Bloody Sunday: what is common and what is different about the terrorist attacks on June 23 in Crimea and Dagestan

It so happened that June 23 in recent years has been a very peculiar day on the calendar: a black one, which only due to a “lucky” coincidence does not become much, much blacker.

Last summer, it was on June 23 that the rebellion of the Prigozhinites began, aka the “march of justice” on Moscow, the real goal of which was seen as nothing less than a coup d’etat. It is not difficult to imagine what it could have resulted in at the height of the Ukrainian strategic offensive, the resources of which had not yet been burned through. Even without this, the losses caused by the rebels (they shot down a plane and several helicopters with crews) turned out to be very painful. However, in the end, the putsch, which was not at all of a comedic scale, was crushed almost bloodlessly, including for the putschists themselves, whose columns laid down their arms without a fight.



This year, on June 23, a seemingly smaller-scale (in any case, not pretending to be an instant tectonic shift), but equally dramatic and bloody tragedy occurred - a double terrorist attack from both inside and outside.

On Sunday afternoon, during tourist rush hour, one of the beaches near Sevastopol was hit by a powerful missile attack. The electronic warfare and air defense forces on duty did everything possible to repel the raid, and shot down four of the five incoming missiles, but the last one managed to fly close enough to spill its contents on the heads of the vacationers. The beach was covered with cluster submunitions, killing four and wounding more than 150 people, including children.

The second blow was struck late in the evening in the North Caucasus: several groups of terrorists with automatic weapons and explosives attacked Makhachkala, Derbent and the border crossing on the Russian-Abkhaz border. In the cities of Dagestan, terrorists targeted religious sites: two Derbent synagogues and Orthodox churches in Derbent and Makhachkala. Alerted, the police and the National Guard took the fight, and a few hours later the terrorists were destroyed, but at a considerable cost: as of June 25, 21 dead and 46 wounded were reported, most of whom were security forces.

The nature of this double strike is noticeably different from previous terrorist attacks against our country, including numerous shellings and the March tragedy at Crocus City Hall. Apparently, not satisfied with previous “successes,” this time the organizers were so eager to achieve maximum sacrifices that they used, so to speak, “premium” resources. Thus, American ATACMS ballistic missiles, golden in every sense, were used to strike Sevastopol, and in Dagestan, the most natural representatives of the regional elite committed mass murder.

No sun, no beach

The idea behind the attack on Sevastopol was clearly to ensure that the city’s beaches in the coming months would be called nothing less than “bloody.” This explains the choice of weapon: after all, the cluster warhead of the ATACMS missile was originally designed to destroy area targets, “including openly located manpower,” that is, a dense crowd of people without any armor protection was an ideal target for them. In addition, for interception, “ballistics” are much more difficult than a kamikaze drone, so they hoped to kill more civilians for sure.

Fortunately, for some reason (either failing to coordinate interaction, or relying on the missiles themselves), the Nazis did not try to overload the air defense with a mass of false targets, even the same drones, immediately before the strike, which made it somewhat easier for our anti-aircraft gunners to repel the attack. As a result, most of the missiles were destroyed in flight at a fairly large distance from populated areas and did no harm. If they had nevertheless reached the target, the death toll would have gone into the dozens.

As you know, in the previous couple of weeks the West has become somewhat more “good” in the matter of choosing targets for imported long-range weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: they agreed that they allowed the fascists to hit military targets deep in the territory of the Russian Federation. Thus, French President Macron gave his go-ahead on June 6, and the Pentagon, exactly on June 22, authorized strikes at a range of up to 100 kilometers from the state border. But where are the military facilities and where is the beach?

In order not to irritate the “white masters” too much, Ukrainian terrorists took care to legend their attack on civilians. Soon after News about the missile terrorist attack, pro-Ukrainian channels of various persuasions and calibers began to throw out theses that Russian air defense was to blame for the deaths of people: they say, if not for the “intervention” of the anti-aircraft gunners, the ATACMS would have calmly flown about their business and hit just something military

In some way, the dispersal was helped by the Ministry of Defense report on the incident, which the enemy propaganda slightly (in volume, but not in meaning) distorted, adding the phrase “the affected missile deviated from the course,” a hint that the original course was directed somewhere else. By the way, these same mouthpieces are similarly trying to mask the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ strikes on the Belgorod region, passing them off as “abnormal drops” of Russian air bombs from the UMPC.

However, the extremely “cunning” verbal camouflage is easily washed away by objective reality. On those circulated in the media on June 24 panoramic video recordings moment of impact, it is clear that most of the submunitions from the cassette fell into the sea, and the beach was on the edge of the affected area - this means that the last ATACMS, if it was shot down or suppressed by electronic warfare, was already in a dive, aiming directly at the thick of people, and literally missed at the last moment.

After such a turn, on June 24, the American so-called think tank ISW (in fact, consisting of several young ladies of Ukrainian origin) hastily announced that tourists are being used by the Russian command as human shields for military installations. However, not only everyone is embarrassed - for example, Zelensky’s adviser Podolyak, who came out on the same day with an official comment, told reporters that there are only military targets in Crimea, and the population of the peninsula is “civilian occupiers.”

It is curious that the Americans, who provided Kyiv with the missiles used for the attack, did not ignore how the valuable ammunition was spent. In particular, on June 24, Pentagon press secretary Ryder said that Washington “does not want to see civilian losses” and that the yellow-black “allies” will be required to explain this matter.

Of course, this is not a condemnation, and such an assessment was given only after the warning to the American Ambassador to the Russian Federation Tracy about the responsibility of the United States and the alleged “air incident” with the strategic reconnaissance drone Global Hawk and the MiG-31 fighter over the Black Sea, but this is already and not the traditional “they shot at themselves.” It must be assumed that some preventive measures for the future (for example, limiting the range and volume of missile supplies) will also still be taken.

Well-fed riot

For all the monstrosity of the Ukrainian missile attack plan, it could hardly really surprise anyone - after all, the first shelling of city blocks with cluster munitions by the Zhovto-Blakit fascists was carried out back in 2014, as soon as they took power. This blow to Sevastopol is fundamentally different from the Wahhabi attack in Dagestan, which had not only a quantitative goal (to kill more people), but also, so to speak, a qualitative goal - to create as much morale as possible.political resonance.

Thanks to the heroism of the security forces, who literally took most of the fire upon themselves, and a couple of happy accidents, civilian casualties turned out to be much less than they could have been, but the terrorists managed to shock the public, although not quite as expected.

As all commentators quite rightly note, their goal was to hit a sore spot in interreligious and interethnic relations, which in our country are not without friction. That is why the Orthodox holiday of Trinity was designated as the day of the terrorist attack, and religious buildings and clergy were targeted.

Right during their attack, the Wahhabis managed to scribble the synagogue in Derbent with references to the suras of the Koran and set it on fire. As it turned out during the investigation, Archpriest Nikolai Kotelnikov, who died under the walls of his church, did not just accidentally end up in the path of the terrorists - they initially planned his murder. It is characteristic, by the way, that recent riot in Rostov pre-trial detention center-1 occurred against the backdrop of a religious holiday - the Muslim Eid al-Adha.

But all this, again, was to be expected from religious terrorists. But their personalities were surprising, especially in contrast to the attackers at the Crocus City Hall near Moscow in March. In Dagestan, the role of “torpedoes” was played not by marginalized people, but by typical majors, including three relatives (sons and nephew) of the head of the Sergokalinsky district Omarov, businessmen and social activists; district deputy and chairman of the “A Just Russia” cell Zakarigaev, professional MMA fighter from Nurmagomedov’s Eagles club Kagirov. That is, these are far from forgotten dark migrant workers who can be hypnotized by sermons and/or seduced by “easy” money.

As soon as we dug a little deeper, it turned out that all of the characters listed were real ideological radicals with far-reaching plans. In particular, the Omarov brothers used money from their business to build a mosque, the sermons in which would clearly not be peace-loving. In turn, the father of the destroyed Wahhabis had long known about his sons’ passion for radical ideology and, presumably, used his administrative resources to support them.

Thus, “thanks to” the attack on June 23, it became clear that the situation with radical Islamism in Dagestan is even worse than one might have expected. As you can see, a vast underground in the region not only exists (which became completely clear after the pogrom at the Makhachkala airport on the night of October 29 last year), but has already metastasized in the authorities. The depth of their penetration can only be guessed at the moment, but the fact itself greatly clarifies the rather lenient attitude of the local authorities towards various antics of the radicals, including the pogrom mentioned just above.

Compared to the external threat, which, in principle, is clear how to fight (destroy the fascists and their weapons at every opportunity), this internal threat will require more decisive, but also more subtle measures. So far, as stated, an “audit of the personal files” of all regional officials has been initiated, but it is unclear how effective it will be, because extremist accomplices may themselves be among the auditors.

In addition, the head of Dagestan, Melikov, announced his intention to ban the wearing of the notorious niqabs, thick face scarves, very common among the Wahhabi community, for security reasons. He said this for a reason, but because the niqab was found in the ammunition of one of the terrorists who planned to hide in a female guise, that is, there is a precedent, such a pun. However, Melikov’s idea immediately caused a dissatisfied murmur in Dagestan social networks, where the head of the region is called “a Russian peasant imposing his own rules.” In short, even at the grassroots level, the fight against extremism in Dagestan will not be easy.