On video: shooting attack in a concert hall near Moscow/use according to Article 27 A of the Copyright Law
Vladimir Putin cultivated throughout the years of his reign the image of a leader who restored Russia's lost honor and security, but yesterday's concert hall massacre, not far from the Kremlin, shattered it again.
If Ukraine's relentless attacks on Russia during last week's presidential election, which included the infiltration of an anti-Putin Russian militia into border towns, were not enough, then came the painful attack by ISIS.
Four terrorists from Central Asia stormed a concert hall on the outskirts of the capital Moscow, which was not under armed security, and sprayed the crowds of spectators waiting for the start of a rock concert.
As of this evening, the death toll is approaching 150 and is expected to rise, as this is already the worst attack to hit Russia since the Beslan school massacre in 2004.
Despite accepting the responsibility of ISIS, Russia hastened to link the terrorists with Ukraine and claimed that they tried to escape to its territory because they had contacts there.
Kiev immediately disowned the attack, but this is a familiar exercise of the Kremlin: an attempt to cover up security failures by painting them in the colors of world-wide conspiracies.
The failure, according to American sources, was particularly large.
According to them, this month Washington issued a warm warning about an attack planned by the ISIS branch in Afghanistan in Russia.
Moscow did announce about two weeks ago that it had uncovered an ISIS cell that planned an attack on a synagogue in Moscow, but it seems that it did not take seriously the information it received from the United States despite the rift in relations between them.
Beneath the multitude of threats, Russia emerges as a security intrusion.
Putin, yesterday/Reuters
The arrogance of Putin and the heads of his security establishment once again cost the lives of many citizens.
As they believed that the conquest of Ukraine would be a short walk in the park and instead they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so ignoring the American warnings brought Daesh terrorism to the heart of Russia.
For its part, the Sunni terrorist organization has recorded a tremendous success, which proves that it is still capable of carrying out serious attacks despite the long-standing struggle it has been waging in the Middle East and in other parts of the world.
The Islamic caliphate does not exist, its leaders are eliminated one by one, but the idea lives on.
This is also a good lesson for those who believe and promise that Hamas can be completely "erased".
Through the multitude of threats by Putin and the senior Kremlin officials to punish those responsible for the attack and those behind them, the practical response is expected to be the worsening of the internal repression.
In addition to this, the narrative linking Kiev and the massacre may be used by Putin as a justification for further recruitment of soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
Just a few hours earlier, the Kremlin admitted for the first time that the conflict is a war, when it abandoned the term "special military operation" adopted from the beginning of the invasion in February 2022. With Putin promising another term, he is free to train the population for a long war that will require them to mobilize extensively.
More in Walla!
Putin: The terrorists tried to escape to Ukraine;
The death toll rose to 133
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Security personnel outside the concert hall where the attack happened, Friday/Reuters
Kiev hinted that Russia itself may be responsible for the attack, in what is known as a "false flag" operation, to find an excuse to expand the conflict.
The Russian security services were already suspicious of this at the beginning of the millennium, when Putin took office, when a row of residential buildings exploded across the country.
These attacks were a case in point for the second Chechen war, in the end of which Moscow defeated the Islamist separatists.
However, the concert hall attack looks like an authentic ISIS attack, which has a rich history with Russia.
It caused a huge embarrassment to the Kremlin, and made a mockery of the illusion of security that Putin has been selling to the Russian public in the quarter century that he has been in power.
As the four terrorists of ISIS, and Ukraine proved on a daily basis, underneath all the talk about Russia's strength, in Putin's time it is very penetrating from a security point of view.
Russia's expected response - more violence and more control - will not change that.
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