#krasnogorsk

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Gary Wilson

FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov dropped a bombshell on March 26, accusing the U.S., Britain, and Ukraine of orchestrating the horrific March 22 concert hall attack in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, that left 144 dead and 360 injured.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from inside the Crocus City Hall where several gunmen burst into the theater and opened fire on the crowds settling in for a show before throwing several smoke or incendiary bombs and lighting a fire that nearly burnt the building to the ground. More than 40 people were killed and over 100 wounded in the terrorist attack.]

[ 📈 The Russian Ministry of Health released the names of the victims of the Crocus City Hall terrorist attacks.]

[ 📸 Photo of the white Renault the gunmen were seen escaping from the scene driving, along with a map of the Crocus City Hall.]

🇷🇺 🚨

FORTY KILLED AND MORE THAN 100 INJURED IN TERRORIST ATTACK AT CROCUS CITY HALL IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

At least forty people were killed and more than 100 wounded at Crocus City Hall, a concert venue located in the Krasnogorsky District in central Moscow region, in the Russian Federation, after several armed men opened gunfire on crowds just settling down for a symphony orchestra show.

Nearly all the tickets were sold out at the time of the attacks, which began around 8pm when a number of men burst into the venue, with at least one of the men carrying and then throwing a smoke or incendiary bomb, and began firing on the unsuspecting concert-goers at point-blank range with automatic gunfire.

“Between the second and third call, at least three men in camouflage and without masks ran through the stalls,” said a reporter with Russian news outlet, RIA Novosti, who was at the scene of the emergency said.

“They opened fire from automatic weapons and threw a grenade or incendiary bomb. People lay down on the floor. 15-20 minutes later, they began to crawl out. Someone succeeded," the correspondant added.

Witnesses said there were Security guards at the show, however being unarmed, there was little they could do to offer resistance to the gunmen.

Other witnesses told Ria Novosti that they heard several short bursts of gunfire before seeing smoke and people running from the hall. Some ran to the bathrooms and barricaded themselves inside, while others rushed towards the exits.

At some point, the smoke or incendiary bombs used by the gunmen set fire to the concert hall, with dozens of police, fire brigades and the Russian National Guard responding to the atrack, while personnel from the Federal Investigative Committee and the prosecutor's office responded soon after.

Some witnesses said that after the gunfire, they heard a loud explosion before fire engulfed much of Crocus City Hall. Local fire brigades, though responding quickly to the call, were unable to enter due to the active gunmen inside and ended up using helicopters to drop water over the hall and extinguish the fire, though the upper floors of the building are said to be completely burnt out.

By 10pm, the roof of the Hall had collapsed, however it is unclear if there were still live or wounded victims inside at the time of the collapse. The fire burnt an area that totals more than 12'900 square meters.

According to Federal authorities, the gunmen escaped the scene as the crowds ran out of the concert hall, and were seen driving away in a white Renault sedan. Investigations of the terrorist attack are now underway.

#source1

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[tomorrowusa]

A reminder: DICTATORS WILL NOT KEEP YOU SAFE

Some people think that letting a dictator run the country will keep them safe. But a dictator's primary motivation is to accrue personal wealth and power – not to benefit the country or its people.

Vladimir Putin's ambition is to become known as the Peter the Great of the 21st century. He aims to achieve that by restoring the territory and hegemony of the decrepit Soviet Union. So far, Putin's invasion has cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, has been a serious drain on the country's resources, and has caused Russia's international reputation to plummet.

The Kremlin casts President Vladimir Putin as something close to a savior, a strong leader who has brought stability and security following the chaos of the Soviet collapse. The mass-casualty events that have punctuated his nearly 25 years as president or prime minister -- and the recurring images of explosions, flames, and helpless victims desperate to escape harm -- badly undermine that narrative. Instead, analysts say, they tell a story of a leader whose focus on the protection and prolongation of his own power have come at the expense of the security of the people. Putin’s critics say that more than three decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia remains a country in which the state puts its own interests far above those of its citizens. The biggest example is the war against Ukraine: Before the full-scale invasion of February 2022, when Russia was massing tens of thousands of troops at the border and the United States was warning that the onslaught could begin any day, many observers predicted Putin would hold back because a massive attack would harm Russia’s security, not improve it.

Putin's secret police are too busy hunting dissidents, liberals, anti-war activists, and gays to be much concerned about genuine security threats. And this culture of repression was already in place before Putin started the war.

This leaves Russia highly vulnerable to real extremists, analysts say, and to deadly disasters in which corruption, corner-cutting, and negligence cause or exacerbate the effects of avoidable accidents like the fire at the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo in March 2018, seven days after Putin was declared the winner of that month's presidential election. “The intelligence services are focused on political investigation and intimidation of citizens. They do not fulfill their direct responsibility to protect society from real threats,” Russian political observer Dmitry Kolezev wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Putin's control of media has made sure that nobody can criticize the way things are run. So everything the government does is publicly portrayed as wonderful. Then when something goes badly wrong and is too big to cover up, people are puzzled at how such a thing could possibly take place.

The March 22 attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow “looks like a grandiose failure” on the part of the state, he wrote. “Fantastic amounts of money are spent on ‘security,’ but in reality, this security is not provided.” Under different circumstances, the political opposition and independent journalists would press the government on this problem, seeing to ensure that security forces do their job and that money is not misspent, Kolezev wrote. “Unfortunately, neither of these groups has access to national television, where they could speak quite loudly about this.” Instead of serving as checks on the state authorities, in other words, these groups are their targets. “Russian security personnel have been trained to look at specific, politically important ‘threats,’” Andras Toth-Czifra, a fellow with the Eurasia Program at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote on X, adding that “due to resource/time/manpower constraints this means that they have less capacity to look at and prevent actual threats.”

When dictators are responsible to no one, they have no obligation to act responsibly.

Putin’s sluggish reaction to the Kursk submarine disaster during his first year in office is an example, and experts say bungled responses to the Nord-Ost theater attack in Moscow in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia in 2004 increased the casualty counts. The predominance of the priorities of the state and its senior leaders over the interests of citizens is not a new problem: It stretches back to Soviet times and the tsarist era, and it’s a phenomenon that dissidents, rights activists, and opposition politicians say must be reversed if Russia and its people are to thrive. But Kremlin critics say it has become more pronounced as Putin’s rule drags on. Among other things, they point to the war in Ukraine, which has caused hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties even as Putin, securing a new six-year term in what opponents and analysts say was a tightly controlled vote marred by millions of falsified votes, used the election to portray himself as the indispensable leader of a deeply united country.

[historyistold]

פיגוע ירי בהיכל קרוֹקוּס בעיר קְרָסנוֹגוֹרסק בפרברי מוסקבה. לפחות ארבעה מחבלים חמושים פרצו למבנה וירו במבקרים, רגע לפני תחילת הופעה מוזיקלית של להקת ״פיקניק״, לפחות 133 הרוגים ועוד 90 אחרים נפצעו. מדיווחים שונים נטען שהמחבלים נמלטו למבנה סמוך עם בני ערובה. למקום הגיעו לוחמי המשמר הלאומי ושירות הביטחון הפדרלי. כבאים ומחלצים של המשרד למצבי חירום פועלים במקום עם כמה מסוקי כיבוי. חשש לקריסת המבנה.

#קרסנוגורסק #מחוזמוסקבה #רוסיה #פיגוע #crocushall #krasnogorsk #russia #historyistold

[devotress]

i finally need to focus and edit this footage for an upcoming show...

[mockva]

[gonzaloiglesias]

Rusia, Japón y Alemania 🔝💯 📷

[kingsnorthportfolio]

I made a short film. This isn't a trailer. The full movies is only 2mins long. But i shot it on 16mm film

[cardinaldesign]

[kingsnorthlobotomy]

Remembrance Sunday 12-11-2023 Shot in Maidstone, Kent, UK, on a silent 16mm movie camera on a very dreary day

[nononookytv]

Dagger Polyester though my viewfinder

[tomorrowusa]

It's embarrassing to Putin that US intelligence is better than his own secret police at assessing the threat posed by ISIS inside Russia. And it's irresponsible of Putin not to have taken the US advisory seriously.

The US warned Moscow that ISIS militants were determined to target Russia in the days before assailants stormed the Crocus City Hall in an attack that killed scores of people, but President Vladimir Putin rejected the advice as “provocative.” Gunmen stormed the concert hall near Moscow on Friday, opening fire and throwing an incendiary device in the worst terrorist attack on the Russian capital in decades. Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack. Experts said the scale of the carnage – some of which was captured in video footage obtained by CNN showing crowds of people cowering behind cushioned seats as gunshots echoed in the vast hall – would be deeply embarrassing for the Russian leader, who had championed a message of national security just a week earlier when winning the country’s stage-managed election. Not only had Russian intelligence services failed to prevent the attack, they said, but Putin had failed to heed warnings from the United States that extremists were plotting to target Moscow.

Earlier this month, the US embassy in Russia had said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts, and it warned US citizens to avoid such places. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the US government had “shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy.” But in a speech Tuesday, Putin had blasted the American warnings as “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” That stance came despite Russian authorities having reported several ISIS-related incidents within the past month.

Some of us may recall another time when the leader of a large country didn't take warnings of a terror attack seriously.

Of course Putin is trying to blame the attack on Ukraine without providing any credible evidence. But anybody who seriously keeps an eye on terrorists understands that this attack was conducted by an ISIS related group. I mean, ISIS-K itself is openly taking credit for the Crocus City Hall rampage.

Russia and its predecessor the USSR have been angering Sunni Islamic militants for a long time. It doesn't take much for ISIS to get pissed off at you and Russia has been giving them lots of material.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 set off the forever war in that region.

Russian intervention in Syria where Putin has been propping up fellow dictator Bashar al-Assad since 2015.

Russia's de facto alliance with the Shi'ite régime in Iran has Sunni ISIS enraged; they consider Shi'ites to be heretics.

Russia's growing involvement in Africa puts it at odds with ISIS elements there – especially in the Sahel.

The Putin régime has been stepping up suppression of religions other than Orthodox Christianity in Russia.

Crocus City Hall, site of the shootings and fire, is in Krasnogorsk which is not terribly far from Putin's official suburban residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. In a direct line, the two are about 9 miles/14.4 km apart; that's the distance between downtown Chicago and the nearest suburb Oak Park. According to Google Maps, it's a 25 minute ride.

I bring this up because it was reported...

President of Russian Vladimir Putin conveyed get-well wishes to victims via Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova. He did not address the nation himself.

When the late Yevgeny Prigozhin was headed to Moscow with his mutineers last year, Putin apparently fled to the Saint Petersburg area. If the most senior official available just after the Crocus attack was a deputy prime minister, that may be an indication that Putin and other senior figures were headed out of town during the crisis.

Just one more observation: Crocus City Hall was the venue for Donald Trump's 2013 Miss Universe contest.

Crocus City Hall: The Trump-linked venue that's now the scene of a deadly IS attack

[historyistold]

קרוֹקוּס סיטי הול. 22.03.2024

[devotress]

fake strawberry

[andijaart]

+++🙏🏻God Bless🕊️+++

The Icon of the Virgin of Georgia

MEMORIAL DAY SEPTEMBER 4

Today, the Krasnogorsk monastery rejoices brightly and the Raifa desert triumphs with it, like a sunny dawn that shone from the east, having received, Lady, Your miraculous icon, with which you disperse the darkness of temptations and troubles from those who cry out to you with faith: "Deliver our monastery and all Christian countries from all the machinations of the enemy and save our souls, as The Merciful Defender of the Christian race."

💫International Orthodox Art Corporation Andcross May the blessing of the Lord be upon you!

[mariacallous]

Editor's note: This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the threat of nuclear war has loomed over the conflict. Yet with President Vladimir Putin’s latest announcement that Russia would hold exercises for tactical nuclear weapons use in combat—supposedly in response to “provocative statements” from Western officials—Russia’s nuclear brinksmanship has possibly reached a new phase, in which higher risks need to be met with an upgraded Western deterrence posture. This deterrence is obviously different from the traditional war-prevention messaging because the high-intensity hostilities in Ukraine are progressing into year three. The theoretical model of deterrence in bello is, however, also not quite applicable because the war is uniquely asymmetric, with Ukraine fighting for its existence, Russia perceiving the battles as a part of an existential confrontation, and the West seeking to avoid any direct engagement while empowering Ukraine to win. The effectiveness of this new deterrence exercised by the West depends primarily on decisions made in Moscow, whose real-time assessments of the course of combat operations are complicated by its leaders’ opaque and highly personalized risk calculus.

One key input for such assessments is the fact that Putin’s new presidential term is off to a rocky start. The deadly terrorist attack targeting a concert in Moscow’s Krasnogorsk suburb has signified a failure of the Russian special services, which were warned about the threat by the U.S. authorities. This disaster left the impression that Putin’s reign, which started with the deadly explosions in Moscow in September 1999, has come full circle. Moscow’s efforts to invent a “Ukrainian connection” are a natural diversion, but the problem with this blame-shifting is that the intensity of missile strikes on Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Lviv cannot be raised any higher. By early May, it had become clear that Putin had failed to deliver a “punishment” that could have restored his credibility, which has been further compromised by Russia’s inability to respond to Ukrainian strikes on such strategic assets as the early-warning radar in Mordovia and the Tu-22M3 long-range bomber.

Several international developments are also raising the pressure on Moscow. The U.S. Congress’ approval of a long-awaited aid package to Ukraine can potentially open a new path to victory for Kyiv. Together with the funding provided by the European Union and many European states, this support effectively closes the window of superiority that Russia has sought to exploit since the start of 2024, in which it failed to achieve a strategic breakthrough beyond the battle for Avdiivka, despite fierce attacks with heavy casualties. Thus, at a time when the Russian public’s support for perpetual war is eroding, Putin is facing the prospect of yielding the strategic initiative to Ukraine. He may find this future unacceptable.

Putin’s announcement of an exercise for non-strategic nuclear forces makes it probable that Russia may escalate its nuclear brinksmanship in the next few months, and this analysis aims to assess how Moscow’s nuclear blackmail may take shape. It starts with a brief update on the nuclear capabilities that constitute the material basis of Russian strategic planning and proceeds to a short evaluation of how deterrence was applied in the first two years of the war. Consideration is then given to how Russia’s nuclear threats have sought to splinter European solidarity since the start of 2024 and to how Moscow may intensify these threats in response to the renewal of U.S. support to Ukraine.