Report by Andrei Kolesnikov about how Vladimir Putin held a meeting regarding the riots at Makhachkala airport

On October 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting at which he spoke about the situation in Dagestan. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov believes that there were surprises. Tat is not a thief – that’s what Vladimir Putin drew attention to.

The list of participants at the meeting essentially coincided with the list of participants in the expanded Security Council. In addition to the heads of law enforcement agencies, there were Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and speakers of the Federation Council and State Duma Valentina Matvienko and Vyacheslav Volodin.

Vladimir Putin began by deciding to give the meeting a working character. At it, he said, Sergei Shoigu, who returned from China, will talk about Sergei Shoigu’s visit to China. (No, well, after all, the Minister of Defense did not go there as quickly as he returned from there – right at the beginning of the meeting. But there was no need to rush: Mr. Shoigu, of course, had a couple of hours in reserve – the meeting could not start on time, then available according to internally announced time).

Vladimir Putin did not use a teleprompter while he spoke. And the format was not the same, and he, without a doubt, was working with the text of the speech just before the start of the meeting. And, apparently, he made some radical changes, which, in the end, were not difficult to detect in this speech: if only by the sudden surge of passion with which something was said, or rather, even thrown into the air – on devouring news agencies and Telegram channels.

“We’ll talk about the situation in the Middle East, and about ensuring law and order in Russia itself, about protecting the rights of our citizens and protecting civil peace and interethnic harmony,” Mr. Putin continued.

But this was closer to the topic of this sudden meeting.

— At a recent meeting with leaders of religious associations, I spoke about attempts to use the dramatic situation in the Middle East against our country, against Russia, to split our multinational and multi-religious society. To do this, they use a variety of means, as we see: lies, provocation, and sophisticated technologies of psychological and information aggression… I repeat: those who are behind the conflict in the Middle East and other regional crises will use their destructive consequences to sow hatred, pit people all over the world. This is the true selfish goal of such geopolitical puppeteers.

So far everything has been more than predictable.

“We remember,” the president continued, “how the current round of the Middle East crisis began: with a terrorist attack against civilians of Israel and other countries on the territory of this state.

It’s good that this is not forgotten. And even very good. Otherwise, there are already prerequisites for the fact that it all started immediately with the Israeli army’s campaign against the Gaza Strip.

However, this was just an introduction to what came next. And again, however, it was predictable:

“We also see that instead of punishing criminals and terrorists, unfortunately, they began to take revenge on the principle of collective responsibility. The terrible events that are now taking place in the Gaza Strip, when hundreds of thousands of innocent people are being indiscriminately killed, who simply have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the bombings, cannot be justified by anything.

Here the president allowed himself emotions that were probably not in the original text of the speech:

“When you look at bloodied children, at dead children, at how women and old people suffer, how doctors die, of course, your fists clench and tears well up in your eyes. There is no other way to say it.

Was it about Jews or about Arabs? No, Vladimir Putin did not explain, but given the sequence of events and the president’s words, it is most likely about the Arabs. He paid higher tribute to the Jews.

“But we should not, do not have and cannot allow ourselves to be guided by emotions,” said Vladimir Putin, and now he seemed to be addressing those who were among those meeting the board from Israel at the Makhachkala airport the night before. “We must clearly understand , who in reality is behind the tragedy of the peoples of the Middle East and other regions of the world. Who organizes deadly chaos, who benefits from it.

Of course, there was another force that Vladimir Putin had in mind without naming it. Why say: everything is already clear – as it was in one Jewish joke?

“Today this has become obvious and clear to everyone. Customers act openly and brazenly. It is the ruling elite of the United States and its satellites that are the main beneficiary of global instability.

I didn’t expect Vladimir Putin to be so specific. This specificity required further sincerity. Then, it means that on October 7 of this year, the US ruling elite sent militants from Gaza to break through? And on February 24, 2022, it was clear who inspired it.

“They extract their bloody rent from it,” said the president. “The United States as a world superpower… everyone sees and understands this, even based on trends in the global economy… is weakening, losing its position (not so obvious.— A.K.). The American world, with one hegemon, is being destroyed, gradually disappearing, but steadily becoming a thing of the past.

But the desire to wishful thinking will never go away.

“But the States,” the president said, “do not want to put up with this, but, on the contrary, they want to maintain and extend their dominance, their global dictatorship, and in conditions of general chaos it is more convenient to do this, because with the help of such chaos they expect to restrain and destabilize competitors, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, which include our country, but in fact – new centers of world development, sovereign, independent countries that do not want to humiliate themselves and play the role of lackeys.

It is clear that Vladimir Putin’s speech had many addressees, and now he was addressing one of them, somewhere in China. And when he spoke about the role of the United States, he addressed not the United States, but the citizens of his country, who could now safely be called voters.

However, there is no doubt that the speech had nothing to do with the election history (or even background). Vladimir Putin is extremely concerned or even shocked by what happened in Dagestan. Perhaps, in terms of how closely he took it to heart, everything is comparable only to the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Yes, I didn’t expect it from the Dagestanis either. Especially from Dagestanis.

— Today Russia not only participates in the formation of a more equitable multipolar world with equal rights and opportunities for all countries and civilizations (Vladimir Putin did not leave behind the terms that he tested at the plenary meeting of the Valdai Club.— A.K.), we are not only one of the leaders of this objective political process, but I will say more: for our future, for the principles of a fair world order, for the freedom of countries and peoples, Russia is fighting on the battlefield! And our soldiers and officers, our heroes, are fighting, losing comrades… I will repeat again: behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, and behind the massacre in the Middle East as a whole, behind the conflict in Ukraine, behind many other conflicts in the world… The ruling ones are US elites and their satellites!

Apparently, according to Vladimir Putin, the time has come to call a spade a spade.

But it didn’t come for a long time. This country was not named by letters.

– They are the ones who plant their military bases everywhere, use their military bases on occasion and without occasion… Constantly! Without achieving results on the battlefield, they are trying to split us, as far as Russia is concerned, from within… They are not at all happy when someone speaks and acts not according to their orders. “They don’t need peace in the Holy Land,” added Vladimir Putin, deliberately calling this land that way and emphasizing that there is someone to whom it is truly dear.

And he repeated over and over again, as if trying to hammer this into the heads of those who should understand, but instead read enemy Telegram channels and act as they say, and not as he says:

– You need to know and understand where the root of evil is! Where is this very spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet, the whole world with its web and wants to achieve our defeat on the battlefield?! Is he using our people, who have been fooled by him for decades, on the territory of Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin still intends to explain everything to them himself.

— By fighting precisely this enemy as part of a special military operation (with the spider, and not with those whom it entangled.— A.K.)… By the hands of Western intelligence agencies…

“I want to ask myself: is it possible to help Palestine by trying to attack Tats and their families?” – Vladimir Putin suddenly asked.

This was a new argument in the whole story. I believe that the argument is precisely Mr. Putin’s.

“The Tats, by the way, are the titular nation in Dagestan,” the president added. “We can only help Palestine in the fight against those who are behind this tragedy!” We, Russia, are fighting them as part of a special military operation!

Now everything has become even clearer. Or rather, it should be.

The Dagestanis who captured the airport must go and fight on the territory of the Northern Military District, capturing enemy airports there, and not in their own country.

— By the way, I never cease to be amazed by both the Kyiv regime and their masters overseas! – the president recalled again. – We know that Bandera and other henchmen of Hitler have already been placed on the podium, we know and see how the leadership of Ukraine applauds the Nazis of the Second World War, who are guilty of the victims of the Holocaust, personally took part in these crimes, and today under the leadership of his Western patrons, he is trying to instigate pogroms in Russia! By the way, I’m not sure whether all the leadership circles in the same States know about this. It would be nice for those who supposedly care so much about the citizens of Israel to conduct an investigation into what their special services are doing in Ukraine if they are trying to instigate pogroms in Russia. Scum, and that’s all. It is impossible to say otherwise.

The American intelligence services are to blame, and it has become clear that this is also the case.

And judging by the feeling with which Vladimir Putin said this, he has irrefutable evidence of this.

“But those who really defend truth and justice, fight against evil and oppression, against racism and neo-Nazism, which are encouraged by the West, are now fighting at the front – near Donetsk, Avdeevka, on the Dnieper,” Vladimir Putin again addressed the Dagestan activists. “I I repeat: these are our soldiers and officers! The choice of a real man, a real warrior – to take up arms and stand in line with his brothers! To be where the fate of Russia, and the whole world, is being decided, including the future of the Palestinian people!

This, we must understand, is not the Gaza Strip.

We are waiting for TV reports about new volunteers of the Caucasus near Donetsk and Avdeevka.

Andrey Kolesnikov