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The USA sent details of an impending terrorist attack to rival Russia - but Moscow describes the matter completely differently.
More than two weeks before terrorists carried out a bloody attack in a Moscow suburb, the U.S. government had informed Russian officials that Crocus City Hall, a popular concert hall, was a potential target. This is reported by US officials familiar with the matter.
The high level of specificity in the warning underscores Washington's confidence that the Islamic State was preparing an attack that threatened large numbers of civilians and directly contradicts Moscow's claims that the US warnings were too general to prevent the attack.
Terror in Moscow: IS branch claimed responsibility for the attack in Russia
The fact that the US has identified the Crocus concert hall as a potential target raises new questions about why Russian authorities have not taken tougher measures to protect the venue, where gunmen killed more than 140 people and set the building on fire. An affiliate of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the deadliest in Russia in 20 years. U.S. officials have publicly said the group known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, “bears sole responsibility,” but Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to shift blame onto Ukraine.
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The attack has further damaged the image of strength and security that the Russian leader seeks to project and exposed fundamental weaknesses in the country's security apparatus, which has been eroded by the more than two-year-long war in Ukraine. According to analysts and observers of Russian politics, Putin's agents appear more concerned with silencing political dissent and opposition to the president than with foiling terrorist attacks.
The Russian leader himself publicly rejected the US warnings just three days before the March 22 attack, describing them as “pure blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”
The Crocus City Hall concert hall in a suburb of Moscow, Russia after the terrorist attack. © Bai Xueqi/Xinhua/Imago
The U.S. officials, familiar with the information Washington shared with Moscow, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations and information. A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment for this report. Previously, the National Security Council confirmed that the United States had shared information "about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow," but did not say that Crocus City Hall had been named as a possible target.
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Kremlin rejects reports of US warning of terror in Moscow
A Kremlin spokesman did not respond to questions from The
Washington Post
about the warning about Crocus City Hall. On Tuesday (April 2), Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, told reporters in Moscow that the information provided by the United States was "too general and did not allow us to fully identify the perpetrators of this terrible crime." according to the state news agency
Interfax
.
Naryshkin said that Russia “took appropriate measures to prevent an attack” in response to the US information. However, videos from the scene of the slaughter show that the gunmen offered no significant resistance. Russian media reported that special police forces arrived more than an hour after the shooting began and then waited more than 30 minutes before entering the building - by which time the attackers had already fled.
While Washington routinely shares information about possible terrorist attacks with foreign countries, it is unusual to share information about specific targets with an adversary under a policy known as "duty to warn," officials and experts said. This risks revealing how the United States obtained the information, which could jeopardize secret surveillance activities or human sources.
The USA also warned its own citizens of the danger in Moscow
However, the information pointing to an attack on the concert hall also pointed to a potential danger to Americans in Russia. On March 7, the U.S. Embassy publicly announced that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to attack large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts,” and advised U.S. citizens “to avoid large gatherings in the next 48 hours to avoid".
According to people familiar with the matter, the United States shared its information with Russia a day before this public warning. Naryshkin said “US intelligence agencies” passed the information on to the FSB, Russia’s state security service.
In the terrorist attack near Moscow, four men opened fire on visitors to the Crocus City Hall and then set the concert hall on fire (picture from March 22, 2024). © Sergei Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency/AP/dpa +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++
As part of its duty to warn, the United States also recently shared information about terrorism with another adversary - Iran. In January, US officials warned that the Islamic State (IS) was planning attacks in Iran. The information was so precise that it may have helped Iranian authorities thwart two suicide bombings that killed at least 95 people in the city of Kerman. The Islamic State, which views Iran's majority Shiite population as apostates, attacked a gathering of thousands of mourners marking the fourth anniversary of the death of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in 2020.
The
Wall Street Journal
first reported the US warning to Iran.
Despite the lack of effective security at Crocus City Hall, there are signs that the Russian government took seriously, at least initially, Washington's warning - which, according to a US official, contained information about Islamic State plans to attack a synagogue. The day after Moscow received this information, the FSB announced that it had prevented an Islamic State attack on a synagogue in Moscow.
Fifteen-year-old Islam Khalilow, who said he was working in the concert hall's cloakroom the night of the attack, said Crocus staff was informed of the possibility of a terrorist attack not long after the March 7 public warning. “We were warned that there could be terrorist attacks and we were instructed what to do and where to take people,” Khalilov said in an interview with Dmitry Yegorov, a well-known Russian sports journalist, posted on YouTube. Chalilow said there was tighter security at the venue, including with trained dogs.
Putin mocked “Western” terror warnings in Russia
It is unclear why security measures were not increased and maintained after the first warning. It is possible that the Russian security services, which did not witness an attack in the days just after March 7, assumed that the U.S. information was false and let their guard down, as some U.S. officials suspected.
Putin publicly ridiculed the terror warnings at a meeting with senior FSB officials on March 19, describing them as "a series of official Western structures." “You are well aware of these warnings, so I will not go into details now,” Putin said, according to an official Kremlin transcript.
Putin stressed that the FSB's most important task was in Ukraine, as part of what he euphemistically described as Russia's "special military operation." Putin equated Ukrainian forces with terrorists and suggested they posed a direct threat to Russia. “The neo-Nazi Kiev regime has also resorted to terrorist tactics,” Putin said, “including attempts to recruit perpetrators for subversive and terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure and public spaces in Russia.”
After Russian authorities arrested the suspects in the Crocus City Hall attack, Putin and other senior politicians claimed that Kiev had recruited the agents and made plans for them to escape to Ukraine - claims denied by the United States and Ukraine.
Russia has gratefully accepted aid from the United States in the past. Twice during President Donald Trump's term, Putin thanked Americans for sharing information that helped thwart terrorist attacks in St. Petersburg, in 2017 and 2019.
Catherine Belton in London contributed to this report.
To the author
Shane Harris
writes about intelligence and national security. He was a member of reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and two George Polk Awards. He was also awarded the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. Shane is the author of two books, The Watchers and @War.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 2, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.