Last week, Russian State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov wrote to the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, denouncing one of Russia’s foremost experts on the Middle East, Kirill Semyonov. Milonov accused him of «justifying the activities of Islamist extremist groups» and «openly promoting the ideology and interests of Turkey».
In Russian society, Milonov is known as a political eccentric, a kind of «northern capital» version of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who gains political capital through constant scandals or, as it is now fashionable to say, cheap hype. And in the eyes of many Muslims, he is also an Islamophobe and Turkophobe who put a cross on a mosque in Ayia Sophia in Turkey during a visit there, and who openly lobbied for the interests of Armenian separatists and occupiers during the Second Karabakh War.
Now Milonov accuses Semyonov of harming Russia’s interests in favor of Turkey’s interests. However, if you think about it, even from a statesman’s point of view, Semyonov’s line corresponded exactly to the Russian position, which consisted of the same things as Moscow’s official position — recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, supporting the Russo-Turkish peacekeeping efforts, calling for the de-occupation of Karabakh with simultaneous security guarantees for the peaceful Armenian population.
On the other hand, Milonov’s actions, visiting the illegitimate entity «Nagorno-Karabakh Republic» during the war and making provocative statements there, actually damaged Russia’s relations with Azerbaijan and its policy in the region. At that time, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry accused him not only of denying the internationally recognized status of Karabakh, but also of calling Azerbaijanis barbarians, which led to the summoning of the Russian ambassador in Azerbaijan for explanations. But Milonov did not stop there, calling his Azerbaijani opponents «monkeys».
In general, it should be said that last year’s war in Karabakh was one of those rare cases when Moscow’s behavior towards Muslims was not based on ideological Islamophobic considerations, but on Russia’s pragmatic interests. And this is exactly what Kirill Semyonov always argues as an expert, proving that supporting the mad tyrant Bashar al-Assad against the Syrian people or supporting the coup-plotting adventurer Khalifa Haftar in Libya does not actually correspond to Russia’s interests, which consist in friendly relations with Muslims rather than in opposing them.
Therefore, when Russia took the position that Semyonov and some other experts advocated during the war in Karabakh, they automatically became sworn enemies of the Armenian lobby, which is now trying to eliminate inconvenient figures from Russia’s expert community.
In this sense, Semyonov seems to have been chosen as a convenient target because, unlike other inconvenient experts, against whom it is difficult to argue formally, he is a Russian Muslim and does not hide it. Therefore, the Islamophobic and Turkophobic lobby, acting through the hands of the eccentric deputy Milonov, apparently decided that the open declaration of a person of Russian nationality’s affiliation with Islam is an unbeatable trump card against him in today’s Russian reality.
Nevertheless, numerous representatives of Russia’s expert and journalistic community, including Semyonov’s opponents, unanimously came to his defense, considering Milonov’s denunciation as the worst example of information and incitement to violence against dissidents, reminiscent of the Stalinist era of the 1930s.
For our part, we join them in expressing the hope that the Russian authorities, if only for their own pragmatic considerations, will have the intelligence not to touch those rare experts whose voices in public discussions in Russia allow the appearance of freedom of speech. We understand the value of this «freedom,» but for them, if they do not want to fully embrace the image of Stalin’s USSR or the DPRK, it would be worthwhile not to target at least those experts who are respected both in the country and in the international expert community. The repression against their representatives will undoubtedly be seen as the behavior of «barbarians» and «apes».