Of Course Ukraine Was Behind the Moscow Terror Attack
The only question now is how much of the operation was directed by the US and UK
On March 22, 2024, a group of Tajik terrorists infiltrated a popular Moscow concert venue called Crocus City Hall. Four hours later, 140 people were dead and hundreds more wounded, and the venue itself lay in ashes.
The official narrative coming out of Washington and London is that the operation was entirely the work of Islamic State Khorasan Province, or “ISIS-K”, an offshoot of the Islamic State based in Central Asia. The group’s name refers to the Khoresan region that encompasses modern day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and parts of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
The Russians, however, remain unconvinced. They see the hand of Ukraine behind the operation. Moreover, Russian leaders such as Putin and Medvedev and the head of the Russian security services (FSB) Bortnikov have hinted that the US and UK may have also had a role.
Alexander Bortnikov, the director of Russia’s FSB security service, said the number of accomplices in the attack would be larger than the 11 reported to have already been detained, and that Western intelligence services and Ukraine needed the attack to “sow panic” in Russia.
RIA news agency quoted Bortnikov as saying Ukrainian intelligence services had contributed to the attack, and that it was “known” that Ukraine had trained militants in the Middle East.
Indeed, the evidence that Ukraine executed the terrorist attack in Moscow is overwhelming. Moreover, there are also plenty of signs that indicate the operation was done under the direction or at the behest of the United States.
And for those who may think that the US or CIA would never order (or pay for) the slaughter of civilians, I would ask you to remember that the US/CIA hired the Georgian snipers who murdered over 100 innocent kids during the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2014.
What follows below is an elucidation of the many factors that prove the US-Ukrainian responsibility for the Moscow terror tragedy.
Setting the Stage — Signals from US Officials
The fingerprints of American involvement go back a long way, and start with the formation of ISIS-K itself. But for me, one of the most damning pieces of evidence is the fact that a year ago, the highest ranking US military official instructed Ukrainian special forces operators to “slit the throats” of Russian civilians.
Milley’s bloodthirsty orders
In early 2023, the top military officials from the US and its allies met with their Ukrainian counterparts in Wiesbaden, Germany. The purpose of the meeting was to conduct a series of war games in preparation for the planned “Counteroffensive”. That battlefield operation was to later fail completely, but military manoeuvres on the battlefield were not the only thing that the generals discussed.
Covert, “asymmetric” operations were also on the agenda.
At one point, Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with Ukrainian special operations troops, who were working with American Green Berets. His aim was to inspire the Ukrainians ahead of planned “operations in enemy-controlled areas”.
“There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night,” Milley said, according to an official with knowledge of the event. “You gotta get back there, and create a [terror] campaign behind the lines.”
Note that Milley says “no Russian” — he does not say “no Russian soldier”. This is because Milley, as head of US armed services, was aware of the Neocon strategy which he was pledged to support — namely, that of inspiring unrest, fear and anger among the general Russian population so a regime change could be engineered, a so-called “Moscow Maidan” that would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin.
Milley’s point was to exhort the Ukrainians to ensure that “no Russian” civilian felt safe. This means, almost by definition, conducting terrorism campaigns.
Nuland’s “nod and a wink”
Prior to her abrupt exit from the State Department, Victoria Nuland served as the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the number 3 post at the State Department.
Nuland’s involvement in Ukraine was a personal one dating back decades. Like her boss Antony Blinken, Nuland is a descendant of Ukrainian Jews. And like Blinken, Nuland’ grandparents told stories about having to emigrate to “escape the Russians”. I am sure that she was determined to make sure that her ancestral home near Odessa would not fall back into Russian hands.
In addition to her Ukrainian roots, Nuland is also a devoted Neocon and thus committed to the dissolution — if not total destruction — of the Russian Federation. In 1997, she directed a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force ominously called “Russia, its Neighbors and an Enlarging NATO”. Members of that task force included such Neocon warmongers as Stephen J. Hadley, William Kristol, Fred Hiatt, and Paul Wolfowitz.
Perhaps it was her passionately personal Russophobia that led her to make some ill-advised, cryptic remarks that contained thinly veiled threats to Russia and President Putin directly.
First, in January 2024, as she was about to get on a plane back to the US from Kiev, Nuland gave an impromptu press “gaggle” at which she said the following:
“I also leave with greater confidence that, even as Ukraine strengthens its defences, Mr Putin is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield, and Ukraine will make some very strong success this year”.
The following month, on February 22, 2024, Nuland gave a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Bill Gates-funded defense and national security think tank (and a CIA cutout). The occasion of her appearance was the two year anniversary of the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
Nuland, like Milley, also made reference to Ukraine’s conducting terrorist campaigns (“asymmetric warfare”):
“With the $60 billion supplemental that the administration has requested of Congress…Ukraine will be able to fight back in the east, but it will also be able to accelerate the asymmetric warfare that has been most effective…”
In addition, Nuland could not help but repeat her menacing words aimed at President Putin:
“And as I said in Kyiv three weeks ago, this supplemental funding will ensure Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year”.
One cannot help but notice that Nuland mentioned “nice” surprises in front of the press in Kiev, but felt free to call them “nasty” surprises speaking before a friendly crowd back home in Washington.
An explicit call for terrorism
When Nuland refers to asymmetric warfare and the resulting “surprises on the battlefield” she is being disingenuous. That is because asymmetric warfare does not take place on a battlefield.
Instead, according to Merriam Webster, asymmetric warfare “typically involves the use of unconventional weapons and tactics (such as those associated with guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks)”.
In fact, the Wikipedia page for “Asymmetric Warfare” has an entire section entitled “Terrorism” which states:
In the modern context, asymmetric warfare… is often defined as terrorism, though rarely by its practitioners or their supporters.
In other words, the old cliché holds true: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.
And while Washington believes that Ukraine is fighting for their freedom, and so “no holds are barred”, Russia sees operations such as the Moscow massacre as simple terrorism in its purest form.
The US incriminates itself
On Friday, March 22, 2024 gunman attacked the crowd of concert-goers in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall arena complex. The attack started around 8:00 PM Moscow time (7:00 PM CET).
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, at 7:55 PM CET, the White House issued a statement saying there was absolutely no Ukrainian involvement, and that it was all done by ISIS-K.
In fact, Russian forces on the ground had not even entered the building yet!
The National Security Council also said in no uncertain terms that Ukraine had nothing to do with the deadly concert attack.
“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
In fact, many of the media outlets such as CBS announced the White House assignation of blame to ISIS and their complete exoneration of Ukraine simultaneously with the announcement of the attack itself — often in the same “Breaking News” article:
“A U.S. official tells CBS News the U.S. has intelligence confirming the Islamic State’s claims of responsibility”
These “definitive” statements were issued 55 minutes into an attack that lasted almost 4 hours.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department analyst, said that it was virtually impossible for the US to draw the conclusions it did at that time:
“We still don’t know how many shooters there were. We don’t know what the weapons were. We don’t know what the firearms were. We don’t know what the explosives were. We don’t know how many were actually killed, how many wounded, but yet the US State Department knows that it was not Ukraine. And [this statement] comes on a day that one of the CIA propaganda outlets came out and said that the Biden White House and the intelligence community were very concerned about what they call ‘brazen’, unwarranted attacks by Ukraine,” he said.
Indeed, on March 22 the Financial Times reported that:
“The US has long been wary of Ukraine hitting targets inside Russia itself, fearing it could provoke retaliation by Russia. It has banned Ukraine from using US-donated weapons on targets inside Russian territory. But Kyiv has geared up the production of its own weapons, including long-range attack drones, which aren’t subject to that restriction”.
The report says that US officials worry that “Russia could retaliate by targeting energy infrastructure the West relies on, such as the CPC pipeline that transports oil from Kazakhstan to global markets”.
“Methinks they doth protest too much”
The fact that the US had such statements at the ready when the attack occurred indicates that the Americans knew about the attack in advance.
It also indicates that it was important for the US and its allies to “get out in front” of the story and to “control the narrative” and and convince as many people as possible that both they and Ukraine are blameless.
What did the US know, and when did they know it?
Aside from the statements seeking to place blame on ISIS-K and deflect blame from Ukraine (and themselves), there are other facts
The US warned of an attack in Moscow by “extremists”
On March 7, 2024, the US Embassy in Moscow issued the following “Security Alert”:
“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”.
Canada and the United Kingdom immediately issued similar warnings to their citizens in Russia.
The specificity of the alert is worthy of note. The alert specified a time frame (next 48 hours) as well as a venue type (concerts). SOP for the State Department in such matters indicates that this alert would not have been issued unless the US had specific and credible information.
Did the US evade its “Duty to Warn” Russian authorities?
Along with their exculpatory statements which were issued contemporaneously with the terror attack itself, the Americans also were quick to declare that they had warned the Russians.
A U.S. official tells CBS News the U.S. has intelligence confirming the Islamic State’s claims of responsibility, and that they have no reason to doubt those claims. The U.S. official also confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence to Russia about a potential attack under the intelligence community’s Duty to Warn requirement.
The Russians, however, claim that they had not received any actionable intelligence from the Americans, and the only info they received — informally — was “of a general nature”.
As The New York Times explained why specifics were not provided by the Americans:
The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented U.S. officials from sharing any information about the plot beyond what was necessary, out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.
Obviously, what the US considered “necessary” was not sufficient.
What happened during that 48-hour window?
The American warning was well-informed and — at least initially — well-timed. In fact, the Tajik perpetrators were filmed by security cameras in Crocus City Hall on March 8, one day after the US issued their alert. It is assumed that the gunman were doing surveillance and planning for an attack that was probably originally planned for March 9.
However, the concert scheduled for Crocus on March 9 featured Shaman, the most popular singer in Russia, known for his patriotic songs including a unique version of the Russian National Anthem. Shaman is known as a “Pro-Kremlin” performer whose concert has been described by The Moscow Times as a “Microcosm of Russia’s Wartime ‘Patriotism’”.
Indeed, several high-placed Russian officials were scheduled to attend the event.
Thus, the Shaman concert would have made a PERFECT place to stage a politically motivated terrorist attack designed to inflict damage on the Russian government and make Putin look weak in the run-up to the Russian Presidential elections.
But the presence of high placed dignitaries meant that security was really tight, with dozens of armed security details stationed around the venue. It is believed that the terrorists canceled their plans for March 9 and waited for the security situation to become more lax.
The US and ISIS — a long-standing partnership
For people who study or follow geopolitics, history and international relations, it is a well-known open secret that the US and its allies — particularly Israel — create terror groups and use them to achieve specific geostrategic ends.
In a 2014 article that appeared in the New York Times, the paper’s Cairo Bureau Chief David Kirkpatrick wrote that practically the entire Iraqi ruling elite was convinced that ISIS was a creation of the US and Israel.
“We know about who made Daesh,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to the same theory.
Investigative journalist William Van Wagenen covered the ISIS-US collusion in Syria:
The US and its allies, both directly and indirectly, colluded with ISIS to attain specific geopolitical objectives. The terror group that captured the world’s attention in 2014 was in fact a vital and valuable tool for US policy planners.
But the CIA’s incubation of ISIS was just one example of a global strategy by the American and British secret services. In 2020, Andrew Quilty, a Kabul-based journalist, wrote in The Intercept:
The CIA has a long history of training, arming, and funding indigenous militia networks. Since its birth in 1947, the agency has supported anti-communist outfits in Greece, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Central America, as well as the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s.
General William Odom, the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, once remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978–79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism — in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”
It started in the 1970's
The origin of CIA’s terrorism love affair goes back over 50 years:
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan.
Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.
The genesis of al-Qaeda was in those CIA-backed mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, who were fighting against the “godless” socialist government in Kabul, which in turn was being supported by an equally “godless” Soviet Communist superpower in Moscow.
The native islamic fighters were receiving help and funding from abroad — notably the United States (aka CIA). The British MI6 were also involved, funding their own islamic fundamentalist fighters.
The mujahideen were also receiving help from Saudi Arabia, through a wealthy son of a construction tycoon, Osama Bin Laden.
For the American Neocons such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, teaming up with islamic radicals made perfect sense: both the Islamic radicals and the Americans had an interest in defeating Communism.
To the rabid anti-Soviet but devout Catholic Brzezinski, it must have seemed like a match “literally” made in heaven.
And the alliance worked! Armed with US made Stinger missiles and other high tech weapons, the mujahideen chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan and dealt the USSR a strategic defeat that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
CIA and Islamic Extremists: partners in crime
The American deep state, especially the CIA, felt they had hit upon a recipe for success. The US has been trying to duplicate that winning Afghan strategy ever since.
The Afghan mujahideen, under Bin Laden’s leadership, evolved into al-Qaeda, a pan-national islamic jihadist organisation that is still active today — most notably in Syria, where it has once more teamed up with the US to oppose the government of Bashar Al-Assad.
But before there was an al-Qaeda in Syria, there was an “al-Qaeda in Iraq”, or AQI, a group that eventually became known as the “Islamic State of Iraq”, which then became “the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, or “ISIS”.
What the CIA was doing in Benghazi
It is now a matter of record that Operation Timber Sycamore was a CIA operation designed to funnel arms to rebel groups in Syria. Those rebel groups included al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
Banghazi played a pivotal role in providing weapons to ISIS and the other rebels. From their outpost in Benghazi, the CIA oversaw a covert supply line that took weapons from the recently deposed Gaddafi regime and shipped them to the islamist groups that the CIA was backing against Assad in Syria.
The “ISIS air force”
There are two cynical jokes about ISIS. One is about the relationship ISIS enjoys with Israel. The name ISIS, they say, stands for “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service”.
This joke may not be far from the truth. Israel works closely with ISIS, and supports ISIS in their fight against Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, Israel’s mortal enemy. But Israel does more than just supply ISIS with weapons; wounded ISIS fighters are often rescued by the IDF and brought to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
The ISIS-Israel relationship is so strong that, when ISIS accidentally attacked an IDF position in the Golan Heights in Syria, the terrorist group immediately issued a public apology to Israel.
The second joke has to do with American support for ISIS. Syrians bitterly remark that the US is Al Qaeda and ISIS’s air force, because whenever the Syrian army starts to make gains on the ground against ISIS, the US (or Israeli) Air Force arrives and bombs Syrian forces.
In fact, it seems to be an open secret that, just as Israel propped up and supported Hamas, the US incubated ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and is allied with ISIS in the fight against Assad.
In fact, according to Paul Williams, a former FBI Counter-Terrorism Consultant, the US “created ISIS” in Syria by combining two rebel groups.
The US played a duplicitous game in Syria, claiming to support “moderate rebels” when in fact none existed. The main opposition to the Assad regime was always from Salafist jihadi groups like ISIS and Al Nusra. And so, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” became the US motto in Syria.
The US-ISIS connection was born of necessity, and has helped prop up the US position in the Middle East, according to The Cradle, an English language publication specialising in the Middle East (aka West Asia):
The extraordinary synergies between the Americans and the world’s foremost terror group can no longer be ignored: their targets are one and the same, and ISIS is only now entering the fray, just as Washington begins to lose its hold on West Asia.
The US supports ISIS’s future Caliphate
Many people dismiss the idea that the US would back ISIS saying that the Americans would be opposed to the Salafist Caliphate that ISIS wants to create in Syria. But the US is apparently OK with that idea:
A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts — and effectively welcomes — the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” — and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.
ISIS-K is a home-made “bagman” for the CIA
There can be little doubt that ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) is a wholly made creation of the CIA. While it may be argued that the original ISIS was only nurtured and incubated by Western Intel agencies, ISIS-K was created by the CIA out of whole cloth for a specific purpose to serve the needs of the US empire.
As Pepe Escobar, the famed investigative journalist explained, the very idea of an “ISIS-Khorasan Province” is illogical, and one cannot make a rational argument as to how or WHY such an organisation would develop on its own without the guiding hand of the USA:
“ Historic ‘Khorasan’ comes from successive Persian empires, a vast area ranging from Persia and the Caspian all the way to northwest Afghanistan — and has nothing whatsoever to do with Salafi-jihadism and the Wahhabi lunatics who make up the [ISIS] terrorist group’s ranks. Furthermore, these ISIS-K jihadis are based in south-eastern Afghanistan, away from Iran’s borders, so the ‘Khorasan’ label makes zero sense”.
In fact, a group called “ISIS-K” only makes sense if you are the United States. As The Cradle summed up:
“Is it a coincidence that the world’s foremost terror organisation is being revived just as the US struggles under a multi-front assault on its hegemony in West Asia? More curiously, both ISIS and Washington’s targets are exactly the same”.
Born from a special US-ISIS “airlift” from Syria to Afghanistan
The link between the US and ISIS-K was being reported by non-Western media back in 2019:
As was reported in the above article and elsewhere, the US used “unmarked helicopters” to ferry arms and foreign ISIS fighters from their bases in Syria (such as Al Tanf) to the ISIS-K facilities:
There are allegations that weapons are often transferred to the territory of Afghanistan by helicopters without identifying insignia. With the US and NATO fully controlling the skies over Afghanistan, there is every reason to believe they had a hand in that, or at least, did not hamper these flights, sources alleged.
Apparently the US was not just transferring weapons. According to intelligence reports reviewed by The Cradle, at its height, ISIS consisted of more than 35,000 fighters in Iraq — 25,000 of these were killed, while more than 10,000 simply “disappeared.”
Where did they go?
The answer seems to be Afghanistan.
Indeed, the Russians have been sounding the alarm about how many “foreign fighters” have been transferred into Afghanistan since the US withdrawal from that country. Russian Defense Minister Shoigu hinted the US was facilitating the transfers: “What’s more, in some parts, we can also see that these movements are quite seriously organised,” he was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
Why would the US create ISIS-K?
As the United States was preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan, the CIA grew worried. Due to its strategic location, Afghanistan is a key element in the US effort to disrupt and impede its most ardent global adversaries, specifically China, Iran and Russia.
While the US was occupying Afghanistan, the CIA was able to sabotage all manner of projects that the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians were trying to build in the country.
Pipelines, railways, highways and other projects, such as those associated with the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), were blocked by the US and the CIA, who want to see the Chinese initiative fail.
The departure of the US, however, gave China a chance to proceed with its plans:
The Biden administration’s aim in withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan was to reset its global strategic priorities. So far, however, it has undermined Washington’s efforts to contain Beijing, as it alleviated pressure on China’s western front and handed over to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a very important fulcrum in the heart of Asia.
Now that the US has left Afghanistan, the Taliban have decided to join the BRI, and China has announced that it is expanding its diplomatic presence and “beefing up ties” to Afghanistan.
ISIS-K to the rescue!
The advance of China in a Taliban-run Afghanistan had been foreseen by the CIA. That is why they organised a “stay behind” force similar to what they did in Operation GLADIO and Operation Bloodstone in Europe, and their recruitment of Banderite Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine.
Except in this case, rather than rely on fascist anti-Russian fanatics, the CIA recruited the Islamic jihadists with whom they had come to be so cozy in the years since they first started their love affair with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
When the CIA had to leave in 2021, they needed a group “on the ground” to continue to thwart the advancement of China and Russia in Afghanistan.
ISIS-K was that group.
The objective: disrupt the progress of Eurasian integration
Every regional player in Central Asia knows that ISIS-K is a “catspaw” for the CIA. As Pepe Escobar reports:
Russian, Chinese and Iranian intel operate on the basis that the US ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, as in Syria and Iraq, was not a withdrawal but a repositioning. What’s left is the trademark, undiluted American strategy of chaos executed via both direct (troops stealing Syrian oil) and indirect (ISIS-K) actors.
The scenario is self-evident when one considers that Afghanistan was the precious missing link of China’s New Silk Roads. After the US exit, Afghanistan is not only primed to fully engage with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but also to become a key node of Eurasia integration as a future full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
Fuelled by a massive prison break
One thing we know for sure: in the run-up to the US departure from Afghanistan, thousands of ISIS-K fighters were released from the US-controlled prisons. The US claimed that it was the Taliban who allowed the prisoners to escape, but that hardly seems likely, given that the Taliban had been fighting ISIS-K since 2015.
These escaped prisoners went on to join the foreign fighters who had been “imported” from Syria, and together they launched a campaign of what Escobar called an “American strategy of chaos”.
Action on Armed Violence, a UK-funded global watchdog, noted that:
“A string of attacks has targeted foreigners or foreign interests in recent months, at a time when the Taliban is trying to attract investment from neighbouring countries.”
Keeping the Taliban in check
It’s not just the Chinese who are the targets of the CIA’s latest islamic pit bull. ISIS-K first made headlines with brazen attacks against the Taliban in 2021, including a major attack at the Kabul Airport.
Indeed, by September of 2021, Al Jazeera reported:
In the six weeks since the Taliban came to power, there have been reports of Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), attacks and activity in the cities of Kabul, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Disrupting Iran
In addition to attacking the Taliban and the Chinese, ISIS-K is also striking Iran. The most notable of these strikes was against a memorial celebration commemorating the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the United States. Known as the Kerman bombings. The ISIS-K attack was the deadliest terrorist strike in Iran’s history.
The memorial was marking the fourth anniversary of the death of Soleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by a U.S. drone. Two explosions tore through the crowd, killing almost 100 people.
In looking at the two incidents, the original US drone strike and the ISIS-K bombings, one cannot help but consider it a sort of CIA copvert verion of a “double-tap” kill operation.
ISIS-K had also claimed responsibility for attacks in 2017 and 2022, when they struck a Shia shrine and even bombed the Iranian Parliament.
Blocking Russia
Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has consistently claimed that US planners have been supporting ISIS-K:
“With the armed opposition in Afghanistan, the Anglo-Saxons are covertly sponsoring Daesh [ISIS], who are aimed at undermining not only the stability of our central Asian partners . . . But also the security of Russia.”
Kabulov told Press TV that the US has been reaching out to groups such as ISIS-K who oppose the Taliban, and secretly giving money to them. This, he said, was because US planners “want to avenge their shameful military-political defeat in Afghanistan, and in retaliation they do everything so that peace isn’t established in this troubled land.”
ISIS and CIA — a match made in heaven
For the above reasons, ISIS-K seems like the perfect solution to the CIA’s lack of a direct presence in Central Asia. Absent any formal CIA “partner force” on the ground, and given the loss of the convenient US military bases and listening posts, ISIS-K can carry the CIA’s “strategy of chaos” all throughout Central Asia.
Moreover, by claiming the group’s strategic aim is to establish a “global caliphate”, the CIA can deploy their ISIS-K minions wherever they are needed — even in the very heart of Russia.
Or so they would have us believe.
Why the ISIS-K Moscow cover story does not hold up
There are several very strong reasons why we should not believe that the gunmen who attacked the Crocus City Hall in Moscow were not actual islamic extremists.
Indeed, it is most likely that they may not even be practising Muslims. Here’s why:
The attackers planned to SURVIVE
The men who attacked the Crocus City Hall venue were planning to survive the operation. They had an exit strategy and an “exfil” plan to scurry across the Ukrainian border.
This is not what ISIS-K do. The Kerman attack in Iran, for example, was carried out by suicide bombers, as was the deadly attack at the Kabul airport.
Moreover. all the photos that the ISIS-K terrorists take of themselves prior to an operation do NOT have their faces blurred, and some of the men even have their faces uncovered.
That is not the case with the Moscow “crew”. They have their faces blurred, so they cannot be recognised. This is NOT what Jihadis do. True believers do not care if people recognise them — indeed, they WANT to be known.
The gunmen were mercenaries being paid to do a job
The terrorists who were captured claimed that they were offered 1 million Rubles (about USD $10,000) to conduct the Crocus City Hall operation. They were given half the money “up front” and promised the other half after they completed the mission.
According to authorities, Telegram messages on the gunmen’s phones indicated that they were to be given the rest of their money once they were in Ukraine.
The Moscow gunmen did not give the proper “shahada” salute
ISIS fighters always photograph themselves reciting the shahada, or Islamic Oath. While reciting the oath, they always point skyward using the index finger of their right hand.
The use of the right hand is very important, because in Islam, the right hand is regarded as “clean”, and is used to eat, whereas the left hand is regarded as “unclean” and is used to clean one’s self after defecation.
In addition, before performing prayers (salat), Muslims start by washing their right hand first during wudu.
As you can see in the photos below, the ISIS-K fioghterws ALWAYS use their right hand to gesture upwards, but the Moscow gunmen use their LEFT hands.
No devout Muslim would disrespect God this way.
Ukraine incriminates itself
In the aftermath of the attack, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov told Reuters:
“Ukraine was of course not involved in this terror attack. Ukraine is defending its sovereignty from Russian invaders, liberating its own territory and is fighting with the occupiers’ army and military targets, not civilians.”
But we know that Yusov was lying when he denied that Ukraine targets civilians.
Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is on record claiming that the Ukrainian security services have arranged the assassination of various civilian “collaborators” within Russia.
The SBU has also carried out assassinations of Russian citizens, such as when they killed Daria Dugina, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian nationalist — and a CIVILIAN.
The SBU admitted doing the “hit” to the Washington Post, aka the official media outlet for the CIA. The WaPo article also noted that the CIA has been schooling the Ukrainian secret services for a decade or more:
“These operations have been cast as extreme measures Ukraine was forced to adopt in response to Russia’s invasion last year. In reality, they represent capabilities that Ukraine’s spy agencies have developed over nearly a decade — since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014 — a period during which the services also forged deep new bonds with the CIA”.
Of course, the Dugin operation — like the Crocus City Hall operation — had a distinctly amateurish, “Keystone Kop” aspect to it: the target of the hit was the father, Alexander Dugin, but the daughter paid the price.
Moreover, the Washington Post article confirms what many had suspected: that under the careful tutelage of Western intelligence agencies, the Ukrainians have been carrying out a plethora of terrorist attacks on Russia proper — attacks which also targeted civilians:
The August 2022 attack is part of a raging shadow war in which Ukraine’s spy services have also twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.
Drone strikes target civilian areas
Since the start of 2023, the BBC has tracked over 60 suspected drone attacks inside Russia and Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, targeting civilians. In one attack in May, 2023, the Ukrainian made “Beaver” drones hit a “high end” residential building on the outskirts of Moscow, a high-rise apartment block, where a drone reportedly flew into an apartment on the 13th floor, and another high-rise building.
In addition to the attacks on Moscow, Ukraine regularly targets civilian areas in Crimea using drones.
Terrorist attacks in Belgorod target civilians
Anti-Putin militias Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Freedom of Russia Legion have frequently attacked Russian villages near Belgorod in Russia. These attacks were staged using paramilitary Neo-Nazi forces armed with US-made equipment and vehicles.
A May 2023 attack saw 9 villages attacked and over a dozen civilians wounded.
Then, in December 2023, Ukraine launched a missile strike at Belgorod residential area, killing 22 civilians.
Malyuk’s Big Mouth
Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, the bulldog-faced Head of the Ukrainian SBU, admitted in August 2023 that the SBU was behind the terrorist attacks on the Crimean Bridge. The attacks — which killed multiple civilians — were designed to promote the political narrative that the West wants to promulgate: namely, that Putin is weak and cannot defend the Russian people — especially in Crimea.
“The Kerch bridge has become a holy grail for the Kremlin. Therefore, its destruction not only disrupted logistics, but also showed that the Putin regime is as fragile and unstable as the bridge itself,” said Olexandr Kovalenko, a military-political commentator from the InfoSprotyv project. “This special operation had military and political goals, and they were all incredibly successful.”
Malyuk’s admissions play right into the hands of the Russians, who have issued ultimatums to Ukraine to hand over Malyuk and other Ukrainian officials on charges of terrorism.
Danilov’s Big Mouth?
One egregious example of ill-considered braggadocio is that of Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, who was allegedly caught on video saying:
“Is it fun in Moscow today? I think it’s a lot of fun. I would like to believe that we will arrange such fun for them more often.”
The clip made wide rounds on social media, but Western news outlets such as the BBC were quick to dismiss the video as a “deepfake”.
I wonder, however, because just a few days after the “fake” video appeared, it was announced that Danilov would be leaving his vaunted position as the Head of Ukraine’s National Security Council to become …. Ambassador to Moldova.
Why Ukraine and the West wanted this attack
The Crocus City Hall massacre serves several purposes, as far as Ukraine and the West are concerned.
What the West gets out of it
The strategic purpose of the West, specifically the US (CIA) and UK (MI6) is to weaken Russia, to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, and at the very least, to force the overthrow of the Putin regime by creating a “Moscow Maidan” in which a “pro-Western” government leadership could be installed in Moscow.
This was, after all, the purpose of the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia over the past 20 years — sanctions which the West hoped would “cripple the Russian economy” and “turn the Ruble into rubble”.
This was the strategy to make life for the average Russian miserable, bleak, and desperate, while attacking the Russian oligarch class and convincing them that Putin could not longer bring them wealth and riches. The result would be that “the Russian people would rise up” and overthrow Putin.
Well, THE SANCTIONS DID NOT WORK.
And so the only other way to hurt Putin was to show the Russian people that their leader could not protect them; that terrorism and the conflict with the West was making them unsafe. This was the meaning of all the terrorist attacks in Russia: the drone strikes on wealthy Moscow neighbourhoods; the attacks on villages in Belgorod; the destruction of the Kerch Bridge; the targeted assassinations.
And now the mass slaughter of innocent concert-goers. Surely such attacks could serve to weaken Putin even where sanctions had failed.
And serve they did:
What Ukraine gets out of it
For Ukraine, this was a way of proving their worth to their US and UK masters — that they can be instrumental in prosecuting a “dirty war” of covert operations in support of the West’s broader strategic goals of overthrowing Putin.
For the Ukrainians, it was important to live up to the role that Washington and London had set for them, to be what The New York Times called “one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today”.
Fulfilling their role in the Moscow terror attack would show Washington — and Langley — that Ukraine is still a good investment.
Indeed, as Ukraine loses on the battlefield, it is critically important for Ukraine to show that they could be the dependable, fanatical, ruthless insurgent force that could inflict pain on the Russians, just as the mujahideen had savaged the Soviet Union in the 1980's.
It can thus be argued that, in terms of achieving the interests of Ukraine and its Western backers, the Moscow terror attack at the Crocus City Hall was a success.
Conclusions
It is obvious that the “ISIS-K” gunmen who were hired to do the massacre at Crocus City Hall were working for Ukraine with the active or tacit cooperation of Western Intel agencies.
The recruitment of the attackers was most likely done through CIA channels in Central Asia who were the creators and handlers of “ISIS-K” forces there.
The attack was means to embarrass Putin, disrupt the Presidential elections, and generate mistrust and fear among the Russian people.
The original date for the attack was October 9, during the Shaman concert at Crocus City Hall, but security was very heightened on that day, so the attack was postponed.
Even happening after the elections, the Moscow attack was meant to hurt Putin, anger the Russian people, and push Russia closer to a regime change — the ultimate goal of teh Western powers.
Whether the West has achieved these goals remains to be seen.
#End
#End
If you liked this post, please consider leaving me a tip! Donations support my independent, ad-free writing.
============================================================================
ADDITIONAL READING:
