Russians back Vladimir Putin in blaming Ukraine for concert hall terror attack

https://www.ft.com/content/e5b52757-1faf-4e6c-9adf-5c018dbf24e6

by WeebAndNotSoProid

41 comments

  1. >It took Anna and her wheelchair-bound teenage son only about 17 minutes to escape from the second floor of the Moscow concert hall after hearing the first automatic gunshots and take a taxi home.
    Just a few hours later, she had no doubt about who was to blame for one of the deadliest terror attacks in Russia’s modern history.
    “The terrorists were fleeing towards Ukraine, so it seems to have been Ukraine,” Anna, a 41-year-old insurance broker, told the Financial Times. “They needed something to divert attention from the front lines. And the deaths of Russians, even those not directly involved in the war, including children, have always been a cause of great joy for Ukrainian patriots.”
    Her response to the March 22 Islamist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue — which killed more than 140 people and left about 180 injured — illustrates how the Kremlin immediately seized the opportunity to use the massacre as a propaganda tool in its war against Ukraine.
    Polling carried out soon after the attack shows most Russians believe Kyiv was behind it, although given President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, it remains difficult to establish how genuine the rise of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia is.
    Anna said she does not watch television and only reads Telegram channels she “trusts”. But she repeated the exact message that Russian propaganda outlets — from official state media to pro-war Telegram bloggers — began to spread soon after the first reports of the massacre.
    Despite Isis having claimed responsibility on the night of the attack, Putin said on Monday the assault fitted a broader strategy of aggression by “the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime”, alleging that the terrorists were fleeing towards the Ukrainian border, where a “window” was open waiting for them.
    Moscow has not admitted any faults in its intelligence and security apparatus. Putin officials have since also blamed the US and UK for allegedly backing Ukraine in the plot.
    European governments have said they warned Moscow of an increased Islamist threat, and the US embassy in the Russian capital issued alerts in early March warning about an increased risk of Isis attacking public venues.
    But Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian security council, a state body, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB domestic security service, have instead focused on the Ukraine line, claiming the four alleged terrorists, who show visible signs of having been tortured after their arrest, had confirmed the “Ukrainian trail” during interrogation.
    Many Russians surveyed after the attack gave credence to the Ukraine theory. More than 50 per cent blamed the Ukrainian leadership and only about 27 per cent pointed to Isis, according to polling data by OpenMinds, an Anglo-Ukrainian online pollster that shared its results with the FT. Another 6 per cent blamed the “collective west”, namely the US, UK and Nato.
    More than 75 per cent of respondents considered Putin to be the most reliable or a completely reliable source of information about the attack, OpenMinds data shows.
    “If the propaganda and the authorities blame Ukraine as the main narrative, people will believe it, because control over the information space is almost absolute,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist and director of the independent Russian polling centre Levada.
    He said Russians usually called for a “strong hand” and tough response to acts of terrorism on this scale, such as Putin’s pledge to “flush terrorists down the toilet” in 1999 as the Kremlin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. Putin’s rhetoric this time focused on Kyiv because he views the war as an existential one, pitting Russia against Ukraine and the west, said Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
    “Putin believes they want to destroy Russia, so anything that appears to be an attempt to do so is attributed to them. Is it beneficial for Ukraine? Are Ukrainians happy about it? Did they have the technical capability to do it? Then it must be them,” Stanovaya said, although she noted the president’s wording suggested his officials had no solid evidence for the claim.
    “He clearly believes it was Ukraine and [that] the lack of evidence so far is because they haven’t searched well enough,” she added. “The rest of the elite follow Putin’s lead.”

  3. > According to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent of those who back the war.

    This correlates with wider historical trends and what’s available on demographics in Russia: old people (especially in the countryside) only with access to the totally Kremlin-controlled TV, and who were generally battered by the 1990s economic shock after being used to the Soviet ways of life, widely accept the propaganda, while younger people, who are more likely to live in cities, only grew up with the post-USSR consumer society, want more freedoms and can fact-check state propaganda claims with other sources on the Internet, are much more likely to reject the opinions of detached old farts in power.

  4. This is like the 6th article I’ve seen claiming putin is blaming a group. It went from ISIS to the US and Brits to Ukraine to the West back to ISIS and now back to Ukraine. Russian incompetence or bots trying to stir up social media

  5. Since criticizing the Russian military or the leader is a punishable offence there is no real news here.

  6. Only 50% of younger Russians believe it was actually ISIS, instead of Ukraine? Guess we can throw that whole “bLAme PUtIN ANd NOt teH rUSsiAn PEoPle” argument in the garbage.

    50% of young Russians actually believe this ridiculous garbage. That’s absurd, and only serves to show how vile and rotten this entire country has become.

  7. Ukraine isnt behind the attacks.
    But in a way this is the Russians acknowledging they have given the Ukrainians a damn good reason to hate them.
    Meaning Putin and his cronies are responsible for the Crocus attacks since they caused and started this war.

  8. Imagine being a sane, thinking Russian. You either leave or you die a little every day.

  9. Z-nation does what the necromancer commands, what a surprise.

    Is anyone really surprised by them spinning it like this and the Russian people for the most part lapping it up?

  10. Waiting for “no war” Russians in comments with statement “we, hipsters from big cities with C level English, are the **real** representatives of Russian people, not these millions of commoners”.

  13. I felt bad for those people then i read this… fk these „people“

  14. Despite the fact that he already admitted it was Isis and after the attack Islamophobia spiked in Russia, but it was also Ukraine too. Literally double think, the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at once and believe both of them

  16. So the terrorists who did this, were fleeing to the Russian occupied Ukraine? Every time someone says “they can’t be that dumb” Russians actually get dumber.

  17. Russians are fuckin stupid! Seriously what other people would stand back and watch a cretin fcuk up their country.

  18. They were fleeing back to Turkey, Ukraine just happens to be on the way back geographically but I doubt they’d be stopping there.

  19. Why didn’t they beat a confession out of some actual Ukrainians instead of parading around some Tajiks or whoever that was they caught if they inevitably wanted to blame it on Ukraine? And the russian accept this tale despite seeing those guys in the news?

  22. >But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

  24. Gotta blame someone. Right. Might aswell back the psycho.

  25. I won’t lie, I’m finding it *really* difficult to feel any empathy for the shooting victims, the more I see just how many Russians are in favour of Putin and the atrocities being committed by the orcs in Ukraine.

    I used to be a very sympathetic, compassionate person; I don’t know what happened to me, but I see ‘130 Russian dead’ and I… feel nothing at all. Maybe that’s just having Ukrainian friends and having been immersed in the documentation of the invaders’ crimes since early 2022. Even when I see Russian civilians getting killed in Belgorod (if they are, the data is unclear) I think ‘well, that’s war – they started it.’

    Dislike how hardened I’ve become.

  26. Let’s be honest, is there even a reason to be surprised.

  27. It’s easier to fool people than convince them they’re being fooled

  28. Impressive level of brainwashing. Have to give them that.

  29. how is this news… its not Putin’s war, he is not alone in Ukraine shooting civilians…

  30. “Everything that every happened is someone else’s fault, if I ever did something wrong it’s because someone else made me do it.” – Until Russia grows out of this mentality we should seek their downfall at every turn.

  31. No government can be trusted to tell the truth UK, American or Russian. Don’t trust or believe ANYTHING either side says, which is crazy. But neither side has ever done anything to deserve respect or trust from citizens. I’m told I should trust my government ONLY because they are my government, how fkd up is that.

  32. It’s why it’s so difficult to care what happened there. The Russians are on Putin’s side. It’s an empire of evil

  40. This is why I’m not convinced when they tell me that it’s not all Russia wanting the war but just Putin and some lunatics

  41. Anyone who denies the Russians themselves are complicit is delusional.

    Think about Germany during the Nazi period.

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