Last week’s terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed 139 people suggests Russia’s security apparatus is far weaker than President Vladimir Putin would have the world believe, says former U.S. expatriate in Ukraine. Ambassador John E. Herbst said.
“This attack is another sign that President Putin’s grip on the country is not as tight as we thought,” Herbst said in an interview on Fox News Digital. “This is not what you would expect from a strict dictatorship with a large security force.”
Russian Rosguardia (National Guard) soldiers secure the area after a large fire broke out above Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, on Friday, March 22, 2024. (AP photo)
Herbst argued that Russia’s short-sighted obsession with the Ukraine war, now in its third year, is inadvertently weakening Russia’s internal security at the expense of other threats.
“Assuming that ISIS did in fact carry out this attack, this shows how focusing Russia’s security resources too heavily on invading Ukraine leaves Russia vulnerable to real threats to its security. “It shows how much we’re doing,” Herbst said.
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Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, blamed Russia’s war on Ukraine precisely for allowing Friday’s attack to occur.
Coffey told Fox News Digital: “The amount of national resources Russia has to commit to this massive war against Ukraine and how this will impact other aspects of Russia’s daily life, including internal security.” “We cannot underestimate the impact it has on the economy,” he said, pointing to economic issues. Russia’s transition to wartime industry.
“Russian security services are probably constantly following leads in Ukraine in terms of subversive groups inside Russia…and also dealing with fighting inside Ukraine,” Coffey said. “This is an industrialized scale that no country in the world has ever experienced. And the fact that this is happening probably means that Russia has fewer resources and other It means there is less interest in some threats.”
Russian firefighters search through rubble after Moscow terror attack (Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations/Handout/Anadolu, via Getty Images)
President Putin was quick to link Friday’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall music venue to Ukraine. He finally admitted on Monday that “Islamic extremists” were behind the attack, but made baseless accusations that Ukraine still may have played a role, despite Kiev’s strong denials. repeated.
Putin also did not mention that the United States secretly shared concerns about an impending terrorist attack with the Russian government earlier this month. Three days before the attack, President Putin denounced the US warning as an attempt to scare the Russian people and “blackmail” the Kremlin ahead of the presidential election.
A large fire is seen above Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, on Friday, March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)
President Putin was further undermined by ISIS-K, an ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, who claimed responsibility for the attack. The four suspected attackers, all Tajik nationals, were indicted in a Moscow court on Sunday night and ordered to be detained pending an official investigation.
Russian media reported that the four were tortured during the investigation and there were signs of severe assault during their court appearance.
Herbst and other observers argued that the beatings the prisoners received during interrogation undermined their testimony.
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Ivana Stradner, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that last week’s terrorist attack shows the Kremlin is “vulnerable” and “insecure,” especially in light of last summer’s attempted rebellion by its founder and leader. “This shows that the situation is stable,” he said. Evgeny Prigozhin of the mercenary Wagner group. She argued that Western countries should use this to their strategic advantage.
“Western countries should launch a new intelligence operation that allays Moscow’s paranoia and communicates Putin’s decline in power, security failures, and significantly reduced influence over Russia’s allies,” Stradner said. said. “If President Putin can’t protect his own people, how is he going to protect his allies?”
ISIS has long viewed Russia as an enemy over its intervention in Syria and alliances with Iran and the Afghan Taliban.
“ISIS considers Russia an enemy. Russia has worked very closely with the Assad regime in Syria against various Islamic groups, including ISIS,” Herbst said. “Russia is best friends with the Iranian mullahs, who are also ISIS’s enemies. And Russia is collaborating with the Taliban, who are also ISIS’s enemies. So there are multiple reasons for ISIS to attack Russia. That’s clear.”
In October 2015, an ISIS-planted bomb shot down a Russian airliner over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian tourists returning from Egypt.
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The group, which operates primarily in Syria and Iraq but also Afghanistan and Africa, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions over the past few years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
