Moscow Today Like Mumbai in 2008
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The incident in Moscow today draws parallels to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Both nations, Russia and India, demonstrate resilience and wisdom in the face of such tragedies, resisting the temptation to react impulsively
Similarities are striking: the Russian nation reacts to the terrorist attack in Moscow very much like the Indian nation did in November 2008, after the Mumbai disaster. Simply speaking, it’s restraint and wisdom that slowly prevail, in spite of an obvious temptation to lose our collective mind.
Many things are similar about these two events. India has lost 175 lives, Russia’s count, so far, is 139 people among the audience of a rock concert in the Crocus City Hall near Moscow. In both cases the background of the executors is similar, ostensibly pointing towards extremist Islamic groups.
I’m not sure everyone in Russia has noticed these touching expressions of solidarity by many Indians, bringing flowers to the Embassy’s wall in New Delhi, but, still, a lot of people did memorize it. The face of India’s Prime Minister on the screens, sending message of compassion to our nation, will also be remembered.
🇷🇺🇮🇳 India did not forget!
— Sputnik India (@Sputnik_India) March 27, 2024
Indian citizens continue to bring flowers and candles to the Russian Embassy in New Delhi to express their grief and condolences over the terrorist attack at #CrocusCityHall in Moscow on 22 March.
On 27 March, the memory of the victims of the terrible… pic.twitter.com/XTgAYOiL6g
Just like in India in 2008, the best minds in Russia today are finding the right words to guide the public. I won’t be aiding the enemy by sowing fear and hatred in the society, says Mr. Sergei Hoodiev, the writer and theologian. He says: terror is about psychological and spiritual damage. Terror’s idea is to make people lose their mind and start doing silly things, so in the end such people will do to themselves more damage than the terrorists did. Terrorists are counting on the feeling of helplessness against incongruous evil, and that’s why that evil they bring looks pointedly absurd, Mr. Hoodiev concludes.
Needless to say, there were a great lot of such wise statements made by everyone who knew that their experience might have helped. And, in the end, the nation has overcome the initial shock admirably. Just one episode says a lot, and that episode relates to the musicians who were to perform that night in the Crocus City Hall, the Picnic.
The group, one of the legends of the Russian Rock, has lost one lady, a technician. Their own life was in obvious danger. But these days they are staging yet another concert, in St. Petersburg, with the profits going to aid the victims.
Rest is a weapon, too, said Jason Bourne, the superspy from Robert Ludlum’s novels. Music is also a weapon, so one can be proud of musicians, not terrorized into being silenced. The nation that finds constant courage just simply to lead normal life in the face of threats, deserves respect.
There is another subject, where the Russian nation in whole has managed to avoid the folly of religious hatred. Simply speaking, almost no one believed that radical Islam was to blame for the massacre. Practically everyone has immediately made the obvious conclusions, namely, that the ethnic Tajiks have only been hired to kill people, but the main blame is on those who ordered the act.
We are witnessing an amazing reality. Somehow every Russian knows that about 14% of the nation is Muslim, and that native religion of our land is not an enemy. To look back at the years past, so far even the large crowds of migrants from Central Asia in the Russian cities and villages have not caused any widespread clashes, riots or anything of the kind.
So what happened when every Russian has encountered, on the TV screen, the bearded faces of those three terrorists who have just killed dozens of concert-goers? An almost universal reaction was: These miserable people have been captured on the way to the border of Ukraine, and that’s what really matters.
And only later we learned that those who saved hundreds of lives, namely the young people at the coat-checking counter, were of the same Central Asian origin. These youngsters knew the way out and let the crowds out of the already-burning hall. And that news, too, has stopped a lot of dangerous talk around the country.
Moscow's Crocus City Hall now
© Photo
Simply speaking, the idea that ISIS was the perpetrator of the mass murder has died out even before it was born. The facts disproving the ISIS version began to come in much later. And these facts are quite telling.
The style, the so-called handwriting of the killers are all wrong, says General Valery Kanakin, the Vice-President of the International Association of the veterans of anti-terrorist services. ISIS and a lot of numerous other jihadi groups have always been perfecting the tactics of suicide missions. Simply speaking, the Crocus case is the first one, when the terrorists expected to escape, he explains. That’s almost impossible to believe, since the jihadi groups are all generally known, there is a lot of information coming out of their lairs. Sudden refusal to use the suicide squads would have been big news, and it would have been leaked to the outside world and noted.
Then came the news about a silliest possible flop by several Western media platforms, hastily reporting that Moscow events have been perpetrated by ISIS. The problem was, they did it not after, but before the faces of the perpetrators have been shown on Russian TV, before any information about identity of these people have been obtained by the Russian police. So how did they know the terrorists were not from Ukraine, but belonged to the jihadi circles?
And, of course, everyone in Russia knows quite well that targeting civilians is absolutely typical of Ukrainian secret services. They did it on an individual basis, hunting writers, political figures and philosophers, while hiring executors on the spot. In most cases the hapless executors of the deals have been caught and gave proof of their drafting by Kiev.
And there were literally dozens of cases when purely civilian targets were been chosen for missile attacks or small-scale military operations. Not to mention the fact, that placing military installations in residential areas have become a trademark of Ukrainian army, something that has never been done by the Russian military for fear of harming civilians.
Finally, there was a recent statement by Mr. Alexander Bortnikov, the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service. He said that there is abundant information that the top Ukrainian military were participating in training jihadi militants “in the Middle East”.
That’s really something explosive. Here we have to remember the inter-state relations between Russia and India presume sharing such information. Which means that somebody in Delhi has had ample chance of accessing such information and comparing it with the rest of available data.
The killers of Moscow concert-goers have already given all possible information about their Ukrainian connections. But they never knew all the details on those drafting them, being “blind agents” in the special language of security people. So, you may ask, what will happen if or when there is solid material evidence of Kiev being guilty of yet another act of terror?
My answer is: if you are living somewhere in the West, nothing will happen. You simply won’t know it. The reason is simple. One thing is, when your government is channeling money and weapons to an allied Ukrainian regime, another thing is when taxes you are paying are going to those organizing mass terror against civilians. That’s something that can never be admitted.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
