Russia’s chief rabbi warned that “something has really changed” in the Muslim-majority region where an antisemitic riot took place on Sunday as Russian officials fumed over the backlash in Israel.
“No, the issue here is not about Israel or the Middle East; they have enough problems there already,” said Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, according to a Meduza translation. “Our problem, it seems, is a problem of upbringing. Something has really changed in the North Caucasus. And not for the better.”
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Russian authorities reportedly have arrested 80 people on charges related to the riot at the Makhachkala in Dagestan, a Muslim-majority region in the Caucasus. The mob overran the airport on Sunday, reportedly in search of Jews following the arrival of an airplane from Tel Aviv — an incident that underscores the potential for Moscow’s internal security regime to come under additional strain during Israel’s war with Hamas.
“I must say that both the regional and the federal authorities should take this very seriously because it could have led to victims,” Israeli Ambassador Alexander Ben Zvi told the Associated Press. “And that really would have influenced the entire situation in Russia.”
Dagestan is part of the North Caucasus region understood to have provided “the most prominent and active contingent” of foreign fighters to join the Islamic State when ISIS declared a caliphate across parts of Iraq and Syria.
“Escalation on the ground ripples through different people, and if nothing else, makes things uncomfortable for some,” former Estonian diplomat Peeter Raudsik, who specialized in Middle East issues at the Estonian mission to the United Nations from 2019 to 2022, told the Washington Examiner.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has treated the incident as a security threat — by blaming it on Ukraine.
“For this purpose, they use a variety of means, as we can see — lies, provocations, and sophisticated technologies of psychological and information aggression,” Putin said Monday. “The events in Makhachkala last night were inspired also through social networks, not least from the territory of Ukraine, by the hands of agents of Western special services.”
The incident and uproar put a new strain on Israel’s relationship with Russia, already strained by Putin’s drawing of an analogy between the tactics of the Israel Defense Forces and Nazi Germany, in addition to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s willingness to host Hamas last week in Moscow.
“There are highs. There are lows,” Ben Zvi said. “Not always we’re happy with Russia’s position. Not always they’re happy with our position. We express it to each other.”
Israel issued a travel warning for the Caucasus, but Lavrov’s team decried that warning as “anti-Russian” while regional authorities purport to believe that foreign agencies are trying to stoke the unrest.
“We should be ready. This is not the last protest,” Dagestan regional governor Sergei Melikov said Tuesday. “They will continue to try to rock this Caucasian boat.”
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Russia’s security services agents will have their work cut out for them. “There are people in FSB who are really cautiously watching how this conflict evolves, especially if Hezbollah gets involved, if there's an escalation — that what it might mean for Russia internally,” Raudsik said.
Lazar, the chief rabbi, suggested a priority for anyone seeking to avert such incidents. “It’s necessary to try to do everything to make sure that the propaganda of hatred has no place in our country,” he said.