There were attacks in Russia that killed 19 people

Crimes against Christians and Muslims in the Dagestan region since the March 16 Ukrainian Massacre at the Pecsi Sunday Synagogue

MOSCOW — Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan continues to mourn loved ones and hold funerals for the dead, as questions and theories swirl over who was responsible for the weekend attack by gunmen that killed 20 people — most of them police — and injured dozens more.

Sunday’s violence in Dagestan’s regional capital of Makhachkala and nearby Derbent was the latest that officials blamed on Islamic extremists in the predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus, as well as the deadliest in Russia since March, when gunmen opened fire at a concert in suburban Moscow, killing 145 people.

Following the latest attack in Dagestan, the Russian branch of the Islamic State splinter group known as ISIS-K issued a statement cheering on the assault, saying the gunmen had responded to “the call.”

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argued that the Islamic State group’s North Caucasus branch, Vilayat Kavkaz, likely was behind the attack, describing it as “complex and coordinated.”

The Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the March attack on Ukraine, despite the fact that President Vladimir Putin was seeking to blame it. The city of Kyiv categorically denied any involvement.

The Investigative Committee, the country’s top state criminal investigation agency, said all five attackers were killed. Of the 19 people killed, 15 were police.

Among the dead was the Rev. Nikolai Kotelnikov, a 66-year-old Russian Orthodox priest at a church in Derbent. The attackers slit his throat before setting fire to the church, according to Shamil Khadulayev, deputy head of a local public oversight body. The attack came as the Orthodox faithful celebrated Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday.

Russian news reports said the attackers included the two sons and a nephew of Magomed Omarov, the head of the main Kremlin’s party United Russia’s regional branch in Dagestan. Omarov was detained by police for interrogation, and United Russia quickly dismissed him from its ranks.

The violence in Dagestan has abated in recent years, but in a sign that extremist sentiments still run high in the region, mobs rioted at an airport there in October, targeting a flight from Israel. Many people were hurt, none of them Israelis, when hundreds of men carrying banners with antisemitic slogans rushed onto the tarmac, chased passengers and threw stones at police.

The authorities’ response to Sunday’s attack was more than they have seen in the past, but still lacking, according to Harold Chambers, who specializes in the North Caucasus.

“They were definitely caught off guard by this attack,” he said. There is a discrepancy between Russia’s counterterrorism capability and what the terrorists have in their own country.

There were at least four attacks on Sunday, including a Jewish synagogue and two Orthodox Christian churches, in Makhachkala and the nearby city of Derbent. There was no claim of responsibility.

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Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, says it has opened a criminal probe into “acts of terror,” and the Kremlin has cautioned to await its findings.

Local officials believe the attackers intended to ignite violence in a majority- Muslim but mostly religiously diverse region that has struggled with extremism.

“This is an attempt to tear apart our unity,” Sergei Melikov, the Kremlin-appointed head of the Republic of Dagestan, said in a social media post after the incidents.

Dagestan’s small vibrant Jewish community goes back centuries. The synagogue in Derbent was destroyed by fire. There was no worship happening at the time.

The attackers in the two cities were seen on video by terrified local residents, and several of them were captured on video, which was shared on social media.

A national counterterrorism task force gave little information other than to say that the active phase of an antiterrorist operation had ended successfully.

Russian special forces raided and killed the six Islamic State inmates who had staged a brief prison uprising in the city of Rostov.

And last October, as Israel’s war in Gaza heated up, an angry pro-Palestinian mob of locals overran Dagestan’s main airport in search of Jewish passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv.

While authorities have yet to identify the assailants publicly, several attackers’ faces were captured by witness videos. The local media said they had identified some of them.

Source: In Russia, Dagestan mourns and suspicions mount after deadly attacks

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As the country awaited the Investigative Committee’s findings, several Kremlin allies and avowed Russian nationalists have provided their own theories.

In an interview with Russia 24, the representative to the Russian parliament said that the NATO and the Ukrainian security forces were behind it.

“The authors — were the Western intelligence services,” wrote Alexander Sladkov, one of a group of nationalist war correspondents who have gained notoriety on social media amid the conflict in Ukraine.

The Crocus City concert hall in Moscow was the site of an attack which resulted in the deaths of many people. ISIS-K immediately claimed responsibility for the carnage.

The United States had shared information about an impending attack by the group. President Putin had publicly rejected the information as “blackmail” and an attempt to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”

At the time, experts said the security failure reflected the Russian president’s unceasing focus on Ukraine — and jailing Russians opposed to his policies — rather than rooting out domestic threats.

It’s a system where “punishment is more important than protection of civilians,” Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on the Russian security services, said in an interview with NPR following the Crocus City attack.

To prevent terrorist attacks you have to have different skills and capabilities, said Soldatov. “You need to know how to share intelligence within the Russian security and intelligence community, but also with your international partners. And for that, you need a lot of trust.”

Some Kremlin allies warn of danger in Russia’s apparent failure to address troubles of its own making after this weekend’s attack.

The Russian hawk wrote on social media on Sunday that he believes NATO and Ukrainians will suffer the consequences of their actions if they are responsible for terrorist acts that involve national or religious intolerance.

The Kremlin spokesman did not agree with the idea that the recent events in North Caucasus signaled a return to the violence that caused havoc in the 1990s and 2000s.