© Maxim Blinov / SputnikCrocus concert hall, March 22nd 2024. 139 people died and around 200 were injured in last Friday's Crocus City Hall massacre.
The proper approach to explaining any event โ say, a murder, a revolution, a war, or a terrorist attack โ is not to fly exclude any cause, perpetrator, contractor and begin to narrow the range of possible causes and perpetrators, and contractors solely on the basis of evidence carefully gathered and analyzed. It would be a fool's errand to immediately focus on a single cause or actor to the exclusion of all others. We still and may always lack sufficient information to determine the gamut of players that might or might not have been involved in ordering, organizing, facilitating, and carrying out the 22 March 2024 Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow that killed some 150 and wounded as many and whether Ukraine may have participated in any way.
However, there is good preliminary reason not to exclude but rather include ISIS-Khorosan, based in Afghanistan, in the list of those possibly or even, perhaps, likely involved. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, ISIS has a record of playing loose in its claims of responsibility by including being responsible not just because of its recruitment for, and organisation, planning, and execution of attacks but for simply having
inspired attackers. One of the four gunmen told security services on video after being captured that he was inspired by a "preacher" through Telegram. Another caveat is the same perpetrator claims that the terrorists were
offered money to carry out the attack. But jihadi attacks are rarely carried out for money. Rather they are driven by the above-mentioned inspiration, jihadism-oriented inspiration. Radical Takfirst jihadist theo-ideology and its teaching that killing the
kufr/infidel will give one eternal bliss in paradise is the motivation. These caveats bring in the possibility that this was an attack involving multiple parties, one of which might be one or more elements in Ukraine and/or the West in addition to ISIS-Khorosan and perhaps others.
Comment: X adds additional information: