By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-03-28

KYIV -- As Russians recover from the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe to be claimed by the "Islamic State" (IS), the Kremlin is frantically trying to pin the blame on Ukraine, which it invaded in February 2022.

On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City concert hall near Moscow, also setting fire to the venue.

The death toll rose on March 27 to 143, Russian authorities said.

An anonymous medical source told TASS that 205 patients had received outpatient care.

Four suspects -- all reportedly natives of Tajikistan -- are under arrest along with several suspected accomplices.

A Moscow court has ordered the men be held in pre-trial detention until May 22 -- a date likely to be extended until a full trial.

IS swiftly claimed responsibility and even posted one gunman's own video of the slaughter, but Moscow continues to accuse Ukraine of involvement.

President Vladimir Putin on March 23 -- 20 hours after the attack -- told his citizens that the attackers "attempted to conceal themselves and were heading towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary information, an opportunity was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border," Gazeta.ru reported.

Three days after the attack, on March 25, Putin finally admitted for the first time that the presumed gunmen were radical Islamists but still contended they were heading for Ukraine when they were captured.

Ukraine and world leaders have denied the accusations.

"Putin is a pathological liar," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on X (formerly Twitter) March 24.

"There is no evidence to support such claims."

Washington also debunked any Ukrainian complicity in the shooting in Russia.

IS "is ... responsible for what happened," Vice President Kamala Harris told ABC News March 24.

Security failure

The terrorist attack was a spectacular failure for the Russian regime, said Mikhail Savva, a political scientist and analyst for the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine.

"Russians gave up everything, including freedom, for the sake of security," he said.

"It turns out that they received nothing. Not only did the US directly warn about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia, it turns out that American intelligence explicitly named the organizer: 'Islamic State -- Khorasan Province,'" Savva told Kontur.

On March 7, the US embassy in Russia advised its citizens not to attend public events in Moscow. Similar statements came from Latvia, Canada, South Korea, Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic the following day.

US intelligence passed all information on to Russian intelligence agencies, but Putin ignored these warnings, Igor Eidman, a Russian political commentator and dissident who lives in Germany, told Kontur.

During a meeting of the Federal Security Service (FSB) governing board on March 19, three days before the IS attack, Putin called such messages from US and other Western intelligence agencies "blatant extortion" and "an attempt to frighten and destabilize Russian society."

If anything, the Crocus Hall bloodbath should be scrutinized not for Ukrainian but for Russian involvement, said Eidman.

The terrorist attack reminds him of the September 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk that killed 307 people and injured more than 1,700.

Russian authorities blamed Islamist terrorists from the North Caucasus, but accusations linger that the bombings were a false flag operation coordinated by Russian security agencies to bring Putin to power.

Whatever the truth behind the explosions, then-Prime Minister Putin's popularity soared immediately afterward.

He sent troops back into Chechnya, three years after Boris Yeltsin had withdrawn them, and won his first presidential election six months later.

"I certainly don't rule out that this IS cell [that attacked Crocus City Hall] ... was created with the help or even the direct assistance of FSB provocateurs," Eidman said.

Trying to justify a new draft

Russian propaganda is following its ancient playbook of trying to incriminate an external foe, observers say.

"We now see that this incitement is being used against Ukraine ... And I can well suppose that in accordance with old Chekist traditions, they [the FSB] will beat confessions out of ... the Tajiks who were caught that they were connected with Ukrainian intelligence," said Eidman.

The regime actively began pushing the idea of "enlarging the army" after the March 15-17 election and a few days before the Crocus attack, added Eidman.

Russia needs new troops, having lost about 315,000 killed or wounded in Ukraine since February 2022, according to a Pentagon estimate in February.

Now it might seize on this terrorist act, even if it turns out that IS and the Kremlin's incompetence -- or worse -- were the real culprits.

"They [the Kremlin] are planning to conduct a new wave of conscription and escalation of the war, but they needed some pretext," said Eidman.

"It was necessary ... to inflame some strong emotions from the public against imaginary enemies to justify this escalation of the war and draft."

German watchers have come to similar conclusions.

The Kremlin will use the attack to portray Russia as "'under threat and surrounded by enemies against whom it must act with all its might,'" political scientist Thomas Jäger said, according to a Deutsche Welle reported March 24.

Inside Russia this situation will mean "increased repression," and outside Russia, it will mean more intense fighting in Ukraine, said Jäger.

"Disinformation campaigns against democratic states" may intensify, he warned.