It is the football stadium that is supposed to symbolise the rebirth of a peaceful Chechnya after two Kremlin wars to crush separatist rebels.

There is only one problem as Terek, the local team newly promoted to Russia's premier league, prepares to play in the capital Grozny for the first time in almost 15 years. Many of Russia's leading teams are unwilling to travel to Chechnya because they are afraid of a terrorist attack.

With the new season just three weeks away the Russian Football Union has yet to sanction games in Grozny. Officials will visit next week before its governing body decides whether Terek can return home to play.

“It is quiet here now, anyone who spends time in the city can see that everything has improved. Sooner or later we have to return to our home ground. We can't keep playing away all the time,” Haidar Alkhanov, Terek's vice-president, told The Times during a stadium tour.

“Some of these other teams played in a cup competition in Israel recently. If they were not afraid to go there, why are they afraid to come here?”

The team has played at Pyatigorsk, 185 miles from Grozny, since re-forming in 2001 after a seven-year break during the wars. This week workers were putting the finishing touches to the new stadium as a portrait of President Kadyrov stared across the pitch at the stand where rebels assassinated his father in a bomb attack.

“Ramzan is president of the club and it's thanks to him that we have achieved such success. He just dreams of seeing the team play in Grozny,” Mr Alkhanov said.

For Mr Kadyrov and his Kremlin patron President Putin, nothing would better illustrate the return of “normality” to Chechnya than sell-out matches at the 10,000-seat stadium broadcast on Russian television.

Russia's military flattened Grozny, killing thousands, when Mr Putin launched the second Chechen War in 1999 to defeat the separatists. The city was destroyed in the first Chechen War from 1994 to 1996, when rebel forces defeated Russia's army.

Human rights groups have long accused Mr Kadyrov of sanctioning kidnap, torture and murder by his security forces. But he has also earned popularity with war-weary Chechens for a rebuilding programme that has transformed Grozny and returned a semblance of normal life to the city.

The local market bustles with shoppers, the central Victory Avenue is lined with new stores and a giant mosque is under construction. Large empty spaces across the city, however, mark districts obliterated by the war.

Many new apartment buildings have sprung up, roads have been repaired and schools and hospitals are functioning. Mr Kadyrov celebrated his elevation to the presidency last March by reopening Grozny's airport, which hosts daily flights to Moscow for the first time in a decade.

Mr Kadyrov has been central to Mr Putin's plans for restoring Kremlin control of Chechnya since his father Akhmad, then President, was killed by a bomb at the former stadium in 2004. The Kadyrovs fought against Russia in the first war but switched sides and backed Moscow in the second.

Mr Putin nominated Ramzan as President after he had reached the required minimum age of 30. He had run Chechnya anyway since his father's death, both through his private army, the Kadyrovtsy, and as Prime Minister since 2006.

Kremlin efforts, however, to portray Chechnya as stable and peaceful clash with the reality of soldiers on the streets at every turn. When The Times and other foreign journalists visited government officials imposed tight restrictions on their movements and insisted on an escort of elite Interior Ministry troops.

Mr Kadyrov sought to give a different impression when he pulled up in his Mercedes sports car during a stop outside Grozny and leapt out to give a roadside press conference. It was a stunt calculated to demonstrate his control over the security situation.

Chechnya's 99.6 per cent vote for Mr Putin's United Russia party in December's parliamentary elections was another show of power. He insists that the result was genuine and has promised to deliver even more support for Dmitri Medvedev, Mr Putin's chosen successor in next week's presidential election.

“Go to any village and ask anyone who they voted for. Because of the politics of one man, Vladimir Putin, we have security, stability and we want to live within the Russian Federation,” Mr Kadyrov said. When The Times asked a random selection of people whether they had voted about half said that they had not.

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge