Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 28 – It is
longstanding Russian practice to point to Western interest in or involvement
with issues within the borders of the Russian Federation that in fact Moscow
officials themselves are worried about but cannot easily discuss openly lest
they appear to be overly alarmist or be forced to accept part of the blame.
Consequently, it is worthwhile to
attend to such remarks even if they are not true on their face, always keeping
in mind that discussing such issues in terms of supposed Western interest or
involvement has the additional virtue for such officials in Russian security
agencies because it is a surefire way to gain more resources from the Kremlin
for their own work.
Speaking in Kazan, Russian Deputy
Interior Minister Igor Zubov said that the Western intelligence community is
studying “scenarios for possible military conflicts in various regions of
Russia,” including the republics of the Middle Volga (ria.ru/20190128/1550014611.html and idelreal.org/a/29735660.html).
That means, he continued, that
officials must both display heightened vigilance to all threats to public order
in the region and view threats they have long considered such as Islamist
terrorism “through a different prism,” recognizing that what they had thought
of as a trend in and of itself may be part of something larger.
Among these developments, he
suggested, is the influx of migrant workers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,
who, while they generally obey in a law-abiding fashion, nonetheless can
destabilize the situation because of their numbers and the reaction of others
to them (ria.ru/20190128/1550012988.html).
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