OPINION:
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Even before the terrorists who slaughtered innocent concertgoers at Moscow’s Crocus City Mall had been apprehended, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the nation’s Security Council, was accusing the government of Ukraine of being responsible.
The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a day of mourning, and in the next breath, asserted that the terrorists “were trying to hide and were moving toward Ukraine.”
The suspects were captured approximately 200 miles from Moscow in Bryansk, which is closer to Belarus than Ukraine. According to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, that is where they were headed until he closed the border at Mr. Putin’s request.
Days later, Mr. Putin finally admitted that “radical Islamists” were behind the attack, but he and his Federal Security Service director continued to accuse the U.S., Britain and Ukraine of playing a role in the terrorist attack, without providing any evidence.
In today’s Russia, there is no independent and impartial judiciary, no non-state media, and no real parliamentary oversight. There is only the Kremlin and what Mr. Putin refers to as the “vertical of power,” which makes him alone responsible for the country’s successes and failures. That is what makes autocracies inherently brittle.
This was an attack carried out by Islamic State’s ISIS-K branch, an attack tragically similar to past terrorist attacks, including the Dubrovka theater in 2002, the Beslan school in 2004, twin suicide attacks in Moscow metro stations in 2010, a suicide bomber who killed 15 civilians in the St. Petersburg subway in 2017, and a suicide attack at the Russian Embassy in Kabul in 2022. In 2017, the CIA shared intelligence that enabled Russia to thwart yet another terrorist attack in St. Petersburg.
This last incident was another of Mr. Putin’s intelligence failures. The FSB failed to detect and preempt the threat. Once the attack took place, authorities failed to secure the perimeter as the attackers fled.
The FSB must now determine more about the network responsible for supplying the guns and money for the latest attack, as well as whether any insiders at Crocus City Mall might have assisted the killers.
Responsible for intelligence collection in the former Soviet Union, the FSB also failed to accurately assess the will and capacity of Ukraine to fight before Mr. Putin ordered his invasion in February 2022. FSB Fifth Service Director General Sergey Beseda, who is responsible for collecting intelligence on Ukraine, paid for that by serving time in Lefortovo Prison.
Terrorists conduct reconnaissance before they attack. That would likely have been the last best chance to detect the threat. In the U.S., we know to say something when we see something. Often, our alert citizens who trust state, federal and local law enforcement are the last line of defense.
In Russia, however, the FSB has no such bond with much of the population it purports to serve.
The FSB is focused on suppressing popular dissent, denying opposition voices the basic freedoms of speech and assembly. The FSB was particularly aggressive in the weeks leading up to Mr. Putin’s sham election last month, especially following the suspicious death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Even if the population trusted rather than feared the FSB, it would have been a monumental challenge for the security and intelligence apparatus in Moscow to detect an ISIS threat while devoting so many resources to the war in Ukraine.
The stakes could not be higher for Mr. Putin, who has built his reputation on stability and bringing order to Russia after the chaotic 1990s under Boris Yeltsin. Mr. Putin will likely continue to search for someone to blame for the terrorist attack, but the incontrovertible fact remains that Russia is in the crosshairs of ISIS-K, which operates in Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. ISIS is ruthlessly focused on exacting retribution for Russia’s alliance with Iran, its attacks on the Islamic State affiliate in Syria, and grievances among Muslims, especially in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
There is no indication this terrorist attack will threaten Mr. Putin’s hold on the Kremlin in the near term. But ISIS-K has shattered whatever was left of Mr. Putin’s Potemkin village illusion of security in Moscow.
Deceased Wagner paramilitary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin exposed Mr. Putin’s lies and propaganda about Russia’s barbaric war on Ukraine and paid for it with his life. The CIA might be banking on Russian security officials recognizing that Mr. Putin has left their country vulnerable to a real terrorist enemy while fighting a barbaric and unjust war of choice against fictitious Ukrainian “Nazis.”
In “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky wrote: “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to the point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
Maybe it’s time for the CIA to make another Russian-language recruitment video.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018.
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