Russia on Monday accused Ukraine of playing a “key” role in the assault on an airport in the Muslim-majority Russian republic of Dagestan by protesters allegedly searching for Israeli passengers.
A crowd invaded the runway and terminal of an airport in the capital Makhachkala on Sunday night, amid tensions caused in the world by the deadly Israeli bombings against the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the bloody attack by Hamas in the south. of Israel on October 7.
The clashes were “the result of a planned and externally directed provocation” in which Kiev played a “key and direct” role, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Monday.
Russia launched an offensive in Ukraine in February 2022. Presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov had previously indicated that the events were “largely the result of external interference”, without specifying the origin.
The spokesman for Ukrainian diplomacy, Oleg Nikolenko, denounced this Monday an “attempt to assign responsibility” to his country.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Jewish confession, considered the day before that the incidents demonstrated the presence of “the Russian culture of hatred against other nations.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin will address “Western attempts to use events in the Middle East to divide Russian society” at a meeting on Monday night, according to the Kremlin.
“What happened is an attempt to sow discord between Muslims and Jews in Russia, who have maintained good relations of friendship and cooperation for centuries,” Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a fervent supporter of Putin, declared in a statement.
Videos broadcast on social networks and Russian media showed a group of people controlling vehicles leaving the site, breaking down doors in the terminal and surrounding a plane on the runway.
One of the protesters held a sign that read “child killers have no place in Dagestan,” according to one of the videos.
The Flightradar website indicated that a Red Wings flight from Tel Aviv landed in Makhachkala at 7:00 p.m. (4:00 p.m. GMT).
According to the independent Russian media Sota, it was a transit flight that was to take off again for Moscow two hours later.
Local authorities did not immediately indicate whether the flight and passengers were able to continue the journey.
On Monday, a large security device surrounded the airport, and employees began repairing the damaged barriers, according to an AFP journalist present.
The airport suffered “significant damage,” its general director explained, but was able to reopen in the afternoon on Monday, according to the Russian aviation agency.
Police detained 60 people and more than 150 “active participants in the riots” were identified, a statement from the Russian Interior Ministry said.
Nine police officers were injured, two of whom were hospitalized, he added.
Sergei Melikov, the president of Dagestan, a republic in the Russian Caucasus, stated on Monday morning that the riots had been organized from Ukrainian territory, in the midst of an armed conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
“The initiators of this action are obviously our enemies, those who organized it from Ukrainian territory,” Melikov told the press, quoted by the Ria-Novosti agency.
Melikov in particular accused a Telegram channel critical of the local authorities, “Utro Dagestan”, run by “traitors” from Ukraine.
That channel, followed by about 60,000 people, broadcast a call to gather at Makhachkala airport on Sunday night, to prevent the arrival of “undesirable” passengers on the Red Wings flight from Tel Aviv.
During the incidents, Israel called on Russia to protect “all Israeli citizens and all Jews.” The United States condemned the “anti-Semitic demonstrations.”
The RIA Novosti news agency reported Sunday that a Jewish center was burned down in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, another North Caucasus republic.