Luxurious wedding of Kadyrov's 17-year-old son

In the ensuing rescue operation, some 130 hostages died—mostly as the result of inhaling a narcotic gas released by security forces that was meant to incapacitate the Chechens. Following the incident, Russia stepped up military operations in Chechnya. In 2003 Chechen voters approved a new constitution that devolved greater powers to the Chechen government but kept the republic in the federation. The following year the Russian-backed Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in a bomb blast allegedly carried out by Chechen guerrillas. Russian forces, in turn, killed several top separatist leaders in 2005 and 2006. With Putin’s backing, Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, gained the Chechen presidency in 2007. Denying accusations by human rights groups that he employed kidnapping, torture, and murder to quash opposition, Kadyrov maintained the support of Russia, and in early 2009 he claimed that the insurgency had been crushed. That April, Russian Pres. Dmitry Medvedev announced that Russia had ended its counterinsurgency operations in the republic. Nevertheless, sporadic outbreaks of violence continued to occur.