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Ukraine has been accused of being responsible for the terrorist attack in Moscow. Originally published on Telegram, the thesis was developed by Vladimir Putin and his close siloviki, the current and former head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov and Nikolai Patrushev, both ex-KGB, like Putin. The narrative rids the Russian authorities of all responsibility, plays well into the rhetoric about the Ukrainian-Western aggression and can be used to escalate the war. Arguments in its defense include falsehoods and an older conspiracy theory.
The FSB “ballet” and the claim that Ukrainians attacked Russia with Islamist “involvement” and Western support
“Ukraine's special services are directly connected” to the terrorist attack that took place at the Crocus City Hall music venue near Moscow on March 22, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said on March 26. The FSB official added the attack was staged by Islamists and “facilitated” by Western secret services, specifying, in response to a question, that he was referring to the secret services of the United States and Great Britain. Bortnikov reiterated and developed a hypothesis that had been circulated the previous day by Russian president Vladimir Putin, who stated that the attack had been carried out “by radical Islamists”, but that it remains to be seen “who it benefits” the most and “who ordered the attack”. Putin himself provided the answer – “the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv”.
Also on March 26, when asked if “ISIS or Ukraine” were behind the attack, the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev, replied: “Ukraine, of course”.
Patrushev and Bortnikov are key figures of the Putin regime, both former KGB officers, like their boss, and representatives of the so-called siloviki elite. When Putin stepped down as head of the FSB, Patrushev was picked to succeed him. Once Patrushev was promoted to Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Bortnikov took over the position left vacant.
The ballet of statements issued by Putin, Patrushev and Bortnikov over March 25-26 was heralded by another public performance, whose choreography also echoes the KGB textbook. On March 23, in his first public appearance since the terrorist attack, Vladimir Putin said that the terrorists had been given a “limited window” to enter Ukraine (a necessary step, given they were supposed to cross a militarized zone, virtually on the frontline) and the FSB told the media they had been “linked with Ukraine”.
Media and channels used to promote the thesis about Ukraine’s involvement: social media, pro-Kremlin outlets, influencers, officials
The story about the attack committed by Ukraine using Islamists as perpetrators and with backing from US and UK special services is the updated version of the thesis regarding the involvement of Ukraine/the West in the terrorist attack at the Moscow concert hall. It started being circulated as soon as news of the attack first broke, being initially promoted on social networks, especially on Telegram. The “Rossiya Segodnya” (“Russia Today”) channel, for instance, blamed the West for the terrorist attack in Moscow just a few hours later. “The terrorist's name is the West” (Anglo-Saxons). Anyone who thinks Ukrainians are responsible is naïve. At their best, Ukrainians are pathetic and corrupt enforcers who betrayed the Slavs. The real terrorists are in London and Washington”, the channel posted for its 1.8 million viewers.
The Telegram channel “The World Today with Yuri Podoliaka” (which has over 2.8 million followers), run by a blogger and military commentator from Russia, wrote that the Ukrainian media is using this topic “for petty purposes”. “These Ukrainian bastards – I wouldn’t expect nothing less from them”, Yuri Podoliaka wrote. In a different post, Podoliaka called on Russians not to give in to the panic caused by “Ukrainian agencies” and described the first photos of the alleged perpetrators of the attack as “the making of Ukraine”.
The thesis about Ukraine’s involvement in the attack quickly spread from Telegram to mainstream media. The government-controlled news agency RIA Novosti wrote that Ukraine has become a caliphate that has unleashed mass terror against Russia. According to Russian journalists, Kyiv has been recruiting and training terrorists for several years, providing them with forged documents and support to destroy Russia.
The same Moscow-based news agency also wrote that, despite the terrorist attack, carried out by “radical Islamists” financed by the West, Russia resisted this time as well. The West made a miscalculation and, once again, underestimated Moscow’s power and the resilience of the Russian people, RIA Novosti writes.
The Russian government media tried to frame the tragic event in the logic of anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda. The West has also been accused of “protecting Ukraine”: pro-Kremlin columnists wonder why Western media refuses to acknowledge Ukraine’s obvious responsibility in staging these attacks.
Other Moscow-funded media outlets, particularly those that focus on covering the developments in Ukraine, wrote that the Crocus terrorist attack was a show of strength from the West.
As for the characters behind the narrative, at first the narrative was rolled out into public space by various influencers – analysts, bloggers, media celebrities like Margarita Simonyan, one of the most iconic mouthpieces of pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Speculation circulated by influencers was quickly backed up by claims lodged by various officials, including the Deputy Chairman of Russia's Security Council, Dmitry Medvev, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. A few hours after the attack, Medvedev wrote that the terrorists responsible must be killed and that “if it turns out that they are terrorists bankrolled by the Kyiv regime [...] all of them must be found and eliminated without remorse as terrorists, including the state officials who ordered such an atrocity. Death for death”. Maria Zakharova also reacted, saying that Volodymyr Zelenskyy allegedly recognized indirectly Kyiv’s involvement in the terrorist attacks in Moscow. She stated that Ukraine’s reaction and its dismissal of Moscow's accusations are evidence of Kyiv bankrolling this terrorist operation.
How the narrative evolved, from “Ukraine did it” to the FSB-backed thesis “ISIS, Ukraine and the West”. What the thesis is “based on”: baseless accusations, lies and conspiracy theories
So far, no one, not even Putin, Patrushev or Bortnikov (who, in theory, are the most knowledgeable people in Russia) has been able to produce any evidence to substantiate their claims regarding the involvement of Ukraine and/or the West. The whole thesis rests on words, lies and on older conspiracy theories.
The narrative of the Crocus City Hall attack was expanded progressively. In the early stages, only Ukraine's involvement was mentioned. In a debunking article, the BBC explains how one of the main Russian television stations, NTV, broadcast a fake video in which the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (dismissed on March 26 by Volodymyr Zelenskyy) allegedly claimed the attack. The video was actually a mix of two older recordings that had been tampered with.
In the next phase, amid increasing evidence that Islamist terrorists were behind the attack, Russian media struggled to uncover inconsistencies between the way the attack was carried out and the typical modus operandi of jihadists. Russian publications claimed and wrote, for instance, that jihadists are never caught alive and would rather die. Cited by the aforementioned BBC article, Margarita Simonyan went as far as drawing attention to the fact that the attackers were not wearing explosive vests. However, there are numerous cases where Muslim extremists, even those belonging to ultra-radical groups such as the Islamic State, surrender or are captured. Thousands of Islamic State combatants have been captured following campaigns targeting the operations of the jihadist group in Syria or Iraq. In the ongoing war in Gaza, Israel has captured scores of Hamas extremists (who in theory are just as willing to die as Islamic State jihadists), while in turn the United States have captured Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Finally, in the third phase of this story, FSB’s claims regarding the involvement of ISIS/Ukraine/the West unraveled, also referring to an older conspiracy theory about the United States being connected to the Islamic State. The theory was advanced during the Syrian civil war against the backdrop of the advent of the Islamic State and the emergence of the “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria. Its origins can be traced to an older date. During the American war in Iraq, in the first decade of the 2000s, many Iraqis believed that Americans are in fact behind the group Al Qaeda in Iraq (an extremely violent terrorist organization, which years later would develop into the Islamic State). Prior to the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq, one conspiracy theory gained particular traction, according to which Osama bin Laden was allegedly Washington’s brainchild, a thesis intertwined with another conspiracy theory, stating that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been planned by the USA. When the Islamic State emerged, the organization was reportedly bankrolled by the CIA and Israel.
Originally circulated in Shiite circles dominated by (equally terrorist) militias that Iran trained and coordinated, the conspiracy theory was also picked up by the Russians.
In 2016, for example, Russia Today and Sputnik accused the West of financing Islamic terrorism, noting that “the US had to dispel the impression that it was funding this terrorist group to advance its own interests” by getting involved in the wars in the Middle East. Russian officials, too, have been talking for years about the United States' ties to the terrorist group. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated earlier this year that the Americans provide assistant to ISIS fighters in Syria and that some of them are used as mercenaries, including in Ukraine.
The thesis about a Russian frame-up and older allegations regarding FSB’s role in terrorist attacks attributed to Islamists
Not only are Western services accused of having been involved in the Crocus terrorist attack, but also of launching a disinformation campaign to shift the responsibility for this attack on Russia. Thus, a series of “falsehoods” about Russia looking for a pretext to “escalate the war in Ukraine” or about a “special FSB operation in Moscow” were allegedly made public. Again, the Russian media did not present any evidence to support these claims, which seem to have been put forth to discredit certain legitimate questions and references to the thorny issue of terrorist attacks committed in Russia around the Second Chechen War (the 1999 Russian apartment explosions, the 2004 Beslan school siege, the 2002 Nord-Ost siege).
Terrorist attacks were at the time attributed to Chechen Islamist terrorists. The media and certain representatives of the opposition claimed the attacks had been staged by the FSB to justify the war in Chechnya or to strengthen the population's confidence in Vladimir Putin. Back then, many journalists wrote back that, with each attack, Putin's approval rating rose, and that every attack was used as a pretext to take certain steps in domestic and foreign policy.
For instance, after the 1999 attacks attributed to “Chechen terrorists”, the FSB gained increasing influence in the political apparatus, following Vladimir Putin's rise to power the following year.
The Russian publication Kommersant wrote in 2002 that the terrorist attacks united Russians around Vladimir Putin. “The victims vote for the president”, the article headlined, explaining the paradox of political perception in Russia two decades ago.
It should also be noted that many of those who investigated the terrorist attacks or spoke out about the involvement of the Putin regime were assassinated or died in suspicious circumstances: members of the parliamentary commission of inquiry, journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Artyom Borovik, or former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Why Russia would be interested in exploiting the ISIS-claimed attack to serve its war on Ukraine and the West
Speculation regarding a possible FSB frame-up remains negligible, for the time being at least. So far, the official position of Western governments, drawing also on the analysis and information of certain intelligence services (American or French), is that this was an ISIS attack. The terrorist group itself claimed responsibility for the attack and presented recordings of the perpetrators. The Islamic State had every reason to attack Russia, which it accuses of persecuting Muslims on its soil, also criticizing its involvement in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Islamic State's enemies. The terrorist group had attacked or attempted to attack Russia in the past, and its Afghanistan branch, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province, has in recent years displayed both an interest and the capacity to stage large-scale terrorist attacks, such as the August 2021 attacks on Kabul airport, or the January 2024 attack near Qassem Soleimani's grave in the Iranian city of Kerman.
The question thus arises: why would Russia want to blame Ukraine and the West for the attack?
Primarily to draw attention away from the responsibility of Russian authorities and their failure to prevent the attack. As early as a couple of weeks ago, the United States have publicly warned Russia that a terrorist attack was in the making, and sent information (presumably somewhat more detailed) through backchannels as well. Not only did Russia disregard this information, but Vladimir Putin also publicly denounced it as “an act of provocation”.
Secondly, the terrorist attack shows that the Putin regime is incapable of delivering on one of its top promises, namely to protect the Russian people (who traded their individual liberties and embraced Putin’s police state in exchange for their own safety).
And finally, the attack proves that, despite propaganda claims that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine to defend itself from the “Nazi regime in Kyiv” and from the West, the threat to the Russians at home is posed by extremist Muslims.
By attributing the terrorist attack at the Crocus auditorium to Ukraine and the West, the Kremlin upholds the same narrative it has been widely spreading for years concerning Western aggression. Now, amid the full-blown war against Ukraine and a civilizational clash with the West, we cannot rule out the possibility that Russia will use this terrorist attack to justify a future escalation in Ukraine, a new massive mobilization campaign (as more manpower is needed to ramp up attacks on Ukrainian armed forces) or to use new and/or more powerful weapons against those found guilty of killing hundreds of civilians in Moscow.
The history of previous disinformation narratives overlapping with anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda of recent years allows the Kremlin to take advantage of this story to intensify its military aggression and push for mass mobilization against Russia's “enemies” who, apparently, have joined forces in an effort to destroy it.
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