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VLADIMIR Putin's Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov has been a staunch supporter of the war in Ukraine.

The former separatist rebel fought against the Russians in the First Chechen War, only to change sides and join Moscow in the second conflict in 1999.

Human rights groups say he personally oversees the torture of political opponents in secret dungeons and runs death squads known as "Kadyrovites".

Ramzan Kadyrov was born in Chechnya in 1976, and like many men of his generation has lived a life largely defined by two brutal wars that ripped through the republic in the 1990s and 2000s.

In the first Chechen war of 1994 to 1996, he fought alongside his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, for the Chechen separatist cause.

But in 1999, after Mr Putin launched the second Chechen war to restore Russian control over the break away republic, the Kadyrovs changed sides.

Akhmad was subsequently installed as the pro-Russian president of the republic.

When he was assassinated in 2004, the baton of pro-Russian leadership passed to his stocky son.

The tracksuit wearing bodybuilder was not an obvious politician after being backed by Putin, he quickly become one of the most powerful men in Russia.

But as he has grown more powerful, he has become an increasingly divisive figure in Russian politics.

To supporters, he is a Russian patriot who has brought peace to a war ravaged region, presided over unprecedented post-war recovery and reconstruction.

To his enemies  he is a turn-coat rebel who has turned Chechnya into his personal fiefdom where Russian law doesn’t apply, and who has used terror and murder to crush not only the separatist Islamist insurgency, but political rivals, human rights activists, and domestic dissenters.