The aggressor’s propaganda space has been seriously feverish for the last week, and the reason for the current abscess was a rather casual and innocent speech by the first deputy of the Russia’s Spiritual Administration of Muslims and functionary of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Professor Damir Mukhetdinov, at a regular scientific conference in Yekaterinburg on November 14.
The formal grounds for the hysteria started by the Nazis Yegor Kholmogorov and Sergei Markov were the rather simple historical facts listed by Mukhetdinov, such as the role of the Khazar Khaganate and the Golden Horde in the formation of Russian imperialism, the importance of the Finno-Ugric tribes, the German origin of Peter III and Catherine II, and the like.
In fact, the defamation of Mukhetdinov, which continued recently in the “Crimean media”, arose from his “rebellion on his knees” against the current use, including by the “official” propaganda of the Kremlin, of the concept of “Russian” as a synonym for the population, controlled by the Russian Federation.
The timid statement of the professor of Islamic studies that “by imposing this identity on other peoples” these figures will lead to “destructive consequences in the long term” gave rise to a flurry of accusations, from some alleged “homosexual adventures” of Mukhetdinov, to his “treacherous correspondence” regarding Crimea in 2014.
The last story from ten years ago is known from the words of the so-called Tanai Cholkhanov, who made public his alleged correspondence with Mukhetdinov regarding the Crimean Tatars, their Mejlis, and also the Crimean Muftiate.
In it, Mukhetdinov allegedly does not approve of his interlocutor’s calls for a “hard hand” from the Kremlin regarding the indigenous people of Crimea, among other things recalling the deportation of 1944.
Here we note that the long-time agent of the Russian special services Cholkhanov, or rather the former historical reenactor Yuri Sapozhnikov from Voronezh, has long been used by his curators to discredit “too smart” representatives of Islamic structures of the Russian Federation itself.
After changing his surname, Sapozhnikov-Cholkhanov announced his adoption of Islam, infiltrated the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the European part of Russia and was even delegated by it to be the imam-akhund of the Central Cossack Army.
At the same time, Cholkhanov participated in the fabrication of a case of “extremism” against the informal leader of the Muslim movement of St. Petersburg, Maxim Baidak, and then began to publicly accuse the Council of Muftis of Russia itself of “anti-state work.”
Since the beginning of the occupation of Crimea, Sapozhnikov-Cholkhanov, the former organizer of the “military-historical and folklore festival” “Chervlenyi Yar”, was hastily “repainted” by curators as “almost a Crimean Tatar” and even joined the marginal pro-Russian organization of Crimean Tatars “Milli Firka”.
Further, this reenactor not only began to be used by the aggressor’s propaganda as a talking head “on the Middle East”, but since 2022 as a “volunteer” and “military engineer”.
The most tragicomic is Cholkhanov’s recent statement in the relevant “media” that all his passion for Islam, pan-Turkism, and so on arose from reading Frank Herbert’s book “Dune”. What else will the Russian special services advise their agents to read to “cleanse” unwanted Islamic scholars – the near future will show.
