The Crocus City Hall attack blindsided Putin’s vast security state. Employing nearly a million policemen, 340,000 national guards and over 100,000 spies, that apparatus has proved ruthlessly efficient at terrorising babushkas bringing flowers to Aleksei Navalny’s grave, tracking down lone bloggers and persecuting homosexuals. But as the Crocus attack demonstrated, the Kremlin’s securocrats are utterly incompetent at doing their actual job, which is to protect the lives of Russian citizens. Rather than keep a relentless watch for emerging threats from all over the region, Putin’s security chiefs have instead focused on only two tasks – repressing internal dissent, and stealing money.

Putin is locked into his own lies about Ukraine

The tragic result was that the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (IS-K) was able to mount its spectacular attack unhindered. On a tactical level, that meant unpreparedness and confusion. Video circulating on social media shows policemen and security guards sprinting away from the gunfire in the Crocus Hall’s lobby. It took nearly an hour for armed support to arrive, allowing the gunmen to flee the scene. Some have claimed that as evidence the attack was a false flag operation. But far more likely the delay was caused by an operational wrangle between police, National Guards and the Federal Security Service and further complicated by the fact that Crocus is in fact outside the capital’s city limits and in the jurisdiction of Moscow Province, not Moscow itself. The car park of Crocus City Hall is just thirty seconds’ drive from the main Moscow ring road, which links with every one of Russia’s main motorways.

But the more serious failure was on a strategic level. The Kremlin may not have been paying attention to the rise of IS-K. But the Americans were. On 6 March, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a public security alert.

QOSHE - The Moscow terror attack is Putin’s 9/11 - Owen Matthews
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The Moscow terror attack is Putin’s 9/11

8 16
26.03.2024

The Crocus City Hall attack blindsided Putin’s vast security state. Employing nearly a million policemen, 340,000 national guards and over 100,000 spies, that apparatus has proved ruthlessly efficient at terrorising babushkas bringing flowers to Aleksei Navalny’s grave, tracking down lone bloggers and persecuting homosexuals. But as the Crocus attack demonstrated, the Kremlin’s securocrats are utterly incompetent at doing their actual job, which is to........

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