UPDATE: A couple of items to add as this story develops.
The Basmanny district court named the suspects as Saidakram Rajabalizoda, Dalerjon Mirzoev, Muhammadsobir Faizov, and Faridun Shamsiddin and said they are Tajik citizens. All admitted guilt after being charged. The New York Times reports that at least two of the men were working in Russia as migrant laborers.
French President Macron says the ISIS branch behind Moscow attack also targeted France. Security has been increased in France, unlike Russia, which accused the United States of provocation when we tried to give them actionable intel.
Pro-Kremlin media has been instructed to emphasize possible “traces” of Ukrainian involvement. Two sources—one a state media employee and one from a pro-government outlet—confirmed.
The news hit my feed on Friday afternoon. A terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Russia, on the western edge of Moscow, had taken multiple lives. There was shooting, slashings, and incendiaries, and in the end there were more than 130 people killed and more than 150 injured, according to Russian authorities.
My first reaction, like so many others, was that this was a false flag attack by the FSB, perpetrated as a reason to impose martial law and mobilize the population. Was this Putin’s “Reichstag fire” to increase support for his war in Ukraine? Was it the Wagner Group getting some revenge for last year’s death of Evgeny Prigozhin? Was it a scheme to distract the world from Russia’s continued disastrous military performance in Ukraine?
A few hours after the news hit, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack at the music venue, which was part of a larger grouping of restaurants and shops, Crocus City.
Why am I using the past tense?
Because the concert hall was destroyed by the fire resulting from the attack.
The goal of this article is not to assign blame. It’s still too soon. ISIS-K did claim responsibility for the attack, but the group is also opportunistic, and if there’s a sensational attack to claim, it’s cheap and easy for them to claim it.
That said, the United States warned Moscow that ISIS militants were planning an attack, but President Putin apparently rejected the information as “provocative.”
Now, he and his cronies are working assiduously to somehow link the attack with Ukraine. Because Russian intelligence services cannot possibly be portrayed as incompetent, having failed to prevent the attack, and the Russian president, who was just reelected, cannot possibly be portrayed as having ignored credible intelligence from an adversary!
So let’s examine Russia’s claims that somehow Ukraine was responsible for the attack.
ISIS-K is one of the Islamic State’s most lethal and most effective branches that has murdered thousands of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan since its inception in 2015, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Formed in 2015 by members of militant groups—including Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan—who pledged allegiance to ISIS, ISIS-Khorasan aspires to establish a province in ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate by controlling territory in “the Khorasan,” referring to Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, Central Asia, and Iran. The branch primarily fights against the Taliban in Afghanistan while seeking to discredit the governments of neighboring countries, promote sectarian violence, and exploit poor economic conditions and social divisions to attract members. The branch obtains funding from ISIS in Syria and sources in Afghanistan.
Most of ISIS-K’s most significant attacks have been in Afghanistan, including the 26 August 2021 attack in Kabul that killed 13 US servicemembers and nearly 200 civilians outside the Kabul International Airport. However, CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Michael Kurilla a year ago told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ISIS-K would have the capability to launch external operations in less than six months.
But the attack on Crocus doesn’t appear to be an opportunistic one—not one that ISIS-K undertook with little to no planning because the opportunity was there. As mentioned, the United States knew something was going on and tried to warn Russia. In addition, the attack—even by FSB admission—was carefully planned. ISIS-K had the means and the motive to conduct this attack, and the United States has confirmed that ISIS has been trying to increase external attacks. The perpetrators had to enter the country and get access to firearms and incendiaries, as well as carefully plan the venue to acquire maximum damage.
Let’s also remember that the United States also warned Iran about a possible attack ahead of the bombings in January at a memorial services for the thankfully deceased IRGC-QF head, Qasem Soleimani, that also was claimed by ISIS-K.
Yet, this doesn’t stop the Kremlin or its trolls from advancing the narrative that Ukraine was somehow responsible for the attack.
Putin says that the individuals who staged the attack on Crocus tried to escape to Ukraine, opportunistically using the attack to further justify his evil invasion of Russia’s neighbor. Putin also threatened to punish those responsible for the massacre, setting the scene for even more savage and aggressive attacks on Ukraine.
The trolls are at it as well, busy posting disinformation about Ukraine, working to connect the country being attacked by Russia every day for the past two years to this savage attack. Interestingly, they all post the same exact narrative.
In the case of this particular claim that Rustam Azhiyev is a Ukrainian Citizen and was one of the terrorists who staged the attack on Crocus, the Kremlin trolls once again failed to do their research. Azhiyev did, indeed, fight on the Ukrainian side in the current war, and he also fought on the side of the opposition in the Syrian civil war and is a veteran of the second Russo-Chechen war. The trolls lifted the photo of his passport from the Internet. And since Russia already said that all who were arrested were Tajik, and not Chechen, it’s quite obviously not the same guy.
Let’s also remember that ISIS-K and the Taliban are enemies. ISIS-K militants killed senior Taliban commander Abdul Ghani in 2015. A clash between ISIS-K and the Taliban—reportedly the largest one—near Iran’s border with Afghanistan in 2017 was allegedly the result of the Taliban violating an agreement with ISIS not to attack one another until a dialogue took place. In that conflict, the Taliban teamed up with Iran against ISIS, and Russia decided to back the Taliban against ISIS the following year, even inviting the terrorists to Moscow for a meeting on Afghanistan that year. The two groups kept killing one another in the following years.
Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that “HAMAS is ISIS” after HAMAS launched its barbaric attacks on Israeli civilians in October, the two groups are not the same. I believe Netanyahu was comparing the two groups in terms of their savagery, not in terms of systemic resemblances, but the media, of course, took the opportunity to instruct anyone who would listen about the differences between the two.
First of all, HAMAS is Iran’s proxy that originated from the Muslim Brotherhood. They seek the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state in its place. ISIS, doesn’t really care about Israel per se. Their goal is a global caliphate, seeking to subjugate and destroy anyone in their wake. HAMAS’s objectives are local, while ISIS wants global Islamic domination.
In addition, ISIS nuts criticize HAMAS for accepting the “sovereignty of man” over God, and castigate the group for accepting funds from Iran (Shia), whom it considers an enemy.
You know which country is super tight with both HAMAS and the Taliban? Let me give you a hint: it’s not Ukraine, but Russia, which recently—along with China—vetoed a US resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for which HAMAS profusely lauded the two countries.
To be fair, no one liked that resolution, but still HAMAS loves Russia, and has had a much cozy relationship with Moscow for years.
Russia never labeled HAMAS a terrorist organization, and in 2006, after HAMAS’s electoral victory over Fatah, Putin invited his terrorist buddies to visit Moscow, and HAMAS praised Russia for its support.
Russian-made weapons had found their way to Hamas for years. In May 2021, senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan gave an interview to Russia’s investigative Novaya Gazeta.
In response to a question, “Where did Hamas get such a large number of Russian-made rockets used to attack Israel?” he said, “I think the Russian people should be proud they gave the oppressed peoples of the world weapons with which they can defend themselves. These weapons were sent to our region in the 60s and 70s.”
So being cozy with ISIS-K’s enemies certainly provides the motive. But that will not stop the perpetually drunk Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokes…creature Maria Zakharova from opining that “any justification by Washington of Ukraine will be evidence” ostensibly of either Ukrainian or US involvement in the attack?
Yeah, OK.
If the attack was indeed perpetrated by ISIS-K, which increasingly seems likely, since the intelligence we gave the Russians indicates that the group had an active presence in Russia, attacking Moscow would make sense for the group, given Russia’s cuddly relations with ISIS-K’s terrorist adversaries and Russian airstrikes against ISIS that helped out Syria’s Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war and prompted ISIS leaders to accuse Putin of having Muslim blood on his hands.
The accusations against Ukraine, and further, the United States, are absurd. But as I have often said, Russia merely needs to put the narrative out there, and its trolls will do the rest, flooding the Internet with inane claims that support the biases of those who already oppose Ukraine, despise the United States for supporting Kyiv, and want to hug Putin for being oh-so tough and supportive of their “values.”
Even if Moscow right now publicly admitted to being wrong and stepped back from the claim that the United States and Ukraine had nothing to do with this attack, the message is already out there, spread by thousands of trolls whose entire raison d’etre is amplifying Russian propaganda.
It certainly appears, based on ISIS-K’s previous attacks and their immediate claim of responsibility for the rampage in Russia, that the terrorist group was responsible. The investigation continues, and I’m sure analysts are working to verify additional details about the attacks.
One thing is clear, though: the desperate Russian attempts to blame Ukraine and link Kyiv (and the United States) with the savage attack on civilians indicate quite a bit of projection, given Moscow’s vicious attacks against Ukrainian civilians. They are also an opportunistic attack on a country that tried to help and warn it (the United States), and a continued perfidious justification for continued ruthless attacks on its neighbor (Ukraine).
Although I doubt this was a false flag operation by the FSB, I do believe the Kremlin will exploit these attacks to impose martial law and mobilize even more Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine.
Your mileage may vary.
Excellent professional analysis based on info available so far.
My first thought was that this had to be a red flag, the way Putin was going on about Ukraine being behind the attack. He's looking for an excuse to ramp up his attacks on Ukraine, and I am afraid he may decide to use a tactical nuke to move things along. All he would need is the "justification", real or imagined. At least that's my first thought on all of this.
But applying the KISS principle here, ISIS-K has claimed responsibility, and there was pretty specific intelligence that indicated this group was up to something like this. It was a warning put out by the US informing Americans not to go to any concerts in Moscow for the time being. I'm sure that we also shared more information about this with the Russian government.
But Putin saw it as America trying to 'destabilize' Russia by spreading fear, and he chose to ignore the warning. Now, he probably wishes that nobody remembers he was warned two weeks ago...
I seem to recall that both Putin and Trump claimed that they destroyed ISIS years ago. So it's not surprising to hear both of them deny that ISIS was involved in this.