Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services were too busy dealing with anti-Kremlin protestors and the Ukraine war to prevent the ISIS-K attack on Moscow.
Analysts have claimed Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) were under an unprecedented strain from the war and dealing with dissenters on home soil, allowing ISIS-K gunmen to plan and execute their attack on a Moscow concert hall last week.
The country’s foreign intelligence agencies, the SVR and GRU, were also operating at a reduced capacity after officers were forced to leave the European capitals they were operating from, forcing the FSB to undertake their work.
Former Moscow station chief for the CIA, Daniel Hoffman, said the agencies could have prevented the deadly ISIS-K attack if they were not spread so thinly tackling other issues.
He said: “You can’t do everything … You dial up the pressure on the locals and sometimes you don’t get the intelligence you need on a potential terrorist attack. That’s where they failed.”
READ MORE: Macron says group targeting Moscow ‘made attempts in France’
He added: “It’s possible they’re overextended dealing with the war in Ukraine and dealing with political opposition. This one slipped through the cracks.”
According to security analysts, the ISIS-K attack on Crocus City Hall, which killed at least 139 people, was carried out by people who must have done extensive reconnaissance of the building beforehand. CCTV footage was then released of the men scoping out the venue at an earlier date.
Nina Krushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School in New York, claimed the FSB would have had ISIS on its radar but did not want to believe the security warning, which came from the US, due to a distrust of the West.
She said: “There’s a lot of mistrust. It’s not like America isn’t involved in misinformation.
“In Putin’s world, where it is an existential battle between Russia and the West that wants to undermine Russia and demolish it, of course he wouldn’t believe it, because how does he know from his own KGB background that America is not creating its own false flag [operation].”
The attack occurred on March 22, and Russia was issued a warning by the US embassy that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts” on March 7.
DON’T MISS:
Putin dismissed the warning as a “provocative” warning from the West. He said: “All these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilise our society.”
Russian special forces were given two other indications in one week that an attack by Islamic extremists was coming.
On March 2, the FSB reportedly killed six wanted members of ISIS after finding their weapons stash. On March 7, they claimed to have prevented an ISIS attack on a Moscow synagogue, killing the potential attackers in a shootout.
John Sipher, former member CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said the FSB failed to prevent it because they were too focussed on political threats to Putin. He said: “The [security services] are more about protecting the Kremlin than they are about protecting the people.”
Four men have since appeared in court on suspicion of committing the attack, all of whom have pleaded guilty. They have been identified as Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, Dalerdzhon Barotovich Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov.
