Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to seize the initiative in Chechnya with a lightning visit to the troubled province two days after separatist rebels assassinated its Kremlin-backed leader.
He ordered his government to boost the number of police in Chechnya by 1,000 and said he was dispatching an economic team to look at ways of rebuilding the region, devastated by a decade of war between Moscow and separatists.
"We need to look again at the reconstruction of Grozny. Despite all that is being done there, it looks horrible from a helicopter," he said of the war-shattered regional capital.
Russia has at present around 70,000 forces in the North Caucasus province, including regular troops and police.
A bombing in Grozny on Sunday killed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, key player in Putin's peace plan for the region, in a humiliation for the Kremlin leader who has insisted publicly that the situation was returning to normal.
"(I want) to discuss the results of my trip with the government, in as far as a whole rank of questions require a rapid reaction," he told key ministers in televised remarks.
Putin has only rarely visited the war-torn region since he sent troops back in 1999 to enforce Moscow's rule and crush rebels ruling the province as a de facto independent state.
In early 2000, he flew to Chechnya in a fighter jet.
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