According to early media reports, on the evening of Friday, 3/22/24, ISIS-K terrorists attacked a suburban theater in Moscow with incendiary bombs, machine guns and grenades. The death toll is still rising, but is expected to surpass 120 people, with an additional 150 hospitalized. The Kremlin announced it had detained 11 perpetrators “…who were on their way to Ukraine, where we will respond on the battlefield.”
Some may recall a similar horror visited on a concert hall in Moscow in October 2002, only three years into Putin’s reign. Even in retrospect, that mass murder of 172 attendees seems weird. The perps, like last Friday’s, were dressed in camouflage uniforms with no patches or other ID and with faces covered.
Before the music was to begin, one of the attackers fired a machine gun into the ceiling, got their attention and announced they were Chechen separatists and the audience were their hostages (59 hours). On and off, during this time, they randomly shot and killed cowering attendees, but over 100 victims died when the Moscow police pumped in large quantities of supposedly sedative gas, ostensibly to disable the Chechen Terrorists.
Perhaps just a coincidence, but at the time, Putin was prosecuting an exceptionally brutal war in Chechnya, to keep it within Russia’s firm grasp.
Some very recent interviews with 2002 survivors and family members of the victims of the mass murders, contributed some interesting information. At the time, Putin said the gas was “harmless”. And the families of the deceased, had difficulty finding their bodies because they had been taken to undisclosed locations for “forensic examinations.” Some of the “terrorists” were apprehended.
Is this a case of old dogs and old tricks?
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