analysis
The anti-Jewish unrest in the North Caucasus has caused horror. The Russian leadership claims that the West and Ukraine are behind it. But the causes are homemade.
The morning after the riots, the airport in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala was deserted. Footage shows the governor of the Russian republic, Sergei Melikov, on a tour of the site. He had security personnel show him where the crowd had entered the airport building and the airfield to hunt down Jewish passengers on a plane that had landed from Tel Aviv on Sunday evening.
Melikov tried to distance himself from the unrest on Sunday evening. The events were “monstrous”. The law enforcement authorities would deal with it appropriately.
The mood in the North Caucasus had already heated up in the past few days, and the events at the airport were just the highlight. On Saturday, a crowd surrounded a hotel in the city of Khasavyurt and demanded that guests’ passports be checked. In Nalchik, a fire was lit next to a cultural center under construction.
Jewish communities in fear
The Russian exile media “Medusa” on Sunday quoted a member of Russia’s Chief Rabbinate in Dagestan, Ovadia Isakov, as fearing that members of the Jewish community in Dagestan would have to be evacuated. They are very afraid that the police will not help. But he doesn’t know what to advise. There are also attacks elsewhere in Russia.
Representatives of international Jewish organizations expressed their horror. It is hoped that President Vladimir Putin will “unambiguously instruct the local authorities not to allow pogroms against Jews,” said the President of the Conference of European Rabbis, Pinchas Goldschmidt, to the Catholic News Agency. Goldschmidt was chief rabbi of Moscow. He has been living in exile since 2022 because he opposes Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Russian leadership claimed that the unrest was caused by foreign provocateurs. In view of the television images of the “horror” in the Gaza Strip, it is “very easy to abuse the situation,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He spoke of attempts by the West to exploit events in the Middle East to divide Russian society. A foreign ministry spokeswoman in Moscow, like Dagestan’s republican leader Melikov, claimed that Ukraine played a key role.
However, they did not provide any evidence – for example, who is behind Telegram channels such as “Morning Dagestans”, which in the past few days had reported on the evacuation of Israeli citizens to southern Russian cities such as Sochi and Mineralnye Vody, but also to Makhachkala, and in the process stirred up hatred . The arrival details of the passenger plane from Tel Aviv were communicated there.
Putin’s room for maneuver limited
It was also prominent figures from the North Caucasus who stoked fears and fueled anti-Israel sentiment. Martial arts champion Khabib Nurmagomedov wrote on October 18th after the explosion at a hospital about Israeli genocide in Gaza. His Instagram account has 35.8 million followers.
President Putin himself directly makes or conveys sentiment against Jews in connection with the war against Ukraine. This included his remark at the beginning of September that Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskiy had been installed by the West as an “ethnic Jew” in order to distract attention from Nazism there.
In May 2022, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov outraged Israel with a Nazi comparison by blathering about the “Jewish blood” of Adolf Hitler. The government in Jerusalem summoned the Russian ambassador at the time – as it did in recent days after Putin invited Hamas representatives to Moscow. The Russian leadership has not only maintained ties to the Islamist terrorist organization for a long time. Its ally and financier Iran also became increasingly important as a partner for Russia as a result of Western sanctions.
The examples show how much the war against Ukraine is now dominating Putin’s politics and thus depriving him of the flexibility that he has previously used in the Middle East. Putin has so far maintained good relations with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.
Fertile ground for anti-Semitism
Remarks like those made by Putin and Lavrov against Israel and Jews correspond to widespread anti-Semitic patterns in Russia. Civil society organizations that deal with and educate people about history were increasingly limited in their work. The country’s educational institutions are increasingly distorting history and spreading ultra-nationalism.
In regions like the North Caucasus, there is also a precarious social situation and massive frustration. A year ago there was an uprising in Dagestan against the forced recruitment of men for the war against Ukraine. The unrest was violently suppressed.
Putin received the country’s religious leaders a few days before the outbreak of violence in the North Caucasus
Tensions that Putin can’t use
It is now becoming clear that the sudden outbreak of violence will be curbed with all our might. Because Putin doesn’t need such tensions in Russia. Just a few days ago, Putin invited the country’s religious leaders to the Kremlin and told them that “interethnic and interreligious harmony is the basis of Russian statehood.” It is a policy that Putin pursued from the beginning with an eye on the diversity of ethnicities and religions in Russia.
Putin also ultimately had right-wing extremist movements crushed after serious crimes against migrants, and massive violence against guest workers and ethnic minorities continued.
There is room for maneuver if it benefits Putin
The arrest of the ultra-nationalist military blogger Igor Girkin/Strelkov and the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin also show that Putin allows such actors to do their thing for a long time, as long as they serve as an outlet for public sentiment and his power games. But if they endanger the stability of his power, he gets rid of them.
But the war against Ukraine is also increasingly restricting Putin’s room for maneuver in domestic politics and endangering the country’s stability. This is shown by the anti-Semitic outbreak of violence in the North Caucasus as an accepted or unwanted consequence of this war.
It is questionable how effective Putin’s countermeasures are – such as his visit to Dagestan at the end of June after Prigozhin’s failed mutiny. Unexpectedly, after a long time, he had appeared again in a crowd that had seemingly spontaneously gathered and was affectionate with a girl.