Dagestani official fired after his sons implicated in Sunday’s deadly attacks – POLITICO

“In (the events) in the Caucasus, we are witnessing another loss of control by the Russian regime in various places, which comes as a surprise to the regime itself,” wrote Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and a former Russian diplomat, in a post on Telegram.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea that Russia was in danger of slipping into instability.

“Today’s Russia is different, the society is stable, the kind of terrorist manifestations that we saw in Dagestan are not supported by society, neither in Russia nor in Dagestan,” Peskov told reporters on Monday.

Peskov said it was too early to draw conclusions about who was behind the shootings in Dagestan. But he mentioned an attack on Sunday on the Russian-annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, where four people died and more than 150 were injured when shrapnel, believed to be from a US missile, fell on beachgoers in the city of Sevastopol, Russian media reported.

“We know exactly who is behind it,” Peskov said, urging reporters to ask Europe and the United States why they are “killing Russian children.”