Terror Strikes Moscow: Understanding the Crocus City Hall Attack
During the finalization of this edition of our newsletter, the world was shocked by the most devastating terror attack to have struck Russia in recent history. At the time of writing, 137 Russian civilians have been killed and more than 60 remain hospitalized with potentially life-threatening injuries. Many aspects of the attack, including its broader implications, remain uncertain. This story is still very much evolving but is nonetheless a critical development in the region.
On Friday, March 22nd, around 8 PM local time, reports emergedof four heavily armed gunmen entering the Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow, amidst a crowd of thousands attending a rock concert. The gunmen fired at random, and at some point, used a flammable liquid to set fire to the building, which took emergency services 10 hours to suppress. The attack itself lasted approximately 20 minutes, and the suspected gunmen were somehow able to flee the scene before being arrested by Russian security services some 14 hours later. The following day, Putin delivered a televised address, vowing to "punish everyone who stands behind the terrorists" and accusing Ukrainian forces of orchestrating an escape route for them—a claim lacking any evidence thus far. Ukrainian officials have strongly refuted this assertion. Concurrently, an ISIS affiliate claimed accountability for the incident on the same day, subsequently releasing video footage recorded from the attackers' perspective. On Sunday, four of the suspected perpetrators were dragged into court with obvious signs of torture. This was later confirmed by Russian state-aligned Telegram channels which leaked images and footage of the four individuals being tortured.
Putin’s televised remarks were a jarring, albeit predictable, redirection of responsibility for the attack. In the weeks preceding, U.S. intelligence services had warned the Kremlin of credible threats of ISIS-K activities in the Moscow area, which were dismissed by Putin as merely “an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society”. It is now clear that the warnings were credible, and Putin may be attempting to salvage his credibility by inventing a Ukrainian connection. It has been confirmed that the four perpetrators charged by the Russian government are all of Tajik origin and are Russian passport holders. It's highly improbable that any fugitive with presence of mind would opt to flee towards the front lines of the ongoing conflict, where Russian military and security forces are most concentrated. Moreover, it is inconceivable for Ukraine to have seen any potential reward in supporting or facilitating such an attack. Ukraine has consistently aimed to minimize collateral damage during its confirmed strikes on Russian military targets in Moscow. It raises questions as to why Ukraine would suddenly target random civilians and promptly disavow any involvement. Given the unequivocal stance against civilian targeting established by Ukraine's Western backers, supporting an act of terror such as this would only jeopardize their vital relationship. Notably, the United States, which must be underscored, cautioned the Kremlin about the attacks and has thus refuted any allegations of Ukrainian involvement, further calls this linkage into question. Only time will reveal the precise motivations and external factors that facilitated this terrorist act. However, an even more critical consideration for external observers will be its impact on Russian society, with history potentially providing some invaluable insights.
It is true that terror attacks can elicit a wave of national unity among the victimized population, or a ‘rally around the flag’ effect, but the opposite can also be true — especially when negligence on the part of the state is suspected. Putin has experienced both effects during his tenure. The 1999 Moscow apartment bombings (which killed over 300 people) provided the pretext for the Second Chechen War, and public perceptions of Putin’s handling of the crisis has been attributed to his rapid ascendency to the presidency. Conversely, the mishandling of the 2004 Beslan school siege by Russian security services (which also killed over 300 people, mostly children) resulted in a surge of political opposition to Putin — which he survived. If substantial leadership failures relating to this attack become more apparent in the following weeks, the possibility of a narrative shift questioning Putin's leadership competence could once again trigger an unpredictable erosion of regime legitimacy. While it's challenging to predict whether such a shift would result in his ouster, preliminary signs suggest that leadership deficiencies were indeed widespread.
State Response: Crisis of Leadership
The initial state response to the biggest, and deadliest, terror attack since Beslan school siege in 2004 was ridiculously uncoordinated and, in general, pathetic: the rapid response unit (OMON) took over an hour to arrive; the counter-terrorist task force that would traditionally respond to such event has been re-located to Ukraine. In addition, the security footage showed gunmen leaving the scene unimpeded. On top of that, President Putin took over 20 hours to address the nation. Those who were around in the 2000s probably noticed a discomforting similarity of this wait to Putin’s week-long silence after the Kursk submarine sinking.
While Putin did not make haste to assure and comfort, others in the government reacted too loudly (and speculatively); it could have been helpful for Medvedev to consult a secretary or proofreader before tweeting one hour after the attack that it was orchestrated by the ‘collective west’ and ‘Ukrainian terrorists. This narrative is still upheld by officials at the time of this article’s publishing even though the responsibility for Crocus was taken by Amaq, ISIS-K’s news outlet.
The haste with which everyone but the national leader came up with speculations and explanations, the absolutism and farcical ferocity of blaming the West and playing into ‘besieged fortress’ narrative, as well as avoiding the fact that U.S. intelligence warned the Kremlin of the attacks’ imminence, is dishonoring to the victims and solidifies the impression that Kremlin’s echo chamber is still segregated from facts on the ground. Naturally, Russian and American intelligence services’ trust in one another is currently non-existing. Considering that Russian intelligence is massively politicized, its skepticism towards American tip-offs is not surprising. However, state-endorsed conspiracies show once again: to Putin, information war with the West is a priority. Mourning, compassion, integrity and unity currently have no place in national discourse. The politics of pacification are overridden by agitation for the sake of agitation.
When a similar attack took place in the French Bataclan theater in 2015, it took President Hollande a little over 3 hours to announce a state of emergency throughout France and a tightening of border controls. This was followed by remarks by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan: “All of Paris needs our prayers tonight”. Hollande’s emergency cabinet meeting was followed by mobilisation of all emergency services; police leave was cancelled, and hospitals recalled staff to cope with the casualties. In Russia, however, the mediascape on March 22 was silent, aside from Kremlin’s spokesperson Peskov’s dry remarks that “the president was informed” and “The President has given all the necessary instructions". 20 hours later, when Putin finally addressed the nation, his speech mentioned mourning and sorrow for a minute, before reverting to anti-Ukraine strategic narrative and stressing that Crocus was about mass murder, not terrorism. All of this completely overlooks that the attack unfolded almost identically to 2015 Bataclan theater attack in Paris, and that ISIS already took responsibility for Crocus. It appears that Kremlin shifted the blame based on evidence that was not real.
For a few days now, Crocus city hall terrorist attack has sidelined accounts of the war in Ukraine. Distancing the discussion from what the government tried to achieve, we should look at what it could have achieved. Every national crisis is an opportunity. The temporary rhetoric shift, in theory, could have been used to popularize ‘citizen values’ that Kremlin demands so fruitlessly of its populace and which it asks of mobilized conscripts and civilians who feel the economic grip of the war. Because even amidst chaos and blame shifting, there was space for courage in this attack worth highlighting: for instance, 15-year old Islam Halilov, who worked at Crocus cloakroom, guided over 100 people to safety out of the burning building and remained impressively calm and collected as he recited the emergency briefing. His friends working the cloakroom shift, their age 14-20, also showed impressive coordination and led people out. Amidst open fire, mayhem and dead bodies scattered around, young people kept an admirable cool and showed leadership. So did 24 thousand Russians queuing up to donate blood the morning after the attack. These people have self-coordinated faster than Valdimir Putin found the words to console the victims and their families.
However, Halilov’s courage did not make it into the final cut of address to the nation, nor into domestic signaling of the ministers. The opportunity to highlight genuine courage and self-initiative was ignored. Instead of reconciliation and pacification, Russian politicians demonstrated anything but genuine empathy to the victims; a commitment to lawful and systemic resolution was not on the agenda. Medvedev’s rushed statements and his comically menacing fist throwing at the West shows farcical, ill-timed leadership that could be expected of a political novice, not someone with nearly two decades-worth of political experience. Many Russian ministers showed outright blood thirst: Russia Today’s Editor, Margarita Simonyan, supported re-introduction of capital punishment, adding how even that would not quelch the thirst of ‘true justice’: the suspects, she claimed, deserved “Lifelong hard labor somewhere underground, without the opportunity to ever see the light of God, on bread and water, with a ban on conversations and with a-not-very-humane treatment”. Other ministers have joined in on the idea of bringing back capital punishment – for instance Poklonskaya, who said“The only punishment for {the attack} is death. Those who committed such a crime are not people, they are just a controlled mechanism in the shell of a human fanatic, unable to think with his own head; cowardly, vile terrorist fanatics".
If blood thirst and pursuit of extra-judicial vengeance characterized state-level response, the workplaces and institutional approaches felt equally devoid of genuine compassion; sorrow was overridden by cynicism and pragmatism. Two occurrences stand out in particular. First, government-backed war artist and author of infamous "Ya Russkiy" (I'm Russian) hit, Shaman) retracted his promises to cover funeral costs for families of victims when casualties surpassed 120, according to DOXA. Shaman’s managers, the source shows, reached out to victims with an offer of compensation, scheduled details and logistics, when the singer backpedaled on the offer because of ‘high costs’. Second example was Meduza reporting that schools and budgetary institutions asked employees to perform activism by laying flowers to emergency memorials to Crocus victims, take photo evidence, and submit it for evaluation.
Apart from moral and ethical pitfalls of hyper pragmatism, demonstrated by institutional responses to the terrorist attack, the conduct of Russian leadership was simply bad, unresourceful governing. Missing the attack as an opportunity to convey critical, non-Ukraine security risks is also something that opposition leaders have suffered from too. As cold as that sounds, Crocus tragedy could have a silver lining for Russian atomized society to ‘rally around the flag’. This nightmare would surely resonate with memories of other attacks across Russia, - “Nord-Ost” 2002, Tushino festival 2003, metro bombings in 2003, Beslan 2004, and others – to awaken long-buried snapshots of terror but also of coming together as a nation. The fear and grief would eventually be rationalized: at the end of the day, Russians can (and should) direct frustration towards the real enablers and conductors of this tragedy: poor intelligence, senseless discreditation of Western tip-offs and the tunnel vision of Russian politics. The attack could yet play a role in substantiating opposition if it draws attention to the state’s inadequate use of their monopoly on force. This could be a moment Russian opposition scrutinizes violence that is enacted, disproportionately and masochistically against Ukraine, as opposed to the lack of genuine order and security (not terror) in Russia. A point of view, cemented and supported by Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, is that grasping for Ukraine deteriorates Russia’s ability to protect its own populace from real, rather than constructed and imaginary, adversaries.
However, interesting is that shifting the blame away from the Islamic State (IS) and towards more ‘topical’ buzzwords– Ukraine and NATO - was not only Kremlin’s vice. Actually, Meduza put forward a pertinent observation: some Kremlin opponents also look away from IS threat towards more conspiratorial impressions, such as that the attack was carried out by Russian authorities. Here, they cite “Ryazan sugar” - the theory that the bombings of houses in Moscow in the late nineties were carried out by the FSB. This theory is actually gaining popularity - on the day of the terrorist attack, traffic to the page about the explosions in Moscow on Wikipedia increased more than 200 times.
Here, Kremlin critics claims the terrorist attack will make it possible to “tighten the screws” after Putin’s victory in the “elections”. While it may be too early to discard this prospect entirely, it is fascinating to observe how detached from reality both pro- and anti- Kremlin camps have become. Or maybe, this indicates how much the war in Ukraine has oozed into the fabric of collective thought and collective fears for all opinion camps: every segment of Russian social strata is evidently framing (in)security, foremostly, in terms of the war.
My concern is that such diversion from facts on the ground may leave Russians vulnerable to the remaining threats of the world, making them lose pulse of reality happening outside of Russia. In this case, even with substantial and determined opposition voices inside Russia, Putin will succeed in severing normative links with the West – and the ‘besieged fortress’ idea will become a reality. Another hope is that anti-Kremlin conspiracies, however justified they are, will not sway public discourse completely away from real internal problems of Russian society, like poor treatment of migrant workers and overall hostility and racism of Russians to ethnic migrant minorities, which allow anti-imperial sentiments of terrorist groups to take root.