DISINFO: The West orchestrated a Crocus City Hall terrorist attack
SUMMARY
When the Russo-Ukrainian conflict calms, Ukraine must be given more support; if not, orchestrate a terrorist attack. Tajik "biological drones" are operatives, but who organized and ordered the attack? The Kremlin suspects Kyiv and questions its collaboration with Islamic mercenaries and involvement of Western intelligence.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative depicting Ukraine as a terrorist regime. The claim was made in connection with the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow, trying to link Ukraine to the terrorist attacks in Russia without presenting any evidence.
The Islamic State have claimed responsibility for and shared video footage from the attacks, corroborating their claims of responsibility.
Kyiv strongly denied any involvement in the assault on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk.
In a recent development, news have appeared that Iran had warned Moscow a few days before of an imminent attack by ISIS based on information obtained from arrested ISIS terrorists in Iran.
The US was legally obliged to warn Moscow earlier in March of a possible attack in Russia aimed at large gatherings before issuing a public advisory to citizens in the country. As explained by ABC news.
"The United States shared those advance intelligence indications under a tenet of the U.S. intelligence community called the “duty to warn," which obliges U.S. intelligence officials to lean toward sharing knowledge of a dire threat if conditions allow. That holds whether the targets are allies, adversaries or somewhere in between".
The United States works intensely to collect intelligence on potential plots by the Islamic State and its Afghanistan-based branch, ISIS-Khorasan. Armed with that information, the United States has been able to warn Russia about specific targets the Islamic State was planning to hit. The U.S. warning to Russia ahead of a terrorist attack was highly specific: Crocus City Hall was a potential target of the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.
The alert was dismissed as "provocative", "blackmail" and an "attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country" by Putin. He said: “I’ll remind you of recent, let’s say directly, provocative statements of certain official Western structures about potential terror attacks in Russia. All of this looks like obvious blackmail and an attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country”.
Even Putin himself acknowledged late on 25 March that Islamists were committing the attack.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that the West encouraged the creation of the Islamic State, who are its mercenaries; that the West is supporting terrorists to encircle Russia; that the EU is supporting terrorism against the Syrian state; that instead of killing ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the US may have evacuated him; that the US is transporting ISIS members to Afghanistan; or that extremists and Nazis are being trained in Ukraine to act in Belarus.