Feeling the repercussions of an apparent security breach that led to a group of heavily armed individuals massacring numerous concertgoers in Moscow last week, Russia has intensified efforts to shift blame onto a familiar target: Ukraine.
While Western officials have attributed the March 22 attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue, which claimed the lives of at least 143 people and left hundreds injured, to the Islamic State, the group itself claimed responsibility through the ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq.
However, Russian authorities, already embroiled in a costly conflict with Ukraine and having convinced the Russian populace that Kyiv and its Western allies are responsible for their troubles, quickly reverted to their narrative.
"Islamists couldn’t have orchestrated such an operation on their own," remarked Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, on Russian state television.
He accused Western security services of involvement and echoed earlier statements by President Vladimir Putin, who claimed that the attackers intended to escape to Ukraine, where "they were supposed to be welcomed as heroes."
The latest edition of Russia’s largest weekly newspaper features portraits of Western leaders engulfed in flames on its cover.
The headline reads, "We know the architects of the Crocus terrorist act. We hope they burn in hell," with a subheading stating, "They can tell lies about ISIS to each other.
"Putin acknowledged on Monday that the attack was carried out by Islamist radicals, but insinuated that Kyiv and its American allies were implicated, linking the attacks to armed incursions into Russia by Kyiv-backed commandos and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
Despite this, neither Putin nor other Russian officials provided evidence of Ukrainian involvement. Kyiv has vehemently denied any role in the attack, and on Tuesday, the U.S. dismissed Russia’s allegations.
"It’s simply not true," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
"These comments by Russian officials, including President Putin, are just propaganda to justify their continued aggression against Ukraine."
However, senior members of Putin’s government have escalated their accusations in recent days, explicitly blaming Ukraine and now its Western allies as well.
On Wednesday, Russian investigators announced that they were investigating reports of Western countries, including the U.S., financing and aiding terrorist attacks in Russia.
Analysts believe that the coordinated effort to blame Ukraine is an attempt to divert attention from security lapses that allowed the attackers to enter the concert hall despite a police presence.
Putin has placed Russia’s economy on a war footing and mobilized Russian society for the conflict in Ukraine, which he has framed as an existential battle between Russia and the West. Any indication that few resources were allocated for other threats would be incriminating.
"They want to categorize this attack as part of a broader standoff with the West and Ukraine and not just a failure of the Russian security services," explained Kirill Shamiev, a fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.
He suggested that Russia is acknowledging the responsibility of radical Islamists to hedge its bets but is avoiding portraying them as operating independently of the conflict in Ukraine.
"It’s a very calculated public relations game," he noted.
Four of the alleged gunmen, all reportedly from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, appeared in court on Sunday, and Russia has since arrested four additional suspects.
Authorities have received over 140 requests for information on missing relatives and friends, and a makeshift memorial outside the concert hall has been flooded with flowers laid by passersby.
Graphic videos depicting the suspects being tortured after their arrest in Russia, including one having part of his ear sliced off, circulated widely across the country after surfacing online on Saturday.
Some pro-Kremlin figures celebrated the footage as just punishment, while others called for the reinstatement of the death penalty for the shooters.
Members of Russia’s sizable Tajik community, which supports the tiny Tajik economy through remittances, expressed concerns that the attack would lead to a backlash against Tajik residents in Russia.
"Despite all this horror and darkness, we must remain human," said Tajik-Russian singer Manizha, who represented Russia in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, in a video posted to Instagram.
For more than a decade, Russia has devoted significant resources to a propaganda campaign attributing the country’s issues to Western schemes and depicting Ukraine as a puppet regime acting on Western orders.
This effort intensified after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Following the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 by Russian-backed separatists, Russian state media propagated stories suggesting that the flight was carrying dead bodies before being hit by a missile or that Kyiv intended to shoot down a plane carrying Putin.
After two investigative news organizations identified the Russians responsible for the attempted murder of a former Russian spy in the British town of Salisbury in 2018, Russian state TV aired interviews in which the men claimed to be tourists visiting Salisbury.
The war in Ukraine has prompted Russian authorities to broaden their definition of terrorism.
A crackdown on dissent has targeted thousands of government critics, many of whom have been labeled terrorists and extremists by the state, diverting resources away from investigating national security threats.
The effort to blame Ukraine for the recent incident and distract from Russia’s security failings was not limited to a domestic audience, according to research by ActiveFence, a cybersecurity company advising social media platforms on combating disinformation.
ActiveFence identified tens of thousands of newly created accounts promoting the Russian narrative on Ukrainian and Western complicity in at least seven languages, including Arabic.
"The scale and sophistication of this effort suggest state involvement," said Rachael Levy, who specializes in geopolitical risk at ActiveFence. She noted that the disinformation campaign on social media resembled past Russian campaigns, targeting international audiences on various issues.
"This is a tool in their arsenal, and a strategic one."
Some social media posts, appearing within 48 hours of the Moscow attack, featured cartoons depicting a British officer ordering a soldier to attack the concert venue. "Blaming ISIS is a diversion.
The focus should be on Kyiv and London," read one post, retweeted thousands of times, using the Russian name for Ukraine’s capital.