Podcast: Is Putin Prioritizing Regime Survival Over Fighting Terrorism?

This transcript was not edited prior to publication:

Alexander Gabuev. Welcome to Carnegie Politika podcast. My name is Alexander Gabuev. I'm director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

About a month ago on March 22nd, a group of terrorists have penetrated a large concert hall just outside of Moscow, Crocus City Hall, they have murdered about dozens of people, have set the building off fire. The official death toll by Russian government is 150 people, and some people are still in a pretty bad condition. Then this group of terrorists have left the scene and moved westward towards the triangle borders between Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, and were captured by the FSB. The number of arrested suspects is growing. People are confessing that they've been hired by somebody from Ukraine and were promised a big reward once they reach Ukraine. And the official line of investigation points to Ukrainian trace and by extension to the trace of some Western involvement, most likely the US. To unpack this complex and very tragic, somewhat surreal story, I have Mark Galeotti, who is executive director of Mayak Intelligence, one of the most prominent specialists on Russian security services, but many, many more things Russia related. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Galeotti. Good to be here.

Gabuev. And Vera Mironova, who is an associate fellow at Davis Center at Harvard University, she is one of the most prominent scholar of radical Islam fighters, and somebody who has followed this tragedy very closely as well. Welcome, Vera.

Vera Mironova. Thank you.

Gabuev. Vera, I start probably with you. I think that based on what we know, it looks like there was a group of Tajik migrants living in Russia, radicalized while either outside of Russia in Tajikistan or while living in Russia by ISIS-K [ISIS-Khorasan]. And there are a lot of building blocks that make sense until we reach this very warred trace of Ukraine, United States, and so on. And we'll talk about that. But let's talk what's most likely is the backbone of this group of terrorists from Tajikistan connected by ISIS-K. I still remember when most of the terrorist attack on Russian soil were committed by fighters from Northern Caucasus, Chechens, Dagestanis, and others. And there is a stream now of new recruits from Central Asia, migrants. How do you explain that? What is the trend line here?

Mironova. So first, the North Caucasus ISIS members, they basically died down, most of them. So first of all, there are not that many. There were not that many. They were extremely loud, but not that many. They went to ISIS. And the number of survived North Caucasus fighters is very small, very small compared to Tajik ones or Central Asia in general. And Tajiks here, I would say the number of remaining guys from Central Asia, and their network are very limited. After the fall of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even the online presence of North Caucasus folks, it died down because the movement died down. But in Central Asia, it's up and running. And plus, Central Asian folks are fed through ISIS Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan at the same time. So North Caucasus guys would not deal with ISIS Afghanistan. It's just, no, it's not the level. But Afghanistan is very close to Tajikistan. And again, let's not forget a minor thing. We all know about the guy called Omar Shishani, right, who was a minister of war of ISIS. But he was killed in Iraq in, I think, 2016 or 2017. Who replaced him as a minister of war? It was Gulmurod Khalimov, a Tajik colonel of Oman from Dushanbe, who defected to ISIS. And there are a lot of, let's say, rumors, because again, we couldn't deny or confirm it, that he's alive and he's in Afghanistan. So the only legit thing I know, for example, is that on the last day of battle in Mosul, he was alive because he was seen by eye witnesses.

So, and Tajiks, Tajik government is insisting that he's in Afghanistan, which does make sense, because some of the Central Asian folks from Iraq and Syria will move there through Iran. So, they are up and running, they are blooming and everything is very active, plus Central Asia guys returned a lot of ISIS members, and the female ISIS members are not prosecuted, they are left just go free. So, the network is up and running.

Gabuev. ISIS-K right now is a group that's kind of stuck in northern Afghanistan. It's fighting Taliban. The terrorist attack, that they did right in the heart of Russia after the presidential election, is well-organized and very well executed in terms of timing. Well, the terrorists escaped, they managed to kill a lot of people and basically reached the border with Belarus and Ukraine undetected, though, at least FSB later chased them. It's pretty well planned. Does their organization have the reach? How do you explain that it is so well executed? And what is your impression about the guys? Are they professionals? How does it come about that it's just so well-planned?

Mironova. So, I would agree with you that everything about this attack is suspicious, it's weird, the timing particularly, but at the same time, we should not forget that it's not like the first one even this year, it's the sixth one this year, executed by Tajiks, tried to be executed by Tajiks in the world. So, there were two attacks in Germany, I think, that were stopped. Both of them were Tajiks. I think they were trying to bomb something on Christmas Eve. Then there was a successful one in Istanbul, then there was one in Tehran. And so, if you look from the ISIS side, right, if you're studying terrorism, it's just one from the list. The question is why, after elections, is timing thing, yeah, it's weird, plus, like, how did that happen? And I guess it's more to Russian experts, like on security in Russia. For me, it's also very weird that, come on, it's much harder to catch two Tajiks in Germany than it is to catch them at that kind of a big event, especially when the US publicly told everyone, “Guys, there is something being prepared”. From the ISIS point of view, it's just one in a list of attacks, and there are more, I'm sure they're planning more. And I think there was someone arrested recently. Yeah, actually, yeah, there was a Tajik arrested recently somewhere in Europe, again, for preparing an attack. So, from that point of view, it doesn't sound that weird.

Gabuev. But I totally agree with you, Vera, that the list of very strange things about this attack is long. Mark, how would you explain, let's start with this kind of warning. The US government came out publicly, saying that we know that there is something being prepared in Russia, most likely in Moscow, we warn our citizens not to go to public places and so on. And a day before that, they have told the FSB and the Russian security apparatus. And now with the details emerging in the media, we know that they said, like, oh, it's ISIS-K. And Crocus City Hall was also featured among the potential locations for this terrorist attack. Did the Russians just ignore it in your view or how do you explain that? And then we can go into other very strange things about that attack.

Galeotti. Sure. I think it's a combination of bad luck and bad politics. I mean, before anything else, we must acknowledge, that we need to have some caution about the various tales. Yes, the Russians are saying, “Oh, it was very, very general warnings, [USA] didn't give us anything to go on”. Whereas the Americans clearly are going to talk up just how specific it was. So let's just be careful, because the interesting thing is actually the very clear warning came out earlier in the month and only told American citizens in Moscow just to be careful for a period of 48 hours. And that seems to have coincided with an abortive terrorist attack on a synagogue in, I think it was Kaluga. So I think it's possible for the Russians to have thought, well, maybe the Americans were onto something, but it was clearly that. More to the point, look, I think one has to acknowledge that there's probably going to be a different response at two different levels from the professionals. And there is some evidence that [something was being orchestrated] not at Crocus, but particularly within the Moscow ring road. In other words, within the only part of Russia that they really care about.

There had been heightened security measures. But on the other hand, politically, I think one of the reasons why Putin came out, so foolishly, just before the attack and criticized the American warning, this is a man who himself would, I'm sure, have no qualms about using a fake warning of a terrorist attack to try and have some kind of political impact. This came after all just before the elections. Election turnout was one of the big Russian concerns. One could imagine if you happen to be of a certain paranoid mentality, thinking that this is intended to scare people away from a location where there's going to be large numbers of people, such as a polling station, it's clearly an attempt by the Americans to undermine the elections and make Russians feel insecure, which always plays against Putin. So I think it's a combination of things. I think it's the fact, that Putin himself was unable to believe that there could be an altruistic move from the Americans. The steer came, therefore, down from above not to take this too seriously. The synagogue attack allowed them to think, well, probably that's what the Americans were [talking] about. And so although some security measures were taken, it clearly was nothing like the level it needed to be.

Gabuev. What's the constant focus of the FSB in the last two years? Obviously, on war in Ukraine, so they are busy trying to catch Ukrainian spies, people who collaborate with Ukrainians, managing the opposition, managing part of the opposition, that are just anti-war or Alexei Navalny supporters, and part of the opposition that are providing targeting data for Ukraine or doing some acts of sabotage inside Russia. A lot of resources and attention, including from the very senior leadership, were diverted to that, and not as much time has been spent on terrorism.

Galeotti. Yeah, up to a point. I mean, on the one hand, yes, there's a real problem in that the second service of the FSB, which is the very ponderously named “Service for protection of the Constitution”, which of course means political policing and counterterrorism. Because it combines those two roles, inevitably, the current focus to the point of monomania on political opposition and Ukrainian sabotage, of course, it gets in the way. Now, that said, we haven't at least heard of there being, for example, major transfers of people from the anti-terrorism directorate into the other bits of the service. But yes, the thing is that as long as the Ukrainians are continuing to mount sabotage attacks inside Russia, wherever possible, recruiting, coercing, co-opting Russians to carry them out. That clearly is the terrorism focus. And when you combine that with the fact, that actually the FSB finds dealing with Central Asian terrorists very difficult, North Caucasus, they know pretty well. They have networks of informants. They have analysts who really do live and breathe this stuff. Central Asia, it's been a lot more difficult. It's hard to actually place informants within Central Asian migrant communities, especially when they're often recruited from the same village or whatever. And they end up having to rely on Central Asian intelligence services, which are very, very dubious source of information between unprofessionalism and just downright incompetence. So I think for all of these reasons, it's a very hard target for the Russians. It takes resources. Attempts to get extra resources now are all being channeled towards the political opposition and the supposed Ukrainian threat. Quite difficult, at least before the Crocus attack for someone to say we need some more resources because we need to deal with these pesky Central Asians.

Gabuev. Vera, how much does this style of the attack match ISIS-K pattern? What was surprising to me is that you would assume that people will not try to run away, but kind of commit suicide and so on. Is that just a misconception?

Mironova. No, I absolutely agree with you that it's also very weird that in such attack, someone [from the terrorist group] survived. So basically, everything till the attack and attack itself, I don't have any questions about that. But everything that happened after the attack, that's when the weird stuff comes up. So the attack is exactly how it's done. The guys were professional the way they're holding a weapon. There is no question about it. The way they did it, you know, also is a very ISIS-y kind of approach. But then, after that attack, that's when weird stuff happens. Why they survived, trying to run in the same car. What on Earth? Not even talking about the Ukraine connection, that Russia is looking for everywhere, under every stone.

Gabuev. Can we be sure that the guys filmed by FSB as captured and tortured visibly, who are confessing in the courtroom and on the tapes taken by FSB are the same guys that have been executing people in Crocus City Hall?

Mironova. Yeah, I agree that it's a very big problem of Russia that like, was there a hardcore propaganda on everything? There is absolutely nothing with trust coming from Russian media anymore. I don't think we could trust anything anymore.

Gabuev. Because I don't know, Mark, Vera, have you seen any kind of matches done by AI face recognition algorithms. The video bits, that we have, mostly by survivors. They mostly filmed these guys from the back and from far away, for obvious reasons. Are they matching the photos of the terrorists [provided by the FBS]?

Galeotti. Yeah, as I understand it, the quality of the footage is not good enough for facial recognition to be anywhere near suitable. But people have, for example, looked a lot at things like the details of clothes, apparent height, that kind of thing. And it seems to match up. And unfortunately, I mean, as Vera says, we absolutely can't trust the official sources. It seems to match up, seems to be about the best kind of reassurance we've got.

Gabuev. Okay. Everything that happens is strange. Vera, can you give me a non-conspiratorial explanation for that? Like these are the same people. These are people who killed a lot of Russians and others in the Crocus City Hall. They hoop on a car, they run away in  the direction of Belarus-Ukraine border. Why?

Mironova. I mean, they need to run somewhere, right? I could not imagine myself being in their shoes and what I would do, but probably not that. They thought they could go and hide in the safe house for quite some time and then peacefully leave. Not driving for six hours in the same car to any border. It's super weird. I would just find a safe house and stay there.

Gabuev. Okay. It's hard for me to imagine that people would cross the border with Belarus, like which is possible still, but then what do they do there? It's also a police state.

Mironova. [The could] go to Europe, I guess.

Gabuev. I don't know how this border crossing to Poland could work, given how fortified they are, since the artificial migration crisis instigated by Lukashenko following 2020. So it's unclear. Okay. But somehow there is this bizarre way of explaining this. Ukraine got somehow involved. And the Ukrainian services have demined their section of the border and have prepared a corridor for the terrorists to cross into Ukraine, which leaves a question what happens to the Russian section of the border, which is also heavily policed by the border guards and the military, and the military police, and everybody else. So that's unclear.

Well, Mark, do you think that the Russian senior leadership like Patrushev or Putin believe in something like that? Or like it's clear for everybody that it's cooked up?

Galeotti. This is always the biggest question. It's just what on Earth does Putin know and believe? All we can really say is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence to suggest, that certainly Putin has been exposed to the opinion that it has nothing to do with the Ukrainians, that there are senior officials who in meetings with him have expressed that view. Now whether he just simply shrugs that off as proof of their essential naivete, I don't know. Given that Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council, also believes that Russian psychics once read Madeleine Albright's dreams, I'm not really willing to put any kind of belief past him. So I'm sure there are people within the system who believe it. But on the other hand, what is really quite interesting is if one looks at some of the Telegram channels and the other outlets that tend to be more used as the voices of the security apparatus, there does seem to be a slight discomfort, a slight embarrassment about the whole Ukraine trace story. I mean, of course, everyone is falling behind, you know, behind this line because you know that's what you have to do in a system like this. The vigour with which the Ukraine story is projected tends to be inversely proportionate to the actual expertise of whoever's giving it. So the toxic TV-commentators will happily state it as fact, others are still being a little bit more cautious.

So I think in some ways it doesn't really matter. The point is that this is a regime, which will use any crisis, any situation, to demonise the Ukrainians and if they can throw in CIA and MI6, that's just a bonus. In terms of how strongly they believe it, particularly given the American warning, within the professional realm, it's going to be a little bit harder to sustain that point of view. But politically, that doesn't matter. The Kremlin line is what dominates.

Gabuev. It's interesting that Russia Field Study group that does polling and some focus groups has checked, and I think more than 50% of Russians believe what the government says. So Vera, how do you assess that?

Mironova. That people believe what government says?

Gabuev. Yes, people believe this, like more than 50% of Russians. And again, it's just one poll about that the Ukrainians are somehow behind a major terrorist attack in Russia.

Mironova. Well, I believe that they do believe because I'm reading a lot of Russian propaganda Telegram channels daily. And yeah, they're very professional people who work to make people believe. I have relatives in Moscow who believe that.

Gabuev. I unfortunately do too, not relative, but people I know who are saying like, “Oh, we'll never get to the bottom of that. They hate us so much that it's totally plausible”. And then you cherry pick some mean tweets from Ukrainians, like tweeted out early on, like totally understandable. The emotional state of many Ukrainians, who want all Russians to burn in hell. And that's put out as proof that Ukraine was behind it.

Mironova. I just wanted to add, I don't know if it's a comment or a question to Mark, that talking about like what about internal FSB. As a person who studies counterterrorism, I’m afraid that, following the logic that Mark just explained, it's going to make the counterterrorism office like very bad. Let’s assume they are professionals, who are actual counterterrorism experts in the office of counterterrorism. And then right now they are making them all look for Ukraine link, right? And who is not looking for it good enough, they would be fired or something. If they're not seriously looking into that. I would imagine the best professionals, who understand that it's all not legit and who want to do their job, the people who are protecting the country. They would try to resign or move to another office because it would be very toxic to work in the counterterrorism office. So can we assume that in the long term, it could weaken the counterterrorism office?

Galeotti. I mean, I'm not sure for the simple reason that they have had a lot of experience in dealing with moderately lunatic political requirements. I mean, one can go all the way back to the killing of Boris Nemtsov, when one looks at what happened within the prosecutor's office. And you first of all had actually the current prosecutor general Krasnov, who was appointed and as soon as he discovered that there was a Chechen connection, he was removed from the position and shall we say a more politically attuned prosecutor was put in place to ensure the right answer. It didn't negatively impact Krasnov's career and generally I think we have seen this, that in some ways everyone knows the game. The Kremlin is not really interested in detailed personalia within the office of counterterrorism. Instead, as long as no one actually gets in the way, they are going to manufacture whatever evidence they need to give whatever prosecution is necessary. They will beat, electrocute and suffocate the necessary evidence out of whoever they have to. And people will do what they must do and then get back to their, shall we say, their day job. I think people have accustomed themselves. If this had been 2012. When there was still a very different, you know, actually, I think I would say the Putin regime was very much in transition at that point. Then we might have seen that. I don't think there's any naive innocence currently within the FSB these days. So, they'll generate what they need to, and then they'll get back to their job, and they will probably justify it on the principle of precisely that they're doing an important job. Rationalization is, after all, a very powerful engine of human behavior.

Gabuev. Vera, but then also a question to you. Seeing what people have seen in terms of torture, will that be a deterrent to the community that's prone to radicalization inside Russia in a way, or that might galvanize the hatred towards the Russians? I don't know whether people need more reasons if they are radicalized by ISIS propaganda, but how fertile is the ground that's producing this radicalists inside the communities?

Mironova. I would say it would increase the hate towards Russia, including among people who are not pro-ISIS now. But they could justify ISIS attacks. But also, I think from the ISIS organizational point of view, now they have a much more legit case saying, “Yeah, guys, that's why you don't surrender. You should have fought to the end”. Because if they surrendered, it's super weird.

Galeotti. Yeah, I very much agree. And I'd add that in some ways, the real problem is not just what happens to those particular prisoners, it's actually the much wider social backlash that has been created. I think part of the reason why Putin tried to generate this rather bizarre notion that you could have jihadist trigger pullers somehow being backed by Ukrainians is that he was trying to avoid this because the Russian economy desperately needs these Central Asian laborers at a time of labor scarcity. You can’t just simply create this kind of moral panic and not expect the social backlash that we're already seeing. I think it's not just what the security forces do, it's what Russian society does that may well push further radicalization.

Gabuev. Final question to both of you. I remember Beslan, Nord-Ost, like these big terrorist attacks very well, half Ossetian. So Beslan strikes very close home, several relatives have been affected, several more distant relatives have been killed. It’s very special for Ossetia, but it's also very special for Russia. And that was used then to abolish direct elections of the governors and the regime used the terrorist attack to become more hands-on repressive. And we all know the trajectory. What's your expectation? Will that terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall have a lasting effect on the Russian society and what it could be? And part of the reason why I ask is that a month have passed and talking to friends and contacts in Russia, I feel that it was like ages ago. It's somehow a very distant memory. I just cannot reconcile the magnitude of that and how people seem to have moved on.

Mironova. I mean, I would say they could just change everything to Anti-Terrorist Operation and tighten the screws even more, including for support of terrorism. Right now, there is a law, that prevents people from criticizing the Army, but now it could be widen to prosecution for supporting terrorism, if you again said something undesired. So, yeah, I mean, absolutely there is still a way to go for them to tighten the screws and they would do it.

Galeotti. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd say that this gives the state yet another larger club with which to beat anyone who looks even sort of faintly dissenting. That before, it was one thing to be a terrorist and supporting those nasty Ukrainians, but now you're supporting terrorists who kill Russians at the Crocus Hall. So, I think we could expect a lot more cases in which people who happen to share the wrong Facebook post or scroll something on a wall are now being sort of tarred with the terrorist supporting brush. So, it helps an escalation there. But again, I think in this case, it's much an escalation that the state was going to have anyway. It was just waiting for a suitable excuse. But the only other point I'd make about this issue you raise that it seems to have receded into history very quickly, which I absolutely agree with.

I think it's precisely, it's a response to crisis and impotence. That sense of there are more terrible things have happened. You don't want to live your life constantly worried that someone is going to shoot you, blow you up, or whatever else. There's nothing really much you can do about it. So you basically ignore it as far as you can. It's a fairly common response to this kind of crisis. And in some ways, it's actually perversely the best response. Because the alternative is much more of a mobilization. As people get up in arms and they start to inform even more on their neighbors and lynch a tragic taxi driver or whatever else. But again, I think it says something about the fundamental malaise currently within Russian society.

Gabuev. Yeah, it's unfortunately the same mechanism that prevents people from asking questions on, oh, why on Earth are our oil processing plants being blown up? And why for some time there were no planes in Moscow on time because Ukrainians were striking the Moscow air hub all the time? Or why people are fleeing Belgorod and just not connect the dots and be up in arms against what started that? It's a grim, depressing, but very realistic assessment. I thank you very much, Vera Mironova and Mark Galeotti, for bringing this dose of clear-eyed depression into my life as if I have not enough. And I wish everybody to stay safe. Thank you for being here with us.

Galeotti. Thank you.

Mironova. Thank you.