Former U.S. officials say Russia probably could have stopped ISIS-K attack

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The U.S. likely provided Russia with enough information to help avert the recent ISIS-K attack on a Moscow concert that killed more than 130 people, a former American military official said Sunday, as questions swirl about whether the Kremlin knew the assault was coming and allowed it to happen.

Retired Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command, told ABC’s “This Week” program that he believes it’s likely Russia had the opportunity to stop the attack based on the warnings it received from the U.S. One such warning came on March 8, two weeks before the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, which explicitly warned that extremists wanted to target concerts in Moscow.

The March 22 ISIS-K attack came during a rock concert at the Moscow venue.

“I think we gave them pretty precise information,” Gen. McKenzie said Sunday. “You know, the problem that ISIS-K has and all these organizations have is when they wanted to conduct an attack abroad, they have to communicate and that communication is often something that we have the opportunity to listen to” and learn about.

“I think there was probably good opportunity for the Russians to have averted this attack had they actually listened to the material that was presented to them,” he said.

Analysts say that intelligence sharing between the U.S. and Russia in such instances is tricky, and that Washington must be cautious about giving an enemy any information they could use to advance their own interests. Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator under President Trump, recently told The Washington Times that “adversaries will often use counterterrorism as a pretext” for military action, domestic political crackdowns, or other activities.

In this case, some Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for the ISIS-K attack, despite no evidence backing up those allegations. It’s possible that the Kremlin wanted to pin the assault on Ukraine as further justification for its war against Kyiv.

There are other ways in which Moscow could take advantage of the attack. One of them is by potentially cracking down on social media such as Telegram, which has been used extensively by pro-Ukraine outfits and by Russian critics of the Kremlin war effort.

In an interview with state-controlled media published last week, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov criticized Telegram founder Pavel Durov and said the app “is increasingly becoming a tool in the hands of terrorists, being used for terrorist purposes.”

There is no direct evidence showing that Mr. Putin or other top Kremlin officials knew the Crocus City Hall attack was coming. But evidence seems to point in that direction.

The London-based investigative organization Dossier Center last week raised a host of new questions about Russia’s possible advance knowledge. The group said in a detailed report that “Russian intelligence services closely monitored” ISIS-K in the run-up to the March 22 attack on the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow.

“A few days before the terrorist attack, members of the [Russian] Security Council received a warning that Tajik citizens could be used in terrorist attacks on Russian territory,” the Dossier Center said.

Nine more people were detained in Tajikistan last Friday because of suspected contact with the ISIS-K gunmen.

The Dossier Center report also raised questions about how long it took law enforcement to respond to the scene and why some of the suspects were able to flee “despite the abundance of CCTV cameras in Moscow and on nearby highways.”

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow also warned of exactly the type of attack seen on March 22.

“The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,” the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a brief March 8 statement on its website.