Recent events at Dagestan airport are not good for Kremlin - Sarts

RIGA - The recent events at Dagestan airport are not beneficial for the Kremlin, said Janis Sarts, the head of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, in an interview with the Latvian public television today.

Yesterday at Dagestan airport, according to videos available on the internet, a mob of local people tried to search the airport building for Jews arriving from Tel Aviv, Israel, and threatened to attack them.

Commenting on the situation, Sarts said that the Russian society has radicalized and the situation at Dagestan airport was one of the manifestations of this radicalization.

"The Russian media is inciting hatred against Ukrainians, against the West and now against Israel. Tensions are rising in Russia, and Dagestan is one of the places where many of those who died in the war in Ukraine come from," said Sarts, adding that what happened was not surprising.

"Such expressions are not good for the Kremlin and there will be attempts to suppress them", the expert admitted, adding that this will happen "in the only way they know how - by force", because although there was no threat to the Kremlin or the central government, from the logic of an authoritarian system this is something that cannot be tolerated because the risks of how far it can go are unpredictable.