Russia is trying very hard to pin an unrelated terror attack on Ukraine
Last Friday, a group of gunmen opened fire at a packed concert at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow, killing more than 130 people and injuring many more. An ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan known as "ISKP" has claimed responsibility for the attack. Despite the claim, Russia’s President Putin tried to connect the perpetrators to Ukraine in his speech in the wake of the attack.
With the news of the attack consuming Russian media, it has provided a distraction from the news of vast numbers of young Russian men being summoned to conscription centers ahead of the spring draft that starts on April 1.
The scenes from Friday's attack have resonated with the Russian population, which quickly remembered the 2002 hostage crisis in the Moscow Dubrovka Theater and the 2004 attack by gunmen on a school in Beslan. Surely, many drew parallels between the scenes of massacres and people trying to flee.
But the Dubrovka and Beslan attacks were conducted by insurgents from the North Caucasus who aimed to publicize Russia’s brutal handling of the war in Chechnya. Back then, hostage-takers were demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.
The attack on the Crocus City Hall proceeded somewhat differently. The perpetrators reportedly made no political statements or claims during the attack.
A more interesting comparison would be with the apartment bombings across Russia in September 1999. Back then, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was facing an approaching deadline to revisit the status of de facto independent Chechnya. Insurgent activities were starting up in Dagestan. And then a wave of terrorist attacks downed apartment complexes in Russia’s Buinaksk, Volgodonsk, and Moscow.
Even though no insurgent groups from the Caucasus claimed responsibility for these attacks, Putin connected the perpetrators to international terrorists of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and indicated his resolve to “wipe them out in the outhouse.” With that, he launched a counterterrorist operation in Chechnya that officially ended only in 2009. Although the Russian public had no appetite for the Second Chechen War, it rallied behind the soon-to-be President Putin in the fight against terrorism.
Starting his fifth presidential term in March 2024, Putin has been similarly struggling with the dilemma of how to convince Russians to go fight in the war in Ukraine. Recent polls in Russia have indicated that Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is much less popular than he likes to think, and the majority of Russians do not want to see a second wave of mobilization.
At the same time, the Kremlin has indicated ambitious plans for increasing the size of Russia’s military. Just days ago, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu promised to form two additional new armies and "30 formations, including 14 divisions and 16 brigades.” Such plans would be hard to realize without additional conscription.
Another mobilization could be explosive. While the Russian population has been generally complacent about the “special military operation” that has been conducted by contractors, forcefully-mobilized ethnic minorities, prisoners, and the Wagner Group, Russians have shown much less appetite for sending their own loved ones to fight in Putin’s war.
Here is where the attack on the Crocus City Hall has presented an opportune moment. Rossiiskaia Gazeta, the official newspaper of the Russian government, has reported that the ISIS claim for the attack was published through a fake account. Instead, the Russian government has attempted to connect the terrorist attack to Ukraine.
First, coincidentally, on the same day of the attack Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared Russia to be in a “state of war” in Ukraine. Second, earlier on Friday, the Russian FSB published a video of “liquidating a Ukrainian agent” who was allegedly planning a terrorist attack in Berdiansk.
Immediately after the Moscow attack, the FSB declared that the perpetrators had contacts in Ukraine. Putin’s initial statement on the attack suggested that the perpetrators were trying to escape in the direction of Ukraine, where “the Ukrainian side prepared a window for them to cross the state border.” Even though a day after the attack Putin acknowledged that it was carried out by “radical Islamists,” he continued to insist that it could only be “the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime” that was interested in ordering such an attack.
Further, the Russian government has insinuated that Western adversaries also wanted to hurt Russia with such attacks. Earlier in March, when the U.S. had warned Russian officials of a potential attack, Vladimir Putin responded: “Recent provocative statements by a number of official Western structures about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia...resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” Perhaps he should have listened instead.
It is too early to draw conclusions about how the investigations of the attack will proceed. It is quite likely that ISKP was indeed behind the attack. Ever since Russia became involved in the civil war in Syria, ISIS has treated it as an enemy. The group has claimed a number of terrorist attacks in Russia to include the 2019 attack in Ingushetia or the 2020 attack in Grozny. ISKP has focused on Russia in its recent rhetoric.
What seems most certain is the intent of the Russian government to connect the threat of terrorism with the war in Ukraine, just as it once did with the Second Chechen War. Russians will be much more likely to support the expansion of the “special military operation” into a full-scale war if it is being fought under the banner of counterterrorism.
Elena Pokalova is a professor at the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University. She is author of "Chechnya’s Terrorist Network: The Evolution of Terrorism in Russia’s North Caucasus." The author's views do not necessarily reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
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