In the post-truth era in which we live, when objective facts lose their power in shaping public opinion compared to appealing to emotion, it is only natural that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putinone of the world’s leading post-truth artists, will not let ISIS’s acceptance of responsibility for the attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow prevent him from marketing to the people of his country the narrative that Ukraine is the one involved in the brutal attack yesterday (Friday).
ISIS released documentation of the terrorists from the attack; Putin declared a national day of mourning
Dmitry Medvedevthe deputy head of the National Security Council who served as president for one term to allow Putin to “rest” in the role of prime minister before returning to the presidential office, was the first to rush to threaten Ukraine already yesterday, while the flames were still raging in the entertainment complex.
“If there is confirmation that the terrorists are connected to the regime in Kiev, there is no other way but to treat them that way, as well as their ideological supporters,” defied Medvedev, who has repeatedly denied the right of independent Ukraine to exist. “It is imperative to identify each of them and neutralize them mercilessly like terrorists, including government officials who are involved in such criminal acts.”
The accusations continued this morning when the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that the arrested suspects were on their way to the border with Ukraine and that they “had connections” in the neighboring country. In his speech at noon, Putin returned to the claim that “the Ukrainian side prepared a window for the attackers to cross the border”, but he did not stop there and compared the perpetrators of the attack to Nazis, the same epithet he often uses against the regime in Kiev, before threatening that “all the perpetrators, the organizers And the clients of this crime will suffer a fair and inevitable punishment. It doesn’t matter who they are, who targets them.”
The terrorists who carried out the attack in Russia (Photo: Arab Networks)
Even when the ISIS organization published an official announcement accepting responsibility for the attack, even before today’s detailed announcement that also included a joint photo of the four terrorists, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces claimed that it was a forgery, even though the announcement had all the features that have been known for a decade from the Islamic terrorist organization’s acceptance of responsibility statements . Moreover, the pro-Kremlin bloggers and tweeters again used the argument that ISIS is a creation of the USA, when they wondered how the American embassy in Moscow knew how to warn already two weeks ago about an imminent threat to carry out an attack against an entertainment site in the Russian capital.
The possibility that this is an attack from the creator of ISIS, more precisely the ISIS-Khorsan branch from Afghanistan, as American government officials also stated in the last day, is the most likely. This is the most dangerous branch of the Islamic terrorist network that is responsible for a long series of brutal attacks, including the suicide attack at the Kabul airport during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that claimed the lives of 183 people, suicide attacks against Shia mosques in Afghanistan and against Taliban forces, and also the double attack that left at least 95 dead in the city of Kerman in Iran last January, during the commemoration of Qassem Soleimani. ISIS-Khorsan even threatened to harm Russia due to the warming ties with the Taliban regime and due to its involvement in the war in Syria.
But for the Kremlin, it is easier to point to a clear and identifiable target like Ukraine, against which the Russian army is already working, than to a faceless enemy like a terrorist organization that is hiding somewhere in the mountains in Afghanistan and it is impossible to guarantee a documented and actual hit to its targets. The fact that Ukraine completely denied any involvement in the attack and mentioned how Russian intelligence itself demolished residential buildings in 1999 to justify going to war in Chechnya is not likely to convince Putin and his entourage.
Therefore, there is certainly a possibility that within hours, if not days, we will see a widespread air attack with suicide drones, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against strategic targets throughout Ukraine, possibly even against government buildings in Kyiv. In such a case, it is hard to believe that even Ukraine’s allies will not be able, or even unwilling, to stop Kiev from a crushing response of its own, ranging from sending drones toward the Kremlin and other strategic targets in Russia – as it has done in recent weeks by hitting the refineries – to attempting to bring down the Kerch bridge that connects the Russia to Crimea. From here, escalation can come quickly.