Breaking - Shooting and Explosion at Concert Hall in Moscow

Russia has a complicated history with its Jewish population: during the Soviet Union they were mostly banned from leaving for Israel (because who could possibly want to leave the paradise of the USSR?) while also having occasional crackdowns on Jews for allegedly being unpatriotic.

When the borders did open up, after the collapse of the USSR, many Jews did leave - but they are unlikely to feel particularly friendly towards today's Russia.

Everyone in Drogheda knows it was the lads from Dundalk.

Most Russians are nominal christians and they were at a gathering, so in the literal sense it is true. Putain has been playing up the christian character of his regime for years now and I doubt that has endeared him to radical islamists.

Yes that's my point. They don't like Russia and Russia doesn't like them. Russia has always been a curate's egg sort of place for Jews.

So unlike the US, where Israeli Jews generally maintain positive links both with Jews in the US and with US administrations generally, relationships with Jews still living in Russia are complex (because it can be risky for Russian Jews to be seen to have close relationships with people who are seen as traitors for leaving) and their relationship with the Russian administration is frankly poor.

Hence their Jewish population provides no strong reason for Russia to support Israel over Palestine. It probably depends on whatever Russia sees as its geopolitical interests of the moment. And at the moment, that's anything that's anti US and anti Europe.

It was a joke, they are all Prigozhin wearing some of the disguises he claimed to have used at various times.

If the translation and confession is to be believed this perp isn't so much an ISIS fundamentalist as he is a paid merc (though for a mercenary he shakes like a leaf)

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1bly180/video_with_translated_captions_of_one_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Allegedly: Offered 500k rubles a month ago, half paid up front to his account, the conspirators gave him instructions including location but no specific persons to target, through telegram and supplied the weapons.

Maybe they were going somewhere else via Ukraine eg IRELAND

Don't forget they'll be carrying the SIM game. For their phones, right?

Although working toward a more extreme end, IS work along the same principles as any other military/political force, real or pseudo. If they were just trying to attack everyone all the time, they'd have no cohesion whatsoever. They have allies and enemies, and a list of priorities toward achieving whatever end it is they're working towards.

Frankly, whatever beef IS have with Russia should be talked about in minute detail. Right now, Putin is trying to spin this (very tenuously, I should add) as an attack by Ukraine, or backed by Ukraine in some way. IS have claimed responsibility for the attack pretty publicly, so this should be what the conversation is about unless some strong evidence to the contrary comes out and give Russia and western bad actors as little chance as possible to spin some false narrative.

There is a lot about the attackers and the attack itself that doesn't align with the claim it was an attack by Islamic State, or indeed any Islamist group. The attackers fled - these were not suicidal "martyrs" looking to die. I've seen none of the survivors say they shouted any sort of religious slogans.

They left in the same car they arrived in and got on the Moscow-Kiev motorway, heading for the Ukrainian border. That's an odd destination for an Islamist terrorist. To the extent they did want to survive, why not go to ground with local sympathisers in Moscow? Or if you are going to travel, why not head towards a place where sympathisers are more likely to be found such as the Caucuses or Central Asia?

Even more oddly for Islamists, when intercepted by the Russian security forces and escape was impossible, all four surrendered with little or no resistance. That is almost unheard of for fanatical Islamists looking for martyrdom.

I've seen videos of the initial (i.e. on the side of the road) interrogations of one of the gunmen and he claims he was paid (roughly 11,000 USD) to go to the building and kill people there. He was paid half up front, the rest on completion. He expresses no religious motivation or grudge against Russia at all. Just a job for money. This lines up with them wanting to flee and to survive - they wanted to collect their money from their employer.

The only thing that points to Islamic State is IS claiming it, but they also claimed they carried out the 2017 Las Vegas shootings and terror attacks in Barcelona and London which is it known they were not involved in so they have form for lying. So far, IS has presented no evidence of a connection to the attackers - typically they would release some video of the gunmen prior to the attack. They haven't done that so far. It's really odd that the US is so absolutely and completely certain about who is and who isn't responsible when the investigation has barely started.

Let's wait and see without jumping to conclusions.

It seems hard to understand how four people could be found to slaughter so many people for $11,000 each. I was just listening to lex Friedman podcast on new book nuclear war and how easily it could happen and started reading here.

This is not a good development. Why do so many world leaders think it's acceptable to kill other people. I don't know what's happened since COVID but it feels like things are going a bat sh1t crazy in the world.

Would be good if sensible adults started using words not guns

ISIS have uploaded a video in the last few minutes of their own terrorists carrying out the attack (not sure how they managed to get hold of the footage - perhaps it was live streamed or something). At least that puts an end to the nonsense that Ukraine was somehow involved.