Implications of the Moscow theater attack for Russia, at home and abroad

It was a peaceful Friday evening. After iftar, we intended to watch a Turkish TV series, “Destan,” with my mother. Instead, we found ourselves watching a horror movie — but this was no fiction.

My sister called, telling is to turn on the TV, and we saw images of people dressed in camouflage outfits, armed with machine guns, attacking the Crocus City Hall music venue shortly before the band Picnic were due to take the stage.

The events we saw were especially terrifying because that evening, my sister had intended to go to Crocus City Hall after work, around the time the attack began. Through great fortune of fate, she decided to go home and change the shoes she was wearing for something more comfortable first and arrive at the venue later. Just 15 minutes here or there can indeed sometimes change everything.

Others were not so lucky. Of those in the hall that night, 137 died, the victims of terrorism. The latest death toll was published by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on March 24, which was designated by Russian authorities as an official national day of mourning.

Modern Russia has experienced many terrorist attacks but this one shocked the country on a particularly large scale. No one has forgotten the horror of the siege at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002, when terrorists took almost 1,000 people hostage during a performance of the musical “Nord-Ost.” Nor have memories faded of the terrible Beslan school siege in September 2004.

Modern Russia has experienced many terrorist attacks but this one shocked the country on a particularly large scale

Dr. Diana Galeeva

Nonetheless, the latest attack resonated in its awfulness. One of the people caught up in it, called Sergey, said: “We were at a concert at Crocus City Hall. Shooting started there, a bunch of people ran, everyone was screaming. Some people set the hall on fire and fired from machine guns.”

You can imagine the shock felt by all those involved. The attack has united Russian society. Almost 5,000 people in Moscow and the surrounding areas donated blood to help the victims in the immediate aftermath. The Investigative Committee of Russia gave a reward to one man who showed unparalleled courage when he saved others by tackling one of the terrorists.

Russian society had, arguably, already displayed a similar sense of unity, or at least a yearning for it, a week earlier when citizens displayed their highest-ever level of support for their leader, Vladimir Putin, in the presidential election.

He won in a record, post-Soviet landslide victory, receiving 88 percent of the votes. It gives him six more years in power, with most people expecting the current course of his leadership to continue during that time.

As Putin put it: “We have many tasks ahead. But when we are united, no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us, nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now, and they will not succeed ever in the future”.

The attack has clearly further consolidated the sense of unity in Russian society.

Daesh’s Afghan branch, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility for it. The rationalization behind it seems at odds with current realities, at least in terms of Muslims in Russia and Russian ties with Muslim countries. Internal and external relations between Russia and Islam have, especially recently, been working toward coexistence and collaboration.

The attack has clearly further consolidated the sense of unity in Russian society.

Dr. Diana Galeeva

The international reactions to the attack reflected the wider geopolitical landscape in terms of the narratives and degrees of sympathy. The leaders of friendly nations offered unconditional support to the Russian government and its people. Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example, sent a telegram to Putin in which he strongly condemned the attack and expressed his condolences.

The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, highlighted the uncertainty it might create in the international community.

“I believe that every day, we are approaching a great world conflict, the largest in history, and I fear that it will claim more lives than the Second World War,” he said.

The tone of the statements from some were noticeably qualified. The Russian ambassador to Vienna, Dmitry Luybinsky, thanked Austrian authorities for their words of sympathy following the terrorist attack but noted they had not condemned it.

Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences to the victims of terrorism, without specifically mentioning the events at Crocus City Hall.

Predictably, the US reaction also raised questions in Moscow. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington strongly condemned the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall and expressed its deepest condolences to the families and loves ones of those killed and injured in this heinous crime. He added that US authorities condemn terrorism in all its forms.

However, his statement came on Saturday. On Friday, White House spokesperson John Kirby was more ambiguous in his comments. He extended condolences to the victims but then immediately stated that there was no indication that Ukraine or Ukrainians were involved in the attack. This was despite the fact that, in his own words, the US was still studying what happened.

The spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said many countries had expressed “unconditional condemnation” of the actions of the terrorists, and had offered words of support for Russia. Among them were neighboring countries and ones on other continents, she added.

The reactions had come from “literally all over the planet,” Zakharova continued, including words of support at the official level.

“Against, this background, the reaction from the United States makes a strange impression,” she added.

It is clear that while the terrorist attack has brought Russian society together in a new way, it is already a new point of friction in relations between Moscow and Washington, which is the main donor of military and other aid to Ukraine during the current conflict in the country.

The warning from Vucic about the danger of the greatest conflict since the Second World war has its basis in logic; hopefully, the international community will find greater wisdom to help avoid any further escalation of the present, ever so fragile, global security situation.

• Dr. Diana Galeeva is an academic visitor to Oxford University. X: @Dr_GaleevaDiana