The Kremlin on Monday dismissed fears Russia’s historically restive North Caucasus region faces a wave of violence after a series of coordinated weekend attacks on churches, synagogues and police killed at least 20 in the southern Dagestan region.
The attacks on Sunday came just three months after Islamic State (IS) group fighters killed more than 140 in a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest attack on Russia for almost 20 years, raising fresh questions about Russia’s security apparatus.
Moscow said on Monday it had concluded an “anti-terrorist operation” and killed five of the assailants behind the attacks in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent.
The incidents had echoes of the kind of insurgent violence that struck the North Caucasus during the 1990s and 2000s, but the Kremlin on Monday dismissed fears of a renewed wave of attacks.
Russia has been a target in recent years for IS, which opposes Moscow’s military support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and claims to have set-up a “franchise” in Russia’s North Caucasus.
At least 20 people were killed and another 26 injured in the attacks, Dagestan’s regional health ministry said on Monday.
Fifteen of those killed were law enforcement officers, according to Russia’s federal Investigative Committee.
“Of those 26, some are more serious so the first figure of 20 (killed) could still change,” a spokesperson for Dagestan’s regional health ministry told.
“In the course of suppressing the criminal actions, five people involved in committing the crime were liquidated,” the Investigative Committee said.
The attackers had targeted two Orthodox churches, two synagogues and a police checkpoint in the regional capital Makhachkala and Derbent, a historic city on the coast of the Caspian Sea.
The Russian Orthodox Church said its archpriest Nikolai Kotelnikov was “brutally killed” in his church in Derbent.
In the 1990s and 2000s, separatist and militant groups waged guerrilla-style campaigns against Russian authorities in the mountainous North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Asked whether Moscow feared a possible return of such violence, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No. Now there is a different Russia. Society is consolidated and such terrorist manifestations are not supported by society in Russia or in Dagestan.”
Moscow fought two wars for control of the neighbouring Chechnya region, with President Vladimir Putin touted his success in quashing the insurgency at the start of his presidency.
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