OPINION:
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Terrorists shot up a Moscow concert hall on the night of March 22, killing at least 137 people. The ISIS-K terror network, based in Afghanistan, quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Putin regime is eager to blame it on the United States, the United Kingdom and, of course, Ukraine.
The U.S. intelligence community had about two weeks’ warning of an attack in Russia and warned both U.S. citizens there and Russian authorities who ignored them. Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly dismissed the warnings as “provocative” and an attempt to “intimidate and destabilize our society.” The attack came four days before he “won” reelection in a landslide, having murdered or jailed his political opponents.
Why would ISIS-K attack Russia, and why is Russia so eager to blame us and Ukraine?
Like all Islamist terror groups, ISIS-K uses revenge for any injury, real or imagined, to justify its actions. Russia’s 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan is more than enough. Russia’s second war against Muslim Chechnya, which ended in 2009, was Mr. Putin’s war. The March 22 concert hall attack was a huge embarrassment to the Putin regime and the FSB, its security service. Nevertheless, without missing a beat, Mr. Putin’s disinformation campaign tried to turn it to his advantage in Ukraine.
Three days after the attack, Mr. Putin said, “We know that the crime was perpetrated by radical Islamists.” But who gave the order for it? Mr. Putin said, “Who benefits from this? This atrocity can only be a link in a whole series of attempts by those who, since 2014, have been at war with our country using the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv as their instrument.”
The U.S., U.K. and Ukraine have denied any responsibility for the attack.
Mr. Putin’s comments were followed by an echoing statement from Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB. Mr. Bortnikov’s comment was unusual. He is, of course, one of Mr. Putin’s closest allies in the regime but is almost unknown to the press. His public comment on the attack — the inability to prevent, a huge failure by his organization — may be nothing more than an effort to save his own neck.
Soon after the attack, some of the alleged perpetrators were caught in Russia and Tajikistan. At one point, the Russians claimed that the people they caught were trying to flee toward Ukraine. With most of the Russian army between them and freedom?
Some of those caught by Russian security services have reportedly been tortured. Nine captured in Tajikistan are reportedly Tajiks who have some connection to ISIS-K. But that’s not the interesting part of this drama.
What is interesting is that the Russians are continuing the disinformation campaign that began before their 2014 conquest of the Crimean Peninsula and continued in the aftermath of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage in September 2022. Their single-mindedness is instructive.
Remember that Russia invaded Crimea with its “little green men” — Russian soldiers in uniform without any markings of their national identity. Russia pretended that it was only trying to protect the Russian-speaking people of Crimea. Before it annexed Crimea in 2014, Russia held a Potemkin referendum in which the annexation was overwhelmingly approved.
Since then, in 2022, Russia has held other referendums in Ukraine in which voters supposedly chose to join Russia just as Crimea purportedly did.
To paraphrase a quote attributed to Stalin, it doesn’t matter who votes; it matters who counts the votes.
The March 22 attack isn’t the first for which Mr. Putin has blamed the U.S. and its allies. In 2022, when sabotage of the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline severely disrupted Russian gas exports to Western Europe, Mr. Putin almost immediately blamed the U.S. and its allies — as well as Ukraine — for blowing up the pipeline.
Both the U.S. and Ukraine denied any responsibility for the act. Sweden and Denmark conducted inconclusive investigations of the pipeline explosions. U.S. intelligence officials later said that the sabotage was traceable to a pro-Ukrainian group, but there was no evidence of Ukrainian government involvement.
Russia has used the March 22 terror attack as an excuse to ramp up its attacks on Ukraine. It has concentrated its attacks on Ukraine’s civilian power plants and military. In one day, Russia reportedly unleashed 38 missiles, 75 airstrikes and 98 attacks from rocket launchers.
On March 30, the U.K.’s defense intelligence agency released a negative report on Ukraine’s effort to stop Russian advances in the east, saying that Russia had significantly more personnel and munitions in the area than Ukraine and was able to replenish its forces by 30,000 troops a month. Mr. Putin won’t negotiate with Ukraine while he is winning the war.
Any hope that Ukraine can win the war Russia is waging against it — or come out of it with its country relatively intact — is fading quickly. Mr. Putin has no reason to negotiate for peace when he is winning.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying and probably failing to formulate a bill for aid to Ukraine that Republican opponents will accept. Do those Republicans want to be blamed if Mr. Putin wins in Ukraine? Ronald Reagan would be ashamed of them.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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