Moscow attack: How Putin could use the concert hall massacre to his advantage

The corpses from Friday night’s terror attack in Moscow were barely cold before Russian President Vladimir Putin began looking to spin the tragedy to his own benefit. 

The brisk response, while cynical, was to be expected. Just look at his history.

Since Putin rose to the upper echelons of power in 1998, first as the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the successors to the Soviet Union’s KGB, and later as Russia’s prime minister and eventually president, the country has suffered some 15 terrorist attacks. 

While few have been as deadly as last week’s massacre at the Crocus City Hall music venue on the outskirts of Moscow, in which at least 137 people were killed by terrorists, almost all have been used by Putin to strengthen his grip on power.

Following the Friday massacre, even though a branch of the Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility, Putin seized the opportunity to blame Ukraine (despite presenting no evidence). Kyiv — which Putin has been attempting to conquer since launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022 — is merely the Kremlin’s latest convenient scapegoat. 

Here are some previous occasions on which Putin used a brutal attack on Russia to consolidate or boost his authority — along with some thoughts on what might come next: 

1999 Russian apartment bombings

When: Sept. 4-16, 1999

What happened? A series of domestic explosions occurred in multiple cities across Russia in September 1999, while Putin was still prime minister. The total death toll reached 307.

While Moscow officially pinned the blame on Chechen separatists, some speculated they were a “false flag” operation orchestrated by Russian security officials.

Especially suspicious was an incident in September 1999 in Ryazan, nearly 200 kilometers from Moscow. A resident of an apartment building noticed individuals they didn’t recognize pull up in a car with Moscow license plates before placing bags in the basement of the building. Law enforcement responders found the bags contained a powdery substance and a timer. Media reports claimed the bags contained hexogen, similar to the other bombings.

Many saw it as evidence that Russia’s security services had been behind the bombings and were about to stage another one.

Nikolay Patrushev, then chief of the FSB and now Putin’s main security adviser, denied those allegations, saying: “It was a drill. There was sugar, no explosive substance. Such exercises are conducted beyond Ryazan as well.”

How did Putin use it to his advantage? The 1999 bombings propelled then-Russian PM Putin to the pinnacle of power. After he blamed Chechen rebels, Moscow shelled Chechnya starting Sept. 14, launching a second bloody war with the breakaway region. Promising to “to wipe them out in the outhouse.” Putin styled himself as a strong leader; the Chechnya campaign significantly boosted his popularity, leading to his election as president on March 26, 2000.

Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB officer who wrote a book claiming the attacks were staged and that Ryazan was an “FSB fiasco,” was later killed in London by two ex-FSB agents, according to a British inquiry.

Nord-Ost siege

When: Oct. 23-26, 2002

What happened? During the staging of the “Nord Ost” play at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater, terrorists wearing suicide belts broke in and took audience members hostage.

After days of negotiations, Russian special forces used sleeping gas while storming the building, killing all the terrorists. Some hostages also died after inhaling the gas, however, due to the lack of adequate medical assistance. The official death toll is still disputed, with figures ranging from 130 to 174 according to independent NGOs.

How did Putin use it to his advantage? Despite widespread criticism of the tactics of law enforcement, Putin backed his security services to the hilt.

“The gas was harmless and could not have caused harm to people … It’s easy to criticize the security services or the medical staff, but that’s not fair,” he said in a 2003 interview with the Washington Post.

Journalists who reported critically on the incident were targeted by the Moscow regime, in one of the first examples of the aggressive censorship that would arrive become common practice many years later.

Beslan school siege

When: Sept. 1-3, 2004

What happened? Terrorists motivated by Chechen separatism invaded a school in Beslan, North Ossetia in the Caucasus region, taking some over 1,200 children, parents and teachers hostage during the opening ceremony for the school year. An operation by Russian special services to release the hostages resulted in 334 deaths, with most hostages dying from the explosives the Russian troops used to breach the school.

How did Putin use it to his advantage? Following the tragedy, the Russian state, including Putin, propagated the false narrative that the terrorists had made no demands, when in fact they had demanded that Russian forces leave Chechnya and recognize its independence. Dmitry Peskov, then one of Putin’s press secretaries and now the Kremlin’s top spokesperson, was key in managing the coverage of the situation.

Later, Putin leveraged the Beslan massacre to justify legislative changes that abolished the election of governors in all 89 Russian regions, allowing him to appoint stooges and tighten his grip across the country.

Moscow subway bombings

When: March 29, 2010

What happened? A pair of Chechen militant suicide bombers detonated explosives at two of Moscow’s central subway stations, killing 39 people and wounding more than 100.

How did Putin use it to his advantage? Then-President Dmitry Medvedev, who briefly held the top job while Putin pulled the strings as prime minister, heightened security measures on public transport across Russia. This led to the testing of CCTV cameras with facial recognition systems in the Moscow subway system.

More than a decade later, Russia has installed around 500,000 CCTV cameras with facial recognition technology nationwide. The system is often used to track and detain opposition activists.

St. Petersburg subway bombing

When: April 3, 2017

What happened? A suicide bomber from a militant Islamist group in Russia detonated a bomb in a train car between two stations on the St. Petersburg subway system, killing 16 people. At the time, the Islamic State was at loggerheads with Russia, with Putin delivering deadly assistance to Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad who was fighting off rebel groups. 

How did Putin use it to his advantage? The investigation suggested that the terrorists used the Telegram messaging app for communication, citing its relative security. The Russian government ramped up pressure on Telegram’s management, leading to the complete blocking of the app in 2018.

Telegram agreed to share user information with law enforcement that same year; the app was unblocked in 2020.

Since then, Telegram’s management has appeared more compliant with the Russian state. In 2021 it blocked opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s “Smart Vote” bot ahead of elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. The bot was a crucial tool for distributing voting instructions, sending users the names of contenders most likely to defeat pro-Putin candidates.

What can we expect after the Crocus massacre? 

Given Putin’s history of harnessing atrocities committed inside Russia to justify brutal and often anti-democratic responses, the response to this latest attack is unlikely to be pretty. 

The first thing Putin might do is implement some planned but predictably unpopular measures, Sergei Davidis, head of the Political Prisoners Support Program at Memorial Human Rights Center, told POLITICO. A prime example is the abolition of elections for governors following the Beslan siege, a clearly unrelated event that was nevertheless used as a pretext for the planned measure.

“In that sense, it’s just a question of what their agenda is here,” Davidis said.

However, the war in Ukraine is already an extraordinary situation that has been exploited to tighten restrictions including full censorship.

It is possible that the death penalty could be reinstated in Russia, “but introducing the death penalty is a Pandora’s box that they themselves may be afraid to open,” Davidis added.

Which leaves, Davidis explained, a reactive response that is typical of the Russian authorities — imposing more restrictions. These could involve toughening sentences, expanding the range of offenses, criminalizing certain activitiess, or freeing the hands of law enforcement in dealing with terrorism suspects.

In the days after the Crocus attack, the four suspects appeared in court with bruised and swollen faces, suggesting they had been beaten, while a video published on Telegram appeared to show one of the suspects having part of his ear cut off and being forced to eat it. Another image on Telegram purported to show another suspect being tortured by electric shocks to his genitals. The Kremlin declined to comment on whether the suspects were tortured.

The response of the authorities to the Crocus massacre has established a new trend: Law enforcement in Russia can brutalize suspects and take pride in it. The acceptable level of violence against alleged enemies of the people, recently expanded by the war in Ukraine, has risen yet again.

“If you can kill thousands of people with bombs, you don’t have to worry about someone’s ear being cut off or someone being electrocuted,” Davidis said.

Denis Leven is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.