The Wednesday Letter #226 - 6/26/2024

THIS WEEK: Dagestan Attack; Fedex Results; Commodities Update; Bitcoin Between FOMO and Regret; Brexit After Eight Years.

DAGESTAN ATTACK

On Sunday, a terrorist group known as Vilayat Kavkaz (literally the State of Caucasus) carried out attacks on a synagogue and an Orthodox church in the Dagestan city of Derbent and set them on fire. Later on the same day, the same group attacked a police station, an Orthodox church and a synagogue in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The death toll now stands at 21 people.

Vilayat Kavkaz is Islamic State’s (IS) northern Caucasus branch. There has been no official claim by IS that it was behind the attack but an IS affiliate in Afghanistan congratulated the “brothers in the Caucasus who showed that they are still strong.”

Dagestan is located in the Caucasus, a region that lies in the southwestern part of Russia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (see map). Dagestan is north of Azerbaijan and east of Chechnya and Georgia. And like Chechnya, it is predominantly Muslim and has had an independence movement for decades.

The entire north Caucasus region of the Russian…