(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with top government officials to address antisemitic protests in a predominantly Muslim region of the country, demonstrations the Kremlin blamed on western interference. 

The president plans to discuss “the West’s attempts to use events in the Middle East to split Russian society,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to the Interfax news service. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, security council members and the heads of law enforcement agencies are among those who will attend the gathering in Moscow on Monday.

The talks are taking place after a Russian airport in the Dagestan region was temporarily shut down on Sunday when a mob forced its way onto the tarmac where, according to reports and images on social media, a plane from Israel had landed.

“Unknown people” infiltrated the airport in Makhachkala, the region’s capital, Russia’s federal aviation agency Rosaviatsia said in a Telegram post on Sunday evening. It took hours to restore order and clear the premises, the agency said. Rosaviatsia said the airport resumed operations as of 2 p.m. Moscow time on Monday, but that flights from Tel Aviv would be temporarily re-routed to other cities. The agency earlier said the regional hub would resume working on Oct. 31.

Israel’s government said in a statement it expected Russian authorities “to protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they may be and to act resolutely against the rioters and against the wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.” 

Tensions between Israel and Russia have been growing since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Israel lodged an official complaint to Russia after a Hamas delegation visited Moscow last week. Russia’s ambassador to Israel was summoned Sunday to the foreign ministry in Jerusalem and reprimanded over Moscow’s failure to condemn the militant group, designated a terrorist outfit by the US and the European Union. 

According to unverified videos on social media, a crowd of people carrying the Palestinian flag forced their way onto a runway at the airport where a Red Wings plane from Tel Aviv was arriving, with one person climbing onto the engine and then onto the wing of the jet. Some people were hurt and sought medical help, the local health ministry said, without giving further details.

The scene unfolded less than 48 hours after Israeli troops and tanks entered the Gaza Strip in what is expected to be a protracted war against Hamas. The deadly incursion into Israel on Oct. 7 by the militant group killed 1,400 people and set off a retaliation that has raised tensions across the Middle East. Officials in Gaza say more than 7,700 people have died so far in Israel’s aerial and ground attacks.

Read more: Israel-Hamas Conflict: TOPLive Transcript

The head of the Dagestan region, Sergey Melikov, denounced the airport attack and promised an “appropriate assessment from law enforcement.” The local prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation. Police detained 60 people, Interfax reported.

The incident follows protests in Russia’s largely Muslim North Caucasus region against Israel’s actions in Gaza. In the city of Khasavyurt, Dagestan, people gathered near a hotel demanding to expel Israeli residents while minor protests were held in Makhachkala. In Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, unidentified people set fire to the construction site of a Jewish cultural center on Sunday, according to RIA Novosti.

Putin met with representatives of the country’s biggest religious groups last week, blaming the West for causing the conflict in the Middle East, calling interfaith strife “anti-Russian” and claiming: “We have not seen antisemitism on a state level for many years and there is hardly any antisemitism on the streets either.”

While the heads of Dagestan and other neighboring regions condemned anti-Israel acts in their territories, they called the unrest provocations. Melikov blamed “extremists” led by “enemies of Russia” and even went so far as to say he thought it was an operation run from Ukraine, according to RIA Novosti. 

“It is well known and obvious that yesterday’s events around the Makhachkala airport are largely the result of outside interference, including external informational influence,” Peskov said on Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose country was invaded by Russia in February 2022, was quick to denounce “appalling videos from Makhachkala, Russia, where an angry mob broke into the airport searching for Israeli citizens on the flight from Tel Aviv.”

--With assistance from Galit Altstein.

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