Dissatisfaction with Putin's rule grows in Dagestan; Iran-Israel war intensified this case

[Starmix]

According to the report, residents of Russia’s Muslim-majority republics of the North Caucasus and the Volga region often pay just as much attention to developments in the Middle East as they do to their own country’s war in Ukraine, The Moscow Times media outlet says. High war losses and evidence of disproportionate mobilization from tightly knit Indigenous communities — including in Russia’s predominantly Muslim regions — means that many residents of Chechnya, Dagestan, Bashkortostan, or Tatarstan know someone currently serving or killed on the front lines in Ukraine. But while these republics may have fewer immediate connections to the ongoing war in Gaza, the conflict in the Middle East feels no less personal.

The report said that Iran did not become an object of sympathy. It never really was,” Gasanova explained. Residents of Dagestan, an ethnically diverse Muslim-majority region on the shores of the Caspian Sea, have been vocal in their support for Palestine since the early days of the war in Gaza, which Israel launched in response to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023. In the nearly two years since the Israel-Hamas war began, Dagestanis sent more than 200 tons of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and welcomed several hundred Palestinian refugees, who were equally amazed by their hospitality and disappointed with the local government’s dysfunction, The Moscow Times says. Nearly two years later, last month’s U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have risked making the conflict in the relatively faraway Middle East even more personal for millions of Dagestanis. Reported damage to Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility sparked concerns that possible radioactive contamination could reach the region sharing a border with Azerbaijan, prompting Russian officials to launch round-the-clock radiation monitoring in Dagestan.


Watch the report via the link.