The Grozny warlord reminding Moscow who is boss

Men with guns are everywhere in Grozny. They stand on street corners, hang out in hotel lobbies and swagger through shopping malls, Uzis hanging from the waist.

They are Kadyrovtsy, the fighters who became policemen after Ramzan Kadyrov, their militia leader, became head of the Chechen Republic under a deal with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

The Kadyrovtsys' distinctive tight black uniform with a Chechen flag patch on the right arm and a Russian one on the left reflect how many Russians regard today's Chechnya: a rival power base to parts of the Russian security state.

Tensions between Moscow and Grozny came to the fore after the murder in February of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition politician, for which three former Chechen security officials were arrested.

This week, after security forces from the neighbouring Stavropol region shot dead a Chechen man in Grozny, Mr Kadyrov felt compelled to remind Moscow who was boss in Chechnya.

Mr Kadyrov instructed his security officials: "If someone appears on our territory without your knowledge - no matter if a Muscovite or someone from Stavropol - I order you to shoot to kill."

The Chechen government insists the Stavropol officials had come as paid assassins and lacked documents for a legal operation. But Mr Kadyrov's aggressive response raises a bigger political question: his regime may have stabilised war-torn Chechnya, but could it now weaken the Russian state as a whole?

"Kadyrov has tried to build a state within the state for a long time," says Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a Caucasus expert at International Crisis Group. "He only listens to Putin, and nobody else."

While other republics in the North Caucasus exchange intelligence on the Islamist insurgency with which the restive region struggles, the Chechen arm of Russia's Federal Security Bureau, the successor to the KGB, refuses to do so. "It shares what it feels like sharing with Moscow, and lets the centre decide what it sends back down south," says Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services at New York University and author of a book on the Chechen wars.

Chechnya's warlord rulers have clashed over their claim to special status with other parts of the security apparatus before. So far, they have had their way.

In 2013, Mr Putin replaced his top investigator in Chechnya after only seven months on the job following a run-in with Chechen officials. Sergei Bobrov, a highly decorated general at the Federal Investigative Committee, had pressed on with an investigation into the murder of three women in the Chechen village of Geldagan even after his staff received threatening phone calls telling them to stop.

Two people from Geldagan said their village belonged to the area of influence of Magomed Daudov, a former fighter under Mr Kadyrov's father and now the republic's prime minister. "No investigator can build a case without asking him what to do," said one of the two.

The same year Mr Bobrov was forced out, the Federal Investigative Committee released several Chechen men with links to Mr Kadyrov whom the FSB had detained on charges of extorting, kidnapping and torturing other Chechens in Moscow.

In Chechnya, some believe that Mr Kadyrov ordered Mr Nemtsov's murder just steps from the Kremlin walls because he thought this would be a service to his political overlord.

"That man is getting really worried what will happen to him if Putin is no longer there," said a government critic in Grozny who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. "With the criticism from the west, the economic crisis and rumours about disagreements in Putin's circle, he realised that Putin will not be there for ever. Once Putin is gone, he loses everything."

Others see the Nemtsov murder as a result of infighting. In Grozny, speculation is rife whether Mr Daudov or Adam Delimkhanov, a Duma member and brother of the commander of interior ministry troops in Chechnya, have ambitions to replace Mr Kadyrov.

True or not, these theories point to the precarious nature and the built-in risks of Mr Putin's solution for Chechnya. But the Russian president does not appear to share such concerns.

He considers Chechnya a model that can be applied elsewhere. Last November, he suggested to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, that Ukraine pacify its eastern Donbass region by buying it off with money and autonomy as he had done in Chechnya.

That is more than an abstract idea. Moscow is bringing other parts of the North Caucasus in line with some of Chechnya's draconian practices. In 2013, Mr Putin replaced the head of Dagestan, who had tried to counter the creeping Islamist insurgency through dialogue with Salafi Muslims. Since then, Dagestan has cracked down on Salafism as Chechnya has. Dagestan authorities have also started using Mr Kadyrov's practice of punishing insurgents' families by destroying their houses and expelling them.

Vladislav Surkov, a Kremlin adviser on Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ukraine for Mr Putin, this year negotiated treaties for a far-reaching integration of the two Georgian breakaway regions with Russia in exchange for more economic aid.

As far as Mr Kadyrov is concerned, the deal is very clear. "If you entrusted this region to me, I must ensure security [here]. If not, please be so good and fire me."

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