Russian President Vladimir Putin attended an expanded meeting of the Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow on March 26, 2024.
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Russia has been stepping up its claims that Ukraine was behind last week’s deadly terror attack in Moscow, a move widely anticipated by political experts who say it could use the tragedy to further support its domestic war against Ukraine.
However, things went further, with senior Kremlin officials claiming that the West and Ukraine colluded in last Friday’s attack on the Krokos City Hall concert hall, in which gunmen killed 140 people.
The investigation into the attack is ongoing, but the latest bizarre accusations pose a problem for Moscow: It must now find evidence to back up its unsubstantiated claims.
In a particular embarrassment to the Kremlin, the Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Eight suspects, mainly Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan nationals, were charged with terrorism offenses and remanded in custody pending trial.
“Going forward, it will be important to watch whether Russian investigators provide any evidence of alleged Ukrainian/Western involvement,” said Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe consultant at Teneo.
“In this case, Putin may have to follow through on his promise to punish those responsible for the attack, which could escalate the war in Ukraine and heighten tensions with the West,” he said.
Ukraine denied any involvement in the attack, saying it was “completely foreseeable” that Moscow would blame Ukraine. The White House said Ukraine “had no involvement” in the attack and that any claims to the contrary were “Kremlin propaganda.” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on social media platform
Russia doubles down
Publicity must have intensified after the attack, when gunmen broke into the grounds of Clokes Town Hall, shot concertgoers and set fire to the auditorium.
Many senior Russian officials and pro-Kremlin media claimed this week that Ukraine, Britain and the United States were somehow coordinating attacks aimed at destabilizing Russia and spreading fear.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that “radical Islamists” carried out the attack but insisted that Ukraine and its Western backers were involved, without providing evidence.
On Tuesday, Russia’s FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov claimed that the United States, Britain and Ukraine were behind the attack, saying it would benefit Western intelligence services and Kiev because it sows fear in Russian society. seed. He also provided no evidence to support his claims.
On May 26, 2015, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev and President Vladimir Putin met with senior officials responsible for security affairs of the BRICS countries in the Moscow Kremlin.
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Nationalist ideologue Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally who is responsible for issuing guidance and policy recommendations on national security issues – Russia’s Security Council secretary – was also asked by Russian reporters about Ukraine or Islam Is the US organization behind the attack?
“Ukraine, of course,” Patrushev replied. According to a Google Translate article by RIA Novosti.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova claims US’s initial rejection of Ukraine’s involvement in anything was questionable He also claimed that the “Islamic State” organization was created by the West. However, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the alleged Ukrainian links or say how Russia would respond if it confirmed Ukrainian involvement.
Peskov told CNBC on Wednesday that the Kremlin was awaiting the results of the investigation before commenting, saying in an email: “The investigation is ongoing. The final version has not yet been released.”
Political analysts say Moscow appears eager to deflect attention from the fact that its intelligence services have failed to detect or prevent Moscow’s terror plots, and Ignoring warnings issued weeks ago by U.S. intelligence agencies that an attack could be imminent.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials appear to be struggling to maintain consistent rhetoric regarding the Krokos City Hall attack, suggesting the Kremlin has not yet fully figured out how to align its information operations with its intelligence and legal “Failure to coordinate implementation with reality,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said on Tuesday.
“Putin and other senior officials have not yet fully embraced the false narrative that Ukraine somehow carried out the March 22 attacks,” ISW said, noting that “between directly blaming Ukraine one day and dodging the issue the next The vacillation suggests the Kremlin has yet to develop a template for how to discuss the attack, possibly in part because Russia’s elite were shaken in the wake of the attack.”
conspiracy thinking
Although the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, high-profile Russian media commentators said the massacre was not typical of an Islamic State terror attack because the attacker was not wearing a suicide belt and did not appear to be carrying it. Religious fanatic.
RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan was among those who questioned the identity of the attacker, posting a video on her Telegram channel, Tass news agency reported One of the suspects claimed he was offered 500,000 rubles ($5,400) to carry out the attack, suggesting the motivation was economic rather than ideological. The suspect appeared in court earlier this week and appeared to have been beaten and bruised. It is unclear whether the reported footage was shot under duress.
Russian media figures also repeated claims that the attackers tried to flee to Ukraine, a claim unusually disputed by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally who said the attackers initially fled. to Belarus, but was forced to change direction and head to Ukraine. Ukraine, as Belarus tightens security measures.
This combination of images, created on March 24, 2024, shows (clockwise from top left) Rachabalizoda Saidakrami, Dalerdjon (also spelled Dalerdzhon) Barotovich Mirzoyev, Muhammadsobir Fayzov and Shamsidin Fariduni suspected of involvement in the concert hall that killed 137 people Attack, the deadliest attack in Europe for which the Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility, a defendant sits in a cage awaiting a pretrial detention hearing at the Basman District Court in Moscow on the night of March 24-25, 2024 .
Tatyana Makeyevaolga Maltseva | Tatyana Makeyevaolga Maltseva AFP | Getty Images
Analysts say that despite discrepancies and anomalies in the narrative, the Kremlin is unlikely to abandon its false claims that Ukraine and the West were involved in the massacre.
“Sadly, this type of conspiracy thinking has been quite common in Russian society since the collapse of the Soviet Union and it’s not going away, and Putin will seek to exploit that,” said Max Hess, a fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy and director of The author of “Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West” told CNBC on Wednesday.
“The Kremlin is not going to give up on the conspiracy theory that ‘even if the Islamists carried out the attack, it was the CIA or some other foreign agency that ordered it along with the Ukrainians,'” he added.
“I also think we should be clear that Putin himself may very well actually believe this paranoid idea. I don’t think the extent of his paranoia has been properly recognized over the past few years. I’m not saying this is something we should accept , but I do think that when dealing with Putin, we have to understand that he is increasingly living in his own reality.”
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