In reply to GameboyRMH :
Ah yes. That makes sense. I suspect there are some people in the Ukrainian Intelligence snickering a bit now.
As noted, those people who fell for it are likely up for many years in prison.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Ah yes. That makes sense. I suspect there are some people in the Ukrainian Intelligence snickering a bit now.
As noted, those people who fell for it are likely up for many years in prison.
A bit of a horrible video of Russians trying to recover damaged Ukrainian tanks. And of course being killed in the process. And this is not just the recovery equipment being destroyed, it is also drones chasing down individual soldiers. Jeez, this is like sci-fi becomes to real life.
I won't put the video itself here, but I will leave a link.
https://mil.in.ua/uk/news/pidbyti-leopardy-prodovzhuyut-ubyvaty-rosiyan/
There was some sort of terrorist attack in Moscow in Krokus-Hall (music hall) and a fire. At least 40 killed at this point. Not sure what the motivation is (Russia has pissed of a lot of people, so there are certainly a lot of potential suspects), but there was a warning a while back.
I am sure Moscow will blame it on the Ukrainian Nazis.
- A shooting and explosion were reported Friday night at a large concert hall near Moscow.
- Russian news agencies reported at least three people wearing camouflage opened fire at the Crocus City Hall.
- The number of injuries is unclear, but video footage published on Russian social media channels showed chaotic scenes, with a large crowd of concertgoers attempting to flee.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/russia-moscow-concert-attack-shooting-rcna144706
In reply to aircooled :
Dang it! Again, and you beat me by 7 minutes this time!
I really wonder what's going on. If it's a terrorist attack, who is behind it, or where's the manifesto / demands? This is one of those situations where I don't think we'll ever get the real answer as to why this happened... (But, yes. It will be blamed on Ukraine Nazis, and there will be a mobilization or something that follows... which is probably the answer I just said we'd never get)
Edit: Russian media currently reporting "Ukrainian Military Unit" is to blame. (not mobile, so I cant use a facepalm emoji)
If there are any actual links to Ukraine discovered, it won't help. That said, I doubt this is something the Ukrainian government had anything to do with. There's nothing to be gained by it: it doesn't hurt Putin and his government in any meaningful way (unless there were high-ranking officials in the audience), it doesn't hurt the Russian Army's ability to continue fighting, and it doesn't hurt any critical infrastructure. My first guess is a Ukraine sympathizing but independent anti-Putin group, and after that it could be just about anything in today's Russia: organized crime, targeted political purge, false flag attack, you name it. It will be interesting to know if there are any familiar names on the casualty list.
Didn't the Russians stop an attack planned on a synagogue earlier this month by Sunni militants?
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1771260494617162142
All early and unconfirmed but I'm seeing that there may have been as many as 6200 people in that building when the attack started. Personally I expect this to be the foundation for a mobilization announcement (with the plan being: very awful, very televised, and very public attack on civilians -> lots of public outcry -> sham link to Ukraine by the russian authorities -> Mobilization announcement by the newly re-elected president)
terrorism, false flag, or all of the above, Looks like we're starting here:
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1771257056080597083
Anton Gerashchenko said:
Is Putin repeating the Nord-Ost scenario? In October 2002, a theater center in Moscow Dubrovka was seized. Putin and the FSB led the operation personally, according to some sources. A group of armed terrorists took more than 900 people in the audience and Nord-Ost musical performers hostage. Three days later, law enforcers started an operation to release hostages and used a secret "sleeping" gas. During the terrorist act and the police attack that followed, 130 hostages died and all the terrorists were killed.
Multiple questions about this terrorist act and its true organizers remain unanswered to this day. According to one of the versions, it was FSB.
Fighting terrorism was used as a pretext to increase control over Russians and a cause to enhance the war in the Caucasus.
Today's terrorist act in Krokus City Hall looks like a direct analogy with those events. Putin and the FSB can well be behind this tragedy, as well.
How were armed people able to get inside a public building? Why wasn't a place of mass gathering not given enough and proper security? Why did it take special police forces an hour to get there, and the fire fighters weren't putting out fire while they were waiting for the police forces?
Could it be so they could capture the most vivid image of what was going on?
It's quite possible that the "Ukranian trace" will appear during the investigation of the accident. Then, mobilization and escalation in the war against Ukraine will follow.
The Kremlin has needed a reason for a long time to announce a new wave of complete, not partial mobilization in Russia and bring Russians to the frontlines in Ukraine. Additionally, it would be a good reason to tighten control within Russia, announcing a "crusade" against any alternative opinions that differ from the official "party line".
The White House has said that it sees no signs of Ukraine or Ukrainians being involved in the terrorist act in Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian media already spread an idea that a "Ukrainian assault group" is to blame for the accident.
Copied from this post: https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1771255943319204275
Looks like this guy is tracking along the same path as I am.
Meanwhile, AD is active over Bilhorod (with explosions)
And there's a missile warning for occupied Crimea.
bobzilla said:Didn't the Russians stop an attack planned on a synagogue earlier this month by Sunni militants?
Yeah. Likely this is ISIS(IS-K?) or Chechen separatists have gotten bold while most of the army is already busy.
eastsideTim said:bobzilla said:Didn't the Russians stop an attack planned on a synagogue earlier this month by Sunni militants?
Yeah. Likely this is ISIS(IS-K?) or Chechen separatists have gotten bold while most of the army is already busy.
Sorry, took me a minute. I found it!
Yeah, ISIS claiming responsibility for attack, guess they see an opening and shooting their shot.
The great irony here is that the US is in a position to offer Russia useful intel support on IS, but has zero motivation to do so. Putin's new allies, with the possible exception of Iran (I have no idea if there is any sort of back-channel communication between IS and the IRGC, but it seems unlikely), can't offer anything of value here. If this is a prelude to Russian repression against Islamic minorities in the outer provinces, it will run counter to any effort to increase mobilization in those regions.
I've been somewhat surprised that more groups aren't taking advantage of the situation to rise up against Russia.
02Pilot said:If this is a prelude to Russian repression against Islamic minorities in the outer provinces, it will run counter to any effort to increase mobilization in those regions.
Man. That's a song I haven't heard in a while.
3 days ago, Putin called warnings from Western countries about the possibility of terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation “outright blackmail”
At the FSB board, he spoke about “recent provocative statements by a number of official Western structures about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia.”
“All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” he said.
The terrorists were never caught. They managed to escape in a white Renault.
The terrorist attack in Moscow is revenge for Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria from ISIL, NYT and CBS confirm the information.
Analysts say that ISIS-K (a branch of the organization in Afghanistan) has been "obsessed" with Russia for wars in Muslim countries for the past two years. American officials warned the Kremlin about this not only publicly, but also in private conversations.
I suspect they will find a way for the attack to help this:
Post-election mobilization indirectly announced:
Shoigu now said that the Russian military plans to form two combined arms armies (CAA) and 14 divisions, as well as 16 brigades, by the end of 2024.
The way I interpret the article in combination with other online sources these are additional 200k minimum to 500k maximum soldiers.
Looks like the found them. Putin is trying so hard....:
Putin vows to punish those behind concert massacre
MOSCOW, March 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Saturday it had arrested all four gunmen suspected of carrying out a shooting massacre in a concert hall near Moscow, and President Vladimir Putin pledged to track down and punish those behind the attack.
Militant Islamist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday's rampage but there were indications that Russia was pursuing a Ukrainian link, despite emphatic denials from Ukrainian officials that Kyiv had anything to do with it.
Russia's state Investigative Committee said 133 people had been killed. State TV editor Margarita Simonyan, without citing a source, had earlier given a toll of 143.
In a televised address, Putin said 11 people had been detained, including the four gunmen. "They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border," he said.....
....Khinshtein said a pistol, a magazine for an assault rifle, and passports from Tajikistan were found in the car. Tajikistan is a mainly Muslim Central Asian state that used to be part of the Soviet Union....
...TV editor Simonyan published a video showing one of the suspects, a young, bearded man, being interrogated aggressively by a roadside, replying in heavily accented Russian to a series of barked questions. He said he had flown from Turkey on March 4 and had received instructions from unknown people via Telegram to carry out the attack in exchange for money....
Could this be some sort of Ukrainian op, similar to the election disruptions? Possibly, but likely they are not quite as skilled in being able to fool that part of the world. Certainly an easy group to rile up.
In reply to aircooled :
I was wondering how long it would take Putin to try to link this to Ukraine. The four guys they captured will eventually "confess" to working for Ukraine. I would think the Ukrainians would be insane to go after civilians after two years of having their own civilians bombed. I'd also like to think Zelenskyy would never approve such an op.
In reply to BenB :
If Zelensky thought it would have any positive effect, I'm sure he'd order it in a heartbeat. But like every campaign that has targeted civilians in an effort to break their morale, it would fail. Giulio Douhet was seen as a prophet by nascent air power advocates (but not by anyone else), and his legacy of targeting cities in order to break "the will of the people" has been proven wrong time and again. Of course, one might make the argument that bombing cities from the air was the only practical use for bomber aircraft when Douhet was writing, since accuracy wasn't exactly pinpoint. Similarly, terrorists attack civilians largely because they're the only available targets, not because they're high-value targets. These operations almost never work to achieve any of their desired objectives (ask the PLO or the IRA); at best, they cause the targets to expend valuable resources preventing future attacks and punishing those that have occurred (which often backfires).
Delving into the realm of pure fantasy, if Ukraine was able to develop a secure back-channel intelligence connection to IS, and through it encourage them to attack Russian targets, I'm sure they would do it. They maintain plausible deniability, there's basically zero cost or elevated risk (Ukraine has no Muslim population to speak of, so no chance of blowback or expansion on to their territory, and what's Russia going to do, attack them?), and Russian resources get spent tracking down Islamic extremists rather than hitting Ukrainian targets. Ukraine has already shown an ability and willingness to get involved with third-parties to weaken Russia (covert ops against Wagner in Sudan, for example). It's straight out of Machiavelli's The Prince, which has shown itself to be dramatically more prescient than Douhet could ever have hoped to be.
Hi everyone!
Let me to say a few of my thoughts on yesterday's accident in Moscow.
First - I'm almost 100% sure this was done by russian intelligence(federal security service). This is not the first time they have used terrorist attacks against their own citizens to strengthen putin's dictatorship or justify illegal actions.
For example - one of them, which took place in 1999 in Ryazan
https://evfilatov.medium.com/russian-apartment-bombings-the-story-of-ryazan-sugar-200f08110f04
There have been many more terrorist attacks like this since.
It was immediately clear that Ukraine would be named as being involved in the incident.
And what are we reading in the Russian news today? yeah, you're right - the terrorists were supported in Ukraine and that's where they went after the attack. Hmmm... not surprise, at all.
What else is interesting - ISIS organization claims responsibility for this terrorist attack, but no one of Russia's media does it say so. Why????
This terrorist attack makes no sense to Ukraine.
And what about putin? let's see - strengthening his dictatorship, even more restrictions on freedoms for russian citizens, more powers for law enforcement agencies, more racist attitudes (if you noted, the attackers weren't Slavs and i read some comments from russians wishing death on all non-Slavic people - but the Nazis are still in Ukraine, don't forget (it's sarcasm)) and what about Ukraine's involvement - this is the reason to mobilize and continue the war.
Some more observations from one of the messenger chats - what happened in Crocus city hall was called a tragedy by all russians (i don't deny it either, it's terrible when such things happen), but at the same time these same people do not consider what is happening in Ukraine a tragedy - someone posted a photo of a burning hydroelectric dam in Zaporizhya after the russian attack the same night with the question - isn't that terrorism? well, this message was deleted by the moderator. Why? rhetorical question.
The fact that on the same day(at night - the attack lasted from 1:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.), russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine's infrastructure - is not terrorism.
The fact that ordinary people in many cities have been left without electricity, water and heat(and still are) - is not terrorism.
the fact that once again ordinary people have suffered (and died), homes have been damaged or destroyed - is not terrorism.
The fact that the nuclear power plant in Energodar is once again without power and there were hits at the hydroelectric plant in Zaporizhya (one of the blocks of which is now completely damaged) and i can't imagine what would happen if the dam was damaged - is not terrorism.
So here's a little summary of my thoughts on what's going on. Any questions? Any thoughts?
I will say it again - even for me it is sometimes difficult to understand the reasoning and logic of the actions of the people of russia.
Have a good day!!!
VikkiDp said:What else is interesting - ISIS organization claims responsibility for this terrorist attack, but no one of Russia's media does it say so. Why????
Because if they acknowledge the IS claim of responsibility, they cannot shape the story to fit their anti-Ukraine narrative.
Of course Russia's claims are hypocritical and easily dismissed as clumsy propaganda, but we have the advantage of access to countervailing news sources and an educational system that is not merely a mechanism of control. To a significant segment of the Russian people, without alternative sources and with little other information or the ability to process it, the party line is often the only line, and as such there is value to Putin in shaping it to his purposes.
In reply to 02Pilot :
Of course, i know that and i understand that very clearly - as a person who grew up in the USSR and this kind of propaganda.
Actually i was a rhetorical question to get some thoughts and to illustrate how the media works in dictatorial regimes - they only show things that support the policies of the ruling party.
I'd like to add a couple more thoughts on what happened in Moscow.
russia is trying to prove Ukraine's involvement in the terrorist attack in order to declare Ukraine a terrorist state or a state that supports terrorists - it gives them a reason to continue military actions and to explain it away as counter-terrorism.
I also think that russia may soon resume the death penalty - any dissent will be punished. And the russian government will make it look like it was the free will of their citizens.
The dictatorship will continue to strengthen.
Boy, these Ukrainians... sneaky...
They managed to get a video to the news arm of the Islamic State.
ISIS Releases Bodycam Footage Of The Attack
A video apparently shot by gunmen who carried out the Moscow concert hall attack has been put up on social media accounts typically used by ISIS, according to SITE Intelligence Group.
According to SITE, the video appeared on a Telegram account belonging to Amaq, the news arm of Islamic State.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/world-news/isis-releases-bodycam-footage-of-the-attack/
And! Not to be... uhm... but they clearly had plastic surgery to look uhm....
BTW Being arrested by Russian's seems to make you fall down face first a lot and run into door frames at full speed!
(in case you are curious there is apparently a video of Mr lower left getting his ear cut off)
There is also a picture of Mr upper right being tortured with an electo-torture device, connected to... his man parts...
...maybe ISIS should just send suicide bombers next time.
The Russian apparently are again having issues with their landing ship spontaneously exploding for no apparent reason:
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