Ramzan Kadyrov threatens to shut down his Instagram account

It looks like FP collected Ramzan Kadyrov’s 11 weirdest Instagrams just in time. Today brought news that the Chechen president is threatening to close his popular account.

According to Radio Free Europe, the threat comes after Kadyrov posted a photograph of himself standing next to Bekkhan Ibragimov, a Chechen who everyone thought was serving jail time for his part in the 2010 killing of a Russian soccer fan.

In the photo’s caption, Kadyrov wrote that he was helping Ibragimov combat local corruption that had prevented him from receiving registration documents.

Kadyrov apparently thought his Instagram followers would be pleased with his hard line on corruption, but instead the Chechen leader was immediately barraged with angry comments criticizing him for his support of such a controversial figure. (The 2010 killing of Yuri Volkov, the Russian soccer fan, sparked protests in Moscow.)

In comments cited by Russian media and reported by Radio Free Europe, a peeved Kadyrov responded to the criticism on LiveJournal:

I no longer understand my subscribers at all. One minute you say we need to fight corruption and punish bribe-takers, but when you see real action in this direction you start discussing and condemning the person that exposed illegal action by a bureaucrat…. Your comments are worth absolutely nothing. It is just empty chatter. That’s why I think it’s probably better for me to delete [my] Instagram [account] and work without taking an interest in your opinions on this or that issue.

Kadyrov has yet to make good on his threat, but he did express similar grievances on Instagram. Of course, he accompanied those comments with yet another picture.