After terror, it’s business as usual
On Friday, I was with some of my colleagues — Russian journalists in exile — when I heard that gunmen had stormed a concert hall in Moscow and, shooting at point blank range, killed over 100 people. As the push notifications came through, some of us went straight to work, calling sources and trying to make sense of the horror. Others scrolled numbly through news feeds. Many, myself included, checked in with friends to make sure no one we knew was at the Crocus City Hall venue.
Disturbingly, none of us were particularly shocked. Forced to observe Russia from the outside, the news from our country is unremittingly grim. Many of us are in a state of perpetual despair. This might be an awful thing to say, but I expected to feel more — more anger? more sorrow? — after I heard about the attack. A few years ago, the emotional intensity of my response would have been different. On Friday, though, I just felt flat, dulled by the reality of the past two years — a reality in which hundreds of people die every day because of Putin's war in Ukraine. You have to live your life somehow, right? Find a way to cope as you hear about near-constant carnage.
Apparently, Putin's emotions have been dulled too. Less than a week after his re-election, after the worst mass murder on Russian soil in years, the Russian president was absent. And when he did finally appear, it was to make a canned address in which he claimed that the suspects had planned to escape into Ukraine. Presumably, under the noses of the ranks of Russian soldiers that Putin has amassed at the border.
Russia is in mourning, but for the president it's business as usual, spinning tragedy into disinformation and conspiracy. The Kremlin failed to protect Russians from a terror attack. To avoid admitting to that failure, Putin pretends to be looking for deeper truths than those staring him in the face. The Islamic State group may have claimed responsibility for the attack. There may be a recent history of IS attacks in Russia. Russian security services may have recently claimed to have foiled several such plots. There may have been a warning from U.S. intelligence that an attack was forthcoming, a warning dismissed as "blackmail." Still, Putin wants Russians to focus on chasing shadows.