On 14 April, the Chechen authorities banned Sharia marriages due to the fear of further spreading Covid-19, reported the Caucasian Knot. Clergymen in the Russian federal republic are currently forbidden to register marriages in accordance with Islamic traditions until allowed by a special order.
On 12 April, two coronavirus patients died in Chechnya; and the number of infected persons has increased to 49 and bringing the total death toll to 5. According to Chechen parliament speaker Magomed Daudov, the increase of infected persons in the federal republic is linked with the crowded funerals in the Shali District.
On 10 April, a funeral was held in the village of Malye Atagi of the Shali District, which was attended by many people. It later became known that the family members of the deceased were infected with Covid-19. Following this incident, the Chechen authorities put the village under a tough quarantine regime where the residents were not allowed to go out of their houses and police posts were deployed at the entrances to and exits from the village.
The “Novaya Gazeta” observer Elena Milashina argued that the Covid-19 infection statistics in Chechnya were affected by the public conflict between the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. “Throughout the week, the infection statistics in Chechnya stood at 22 cases confirmed by federal laboratories. The information about the cases identified during the initial testing has disappeared altogether from official news reports. Perhaps the reason for this is in Kadyrov's public conflict with Mishustin, who had criticized the Chechen authorities for unjustifiably harsh closure of Chechen borders,” she wrote.
On 6 April, Mishustin gave a rebuke to the governors, after they introduced a ban on leaving and entering their regions, and advised them “not to confuse regional powers with federal ones.” Ramzan Kadyrov responded by saying that “if it was about Chechnya, then Mikhail Mishustin was misled.”
On 3 April, Kadyrov announced that quarantine demands would become stronger in the republic due to the growing pandemic. The government decided to ban traffic and pedestrians in all settlements of the Chechen Republic from 20:00 to 8:00 o’clock. An exception was made for some organizations and services that have the right to travel at night. In addition, the entry into the republic of all types of transport was closed and the arrival of citizens to the republic was limited.
On 29 March, Chechnya was the first Russian federal republic to close its administrative borders to halt the spread of the coronavirus (Caucasus Watch reported). So far 21 102 cases of COVID-19 were recorded in all of Russia with 170 deaths. Dagestan reported 100 cases, Kabardino-Balkaria 50 and Ingushetia 34 (with one death) from the rest of the Russian North Caucasus Republics.
