{"id":7896,"date":"2024-03-23T19:18:08","date_gmt":"2024-03-23T19:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/23\/deadly-moscow-attack-shatters-putins-security-promise-to-russian-people\/"},"modified":"2024-03-23T19:18:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-23T19:18:08","slug":"deadly-moscow-attack-shatters-putins-security-promise-to-russian-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/23\/deadly-moscow-attack-shatters-putins-security-promise-to-russian-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly Moscow Attack Shatters Putin\u2019s Security Promise to Russian People"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Deadly<\/div>


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Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term as president with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.<\/p>\n

Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia\u2019s deadliest terror attack in 20 years.<\/p>\n

The attack, which killed at least 133 people at a suburban Moscow concert hall, was a blow to Mr. Putin\u2019s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That\u2019s especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to the nation\u2019s survival \u2014 and which he cast as his top priority in the aftermath of last Sunday\u2019s election.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,\u201d Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. \u201cAnd suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there\u2019s this demonstrative humiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took Mr. Putin more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan in the country\u2019s south that claimed 334 lives. When he did, Mr. Putin said nothing about the mounting evidence that the attack was committed by a branch of the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Instead, he hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and said the assailants acted \u201cjust like the Nazis,\u201d who \u201conce carried out massacres in the occupied territories\u201d\u2014 evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur common duty now \u2014 our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country \u2014 is to be together in one formation,\u201d Mr. Putin said at the end of his five-minute speech, trying to conflate the fight against terrorism with his invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The question is how much of the Russian public will buy into his argument. They might question whether Mr. Putin, with his invasion of Ukraine and his conflict with the West, truly has Russia\u2019s security interests at heart \u2014 or is he woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.<\/p>\n

The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist act is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings, and tightening security, he dismissed them as \u201cprovocative statements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,\u201d Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia\u2019s domestic intelligence agency, referring to Western warnings. In the aftermath of Friday\u2019s attack, some of his exiled critics have cited that response as evidence of the president\u2019s detachment from Russia\u2019s true security concerns.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kynev said he believes that many Russians are now in \u201cshock,\u201d because \u201crestoring order has always been Vladimir Putin\u2019s calling card.\u201d But given the Kremlin\u2019s efficacy in cracking down on dissent and on the news media, he predicted that the political consequences of the attack would be limited, as long as the violence is not repeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, our society has gotten used to keeping quiet about inconvenient topics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack, and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin\u2019s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to convince the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.<\/p>\n

Olga Skabeyeva, a state television host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had found assailants \u201cwho would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT television network, wrote that reports of Islamic State responsibility amounted to a \u201cbasic sleight of hand\u201d by the American news media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term as president with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control. Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/23\/multimedia\/23moscow-attack-putin-analysis-czqm\/23moscow-attack-putin-analysis-czqm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2601,11100,3098,124,5316,3979,1461,2441,12004],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7898,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7896\/revisions\/7898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}