DISINFO: The US is covering for those responsible for the Crocus City terrorist attack
SUMMARY
The United States is covering for those responsible for the Crocus terrorist attack, and the office of US President Joe Biden is intensifying work to create a distorted picture of what happened. US special services have been tasked with lifting the suspicions of the world community from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's involvement in the Crocus attack.
RESPONSE
This baseless disinformation story is part of a wider campaign by Russian officials and media -including by Vladimir Putin himself- to blame Ukraine and other actors for the Crocus City Hall terror attack in Moscow, even after the Islamic State credibly claimed responsibility for it.
The US had warned Russia of the upcoming attack beforehand -even pointing to the Crocus City Hall as a likely target- under a US intelligence directive called “duty to warn”. As explained by ABC news:
"The United States shared those advance intelligence indications under a tenet of the U.S. intelligence community called the “duty to warn," which obliges U.S. intelligence officials to lean toward sharing knowledge of a dire threat if conditions allow. That holds whether the targets are allies, adversaries or somewhere in between".
The alert was dismissed as "provocative", "blackmail" and an "attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country" by Putin. He said:
“I’ll remind you of recent, let’s say directly, provocative statements of certain official Western structures about potential terror attacks in Russia. All of this looks like obvious blackmail and an attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country”.
Hours after the attack, the Islamic State posted a statement in Amaq, its official propaganda media, which, as experts pointed out, leaves no question regarding its authenticity. In the following days, the Islamic State released multiple evidence, including a gruesome video of the Moscow attack filmed by the attackers themselves, leaving little doubt about its responsibility.
In a recent development, news has appeared that Iran had also warned Moscow a few days before of an imminent attack by ISIS based on information obtained from arrested ISIS terrorists in Iran. Even Putin himself acknowledged late on 25 March 2024 that Islamists had committed the attack. Nonetheless, Russian authorities and pro-Kremlin outlets continue insisting on some degree of Ukrainian and/or Western involvement.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Moscow has evidence of the connection between the Crocus City terrorists and Ukraine, that ISIS claiming responsibility for Moscow attack looks like a fake, that Ukraine’s top official confirmed its participation in the Moscow Crocus City terror attack, that the West is afraid of evidence proving Kyiv's involvement in the Moscow terrorist attack, or that the US and Israel created ISIS and now moved this pawn against Russia in Crocus City attack.