Ramzan Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin were at center stage this week for different reasons.
Kadyrov due to suspicions he was behind the February 27 assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemstov, which placed him at the epicenter of an apparent Kremlin clan war.
And Puin was in the spotlight by disappearing, sparking widespread rumors about his health as his underlings edged toward open conflict.
On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we take a closer look at Kadyrov's emergence at the center of the Nemtsov assassination, the clan battles in the Kremlin, and Putin's mysterious disappearance from public view.
Joining me are Aslan Doukayev, director of RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service; Kirill Kobrin, editor of the Moscow-based history and sociology magazine Neprikosnovenny Zapas; and Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, author of Sean's Russia Blog, and host of the newly launched SRB Podcast.
Enjoy...