Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Gigantic terrorist attack at a concert in Moscow in progress. At least 140 dead probably significantly higher. The concert hall is on fire and currently collapsing. Perpetrators unknown. Multiple shooters with AKs.
Edited to add: Looks like ISIS had claimed responsibility, Putin will be making a statement soon
Second Edit Reuters and Skynews are reporting a second attack at an emergency medical center at least 28 dead there. (Third edit: this seems to be an erroneous report based on a western news outlets mistranslation of a Russian news broadcast)
Fourth edit Putin and the FSB have made statements in the past hours claiming that the concert hall attackers were attempting to flee to Ukraine and had Ukrainian assistance in entering Russia to carry out the attack
Fifth Edit FSB alleges attackers were detained 85 miles from the Ukrainian border on a near a highway heading south. Attackers indicted in Russian court. They appear to have been tortured.
Sixth Edit FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov claims in official statement that the Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom were behind the attack
I kind of doubt that the Kiev government is responsible. Right now Western public support for giving Ukraine unlimited aid is wavering - so the Kiev government would have to be kind of insane to risk the absolutely horrible optics of launching a jihadi-style mass killing of random civilians.
It would be going way beyond things like incorporating open Nazis in the ranks, blowing up Nord Stream 2, shelling Belgorod, trying to kill Dugin and killing his daughter by mistake, or blowing up Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe.
One can sort-of justify the Nazis through Ukraine's desperate need for military personnel and the fact that the Nazis are largely fighting against uniformed Russian soldiers (and Western media is unlikely to focus too much on any other things the Nazis might engage in, like maybe some suppression of dissidents), most Westerners don't really care about Nord Stream 2, shelling Belgorod is easily justified by Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, and the assassinations were launched against specific Russian pro-war targets.
Attacking completely random civilians in a jihadi style that reminds Westerners of recent attacks against their own countries carries such terrible optics if exposed that I really struggle to believe that the Ukrainian government would be stupid enough to do it given the lack of benefit. The Nazis at least actually provide a good bit of benefit to the Kiev government's war-making capability even if their optics are terrible... but killing 100 completely random Russian civilians does what exactly? Makes Putin look weak? Anybody who reads about the history of war a bit will realize that such actions are more likely to solidify support for the country's leader, not hurt it.
Of course governments do not always make decisions rationally, but given the cost-benefit analysis as it seems to me, I think that the level of irrationality necessary to attempt something like this would be significantly greater than anything I've seen from the Kiev government so far.
If it is true that the perpetrators were apprehended along the highway to Ukraine, that can potentially be explained by the fact that realistically, attempting to cross the Ukraine border despite having no ties to the Ukraine government could have been their best chance of survival. If they tried to go to Tajikistan, the long arm of the FSB would probably not find it too hard to follow them there.
I struggle to figure out how exactly they would have crossed the border without being discovered given that the border is, presumably, pretty well defended from the Russian side. Not that "pretty well defended from the Russian side" is saying much, given the length of the border and the mediocre quality of the Russian military (probably even more mediocre among troops stationed on a relatively peaceful part of the border). But it still would be running a gigantic risk. However, the theory that they were under orders from Kiev and had pre-arranged contacts with the Ukrainians suffers from the same problem... they would still have to figure out how to cross the border somehow.
You are saying that now, but many posters here said the same thing to argue that Ukraine would never blow up Nord Stream 2, before the articles saying it was likely them started appearing - it was all about how it would be stupid of them to engage in a terrorist attack against the infrastructure of one of their most important backers, and people in Germany would never forgive them if that turned out to be true, all for dubious benefit. Then the articles came out, and it was predictably crickets; ask anyone here or in Germany now and they'll affirm that surely Ukraine can't be faulted for protecting its interests like that (and are you really sure it was them anyway?).
People consistently overestimate how much they would actually be willing to apply principles if it turns out those principles favour the enemy team over their own. Condemning your in-group is painful, and people will be looking for any excuse to not do so, and anyhow we have the best excuse-printing machines in the world. If hypothetically this attack was actually ordered from Ukraine, is there any evidence that Russia could realistically obtain and present that would convince you of that, assuming Western media and governments just stuck to the line that it was independent ISIS adherents? Any statement procured from the perpetrators themselves can easily be dismissed as the product of torture or bribery, and supplying money and weapons untraceably in a country like Russia is trivial. Knowing this, though, any hypothetical Ukrainians considering to orchestrate such an attack would not need to include Western displeasure in their risk calculus at all - as long as governments and media in the West stay broadly on their side, no such displeasure can possibly manifest over this.
I was commenting (maybe here) that Ukraine blowing NS is unlikely - but due to lack of ability to do this, not due to lack of motive. (add to that inability to keep secret)
were there any worth anything? And not written by that journalist which is spiralling into insanity for some time?
AFAIK nothing clear appeared and I am confused how this topic died. I would expect at least Russia to keep talking about this and release something if anything close to actual proof would appear.
In this case it is relatively tricky. And it is price they are paying for very low quality of courts.
Though for NS providing some evidence should be feasible.
There was this cluster of reports carried by the WaPo and most major German papers. The Russian reaction at the time was that this is a lizard-cutting-off-its-tail release meant to pin it on "rogue elements in Ukraine that nobody with agency can be held responsible for" and the operation was actually executed with US backing. The reaction was mokusatsued in Western media.
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Maybe, but it would have to be something that cannot be faked or coerced, like a confession from a Ukrainian planner made while he and his family are in safety, not in Russia. Other than that... well, suffice it to say that I do not trust either the Kiev government or the Moscow government when they say anything that is less obvious than "the sky is blue" or "2 + 2 = 4".
I am pretty neutral in this war, so I feel that for whatever my intuition is worth, it is at least probably not much biased by partisanship. And in the absence of strong evidence that Ukraine either did it or that someone else clearly is behind planning it, I default to my cost-benefit analysis, which says that it makes no sense for Ukraine and it does not really fit their usual modus operandi (as far as I know, they usually find Slavs instead of people of Muslim ethnicities for assassinations in Russia, probably precisely because that is much much easier to present or spin as a case of "disaffected freedom fighter wants to strike a blow against Putin's regime" than using Muslims would be, since it would be a very hard sell to present Muslim militants as being chiefly driven by the kind of liberalism that Westerners like).
Of course nations do not always behave rationally, and you make a good point about Nord Stream 2. I would never have thought that the Ukrainians would risk doing something like that. However, I still think that a jihadi-type attack on civilians, without even the shred of a plausible military target, has significantly worse optics in Western eyes than either blowing up Nord Stream 2 or killing civilians as part of an assassination that targets some Russian pro-war figure.
That said, I never thought Russia would invade in 2022 to begin with because I overestimated the degree to which Putin would be deterred from such a course by the risk of losing the gas and oil trade with Europe. And as I already mentioned, I did not think that the Ukrainians would risk something like the attack on Nord Stream 2. So my track record is bad and I seem to have a tendency to underestimate people's risk tolerance.
For now, I can at least say that all presented evidence pointing at the Ukrainians is not sufficient to convince a neutral observer like myself, and my intuition is "this doesn't seem like the Ukrainians' typical style". But who knows.
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