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Lower than per week in the past, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth time period as president along with his highest-ever share of the vote, utilizing a stage-managed election to indicate the nation and the world that he was firmly in management.
Simply days later got here a searing counterpoint: His vaunted safety equipment failed to forestall Russia’s deadliest terror assault in 20 years.
The assault, which killed a minimum of 133 individuals at a suburban Moscow live performance corridor, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a pacesetter for whom nationwide safety is paramount. That’s very true after two years of a struggle in Ukraine that he describes as key to the nation’s survival — and which he solid as his prime precedence within the aftermath of final Sunday’s election.
“The election demonstrated a seemingly assured victory,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, mentioned in a telephone interview from Moscow. “And out of the blue, in opposition to the backdrop of a assured victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation.”
It took Mr. Putin greater than 19 hours to deal with the nation in regards to the assault, the deadliest in Russia because the 2004 faculty siege in Beslan, within the nation’s south, that claimed 334 lives. When he did, Mr. Putin mentioned nothing in regards to the mounting proof that the assault was dedicated by a department of the Islamic State.
As a substitute, he hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and mentioned the assailants acted “identical to the Nazis,” who “as soon as carried out massacres within the occupied territories” — evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.
“Our widespread responsibility now — our comrades on the entrance, all residents of the nation — is to be collectively in a single formation,” Mr. Putin mentioned on the finish of his five-minute speech, attempting to conflate the struggle in opposition to terrorism along with his invasion of Ukraine.
The query is how a lot of the Russian public will purchase into his argument. They may query whether or not Mr. Putin, along with his invasion of Ukraine and his battle with the West, actually has Russia’s safety pursuits at coronary heart — or if he’s woefully forsaking them, as a lot of his opponents say he’s.
The truth that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the USA a couple of potential terrorist act is prone to deepen the skepticism. As a substitute of appearing on the warnings, and tightening safety, he dismissed them as “provocative statements.”
“All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Mr. Putin mentioned on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia’s home intelligence company, referring to Western warnings. Within the aftermath of Friday’s assault, a few of his exiled critics have cited that response as proof of the president’s detachment from Russia’s true safety considerations.
Mr. Kynev mentioned he believes that many Russians are actually in “shock,” as a result of “restoring order has all the time been Vladimir Putin’s calling card.” However given the Kremlin’s efficacy in cracking down on dissent and on the information media, he predicted that the political penalties of the assault could be restricted, so long as the violence is just not repeated.
“To be sincere, our society has gotten used to maintaining quiet about inconvenient matters,” he mentioned.
Even because the Islamic State repeatedly claimed duty for the assault, and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin’s messengers pushed into overdrive to attempt to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.
Olga Skabeyeva, a state tv host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian navy intelligence had discovered assailants “who would appear like ISIS. However that is no ISIS.”
Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT tv community, wrote that experiences of Islamic State duty amounted to a “primary sleight of hand” by the American information media.
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