“Death toll in concert hall attack rises to 137” Security in Russia is focused on protecting Putin. Russian military exists to protect Putin. The Russian people don’t matter. Think about that when Trump says he will be dictator like his mentor Putin.

Death toll in concert hall attack rises to 137 — including 3 children, Russian Investigative Committee says

From CNN's Darya Tarasova 

“When Vladimir Putin finally spoke about the worst terrorist attack to hit Russia in 20 years, he swept over the glaring failure of his security state to prevent the assault, which left at least 133 dead, despite a clear warning from the United States on March 7 that a strike on a concert hall could be imminent…

But the gruesome videos of the attackers with automatic weapons coldly murdering innocent concertgoers and setting ablaze one of the Russian capital’s most popular entertainment venues smashed through Putin’s efforts to present Russia as strong, united and resilient…

Despite Putin’s rhetoric seeking to implicate Ukraine, analysts, former U.S. security officials and members of the Russian elite said the assault underscored the vulnerabilities of Putin’s wartime regime, which were also evident when Yevgeniy Prigozhin led his Wagner mercenaries in a brief mutiny aiming to oust top defense officials in June.

“The regime shows its weakness in such critical situations, just as it did during the mutiny by Prigozhin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Though Prigozhin abandoned the uprising, the damage was clear. Then, as during this weekend’s events, Putin did not appear for hours before finally addressing the emergency. “In difficult moments, Putin always disappears,” Kolesnikov said.

Just three days before the Crocus City assault, Putin dismissed the U.S. warning about a potential imminent terrorist attack as “open blackmail” and as “an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society.”

But with his authoritarian grip on power and virtually no one willing to challenge him, the Russian leader is unlikely to face any criticism or consequences for failing to take the warning more seriously…

A Russian academic with close ties to senior Moscow diplomats offered a similar assessment of Russia’s failure to prevent Friday night’s attack. “It’s clear that we will search for Ukrainian fingerprints and possibly those of Western security services,” the academic said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Putin’s regime often retaliates against critics. “But probably any investigation will find failures by our security services.”

Russia’s security services have poured enormous resources into monitoring the movements of opponents of the Putin regime, using facial recognition technology to track and question those who participated in the recent protest against Putin’s election or who laid flowers in honor of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in prison last month.

But providing adequate security for citizens against threats emanating from known terrorist groups appears to have slipped down the list of priorities, analysts said, despite the country consistently facing terrorist attacks over the years, including two claimed or attributed to the Islamic State in 2019…

“Everywhere there is the feeling we are living in a police state which is closely watching every citizen,” Kolesnikov said. “People now are often stopped and checked at the entrance to the metro system. At airports, security has become much tougher. … There really is a question how this could happen at all.”

Others said Russian security failures were not an exception, but the norm.

“Unless it’s a really high-profile public event like the Olympics or where Putin is involved … Russia’s guard on serious security is always down,” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “You really need to have an elaborate system focused on these kind of threats, and they have been focused elsewhere…”

The former U.S. officials said the potential terrorist threat emanating from Central Asia had become a blind spot of the Putin regime while it focused on pursuing political enemies in Russia and on threats resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, including drone strikes and cross-border attacks.

“They have not prioritized the threat from ISIS that includes many Central Asians,” said Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer who has specialized in counterterrorism and Central Asia and serves as an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. “Thousands of Central Asians joined the Islamic State, and many returned from Syria and Iraq after the loss of the caliphate. A lot of them rose to very senior positions and had come from either the army, the police or the intelligence services of a number of Central Asian states.”

“The Central Asian element of ISIS had always targeted Russia,” London added. “I don’t think there is shock and surprise in Russian intelligence that there was an issue. It just simply wasn’t sufficiently high on their agenda.”

FROM:

The Washington Post

Terrorist attack in Russia exposes vulnerabilities of Putin’s regime

By Catherine Belton and Robyn Dixon

March 24, 2024 at 7:18 a.m. EDT