With focus on Ukraine, Putin relegates the escalation of terrorist acts in Russia to the background

With at least 20 dead — 15 of them security agents — the terrorist attack carried out on Sunday against several churches and synagogues in the Caucasian Republic of Dagestan was one of the worst attacks suffered by Russia in recent years. The tragedy took place just a couple of weeks after Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners shocked Russia by taking guards hostage in the southern city of Rostov on Don, and three months after the massacre committed by the same Islamist group in the Crocus concert hall, on the outskirts of Moscow, where 145 people were killed. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin, absolutely absorbed by his invasion of Ukraine, has chosen to relegate this terrorist escalation to the background.

“No. At the moment, no,” Putin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday when asked by the Russian media if the president planned to address the people. No terrorist organization has yet taken responsibility for Sunday’s attack. On the Kremlin’s website, the only mention of the tragedy are the telephone conversation between Putin and the president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, who both separately offered their condolences.

By way of comparison, the last attack on Russian soil of this gravity — Crocus aside — took place in the St. Petersburg Metro on April 3, 2017, when a Russian-Uzbek citizen killed 15 people with a bomb. Putin — who visited the scene of the crime that same day — has not even commented on Sunday’s attack in Dagestan, nor has he set foot in the Crocus concert hall since the tragedy occurred in March.

The war in Ukraine is consuming a large part of the resources available to Russian intelligence. Washington warned Moscow that Islamic terrorists were preparing a series of attacks on Russian territory before the Crocus tragedy, and on Monday, it became known that the attackers had been preparing the assault since at least mid-May, according to the Telegram channel Shot, which is specialized in police leaks.

Then there is the astonishing ease with which on June 16, six ISIS prisoners took several employees of the Rostov-on-Don prison hostage. According to the official version, the prisoners broke the bars on their windows and went down several floors before silently capturing their own guards. However, this explanation has raised doubts even among the Russian elite, who are struck by how easily the terrorists were able to move about the prison.

“Where did those demons get the phones from? Where did they get the Islamic State flags from? Why didn’t they shave their beards — as prison rules dictate?” State Duma deputy Yevgeny Popov asked on Telegram. His question was shared by other lawmakers such as Alexander Khinshtein.

Police shortage

Likewise, Russian authorities themselves recognize that there is a police shortage. “We need 150,000 police officers,” said Valentina Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the Federation Council, on Monday. “A district police officer works as many as four, 10 officers, and the salary they receive is not competitive at all, often lower than that of a courier or a taxi driver,” she added. While there is a police shortage, spy and military organizations, such as the National Guard — a separate army that only obeys the president — have thousands of troops.

Authorities are also concerned by how terrorists are becoming involved with social institutions. Three of the attackers killed in Dagestan were sons and nephews of the current head of the Sergokalinskiy district, Magomed Omarov. What’s more, another of the dead terrorists, Ali Zakarigayev, had been the chairman of the A Just Russia – For Truth party — one of the few groups with a presence in the state Duma — in that same district until two years ago.

Indeed, Zakarigayev’s father, of the same name, had been locked up in preventive detention along with 35 other people two months ago for allegedly defrauding the local energy company Dagenergo of 2.8 billion rubles ($3 million), as revealed by the independent Russian media Agentsvo.

Despite the Kremlin’s apparent control over the Caucasus, there is still the threat that there could be a new surge of violence. The resurgence of secessionist movements in the Caucasus regions after the demise of the Soviet Union has been compounded in the last decade by the proliferation of jihadist cells in the region. The Federal Security Service (FSB, heir of the KGB) often reports arrests and “liquidations” of people — an official euphemism — linked to the Islamic State.

On May 17, officers of Russia’s omnipresent FSB killed a soldier from the Russian 49th Army who had defected to the Islamic State and was preparing an attack in the Caucasian region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, according to the Baza Telegram channel. And on March 7, weeks before the Crocus concert hall attack, the FSB announced that it had prevented a cell of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) — the same jihadist faction that would later carry out the concert hall massacre — from attacking a synagogue in Moscow.

Although the Kremlin has tried to link the March attack with Ukraine, the FSB itself announced on April 1 the arrest of several citizens in Dagestan who “directly participated in the financing and provision of terrorist funds to the perpetrators of the terrorist act committed on March 22, 2024 at the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Moscow.”

Russian authorities fear that the attacks will shake the country’s already fragile stability, which has been rocked by the war in Ukraine. “They are trying to destabilize the social situation,” Sergey Melikov, the head of the Republic of Dagestan, said on social media after the attacks. At that time, the police were arresting a group of men in the city of Pyatigorsk, also in southern Russia. They were arrested for dancing the lezginka — a traditional Caucasian dance — in the street while Russian forces were fighting the terrorist in Dagestan. “Why are these people so happy…? For the death of children, police officers and civilians?” asked Dagestan Mayor Dmitry Voroshilov, on Telegram.

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