The fact that the ruling regime in Russia sees its own youth as a threat became an obvious conclusion after a series of recent events, so it was not just us who came to this realization. That is why, after the shooting at a college in Kerch and the explosion at the FSB office in Arkhangelsk, alarm bells rang at the highest level. At one of the meetings, the director of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, commented on the events in an almost hysterical tone: «We have to do something about it. We don’t have time. We must take appropriate measures. We will definitely submit our proposals to the country’s leadership, we have practically submitted them. Bortnikov stressed that the problem of youth radicalization «must be addressed immediately.
But to fight the enemy, you have to know the enemy. For example, «Islamic extremism» or «Islamic terrorism»-it is clear that Russian law enforcement can include any principled and practicing Muslim in these categories as «enemies of the people. But Jehovah’s Witnesses or Navalny supporters cannot be included, so these groups are already considered separately. But in this case, they do not seem to know where the threats are coming from. «… we practically missed the ‘difficult teenagers’ and ‘difficult youth’ who fell under the influence of certain groups of individuals and began to adopt such views — radical left, radical right, and sometimes all mixed up, a jumble in their heads, who knows… nationalist, anarchist, left, right, Islamist,» Bortnikov panics, listing everything that comes to mind from his years of study at the KGB Academy.
It’s scary to say, but «people who adhere to certain ideas, who form groups, closed groups, have goals aimed at opposing the existing government,» Bortnikov fears. But the problem for his comrades in the security services is much more difficult — if they have learned to effectively identify and neutralize groups of people who adhere to certain ideas (sometimes even helping to create them, as in the case of «New Greatness»), what should they do with individuals like the «Kerch shooter» Vladislav Roslyakov? As his story has shown, he can target not just any opposition figure, but a person who until recently posted portraits of the «national leader» and praised «Crimea is ours».
Of course, the FSB has no answers to these questions, only panic-induced incantations of a general nature. «We will actively work in this direction — not only the security forces, but also the authorities, civil society, schools, where there are enough such manifestations. These are all mistakes that have been made, and everything must be done to eliminate them,» Bortnikov is convinced.
In general, judging by the director of the FSB’s incantations, our prediction in the previous article on this topic will be justified: «…there is no doubt that instead of drawing the right conclusions, they will take steps that will only worsen their situation as a reaction to the recent incidents: more control, more repression, more intoxicating propaganda. As a result, there will only be more terrorism — this time Russian terrorism, which, by the way, has a history of more than a hundred years and is not inferior in scale to the same banned organization, Al-Qaeda in Russia».