It had to start sometime

Despite beheading videos having gone out of style for Jihadis in Iraq, it seems that one Russian extremist group is starting to copy the tactic. According to Radio Free Europe,

A Russian ultranationalist group has posted a video on its websites that appears to show the execution-style killing of two men from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Two men are seen kneeling on the ground in a forest, their arms and legs tied up. A large flag with a Nazi swastika stands in the background. “We’ve been arrested by the Russian National Socialists,” one of the two men says.

A third man walks up to the captives and beheads one of them with a knife. The second captive is shot in the head and falls forward into a freshly dug grave.Two masked men then raise their arms in a Nazi salute.

It is only a matter of time until the tactics of radical Islamists and insurgents in Iraq spread elsewhere, both geographically and ideologically. In fact, many already have as the video demonstrates and as similar tactics pop up in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Mexico and elsewhere. Coincidentally, this comes as a section of the main railroad between St. Petersburg and Moscow was destroyed and a train derailed by an IED.

As John Robb notes in Brave New War, Russia has long suffered such incidents, and although nowhere near as often reported as those in Iraq, are just as disturbing. In 2004, gas and oil pipelines all over the country were bombed and power lines severed. In the largest country in the world and one of the most sparsely populated, it seems that global guerrillas could just as easily use Russia’s energy as a weapon as the Russian government does. Interestingly, it would be an interesting counterattack option not just for Georgia, as Robb often notes, should Russia ever come into conflict with Europe and cut energy supplies.