At least 21 dead in terrorist attacks in Makhachkala and Derbent, Russia

The Head of the Republic of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov (center), visits the damaged Kele Numaz Synagogue in Derbent, Monday, June 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Telegram channel of the President of the Russian Republic of Dagestan)

On the evening of June 23, terrorist attacks were carried out in the Russian cities of Makhachkala and Derbent in the impoverished North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on the coast of the Caspian Sea. The population of Dagestan is ethnically diverse but predominantly Muslim.

The attackers targeted two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, one of which was set on fire, and a traffic patrol post (one of the traffic police units). The attack occurred on the Orthodox Trinity Day, one of the most important holidays for Orthodox Christians.

According to the latest figures, at least 21 people were killed and 26 others injured. Among those killed were 16 police officers and five civilians, including an Orthodox priest. Five suspected terrorists were killed on the spot.

All media reports indicated that the attacks were well organized and that the attackers themselves used foreign-made weapons in their attacks, including at least one assault rifle.

Notably, the attackers included the sons and two nephews of Magomed Omarov, a local official of the United Russia party that rules in Dagestan. Before the terrorist attack, Omarov was the head of the district of the Republic of Dagestan and secretary of the local branch of United Russia. He has now been arrested. He has already been charged with hooliganism, but he will probably also be charged with aiding and abetting terrorism.

One of Omarov’s nephews, who carried out the attack, was chairman of the district group of the parliamentary party “Fair Russia” until 2021.

At the time of writing, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Kremlin has only just begun investigating the attack and has not yet officially charged any state intelligence agency or terrorist organization. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on June 25 that the rocket attack on the Sevastopol beach, which killed four people, and the terrorist attacks in Dagestan were likely simultaneous.

Everything indicates that the imperialist powers were involved in the attack, which serves their war aims and strategy in several ways. It comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Washington DC on July 9-11 and at a time when NATO is preparing to enter the war directly against Russia in Ukraine. At the end of May, NATO countries authorized attacks with weapons supplied by them deep into Russian territory. This directly endangers the civilian population in Russia, especially in the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions.

The United States and other NATO members have repeatedly stated that they will not cross certain “red lines” in order not to turn the conflict in Ukraine into a full-blown world war. Yet each time, NATO member states have crossed precisely those “red lines” that they themselves had drawn. Even in an article before Biden’s decision to authorize US strikes on Russian territory, New York Times claimed that Biden was unlikely to take such a step, but Biden has done just that.

Given all these facts, it is logical to assume that the attack of the militants in Dagestan was in the interests of the United States: they wanted to destabilize the situation in Russia, and especially in the republics of the North Caucasus, in order to weaken the position of the Putin regime in the war with Ukraine and disperse its forces on the internal front.

In fact, the NATO powers have already opened a second front in the war, inside Russia. In March, a major terrorist attack at Moscow’s popular City Crocus concert hall killed at least 145 people. As the WSWS and the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists have documented, the attack bore the hallmarks of US imperialism and its proxy, the Ukrainian regime. The WSWS explained the goals that US imperialism pursues with such attacks as follows:

This has three aims: first, to encourage opposition to the Putin regime within the oligarchy and the state apparatus; second, to provoke a military response from the Kremlin, which NATO can use as a pretext for further escalation of the war; and third, to stoke ethnic and religious tensions in Russia, which would destabilise the regime and facilitate the division of the entire region by the imperialist powers.

All three of these goals are also achieved by the terrorist attacks in Dagestan. With their attacks on Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, the attackers obviously wanted to stir up religious and ethnic tensions. The location of the attacks is also no coincidence. Dagestan is one of the most diverse but also poorest regions in Russia and is suffering from the effects of the Kremlin’s decades-long war against separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

In October 2023, anti-Semitic riots broke out at Makhachkala airport after the arrival of a flight from Tel Aviv. A statement by the YGBL condemning the riots said at the time:

In fact, one cannot rule out that Western intelligence services were involved in inciting the unrest in order to undermine stability in Russia itself. Inciting ethnic and nationalist conflicts and tensions, especially among the country’s large Muslim population, has long been part of the imperialist strategy to divide Russia. Financial Times reported that a channel previously linked to Ilya Ponomarev helped instigate the unrest. Ponomarev is a leading figure in the pro-NATO opposition in the Russian oligarchy that has coordinated incursions by Ukrainian neo-fascist militias into Russian territory.

With such incitement and terrorist attacks, the imperialist powers and their proxies in the oligarchy are trying to exploit and exacerbate discord within the Russian elite. Their ultimate goal is to weaken and eventually overthrow Putin’s regime and replace it with a puppet regime.

The fact that local officials with ties to the ruling United Russia party, as well as one of the main “loyal” opposition parties, Fair Russia, were directly and indirectly involved in the attack not only testifies to the reactionary nature of the ruling class. It also shows that there are violent conflicts within the ranks of the Russian oligarchy. If there are such extremists and conflicts among officials at the local level, what is the situation at the highest echelons of power?

The Putin regime emerged from the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism as a Bonapartist regime. To protect the interests of the oligarchy, it maneuvers between different factions within the ruling class, between the working class and the oligarchy, and between the national interests of the oligarchy and the interests of imperialism. But both imperialism’s unstoppable escalation of the war and growing social tensions in Russia itself are increasingly undermining the basis for such maneuvers. In recent weeks, Putin has launched a sweeping purge of the army, placing much of its leadership under the control of economists loyal to him and the secret FSB intelligence agency.

The Putin regime, besieged on all sides, is sitting on a ticking time bomb. The attacks on the Sevastopol beach and the terrorist attacks will further exacerbate the contradictions between the various factions of the ruling class and the elites of the national republics. The opposition, openly supported by NATO, will be emboldened by NATO’s increasingly direct intervention in the war and its systematic efforts to destabilize the Putin regime, and will in turn intensify its long-running preparations for regime change. The ultra-nationalist faction, on the other hand, will be ever more insistent in demanding that Putin take decisive action in the war in Ukraine, up to and including the deployment of nuclear weapons. At the same time, separatist tendencies will also intensify in republics such as Dagestan and Chechnya.

For the working class, the terrorist attacks in Dagestan and the strikes on the Sevastopol beach are a grave warning. Without the independent intervention of the proletariat, Russia will either be drawn into a nuclear war or dismembered by the NATO imperialists into compliant puppet and dictatorial regimes. Workers of all countries must condemn the terrorist attacks and oppose the inflaming of nationalist and religious tensions, which are a central element in the development of a third world war that threatens humanity with annihilation. What is urgently needed is the building of a socialist anti-war movement that fights for the independent mobilization of the working class against imperialist war and capitalism.

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