Russian Terrorism
Each of these posts regarding Russia should probably come with this disclaimer: What I’m about to say may be taken as offensive, objectionable, delusional, and—worst of all—completely wrong.
With that effort at disclosure out of the way, let’s talk about the track record of the nation officially known as the Russian Federation, but more accurately described as the Fiefdom of Vladimir Putin. It is worth recalling how Putin’s reign began: with terrorist bombings of civilian apartment blocks in Russia—murdering random civilians as they slept. These were fairly clearly the work of Russia’s secret state and rogue spy agencies that Putin himself probably still worked for, if secretly. Karen Dawisha’s book Putin’s Kleptocracy (2014) still stands as the best work on the murder spree launched to secure Putin the presidency.
Much of that was subsequently forgotten in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Assuming the scenario is true, which I do, the September 1999 bombings killed over 300 civilians and resulted in a public outcry for revenge on Chechnya, a small nation on the south-western edge of the Russian Empire that has tried for over two centuries to break free of the imperial yoke. The bombing was staged by the Russian secret state to inspire support for Vladimir Putin to become the successor to Boris Yeltsin.
The pattern is a simple now as it was then, and all the evidence was and is under the control of a secretive police state. Thus, the outside observer and analyst is left with nothing better than appearances from a distance. The human penchant for pattern recognition takes over. And the pattern here is of a mafioso nation state that has spent the better part of a century applying violence, oppression, chaos, and mass murder on its own people, among others. Some observers from neighboring countries that spent the Soviet years under Russian rule see the behavior pattern everywhere, and hold Russians in perpetual contempt, as likely cultural chauvinists and probable violent murderers. One such person is the former president of modern Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who grew up in the Estonian exile community in Europe and the United States before returning to his ancestral homeland after it split from Russia in 1990.
For people on the receiving end of Russian imperial brutality and violence, the so-called terrorist acts in Russia in recent days is all too familiar. The speed is inconceivable with which a white van with old Ukrainian license plates was found in Moscow as Russia is engaged in an all-out assault on that country. What are the odds that a Ukrainian van could cross the front lines and drive for hours across Russia into Moscow without anyone noticing?
On the other hand, it is a government whose dictator has applied mass murder to his own people in the past to secure the job and public loyalty. Why would he not return to a scheme and method that succeeded in the past? If it wasn’t the Russian secret state ultimately behind the bombings—or behind the men behind the bombings, matryoshka-doll style—who else could it have plausibly been?
Reading the comments about the attacks in Moscow. Given that the US exercising its “duty to warn” notified the Russians of indications of a pending attack, I think it less likely that Putin’s government was behind it — at least, this time.
Good evening. Today the mothership reported that, over the weekend, Congress finally got around to funding the government.