Hours before ISIS attacked, Putin added the "LGBT movement" to an official list of "terrorists and extremists" [View all]

[BeyondGeography]

A deadly attack shatters Putin’s promise of security to the Russian people

Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control. Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years. The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia’s survival — and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.

…The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist attack is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings and tightening security, he dismissed them as “provocative statements…All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, referring to the Western warnings. After the attack on Friday, some of his exiled critics have cited his response as evidence of the president’s detachment from Russia’s true security concerns.

Rather than keeping society safe from actual, violent terrorists, those critics say, Mr. Putin has directed his sprawling security services to pursue dissidents, journalists and anyone deemed a threat to the Kremlin’s definition of “traditional values.” A case in point: Just hours before the attack, state media reported that the Russian authorities had added “the L.G.B.T. movement” to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”; Russia had already outlawed the gay rights movement last year. Terrorism was also among the many charges prosecutors leveled against Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who died last month.

“In a country in which counterterrorism special forces chase after online commenters,” Ruslan Leviev, an exiled Russian military analyst, wrote in a social media post on Saturday, “terrorists will always feel free.” Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin’s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse…

More at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/24/world/moscow-russia-attack-news?unlocked_article_code=1.fE0.wigu.p47rLjoT9ud9&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb