Putin makes surprise visit to Chechnya before elections

Wearing black, a somber Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Chechnya on Sunday, laying a wreath at the grave of its assassinated leader who was Kremlin's main ally in the war-torn republic.
The Russian leader's rare visit to Chechnya came hours after fighting killed dozens in its capital and a week before an election to replace Akhmad Kadyrov, who died in an explosion in central Grozny on May 9.
"He was a very proper man," Putin said in televised remarks as he laid a bouquet of red carnations at Kadyrov's grave, in line with Russian rather than Chechen custom, in his home village of Tsentoroi.
"He had no other aim in life than to serve his own people," Putin said.
The Russian leader was accompanied by Alu Alkhanov, the Kremlin-backed candidate who is widely expected to win next Sunday's election, and Kadyrov's son Ramzan, who heads a feared security service that has been accused of widespread human rights violations in Chechnya.
Putin hailed Kadyrov, a former separatist Muslim cleric who fought the Russians in the first 1994-96 Chechen war before switching sides in the second Russian offensive launched on October 1, 1999.
"We lost a sincere, courageous, talented and decent man who had but one goal, to serve his people," he said. Alkhanov and Ramzan then accompanied Putin to the resort town of Sochi, where the Russian president said he was in favour of letting Chechnya's local government to have control over revenues from the sale of oil in the province.
"It would be just to allocate revenues from the sale of oil toward the republic's reconstruction," he said.
Previously revenues from oil sales in Chechnya were sent to the federal budget and Kadyrov had been lobbying to keep them inside the republic before he was killed.
Hours before Putin was whisked to Tsentoroi by helicopter, fighting raged in Chechnya's capital Grozny, in the most brazen rebel attack to have occurred there in at least a year.
Late Saturday, Chechen separatist fighters carried out a number of attacks across the capital Grozny that left several people dead, including pro-Russian policemen. Civilians and rebels were also reported killed.
The Interfax news agency quoted Russian officials as saying that 50 Chechens had died in the fighting. It quoted Russian military officials as saying that 16 civilians were killed. Putin's visit on Sunday was his third to the Muslim republic where he launched what was termed a quick anti-terror operation in October 1999, which today has dissolved into a simmering guerrilla war.