Russia blames attack on Dagestan on Ukraine and the West and ignores religious tensions

Trinity Sunday is one of the most important holidays in the Orthodox calendar.

On this special day, 66-year-old Father Nikolai was in the church in the city of Derbent in Dagestan.

Dagestan is located in the North Caucasus and is a predominantly Muslim republic. However, Derbent is known as the “city of three religions”.

It is one of the oldest Christian centers in Russia and home to an ancient Jewish community.

Both were on the verge of being attacked in the most brutal way.

On Sunday evening, armed men stormed the church and murdered Father Nikolai. They also attacked the local synagogue and set it on fire.

At about the same time, insurgents also wreaked havoc in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, and attacked a church and a synagogue there too.

In response to this dramatic coordinated attack, security forces launched an “anti-terrorist operation.” In Dagestan, gun battles raged late into the night. At least five of the attackers were killed.

But why had they run amok?

The immediate suspicion: links to Islamist extremism. After all, not so long ago Dagestan was a hotbed of extremism that had spilled over from neighboring Chechnya.

When I visited Makhachkala in 2010, there were almost daily reports of militant attacks on police and local officials.

During this trip, a policeman named Magomed told me:

“When I get out of the police car, I always wonder if the insurgents will see my uniform and shoot at me. Six of my colleagues have been killed this year. At night, you don’t see any police officers on the streets. We are all too afraid.”

The region’s chronic economic and social problems – high unemployment and rampant corruption – fuelled extremism.

Radical ideas thrive on such soil.

In recent years, it seemed as if Russian security forces were winning their battle against armed insurgents.

But the Islamist attacks have not stopped. The terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS) has repeatedly claimed responsibility for attacks in Dagestan, including a shooting in front of a church in the city of Kizlyar in 2018.

And yet, Russian MP Abdulkhakim Gadzhiev had a very different explanation for the events when he commented on Sunday’s bloodshed on Russian state television.

Mr Gadzhiev suggested that the intelligence services of Ukraine and NATO countries may have orchestrated the attacks. However, he did not provide any evidence to support his accusation.

And when the pro-Kremlin news portal Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on the events in Dagestan, it accused the “collective West” of trying to open “a second front” against Russia.

The author continued: “When there is unrest in this region, it is traditionally the British intelligence services that listen closely.”

Russian authorities blamed Kyiv and Western countries, even though ISIS had already claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video of it.

A few days later, President Vladimir Putin even insisted: “Russia cannot be the target of terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists. We are a country that represents a unique example of interfaith harmony and interreligious and interethnic unity.”