Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov pictured on February 25, 2022.
Grozny (Russia) – The ruler of the autonomous Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, called his horse Zaza, stolen in the Czech Republic, the first victim of sanctions imposed by the West in 2014 in response to Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. He estimated the value of the horse at at least ten million dollars (about 224 million CZK).
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According to a statement from the Czech police on Tuesday, an unknown perpetrator apparently stole a horse from a stable in Krabčice near Roudnice nad Labem in Litoměřice on the night of Friday to Saturday. The police are now looking for the thief and the stolen English thoroughbred, whose value, according to the police, is almost 400,000 crowns.
< /p> “It is a shame that a beautiful and noble animal is suffering. I am worried that Zazou could fall into the wrong hands,” Kadyrov said today on the social network.
Unknown thieves removed the locking chain with a carabiner from the sliding stable door and took the breeding stallion away. The 16-year-old bay gelding has a mark in the shape of an irregular white star on its forehead, and the part of the right hind leg below the metatarsal joint is also white. sanctions, could so easily be stolen by unknown criminals from what he believed to be a remote and unguarded farm. “Where is the security and surveillance? Where is the heroic police with democratically effective and advanced search methods? In our (autonomous) republic, you can leave a car open overnight and here someone will take a sanctioned horse and the law enforcement officers will find out about it after a few days, ” he fretted.
For years, the Chechen authorities have been accused of persecuting, torturing and silencing all critical voices, including homosexuals. Chechens have also been implicated in a number of high-profile murders, including those of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was formerly the deputy prime minister of the Russian government. Last February, journalist Jelena Milašinová fled Russia because of death threats personally addressed to her by Kadyrov. She drew his ire by reporting on extrajudicial executions in the autonomous republic and the case of Chechen-born former federal judge Saydi Jangulbayev, who became a critic of Kadyrov. The judge is safe due to his former position in Russia. But his wife was taken by a Chechen commando from Nizhny Novgorod to Chechnya as a “hostage”.
Kadyrov today also objected to reducing the value of his horse. According to him, the value, calculated by the Czech police at 18,000 dollars, is artificially reduced and is most likely related to “some kind of financial machinations”, after all “Zazou is worth at least ten million dollars”.
In conclusion, Kadyrov emphasized that he does not believe to coincidences and does not even believe in the existence of such unique thieves who are stupid enough to steal horses from the sanction list and so cunning that the police do not track them down.
The Jezdci.cz server stated that he bought a stallion named Zazou Kadyrov in 2012. He completed a total of 36 races, won nine times and earned over 1.2 million euros (over 28 million crowns in conversion).
