Why Putin still blames Ukraine for the Moscow terror attack

In the two weeks since four ISIS gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall in the Moscow suburbs, Vladimir Putin has done his best to dodge as much of the blame as possible. Speaking at a trade convention in Moscow on Thursday, Russia’s president once again reiterated the implication that Ukraine, and not the Islamist terror group, was responsible for the atrocity. But there are growing questions about not only what Putin knew in advance of the attack, but also the Russian president’s willingness to face up to those who planned it.

“We have every reason to believe that the main goal of those who ordered the bloody terrorist attack in Moscow was to damage our unity,” he mumbled into the microphone on stage. “No other motives have emerged. There are none, because it can’t be the case that Russia is a target for attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.”

Every dictatorship needs an external foe to pin the blame on when things go wrong

Putin knows, of course, that this is a lie — as will most Russians. ISIS terrorist attacks on Russian lives and soil have been a frequent occurrence over the past decade or so. Fighters claiming to seek vengeance for a number of Russian military interferences, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria (the last two conducted since Putin came to power), have wrought havoc. In 2015, ISIS bombed a plane flying to St. Petersburg (Putin’s home city) from Egypt, killing all 224 people on board; in 2017, fourteen people were killed when ISIS targeted the St. Petersburg metro system. Several Islamist terror attacks have also been thwarted by the security services, most recently one planned against a synagogue in the Russian capital on March 7.

Putin’s latest refusal to meaningfully address the Islamist threat to Russia is even more galling following the revelation this week that it appears Russia did in fact know that Crocus City Hall in particular was a potential ISIS terror target. 

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that US authorities had specifically warned the Kremlin that the music venue was vulnerable two weeks before the attack that left 144 Muscovites dead and over 550 injured. This directly contradicts Moscow’s claim that the warnings they received from the US, made under the “duty to warn” policy Washington subscribes to, were too general to foil the attack.

This news marks the climax of a diplomatic spat that began in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, when it emerged that Washington had warned Moscow of a likely terror attack on Russian soil at the beginning of March. Although the Kremlin grudgingly acknowledged that they had indeed been warned, they have stubbornly stuck to the line first pedaled by the FSB chief Alexander Bortinkov that the information the US provided was of a “general nature” and therefore not actually detailed enough to be acted on effectively. 

Doubling down on this line, when quizzed about the Washington Post’s claims, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov did his best to avoid answering. “This is not our remit, because such exchanges of information take place through the channels of special services, information is transmitted directly from service to service,” he claimed, somewhat unbelievably.

There are several reasons why the Kremlin has chosen to take this stubborn and illogical path. Every dictatorship needs an external foe to pin the blame on when things go wrong, but in this case, to hold ISIS accountable — who have, after all, claimed responsibility for the tragedy themselves — isn’t quite enough. 

One glaring reason for this is shown by the highly embarrassing statement Putin gave on the subject just three days before the terror attack. In remarks at a press conference made for the Russian state media to splash loud and proud across the information sphere, he lambasted Western warnings of an impending attack as “blackmail” designed to “intimidate and destabilize” Russian society. 

This turned out to be a spectacular own goal for Putin. That it then took him over twenty hours to make a statement on the attack further demonstrated how taken by surprise the Russian president was. Putin has been so caught up in stamping out perceived threats and internal political opposition to his rule that protecting the Russian people from genuine threats to their safety was allowed to slip down the list of priorities. When Putin dismissed the warnings of a looming attack as “blackmail,” there is a good chance he really did believe what he was saying. 

Nevertheless, the state’s handling of the attack and its immediate aftermath has let the cat out of the bag. Putin failed to protect the Russian population and they know it. This terror attack has threatened to tug at the fragile structure of authority the Russian president consolidated when he proclaimed himself president for a sixth time just the week before. 

Putin will have to rely on this authority in the coming months when he launches his next rumored offensive in Ukraine. Russian army losses are now believed to average between 550 and 600 soldiers a week — a staggering figure. The new wave of conscription which began at the start of this week, calling up some 150,000 for military service, is an additional test of Russians’ obedience. Ignoring ISIS and shifting blame on the US and Ukraine in varying capacities for the Crocus City Hall attack is a distraction tactic and is handy for encouraging Russians to continue rowing in behind the war.

The potential for more tragedy off the back of this cynical strategy by the Kremlin is two-fold. Putin may use the false pretence that Kyiv was responsible for the attack to inflict more misery on Ukraine. ISIS may also see Putin’s refusal to face up to who was responsible for the attack as a sign of weakness: the terror group could come to see Russia as a soft target. In refusing to learn any lessons from this tragedy, Putin will sow the seeds of more ISIS attacks on Russia soil in the months and years to come.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.