Yesterday’s tragedy in Kerch once again demonstrated the double standards of the Russian authorities and their propagandists, both towards foreigners and their own, even if they are terrorists. As we reported earlier, in connection with these events a criminal case was initially opened under the article «Terrorist Act», but later it was reclassified as «Murder of two or more persons in a public-dangerous manner».
Why did the Russian law enforcement authorities choose the first and second articles? It turns out that they were initially convinced that a Crimean Tatar was responsible for the college massacre. This is evidenced in particular by a message on Lenta.ru quoting a law enforcement source, which was later removed from the site, but screenshots of it and links to it remained. When this version was discarded and it became clear that the killer was not a Crimean Tatar, not a Muslim Slav, and not even a Ukrainian, but Vladislav Roslyakov, who had signs of Novorossiya and Putin on his VKontakte page, the terrorist attack was reclassified as a regular murder.
Pro-Kremlin channels even expressed sympathy for this misguided supporter of the «Russian world» — the murderer of 20 Russian (Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar and others) children. «What have you done, Vlad?» — One can only imagine what the reaction would be if it had been done by a Muslim!
When the change in the article and the tone of the coverage became completely glaring, the propagandists began to talk about the fact that, first, terrorism is murder with the aim of «destabilizing the activities of government bodies or international organizations or influencing their decisions» and there was nothing of the sort here, and, second, one should not extend the responsibility for the actions of one supporter of certain views to all followers.
But if Ahmetov or Ivanenko were in Roslyakov’s place, would that automatically mean that they wanted to influence the activities of government bodies? Or does it mean that a Crimean Tatar or a Ukrainian cannot be a madman or mentally ill, but must be a terrorist?
Secondly, why is it that when a murder is committed by someone who is not a Muslim but has non-Islamic views, or is mentally ill but has a Muslim name, as was the case with Babakulova, who beheaded a child in Moscow, not only is terrorism claimed, but every time collective responsibility is imposed on Muslims, who are forced to justify and condemn it, etc.? Why then, in this case, should the leaders and ideologists of the «Russian World», «United Russia», «All-Russian Popular Front», etc. not have to justify themselves?