Terrorist Attack that Killed 133 Russian Civilians in Moscow Yesterday Appears to Have been Sponsored by Ukraine

Russia declares its Special Military Operation is over and that Russia is now at war with NATO in Ukraine

Russian President Putin Addressing the Russian People earlier today vowing to “obliterate” the perpetrators of this “bloody and barbaric terrorist attack.”

Editor’s Note—a previous version of this article incorrectly reported that one of the captured terrorists was Ukrainian Foreign Legion Colonel Rustam Azhiev. However, in the process of fact checking this claim shortly after I posted it I determined that the name of the terror suspect is actually Rustam Nazarov so I have corrected this in the current version. I have also corrected the death count which some Russian reports had at 143 but most Western media accounts listed as 133.

Last night four terrorist gunmen, who were revealed to be Tajik citizens, engaged in a mass terror attack at a popular concert hall located in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of Moscow in which they employed assault rifles and explosives to kill 143 civilians and wound hundreds more. Earlier today Putin addressed the Russian people in response to the attack. In his address, Putin denounced the mass shootings at Crocus City Hall a "bloody and barbaric terrorist attack.” He then claimed that those involved in the shooting allegedly intended to travel to Ukraine, where, according to him, a “window" to exit the country had been prepared for them. Putin stated, "All four perpetrators of the attack - all those who shot and killed people - have been found and detained…They were trying to hide and were moving towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them to cross the border. A total of 11 people were detained." Putin declared a National Day of Mourning in response to what he claimed were Ukrainian sponsored terrorist strike.

The attack occurred on the same day that Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dmitri Pskov declared Russia’s Special Military Operation had ended and declared that Russia was now fighting a proxy war with NATO in Ukraine. This announcement has major ramifications for Ukraine and NATO that I will address in my next article and followed the largest Russian missile strike on Ukraine since the beginning of the war with 150 Russian missiles, few of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses in what appear to constitute a preparatory attack in advance of a major Russian offensive which could materialize as early as May or June.

US intelligence agencies stated that the attack was most likely conducted by ISIS-K which routinely claims responsibility for such mass terror attacks. However, there are many reasons to doubt this Biden administration narrative and even if it is true that ISIS-K fighters did carry out the attack, the question remains who hired them and paid them to do so. Yesterday I posted the following initial assessment on social media: “Either Ukraine helped the terrorists do it or this is a Russian false flag as a pretext for Putin to take off the gloves with Ukraine. Hard to know for sure. Most likely Ukraine paid them handsomely to conduct the terrorist attack. If ISIS is claiming responsibility, then it's not a Russian false flag attack. While Putin has not spoken out in response to these attacks as yet, he likely will following the interrogation of ISIS terrorist suspects which will likely expose Ukrainian ties.”

The London Guardian newspaper reported that the terrorists were hired and given AK-47s as well as 500,000 rubles to conduct the attacks . This morning, I posted, “This operation bears the fingerprints of the CIA-created Ukrainian SBU’s (former Ukrainian KGB) Fifth Directorate that was created for the very purpose of staging these types of attacks deep inside Russia to attempt to destabilize Putin’s regime while giving the US plausible deniability.” Of all the potential perpetrators of the attack, Ukraine obviously stands to benefit the most. One of the purposes of this Ukrainian sponsored terrorist attack was likely to embarrass Russian President Vladimir Putin and send a signal to the Russian people that no one in western Russia is immune from Ukrainian missile and terror strikes in an attempt to undermine Russian popular support for the war. But the main purpose of the attack is likely to provoke exactly the kind of Russian military escalation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been seeking over the past two years in order to provoke direct NATO military intervention to ensnare the US and its NATO allies in a direct war with Russia as Zelensky knows that is Ukraine’s only hope to liberate any of the five annexed Ukrainian oblasts from Russian control.

Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryen, who serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Security Policy, published an excellent article showing how the CIA set up and trained the Ukrainian SBU Fifth Directorate death squads to kill ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens behind the lines as well as to conduct deep drone and missile strikes in Russian territory including Russian nuclear bomber bases and their Black Sea Fleet Headquarters where a number of Russian nuclear-armed warships and submarines are based. It was recently revealed that these are exactly the type of attacks that Russian nuclear doctrine cites as justifying Russian nuclear escalation against Ukraine and NATO. The US and its NATO allies are not merely arming Ukraine with the missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory but US military and intelligence operatives are likely closely involved in helping Ukraine decide which targets to attack. 

The New York Times was the first to report on the CIA’s close ties with Ukrainian intelligence dating back well over a decade following the CIA’s success in funding and aiding the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych during the February 2014 Maidan coup which was authorized by then Vice President Joe Biden. The Washington Post also reported on this blockbuster revelation in an article entitled, “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia.” noting that the CIA set up twelve secret bases in Ukraine back several years ago. Russia claims that one of them has since been destroyed by Russian artillery bombardment likely resulting in several US casualties. The article reveals:

"The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said. The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. The CIA maintains a significant presence in Kyiv, officials said. The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed. U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the agency has had no involvement in targeted killing operations by Ukrainian agencies, and that its work has focused on bolstering those services’ abilities to gather intelligence on a dangerous adversary. A senior intelligence official said that “any potential operational concerns have been conveyed clearly to the Ukrainian services.”

Many of Ukraine’s clandestine operations have had clear military objectives and contributed to the country’s defense. The car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, however, underscored Ukraine’s embrace of what officials in Kyiv refer to as “liquidations” as a weapon of war. Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a former Russian submarine commander jogging in a park in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and a militant blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian and Western officials. Ukraine’s affinity for lethal operations has complicated its collaboration with the CIA, raising concerns about agency complicity and creating unease among some officials in Kyiv and Washington.

To manage that security risk, the CIA worked with the SBU to create an entirely new directorate, officials said, one that would focus on so-called “active measures” operations against Russia and be insulated from other SBU departments. The new unit was prosaically dubbed the “Fifth Directorate” to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the SBU. Training sites were located outside Kyiv where handpicked recruits were instructed by CIA personnel, officials said. The plan was to form units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups,” said a Ukrainian official involved in the effort. A senior Ukrainian official who worked closely with Western governments coordinating support for Ukraine said that attacks on noncombatants and bombings of Moscow buildings feed Putin’s false narrative that Ukraine posed a growing danger to ordinary Russians. “It plays into his lies that Ukrainians are coming for them,” the official said."

The CIA has done a lot of morally questionable things working to overthrow many foreign governments in the name of spreading ’democracy’ like helping Ukraine assassinate non-combatant civilians including minor children. Americans need to demand that the US government stop supporting countries that commit war crimes and pursue an America First policy that prioritizes the defense and protection of human lives both at home and abroad instead of supporting all the killing in Biden's unnecessary and deadly proxy wars. The Ukrainian SBU even reportedly attempted to assassinate Tucker Carlson while he was in Russia to interview Putin. Thankfully, their assassination attempt failed.

I was not previously aware of the extent to which the CIA was funding and training the SBU Fifth Directorate which would not exist had the CIA not set it up in 2014 following up on their success in overthrowing Ukrainian President Yanukovych. As Bryen points out, virtually all Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia have been executed with CIA assistance by the CIA created SBU Fifth Directorate. So, Biden's denials that the attacks on Russian nuclear bomber bases, nuclear naval bases and Russia itself are clearly false. Maybe Russia will respond with attacks on US nuclear bomber and nuclear submarines bases. Furthermore, the commanding general of US Cyber Command General Paul Nakasone stated in June 2022 that the US had been engaging in offensive cyber operations in support of Ukraine in its war against Russia. Biden has proven every single one of Putin's most paranoid fantasies about the US true including Biden’s call for the overthrow of the Russian President from power and getting the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant so that he can be extradited and tried in front of an international war crimes tribunal at the Hague.

Responsible Statecraft recently published a seemingly prescient article warning of the coming military collapse of Ukraine and a potential Russian advance that will take a lot more territory in eastern Ukraine as well as the plans of a several NATO countries to send a expeditionary force into Ukraine to start a nuclear war with Russia. Specifically, it warned of the national security risks to the US and its NATO allies if Ukraine were to kill “a large number of Russian civilians in a single-strike” that could provoke Russia to engage in a major escalation of the war in Ukraine and provoke Russia to target NATO military targets as well.

"The danger is, however, that if the Ukrainians managed to hit a very high-profile target (like the Kremlin), or killed a large number of Russian civilians in a single strike, the Russian government might feel impelled to escalate quite radically in response. Already, many Russian hardliners are asking publicly how long Putin will tolerate NATO massively arming Ukraine without retaliating directly against NATO countries. The West could then find itself with the worst of all worlds: direct clashes with Russia (and a probable world economic crisis) that would not save Ukraine from defeat. To eliminate the risk of NATO being drawn into war with Russia, Western governments would not only have to compel Ukraine to accept a ceasefire, but most likely order the Ukrainian army to fall back to NATO lines (which many Ukrainian soldiers would probably be doing anyway). Should a limited NATO presence in fact lead to full-scale war with Russia and the intervention of the U.S. armed forces, then the danger of escalation to the use of (initially limited and tactical) nuclear weapons would grow immensely, bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon."

As the article warns, it is highly likely that Putin will respond very forcefully to this Ukrainian terrorist attack, perhaps in a surprising way that will catch the US and its allies off guard, perhaps with devastating effect leading to further escalation of the war.

My assessment that Ukraine is most likely responsible for this terrorist attack was not taken lightly or without significant supporting evidence. Back in May 2023, I assessed Russia had conducted a false flag attack on the Kremlin even as most of my anti-war conservative allies and even some mainstream media reporters were saying Ukraine was likely responsible. At the time I stated, Russian false flag attacks were characterized by low casualty events which is not the case with the Islamist terrorist attack on the Moscow concert hall on March 22^nd which has killed at least 143 Russian civilians thus far. However, in this instance all the evidence is pointing to these terrorist attacks being Ukrainian sponsored to make the Russian people feel less secure in Putin’s leadership following his resounding electoral victory earlier this week in elections that were manifestly unfree and unfair in which he was re-elected to an unprecedented fifth term giving him the longest tenure in office of any Russian leaders since Josef Stalin who led Russia for over three decades.

This attack closely follows a cross-border incursion by as many as 2,500 troops of the Russian Volunteer Corps, which the New York Times reports is led by a neo-Nazi, that is part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces which killed over eighty Russian civilians in the Belgorod region mere days earlier. Ukraine has been increasingly desperate to take attention away from its losing war on the battlefield by conducting attacks inside pre-war Russia that have little to no military utility but are rather designed to kill large numbers of civilians. The incursions appear to have been a Ukrainian attempt to disrupt the 2024 Russian presidential election and make it more difficult for Russian citizens living along Russia’s border with Ukraine to vote. Ukrainian intelligence operatives inside Russia have reportedly conducted smaller scale terror attacks to kill Russian civilians earlier in the war while the Ukrainian army has regularly used its artillery to bombard densely populated urban areas in Russian annexed territories of Ukraine resulting in significant civilian casualties to what Ukrainian leaders would presumably argue are its own citizens.

Earlier today, several top Russia experts shed doubt on the claim by US intelligence agencies that the attack was likely perpetrated by ISIS-K. Former National Security Council DIA official Rebekah Koffler tweeted this morning “To be clear, no serious intelligence analyst buys the US spy agencies’ propaganda that ISIS is behind the Moscow Terror Attack.”

LTC Daniel Davis posted a podcast stating that ISIS-K was likely not involved in the Moscow terrorist attack because in his experience the terrorists were motivated by money not religion as ISIS terrorists are and did not attempt to commit suicide to avoid capture as ISIS terrorists typically do. Davis reports that Russia may react by following Israel’s example and targeting and destroying Ukraine’s SBU headquarters in Kyiv, which I think is very possible, and perhaps even engaging in direct attacks against civilians which they have not done to date.  

COL Rob Maness (USAF Ret) tweeted: “There are more markers that our CIA and Ukraine are behind this intentional targeting of civilians and children than there are ISIS. We live in a sad state of affairs. Pay attention as this will happen here.”

COL Douglas MacGregor (USA Ret) tweeted, “The perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Russia escaped from Russia into Ukraine near Belgorod and are directly tied to Muslim elements fighting on behalf of UA. We’re they originally ISIS or something else? I have no idea, but there is little doubt that MI-6/CIA were involved.”

It appears likely that the US intelligence claim that ISIS-K was responsible for this brutal terrorist attack is nothing more than a cover story. In this context, it appears that the March 7^th US State Department warning to US citizens in Russia to be careful for a potential terrorist attack in public spaces was issued in order to give the US government plausible deniability while indicating, minimally, that the Biden administration had advance warning that this Ukrainian-led attack would soon occur. There are reports that the Russian FSB actually acted on this warning to try to disrupt the terrorist network that conducted this attack but instead only succeeded in delaying it given indications it was initially planned to try to disrupt the Russian presidential election earlier this month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to deny any Ukrainian involvement in the massacre which would constitute a war crime under international law. However, given the recent pattern and practice of Ukrainian attacks against civilian targets inside Russia, his denials are difficult to believe. That said, I see no evidence that the Biden administration either approved or authorized this apparent Ukrainian terrorist attack. Quite the contrary, they likely advised Ukraine against it but did nothing to prevent it from happening given Biden’s blank check of unconditional US financial and military support for both Ukraine and Israel in the respective wars they have been fighting.

Ardent defenders of Presidents Biden and Zelensky would have us believe that it is Putin who is to blame for the Nordstream attack and even for terrorist attacks killing large numbers of Russian civilians, dismissing the fact that Putin had no conceivable motive to commit such an attack while Ukraine had many such motives, because they argue Putin is that irrational. The truth is that Putin has proven a far more rational actor than any Western leader during the course of Biden’s manufactured war in Ukraine demonstrating remarkable strategic forbearance in refusing to respond in kind to US and NATO sponsored Ukrainian attacks on targets deep inside Russia including Russian nuclear bomber and submarine bases.

During her last official trip to Ukraine taken two weeks before retiring, former Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland stated, “With this money Ukraine will be able to fight back in the east, but it will also be able to accelerate the asymmetric warfare that has been most effective on the battlefield. And as I said in Kyiv three weeks ago this supplemental funding will ensure that Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield.” At the time she warned Russia would face some “nasty surprises” it was not clear that her reference to “the battlefield” included a mass civilian casualty terror attack in Moscow. Needless to say, this attack could set up a perfect pretext for Putin to follow up Pskov’s comments that Russia is now at war with the West in Ukraine with a formal declaration of war and a Second Great Patriotic War, which will be the subject of my next article.

© David T. Pyne 2024

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently served as Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to a top-tier presidential candidate. He has also co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster” and his new book “A Nuclear Posture Review for Advanced Technology Weapons” will be published in early fall 2024. He serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Recent Media Interviews

February 27th—Interview with Jon Twitchell on his Talk with Jon show to discuss the latest developments with regards to Russia, the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza and the increasing threat of war with China. Here is a link to the interview.

February 27th—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on his Dialogue Works podcast to discuss the 2nd anniversary of the war in Ukraine as well as my newly published peace plan to end the war on Gaza on fair and reasonable terms while also ending America’s proxy war with Iran. Here is the link to the interview.

February 27th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Hour show on Patriot TV to discuss the NATO threat that the UK and France are considering sending an Expeditionary Force into central Ukraine to fight Russia directly and start World War Three and Russia’s threat to nuke the US and NATO if they do. Here is a link to the interview.

March 5th—Interview on the COL Rob Maness (USA Ret) on the Rob Maness Show to discuss the Russian super-EMP satellite threat, the potential vulnerabilities of America’s Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) system and what we can do to reduce America’s vulnerability to a nuclear/EMP first strike. Here is the link to the interview.

March 6th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Hour show on Patriot TV to discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Decision to Highlight the 14 top US nuclear targets Russia would attack if US troops are sent to fight Russia in Ukraine during his annual presidential address. Here is a link to the interview.

March 8th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Hour show on Patriot TV to discuss General Cotton’s leaked classified briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee that China will finish deploying its new DF-45 mobile ICBM based in its 3,000 mile underground tunnel network by next year greatly expanding the size of China’s strategic nuclear arsenal. Here is the link to the interview.

March 15th—Interview on The American Journal hosted by Harrison Smith to discuss Russian and Chinese super-EMP satellites and orbital nuclear weapons as well as the coming Chinese blockade of Taiwan and ramifications for the US. Here is a link to the interview.

March 19th—Interview with Jon Twitchell on his Talk with Jon show to discuss China’s planned blockade of Taiwan which I am predicting will materialize later this year, Biden’s rejection of a peace agreement ending the war in Ukraine two years ago and how escalating Western threats against Russia in Ukraine could provoke a nuclear war could destroy the US and NATO, Here is the link.

March 22nd—Interview with Canadian Prepper to discuss the chances that the US may soon be embroiled in a two-front world war with both Russia and China.

March 23rd—Interview with Jonathan Hollerman who serves as Deputy Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security on the EMP Task Force YouTube Channel to discuss the increasing threats of World War Three with Russia and China.

Upcoming Media Interviews

March 24th—Discussion with COL Ron Maness (USA Ret) and Brannon Howse on his Sunday Morning show on Patriot TV to discuss Ukrainian involvement in the terrorist attack against Russia as well as the implications of the Russian declaration of war against NATO in Ukraine

March 24th—Panel Discussion about the perpetrators and ramifications of the Russian terrorist attack on Moscow on a Twitter Space hosted by Mario Nawfal

March 26th—Interview with Cyrus Janssen on his podcast to discuss the costs and consequences of the war in Ukraine and Biden’s decision to veto the Russo-Ukrainian peace agreement in April 2022 which would have delivered a victory for Ukraine

March 26th—Panel Discussion about the ramification of the potential enemy sabotage attack on the cargo ship that rammed and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on a Twitter Space hosted by Mario Nawfal

March 28th—Interview with Nima Alkhorshid on his Dialogue Works podcast to debate former USAF Major Scott Ritter to debate the merits of my proposed Gaza Peace Plan

April 5th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Hour show on Patriot TV to discuss the latest Biden administration statements relating to its support for Taiwan and its support for NATO membership for Ukraine.

April 13th—Interview with Brannon Howse and COL Rob Maness (USA Ret.) on Patriot TV to discuss the prospects that the war between Israel and Iran will escalate to World War Three.

April 15th--Interview with COL Rob Maness (USA Ret.) on Patriot TV to discuss the war in Ukraine, Chinese plans to attack Taiwan later this year and what we need to avert the outbreak of a nuclear World War Three.

April 18th-19th—I will be presenting an extensive briefing at the Firm Foundation Expo at 8pm on April 18th at the Mountain America Expo Center at 9575 South State Street in Sandy, Utah to discuss the increasing threat of World War Three with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran and what we need to do to avert it.