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Dagestan, Sanctions, Troops
Let’s start with the breaking news only because that is one of the possible places where Russia will begin to break up. Once again, it’s Dagestan. I am using Pravda Gerashenko’s post for the breaking news because it summarizes a series of posts in the local channel well.
From the life of a “superpower”: in Dagestan, unknown people barricaded themselves in a residential building and are threatening to blow it up
Rospublica reports that a group of people locked themselves inside an apartment building in Kaspiysk. The house was de-energized, and the residents were taken outside — they were asked to move to a safe distance.
According to eyewitnesses, security forces are negotiating with one of the barricaded men.
There is a reality about the Federation. The cracks are there, and they continue to grow. The Northern Caucasus has never fully been controlled by the Tsarist armies, the Red Army, or the current iteration.
Dagestan has had a few issues with radicalization. This is what the Center for Eastern Studies has to say about the previous attack regarding international support:
Both the scale and coordination of the attacks in Dagestan suggest that the perpetrators had links with international Islamist terrorist organisations, like Vilayat Kavkaz, the North Caucasus cell of Islamic State established in 2015, which has absorbed some of the assets of the dismantled Caucasus Emirate. Media channels associated with ISIS-K have praised the attack. In turn, the Russian government may attempt to use the situation for political and propaganda purposes and indirectly place the blame on Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies, as seen following the Krasnogorsk attack. Governor Sergey Melikov ambiguously referenced the war in Ukraine when discussing the attacks, while Dagestan State Duma Deputy Abdulkhakim Gadzhiev directly blamed Ukrainian and NATO secret services, a statement which was criticised by Senator Dmitry Rogozin. Similarly, Leonid Slutsky, leader of the populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, echoed these accusations.
We have no idea who the people holed up in that house are. But it’s hardly the first time the Russians have had these issues. We also know the attack on Crocus City Hall was connected to ISIS-K.
