Putin looks to exploit Moscow ISIS-K attack

Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized on the Moscow attack carried out by ISIS-K last week that killed more than 130 people at a concert hall by linking it to Ukraine, spurring fears he may use the tragedy to mobilize more forces and ramp up the war against Kyiv.

The Friday attack, in which multiple gunmen opened fire into a crowd at the Crocus City Hall in the Moscow regional city of Krasnogorsk and set fire to the music venue, is the worst massacre to hit Russia in 20 years. 

That’s putting Ukraine and the West on edge as officials try to fend off blame from Russian officials for allegedly supporting the attackers. 

Samantha de Bendern, an associate fellow at the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, said Putin sees growing vulnerabilities in Ukraine because of the U.S. holdup on more aid, and has already been looking to escalate missile attacks on the country as air defenses weaken.

At the same time, the attack at Crocus City Hall highlights Russia’s failure to safeguard against threats and heed calls from the U.S. to prevent the incoming attack.

“Putin has no choice but to blame the Ukrainians, because if he doesn’t blame the Ukrainians, he has to face the fact that he did not heed the warnings from the U.S.,” she said. “He can deflect responsibility for having ignored a terrorist threat and continue bombarding Ukraine.” 

John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said Russia is seizing an opportunity to whip up public support for not just the war against Ukraine but also a future mobilization.

“He’s trying to change the perception of the war in society in order to do that mobilization — and this was a way to do it,” he said. 

Eleven people were detained and four suspects were charged in connection to the Friday attack.

ISIS-K, the Afghanistan affiliate of the extremist and widely condemned Islamic State group, claimed responsibility for the attack, and U.S. intelligence has supported that conclusion. 

But in an address Saturday, Putin said the attackers were fleeing toward Ukraine, where they had a “window” to escape, and pledged to find “whoever directed them.” 

In Monday remarks, Putin admitted the assailants were “radical Islamists” but said the attack could benefit Ukraine, which he accused of having “never hesitated to use the most dirty and inhumane means to achieve their goals.”

“This crime can only be a link in a chain [from] those who are at war with our country since 2014,” he said, noting the date when Russian-backed separatists began fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“These steps make up a logical sequence of terrorist attacks and attempts to intimidate Russian society and sow discord,“ he continued, “at the same time [trying] to show their own population that the Kyiv regime is still strong.” 

Russian influencers also fanned the flames after the attack. 

Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-run news channel Russia Today, wrote on social media that because Western intelligence agencies knew of the attack beforehand, they must have been involved. 

“They KNEW who the performers were. Before arrest. This is direct participation,” she wrote. 

The White House said it shared intelligence with Russia in early March about a planned terror attack and warned Americans living in the country, but said there was no Ukrainian or Western involvement.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby called the attempts to link Ukraine to the attack “more Kremlin propaganda” and a push to “scratch out some sort of justification for the continued violence” against Kyiv.

“It should surprise exactly nobody Mr. Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin keep trying to find a way to pin this on Ukraine,” he told reporters Monday. “There was no linkage to Ukraine. This was an attack carried out by ISIS-K operatives. Period.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also pushed back against the Russian claims in a video address, arguing that “Putin and other scoundrels” were distorting the message for propaganda purposes. 

“This absolute miserable Putin, instead of attending to his own citizens of Russia,” Zelensky said, “remained silent for a day, thinking about how to link this to Ukraine.” 

During the war, Ukraine has consistently attacked border regions of Russia, including Belgorod, and infrequently Ukrainian attacks have struck as deep as the capital of Moscow. But those attacks have largely targeted Russian defense capabilities, military and political figures or infrastructure linked to the war.

The gunmen from Crocus City Hall were from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. The country is predominantly Muslim and borders Afghanistan, where ISIS-K is based.  

While ISIS is largely suppressed by international campaigns in Syria and Iraq — including with forces from Russia and the U.S. — its Afghanistan branch has resurged following the 2021 American withdrawal from the country, where the Taliban rule with a limited ability to fight off insurgents. ISIS-K was also responsible for a deadly bombing in Iran in January that killed 95 people.

Last week’s attack also exposed a vulnerability in the heart of Russia.

Pavel Baev, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Institution, said it was a “colossal failure of the security services” in Russia due to them having been focused on Ukraine and less so on terrorism.

“What is important [for Putin] is to counter with something to restore the credibility of leadership, to show him strong and not weak,” Baev said. “It is possible to blame Ukraine, but then what?”

It’s not clear how much more Putin could escalate the war in Ukraine if he chose to do so in the aftermath of the concert hall attack. Russia has thrown nearly everything it has on the battlefield at Ukrainian cities and frequently targets Ukraine with missiles and drones. 

Putin ordered a partial mobilization in 2022, increased his military’s size and tightened recruiting laws, though he has refrained from any further action since, given they can lead to public pressure.

But analysts agree that Putin may be able to use the Crocus tragedy to mobilize more forces, a possibility since his Defense Ministry called for the creation of two new ground armies by the end of the year.

“He’s got another justification for his mobilization,” said Chatham House’s de Bendern. 

Russians are largely united behind Moscow against Ukraine, but that could change amid another mobilization, which tend to be unpopular. The war is already taking a toll, too. The U.S. this year estimated that Russia has suffered at least 315,000 casualties in the more than two-year-old war.

Politics and public opinion may be less in focus, with elections behind the Kremlin. Putin cemented his grip on power this month, winning a presidential election that many in the West condemned as rigged. And the war has increasingly shifted in Russia’s favor, with Russian troops pushing forward incrementally on the battlefield as Ukrainian forces run low on supplies, and further U.S. aid to Kyiv is in doubt.

But Herbst, from the Atlantic Council, said even if Putin tries to push for increased mobilization, it will be difficult shaping public opinion with the available evidence. 

“Given ISIS formally taking credit, given what the U.S. did before the terror attack,” he said, and “given the widespread coverage of this on the global media, it will be hard to do.”