Crocus Attack Ends Lull of Six Years, Raises Question About Law-Enforcers’ Focus

One of the multiple factors that propelled the then relatively unknown apparatchik Vladimir Putin to the pinnacle of power in Russia in late 1999/early 2000, was his ability to convince many members of the Russian elite and the public that he was the kind of leader who not only promised to protect them from the horrors of mass-casualty terrorism, but also delivered on his promises of security, in contrast to the ailing Boris Yeltsin.

The need for such a leader at the time was especially obvious to those who had suffered from or witnessed multiple acts of terrorism committed in Russia in the 1990s, whether or not all of them were, indeed, carried out by jihadists.¹ Having been elected president in spring 2000 on a platform with a prominent counter-terrorism component, Putin proceeded to try to deliver on his 1999 promise to “waste them in the outhouse.” At first, his counter-terrorism efforts were not very effective. Eventually, however, a combination of factors—including an increase in the quantity, if not quality, of government force used against non-state actors engaged in political violence, the departure of many Islamist radicals to “greener pastures” in the Middle East,² and, arguably, increases in living standards—led to a decline in the levels of such violence in Russia by the 2010s, even as abuses at the hands of “siloviki” (the officers of Russia’s so-called power agencies) continued to feed low-intensity insurgency in the North Caucasus (see Table 1 below).

In fact, if one were to analyze attacks executed by non-state actors primarily against Russian civilians in or outside Russia³ during Putin’s rule (i.e. the kind of attack carried out at the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow), one would notice a lull in such attacks after February 18, 2018, when a gunman shot five and injured four  civilians in Dagestan. The attack on March 22 not only ended the lull of 6 years, 1 month and 4 days, it also instantly turned 2024 into the fourth worst year of Putin’s rule in terms of the number of civilians killed in such attacks (see Figures 1 and 2 below), according to my calculations based on data mined from the Caucasian Knot’s timeline of political violence in Russia, as well as from reports in the Russian and Western press. If one were to look beyond these sources and analyze the relevant data in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which has data through 2020,⁴ one would find many more cases than in Table 1. However, the trends revealed by plotting the GTD data (see Figures 3 and 4 below) are not dissimilar to the ones gleaned from the author’s monitoring of Russian media for major cases (see Figures 1 and 2 below) with the GTD database including 34 attacks, for which ISIS and its North Caucasian branch claimed responsibility in 2015-2020.⁵

Incidentally, it was ISIS—whose current leaders have not forgotten what Russian forces did to subdue this organization in Syria as well as in Russia itself—that claimed responsibility for the Feb. 18, 2018, after which the aforementioned lull started, and the March 22 attack, which ended that lull.⁶ To be more precise, it was ISIS’ Khorasan Vilayat (ISIS-K)⁷ that claimed responsibility for the March 22 attack, which was allegedly carried out by four citizens of Tajikistan⁸, who were allegedly assisted by at least seven other natives of Central Asia. Both the U.S. and some of its allies have found the claim by ISIS-K, which has targeted both Russia and Western countries in the past, to be plausible. In contrast, while stating that ISIS members executed the attack, Putin and some of his key subordinates have alleged that the attackers were aided by Western and Ukrainian intelligence services. Putin provided no evidence to support these allegations, which officials in Kyiv⁹ and Western capitals have refuted,¹⁰ while four people close to the Kremlin told Bloombergthat there’s no evidence of involvement by Ukraine.

Does the March 22 attack signal a return of recurrent large-scale terrorism to Russia? Hopefully not and there are multiple ways to lower the probability of such recurrence. Doing so requires drilling down into what drove and drives those behind the terrorist attacks,¹¹ including not only those carrying them out, but also the actual organizers—rather than the ones the Kremlin finds it politically expedient to blame.  When doing so, one should, of course, keep in mind that there can be no justification for attacking innocent civilians, and perpetrators of such attacks must be condemned and prosecuted. At the same time, however, while fighting individual manifestations of this evil, authorities also should avoid either condoning or turning a blind eye on illegal methods of handling the suspects. 

Subjecting suspects to torture (which has been only recently become a subject of a separate article in Russia’s Criminal Code) of the kind we have seen the suspects in the Crocus attack subjected to, may produce instant gratification for a public demanding revenge as well as some investigative results, but in the longer-term such practices can fuel more attacks, especially as they are now being broadcast on social media. (My research of drivers of political violence in Russia in the 2000s-2010s has indicated that a combination of being at disadvantage socially, being exposed to violent ideologies and experiencing abuses at hands of state representatives (or knowledge of one’s near and near being abused) made the youth of the North Caucasus more likely to resort to such violence.)   

The Russian authorities would also do well to have an independent review examine not only the actions of the terrorists, but also what Russia’s law-enforcement, security and other agencies did or did not do to prevent and to respond to this attack,¹² including whether the fact that these agencies’ counter-terrorism and counter-extremism branches have increasingly focused on the Kremlin’s political opponents¹³ may have come at expense of maintain a robust capacity to go after non-state actors seeking to commit acts of political violence against Russian civilians.¹⁴
 

Finally, the review can also, perhaps, explore how and why these agencies have acted on own intelligence¹⁵ as well as intelligence shared by other countries, such as the U.S.¹⁶ Dismissing warnings from such countries as provocationwould be wrong if only, the new Cold War notwithstanding, these countries also have a vested interest in degrading the capabilities of ISIS, which have been targeting them in addition to Russia.¹⁷ After all, efforts at degrading this international threat have higher chances of success if those involved in it do not just accept, but also act on intelligence on this threat.

The cut off point for research was 12:00 pm (GMT) March 27, 2024.