In the fortnight since four Isis gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall in the Moscow suburbs, Vladimir Putin has done his best to dodge as much of the blame as possible. Speaking at a trade convention in Moscow on Thursday, Russia’s president once again reiterated the implication that Ukraine, and not the Islamist terror group, was responsible for the atrocity. But there are growing questions not only about what Putin knew in advance of the attack, but also the Russian president’s willingness to face up to who was responsible.

‘We have every reason to believe that the main goal of those who ordered the bloody terrorist attack in Moscow was to damage our unity,’ he mumbled into the microphone on stage. ‘No other motives have emerged. There are none, because it can’t be the case that Russia is a target for attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.’

Every dictatorship needs an external foe to pin the blame on when things go wrong

Putin knows, of course, that this is a lie – as will most Russians. Isis terrorist attacks on Russian lives and soil have been a frequent occurrence over the past decade or so. Fighters claiming to seek vengeance for a number of Russian military interferences, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria (the last two conducted since Putin came to power), have wrought havoc. In 2015, Isis bombed a plane flying to St Petersburg (Putin’s home city) from Egypt, killing all 224 people on board; in 2017, 14 people were killed when Isis targeted the St........

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