Doctorow interviewed on WION re Moscow terror attack
Posted by t on March 28, 2024, 5:03 pm
The director of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, said on Tuesday that the US, UK, and Ukraine were behind the Moscow concert hall attack that killed at least 139 people on Friday - despite repeated claims of responsibility by Islamic State. Russian president has also insisted on alleged Ukrainian involvement. No proof has been provided for these claims...Then why is Russia insisting that there was a Western hand behind those attacks?
To the uninitiated, I explain first that the FSB is the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s well-known and much feared KGB. However, the FSB today might be better compared with the FBI in the United States. It deals with domestic criminality of all kinds and with threats to Russian civilians such as terrorism. The agency and its head are rarely in the news.
In this respect, the FSB is less visible both at home and abroad than the Foreign Intelligence Service headed by Sergei Naryshkin, a state figure who spent five years of this millennium as chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of the legislature, and also three years as head of the Presidential Administration. In both positions Naryshkin was very often seen on television performing his duties.
By contrast, Bortnikov spent the past 15 years in his FSB offices out of sight. However, the spectacular attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue has propelled him to center stage and yesterday he met with the Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin for an interview and then allowed himself to be questioned further by a gaggle of other journalists on his way out along a corridor. This spontaneous Q&A was later broadcast on the television news. What Bortnikov had to say was extraordinary and bears directly on whether you and I should now be looking for bomb shelters. Regrettably you will not find any of it in the lead stories of today’s mainstream media. The Financial Times, for example, features an account of Xi’s meeting with CEOs of American businesses to mend ties: interesting, but not very relevant if we are at the cusp of WWIII. *****
Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors. He, Putin and Naryshkin are all roughly the same age. At 72, Bortnikov is just several years older.
I was struck in particular by his poise and prudent, carefully weighed choice of words while setting out where the investigation is heading with transparency and a ‘let the chips fall where they may’ unaffected demeanor.
The journalists were all probing the question of who stood behind the terror attack. Bortnikov told them…and us: standing behind the terror act committed by Islamist extremists are the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine.
Bortnikov said that the preliminary findings indicate that the four perpetrators of the slaughter were headed by car to the border with Ukraine where they were awaited on the other side. He very calmly explained that the involvement of foreign powers is being clarified and that he will say nothing out of pure emotion now but will wait for the facts to be solidly collected before being presented.
Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act. Let us remember that following the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the most significant attack on critical civilian infrastructure globally in the last 50 years, Russian officials did not point the finger directly at any country. There was innuendo but no direct accusations such as we heard from Bortnikov yesterday.
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Meanwhile, quite apart from Mr. Bortnikov’s chat with journalists, a lot of new elements to the terror attack at Crocus City Hall were posted yesterday on the Russian state television news and analysis program Sixty Minutes. In particular, we learned that in the last days of February and first couple of days of March two of the four attackers were in Istanbul. The departure and arrival of one at a Moscow airport was recorded on video. We were told which hotels they stayed in, and the selfies and other photos taken by one in Istanbul were put up on the screen. It is still not clear with whom they met in Turkey. However, the timing itself is very important, because the point was made that they returned to Moscow to carry out a terror attack on 8 March, International Women’s Day, a sacred date on the Russian calendar. Had they done so on that day, the effect would have been catastrophic for the presidential elections in Russia one week later.
However, per Sixty Minutes, it was determined that Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation. Note that this is approximately the time when Victoria Nuland tendered her resignation at the State Department (5 March). The possible causal link here surely deserves attention by my peers in the U.S. ‘dissident’ community.
In any case, the scenario which was explored later in the day on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show is that the Ukrainians decided to proceed with the terror attack a week after the Russian presidential elections, when it lost most of its rationale. They did so over the objections of Washington.
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From time to time, readers ask why I pay attention to talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s. These skeptics tend to ignore that Solovyov invites not just the usual irresponsible academics and journalists who can amuse the public but also some very serious statesmen who are close to the center of power in Russia and exert influence on the conduct of foreign and domestic policy, including in particular committee chairmen and other key personalities from the State Duma.
So it was last night when we heard from a member of the Committee on Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (Former Soviet Union). With reference to the never ending terror attacks on civilians in the Russian border region of Belgorod coming from nearby Kharkiv (Ukraine), he said it is time to raze Kharkov to the ground: issue a warning to the population to get in their cars and head West, then blow it all to bits. Kharkiv is, by the way, Ukraine’s second most populous city after Kiev.
In general, the mood of panelists and of the host Solovyov himself is now changing in a cardinal manner: Ukraine is seen as an enemy state and the sooner it is finished off the better. There was talk last night on the need for missile strikes to flatten the presidential palace in Kiev along with all military and other decision making government centers in the capital.
As we have observed repeatedly over the past two years. President Putin has been a voice for moderation and restraint, resisting actions that might precipitate WWIII. That is clearly coming to an end when his own FSB director names the United States and the UK as planners of the biggest terror attack in Russia in 20 years.
A controversy arose needlessly over the advisory issued by the American embassy in Moscow on March 7 to the effect that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts” and warning US citizens to “avoid large gatherings.” It took the form of a diplomatic spat and momentarily at least, the American claim that they shared the ‘information’ with the Russians hinted at the ineptness of the security agencies in Moscow while the latter hit back saying there was nothing specific or actionable that the Americans conveyed.
Clearly, Washington was in possession of some information which was at the very least credible enough in terms of its source but was not specific enough for Moscow. Interestingly, the UK embassy in Moscow also issued a similar advisory cautioning British citizens against visiting shopping centres. The US and British intelligence agencies work in tandem.
However, in a strange pre-emptive move, as it were, the State Department also scrambled within two hours of the horrific attack on the mall in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22 with a statement declaring that Ukraine was not responsible for the attack. The US’s European allies also began parroting the same line. As can be expected, the Americans got a head start in the propaganda war and that in turn enabled them to craft a narrative — also in real time — naming the Islamic State as the culprit in the horrific crime.
Yet, the very next day, President Vladimir Putin went on to reveal in his address to the nation that what happened was “a premeditated and organised mass murder of peaceful, defenceless people,” harking back to the Nazis “to stage a demonstrative execution, a bloody act of intimidation.”
Importantly, Putin disclosed that the perpetrators “attempted to escape and were heading towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary information, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.” But he stopped short of finger-pointing as the investigation was a work in progress.
That is to say, from Putin’s disclosure, it appears that the perpetrators’ mentors / handlers gave them instructions to exit Russian territory after their mission by using a particular route for border crossing into Ukraine where they were expected by people on the Ukrainian side of the border. What now remains in the realm of the ‘known unknown’ is really about the chain of command. This is the first thing.
Second, a storyline has been propagated by Washington that this was an ISIS attack. Indeed, it has been effectively propagated by the western media and was intended as a red herring to confuse dumb-witted folks abroad.
However, in reality, the perpetrators did not behave like ISIS killers on suicide missions who would have sought martyrdom but in this case behaved like fugitives on the run. Nor were they answering the call of ‘jihad’. They were reportedly ethnic Tajiks who admitted that they were hirelings lured by the money in it.
The expert opinion from released videos is also that their movements inside the mall did not show battle skills attributed to well-trained fighters, and they had ‘poor muzzle discipline’, which means they had only minimal rifle training. In sum, theirs was quintessentially an act of motiveless malignity — that is, except the money part.
That said, the US military has been ‘retooling’ erstwhile ISIS fighters lately. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) alleged in a statement on February 13 that the US was recruiting the jihadist fighters to carry out terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia and the CIS countries.
The statement said, “Sixty such terrorists with combat experience in the Middle East were selected this year in January… they are undergoing a fast-track training course at the US base in Syria’s Al-Tanf, where they are being taught how to make and use improvised explosive devices, as well as subversive methods. Particular emphasis is paid to planning attacks on heavily guarded facilities, including foreign diplomatic missions… In the near future, there are plans to deploy militants in small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS countries.”
The SVR also noted that “special attention was paid to the involvement of natives of the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia.”
Significantly, on March 26, Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in an interview with Rossiya TV channel that from the interrogation of the detainees so far, there is a political background to the incident. He said radical Islamists alone could not prepare such an action on their own, they were assisted from the outside.
Bortnikov stated: “The primary data that we received from the detainees confirm this. Therefore, we will continue to refine the information that should show us whether the participation of the Ukrainian side is real or not. But in any case, so far there is every reason to say that this is exactly the case. Since the bandits themselves intended to go abroad, it was to the territory of Ukraine, according to our preliminary operational information, they were waiting there.”
Bortnikov added that the terrorist attack had the support of not only the special services of Ukraine, but countries such as Britain and the United States are also behind the massacre. According to him, the prime mover of the incident has not yet been identified, and the threat of a terrorist act in Russia still persists.
Bortnikov’s remarks hint at a classic predicament: Russia possesses evidence of Ukrainian involvement but no ‘proof’ remains inadequate as yet. This is a predicament that countries often face in countering the cross-border terrorism, especially when it happens to be state-sponsored terrorism. Of course, no amount of evidence will be accepted as proof by the adversary ultimately — while in Ukraine’s case, often there is an eagerness to claim credit for bleeding Russia by staging operations on its soil, such as assassinations.
As for the US or the UK, Russians assess that without intelligence inputs, satellite imagery, and even logistical backing by the western powers, Ukraine does not have the capability to undertake operations deep inside Russia or the sort of complex attacks targeting Russian war ships of the Black Sea Fleet. But the western powers are invariably in a denial mode when confronted with such accusations by Russia.
There is no question that the Crocus City Hall attack will have profound geopolitical consequences and will impact the trajectory of the Ukraine war. The incident has rallied world sympathy massively for Russia. It is a huge challenge of statecraft now for Putin to act decisively, as the Russian public will expect, to completely uproot the dark forces entrenched next-door.
Conceivably, that may involve Moscow shaking up the very foundations of the house that Washington built in Kiev after the 2024 coup. The New York Times recently disclosed that the CIA keeps a string of intelligence outposts all along the Ukraine-Russia border regions.
Make no mistake, the US is determined to hold on to the extensive infrastructure it created in Ukraine to mount covert operations and destabilise Russia, no matter what it takes. The bottom line in the western strategy is to weaken Russia and prevent it from playing an adversarial role on the global stage.
TS Eliot’s lines from the play Murder in the Cathedral come to mind: ‘What peace can be found / To grow between the hammer and the anvil?’ The war is slated to escalate dramatically and it is a matter of time before western combat deployment takes place in Ukraine to salvage that country’s residual potential as a frontline state for NATO in the proxy war against Russia. On their part, Russia may have no alternative but to seek a total military victory. The multi-layered Russian reaction will unfold depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation.