By Ivor Bennett, Moscow correspondent
There’s a lot we nonetheless do not know concerning the assaults in Dagestan.
It isn’t clear who the gunmen had been or what their wider affiliation could be. There was no fast declare of accountability.
There are additionally questions over what number of assailants there have been and the way many individuals died in complete.
However regardless of that uncertainty, conclusions are being made, some extra shocking than others.
In response to the native member of Russia’s parliament, Abdulkhakim Gadzhiyev, there may be “little doubt” the assaults are linked to “the intelligence providers of Ukraine and NATO nations”.
Actually? There does not appear to be any proof.
But it surely’s not the primary time a home assault has prompted claims of Western and Ukrainian involvement.
Bear in mind the lethal assault on Moscow’s Crocus Metropolis Corridor live performance venue in March? It was Russia’s deadliest terror assault in twenty years. The Islamic State group claimed accountability, however that did not cease authorities blaming Kyiv.
Earlier than we take that additional, let’s rewind and set up what we do learn about what occurred on Sunday.
The assaults seem to have been coordinated. A synagogue and an Orthodox church in Derbent had been seemingly the targets.
The historic metropolis claims to be Russia’s oldest. It is residence to an historical Jewish neighborhood in addition to a UNESCO world heritage website.
The broader area of Dagestan is predominantly Muslim, and is not any stranger to Islamist violence.
A homegrown insurgency staged a number of assaults throughout the North Caucasus over the past twenty years, following Russia’s wars in Chechnya.
In 2017, the FSB mentioned it had defeated the insurgency and since then, assaults have change into much less frequent.
However the Crocus Metropolis assault was a reminder that Russia’s Islamist menace hasn’t gone away.
And there was the disturbing second in October, shortly after the beginning of the warfare in Gaza, when a rampaging mob stormed Dagestan’s primary airport on the hunt for Jewish passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv.
There’s loads of hypothesis this assault could also be in the identical vein.
State information retailers have been reporting the gunmen had been followers of “a global terrorist organisation”, citing legislation enforcement companies.
Whereas the US-based Institute for the Research of Battle has prompt it’s possible the work of Islamic State’s Northern Caucasus department, Wilayat Kavkaz. However there is no such thing as a affirmation of that.
Regardless of all this, although, it hasn’t stopped some, just like the native Duma deputy, claiming Western involvement.
Leonid Slutsky, who heads the State Duma Committee on Worldwide Affairs, is one other.
“The USA and its European satellites… have became outright sponsors of state terrorism,” he mentioned on Telegram, including the blood of the victims is “on their fingers”.
Do not be stunned if there are extra.
It suits the Russian authorities’ wider narrative that the nation is underneath assault by Ukraine and the West. That’s the reason, Russians are advised, for going to warfare with Kyiv. Linking assaults like this helps to strengthen it.
