US warning unheeded as Putin thought it was patronising

VLADIMIR PUTIN may have ignored US warnings of an Islamic attack in Russia because he found them patronising and didn’t want the shine taken off a whopping election victory.

Instead of taking them seriously, he used a speech on Tuesday to his security forces to deride the US analysis as a “blackmail” attempt and a “provocation”. Except it wasn’t, and three days later he was trying to deflect blame for the deadliest terrorist atrocity in Russia in 20 years.

Analysts said that a mixture of hubris, scepticism, and the timing of the warning a week before a presidential election meant that Putin ignored the US report.

“He was irritated that this public warning came as an embarrassment and a spoiler before this election,” said Mark Galeotti, a professor at UCL and the author of several books on Russia.

Now, in just a week, Putin has gone from toasting a record 87 per cent win at a pumped-up victory celebration to appearing in a sombre video address calling for national unity.

It’s difficult to overestimate the sense of shock in Russia after an attack that reignited memories of Chechen terrorist attacks in the early 2000s, during Putin’s first years as president.

Public events have been cancelled, a day of mourning announced, and electronic billboards replaced by images of flickering candles.

Low-level terrorist attacks occur regularly in Russia. This month, FSB agents shot dead two Kazakh nationals in a town south-west of Moscow who they said had been planning an attack on a synagogue. They also killed six alleged IS terrorists in Dagestan.

But you have to go back to 2004 to find an attack comparable to Friday’s assault when more than 300 people were killed by Chechen rebels in a school in Beslan, North Ossetia.

Putin used the Beslan attack to empower himself and his security forces, but how does he respond now during a Ukraine war that has stretched both the Russian economy and its security forces?

The attack presents Putin with both a risk and an opportunity, analysts said. A risk, because Putin has built his 24-year reign guaranteeing security at home. An opportunity, because Putin and his propagandists wasted no time blaming Ukraine for organising the attack, an accusation they hope will act as a powerful rallying call.

Ian Garner, an author who has written about Russian propaganda, said Putin had trapped himself in a cycle of violence hooked around war, repression, terror attacks and mobilisations he can’t escape from. “The Putinist cycle of violence since 1999. Adopt brace positions,” he said.