So much for the Russian President’s iron hand….
The American’s warned him that a terroist attack was coming….
There are over 130 poeople dead and over 140 hurt….
This is in a Communist Country…..
And?
This had NOTHING to do with Ukraine……
A conflict his country is ALSO waging…..
As with others?
Things are actually NOT under his control dictaorship or Not…
Putin does HAVE his hands full….
He also made no reference to the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack at the Crocus City concert hall on Friday and which Putin denounced repeatedly as an enemy throughout Russia’s long military intervention in Syria. In 2017, Putin declared victory over the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Putin instead used his five-minute televised address on Saturday to emphasize that the four direct perpetrators were “moving toward Ukraine” when they were detained and that “a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.” He did not directly accuse Ukraine, which has denied any involvement, but a reference to “Nazis” — his usual label for the Ukrainian government — made clear that he was blaming Kyiv….
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The strike occurred just five days after his triumphant claim of a new six-year term in an election that was heavily controlled by the Kremlin and widely denounced abroad as failing to meet democratic standards. Putin used the election to assert huge public support for his policies.
On Sunday, Russia observed a day of mourning as people left flowers at a memorial outside the concert hall, which the company that owns the destroyed facility has vowed to rebuild. Russia’s Investigative Committee said 62 of the victims have been identified, with DNA testing being used to identify others recovered from the burned site….
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Those hundreds of thousands of Russians who are now killing on Ukrainian land would surely be enough to stop any terrorists. And if the Russians are ready to silently die in ‘Crocus Halls’ and not ask any questions to their security and intelligence agencies, then Putin will try to turn such a situation to his personal advantage again.”
When Russia was hit by terrorist attacks in the past, Putin often accused the West of stoking them, most notably after the Beslan school siege of 2004, which left over 330 hostages dead. Then, he claimed the assault had been engineered by those who wanted to weaken Russia and aimed for its “disintegration.”
Analysts said the Russian leader would almost certainly seek to do so this time, as well. A lead Kremlin propagandist, Margarita Simonyan, the head of state broadcaster RT, was already claiming on Saturday that the Americans’ warning ahead of the attack indicated they were participants in preparing it.
The former U.S. officials and analysts said rhetoric blaming Ukraine and the collective West was likely to continue and could lead to further crackdowns as Putin seeks to galvanize his nation for a protracted war.
Others said the bloodshed raised eerie echoes of an era Putin thought was long behind him — during his first two terms as president in the 2000s, when Russia was wracked by deadly terrorist attacks that he later used to justify harsh responses by the military and security services and to strengthen his rule….
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The former U.S. officials said the potential terrorist threat emanating from Central Asia had become a blind spot of the Putin regime while it focused on pursuing political enemies in Russia and on threats resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, including drone strikes and cross-border attacks.
“They have not prioritized the threat from ISIS that includes many Central Asians,” said Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer who has specialized in counterterrorism and Central Asia and serves as an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. “Thousands of Central Asians joined the Islamic State, and many returned from Syria and Iraq after the loss of the caliphate. A lot of them rose to very senior positions and had come from either the army, the police or the intelligence services of a number of Central Asian states.”
“The Central Asian element of ISIS had always targeted Russia,” London added. “I don’t think there is shock and surprise in Russian intelligence that there was an issue. It just simply wasn’t sufficiently high on their agenda.”…