Terrorist attack in Moscow opens the way for talks with the West or greater cooperation with Iran? “Putin is cornered”

Moscow has always been careful to present itself as a multi-religious capital and to promote pragmatic relations with Islamic countries, but the effective implementation of this policy is difficult, as was seen on Friday, with the attack on the concert hall in the Russian city . On Friday night, attackers with guns entered the Crocus City venue, then fired in all directions for almost an hour as panicked spectators tried to escape. The attackers then set fire to the place. Daesh-K, the Afghan branch of the terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attack, once again exposing a wound that never healed.

“Russia has done a poor job, in general, in understanding the threats to the Russian Federation, including internal threats”, diagnoses William Alberque, director of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in Berlin. . “There is an inherent myopia in the Russian leadership, that is, they do not see the threat of a marginalized Muslim population, nor their relatively racist and imperialist attitude towards that population and, more broadly, Central Asia in general, from which they are drawn many workers”, he continues to explain, speaking to Expresso. In this discomfort lies a great potential for “unrest”, an “uncomfortable truth that was swept under the carpet by the Russian leadership”, points out the analyst.

Four suspects, identified as citizens of Tajikistan, appeared in court this Sunday, pleading guilty to involvement in the attack. The Kremlin continues, however, to refuse to comment on growing evidence that the self-styled Islamic State planned the attack. “It is a public shame for Putin to have been warned by several Western secret agencies about a possible attack, and his government not to have acted on the warning,” says Kelly Grieco, researcher at the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the think tank Stimson Center. “I bet it will continue to blame Ukraine for the attack, even though there is no evidence to suggest Ukrainian involvement, but its intelligence and security services will respond by brutally repressing ethnic Muslim minorities like the Chechens.”