Kadyrov's motorcade set dangerous example for Chechen wedding parties

Large wedding trains of many carts or cars are a traditional element of almost any Chechen wedding party, Khasan Bakaev, a historian, believes. People tend to imitate the republic's leadership by motorcade scales and driving style, Ruslan Kutaev, the head of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations, has stated.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that a resident of the Naur District repented, on air of the Chechen TV, of violating traffic rules while trying to oust another participant in the wedding motorcade off the road. Local residents have treated the young man's public repentance as excessive.

Wedding corteges have existed throughout the foreseeable history of Chechens as part of the ceremony, Khasan Bakaev, a Chechen historian, believes.

He is sure that although long motorcades with continuous beeping are annoying some people, most passers-by and motorists treat this with understanding and wish happiness to newlyweds. According to his observations, Chechnya holds practically no weddings without motorcades: an exception may be the situation when mourning has been declared in the family village of the bride or groom, or there is warfare, or a natural disaster.

Violations of traffic rules by wedding motorcades are disgusting, but quite common phenomena, Ruslan Kutaev, the President of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations, has stated.

He treats punishments for violating traffic rules during weddings ceremonies as reasonable, because of such rash driving a wedding sometimes ends in tragedy.

In such behaviour, Ruslan Kutaev also sees an attempt to imitate Ramzan Kadyrov's corteges. "Of course, the scale is not the same, but there's still an attempt to imitate the corteges of the republic's leader. This is especially evident among young people. When the father is not an absolute authority in a family and fails to show what is good and what is bad, then the younger generation looks at the behaviour of the republic's leader and thinks that it is right," Mr Kutaev has noted.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on November 18, 2019 at 11:57 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.