The battle over who committed an attack that killed more than 130 people will have major ramifications for the Ukraine war
Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in decades may not be directly related to the ongoing war in Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have implications for the future of that conflict. In fact, the horrific attack has already become one more battle in the ongoing information war between Russia, Ukraine, and Ukraine’s western allies, including the US. The nature and timing of the attack, as well as its alleged perpetrators, have all combined to make this tragedy fertile ground for conspiracy theories and motivated reasoning.
At least 133 people were killed in the attack on the Crocus City Hall theater just outside Moscow on Friday, where a concert by the veteran Russian rock band Piknik was happening. A group of gunmen wearing tactical gear and carrying automatic weapons shot concertgoers and set fire to the building. Grisly videos circulating on social media seen by Vox show the attackers firing on defenseless people crouched on the ground.
With over 100 people wounded, the death toll is likely to rise, but it is already higher than the 132 people killed in the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis – an event with which it shared some disturbing resemblances – and is likely to be the second-worst terrorist attack in Russian history after the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis in the country’s North Caucasus region, which resulted in more than 300 deaths.
The Islamic State terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the attack and US intelligence officials have said they believe it was specifically the work of the group’s Afghan affiliate, the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K). (Khorasan refers to a historic region that includes parts of modern Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan.)
The US embassy in Moscow had issued a warning on March 7 advising US citizens to avoid large gatherings due to reports that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.” Russian authorities also claimed earlier this month to have foiled an ISIS attack on a synagogue in Moscow.
In a video statement released Saturday, President Vladimir Putin said that 11 people have been arrested, including the four perpetrators of the attack, who had fled the scene. Authorities in Moscow say the four were not Russian citizens.
Colin Clarke, a terrorism analyst with the Soufan Center, said that evidence suggested the four gunmen had experience and training. “If you look at the videos of this attack, the way that they shot, and even the spacing between them when they carry out the attacks, it’s clear they were well trained,” Clarke told Vox. “It doesn’t seem like these were just local guys who were imbibing ISIS propaganda and decided to do something. I would put money on them being trained in Afghanistan.”
Why would an ISIS offshoot attack Russia? Islamist extremist groups like ISIS-K have long-standing grievances against Moscow dating back to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as well as the Russian Federation’s brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Chechnya and the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s and its support for Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. More recently, ISIS-K carried out a suicide attack targeting the Russian embassy in Kabul in 2022.
The simple explanation that ISIS was responsible would be an inconvenient one for Putin. It would mean that he had ignored the US warning of an imminent attack, which at the time he dismissed as “blackmail” intended to destabilize Russian society. (In fairness, he would definitely not be the only world leader to recently ignore such a warning.)
It would also be another instance, along with the remarkable detailed US warnings of Russian war plans ahead of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when America’s spies seemed to know more about what was happening in Russia than Putin’s own security services.
