“Now, in this dire hour, every boa constrictor can swallow its rabbit, and everything will be fine – fight against terrorism “.
Lina Kostenko
State terror against all dissenters, illegal methods of waging war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear blackmail have become the signature style of Putin’s regime, which has finally come off the rails.
Repression and terror have turned into both the only method of governance within the country and an external communication tool.
But it is axiomatic that in response to the strengthening of state terror against “enemies”, to which all dissenters are counted, group or individual terrorism arises. Moreover, having deprived citizens of the right to peaceful protest, the regime leaves no choice in the methods of combating it.
Focusing incredible power in his hands, creating one of the world’s largest law enforcement apparatuses (about 5 million people belong to law enforcement, special and paramilitary structures), allocating a colossal amount of money (almost half of the state budget) for war needs, Putin “saw through” a terrorist attack in Moscow on 22 March, which took the lives of more than one hundred and fifty Russians and dealt a good blow to its legitimacy.
The regime showed complete helplessness in the first hours after the terrorist attack, allowing the attackers to leave the metropolis safely. Moreover, information about the preparation of a terrorist attack in a crowded place has been sent by the Western special services since the beginning of March. However, obsessed with the obsessive psychopathic idea of a war with Ukraine until the end, Putin and his camarilla waved away objective information provided by Western special services. How easily representatives of the ISIS-Khorasan terrorist community managed to penetrate the heart of the empire testified to the degradation of Russia’s power structures against the background of their overload with the war with Ukraine.
Although the regime will once again try to use the terrorist attack in “Crocus City Hall” to its advantage (in Russia, from all irons, the tongues of Putin, Patrushev, Bortnikov and legions of talking heads irrevocably blame Ukraine and “its Western masters”), propaganda tinsel will not remove the real problems.
Now Russia faces a difficult choice. The terrorist attack in Moscow destroyed the shaky ideological construction of a single, multi-ethnic nation of Russians.
After the events at the Crocus Centre, a wave of xenophobia swept through the country. There are raids on so-called illegal migrants. A spiral of violence is encouraged. A demonstrative, unpunished demonstration of torture and sadism against detainees raises a wave of domestic pogroms.
Russian chauvinists and imperialists demand an end to the visa-free regime with the countries of Central Asia, the main donors of labour migrants. In Russia, there are more and more calls for the restoration of the death penalty. Moreover, these theses sound even from the mouths of clowns, who were recently assigned the role of liberal candidates in the elections. In a chauvinistic fit, the heads of the regions begin to pass decisions on the ban on obtaining work permits and the expulsion of illegal and legal migrant workers.
The country, which exhausted its labour resources due to the war with Ukraine, is facing a dilemma. Allow society to let off steam by venting the accumulated negativity into blind hatred against “Asians and Muslims” and lose almost a tenth of the workforce doing more unprestigious work for pitiful wages, or try to defuse the situation by being attacked and accused by an angry chauvinist mob.
Putin will try to use this burst of blind rage to mobilize another wave of war with Ukraine. Statements about the involvement of Ukraine are made precisely because the previous contingent, mobilized for the war and buried by meat assaults, is ending, and there is no obvious “pabeda” (victory).
However, having once again dispersed the wave of hatred against the “Ukrainian Nazis” and their “masters”, Putin will not solve the internal problems that are gaining the effect of a snow avalanche.
By messing up relations with “dear comrades” from Shiite Iran, Putin is causing growing resentment in Russia’s traditionally predominantly Sunni Muslim community. Kadyrov’s threatening statements are only the first bell. Due to the lack of personnel for the war, Putin permitted the formation of territorial and national units, including Muslim units.
Anti-Muslim hysteria will radicalize sentiment among these structures. Kadyrov’s statement that “the Chechens are successfully fighting Nazism and nothing will prevent them from equally successfully fighting nationalist manifestations inside the country… and the conversation with the instigators of ethnic cleansing will be brief.”
Anti-Tajik hysteria will only exacerbate the problem of radicalization of labour migrants from Muslim countries. This is about 10% of the Russian population. Deprived of their jobs, and persecuted under the principle of collective responsibility, millions of migrant workers will become a fertile ground for radical propaganda and recruitment into terrorist communities. The ease with which the terrorist attack in Moscow succeeded will encourage and double the decisive action of the amateur and professional terrorist communities. Demonstrative violence against the detainees, whose guilt has not yet been proven by the court, will only infuriate the Muslim community and incite radical actions.
The wave of telephone hijackings, calls to carry out a terrorist attack or to join a terrorist group for a reward (which is quite possibly a consequence of the preventive work of special services) has already caused mass public hysteria, which will only intensify the public confrontation.
The security forces and their FSB elite, who missed a demonstration terrorist attack right under their noses, will demand additional powers and finances, and will eagerly demonstrate the results, mostly falsified. A war-burdened economy will be further bled to death by the need for an internal war.
A possible deterioration of relations with Central Asian countries (at least a catastrophic deterioration of public opinion about the Russians) could lead to a geopolitical defeat in another important region. Recently, Putin has already received a loud slap in the South Caucasus, the loss of influence over the countries of Central Asia with the possible closure of the EurAsEC project will have irreparable consequences. The country’s entanglement in the war with Ukraine does not allow it to respond adequately to any other external challenges.
Statements such as the words of Krasnov, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation that crime among migrants increased by 75% in 2023 only add fuel to the already boiling pot.
The regime will usually respond with repression. To relieve the public tension a little, the plebs are fed with video footage of the detentions and searches of “gluttonous officials” of the middle ranks. But repression is a way to drive the situation underground, not to solve it.
Nowadays, Putin has a difficult problem, whether it is time to raise a Stalinist toast “for the great Russian people”, or once again try to drive him to war with the mythical Nazism for “Orthodoxy”, representatives of the “multinational Russian people”, for example, among the Buryat Buddhists…
