On March 22, before a concert by the Russian rock band Picnic, a terrorist assault killed 144 people, including six minors, and destroyed the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, a satellite town of Moscow. The terrorists only had 17 minutes to shoot so many people and ignite a major fire in the large contemporary structure. A day later, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack.
According to The Washington Post, about two weeks before the attack, the United States not only presented to Russia information about the terrorist intentions but also provided unusually specific details regarding the involvement of ISIS-K and identified Crocus as a potential target. This is not the first time the United States warned Russia about impending terrorist attacks, which it did in 2017 and 2019. This time, Russia irrationally ignored the information, which had been conveyed not only by the United States but also by one of its closest allies, Iran.
Russian experts doubt the Kremlin’s official narrative, as well as U.S. claims, about who is behind the attacks. They point to the potential involvement of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, which was allegedly involved in high-rise building explosions in Volgodonsk in 1999 that were pinned on Chechen terrorists. Why would Russians deny the involvement of ISIS, and what are the differences between the explanations put forward by Putin and his opposition?
Putin’s Finger-Pointing
Vladimir Putin waited for 19 hours before addressing his citizens with a message about the assault in Crocus. Surprisingly for Americans, he blamed Ukraine for the organization of the attack. After the FSB caught the accused attackers on Russia’s western borders and subjected them to horrifying torture shown online, Putin stated that the Tajik ISIS terrorists were allegedly recruited by the Ukrainian security service and were planning to flee to Ukraine, where a “window” had been prepared for them at the border. This scenario was refuted by Putin’s closest ally, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who said that Tajik terrorists from ISIS were supposed to go to Belarus, but he blocked their path.
In developing Putin’s version of the events, the Russian Federation Investigation Committee began on April 1 to examine possible “organization, financing, and carrying out of terrorist attacks” against Russia by the United States, Ukraine, and other Western countries.
In response to this, Pentagon official John Kirby repeated that the attack had been organized by ISIS-K and claimed that the version about Ukrainian involvement was “nonsense and propaganda.” Sergei Zhirnov, a former foreign intelligence KGB officer and political refugee in France, calls Putin’s connecting of Ukraine and the ISIS attack “pathological” but logical in the sense that Putin blames Ukraine for everything: “Even if aliens land on Red Square tomorrow, Putin will still call them Ukrainians or say that Ukraine is behind this.”
The Suspicions of the Russian Opposition
The very terrorist attacks that propelled Putin to power were likely performed by the Russian FSB. In September 1999, explosions in high-rise residential buildings in three Russian cities, purportedly carried out by Chechen separatists, provided the pretext for Putin to launch the second Chechen war. According to ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko and historian Yuri Felshtinsky in their book Blowing Up Russia, one of the FSB-planned attacks in Volgodonsk was thwarted by alert citizens and police, who identified the perpetrators as Moscow FSB agents. The deputy chief of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, dismissed the failed bombing as a “training exercise” with sugar in the bags instead of the explosive hexogen.
The “Liberty of Russia” Legion, fighting on Ukraine’s side, have blamed “the terrorist regime of Putin” for the tragedy at Moscow’s Crocus, arguing that once again the FSB is behind the tragedy. However, this explanation has flaws. For instance, no group claimed responsibility for the residential building attacks in 1999, while ISIS did admit to the Crocus assault.
At the same time, there are many similarities between these two terrorist attacks. Vladimir Оsechkin, a Russian human rights activist in exile, found several details about the terrorist attack in Crocus that cannot be explained other than by the FSB theory. Commenting on the late arrival of Russian police and anti-terrorist forces to the Crocus Hall, he asks, “Is it a failure or deliberate inaction?” He and Sergey Zhirnov draw attention to the fact that Crocus City Hall is surrounded by all kinds of security forces. Indeed, the well-equipped Pavshino district police office was located right in the building. Nearby, there were well-equipped units guarding the Moscow region government and the court buildings, and less than two miles away were the FSB and Moscow’s Rosgvardia bases. According to the BBC, no additional approvals were needed to send the nearest duty group to Crocus Hall immediately after the police received the first message about the attack at about 8 pm. The first of Rosgurdia’s officers arrived there only between 8:30 and 9 pm, when it was too late and the building was nearly totally on fire.
Osechkin and Zhirnov question how terrorists could escape and so quickly make it to the border with Belarus if Crocus City Hall is sandwiched between the Moscow River delta and the Moscow Ring Highway, densely stuffed with surveillance cameras. Another unusual detail is that the four ISIS Tajik terrorists didn’t resist when they were detained, although, according to Russian official sources, they were well armed and carried ammunition with them.
After analyzing the video of the terrorist attack and subsequent detainment, available online, Sergey Zhirnov suggests that there were more than four attackers and more than one group. He emphasizes that the tall “professional” terrorists of Slavic appearance on the video look very different from the detained Tajiks, who could not likely have had enough time and resources to start a massive fire. However, these other perpetrators have not been identified. “I don’t rule out that they simply crossed the road and came back home to the riot police barracks opposite,” Zhirnov ironically notes.
Osechkin agrees, blaming the police and anti-terrorist officers for obstructing a fair investigation because publishing the footage of the detention of the four Tajik terrorists allowed other suspects to escape detection. Putin’s allegation that the perpetrators intended to hide in Ukraine because of access provided them at the Russian-Ukrainian border is totally absurd, he points out, given the hot war between the two countries.
The Kremlin’s Interest in the Terrorist Attack
If the Russian FSB was involved somehow in the attack, then why did ISIS-K claim responsibility? ISIS-K’s motivation is obvious. Russia, which fought in Syria and maintains official contacts with ISIS enemies in the Afghan Taliban, is a legitimate target for them. For the Russian FSB, the motivation could stem from the opportunity to blame Ukraine and the West for the attack.
The Russian FSB does not hide its connections with ISIS, pretending to use them to prevent terrorist attacks. However, according to the Russian opposition media source Meduza, the FSB recruits ISIS terrorists for other purposes, such as actions against Ukraine. Baurzhan Kultanov, a native of Russian Astrakhan, was one such recruit.
Journalist Sergei Parkhomenko and Russian human rights activist Mark Feygin believe that the Kremlin is using the terrorist attack in Crocus to fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russia, which is needed to continue the war and recruit more soldiers. According to the pro-Putin Izvestia, the attack in Crocus has already helped increase the number of people signing up to serve in the Russian army for the war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Osechkin believes that this terrorist attack, like a bowling ball, helps the Kremlin knock down all the pins at once. In addition to helping with mobilization, it has given Russia more space on the international stage and has elicited condolences from those countries that did not recognize Putin as the legally elected president. Like the Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933, it also represents the culmination of the country’s turn to fascism.
Another historical parallel is the 2011 terrorist attack in the Minsk subway in Belarus, which followed the brutal suppression of protests against fraudulent presidential elections. The explosions claimed the lives of 15 people. The alleged perpetrators, two young provincial workers who were found in an unusually short time, admitted that they wanted to destabilize the situation in the country. They were subsequently executed. This way, the Belarusian dictator shifted public attention from the post-election political crisis and found a convenient excuse to consolidate total control in the country. The same scenario seems to be unfolding today, when the Tajik perpetrators, tortured almost to an animal state, are confessing to Putin’s version of the terrorist attack, that they were told to escape to Ukraine, the country that just happens to be at war with the Kremlin, where they would receive a million rubles.