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At the writing of this post, at least 126 people have been killed (5 children among the victims) and over 100 people have been injured by a terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow. The official number of deaths is 93 but some trusted contacts have reported a higher toll.
This post is only a preliminary exposition of events with limited commentary and working hypotheses since it is too early to come to any conclusions.
Timeline of the massacre and fire…
According to Mash, this is the timeline of events at the Crocus City Hall venue with Moscow time stamps: “The terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall. We have collected the chronology of events:”
VchK-Ogpu: In the afternoon, the security forces detained a large group of men at the Crocus City Hall. This could be unrelated to the events that transpired around 8pm in the concert hall. The Russian services had been on alert.
19:55 - the terrorists enter the Crocus City Hall, shooting the guards and people nearby.
20:01 - first calls for ambulance and emergency services.
20:03 - the gunmen opened fire on the audience in the concert hall and set fire to the chairs.
20:04 - first reports of shooting from eyewitnesses.
From 20:00 - people tried to evacuate.
20:18: VChk-Ogpu began reporting on its channel with this video, “There's a shooting at Crocus City Hall. There are wounded.”
20:25: “Video has emerged of the Crocus City Hall at the time of the open shooting.” In the Crocus City theatre hall four shooters with automatic guns started firing at random people. At this point, the building itself has been set on fire and it is claimed that at least 15 people had been killed.
"We were in the VIP box. We saw what was happening. Shooting, shooting everywhere, screaming, blood. Men rushed to barricade the door to the box. Then the staff came in and quickly took us down the stairs. A lot of people stayed in the auditorium."
18:28—More video emerged as people in the Concert venue began escaping. Warning: the contents of this video are disturbing.
20:44 - Crocus City on fire. There are people inside. Firefighters cannot start extinguishing the fire until the special forces have cleared the area.
20:49 - VchK-Ogpu reports that the roof had caught fire and there were people trapped inside the venue.
21:00 - more than 50 ambulances and other special services were on the scene. OMON and SOBR are preparing for an assault.
21:06 - “VChK-OGPU publishes footage of the attack on Crocus City. There are at least four attackers. Killing everyone in the way. One attacker appears to have a flamethrower.”
The gunmen also detonated explosives. At least two blasts took place at the concert hall on Friday evening, news agencies reported.
An eyewitness told the Mash Telegram channel that there were “at least five” attackers and that they were “bearded”.
“They act like trained fighters,” the account read. “At the moment of entering the building, the guards and people standing at the door were killed. Then they blocked the main entrance.
“The terrorists are armed with [Kalashnikov] assault rifles. Some carried vests with various ammunition. At least two of the attackers are carrying backpacks, possibly with molotov cocktails.”
“Cars didn’t stop on the road, no one was willing to help the crowd fleeing from the attack. I was in line at Navalny’s funeral, there was a policeman for each person, there was not a single law enforcement officer here.”
21:12 - VChK-OGPU reports that the emergency services can't get to the Crocus Concert Hall due to the huge traffic jam in the centre.
21:14 - rescuers evacuate people from the burning roof of the building. VchK-OGPU reports that the dead are being carried away by the emergency services.
21:30 - firefighting helicopters are drawing water from the Pavshinskaya floodplain to extinguish the roof of the "Crocus". More than 70 ambulances are heading to the area.
21:37: the Kremlin announces that the gunmen have escaped. The first eyewitnesses report that there were 10 gunmen in the building.
21:40 - Sergei Sobyanin announces the cancellation of all public events in Moscow on the weekend. In St. Petersburg, evacuations have begun in the 'gallery' shopping center. Many other cities will follow suit and close down public events.
22:05 - at "Crocus" begins to collapse the roof.
22:13 - the FSB Central Committee reports 40 dead and 100 injured.
22:30 - published the first list of victims of the terrorist attack.
23:10 - the area of the fire has increased to 12900 squares.
00: 55 - the fire in "Crocus" is localised.
By late evening, Russian authorities had launched a mass manhunt for the gunmen in the attack, warning residents in Moscow and its suburbs to look out for signs of the attackers. The Russian government did not immediately identify any of the suspects. Eleven people were detained by the FSB.
01: 07 - published a photo of the alleged terrorists in a white Renault Symbol with numbers T668UM 69.
05:00 - the fire in "Crocus" is liquidated.
08:30 - dozens of people gathered at the Blood Centre of FMBA of Russia to give blood and its components to the victims.
09:00 - three children died in hospital after the terrorist attack. 121 people were hospitalised.
112 News: “The top floor of the Crocus, destroyed by fire. In some places, the concert hall is still burning and smoking. Emergency Situations Ministry forces continue to eliminate the consequences of the terrorist attack.”
Russian accounts and how to interpret them…
Madi Kapparov: ”General recommendation regarding Telegram: the platform is the testing ground for various "news" versions for the Russians. Their mainstream media shows you which version the Kremlin decides to pick.”
This is why I’ve chosen to present the timeline of events for now and record what the Kremlin would have us believe. I will reserve my overall analysis for a later date, but I think there is a consensus on two working hypotheses, which I have expanded on below. However, like most analysts, my initial thought was that the massacre provides the Kremlin with the excuse to call for mobilisation and institute martial law. One version of events will try to pin the blame on Ukraine, thus ‘justifying’ further attacks against Ukrainians. This doesn’t mean there won’t be more than one version since the Kremlin excels at creating chaos. Another side version claims the CIA was involved: I guess anything to disparage the US is thrown in for good measure.
A slew of questions still remain unanswered: How is it possible that the gunmen were able to bring their weapons near or in the concert hall without being detected? There are thousands of cameras in Moscow. What delayed the security forces that arrived over an hour after the first shots rang through the concert hall? Protesters are routinely and immediately rounded up minutes after they begin their ‘subversive’ activity.
For the time being, some Kremlin propagandists are posting that the massacre was carried out by radical Islamists—at first from Afghanistan, and then from Tajikistan.
During the night, the Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, based in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on Telegram. The group claimed its gunmen had managed to escape afterwards.
A US official said Washington had intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim. Hamas has condemned the terrorist attack.
“A white Renault Symbol, which could be used by terrorists, was stopped in Bryansk Region.
Preliminarily, the car was caught in Navlinsky district, a few dozen kilometres from the border with Ukraine. Inside were three citizens of Tajikistan and one citizen with a Russian passport. These are:”
VChK-OGPU: “Footage from the scene of the detention of suspects in the attack on Crocus in the Bryansk region, which was first reported by the VChK-OGPU. The detention took place with shooting and a chase. One terrorist, 19-year-old Dushanbe native Muhammadsoobir Faizov, was captured at once. Three others managed to escape into the forest, but they were also captured.”
VChK-OGPU published more information about the suspects this morning:
“A source of the VChK-OGPU reported searches at the Okruzhnoi Apart Hotel on Dmitrovskoye Shosse. Two Tajiks, who are tentatively related to the terrorist attack in Crocus City, lived there. According to the interlocutor, they had been living there since February and the hotel administration spoke of them as exemplary tenants.
"They were going somewhere, coming and going, two of them lived there all the time. They were always quiet and clean. Go into their room now (other people live there now), bottles, rubbish. They didn't have such things in their house. They left the hotel the day before the attack.
Who are the suspects?
As I’ve said previously, there are two working hypotheses for the moment: 1. The massacre was an internally orchestrated and piloted operation along the lines of the apartment bombings in 1999. On that occasion, Putin unleashed a war against ‘terrorism’ in order to boost his public image before taking office in September 1999, stepping in for Boris Yeltsin; 2. It’s an authentic expression of terror activity within the Russian Federation aimed at destabilising the Kremlin. For what it’s worth, I’ll comment on the second hypothesis.
If the Russian Federation should collapse in the future, it won’t be triggered by actors in Moscow. It will stem from the endemic, dramatic problems that already exist in the so-called independent states of the Russian Federation. Organic riots and protests were reported some time ago in Dagestan, Ingushtia, and Bashkortostan, and Buryatia.
The economic and social landscape in the Russian hinterland is quite dire. The governors of these ‘independent republics’ are not receiving the bribes and cash they were used to getting before February 2022, which means they have less power and are increasingly disgruntled with the Kremlin. The populations in the Russian ‘outback’ have provided the bulk of the Russian armed forces being slaughtered at the front. While they and their families do receive a hefty salary (if alive) or ‘death payments’, inflation across the Federation has driven prices to the sky for basic food items and other goods. Those who are not fighting earn very little compared with their counterparts in Moscow, and they’re paying the same prices for goods as they do in Moscow. Prices are not adjusted according to regions. Public services are almost non-existant.
There’s a lot of malaise in these areas: let’s remember that Prigozhin’s ‘march to Moscow’ started in Rostov-on-Don, which notoriously views Moscow with disdain, as do most regions outside the capital. These populations simply don’t identify with Moscow, which seeks to impose its version of ‘Russianism’ on them.
I’ll close up my comments by saying that we’ll be monitoring the information that emerges about the massacre, and report on developments as they come in.
Steve Rosenberg for the BBC in Moscow:Dozens of people have been killed at a Russian concert hall in what Moscow has called "a bloody terrorist attack." Our report from Moscow.
An interesting twist…
On March 7 the United States Embassy and embassies of other countries, had issued a notice to their nationals in Moscow warning them to stay away from public events due to the heightened risk of a terrorist attack. Olga and I talked about this on Kremlin File Week in Review. The U.S. authorities also passed information onto the Kremlin.
According to CBS news, a U.S. official said “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.”
"Earlier this month, the U.S. government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow —potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts— which prompted the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia," Watson said. "The U.S. government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding 'duty to warn' policy."
On March 19, Putin addressed the FSB dismissing the warnings as "Western blackmail".
Within minutes of the massacre, the Kremlin immediately began disseminating the narrative that Ukraine was responsible by stating that a white van with Ukrainian licence plates had been found on the site of the massacre. In this post, Dmitry Medvedev published his invective against the possible assailants. Please note that the post is written in English for a foreign audience.
Mirroring Medvedev’s comment, the Chairman of the Committee on Defence and Security of the Russian Federation Council, Viktor Bondarev, told RIA Novosti that he considers what happened in Crocus City Hall a terrorist attack and sabotage by Ukraine. With lightening speed, the Russian Federation let it be known that it’s going to the UN with some sort of narrative.
How has Ukraine reacted? “The terrorist attack in Moscow was a provocation by Russian special services on Putin's orders. Its purpose is to justify total mobilization, the Ukrainian GUR reports. "Peskov's statement shortly before the attack was just a false start of a planned special operation."
"Terror against civilians is a longtime favorite technique of Vladimir Putin. It does not matter which country's population suffers from its use. Since the beginning of Putin's rise to power, Russia has been accompanied by terrorist attacks - the bombing of three houses on the Kashirskoye highway, Volgodonsk, Nord-Ost, Ryazan, the explosions in the subway, and the Wings youth festival. All these events were always used as a pretext for more terror: wars in Chechnya and Dagestan, the introduction of draconian laws, total restriction of freedoms, and uncontrolled expansion of the powers of the security forces.
A very important detail: Moscow and the Moscow region are saturated with an unprecedented number of video surveillance cameras, facial recognition systems, the Safe City system, and the "Potok" system. By some absurdity, all these systems failed at once and let through 5 or 20 heavily armed and equipped terrorists. The all-seeing Eye of the FSB just today reported on the arrest of the "cell of the RDK" and lazily put on the floor teenagers armed with axes and sticks, and just a few hours later, slept through the entry of full-fledged terrorists into one of the most famous concert halls in Russia.
The fire that started was not extinguished for an hour, OMON and SOBR were "in a hurry", just like Ahmatov's men in Rostov-on-Don....
Today, shortly before the terrorist attack, Peskov said that now there is a war, not a special operation, although this term has been under strict prohibition since the beginning of the war.
Monique, thank you so much for this extensive coverage!!