President Volodymyr Zelensky said a few days ago that if Ukraine does not receive the promised military aid from the US, blocked by disputes in Congress, its forces will have to start withdrawing little by little. About the war, the elections in Russia, the attack on “Crocus City Hall“... Prof. Tatyana Dronzina - lecturer at the Department of “Political Science” at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, an expert on conflict resolution, spoke to FACT.
- Prof. Dronzina, we saw a presidential election in Russia in which the most normal thing happened, namely that Vladimir Putin was re-elected, but the vote was followed by an assassination. Rise and tragedy – is that how we can look at things?
- This terrorist act shook Putin's image as the batashka (b.r. - the father) who can guarantee the lives of his subjects - because there are no citizens in Russia. This probably indicates that his grip is not as iron as it seems, but it does not mean that he is not firmly in power. The truth is that at the moment Russia is Putin and there is no resistance to him and there will be none in the near future. There is simply no one to push him. Rise or tragedy? It depends on who. For Putin, the movement is from rise (electoral victory) to rise, because the terrorist act, regardless of whether it was organized with the participation of the Russian security services or without them, was a living hell for him. It allowed him to justify the upcoming mobilization and, of course, blame Ukraine. Who else? For Russians, whether they understood it or not, this was a path from one tragedy (another term for the war criminal Putin) to another tragedy - nearly 150 killed as a result of the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall.
- Someone, somewhere, ever had any doubts about what would happen in the presidential elections in Russia. Will we see a new Putin in his new term?
- If someone had any doubts, they must have been very naive. And no, Putin cannot be renewed, updated or recycled.
We will see the same Putin who will not stop the aggression against Ukraine, because the outcome of the war is a matter of his physical existence.
The political opposition will continue to be brutally repressed, its leaders will continue to die beyond the Arctic Circle or somewhere else, the free press, to the extent that it exists, will continue to experience increasingly severe restrictions, the murders of journalists and human rights defenders will continue, and public opinion support for him is unlikely to decrease significantly. The monstrous mechanism of control that was revealed during the pandemic and perfected in the course of the war against Ukraine will continue to operate. Political pluralism will become less and less possible.
- Elections during a “military operation“. Is there a place for the word “democracy“ in this situation?
- As for Russia, there is no democracy even in peacetime. If we believe Dugin, Putin's personal executor, then Russians do not need one. According to him, “a Russian is a person only through and in the father“. This paternalism was not imposed on him, he wants it, this is paternalism “from below“. This is his form of life or, more precisely, - the form of existence. He does not need another. Did you say democracy...
- And after the vote, an assassination attempt. Nearly 150 victims. The culprit for Putin, of course, is Ukraine. But what is the genesis of this assassination attempt. What does this tragedy want to show us?
- The most interesting thing about this attack is why it happened: whether because the Russian security services missed it, or because they themselves organized it. I fully assume that they missed it. This does not mean that they did not have information. It is simply that any organization - whatever it is, including the national security service - is ultimately an administrative pyramid structure. The information may have arrived, but no one paid attention to it. It may have been hidden. Or maybe this issue was simply not declared a priority and therefore no one was assigned to work on it.
In addition, a large part of the security services personnel are in the field of combat operations, because it is easier for them to kill Ukrainian civilians than to protect Russian civilians.
Otherwise, the attack itself came to Putin like manna from heaven. It gave him the opportunity to announce the incredible news that Russia is at war, that mobilization must take place, that tons of bombs must be dropped on the civilian Ukrainian population in retaliation for the terrorist attacks allegedly organized by Ukrainians. For this reason, many suspect the Russian services of collaborating in organizing the attack. And these suspicions are not unfounded.
Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist living in France since 2015, who wrote two weeks before the attack that Putin would resort to terrorist acts to mobilize Russians, raised a number of uncomfortable questions, such as: How does it happen that the terrorist act occurs at a time when groups in the FSB are competing for influence? Over the past year and a half, every effort has been made to replace the head of the service in Moscow and the Moscow region in order to establish control over these bodies that simultaneously control two regions. So far, the attempts have been unsuccessful, but it is obvious that such a terrorist act would mean the resignation of the head of the services. In order to appoint a new one who will play to the whistle of... factors outside the system. Osechkin recalls the published confessions of the former agent of the Russian services Barzhan Kultanov, a fighter for ISIS. Instead of being imprisoned, the Russian security services gave him a short term and persuaded him to work as an agent for them, sending him to Turkey.
He testified that the FSB was building its network of influence in the terrorist organization.
Right across from “Crocus City Hall“ is an OMON base, and behind it is the Moscow Region administration building, which has its own divisions, on the territory of “City Hall“ there is its own Interior Ministry department, a hundred meters away is the Moscow court, which also has its own divisions. How is it possible that for a whole hour none of them responded to stop these murders? How is it that the metal detectors are not working like humans on that particular day. How did the Tajiks, who arrived two or three weeks ago, find their way around and set fire to the huge “Crocus City Hall“?
Western services warn the Russians about the possibility of committing a terrorist act. On March 10, Putin attended an FSB board meeting. What did he tell those present? That this was blackmail or provocation on the part of the West, but there was not a word about making efforts to prevent possible terrorist acts.
- "Islamic State" claimed responsibility. How should we look at this - they want to state that they haven't left, that they exist, that they can…
- Islamic State is ready to take responsibility for any attacks - this is how they accumulate points in their biography. But this one, it seems, is really their work, because the partner security services announced that they have such evidence. The organization may have been militarily defeated, but as a brand it continues to live on social media and motivate new young people to commit suicide attacks. A discussion continues to develop in jihadist forums, which is probably the basis of leaderless jihad - network structures scattered around the world. The group acts as a trained team. While one kills, the others keep their sectors under control.
It is obvious that this is not the first time they are shooting and, moreover, they enjoy well-established interaction. The footage shows that the terrorists act in pairs, which is typical training for the military operating in a place with a high concentration of enemy manpower.
The footage shows how the groups join, split up again and continue their pre-drawn route. No one acts chaotically, because they know their next step and the direction of movement. They are not masked, they do not hide their faces from the cameras. The weapons are army weapons, Kalashnikov assault rifles, combat weapons, but modified with certain improvements. They do not have an optical sight, they have an open sight, which is typical of trench soldiers. The shooting skills of some of the terrorists are so great that they fire from the chest and hips, almost without using the stock, which means that each of them has fired thousands of rounds. There is no concern - apparently the terrorists know that their withdrawal is guaranteed. This act is not an act of suicide terrorism. They do not plan to die in battle. Two spectators from the hall testify that while one of the terrorists is reloading his weapon, a man with combat skills throws himself on him, another runs to help, and thus the terrorist is neutralized. But the official authorities do not report this. The captured terrorist has not been shown so far. The footage gives grounds to conclude that there are two different groups of terrorists. The first have many years of combat experience, trained by Russian instructors. The second are hired Tajiks - Teji, who were officially shown as perpetrators. This is not "Wagner", nor ISIS, nor "Hamas". Whoever they are, they speak pure Russian.
- The US and Italy sent signals to Moscow before the attack. Could it have been avoided?
- Such signals did indeed come, but one can never claim that an attack can be avoided with certainty.
A smart bomb, such as a suicide terrorist, can hardly be stopped.
At the same time, a number of attacks, including suicide attacks, have been and continue to be prevented. But this requires effective work by the security services and political will, which I do not see. Moreover, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, accused the US, Britain and Ukraine of being behind the attack on the concert hall in Moscow. Well, who else?... A day before that, the president made the same suggestions. Neither one nor the other presented concrete evidence, and in my opinion, they will not. Because their goal is not to identify the terrorists, but to strengthen the support of Russian society for the Ukrainian adventure. This simply had to be said, and it was enough to say it to achieve its goal.
- Will the tragedy give rise to a tightening of Vladimir Putin's rule?
- After every attack, regardless of the country and the regime, hardening follows. The question is how long it will last and within what foreseeable time frame the rule of law, respect for human rights and guarantees of civil liberties will be restored. As for Putin's regime, it has been a constant hardening since day one - it did not need any terrorist acts to kill Anna Politkovskaya and five of her colleagues from "Novaya Gazeta", to restrict the rights of the free press, to impose penalties for interpretations of history other than the official ones. Nor to attack Ukraine in the framework of a full-scale bloody aggression. But yes - with or without this assassination, the government will pull the reins ever more decisively and tighten the screws ever more tightly.