Sunday, January 19, 2025

Islamist Extremism, Veterans Returning from Ukraine Threaten to Increase Crime in Russia, Moscow Criminologists Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 15 – In addition to the problems arising from a shortage of police, Moscow criminologists point to two major “risks” of an upsurge in crime in 2025 with “the greater problem being from the growth of religious extremism” but also the return to their home areas of Russian veterans who unlike in past wars have kept together while fighting.
    Profile journalist Igor Trifomov explores both of these risk, emphasizing that the violence of Islamist groups in Dagestan against Christians and Jews was what many criminologists believe is the opening round of such attacks (profile.ru/society/operativnyj-dissonans-v-kakih-sferah-mozhno-ozhidat-rosta-prestupnosti-v-rossii-1648894/).
    Indeed, he cites local experts as saying that while outside observes may not consider that episode “so significant, the professionals are convinced that this is only the beginning” given the rise in Islamist training in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan and the increasing hostility of Muslims to Christians and Jews more generally.
    But Trofimov says that veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine are another source of worry among criminologists. On the one hand, many of them are coming back with more weapons than was trues after Afghanistan and Chechnya; and on the other, not only are some of them previously released criminals but they have served together and returned together.
    Because of that, he says, many of these individuals feel themselves beyond the reach of the authorities because they have now formed organized criminal groups that draw both on their experiences in Ukraine and their earlier experiences in such groups before going to fight in Putin’s war.  

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