Russian Authorities have Charged 1500 Dagestanis over Makhachkala Airport Pogrom But Not Yet Found 1500 Others who Took Part, ‘Zona Media’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Oct. 29 – A year after a crowd of Dagestanis surrounded a plane from Tel Aviv at the Makhchkala airport and demanded that Jews on board not be allowed off, Russian officials have brought administrative and criminal charges against 1500, haven’t been able to find 1500 others known to have taken part, and continue to blame Ukrainians for the action.
    Those are the key findings of Anna Pavlova of the Zona Media news agency on the first anniversary of the violence at the Makhachkala airport (zona.media/article/2024/10/28/pogrom). What makes her report especially important is that Moscow and Makhchakala have worked hard to limit coverage of these events (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/daghestani-officials-order-population.html).
    That effort continues with most trials for those charged with criminal as opposed to administrative offenses taking place outside the borders of that North Caucasus republic and as Russian propagandists have promoted the notion that Russians and Ukrainians, on the one hand, and radical Islamists, on the other, orchestrated the pogrom.
    Pavlova details these charges but also shows that there is far less support for them than Moscow and Makhchakala have claimed. Indeed, perhaps the most important of her findings is the shear size of those who took part in this anti-Jewish action and the inability or unwillingness of officials in that republic to find and bring to trial all those involved.
    That failure may suggest that some in the Dagestani capital are worried that if they arrest even more participants, it will turn out that some of them are family members of senior officials in the region or have ties to Moscow (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/anti-semitic-outrages-like-those-in.html).