Column|The old populist nationalist Dmitri Rogozin spoke sense when he said that not all terrorist attacks in Russia should be attributed to the West and NATO. However, an occasional reasonable remark does not change anything.
Multi may recall the brash and populist nationalist Russian politician Dmitri Rogozinwho was once Russia’s ambassador to NATO.
The effort to provoke remained even after Rogozin moved to the position of deputy prime minister responsible for military industry and later to the director general of the Russian space agency Roskosmos. Last fall, he was transferred from Roskosmos to the Federal Council, i.e. the upper house of the parliament. The move was a shelve, as Rogozin got a mickey mouse role as Zaporozhye’s senator. Zaporozhye is the Russian name for the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, which Russia declared to have “annexed” after occupying part of it.
The provocateur Rogozin therefore represents the illegally annexed territory. But the development in modern Russia is now such that sometimes even he may sound like the voice of reason.
This emerged after gunmen carried out a series of terrorist attacks on churches and synagogues in Makhachkala and Derbent on Sunday.
Dagestan’s elite immediately blamed the West and Ukraine for the terrorist attack. There were no grounds for the allegations, but blaming the West has been routine for the region’s rulers for a long time. Now there is even more incentive for the talks, when the Russian top management and the entire propaganda machine blamed the West and Ukraine for the attack on a concert hall near Moscow in the spring. Such a message seems to sink in with a large part of Russians, although there is no evidence.
However, Rogozin noted that automatically blaming NATO and Ukraine for the attacks leads to problems.
“We see a speck in another’s eye, but we don’t see a speck in ours. It’s about time,” he wrote, referring to the Bible.
Generally it is known that the Russian leader Vladimir Putin his strengths don’t even include seeing a rikka in his own eye. The North Caucasus is an example of that.
The area is poor and badly corrupt even by Russian standards, and the majority of residents have no future prospects. However, these problems do not interest Putin, because in his system the loyalty of local leaders is more important than competence. All kinds of justified protests are crushed, opposition is not allowed, justice is denied. The level of education is low, young people are sent to crash in Ukraine.
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Blaming the West has been routine.
The North Caucasus was a secularized Muslim region for a long time. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many found a new identity in Islam, where the harshest religious interpretations gained a foothold, especially with the support of Saudi Arabia. In Chechnya, the rebellion was initially an independence movement, but when Russia brutally defeated it, the rebellion became Islamist and spread to Dagestan and the rest of the North Caucasus.
During the Sochi Olympics held at the beginning of 2014, Russia got rid of Islamist rebels by letting them into the Middle East and the terrorist organization ISIS.
The Wahhabi faith still has a strong position. When the leadership does not even try to solve social problems, radicalization expands. Especially when for locals the only alternative to Kremlin propaganda is social media, where conspiracy theories spread and extremist organizations are effective. Family members of a member of the local elite already participated in Sunday’s attacks.
Now so we are in a situation where Russia declares that it is fighting the Nazis in Ukraine, but anti-Semitic attacks are repeated in Dagestan. In October, a mob searched the Makhachkala airport for Jewish passengers. It was new, because Jews have lived in the area since the fourth century.
However, the Russian leadership cannot admit its failure, and neither can the intelligence agencies, whose attention is focused on Ukraine and the fringes of the liberal opposition. Rogozin, of course, knew this and did not cross any boundaries. He just used the space allowed to the populist nationalists of a small elite and happened to speak sense. This has no effect, and Rogozin is not interested.
So it is clear that the situation in the North Caucasus is only getting worse. The Russian leadership has yet to find it.
The author is acting director of the editorial and opinion department. foreperson.
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