Vladimir Putin once presented himself as an ally of the West in the war on terror, and Russia has had its own battles with jihadist violence emanating from Chechnya. But Russia’s response to the recent Islamist attacks in Paris, as expressed through its official and quasi-official media outlets, reflects a major shift. As Michael Khodarkovsky explains, Putin, who has reached an uneasy compromise with his nation’s large Muslim minority, considers liberal democracy a more dangerous ideology than jihadism:
On January 10, a protester holding a sign “I am Charlie” was arrested in Moscow and later sentenced to eight days in jail. A few days later, the federal media watchdog ordered the St. Petersburg edition of the Business News Agency to remove the new cover of Charlie Hebdo from its website. The same agency was warned that reprinting the cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad could be considered a criminal offense, and that it would violate the “ethical and moral norms formed in Russia through the centuries of different peoples and faiths living side by side.” . . .
Behind the purported wish to protect the feelings of the faithful lies a pragmatic attempt to maintain the support of conservative Christian, Muslim, and nationalist groups, and to keep Islamic extremists at bay. . . .
Though the Kremlin was quick to express solidarity with France and condemn terrorism in the aftermath of the Paris attack, the pro-government media placed equal blame at the feet of the Charlie Hebdo journalists for their provocative cartoons, and at the Western liberalism that allows such publications.
Read more on New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/opinion/chechnya-and-charlie-hebdo.html