2024-04-04 08:33:46
More than two weeks before the terrorists carried out the bloody attack in the Moscow region, the US government notified Russian officials that the popular Crocus City Hall concert hall was a potential target, according to familiar US officials, cited by the Washington Post and BTA. .
The U.S. designation of the Crocus City Hall concert hall as a potential target – something that had not been reported before – raises new questions about why Russian authorities did not take stronger preventive measures at the site where gunmen killed more than 140 souls. A branch of Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Russia in 20 years. US officials have publicly said the group, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, “bears full responsibility”, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to shift the blame to Ukraine.
The attack further damaged the image of strength and security that the Russian leader is trying to instill, and revealed fundamental weaknesses in the national security apparatus, which has been consumed by the more than two-year war in Ukraine, the American publication writes. According to analysts and observers of Russian politics, Russian special services are more concerned with silencing political dissent and opposition to the president than preventing terrorist plots, notes the Washington Post.
The Russian leader himself publicly rejected the US warnings just three days before the March 22 attack, calling them “outright blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society”, the paper said.
A Kremlin spokesman did not respond to a Washington Post inquiry about the leaked information about the Crocus City Hall warning. Yesterday, however, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, told reporters in Moscow, quoted by the state-run Interfax news agency, that the information the US shared was “too general and did not allow us to fully identify those who committed this terrible crime”.
Naryshkin indicated that in response to receiving the American intelligence, Russia “took appropriate measures to prevent” the attack, according to the Washington Post.
The spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, today called the publication of the “Washington Post” that the USA warned Russia of a possible terrorist attack in the hall “Crocus City Hall” an informational provocation, TASS reported.
“We are already so used to the American informational provocations and their refusal of their own statements that I want to ask you to receive from the American side factual material on this topic. In other words, when and to whom did they pass on this information,” he said at a press conference the speaker.