The Islamic State claimed responsibility online. U.S. officials have identified as likely perpetrators the group’s affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province, which is active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. ISIS-K, as it is sometimes known, might be seeking to expand its reach by attacking Russia — having previously committed a massacre of 84 Iranians in January. If so, this new atrocity is a reminder that the transnational threat of violent Islamist extremism is far from over, despite the destruction of the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq and Syria by the United States and its allies.
There is nothing to celebrate in this incident. Still, it’s appropriate to praise both the professional competence and — yes — ethics of U.S. intelligence, which detected the plot in advance and then fulfilled its “duty to warn” even an adversary government by sharing information with Russia, officials told The Post. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow announced publicly on March 7 that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.”
What cannot be explained is the response to this by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Three days before the attack, he brushed off the U.S. warning, publicly denouncing it as “provocative” and claiming it resembles “outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” He made this comment at a meeting of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the all-powerful successor to the Soviet KGB, which has been instrumental in arresting dissidents and anyone who has even slightly criticized Russia’s ruinous war against Ukraine.
Did Mr. Putin’s FSB fall down on the job and fail to detect the gunmen moving through Moscow? To be sure, Russian security agencies claim to have thwarted two previous attempted Islamic State attacks in Russia this month. The slaughter at the Crocus City Hall, however, suggests that Mr. Putin’s much-vaunted spy apparatus, perhaps exhausted and distracted by the war in Ukraine, is not quite what it’s cracked up to be.
Mr. Putin has erected a totalitarian regime on the claim that his unquestioned preeminence means stability and security for Russia. He constantly warns of enemies bent on causing chaos and instability. He cemented his power just this week with a simulacrum of an election in which he supposedly received almost 90 percent of the vote. But after the bloodbath at the concert hall, Russians are entitled to wonder whether Mr. Putin’s authoritarian system is effective at protecting anyone but him.
On Saturday, Mr. Putin attempted to deflect blame to Ukraine, saying the captured suspects were heading to an escape corridor leading to Ukraine. This was clumsy propaganda, and Ukraine credibly denied any involvement. Mr. Putin has waged a devastating, two-year-old war against Ukraine that includes terroristic tactics of its own, such as the massive missile and drone strike Russia unleased on the country’s civilian energy infrastructure — also on Friday. The attacks killed five people and left well over 1 million households at least temporarily without electricity.
To repeat, the victims of terrorism in Russia deserve the world’s sympathy, and its perpetrators deserve lawful punishment, difficult as that is to imagine under a regime such as Mr. Putin’s. There is indeed a strong possibility that Mr. Putin will exploit this atrocity as he has used others, such as a 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, in which 330 people, mostly children, lost their lives: to crack down even harder on civil society and assume even greater powers for himself. It’s certainly foreseeable that he might use it to justify new restrictions on information online or to further his planned mass mobilization for the military, in which as many as 300,000 Russian soldiers could be called to the Ukraine killing fields.
Mr. Putin has survived in power partly by persuading many Russians, especially in big cities, that his one-man rule represents their best hope for security, abroad and at home. Unfortunately for Mr. Putin, if only one man rules, then, when catastrophe strikes, only one man can be held responsible.
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