Putin’s FSB is Either Incompetent or Complicit in the Crocus City Hall Attack

Moscow’s non-response to intelligence threat warnings reveals either gross incompetence or involvement by the Russian special services

The March 22 Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP) assault on an entertainment complex outside Moscow continues to roil Russia. The death toll in this, Russia’s most lethal terrorist attack in two decades, has climbed to 144 and may go higher yet, since many of the more than 500 injured were gravely wounded. This crime has raised awkward questions for President Vladimir Putin and his repressive system, which in many ways is built upon terrorist outrages against Russia, which the former KGB man promised to halt.

The Mar. 22 attack therefore poses political problems for the Kremlin, which Putin has addressed by pointing the finger at Kyiv and the West, while conceding that IS-KP jihadists were the actual terrorists who committed mass murder. According to this view, NATO intelligence services, led by Washington and London, constitute the “hidden hand” behind this historic atrocity, which Putin has promised to get to the bottom of.

On multiple occasions, top Kremlin officials, including Putin, have stated that Russia is at war with the West, while Ukraine is merely the battlefield; moreover, that Moscow dogma has been amplified since the recent terrorist attack. Yesterday, Nikolai Patrushev, who is Russia’s national security advisor and one of the president’s closest confidants (just like Putin, Patrushev was a Leningrad KGB officer who later headed the Federal Security Service, the powerful FSB), pointed the finger of blame at NATO. “The North Atlantic Alliance is de-facto a party to the Ukrainian conflict and is actively involved in organizing the shelling of Russian territories,” Patrushev stated. Today he went even further, directly naming Kyiv, with NATO behind them, as the terrorists who struck on Mar. 22. Patrushev accused “Ukrainian special services” of being the real culprits in the attack, with NATO and the United States supporting them. Patrushev proffered no evidence for this explosive claim, which has become the Kremlin line on this ugly matter, despite direct denials from Kyiv and Washington of any involvement.