29 September 2024
Source: Facebook
I don’t even know what to think about this. . . . Maybe I’ll share. Somehow, I never did properly examine the list of organizations deemed terrorist in Russia—I’ll put the link in the comments. Now for work reasons I looked at it—and I’m holding the boilerplate with both hands so I don’t explode. Probably you should know this so you don’t accidentally vindicate one, and especially don’t join one. It’s not complicated. 54 organizations total that the FSB thinks you shouldn’t get involved with. Obviously, ISIS, the Taliban . . . well even the FSB can’t dictate to Russia’s top leadership who they should and shouldn’t get involved with . . . but that’s the top leadership. Mere mortals shouldn’t.
Some have been on the list since the days of Ichkeria. I don’t know how relevant they still are, but what do I know? What if they manage to nab a cell?
Then there are various Muslim groups, all kinds of jamaats, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and then Ukrainian military units: Azov, Aidar, Dnepr, RDK, the Free Russia Legion . . . and this strange one that showed up very recently: “A terrorist group created by employees of the Main Intelligence Administration of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and carrying out its activities in Energodar, Zaporozhskaya Oblast.” It’s all very specific. Evidently, they’d tried someone from that town: mostly these show up to suit the needs of specific criminal cases.
The political ones stand apart: Artpodgotovka, ABTO, Network . . . well, it would also require some evidentiary base to judge who they’d caught.
It seems to me, though, that the absurdity prize has to go to this one: “The Jamaat terrorist group (created in Penal Colony No. 7 of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service for the Republic of Dagestan).” You’d have to figure out how to get in there in the first place!. . . . And anyway, I don’t understand, shouldn’t the authorities storm the terrorist nest and shut the colony the hell down? Or are Jamaat’s members now at liberty and arming and recruiting supporters, saying: Come join our Penal Colony No. 7 organization? . . . I wouldn’t join for any kind of reason.
Basically, it’s a very strong list, and for some reason it seems to me that somehow Russian citizens aren’t very well protected from terrorism . . . actually, the now nearly forgotten attack on the Crocus City Mall showed that. I don’t know how much the FSB is guided by their own list, but sometimes you write something and later you come to believe it. I don’t know whether FSB guys are fighting Ukrainian units on the battlefield. . . . I doubt it, naturally. But it’s a fact that it’s mainly the people they’ve caught they’re calling terrorists. The ones they haven’t caught—they don’t call them that. And the ones they haven’t called terrorists, therefore, don’t exist. Or else they are suddenly the Kremlin’s geopolitical allies. And after that it follows as usual: it’s important not to go after yourselves, after all that uses up a lot of your strength, too.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
