The State Duma saw a foreign trace in the riots at Makhachkala airport

The State Duma on Tuesday instructed its committees on information policy and security to study the situation in Dagestan for possible interference by foreign intelligence services. But the general opinion about the attempted pogrom against Jews at Makhachkala airport (about the first court decisions see article “Kommersant”) the deputies have already formed it. In their speeches, they appealed to personal experience and refused to believe that in such a friendly and multinational republic anti-Semitism could take root without outside help.

Let us remind you that on October 29, large-scale riots occurred at the Makhachkala airport: hundreds of local residents broke into the runway after a flight from Tel Aviv arrived there. Speaking the next day at a special meeting with members of the Russian Security Council, President Vladimir Putin said that these events were “inspired, including through social networks, not least from the territory of Ukraine, by the hands of agents of Western intelligence services.”

The plenary session of the State Duma on October 31 began with a discussion of the situation in Dagestan. To begin with, the lower house unanimously supported the protocol order introduced by the deputy from Dagestan Sultan Khamzaev (United Russia). It asks the information policy and security committees to request from the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB information “about the facts of interference in the internal affairs of Russia, incitement of anti-Semitism by Western and Ukrainian intelligence services, and also to understand the issue of possible foreign information influence, which could have been the reason for an attempt to initiate pogroms” at Makhachkala airport.

Then the deputies continued the topic within the framework of traditional speeches from factions, during which they fully supported the president’s point of view. All of them, citing personal experience of getting to know Dagestan, talked about the peacefulness of its inhabitants and convinced each other that in such a region anti-Semitism simply could not sprout on its own, without outside help.

Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky (LDPR) started talking about interfaith and interethnic harmony, which, in his opinion, reigns in Russia, and quoted Vladimir Putin close to the text: “In my family there are only Ivans and Marys, but when it comes it’s about a special military operation, I’m Lak, I’m Dagestani, I’m Ingush, I’m Chechen, Russian, Tatar, Jew, Mordvin, Ossetian.” Mr. Slutsky is confident that there is no ethnic hatred in Russia, and that Ukraine and the West are behind such provocations. At the end of his speech, the LDPR leader recalled that “Russia and the Russian President today are the center of a new, healthy world majority.”

Rosa Chemeris (“New People”), also using personal example, confirmed that Dagestan “has always been a friendly region,” and she herself, an Avar by nationality, was friends with Jewish children as a child. Ms. Chemeris believes that “protests and sentiments have been fueled for months, dozens of fake news have appeared in the information space,” and the goal of the provocateurs is to “split Russian society.” At the same time, a representative of New People pointed out the lack of official information and the insufficient activity of the authorities in trying to reassure residents: “Media reports and speeches by officials began only when the crowd tried to storm the airport.”

Finally, there was something to say to the leader of the United Russia faction, Vladimir Vasiliev, who headed Dagestan from September 2018 to October 2020. He suggested immersing himself in history, remembering how terrorists from Chechnya moved into this republic in 1999, but the people “stood up to defend their small homeland and big Russia.” Working in this region left him with “the best feelings,” Mr. Vasiliev shared with his colleagues. “When I arrived in Dagestan and just like that I came to the People’s Assembly, I immediately said that I have a Kazakh father, a Russian mother, teachers, that I myself was recently baptized, Orthodox, no one ever reproached me for anything. All the time that I worked there, and not once after that did I feel anything other than kind attitude from the Dagestanis. Today I put on this suit, made by a fashion designer from Dagestan. I don’t mention the name, I remember, I honor, I’m proud,” the United Russia member frankly admitted. He ended his speech with the words of the people’s poet of Dagestan Rasul Gamzatov, who said that in Dagestan he is an Avar, in Russia he is a Dagestani, and abroad he is Russian.

Ksenia Veretennikova