Terror Attack in Moscow is not New Nord Ost

Despite the overwhelming evidence against the islamic extremists as the culprit, Putin in his speech on the terror act did not mention ISIS but pointed his finger towards Ukraine

On Friday evening, armed terrorists stormed Crocus City concert hall in Moscow which is 20 km from Kremlin and 3 km from national guard base (Rosgvardia). After shooting at the crowd, they set the concert hall on fire with petrol bombs. At least 137 were killed including children and elderly.

Although some 6200 tickets for the performance of the rock group Picnic were sold that night, the security was lax. When the shootings began in the entrance, four unarmed guards had no choice but hiding behind an advertising board. Some emergency exits were locked blocking the escape. The arrival of Rosgvardia to the location took about an hour despite its closeness.

Two weeks ago, the US government had shared their intelligence that extremists had imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow with the Russian authorities. However Putin condemned US warnings publicly as a provocation, blackmail, intimidation and aiming to destabilise Russian society. The developments show that necessary precautions also were not taken behind the veil of the denunciation.

However, from the beginning of March the state run news agency reported that several FSB operations caught or eliminated ISIS members. On March 3, FSB claims that six ISIS members were killed in the Ingush Karabulak; on March 7, a group of the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), a branch of ISIS, which planned an attack on a synagogue in the Kaluga region was eliminated, and on March 20 a commander of ISIS was detained. Despite these successes on the periphery of the Russian Federation, the most protected capital city could fall victim to such a highly organised terror act.

Not long after IS-K claimed responsibility for the Friday attack. The organisation, while being very active, experienced a decline in membership due to the Taliban and US operations. According to the US, the organisation develops the ability to conduct operations in Europe and Asia. However, the US emphasises that its intelligence ability inside Afghanistan has been heavily reduced since its withdrawal together with its ability to acquire details about the attacks.

IS-K was in a major recruitment campaign from Tajikistan and other central Asian countries. As these recruits would be Russian speakers and even Russian nationals, they could easily infiltrate targets inside Russia. Indeed, an attack on a church in Istanbul on January 28 was organised by IS-K. One of the attackers was Russian and the other was Tajik national and several communications in Russian were found.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against the islamic extremists as the culprit, Putin in his speech on the terror act did not mention ISIS but pointed his finger towards Ukraine by claiming that the attackers were arrested while moving to Ukrainian border and claimed that “a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.”

The current terror act is an embarrassment for the Russian President. His army is occupied in Ukraine and his limited resources do not allow to open a new front. Russian forces that are present in Syria may engage in an operation against ISIS but the central asian branch of the terrorist group presents the real threat.

This is why Putin needs to divert the responsibility towards an enemy that he has already engaged in to claim that he is dealing with the threat and regain his prestige. In addition, declaring Ukraine as the responsible party could rationalise a larger mobilisation to increase the size of the Russian army. In this way the disadvantages of Ukraine - the shortage of ammunition and man power - would become more pronounced.

Although, at the moment the West does not find Putin’s claims credible, in time there may be countries that use Putin’s alternate reality as an excuse to stop supporting Ukraine or may begin to pressure for an untimely peace agreement. In return, if Putin senses such a weakness, he may use nuclear threats more convincingly claiming his fight is against terrorism, to further loosen their will.

The Crocus hall attack reminds of the 2002 Dubrovka theatre crises (Nord Ost), where 40 Chechen militants headed by warlord Movsar Barayev were killed and 132 hostages died mainly due to the effects of the sleeping gas released by the Russian security forces. The attack enabled Putin to consolidate his power and convince the Russian public to use much harsher measures against Chechen separatists. Moreover, together with other terror acts Nord Ost incident isolated Chechen separatists alienating their cause to the West.

Putin tries to put a positive spin on the tragedy as in Nord Ost, but conditions are different. Russian industry is ramped up for military production, but both military and industry requires man force. Moreover, Russia fought against one enemy in the Chechen war, now will need to fight against Ukraine and the Islamist extremists on different fronts. Putin thought that the Western resolve was weak and would break, but it seems his corrupt authoritarian regime is not as strong as he thought as the boiler of its system began to leak steam from multiple holes.