Deep distrust chief cause of security lapse
Analysts say Kremiln’s lack of willingness to heed foreign agencies’ warnings main cause of prevention failure
A day before the U.S. Embassy in Moscow put out a rare public alert this month about a possible extremist attack at a Russian concert venue, the local CIA station delivered a private warning to Russian officials that included at least one additional detail: The plot in question involved an offshoot of the Islamic State group.
U.S. intelligence had been tracking the group closely and believed the threat credible. Within days, however, President Vladimir Putin was disparaging the warnings, calling them “outright blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Three days after he spoke, gunmen stormed Crocus City Hall outside Moscow last Friday night and killed at least 143 people in the deadliest attack in Russia in nearly two decades. The Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for the massacre with statements, a photo and a propaganda video.
What made the security lapse seemingly even more notable was that in the days before the massacre Russia’s own security establishment had also acknowledged the domestic threat posed by the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, called Islamic State Khorasan.
Internal Russian intelligence reporting that most likely circulated at the highest levels of the government warned of the increased likelihood of an attack in Russia by ethnic Tajiks radicalized by the Islamic State Khorasan, according to information obtained by the Dossier Center, a London research organization, and reviewed by The New York Times.
Russia has identified the four men suspected of carrying out the attack as being from Tajikistan.
Now, Putin and his lieutenants are pointing fingers at Ukraine, trying to deflect attention from a question that would be front and center in any nation with an independent media and open debate in its politics: How did Russia’s vast intelligence and law enforcement apparatus, despite significant warnings, fail to head off one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the country in Putin’s nearly quarter century in power?
The full picture is still unclear, and U.S. and European officials, as well as security and counterterrorism experts, emphasize even in the best of circumstances, with highly specific information and well-oiled security services, disrupting covert international terror plots is difficult.
But they say the failure most likely resulted from a combination of factors, paramount among them the deep levels of distrust, both within the Russian security establishment and in its relations with other global intelligence agencies.
They also point to the way Putin has hijacked his domestic security apparatus for an ever-widening political crackdown at home — as well as his focus on crusading against Ukraine and the West — as distractions that probably did not help.
This account of the Russian failure to prevent the concert attack is based on interviews with U.S. and European security officials, security experts and analysts specializing in international intelligence capabilities. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence details.
“The problem is to actually be able to prevent terrorist attacks, you need to have a really good and efficient system of intelligence sharing and intelligence gathering,” said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence, who underscored that trust is needed inside the home agency and with agencies of other countries, as is good coordination. He said, “That’s where you have problems.”
Putin’s definition of what constitutes an extremist began to expand even before his invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
And as Putin has advanced his political crackdown at home, its list of targets ballooned to include opposition figures like Alexei Navalny, who died last month in a Russian prison, and his supporters, as well as LGBTQ+ rights activists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, peace activists and other Kremlin critics.