The Daily - A Terrorist Attack in Russia

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Warning: this episode contains descriptions of violence.More than a hundred people died and scores more were wounded on Friday night in a terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow — the deadliest such attack in Russia in decades.Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The Times, discusses the uncomfortable question the assault raises for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin: Has his focus on the war in Ukraine left his country more vulnerable to other threats?Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: In Russia, fingers point anywhere but at ISIS for the concert hall attack.The attack shatters Mr. Putin’s security promise to Russians.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. A terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow Friday night killed more than 100 people and injured scores more. It was the deadliest attack in Russia in decades. It was the deadliest attack in Russia in decades. Today, my colleague Anton Trinovsky, on the uncomfortable question it raises for Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Has his focus on the war in Ukraine left his country more vulnerable to other threats? It's Monday, March 25th.

So Anton, tell us about this horrific attack in Russia. When did you first hear about it? night around 8.30 Moscow time that we started seeing reports about a terrorist attack at a concert hall just outside Moscow. I frankly wasn't sure right at the beginning how serious this was because we have seen quite a lot of attacks inside Russia over the last two years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And it was hard to make sense of right away. But then within a few hours, it was really looking like we were seeing the worst terrorist attack in or around the Russian capital in more than 20 years.

the Russian capital in more than 20 years. On Friday night, Krakow City Hall was the venue for a concert by an old-time Russian rock group called Picnik. It was a sold-out show. Thousands of people were expected to be there. And before the start of the concert, it appears that four gunmen in camouflage walked into the venue and started shooting.

We started seeing videos on social media, just incredibly awful graphic footage of these men shooting concert goers at point blank range. In one of the videos, we see one of them slitting the throat of one of the concert goers. And then what appears to have happened is that they set the concert hall on fire. Russian investigators said they had some kind of flammable liquid that they lit on fire and basically tried to burn down this huge concert hall with wounded people in it. Some of these people ended up trapped as the building burned. ended up trapped as the building burned,

as eventually the roof of this concert hall collapsed, and it seems as though much of the casualties actually came as a result of the fire as opposed to as a result of the shooting. The actual attack, it looks like, didn't take more than 15 to 30 minutes, at which point the four men were able to escape. They got into a white Renault sedan and fled the scene. It took the authorities clearly a while to arrive. The attackers were able to spread this horrific violence for, as I said, at least 15 minutes or so.

So among other things, there's a lot of questions being raised right now about why the official response took so long. And you said the perpetrators got away. What happened next? So, it looks like they were caught at some point hours after the attack. On Saturday morning, the Kremlin said that 11 people had been arrested in connection to the attack, including all four perpetrators. They were taken into custody, according to the Russian authorities, in the Bransk region of Russia, roughly a five-hour

drive from the concert hall in southwestern Russia, also pretty close to the border with Ukraine. Obviously, we have to take everything that the Russian authorities are saying with a grain of salt. And as we've been reporting on this throughout the weekend, we have very much tried to verify all the claims that the Russian authorities are making independently. And so our colleagues in the Visual Investigations Unit of The Times have been working very hard on that. And what we can say, based on the footage of the attack that was taken by many different individuals and posted to social media, that was taken by many different individuals and posted to social media. It very much looks like the four men who were detained, who Russia says were the attackers, in fact, are the same people who are seen doing the shooting in those videos of the attack, judging by their clothes, judging

by their hairstyle, judging by their build and other identifying characteristics that our colleagues have been looking at. So it does appear that by Saturday morning, the men who directly carried out this attack had been taken into custody. Wow. So the Russian government actually apprehended the perpetrators, according to our reporting work that our colleagues have done. So who are these guys? We don't know much about them. The Russian government says that none of them are Russian citizens. After the arrest, throughout the weekend, videos, short clips of interrogations of these men have been popping up on the Telegram social network, clearly leaked or provided by Russian law enforcement. You see these men bloodied, hurt.

And is this Russian interrogators abusing them? Yes, that is very much what it looks like. And it's also notable that the Russian authorities aren't even hiding it. Two of the suspects in those videos are heard speaking Tajik. So that's the language spoken in Tajikistan, a Central Asian country, but also in some of the surrounding countries, including Afghanistan. At the end of the day, this is still a very much developing situation, and there's a ton that we don't know. But hours after the attack,

the Islamic State, ISIS, took responsibility. And they then really tried to emphasize this by even releasing a video on Saturday showing the attack taking place as it was filmed, apparently, by one of the attackers. And U.S. intelligence officials have told our colleagues in Washington that they indeed believe this to be true, that they believe that this ISIS offshoot did carry out this attack. Wow. So the Americans actually think that ISIS, the extremist group that we know so well from Iraq and Syria, carried out this attack. Yes. And all of this is really remarkable because just a few weeks ago, on March 7th, the United States actually warned publicly that something just like this could happen. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert

urging U.S. citizens to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours. They said that the embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow to include concerts. Crazy. That is a very specific warning. Absolutely. And of course, the statement mentioned that specific 48-hour time frame, but nevertheless, it feels really significant.

And did the Russian authorities respond to that? They did. And frankly, they responded mostly by ridiculing it. This is all obviously happening against the backdrop of the worst conflict between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War. And so Vladimir Putin actually publicly dismissed this warning. He called it blackmail in a speech that he gave just three days before the attack last Tuesday. So despite the specificity publicly, at least, the Russian authorities did not take it seriously. That is remarkable. And so three days later, this huge attack happens. Where is Putin in all of this?

And who is he blaming? What's his version of events? So he's coming off this Russian election season, as you know, where he declared this very stage-managed victory and after that had been taking a victory lap of sorts. a victory lap of sorts. But Putin doesn't appear on camera until around 19 hours after the attack. At that point, Russian state television airs a five-minute speech by Putin. He's sitting at this nondescript desk surrounded by two Russian flags, but it's not clear where he is located at that point.

It doesn't look like he's at the Kremlin. And Anton, what does he say? So he describes the horror of this attack. He declares Sunday a national day of mourning. He says the most important thing is to make sure that the people who did this aren't able to carry out more violence. He also says that the four men who carried out the attack were captured as they were moving toward Ukraine.

And he claims that based on preliminary information, as he put it, there were people on the Ukrainian side who were going to help these men cross the border safely. And remember, this is an extremely dangerous militarized border, given that Russia and Ukraine have been in a state of full-scale war for over two years now. And as he ends the speech, he says that Russia will punish the perpetrators, whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them. So what's important about all that is, first of all, that Putin did not mention the apparent Islamic extremist connection here that Western officials have been talking about and that is in front of all of us,

given that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack. But he does set the stage for blaming Ukraine for this horrific tragedy, even though it seems that Putin and the Russian government may be alone in thinking that. We'll be right back. So Anton, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for this attack, but Putin ignores that and kind of obliquely points the finger at Ukraine. What do we actually know about who did this? Well, let's start with the group that claimed responsibility for this attack.

That's ISIS, the Islamic State. And in particular, U.S. officials are talking about a branch of ISIS called ISIS-K or Islamic State Khorasan, which is an Islamic State affiliate that's primarily active in Afghanistan and that in recent years has gained this reputation for extreme brutality. They might be best known in the U.S. for being the group behind the Kabul airport bombing back in 2021, after the Taliban took over when thousands of Afghans were trying to escape. That was a bombing that killed 13 American troops and 171 civilians, and it really raised ISIS-K's profile. So this terrorist group is mainly based in Afghanistan. What do they want with Russia? So what's notable is our colleague Eric Schmidt in Washington talked to an expert over the weekend

who said ISIS-K has really developed an obsession with Russia and Putin over the last two years. They say Russia has Muslim blood on its hands. So it looks like the primary driver in this enmity against Russia is Russia's alliance with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, who is also a sworn enemy of ISIS. And Russia intervened, of course, on Assad's behalf in the Syrian civil war starting back in 2015. But it's not just Syria. So the experts we've talked to say that in the ISIS-K propaganda, you also hear about Russia's wars in the southern region of Chechnya in the 1990s and the early 2000s. And also even about the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s. There's this really long arc of Russia's and the Soviet Union's wars in Muslim regions that appears to be driving this violent hatred of Russia on the part of ISIS-K.

Okay, so ISIS-K is pointing not only to Russia's actions in Syria, but actually further back into Russian history, even Soviet history, to its war in Chechnya and then to the Soviets' war in Afghanistan. Yet Putin, in his speech, ignores the group entirely and instead points in the direction of Ukraine. Is there a chance that this attack could have been carried out by Ukraine? Well, look, it is true that Ukraine has carried out attacks inside Russia that put Russian civilians at risk. There have been several bombings that American officials have ascribed to parts of the Ukrainian government. Perhaps most famously, there was the bombing that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a leading Russian ultra-nationalist back in the summer of 2022. That was a bombing that happened just outside Moscow. And of course, there have been various drone strikes by Ukraine against things like Russian energy infrastructure, even just in the last few weeks.

in the last few weeks. But we really don't see any evidence right now of any connection of the Ukrainian state to this attack. U.S. officials tell us they don't see anything, and we haven't in our own reporting come across such a connection either. And there is, of course, the context of the U.S. has said very clearly that they don't want to see Ukraine carrying out big attacks inside Russia. American officials have said that doing so is counterproductive, could lead to the risk of greater escalation by Putin in his war. And we're in an extremely sensitive time right now when it comes to U.S. support for Ukraine. The U.S., of course, has given all these weapons, tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. But right now, $60 billion in aid are stuck in U.S. Congress. And you would think that Ukraine wouldn't want to do anything right now.

They could risk that. That could risk that. Exactly. I mean, also, let's just say, I mean, this was an incredibly horrific attack. And we haven't seen anything from Ukraine in the way they've carried themselves in defending against Russia in this war that would make us think they would be capable of doing something like this. Anton, just to step back for a moment, I mean, it's interesting, you know, because this attack, it really doesn't remotely fit into Putin's obsession about where the threat is coming from in the world to Russia, right? His obsession is Ukraine. And this kind of short-circuits that. Absolutely. I mean, Russia has had a real Islamic extremism problem for decades, going back to the 1990s, to those brutal wars against

Chechen separatists that were a big part of Putin coming to power and developing his strongman image. So it's really remarkable how we've arrived at this turning point here for Putin, where he used to be someone who really portrayed himself as the man keeping Russians safe from terrorism. Now, the threat of terrorism coming from Islamic extremists doesn't really fit into that narrative that Putin has, because now Putin's narrative is all about the threat from Ukraine and the West, and that the most important thing to do now for Russian national security is to win the war against Ukraine. And does a security failure here have anything to do with Russia actually being obsessed with Ukraine? Like it's kind of taken its eye off the ball? Well, look, the Russian Domestic Intelligence Agency, the FSB,

they're the ones who are supposed to keep the country safe from terrorism. But that has also been the agency that has been charged with asserting control over the territories in Ukraine that Putin has occupied. And the FSB has been spending all this time hunting down dissidents of Putin. Just a few hours before the attack on Friday, Russia officially classified the so-called LGBT movement, as they put it, on their list of terrorists and extremists. So terrorists in the current

Putin narrative are anyone who disagrees with him, who criticizes the war, and who doesn't fit into the Kremlin's conception of so-called traditional values, which has become such a big Putin talking point. So the FSB has been pretty busy, but not in terms of Islamic terrorism, in terms of its own people. Exactly. We don't know for sure, obviously, how the FSB has been pretty busy, but not in terms of Islamic terrorism, in terms of cracking down on dissent domestically, they could well have lost sight of the risks of actual terrorism inside Russia. Which is pretty remarkable, right, Anton? Because you and I know, and we've spoken a lot about on the show, a big part of the reason that Putin actually appeals his argument to Russians is that he's the security guy.

You know, think what you will about him. He's the guy who's fundamentally going to keep you safe. And here we have this attack. That's right. And so he needs to continue making the case that he knows how to keep Russia safe. And that's why my colleagues and I have been watching a lot of Russian state TV this weekend. And this ISIS claim of responsibility barely comes up. And when it does come up, it's often being referred to as fake news. Instead, Russian propaganda is already assuming that it was Ukraine and the West that did this. We'll see if the Russian public buys that. But if you look at the way the last two years have gone in Russia, I think you have to draw the conclusion that Russian propaganda is extremely

powerful. And I think if this message continues, it's quite likely that very many Russians will believe that Ukraine and the West had something to do with this attack. had something to do with this attack. And so the worry now, as we look ahead, is that Putin could end up using this to try to escalate his war even further, which shows us why this is such a tenuous and perilous moment. Because at the same time, this attack reminds us that Russia faces other security risks. And as Putin deepens that conflict with the West, he may be doing so at the cost of introducing even more instability inside the country.

Anton, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. Late Sunday night, the four men suspected of carrying out the concert hall attack were arraigned in a court in Moscow and charged with committing an act of terrorism. were arraigned in a court in Moscow and charged with committing an act of terrorism. All four are from Tajikistan, but worked as migrant laborers in Russia. They range in age from 19 to 32 and face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Also on Sunday, Russian authorities said that 137 bodies had been recovered from the charred remains of the concert hall, including those of three children.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London. And at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present. In a video message on Friday, Catherine, Princess of Wales, disclosed that she'd been diagnosed with cancer and has begun chemotherapy,

ending weeks of fevered speculation about her absence from British public life. This, of course, came as a huge shock. And William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately. In her message, Middleton did not say what kind of cancer she had or how far it had progressed, but emphasized that the diagnosis has required meaningful time to process. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment. But most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte, and Louis in a way that's appropriate for them and to reassure them that I'm going to be okay. and to reassure them that I'm going to be okay.

Today's episode was produced by Will Reed and Rochelle Bonja. It was edited by Patricia Willings, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and translations by Milana Mazaeva, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Special thanks to Eric Schmidt and Valerie Hopkins. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.