The attack on Friday 22 March at the Crocus City Hall, Moscow’s largest concert venue, killed 144 people and injured 182, leaving Russia shocked and in mourning. The unusually violent operation was claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan, an Afghan terrorist branch that regularly targets Russia in retaliation for its fight against jihadism in Syria and Chechnya. Four suspects were quickly arrested by the Russian authorities, brutalised and then paraded before the world’s cameras in a sorry state, after admitting their guilt. However, the master of the Kremlin maintains without proof that the attackers had contacts in Ukraine and that Kiev was involved in the attack. The Russian security services have gone so far as to question the responsibility of the Western secret services in the attack, despite the fact that the United States had warned Moscow of an imminent risk of an attack on its territory… Or how the Kremlin’s propaganda attempts to conceal a power weakened by the jihadist threat, neglected in favour of the war in Ukraine.
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