Breaking - Shooting and Explosion at Concert Hall in Moscow

I had my doubts earlier in the week about whether the 4 captured were the 4 who carried out the attack. I posted about it in this thread. A couple of the things that I pointed out that didn't add up to me were that the attackers were speaking Arabic to each other and that one of the captured men was a 19 year old barber - which seemed an unlikely candidate.

I since learned though that they were not in fact speaking Arabic to each other - they were speaking Tajik. Also the 19 year old didn't actually take part in the slaughter. He instead was the designated camera-man and driver. It was from his POV that the video that ISIS-K released was taken.

Furthermore a NYT analysis piece, using OSINT, shows a clear link between the clothing of the captured men with that of the attackers and of the photograph that ISIS-K released.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that Putin and the FSB are definitely capable of organising a mass murder of their own citizens as a false flag. I just don't believe the facts add up to that as the likely conclusion this time round.

It's far too convoluted for one. The Kremlin are now trying to link Islamic terrorists to Ukraine and it's a massive stretch. It smells instead of the Kremlin trying to make the best of a bad situation. If they were to dream up something that they could pin on Ukraine it would have been something that would have been far easier to link to them, instead of the hoops that they're now trying to jump through.

Putin going missing for 18 hours after it happened is another tell that this wasn't something that had been expected or that he was in control of.

I do agree that the slow reaction time of the security services to the attack looks suspicious but I think that that can simply be put down to rank incompetence and the surprise factor of something happening on a Friday night. They're not a real security force. They're a glorified protection racket. They're designed for brutalising protesters not for reacting to actual terrorists. I remember the Prigozhin uprising happened on a Friday night as well and the reaction time of the Security forces was glacial.

There are plenty of other things that still don't make sense. I don't believe that those 4 agreed to carry out the assault for a pitiful amount of money (less than $10k). I don't understand why they allowed themselves to be captured alive when they had weapons and ammunition available to them. We'll probably never learn the truth to those questions either.

Pity about what happened in Russia, under different management, could have been a fantastic country. The Country has many attractions, like the Balkans, and despite the general opprobrium Russian people now find themselves under, I always found them to be friendly and helpful. Sure, you would find the bad egg there, but I didn't have to leave Ireland to find bad eggs. I'd like to go back, and have several invitations, but not at the present time. Unless of course, I had a "roof".

russia can now claim different things at different times depending on what is beneficial to them. It's a bit genius in a horrible way.

Russia has a marvellous amount of great historic monuments. The palaces of the tsars and the nobility are the equal of any in Europe-they put the dwellings of, say,British and Spanish royalty in the ha'penny place-and their old monasteries, churches and fortresses, often made of wood, have a unique character of their own. When they joined the European architectural mainstream their versions of Baroque and Neoclassical were very sophisticated.

You wouldn't happen to know where I could get some novichok, by any chance?

Anything reputable you could have linked to? Lol.

Often a true word spoken in jest… LOL😂

Russia officially says Ukraine was involved in the Moscow attack

How can i have an opinion when no one knows what the evidence is. I did think it was a bit weird when that guy went on TV the other day and said they assasinated people and blew them up like.

Obviously these things go on, but not often they go on telly and tell everyone what they did. Also difficult to see them going the legal route without any proof, so they must present something in due course.

I think it;s been proven time and time again, you don't need evidence - you just need good propaganda and the ability to ban opposing voices.

Absolutely. It's tragic. I don't know whether we here in the west could have helped prevent that return to authoritarianism, but in any case we are paying the price of it - and this may be only the beginning. Such opportunities wasted.

I'm still in (occasional) contact with a couple in Moscow, educated and westernised, keen to have contacts with the rest of Europe, yet the last time I spoke to the woman, shortly after the invasion, I found that she was very guarded even on Telegram about expressing any opinion other than general sadness about the conflict and the resulting bad relationship with the west. Nothing at all about whose "fault" it was, and a certain eagerness to assure me that the economy wasn't suffering from the boycott which had been declared that made me wonder a bit.

I don't know if it was because she was being very careful out of fear or prudence, or whether the tradition of a "patriotism" which is not far from xenophobia is still there just under the surface even among the educated middle class.

I haven't contacted her since, and neither has she contacted me, so I can't tell if her thinking has changed since then.