Russia: fighting the wrong war

By Richard North - March 24, 2024

But for the Princess of Wales story breaking yesterday, there is no doubt that the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, 15 miles northwest Moscow, would have been top of the bill.

There is also no doubt, with the full details yet to emerge – if they ever do – that this outrage will fuel any number of conspiracy theories. Even a superficial run though Twitter will yield commentators alleging a false flag operation by the Russian security services, with the assent of Putin, of course, while suspicions of Ukrainian involvement run close to the surface.

The actual sequence of events during the attack are now fairly well recorded. although probably more details will emerge, with the official death toll standing at 133 and over 200 injured.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Isis-Khorasan or Isis-K, an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, has taken responsibility, and the US State Department has corroborated the claim. Russian officials, who claim to have captured all four perpetrators, identify them as coming from Tajikistan, a largely Muslim former Soviet republic.

Tajik authorities are said to have denied that some of the suspects named in Russian media were involved, but there seems to be little dispute that the terrorists are of Tajik origin.

There is, in fact, a large group of Muslim Tajiks in the Moscow district, resident in Kotelnik, a suburb to the south east of the city, where they make up 70 percent of the population.

Mirroring experience elsewhere in European cities, Russian residents claim they are harassed, oppressed and, told to leave. Women and girls are sexually assaulted, while the police appear to do nothing against a background of corruption allegations.

However, the indications are that the terrorists were not local as the Russian security forces have released pictures of a hotel room in which they allegedly lived prior to mounting their attack.

This, however, may be misleading. An interview of one of the terrorists, published by the Russians, has him saying: “We lived in a hostel with other migrants from Tajikistan. I couldn’t find a job for a long time. Then someone called Abdula texted me and offered me money to kill people”.

Four terrorists were apparently captured by Russian police, as they sought to escape in a car, and have been detained. Putin, in a state broadcast, later said that they had been “¬travelling towards Ukraine”, asserting that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for their escape.

He pledged to “punish everybody who stood behind the terrorists, who prepared the attack” but made no ¬mention of Islamic State, thus setting the scene for retaliatory action against Ukraine, especially as Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesman, accused Kiev of abetting the “bloody bastards”.

However, it has now emerged the suspects may have been fleeing to neighbouring Belarus rather than Ukraine. The ¬Belarusian ambassador in Moscow, we are informed, claimed that Minsk’s special forces had been involved in an operation to stop them “escaping across the shared border”.

With a little more time elapsed since those statements, though, we now have Mark Galeotti in the Sunday Times to piece together what is known and to add his analysis of the events and their implications.

He argues that a jihadist attack originating from central Asia at the very time that it is focused on Ukraine looks like the Kremlin’s worst nightmare. With Putin having staked his legitimacy on his role as the tough defender of the Motherland, his inability to prevent such an attack inevitably weakens him.

With the passage of time, Galeotti notes that the Russian security forces appear to be accepting the claim of responsibility from Islamic State Khorasan (Isis-K). He tells us that the operation, based largely in Afghanistan and central Asia, has become increasingly focused on Russia, which it sees as equivalent to the US in its “hatred” for Islam.

It cites Russia’s 2015 intervention in Syria in support of the Assad regime against, among others, Isis fighters, as well as its support for central Asian governments opposed to Isis.

Isis-K, we are reminded, was behind the bombing of the St Petersburg metro in 2017, which left 15 dead, as well as a string of smaller and often unsuccessful attacks. Most recently, it tried to launch an armed attack on a synagogue in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow this month, which was foiled by the Federal Security Service (FSB).

As one might expect, Galeotti is not the only one to be taking a close look at ISIS-K. Andrew Roth in the Observer reports that US intelligence has told American news agencies that there’s “no reason to doubt” the IS claims of responsibility.

He confirms that this terrorist group has increasingly focused its attention on Russia since the United States left Afghanistan in 2021. It was formed in 2015 from an amalgamation of several other groups including those from Pakistan and Uzbekistan and is active in central Asia and Russia. But it carried out twin bombings in January in Iran that killed nearly 100 people.

We learn from testimony to the (US Congress) House armed services committee in early March, from Gen Michael Kurilla, the commander of US Central Command, that: “ISIS-K and its allies retain a safe haven in Afghanistan, and they continue to develop their networks in and out of the country”.

But, we are told, “their goals do not stop there. They have called for attacks globally on anyone not aligned with their extremist ideology, and Taliban efforts to suppress the group have proven insufficient”. It is said that the attack in Iran demonstrated the group’s “resiliency and indicates that they retain the capability and will to conduct spectacular external operations”.

There is a further complication that, within hours of the ISIS-K attempted synagogue attack on March, the US embassy issued an unusual warning for American citizens to avoid large gatherings and in particular concerts, repeating calls for US citizens to leave Russia.

“The embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and US citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours”, the embassy said on its website.

CNN reporters said they had been told that “since November there has been ‘fairly specific’ intelligence that Isis-K wanted to carry out attacks in Russia … US intelligence warned Russia about it”.

Moscow says that the warnings were quite generic, and Putin called them – issued on the eve of the presidential elections – a “provocation”, meant “to intimidate and destabilise our society”. In the event, it seems no action was taken. Whether and how this fuels the conspiracy theorists remains to be seen.

For the moment, Ukrainian officials are insisting that they had no link to the attack. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration, says: “Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the shooting/explosions in the Crocus City Hall (Moscow Region, Russia). It makes no sense whatsoever”. He adds: “Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he said. “It is always pointless”.

Before even the smoke has died down from the Crocus City Hall though, Ukraine launched a barrage of three Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Crimea, reportedly completely destroyed the Russian Black Sea Fleet Communications Center in Sevastopol.

This, presumably, is in retaliation for the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure which, in turn, was presumably driven by Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.

As the tit-for-tat attacks escalate, giving rise to considerable unease amongst Ukraine’s partners, the Kremlin has, for the first time, formally declared that “a state of war” exists between Russia and Ukraine, upgrading the conflict from the “special military operation” which had previously been the designation.

Perhaps slightly behind the curve, the Telegraph is still reporting Putin’s claim that the Crocus City Hall attackers were “helped by Ukraine”, leading to a warning from the UK, telling Putin not to use Moscow terror attack as an “excuse” to intensify war.

A senior Whitehall security source is cited, saying that: “Putin’s desperation to put all of this on Ukraine is unsurprising, as he tries to further dupe the Russian people whilst pretending that there is no dissent within Russia”. This source adds, “He must not use this confected connection as any sort of excuse for intensifying his illegal war in Ukraine”.

What this source and others might have observed, though, is that – if he indeed still directing his ire at Ukraine – Putin is identifying the wrong enemy. And, in a very real sense, he is fighting the wrong war.