Repeating what they did after a bombing at a concert hall in the Moscow region in March, Russian authorities are blaming Ukraine and the West for terrorist attacks in the Dagestan region that left dozens dead and injured on Sunday (23). .
Terrorists attacked two Russian Orthodox churches, two synagogues and a traffic police post in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala, leaving 20 dead (including civilians and security officers) and 26 injured.
According to information from the Washington Post, a parliamentarian from Dagestan, Abdulkarim Gadzhiev, said that the attacks were planned by “special services of Ukraine and NATO countries”.
Valentina Matviyenko, president of the Federation Council, Russia’s equivalent of the Senate, also attributed the attacks to external agents.
“The tragedy in Dagestan is an absolutely cynical and carefully planned provocation from abroad,” he said.
Also on Sunday, Al Azaim Media, a Russian-language Telegram channel associated with the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K), said the attacks were a response to a “call” for attacks to be carried out in the name of IS. .
“Our recent appeal didn’t take long to be answered. Our brothers from the Caucasus showed us that they are still strong. They showed what they are capable of,” he told Al Azaim Media.
Dagestan is a Russian republic located in the southwest of the country, where more than 80% of the population is Muslim.
An attack on a concert hall on March 22 in the Moscow region that killed 145 people and injured 551 was claimed by IS, but Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin nevertheless suggested that Ukraine could be behind the attack. outrage.
For analysts, two major terrorist attacks in the space of just three months, both probably promoted by Islamic terrorism, show that the Kremlin has serious weaknesses in its internal security, but the specific case of Dagestan may also be an indication of the feeling of rancor. in certain Russian regions due to the war in Ukraine.
“The high number of deaths among police officers [nos ataques no Daguestão] suggests they were heavily targeted or encountered strong resistance when they intervened. The war in Ukraine – with police officers being sent to the front – has left Russian law enforcement overwhelmed across the country,” Nick Paton Walsh, chief international security correspondent at CNN, said in an article.
“But the situation is particularly bad in Dagestan, where protests broke out in the first months of the war as its children were disproportionately mobilized [para lutar na Ucrânia]”, he added.
In an article for the British newspaper The Telegraph, Samuel Ramani, a researcher in international relations at the University of Oxford, stated that “Russia is falling apart from within”.
“The war in Ukraine is sowing discord within the Russian Federation. The Kremlin cannot avoid these tensions forever,” she said.
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