There are two key takeaways from the ISIS terrorist attack on a Russian concert hall near Moscow last Friday.
First, that the attack was brutal in both intent and form. It was another manifestation of ISIS’s particularly pernicious interpretation of Salafi-Jihadist ideology: the belief that innocent blood and gratuitous suffering are the purest pathways to God’s will. Why the terrorists allowed themselves to be caught by the Russians is unclear. But as in the various torture videos that the Russians are now releasing, the remainder of their lives are unlikely to be pleasant.
Second, Moscow’s blaming of Ukraine and the West for complicity in the attacks is absurd. It underlines the affection of Vladimir Putin’s government for deception as a favored tool of statecraft. And Moscow’s “blame the West and Ukraine” game is escalating.
Top Russian security officials on Tuesday built on Putin’s suggestion that the terrorists sought escape to Ukraine. National security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev stated that Ukraine was “of course” responsible for the attack. FSB domestic security service director Alexander Bortnikov added that Ukrainian intelligence services had a “direct connection” to the attack. And while Bortnikov admitted that the U.S. had warned Russia about the possibility of a mass casualty attack, he added that Friday’s attack was “facilitated by the Western [intelligence services].”
Yes, you read that right. Moscow says that the U.S. both warned an attack was likely and is partly responsible for the attack that followed. Only in Putin’s Russia could both claims appear credible.
The actual reality is that Putin’s government has been deeply embarrassed by what happened last Friday. The U.S. Embassy-Moscow’s warning on March 7 about the possibility of just such an attack was clear. It warned “that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts….” Putin has previously shown gratitude for similar U.S. warnings that helped Russia prevent prior ISIS terrorist attacks. But Putin didn’t simply ignore this U.S. warning: In the days just preceding the Crocus City Hall attack, Putin decried it as constituting “outright blackmail.”
Moscow knows full well that ISIS has an enduring fixation on mass-casualty attacks a la the November 2015 Paris attacks. That fixation explains why many governments have expended great expense and effort to boost the means of their security forces to rapidly respond to attacks on city events. In contrast, Putin’s government failed to bolster security even at concert halls, as explicitly identified in the U.S. warning. Securing concert halls and similar events would have required a relatively small security deployment but would likely have deterred, delayed, or defeated an attack by these gunmen. Russian security forces also took a long time to arrive at the concert hall, allowing the gunmen to almost casually stroll around shooting the wounded before escaping.
While it seems unlikely the Russians deliberately facilitated this attack, the tradecraft of the Russian intelligence services and the suspicious nature of the 1999 apartment bombings means it cannot be ruled out.
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Still, Putin’s KGB-style reaction to this failure is understandable. Rather than accept responsibility for failing to protect their people, Putin and his security elites have invented a theory that is so absurdly unbelievable that its straight-faced offering seems potentially believable. He knows his people will ask why the U.S. would both warn Russia about an ISIS attack on a concert hall and then help Ukraine and ISIS carry out an attack on a concert hall.
But Putin has confidence in his unmoving response: because ISIS are fanatics, because America is the main enemy, and because Ukraine is a Nazi state dedicated to annihilating Russian lives. In a country where Putin remains popular and it is rather dangerous to question one’s leaders, the lie often offers happier appeal than the truth.