RT, 10/29/23
There has been a string of anti-Jewish incidents in Russia’s southern Muslim-majority regions, since the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began, earlier this month.
Media sources in Moscow believe the unrest has been encouraged by Ukraine-based Telegram channels running information-war operations.
The latest major flashpoint took place on Sunday, when hundreds of anti-Jewish protesters breached the international airport of Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Dagestan.
What happened?
Hundreds of angry protesters, some of whom were carrying Palestinian flags and anti-Jewish placards, massed outside the Makhachkala airport late on Sunday. The unauthorized gathering was prompted by online rumors of a flight, allegedly inbound from Tel Aviv and carrying “Jewish refugees” purportedly fleeing the conflict in the Middle East.
The mob scuffled with airport police, breaking doors of the terminal and forcing its way into the facility. Rioters streamed into the terminal, found their way onto the runway and blocked incoming flights as they searched for Israeli passengers.
Response from the authorities
The unrest at the airport prompted a massive police response, and dozens of law enforcement vehicles were spotted at the scene. Riot police entered the airport, detaining multiple protesters, footage circulating online suggests. Some 20 people, including at least six police officers, were injured in clashes, according to local health authorities.
The local directorate of the Russian Interior Ministry said a criminal probe into mass rioting has been launched. The charge incurs heavy penalties and can land offenders behind bars for up to 15 years. Apart from that, individuals making hateful racially- and religiously-charged public remarks may face criminal probes as well, the directorate has warned.
Other anti-Jewish incidents
A day earlier, an angry crowd searched a hotel in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt for “Jewish refugees,” rumored to be living there. The crowd found none, and the incident was resolved peacefully.
Separately, a Jewish cultural center under construction in the city of Nalchik, the capital of Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, was targeted by unknown assailants. The attackers set the building ablaze and tagged it with anti-Semitic graffiti.
Ukrainian intelligence behind the unrest?
The online rumors that prompted the unrest in Dagestan appeared to have originated from the Utro Dagestan (‘Dagestan Morning’) Telegram channel. Despite portraying itself as a local outlet, the channel had been exposed by both Russian officials and the Killnet hacker community as a Ukrainian intelligence service project, set up to stir unrest in Russia.
The channel began to rapidly grow shortly after the beginning of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow in February 2022, receiving lavish funding and becoming a major resource in the network of anti-Russian online outlets.
Fugitive former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who had settled in Kiev in 2016 and was eventually granted Ukrainian citizenship, has openly and repeatedly admitted, most recently just a few months ago, that the Dagestan Morning was one of “their” resources.
Branded a “foreign agent” by Moscow, Ponomarev previously claimed to be the mouthpiece of the so-called Russian guerilla group NRA, even though there is no conclusive evidence that it actually exists. Through Ponomarev, the group claimed responsibility for the murders of Russian journalist Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, taking the heat off Kiev, after Moscow blamed Ukrainian special services for orchestrating both terrorist attacks.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky immediately reacted to the unrest at the airport with a lengthy post on X on Sunday evening, in which he accused Russia of “deeply rooted” antisemitism and “hatred toward other nations.” Meanwhile, Ponomarev’s team distanced itself from the source of the rumors, claiming that the ex-MP had not been in contact with the Dagestan Morning for over a year.
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Deciphering What Really Happened In Dagestan by Andrew Korybko, Substack, 10/30/23
Efforts have been underway since the start of the special operation to weaponize multiculturalism under a faux “decolonization” guise in order to “Balkanize” Russia. Of additional relevance, attempts have been made to ruin Russia’s careful balancing act between Israel and Hamas/Palestine. These two contextual factors combined in the latest incident, which saw the SBU exploit some local Muslims’ pro-Palestinian sentiment amidst the latest regional war for the purpose of manipulating them into rioting, storming the airport, and carrying out a pogrom in pursuit of their puppet master’s anti-Russian geopolitical agenda.
An Unexpected Security Incident
A riotous crowd stormed the Makhachkala Airport in Russia’s autonomous Republic of Dagestan on Sunday night and even reached the tarmac after falling under the influence of online rumors alleging that an inbound flight carrying Jewish refugees was expected to arrive from Tel Aviv. They acted as if they wanted to protest in support of Palestine amidst the latest Israeli-Hamas war, but anti-Semitic slogans were associated with the mob, which made some fear that it wanted to carry out a pogrom.
Subsequent Media Spin & A Background Briefing
The security services quickly restored order, though the optics of the incident were immediately exploited by the Western media to fearmonger that Russia is supposedly no longer safe for Jews. According to them and their supporters, the Kremlin’s bias towards Hamas in this conflict has stoked anti-Semitic sentiment in the country and directly contributed to what happened Sunday night. In reality, Russia is neutral as explained by Lavrov here, while Moscow blamed the rumors on the SBU.
Deciphering what really happened in Dagestan requires one to be aware of the larger context leading up to this event. Efforts have been underway since the start of the special operation to weaponize multiculturalism under a faux “decolonization” guise in order to “Balkanize” Russia, which is explained more at length in the preceding two analyses. Of additional relevance, attempts have been made to ruin Russia’s careful balancing act between Israel and Hamas/Palestine, which was explained here and here.
These two contextual factors combined in the latest incident, which saw the SBU exploit some local Muslims’ pro-Palestinian sentiment amidst the latest regional war for the purpose of manipulating them into rioting, storming the airport, and carrying out a pogrom. Under the pretext of holding an unauthorized/illegal protest in support of their co-religionists’ UNSC-endorsed independence cause, this foreign spy agency misled some young men into harming three of Russia’s state interests.
An Attempt To Kill Three Birds With One Stone
For starters, riots naturally pose a threat to any country, especially when they involve storming an airport. Second, it’s even worse when they take the form of a heavily implied pogrom like some extremists within their ranks arguably wanted to carry out as proven by their anti-Semitic slogans. And finally, this incident extended false credence to claims that Russia isn’t safe for Jews anymore, which in turn risks ruining its careful balancing act between Israel and Hamas/Palestine in the latest conflict.
Documented Proof Of Putin’s Passionate Philo-Semitism
The last-mentioned points deserve a bit more elaboration since it was these two goals that the SBU and its CIA masters wanted to achieve most of all. Contrary to the Western public’s twisted perception, which is the result of incessantly being fed groundless propaganda over the past 20 months about President Putin purportedly being the “New Hitler”, the Russian leader is actually a passionate philo-Semite. This collection of quotes here from the Kremlin website between 2000-2018 proves it beyond any doubt.
In fact, he praised Judaism as recently as last Wednesday when meeting with representatives of religious associations. For those who want to learn more about President Putin’s philo-Semitism, they should review his speech at the Keren Heyesod Foundation’s annual conference in Moscow in September 2019 here and the one that he gave at the Fighting Antisemitism forum in Jerusalem several months later in January 2020 here. This background places former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s praise in context.
He told President Putin during their meeting in October 2021 that “I want to tell you on behalf of our country, the whole of our people that we regard you as a very close and true friend of the State of Israel”, which he would never have said if there even a remote chance that he was an anti-Semite. Those Western media outlets and their supporters who try to defame the Russian leader in such a way are suggesting that Israel can’t properly assess friend from foe, which inadvertently offends its policymakers.
The Plot To Ruin Relations With Israel
Nevertheless, the artificially manufactured narrative that was just concocted following Sunday night’s incident at the Makhachkala Airport alleging that Russia is no longer safe for Jews puts pressure on Israel to reconsider their ties, especially after some counterfactually claimed that this is President Putin’s fault. It’s premature to predict whether or not that’ll happen in the long run, but the case can compellingly be made that the SBU’s provocation was timed for maximum effect considering the lead-up to it.
Russia’s unsuccessful UNSC draft resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire was vetoed by the US on the grounds that it didn’t explicitly condemn Hamas’ terrorist attack, which Moscow pragmatically eschewed doing in alignment with its neutral stance and desire to raise the odds of ending the violence. Washington’s objection intended to lend false credence to the claim that Russia is biased towards Hamas, all with the ultimate aim of pressuring Israel into reconsidering their ties.
Approximately one week later, Israel demanded that Russia expel Hamas’ political delegation that traveled there to discuss freeing those of its host’s dual citizens who it had earlier taken hostage. Around the exact same time, Israel’s Permanent UNSC Representative criticized Russia’s position at that global body, which prompted his counterpart to clarify the Kremlin’s neutral policy in remarks that were analyzed here.
The Plot To Drag Russia Into The War
Taken together, these three developments in the lead-up to Sunday night’s incident – the US’ innuendo at the UNSC that Russia is biased towards Hamas and Israel’s two subsequently implied claims to that effect – put further pressure on Israel to reconsider ties in the aftermath of that event. The SBU and its CIA masters hope to spark a self-sustaining cycle of political escalations through their latest meddling with the goal of dragging Russia into the Israeli-Hamas war by inertia against its will.
From their perspective, this would open up their long-planned “second front” after prior attempts in Moldova/Transnistria, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Karabakh were either called off in the first two cases (at least for now) or failed in the last three as explained in the associated hyperlinks. These three analyses here, here, and here explain why Russia doesn’t deter or respond to Israeli-US strikes in Syria, but the Kremlin’s calculations could change if Tel Aviv’s do and it begins threatening Russia’s bases there.
To be clear, there’s no credible indication at the time of writing to suggest that Israel has any such intentions, even after Sunday night’s incident. Even so, this doesn’t mean that the SBU-CIA alliance didn’t hope to make that more likely through their latest meddling in Makhachkala, the failure of which wouldn’t automatically amount to a failure of that operation. After all, it demonstrated that they can still manipulate some Daghestanis into doing their bidding, but this isn’t anything new though.
The Plot To Discredit Russia’s “Ummah Pivot”
RT wrote about this in October 2022 in their article here about how similar such information warfare methods as Sunday night’s were employed to incite unauthorized protests against Russia’s partial mobilization of experienced reservists back then. This time the weaponized narrative that they relied on was to take advantage of local Muslims’ pro-Palestinian sentiments amidst the latest Israeli-Hamas war for the purpose of manipulating them into rioting, storming the airport, and carrying out a pogrom.
The foreign conspirators responsible for this provocation wanted large-scale clashes to erupt between their “useful idiots” and the security forces in order to then spin the decontextualized footage with the aim of generating more unrest in the region on the false basis that “Russia is oppressing Muslims”. They haven’t succeeded in this supplementary objective thus far, but they hoped that it could lead to another wave of terrorism in the North Caucasus while also discrediting Russia’s “Ummah Pivot” in recent years.
That concept refers to Russia’s prioritization of ties with majority-Muslim countries, which is intended to optimize its Sino-Indo balancing act in Eurasia as well as serve as a supplementary valve from Western sanctions pressure since the start of the special operation. If Muslims were misled into thinking that “Russia is oppressing” their co-religionists in Dagestan, however, then its soft power would plummet and immense grassroots pressure could be placed on their governments to distance themselves from it.
The Plot To Discredit Spring’s Presidential Elections
Even if none of these objectives are achieved, then this still doesn’t mean that the latest meddling completely failed since it made some Westerners think that Russia is anti-Semitic, briefly revived ridiculous speculation about its “impending collapse”, and distracted from Kiev’s failed counteroffensive. Unless the targeted Dagestani population is inoculated from the effects of foreign influence campaigns, which can be achieved via the means detailed here, some elements might continue doing their bidding.
Other than lone wolf terrorist attacks, this could manifest itself through more such riots as Sunday night’s (whether at transport facilities, government buildings, or wherever else) aimed at either creating wider unrest or at least the perception thereof ahead of next spring’s scheduled presidential elections. The purpose is to encourage a Color Revolution that could then create the previously mentioned optics required for inciting further instability in order to discredit the vote and whatever its outcome may be.
Concluding Thoughts
Considering the wide range of objectives that the latest SBU-CIA latest meddling in Russia sought to achieve, it can be concluded that Dagestan is of disproportionate geostrategic importance, and events there can more easily have far-reaching consequences than if they happened elsewhere. The worst-case scenarios were averted by the security forces’ swift intervention, however, which suggests that they’ll also succeed in averting most (if not all) forthcoming ones and thus crush their foes’ Hybrid War plans.