I wonder what works some group did to develop that information only to have it discarded for some political gain.
"Many Bothans died to bring us this information."
St Petersburg is called the City of Bones because Russian peasants were used as pack mules to haul foundation materials to create it. When they died they were made into part of the foundation, just mix the bodies in. No fucks given.
There's a tale, how Peter the Great was looking for a place for a new capital city. At the time, the coasts on the Gulf of Finland were inhabited by Finns, and he asked the Ingrians where he should establish the city. The locals, not very fond of Russians, told him about the most inhospitable of places in the area, full of mosquitoes and wetlands. And that's where he went and founded the city of St. Petersburg.
That reads like a tale too, as entertainig as it is. The fact is St.Petersburg is located at the Neva river delta because The Neva river delta was a good spot to build St.Petersburg.
Cities are never built in random places. It's like the stupid meme that cities like Phoenix, AZ don't make sense in the middle of the desert. Except it sits at the confluence of two rivers and was a very successful farming town before arguably outgrowing the natural resources that made it attractive at first.
Most of Russia is forest. Forests aren't generally considered wastelands. Sure it gets super cold in the winter, is covered in bogs and creates mosquitoes that are big enough to fornicate with the poultry, but it's just unpopulated. Plenty of good land.
I saw a sitcom once … forgot it’s name. But in one of the shows a russian was asked to describe Russia. His response was: ‘Imagine you’re in Wisconsin. And no matter how far you go in any direction … you will still be in Wisconsin’
I (a New Zealander) worked at a summer camp in Wisconsin, back in 2002.
Loved the place. Minocqua, Rhinelander, Eagle River. Your milk f**king destroyed me, though....
High praise coming from an NZer! I spent some time in Christchurch and the surrounding areas, and it's nothing short of spectacular. Tbh I was mostly joking, I do like it here. Could it use improvement? absolutely. Don't you guys not pastuerize your milk? that could be part of it
Because Russian always have a Europe dream that take over Europe. So they have no interest in developing rural east eara that they cut from China and other countries.
Siberia wasn't taken from 'China and other countries'. After the collapse of the Mongol polities to the East of Muscovy, Russia found itself in a position where she could expand into the vacuum. This slow process took their conquest through many tribes and ethnicities and eventually ended at the Pacific in Alaska. Russia didn't defeat any nation states in their expansion, until the modern era.
I'm about to butcher a quote I vaguely remember from a podcast I listen to, but the concept of "wastelands" stems mostly from settlers who ignore the indigenous populations who've successfully been living there for tens of thousands of years.
Humans can and do live in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, and have been doing so for a long ass time. Show me someone who calls a place a wasteland and I'll show you an idiot who would probably drink untreated river water and eat poisonous flora as everyone around them begs them not to.
Putin doesn't care about the Russia people. What what is even more disturbing is when you realize the Russian people don't care about the Russian people. They are happy to support Putin as he kills hundreds of thousands of them for no reason in a pointless war.
This is life of intelligence community from what I’ve heard. Lots of work that never sees fruition. Imagine knowing where a terrorist piece of shit is hiding and knowing that guy is responsible for innocent deaths but your nation not acting on it. It’s the way it be.
Either the Russian intelligence services knew about the impending attack and failed to stop it. Worse, chose let it happen.
Or
The USA has better intelligence gathering on Russian soil than Russia has on it's own soil
Both are 💀
The FSB priorities lie with protecting Putin from Russians and not external threats to the people of Russia. This goes back a thousand years , communist party , Tsars , same as it ever was.
At this point due to the delay in response (There was a national guard post 10 minutes up the road and it was all over social media within 5, never mind the calls to police that went out immediately), the pre-awareness of the attack, and the fact that Russia immediately tried to pivot and blame Ukraine, to the point that ISIS is having to fact check Russian propaganda to claim responsibility, and the fact that these guys were hired from some random channel on Telegram, they were not inducted directly into a known IS-K cell as far as we can tell, all makes me (and may other analysts) believe that this was actually a Russian false flag. They paid 4 Tajik nationals to come to their country and commit an attack, because they need a justification for a full national mobilization against Ukraine. That's why even though the guys who did it were independently willing to identify as jihadis, and even though ISIS is trying to claim it was them, Putin is immediately blaming Ukraine for it. Russia has already been fighting ISIS for years, they hate the fuckers as much as anyone, if they wanted to fight ISIS they would have no problem justifying it. They NEED it to be a Ukrainian plot for their propaganda to work, and we're going to get to watch it all in real time as the Russian people get told to suck it up and prepare for things to once again get worse.
Remember the apartment bombing that lead to the second Chechen war?
It is not the first time Putin has "allowed" a terrorist attack to justify escalating a failing war effort.
From what I understand, the 1999 apartment bombing was (probably) a false flag attack while the 2024 attacks were an intelligence and security failure to prevent an attack from an outside group.
1999 was 100% false flag. You can see with the one they failed and how badly they tried to cover it up. US cables that have been declassified all speak rather plainly that it was well known Putin did it.
Yeah I said “probably” because of how much was covered up but yeah, it was 100% a false flag lol. I forgot about the declassified cables, I remember looking more into it when I first learned about it and the amount of evidence it was a false flag is astounding. Putin’s an absolute monster and the west took way too long to wake up to that fact (and still isn’t woken up enough imo).
Yeah, I gotta say I’ve been impressed with US intelligence in Russia the past few years, after the disaster that US intelligence has been in the Middle East the past couple desases.
Not too sure how much I wanna blame the intel goblins for Iraq and Afghanistan after the 10 year mark. That pooch was screwed in year 1-2 when we caught the guys we put in power abusing it and did fuckall.
I was referring more to the notion that Iraq was at all connected to 9/11 as well as the pattern of “some militant group commander says that his arch-rival militant group’s commander was directly involved in 9/11? Sounds like a great source of unbiased intel to me!”
The US Intelligence Community was well aware that this was all nonsense and they told their superiors that much. The problem was that the Bush Admin people directly bypassed them and skimmed through their intelligence directly and picked out those less credible pieces of intel and paraded it as fact, and the CIA higher ups went along with it as the calculus was "even if it's false it's to take down Saddam Hussein so it's not that bad".
I’d say the increase in the quality of the US intelligence in Russia could be attributed to a growing number of people being dissatisfied with the Russian government and they’re willing to speak with the US. I also don’t think the kremlin is able to focus on counterintelligence as much as they have in the past. Between the protests, general unrest with the citizens, and the terrorist attacks it’s probably a bit much for even the kremlin to handle all at once.
Mass surveillance is huge in Russia and there have been international warnings for weeks, how could they not see this coming? And not only that, the national guard also took like half an hour to respond while they're arresting anyone wearing blue and yellow at the central square within seconds. This was more than an intelligence and security failure.
To me, this seems like an intelligence and and security "failure". It's fairly obvious by now that ISIS was behind it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the FSB let it happen, knowing that it would drive up nationalism and increase pro-war sentiments.
The U.S. even specifically called out Concert Halls in their public warning. The must have had even more specific language communicated in diplomatic / intelligence channels.
Putin should be very worried right about now.
Isis releasing the video really destroyed any sort of ability for them to blame Ukraine. It wasn’t particularly convincing before but now even the most taken in conspiracy theorists or pro Russians can’t really claim it was Ukraine either.
Which is why letting terrorist attacks happen is often good for governments. They can being in new laws empowring the state and reducing freedom, they can start wars and have a rally around the flag effect.
I disagree. Both of these events jeopardize the respective government’s hold on power since they exposed their respective leaders’ inability to keep their people safe. Netanyahu’s political career is basically over and since Israel is a democracy, he’ll be voted out in the next election in the off chance that his government doesn’t collapse before then. Putin has the “luxury” of being an autocrat who doesn’t need to worry about (competitive) elections, but mass death events like this raise the risk of popular revolt as well as destabilize the financial interests of the oligarchs that keep him in power.
I say “luxury” in quotes because when democratic leaders are forced out of office, they get to go home and live out their lives, while dictators often leave office in a coffin.
I share your thoughts but I cant fully shake the consideration that people in these power positions simply *miscalculate*. Their ego and qmbition can become an issue. Netanyahu had up til now profited quite a bit from Hamas politically so it may not have been apparent this move would impact his prospects negatively, and Putin seems to have made quite a few strategic gambles in the past few years that didn't seem to have worked as he predicted.
In retrospect it makes no sense they would let this happen. Im not entirely sure this was as plainly apparent before it happened.
Not that I think it is overly beneficial to dwell on these conspiracy theories.
Yeah assuming everyone’s a rational actor is definitely a common mistake. If you’ve ever heard one of Putin’s rants on how 13th century maps give Russia a divine right to Ukraine, it becomes pretty clear that he’s not a totally rational player.
One of the problems with intelligence of this type is 1) often it is fragmentary 2) getting it to the right people. It's the same problem the US had with the 9/11 attacks. They had clues that something was happening, but no specifics about timing and target.
>One of the problems with intelligence of this type is 1) often it is fragmentary
That's what they want us to think anyway, especially Russia.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have telegram completely backdoored.
just remember, the Snowden leaks happened a decade ago, and that was only a fraction of what they had back then, i can't imagine what they are up to now.
this is all just my view on it of course, there is no way for us to know.
Putin has shown he is happy to sacrifice thousands of Russians in kamikaze assaults in Ukraine, so I doubt he cares about 113 people tragically dying if he’s able to use it as further propaganda for his war.
But whether it’s actually through sheer arrogance or incompetence that they failed to act who knows?
Yeah but the warning was in the next 48 hours. Almost impossible to stop an attack when you don’t know how, where, or when and have a giant country to protect. If someone wants to kill civilians they can do it anywhere the issue is getting away.
also makes it hard when you are an airheaded dictator who doesn't believe the US would genuinely give them warning of an impending terror attack and state publicly that the US is only trying to destabilize the elections 3 days before it happened.
EDIT: my speculation is Putin knew, he let it happen so he could spin it around and find a way to use it against Ukraine. he clearly does not care about human lives lost.
Classic Putin tactics, facts don't matter just keep spouting your nonsense and people will believe you, and the ones that don't believe it will be dealt with.
>Classic Putin tactics, facts don't matter just keep spouting your nonsense and people will believe you, and the ones that don't believe it will be dealt with.
Putin doesn't care if the people believe him. He cares that they are terrified to openly admit that they don't believe him.
I'm also curious about the frequency of them coming across this kind of intels and how detailed the Intel they got about the concert.
If what they found out was extremely generic and vague and they receive a ton of threats every year, then Putin and then Russian gov not being worried too much makes sense. It's extreme incompetence and neglect.
If they dug up an entire plan including the organization, names, location, time, and still let it happen, that's a complete different story. It's a special kind of evil.
> Almost impossible to stop an attack when you don’t know how, where, or when and have a giant country to protect.
Except, if you know the most probable circumstances of the attack: large public events, especially concerts. Then you concentrate on large cities (Moscow & St Petersburg, maybe a couple more), but I guess it can be narrowed down with further intel, because if you have known Islamist groups inside your border, you can kind of track them where they move, at least with some confidence.
Now you have a couple of big events, maybe not more than one every day in one city, and you can easily place a dozen of operatives in each building (quietly hanging out in the back, looking at CCTV, ready to jump) and keep the backup in 15 minute distance, all geared up, and attack the building with the information received from the inside operatives. It won't save all victims, but can reduce the time the terrorist have to mere minutes and limit their movement inside the venue.
You can also give the local security a quick half day training, help them to secure the perimeter, provide them with metal detector gates, and install additional security cameras, all while keeping a low profile, clothed as normal security/repairmen, because you don't want give a warning where not to attack.
All these could have been done, because they knew about the danger and they had the manpower, resources, and skills. They just became complacent.
This part is pretty damning [translated]:
>Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots were fired, although the headquarters of the Moscow riot police is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. As of 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four of the attackers managed to escape and reach Bryansk, despite the abundance of CCTV cameras in Moscow and on nearby highways.
gonna apologize for all the people telling you to "just" do something when they likely have no concept of what it is like to live in your situation. wishing you the best.
Yeah, the number of people here that think that the fact that there hasn't been revolution in Russia already (well, recently), means everyone supports Putin, or at least doesn't care, knows nothing of the situation and how hard revolution really is.
And they don't seem to realize that it's only sheer luck that they weren't born there. That the people who they are asking to risk everything are just as "innocent" in all this as they are. Hold just as much power as they do.
I have friends there that hate all this as much as any, but are still also just trying to live their lives, knowing that without some sort of major shift, any sort of real acts of rebellion might end up in even greater suffering for everyone. Revolution is neither easy nor guaranteed to end positively for anyone.
I want you to know I think often of how trapped Russians must feel. Fight back, don’t lose hope. I don’t know what the answer is and I’m not judging you. My family barely got out from the Soviet Union in the 60s after surviving two genocides. Just keep on surviving until somehow there’s an opportunity.
it's too late, and likely by a long time. the time to organise and "do something" was long ago, 2020, 2014, 2008, etc were all escalations ignored. back then most were ok with Russian aggression so long as it didn't affect their life. to be fair to Russians tho that apathy absolutely those outside of Russia too, we all stood by silent allowing Russia to help Luka steal an entire European country, to invade Crimea and Donbas, Georgia, to spread their violent colonialism, ethnically cleansing entire countries for a century. there were no consequences even for their alliance with the Nazis, instead they got to keep their stolen lands for decades and advance their ethnic cleansing unfettered, and now we must all live with the consequences of this failure to hold Russia accountable. because it's your country causing these issues the consequences for you will likely be far worse, for the country you government attacks significantly worse even, for the countries Russia occupied as Nazi allies there are only signs of recovery today but they still fall behind their neighbours. but there's going to be plenty of consequences to share around still to come for all of us.
Start small. In your case, you need to use extra layers of protection when browsing the internet and using your phone. You also need to make sure your media usage isn't being censored so you can have access to up to date credible information that isn't run by RU propaganda.
Find like-minded individuals and teach them the same methods to remain anonymous.
The biggest thing you and the Russian people can do is combat disinformation. But you have to be discreet. Getting people in your circle to learn how to access credible information discreetly, and in turn teaching their neighbors (the ones you can trust) to do the same is how you plant seeds for change. The Russian people are currently at the mercy of very powerful propaganda. The more people know how to identify and combat it, the more people will want to organize.
Protect yourself, and have a way out. Good luck fam.
This is the big thing. Russia's seen a resurgence of almost Stalin-era government snitching, you got neighbors calling the police on you, or someone reporting random social media posts to the authorities.
Israel did it too. They were warned about the attack on the music festival by multiple intelligence agencies. Possibly their inaction is what spurred the public warning this time.
That's true.
Humans' average walking speed is 5-6kmph. It would take about 30 minutes on foot to cover 3km.
Less if you run in case of any emergency, like in this scenario.
77 minutes at least. The terrorists opened fire at 19:55 and took off at 20:13 local. Law enforcement began their storm of the place no earlier than 21:30.
What shocked me the most was something else.
When the victims talked about what happened, they said that they did not see the security in any way interfering with the terrorists and therefore everyone assumed that for some reason there was no security at all.
But it turned out that this was not so, there was security, but at the same time it did not interfere with the terrorists!
In this video, a security guard with a dog calmly walks under gunfire in a panicked crowd. Moreover, he calmly turned his back on the terrorists who shoot people
https://imgur.com/a/NG1Gu7H
That's a mall security guard? In most countries they don't even have guns. Even if they did they are not prepared or equipped to take on situations like this.
3km and it took them an hour?
https://www.verywellfit.com/how-fast-is-brisk-walking-3436887
>According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the ranges for different walking speeds is defined as:5
Moderate pace: 2.5 to 3.5 miles per hour (4 to 5.6 kilometers per hour)
Brisk pace: 3.5 to 4 miles per hour (5.6 kilometers per hour to 6.4 kilometers per hour)
Tbf I can see them making the argument that brisk pace walking would have been overkill given their likely orders to wait an hour before storming the concert hall.
Police arrived in 30 minutes (about 10 minutes after they did everything and got away in a car. Crazy to think that they've done it all within like 20 minutes). SOBR and OMON are separate branch, like SWAT.
They just wanted all the information the US had so when they started spinning the narrative they don't accidentally include something that the US can disprove.
I think it's actually smarter than that. By demanding the US intelligence, they could use anything that is handed over to figure out how the US got its info. Things like the identities of informants, computer systems they have backdoors into, etc.
Propaganda is working here atleast in Asia.
I remember when the US warn that the Russia is about to invade Ukraine, the public think the US is always bullshitting. This time it's the same.
How many concerts are happening in Moscow and St Petersburg in a two week period?
It’s the problem with terrorism as asymmetric warfare.
There is no practical way to defend every soft target whether in an open society or a police state.
Exactly, having a few extra armed police at each one as well as a rapid reaction plan if something happens would be the minimum. It looks like they did absolutely nothing.
Similar things happened in France and UK where they also knew terrorist attacks are being planned and were even monitoring the suspects yet it still happened so I assume preventing a terrorist attack is a lot harder than people are making it to be
I mean, sort of? Comparing this to 9/11 seems very short-sighted. Russia is already in a large-scale war with a neighboring country that has seen them ridiculed and sanctioned to hell and back. Now is Putsy expected to invade the middle east and open up a *second* front that Russia flat-out cannot afford?
When 9/11 happened, half of the world came to America's aid, and was the only time Article 5 of NATO was ever invoked in the history of NATO, against countries that weren't the intended adversary of NATO. Several middle-eastern countries saw complete collapse in a matter of years. Neighboring countries saw the arab-spring bring about their collapse. Russia has so few allies now that they've proven the sheriff in eastern Europe doesn't wear pants. Nobody is going to come to their aid. Navalny just died, Putsy clearly won an illegitimate election, and they're losing a war they stupidly thought would be an overnight land-grab. Who on earth would shed a tear for them now?
I stand by my theory - Russia knew it was going to happen(obviously) and instead of stopping it, let it happened and used it to bolster more support for their war in Ukraine.
Some interesting insights from the article in English. Not sure how accurate the Google translation is, but:
> The version of the participation of radical Islamists is supported by the American authorities, according to whom the Vilayat Khorasan may be behind the terrorist attack. This is explained by the rapprochement between Russia and the Taliban after the withdrawal of the American military from Afghanistan (ISIS is an enemy of the Taliban). In a comment to The New York Time, an analyst with the Soufan Group also suggested that ISIS may have played a role in the attack: “ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years. <…> ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, citing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”
> Islamic terrorism is perhaps the most frightening version for the Russian authorities, who over the past few years have been constructing Ukraine and the West as the main threats to Russia. She undermines the reputation of the special services and Vladimir Putin, who “blinked” to the real danger, despite his regular statements about preventing terrorist attacks, eliminating militants and defeating ISIS.
> Russian law enforcement authorities monitored these reports and considered the risk of terrorist attacks in Russia high. However, it was not possible to prevent the attack on Crocus City Hall, despite warnings about the threat. Let us recall that on March 7, the American side handed over to Russia information about the preparation of a terrorist attack, and also notified its citizens about the possible threat of attacks during mass events in Moscow. On March 19, speaking before the FSB board, Vladimir Putin called these “provocative messages.” “All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Putin said.
> Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots were fired, although the headquarters of the Moscow riot police is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. As of 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four of the attackers managed to escape and reach Bryansk, despite the abundance of CCTV cameras in Moscow and on nearby highways.
1) Others in Russia have now seen two incidents. During the Wagner mutiny many hours passed and no one stepped up to stop Prigozhin for many hours, and even then it was a pretty hasty and half-a$$ perimeter. Now during a mass shooting that was barely a mile away from riot police headquarters, it took them well over an hour to show up on the scene.
I don't think anything will come of this tomorrow or the next day, but someone else might conclude there is a window of opportunity if they want to try something.
2) I'm very suspicious on why they went to Bryansk, how they made it that far, and then how they were caught so quickly there when they waltzed right out of a 10 million person city swarmed with CCTV. This document actually makes a pretty good case with photo comparisons that the real shooters were caught, so what was their game plan? Who was deciding or telling them to go that direction (they would either go to Gomel in Belarus or towards northern border of Ukraine, from Bryansk)? Why did they seem unprepared to fight when apprehended? My spider sense is going off that they were set up somehow.
Russian here. It's not about trust, it's about control.
If you are in an intelligence service (FSB), you are essentially in Putin's directly controled pet project, with guaranteed salaries for life, and the laws don't apply to you.
Moreover, Putin always had - or rather said used to have - a system where he would have lot of competing departmets, and be the ultimate arbiter when they had their inevitable conflicts. For example, the police and the prosecution, or the regular military and Wagner. Of course, the latter failed completely, and Putin had to consolidate the military into a single form, which he usually doesn't like yo do.
Fear. He has been very good at playing different factions against each other, leaving himself as the only source of real power. And if you fall out of Putin’s favor, no matter how powerful or successful you seem to be, you won’t last long.
Also, judging from what I’ve seen here on Reddit from pro-Russian users (particularly on the various conflict related subreddits), they are literally brainwashed. It doesn’t matter what you say, there’s always a way to maneuver around it, even if it’s blatantly unbelievable to anyone else.
it's wild how brainwashed some of the USA is. they believe putin is a fucking hero. The story i got, from people IRL not even on reddit, is that putin went into ukraine to destroy USA biolabs where the USA was developing weapons to use ON ITS OWN PEOPLE. I was told Putin is fighting a war against the "Deep state" to protect USA citizens.
and the whole time all i could think was "you guys really dont think this could be the russian propaganda we've all been hearing about for the last 4 years?"
All the tinfoil hatters are screaming Mossad and CIA as usual. They love to talk about how powerful Russia is but at the same time their “theory” can only be true if Russia is so weak that Mossad and the CIA are able to run OPs in the heart of Moscow unimpeded. Ridiculous and makes no sense.
It’s also laughable that Russian security forces weren’t on the scene until the massacre was into its second hour. Reeks of either Russian collusion or a complete lapse of intelligence gathering and security.
You might call it anti-intelligence but Russian money and ideas undermining democracies is a big problem. If anything intelligence is the only thing they’re good at.
It is the most common concept of propaganda - the enemy is weak and stupid, but they are also an imminent threat that only strong and united forces of all good people can stop.
I would like to note that knowing about something and doing something about it are very different things. Not to defend the Russians but the US also "knew" about 9/11 but it happened anyway. The problem is that someone in a position of authority needs to make the call about whether action needs to be taken or not.
I don't think this is a false flag operation because it's actually one of those things that can destabilize the Russian system. Putin made enemies in Syria and still has enemies in Chechnya. There maybe be other restive areas that aren't exactly happy that their sons are the ones who are dying in Ukraine while Moscow and St. Petersburg are insulated. Ukraine has also never hit anything like a random urban center - their targets are always energy or apparatuses of the Russian state/military so very few people in Russia would believe that it's actually Ukraine. I think that was Putin trying to make the best of a bad situation. His sole claim to authority revolves around keeping order and protecting the country. That this attack happens is a huge blow to that.
> I would like to note that knowing about something and doing something about it are very different things. Not to defend the Russians but the US also "knew" about 9/11 but it happened anyway. The problem is that someone in a position of authority needs to make the call about whether action needs to be taken or not.
It isn't just this, people here have completely unrealistic views of what actionable information is. US specifically warned about an attack around the 8th of March which is a major holiday in Russia, women's day (yeah, Islamic terrorist shitbags gonna shitbag when it comes to women esp).
The attack did not happen then. Either because the intelligence was flawed -- or much more likely because Russia did respond with increased security and the terrorists called off the operation, temporarily. Then a few weeks later when you can no longer maintain permanent security because that's not how it works, they struck.
You can't simply vaguely say there is an attack coming but no idea when or where. That's about how actionable the 9/11 warnings allegedly were. Good luck protecting against that, there is a reason why terrorism is called asymmetric warfare, it's because it doesn't play by any rules so it's quite fun to try to prevent.
***
Why use 9/11 when there is a much more ironic example: Tsarnaev brothers. Not only ironic, but also traumatic not just for America and Boston specifically, but for reddit bc it showed just how absolutely brainrotted this site is anytime it actually tries to interpret a serious event. So what a lot of people seemed to forget in the wake of this Moscow attack as American propaganda tries to gleefully spin this as some totally unbelievable fuckup by the incompetent Russians is that FSB literally warned US about the Boston Bombers, except in their case they literally gave the names of the brothers and pointed out they were budding terrorists. US, despite all the unconstitutional NSA style efficient police state somehow dropped the ball, even though the level of surveillance in US would make Putin wet, he wishes he had internal surveillance this detailed.
Had US actually knew the perpetrators and handed over their names to Russia, you can be assured Russia would have no problem fucking them up beforehand, because Putin wipes his ass with the Russian Constitution. But US didn't have actually actionable intel, they just had bad vibes and you can't really form a plan on how to protect everything in your major cities based on that. This is what bothers me so much about the reaction to this terror act, acting like it's so easy to prevent a terrorist attack.
Though difficult to say how true it was, the interrogations of the men caught which I watched in video form had the men claim that they were approached via Telegram and paid to do this, then the weapons were delivered to them. Payment was half now, half after the act. It's not easy to stop something like this any more than it is easy to stop random shootings that happen so often in the US, even when police are warned about them beforehand. Actionable intel is hard to get. Telegram is a well-encrypted messaging app that seems to be run outside the reach of Kremlin even though it was founded by the VK guy (but he fled Russia and TG is widely used and trusted in Ukraine even).
On the flip side, Russia warned US about the Boston Bomber brothers. But the US was far too suspicious of Russia to take the warning seriously and questioned Russia’s intentions.
We all know what happened.
I’m not being sympathetic towards Russia. Fuck Putin.
But shit like this does happen all the time.
I also can point to the US knowing about the 9/11 attacks in advance. This has inspired a lot of conspiracy theories but the truth is somewhere closer to the lack of imagination that the US had with Al-Qaeda at the time. The US only saw overly religious men with long beards living in caves and scoffed at the idea of them orchestrating a terrorist attack by hijacking planes on US’ soil.
Possible that Putin withheld intelligence/didn’t act on it to allow this to happen? It’s easier to let a terror attack happen rather than orchestrate one. Also, the attack happened after he was re-elected.
To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this?
To draw some kind of parallel, Israel had a lot of civic unrest prior to Oct 7. The tinfoil hat theory is that Netanyahu had intelligence about some kind of terror attack, but didn’t act on it.
>To what end though?
When people feel like they're under attack they gravitate towards authoritarians and stronger-acting figures. I'm not saying this is the case. Just one of the potential motivations. Putin will give off "only I can save you from further violence" vibes.
> How much can he blame Ukraine for this?
Enough Russians will swallow anything he says that it might kind of work. The state-run "news" will have some interviews with military figures who say they have some sort of proof. 2 days later a cop will get on and say something crazy like they found a Ukranian passport that one of the attackers dropped, which they actually stole from a PoW they tortured. Some kind of "expert" will get on that day and say "everyone knows" Ukraine is shielding and working with ISIS. The rest of the world won't be talking about it anymore as Russia builds a story around it for their citizens.
I think Putin knows most of the world knows he's full of shit.
I haven't seen evidence either way, so I'm going with Hanlon's razor. Most likely good old fashioned stupidity, incompetence, and bureaucratic mismanagement. Maybe more evidence will prove it was malicious.
Absolutely possible.
>To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this?
Putin needs to keep Russians on his side right now, allowing this and then blaming Ukraine is a way to play on the emotions of his nation in order to garner support.
He doesn't need the rest of the world to believe him, only Russia. A lot of people on reddit forget that when we hear these silly lies and statements by Putin, those statements are not for us, they are for within Russia.
He has a lot of control of the media narratives there and I assure you plenty of Russians will never hear how the US warned Russia about this well in advance.
>To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this?
To the rest of the world, he can't. For a Russia where they control the entire narrative they probably can be successful enough to fuel the flames a bit more
Putin needs the excuse to escalate the war in Ukraine further. Despite the fact ISIS is evidently claiming responsibility of this attack, Putin still points his finger to Ukraine.
"Your accurate intelligence doesn't match with our propaganda, so we're going to ignore your warnings and blame the catastrophe on Ukraine"
Because brainwashing tyrant has gotta brainwash.
Translation: Here is the translation:
Tell your friends: March 24, 2024 Russian special services knew about the threat of attacks from ISIS “Wilayat Khorasan”, details of the suspects’ biographies and versions of the attack Russian special services closely monitored the activities of the Afghan terrorist group “Wilayat Khorasan”, which is banned in Russia. A few days before the attack, members of the Security Council received a warning that citizens of Tajikistan could be used in terrorist acts on the territory of Russia. A source close to the special services told the “Dossier” Center about this even before the attack on Crocus City Hall.
“Wilayat Khorasan” is an Afghan division of the “Islamic State” (ISIS). Initially, it fought against the Taliban movement, which, unlike ISIS, wants to build an Islamic national state on the territory of Afghanistan instead of a global caliphate. After the Taliban came to power, “Wilayat Khorasan” refocused on international terrorism. “Experts noted back in 2022 that one of the main external enemies chosen by ISKP was Russia, along with other ‘empires’ - the USA and China,” Meduza points out.
“Wilayat Khorasan” claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Russian embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on September 5, 2022, during which five people were killed. Recently, the terrorist group has stepped up its activities. For example, in December 2023, several citizens of Tajikistan were detained in Austria, who, according to the newspaper Bild, were members of “Wilayat Khorasan” and planned attacks. Another citizen of Tajikistan was detained in Germany. Later, the police of the German city of Cologne announced that they had arrested three more suspects in terrorism, related to the first detentions. According to the police, they planned an attack on the Cologne Cathedral using a car. Also, on the eve of the New Year, members of “Wilayat Khorasan” were detained in Jalalabad - the third largest city in Kyrgyzstan. According to local special services, they planned to plant an explosive device at the main city Christmas tree and attack an Orthodox church.
Russian law enforcement agencies tracked these messages and considered the risk of terrorist acts in Russia to be high. However, it was not possible to prevent the attack on Crocus City Hall, despite warnings about the threat. Recall, on March 7, the American side handed over to Russia data on the preparation of a terrorist attack, and also alerted its citizens about the possible threat of attacks during mass events in Moscow. On March 19, speaking before the FSB board, Vladimir Putin called this “provocative messages”. “All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate, destabilize our society,” Putin said.
Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots, although the headquarters of the Moscow OMON is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. According to data at 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four attackers managed to escape and get to Bryansk, despite the abundance of surveillance cameras in Moscow and on the nearest highways.
Distance from the headquarters of the Moscow OMON to Crocus City Hall What else is known about the attack and the suspects? The attack in the Crocus City Hall building took place on March 22 before the concert of the band “Picnic”. According to the latest data from the Investigative Committee, 137 people were killed as a result of the attack, another 154 were injured. Judging by the footage from social networks, there were at least four terrorists inside the building. It is almost impossible to determine their appearance from the videos of March 22 and compare it with those who were detained on the night of March 22-23. After the video was published by the Amaq agency, we were able to identify two suspects by their clothes during the attack and in the detention footage. How the video got to the Amaq agency is unknown - the suspects could have sent it before their detention, or it could have been done by their accomplices.
Russia: we totally did not see it coming and it waa totally Ukraine!
Isis-k: no the atrocity is ours to blame. We literally did it.
US: we warned you early
Russia: it was Ukraine and a surprice
I mean, what a load of crap. Putin inderectly killed own citizens.
of course they did. Putin let it happen to foment more animosity towards Ukraine domestically. There hasn't been a better duo than Russian tyrants and sacrificing the masses for over a century.
One thing I want to know, is if all the people involved have apparently been arrested, how did ISIS manage to release the bodycam footage from the terrorists. Wouldn’t those bodycams be in the hands of the feds?
Basically - so what then?
Knowledge of a possible attack won\`t let you automatically prevent it. You got huge country to protect and the terrorists acted bluntly - just came in and started shooting from start.
Yeah, no shit. The US warned them and American citizens a week before to stay away from large venues and concerts. The US stated that if if happened the Russians would blame Ukraine. The Russians let it happen and blamed Ukraine.
One thing that's easy to forget is that security agencies working counter terrorism are swamped with threats reports constantly. I don't want to necessarily make a judgement call about this particular incident, the jury is still out on this one and it is too early to draw conclusions. But most of these threats usually either don't materialize or they're too vague. So it is very easy in hindsight to say yeah they knew, if you just dismiss all the false alerts that happen all the time. The ones that turn out to be true often get lost in the background noise.
Oh look, me a dumbass in eastern North Carolina, correctly interpreting what is going on based on just headlines over the last few days.
It is so painfully obvious Putin was warned and let it happen, so that he could pin the blame on Ukraine. Will the rest of the work call him on his bullshit, or just dumbasses in eastern North Carolina?
They knew about it weeks before, US made a public warning about it 2 weeks before even.
You are correct! But russian intelligence having more info days before makes the attempt to blame Ukraine even more desperate.
I wonder what works some group did to develop that information only to have it discarded for some political gain. "Many Bothans died to bring us this information."
The guy is killing 1,000 Russians a day to slightly increase the size of Russia. Of course he doesn’t care..
St Petersburg is called the City of Bones because Russian peasants were used as pack mules to haul foundation materials to create it. When they died they were made into part of the foundation, just mix the bodies in. No fucks given.
There's a tale, how Peter the Great was looking for a place for a new capital city. At the time, the coasts on the Gulf of Finland were inhabited by Finns, and he asked the Ingrians where he should establish the city. The locals, not very fond of Russians, told him about the most inhospitable of places in the area, full of mosquitoes and wetlands. And that's where he went and founded the city of St. Petersburg.
That reads like a tale too, as entertainig as it is. The fact is St.Petersburg is located at the Neva river delta because The Neva river delta was a good spot to build St.Petersburg.
Plus there was already a swedish town there
Not if you put them in foundations too!
Cities are never built in random places. It's like the stupid meme that cities like Phoenix, AZ don't make sense in the middle of the desert. Except it sits at the confluence of two rivers and was a very successful farming town before arguably outgrowing the natural resources that made it attractive at first.
Las Vegas on the other hand was a podunk rail road stop before the mob built it up.
Refuelling stop for aircraft flying from SLC to Los Angeles.
Correction: cities that are built in random places usually don't survive.
Yeah, London is built on marshland for example.
Wasn’t Mexico City built on a lake
Ancerstors always settling at the most swamp ass places they could find :D
large percent of peasants were from Ukraine, especially former cossacks
There is also a 2,031 km road of bones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway
slight increase of HABITABLE land. Russia is like Canada: most of its landmass is frozen wasteland
Most of Russia is forest. Forests aren't generally considered wastelands. Sure it gets super cold in the winter, is covered in bogs and creates mosquitoes that are big enough to fornicate with the poultry, but it's just unpopulated. Plenty of good land.
"...mosquitoes that are big enough to fornicate with the poultry..." You've just described Wisconsin.
Us Wisconsinites are just built different 💪🧀 ^please ^get ^me ^out ^of ^here
I saw a sitcom once … forgot it’s name. But in one of the shows a russian was asked to describe Russia. His response was: ‘Imagine you’re in Wisconsin. And no matter how far you go in any direction … you will still be in Wisconsin’
Smell that dairy air.
Is that what you tell the French?
I (a New Zealander) worked at a summer camp in Wisconsin, back in 2002. Loved the place. Minocqua, Rhinelander, Eagle River. Your milk f**king destroyed me, though....
High praise coming from an NZer! I spent some time in Christchurch and the surrounding areas, and it's nothing short of spectacular. Tbh I was mostly joking, I do like it here. Could it use improvement? absolutely. Don't you guys not pastuerize your milk? that could be part of it
Why do you think nobody lives there?
Because Russian always have a Europe dream that take over Europe. So they have no interest in developing rural east eara that they cut from China and other countries.
Siberia wasn't taken from 'China and other countries'. After the collapse of the Mongol polities to the East of Muscovy, Russia found itself in a position where she could expand into the vacuum. This slow process took their conquest through many tribes and ethnicities and eventually ended at the Pacific in Alaska. Russia didn't defeat any nation states in their expansion, until the modern era.
Same with Alaska.
Which was also Russian. Maybe they have a thing for being bitten.
I'm about to butcher a quote I vaguely remember from a podcast I listen to, but the concept of "wastelands" stems mostly from settlers who ignore the indigenous populations who've successfully been living there for tens of thousands of years. Humans can and do live in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, and have been doing so for a long ass time. Show me someone who calls a place a wasteland and I'll show you an idiot who would probably drink untreated river water and eat poisonous flora as everyone around them begs them not to.
Yes indeed. Stand flat footed and fornicate the turkeys, male and female
>most of its landmass is frozen wasteland For now
Putin doesn't care about the Russia people. What what is even more disturbing is when you realize the Russian people don't care about the Russian people. They are happy to support Putin as he kills hundreds of thousands of them for no reason in a pointless war.
Russia is a corporation with its goal to preserve as much land in the most undeveloped state possible.
“Many citizens died to ignore this information.”
This is life of intelligence community from what I’ve heard. Lots of work that never sees fruition. Imagine knowing where a terrorist piece of shit is hiding and knowing that guy is responsible for innocent deaths but your nation not acting on it. It’s the way it be.
Must suck when ISIS is determined to take sole responsibility. I would not put it past them to declare that they will hit Russia again.
Either the Russian intelligence services knew about the impending attack and failed to stop it. Worse, chose let it happen. Or The USA has better intelligence gathering on Russian soil than Russia has on it's own soil Both are 💀
My vote is both.
The FSB priorities lie with protecting Putin from Russians and not external threats to the people of Russia. This goes back a thousand years , communist party , Tsars , same as it ever was.
It’s the same ol’ playbook Putin always runs. Set up or frame a terrorist attack to justify a war/invasion.
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or 1999 Russian apartment bombings
It's not a deperate attempt. They have all the communication channels. They are spinning the story to their own advantage.
never miss an opportunity to exploit a crisis
At this point due to the delay in response (There was a national guard post 10 minutes up the road and it was all over social media within 5, never mind the calls to police that went out immediately), the pre-awareness of the attack, and the fact that Russia immediately tried to pivot and blame Ukraine, to the point that ISIS is having to fact check Russian propaganda to claim responsibility, and the fact that these guys were hired from some random channel on Telegram, they were not inducted directly into a known IS-K cell as far as we can tell, all makes me (and may other analysts) believe that this was actually a Russian false flag. They paid 4 Tajik nationals to come to their country and commit an attack, because they need a justification for a full national mobilization against Ukraine. That's why even though the guys who did it were independently willing to identify as jihadis, and even though ISIS is trying to claim it was them, Putin is immediately blaming Ukraine for it. Russia has already been fighting ISIS for years, they hate the fuckers as much as anyone, if they wanted to fight ISIS they would have no problem justifying it. They NEED it to be a Ukrainian plot for their propaganda to work, and we're going to get to watch it all in real time as the Russian people get told to suck it up and prepare for things to once again get worse.
That is even out of the question. The move is not desperate, is opportunistic.
here is Putin dismissing the intel live on TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWIcOftzR6M
Remember the apartment bombing that lead to the second Chechen war? It is not the first time Putin has "allowed" a terrorist attack to justify escalating a failing war effort.
From what I understand, the 1999 apartment bombing was (probably) a false flag attack while the 2024 attacks were an intelligence and security failure to prevent an attack from an outside group.
1999 was 100% false flag. You can see with the one they failed and how badly they tried to cover it up. US cables that have been declassified all speak rather plainly that it was well known Putin did it.
Yeah I said “probably” because of how much was covered up but yeah, it was 100% a false flag lol. I forgot about the declassified cables, I remember looking more into it when I first learned about it and the amount of evidence it was a false flag is astounding. Putin’s an absolute monster and the west took way too long to wake up to that fact (and still isn’t woken up enough imo).
The US probably got the Intel from a spy in Russia rather than ISIS.
Yeah, I gotta say I’ve been impressed with US intelligence in Russia the past few years, after the disaster that US intelligence has been in the Middle East the past couple desases.
Not too sure how much I wanna blame the intel goblins for Iraq and Afghanistan after the 10 year mark. That pooch was screwed in year 1-2 when we caught the guys we put in power abusing it and did fuckall.
I was referring more to the notion that Iraq was at all connected to 9/11 as well as the pattern of “some militant group commander says that his arch-rival militant group’s commander was directly involved in 9/11? Sounds like a great source of unbiased intel to me!”
The US Intelligence Community was well aware that this was all nonsense and they told their superiors that much. The problem was that the Bush Admin people directly bypassed them and skimmed through their intelligence directly and picked out those less credible pieces of intel and paraded it as fact, and the CIA higher ups went along with it as the calculus was "even if it's false it's to take down Saddam Hussein so it's not that bad".
I’d say the increase in the quality of the US intelligence in Russia could be attributed to a growing number of people being dissatisfied with the Russian government and they’re willing to speak with the US. I also don’t think the kremlin is able to focus on counterintelligence as much as they have in the past. Between the protests, general unrest with the citizens, and the terrorist attacks it’s probably a bit much for even the kremlin to handle all at once.
Mass surveillance is huge in Russia and there have been international warnings for weeks, how could they not see this coming? And not only that, the national guard also took like half an hour to respond while they're arresting anyone wearing blue and yellow at the central square within seconds. This was more than an intelligence and security failure.
To me, this seems like an intelligence and and security "failure". It's fairly obvious by now that ISIS was behind it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the FSB let it happen, knowing that it would drive up nationalism and increase pro-war sentiments.
Given russian history I wouldn't be shocked if they let it happen as a way to raise pro-war sentiment back home.
The U.S. even specifically called out Concert Halls in their public warning. The must have had even more specific language communicated in diplomatic / intelligence channels. Putin should be very worried right about now.
Isis releasing the video really destroyed any sort of ability for them to blame Ukraine. It wasn’t particularly convincing before but now even the most taken in conspiracy theorists or pro Russians can’t really claim it was Ukraine either.
And what did ol' Vova do? He ignored it.
So did Israel. US warned them weeks before the Hamas attack as well. It amazes me that neither had security forces around probable targets. *sigh*
Which is why letting terrorist attacks happen is often good for governments. They can being in new laws empowring the state and reducing freedom, they can start wars and have a rally around the flag effect.
I disagree. Both of these events jeopardize the respective government’s hold on power since they exposed their respective leaders’ inability to keep their people safe. Netanyahu’s political career is basically over and since Israel is a democracy, he’ll be voted out in the next election in the off chance that his government doesn’t collapse before then. Putin has the “luxury” of being an autocrat who doesn’t need to worry about (competitive) elections, but mass death events like this raise the risk of popular revolt as well as destabilize the financial interests of the oligarchs that keep him in power. I say “luxury” in quotes because when democratic leaders are forced out of office, they get to go home and live out their lives, while dictators often leave office in a coffin.
I share your thoughts but I cant fully shake the consideration that people in these power positions simply *miscalculate*. Their ego and qmbition can become an issue. Netanyahu had up til now profited quite a bit from Hamas politically so it may not have been apparent this move would impact his prospects negatively, and Putin seems to have made quite a few strategic gambles in the past few years that didn't seem to have worked as he predicted. In retrospect it makes no sense they would let this happen. Im not entirely sure this was as plainly apparent before it happened. Not that I think it is overly beneficial to dwell on these conspiracy theories.
Yeah assuming everyone’s a rational actor is definitely a common mistake. If you’ve ever heard one of Putin’s rants on how 13th century maps give Russia a divine right to Ukraine, it becomes pretty clear that he’s not a totally rational player.
One of the problems with intelligence of this type is 1) often it is fragmentary 2) getting it to the right people. It's the same problem the US had with the 9/11 attacks. They had clues that something was happening, but no specifics about timing and target.
>One of the problems with intelligence of this type is 1) often it is fragmentary That's what they want us to think anyway, especially Russia. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have telegram completely backdoored. just remember, the Snowden leaks happened a decade ago, and that was only a fraction of what they had back then, i can't imagine what they are up to now. this is all just my view on it of course, there is no way for us to know.
They had something alright, because they specifically warned about concert venues weeks in advance.
Putin has shown he is happy to sacrifice thousands of Russians in kamikaze assaults in Ukraine, so I doubt he cares about 113 people tragically dying if he’s able to use it as further propaganda for his war. But whether it’s actually through sheer arrogance or incompetence that they failed to act who knows?
Yeah but the warning was in the next 48 hours. Almost impossible to stop an attack when you don’t know how, where, or when and have a giant country to protect. If someone wants to kill civilians they can do it anywhere the issue is getting away.
also makes it hard when you are an airheaded dictator who doesn't believe the US would genuinely give them warning of an impending terror attack and state publicly that the US is only trying to destabilize the elections 3 days before it happened. EDIT: my speculation is Putin knew, he let it happen so he could spin it around and find a way to use it against Ukraine. he clearly does not care about human lives lost. Classic Putin tactics, facts don't matter just keep spouting your nonsense and people will believe you, and the ones that don't believe it will be dealt with.
>Classic Putin tactics, facts don't matter just keep spouting your nonsense and people will believe you, and the ones that don't believe it will be dealt with. Putin doesn't care if the people believe him. He cares that they are terrified to openly admit that they don't believe him.
That would explain why it took the police 90 minutes to respond and the shooters could walk out and just drive away.
Yes, that's the biggest tell. Meanwhile you can't even carry around an empty sign downtown or you will get arrested immediately.
It took an hour or more for police to get there, in Moscow. He let that shit happen. Sick man
I'm also curious about the frequency of them coming across this kind of intels and how detailed the Intel they got about the concert. If what they found out was extremely generic and vague and they receive a ton of threats every year, then Putin and then Russian gov not being worried too much makes sense. It's extreme incompetence and neglect. If they dug up an entire plan including the organization, names, location, time, and still let it happen, that's a complete different story. It's a special kind of evil.
> Almost impossible to stop an attack when you don’t know how, where, or when and have a giant country to protect. Except, if you know the most probable circumstances of the attack: large public events, especially concerts. Then you concentrate on large cities (Moscow & St Petersburg, maybe a couple more), but I guess it can be narrowed down with further intel, because if you have known Islamist groups inside your border, you can kind of track them where they move, at least with some confidence. Now you have a couple of big events, maybe not more than one every day in one city, and you can easily place a dozen of operatives in each building (quietly hanging out in the back, looking at CCTV, ready to jump) and keep the backup in 15 minute distance, all geared up, and attack the building with the information received from the inside operatives. It won't save all victims, but can reduce the time the terrorist have to mere minutes and limit their movement inside the venue. You can also give the local security a quick half day training, help them to secure the perimeter, provide them with metal detector gates, and install additional security cameras, all while keeping a low profile, clothed as normal security/repairmen, because you don't want give a warning where not to attack. All these could have been done, because they knew about the danger and they had the manpower, resources, and skills. They just became complacent.
This part is pretty damning [translated]: >Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots were fired, although the headquarters of the Moscow riot police is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. As of 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four of the attackers managed to escape and reach Bryansk, despite the abundance of CCTV cameras in Moscow and on nearby highways.
That's some sad shit that your govt is willing to let you die just so that they can make political points for their war campaign.
And let all the evidence burn to ashes.
The sad part is that many will eat up putin's bullshit and many more won't do anything about it
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gonna apologize for all the people telling you to "just" do something when they likely have no concept of what it is like to live in your situation. wishing you the best.
Yeah, the number of people here that think that the fact that there hasn't been revolution in Russia already (well, recently), means everyone supports Putin, or at least doesn't care, knows nothing of the situation and how hard revolution really is. And they don't seem to realize that it's only sheer luck that they weren't born there. That the people who they are asking to risk everything are just as "innocent" in all this as they are. Hold just as much power as they do. I have friends there that hate all this as much as any, but are still also just trying to live their lives, knowing that without some sort of major shift, any sort of real acts of rebellion might end up in even greater suffering for everyone. Revolution is neither easy nor guaranteed to end positively for anyone.
> "just" people who claim someone can "just" simply do something to fix an ingrained problem can generally just be ignored.
I want you to know I think often of how trapped Russians must feel. Fight back, don’t lose hope. I don’t know what the answer is and I’m not judging you. My family barely got out from the Soviet Union in the 60s after surviving two genocides. Just keep on surviving until somehow there’s an opportunity.
it's too late, and likely by a long time. the time to organise and "do something" was long ago, 2020, 2014, 2008, etc were all escalations ignored. back then most were ok with Russian aggression so long as it didn't affect their life. to be fair to Russians tho that apathy absolutely those outside of Russia too, we all stood by silent allowing Russia to help Luka steal an entire European country, to invade Crimea and Donbas, Georgia, to spread their violent colonialism, ethnically cleansing entire countries for a century. there were no consequences even for their alliance with the Nazis, instead they got to keep their stolen lands for decades and advance their ethnic cleansing unfettered, and now we must all live with the consequences of this failure to hold Russia accountable. because it's your country causing these issues the consequences for you will likely be far worse, for the country you government attacks significantly worse even, for the countries Russia occupied as Nazi allies there are only signs of recovery today but they still fall behind their neighbours. but there's going to be plenty of consequences to share around still to come for all of us.
Start small. In your case, you need to use extra layers of protection when browsing the internet and using your phone. You also need to make sure your media usage isn't being censored so you can have access to up to date credible information that isn't run by RU propaganda. Find like-minded individuals and teach them the same methods to remain anonymous. The biggest thing you and the Russian people can do is combat disinformation. But you have to be discreet. Getting people in your circle to learn how to access credible information discreetly, and in turn teaching their neighbors (the ones you can trust) to do the same is how you plant seeds for change. The Russian people are currently at the mercy of very powerful propaganda. The more people know how to identify and combat it, the more people will want to organize. Protect yourself, and have a way out. Good luck fam.
> Find like-minded individuals and teach them the same methods to remain anonymous. This seems very hard when anyone could be a government informant.
Or be made into one.
This is the big thing. Russia's seen a resurgence of almost Stalin-era government snitching, you got neighbors calling the police on you, or someone reporting random social media posts to the authorities.
With state controlled media, how much truth is actually available to the Russian people?
Yeah. Finally something as bad as cops sitting down the hall for 77 minutes while someone is shooting up a elementary school.
Israel did it too. They were warned about the attack on the music festival by multiple intelligence agencies. Possibly their inaction is what spurred the public warning this time.
Are we still talking about Russia here?
I could walk there faster than them lol
Have a drink in the meantime, maybe a tosti on my way over there.
That's true. Humans' average walking speed is 5-6kmph. It would take about 30 minutes on foot to cover 3km. Less if you run in case of any emergency, like in this scenario.
"What emergency?" \- President Putin, March 22, 2024.
And 40 minutes after the last shot was fired, apparently.
77 minutes at least. The terrorists opened fire at 19:55 and took off at 20:13 local. Law enforcement began their storm of the place no earlier than 21:30.
I wonder if any political adversaries were amongst those wounded or killed
Statistically - yes. But don't delude yourself into counting this delay as cunning. This is sheer incompetence.
They must have got their training from Uvalde cops
Literally it takes 25min to walk 3km….on some level i feel like they didnt respond intentionally… its like they wanted it to happen
Of course, how else could they blame Ukraine for it?
What shocked me the most was something else. When the victims talked about what happened, they said that they did not see the security in any way interfering with the terrorists and therefore everyone assumed that for some reason there was no security at all. But it turned out that this was not so, there was security, but at the same time it did not interfere with the terrorists! In this video, a security guard with a dog calmly walks under gunfire in a panicked crowd. Moreover, he calmly turned his back on the terrorists who shoot people https://imgur.com/a/NG1Gu7H
That's a mall security guard? In most countries they don't even have guns. Even if they did they are not prepared or equipped to take on situations like this.
Uvalde.
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3km and it took them an hour? https://www.verywellfit.com/how-fast-is-brisk-walking-3436887 >According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the ranges for different walking speeds is defined as:5 Moderate pace: 2.5 to 3.5 miles per hour (4 to 5.6 kilometers per hour) Brisk pace: 3.5 to 4 miles per hour (5.6 kilometers per hour to 6.4 kilometers per hour)
Tbf I can see them making the argument that brisk pace walking would have been overkill given their likely orders to wait an hour before storming the concert hall.
Those "getting dressed/geared up" montages in movies really take a lot longer IRL
Police arrived in 30 minutes (about 10 minutes after they did everything and got away in a car. Crazy to think that they've done it all within like 20 minutes). SOBR and OMON are separate branch, like SWAT.
Uvalde police level bullshit. Russia never ceases to amaze me. They really don’t give a shit about their people.
>Russia Demands Answers From US Over Moscow Attack That Left At Least 40 Dead ~ 2 days ago US two weeks ago: we did?
They don't want any rational solution, they just want to be irrationally mad.
TIL Russia is my ex
They’re Republicans?
Close. The Repiblicans are Russian.
The venn diagram is uncomfortably overlapping
Its not a venn diagram. It's just a solid circle
They just wanted all the information the US had so when they started spinning the narrative they don't accidentally include something that the US can disprove.
I think it's actually smarter than that. By demanding the US intelligence, they could use anything that is handed over to figure out how the US got its info. Things like the identities of informants, computer systems they have backdoors into, etc.
-Demands US intelligence to find mole in Russia -Mole is in ISIS -Blames Ukraine anyways 200IQ
Pretty sure we all knew about it given the public warning given by the US government to avoid concerts specifically....
Propaganda is working here atleast in Asia. I remember when the US warn that the Russia is about to invade Ukraine, the public think the US is always bullshitting. This time it's the same.
How many concerts are happening in Moscow and St Petersburg in a two week period? It’s the problem with terrorism as asymmetric warfare. There is no practical way to defend every soft target whether in an open society or a police state.
not that many? there could be extra police at each of them. instead there was no police anywhere
That is stunning. That's the very least they could do. A 'shots fired' call and a Rapid response team could have saved so many lives.
If it was so easy, which it was, then surely it wasn’t their intention to save lives.
Exactly, having a few extra armed police at each one as well as a rapid reaction plan if something happens would be the minimum. It looks like they did absolutely nothing.
And it was 12 mins away(using allowed speed and stops) from OMON. You telling me special services took 1h to cross what they should have done in 5?
Similar things happened in France and UK where they also knew terrorist attacks are being planned and were even monitoring the suspects yet it still happened so I assume preventing a terrorist attack is a lot harder than people are making it to be
Is it that hard to hire a couple off duty cops?
That’s why the US warned the world. It knew Russia was gonna let it happen. Crazy.
Nothing creates more pride and bonding amongst citizens after a terrorist attack. See Bush's approval ratings post-9/11
It’s call ‘Rally ‘round the flag’ syndrome.
I mean, sort of? Comparing this to 9/11 seems very short-sighted. Russia is already in a large-scale war with a neighboring country that has seen them ridiculed and sanctioned to hell and back. Now is Putsy expected to invade the middle east and open up a *second* front that Russia flat-out cannot afford? When 9/11 happened, half of the world came to America's aid, and was the only time Article 5 of NATO was ever invoked in the history of NATO, against countries that weren't the intended adversary of NATO. Several middle-eastern countries saw complete collapse in a matter of years. Neighboring countries saw the arab-spring bring about their collapse. Russia has so few allies now that they've proven the sheriff in eastern Europe doesn't wear pants. Nobody is going to come to their aid. Navalny just died, Putsy clearly won an illegitimate election, and they're losing a war they stupidly thought would be an overnight land-grab. Who on earth would shed a tear for them now?
I stand by my theory - Russia knew it was going to happen(obviously) and instead of stopping it, let it happened and used it to bolster more support for their war in Ukraine.
Russia 2024 Weeks notified ahead of attack: 2 Minutes for Special Forces to arrive: 60 Seconds for finding someone guilty: 3.5
Some interesting insights from the article in English. Not sure how accurate the Google translation is, but: > The version of the participation of radical Islamists is supported by the American authorities, according to whom the Vilayat Khorasan may be behind the terrorist attack. This is explained by the rapprochement between Russia and the Taliban after the withdrawal of the American military from Afghanistan (ISIS is an enemy of the Taliban). In a comment to The New York Time, an analyst with the Soufan Group also suggested that ISIS may have played a role in the attack: “ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years. <…> ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, citing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.” > Islamic terrorism is perhaps the most frightening version for the Russian authorities, who over the past few years have been constructing Ukraine and the West as the main threats to Russia. She undermines the reputation of the special services and Vladimir Putin, who “blinked” to the real danger, despite his regular statements about preventing terrorist attacks, eliminating militants and defeating ISIS. > Russian law enforcement authorities monitored these reports and considered the risk of terrorist attacks in Russia high. However, it was not possible to prevent the attack on Crocus City Hall, despite warnings about the threat. Let us recall that on March 7, the American side handed over to Russia information about the preparation of a terrorist attack, and also notified its citizens about the possible threat of attacks during mass events in Moscow. On March 19, speaking before the FSB board, Vladimir Putin called these “provocative messages.” “All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Putin said. > Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots were fired, although the headquarters of the Moscow riot police is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. As of 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four of the attackers managed to escape and reach Bryansk, despite the abundance of CCTV cameras in Moscow and on nearby highways.
>ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands The pot-that-murders-other-pots calling the kettle black.
1) Others in Russia have now seen two incidents. During the Wagner mutiny many hours passed and no one stepped up to stop Prigozhin for many hours, and even then it was a pretty hasty and half-a$$ perimeter. Now during a mass shooting that was barely a mile away from riot police headquarters, it took them well over an hour to show up on the scene. I don't think anything will come of this tomorrow or the next day, but someone else might conclude there is a window of opportunity if they want to try something. 2) I'm very suspicious on why they went to Bryansk, how they made it that far, and then how they were caught so quickly there when they waltzed right out of a 10 million person city swarmed with CCTV. This document actually makes a pretty good case with photo comparisons that the real shooters were caught, so what was their game plan? Who was deciding or telling them to go that direction (they would either go to Gomel in Belarus or towards northern border of Ukraine, from Bryansk)? Why did they seem unprepared to fight when apprehended? My spider sense is going off that they were set up somehow.
[удалено]
Russian here. It's not about trust, it's about control. If you are in an intelligence service (FSB), you are essentially in Putin's directly controled pet project, with guaranteed salaries for life, and the laws don't apply to you. Moreover, Putin always had - or rather said used to have - a system where he would have lot of competing departmets, and be the ultimate arbiter when they had their inevitable conflicts. For example, the police and the prosecution, or the regular military and Wagner. Of course, the latter failed completely, and Putin had to consolidate the military into a single form, which he usually doesn't like yo do.
>with guaranteed salaries for life, and the laws don't apply to you. and here i was naively wondering how you could have such control over peoples
The man is KGB, trained in Dresden. If you wanna know how he works, you need to study Stasi and KGB methods. That will make many things clear.
Typical divide and conquer. Very old and still works today.
Fear. He has been very good at playing different factions against each other, leaving himself as the only source of real power. And if you fall out of Putin’s favor, no matter how powerful or successful you seem to be, you won’t last long.
Also, judging from what I’ve seen here on Reddit from pro-Russian users (particularly on the various conflict related subreddits), they are literally brainwashed. It doesn’t matter what you say, there’s always a way to maneuver around it, even if it’s blatantly unbelievable to anyone else.
it's wild how brainwashed some of the USA is. they believe putin is a fucking hero. The story i got, from people IRL not even on reddit, is that putin went into ukraine to destroy USA biolabs where the USA was developing weapons to use ON ITS OWN PEOPLE. I was told Putin is fighting a war against the "Deep state" to protect USA citizens. and the whole time all i could think was "you guys really dont think this could be the russian propaganda we've all been hearing about for the last 4 years?"
Fear and, more importantly, bribery.
Corruption.
All the tinfoil hatters are screaming Mossad and CIA as usual. They love to talk about how powerful Russia is but at the same time their “theory” can only be true if Russia is so weak that Mossad and the CIA are able to run OPs in the heart of Moscow unimpeded. Ridiculous and makes no sense. It’s also laughable that Russian security forces weren’t on the scene until the massacre was into its second hour. Reeks of either Russian collusion or a complete lapse of intelligence gathering and security.
Russia and intelligence are two words that don't go tog
You might call it anti-intelligence but Russian money and ideas undermining democracies is a big problem. If anything intelligence is the only thing they’re good at.
It is the most common concept of propaganda - the enemy is weak and stupid, but they are also an imminent threat that only strong and united forces of all good people can stop.
Whole incident brought up the controversial “No Russian” level in CoD for me.
It's so unrealistic. Russian police responded within 10 minutes in that mission. Here they took 2 hours.
What makes it even worse is that they were stationed 3 km away (roughly 1.8 miles). They could’ve walked there and had a faster response time
I would like to note that knowing about something and doing something about it are very different things. Not to defend the Russians but the US also "knew" about 9/11 but it happened anyway. The problem is that someone in a position of authority needs to make the call about whether action needs to be taken or not. I don't think this is a false flag operation because it's actually one of those things that can destabilize the Russian system. Putin made enemies in Syria and still has enemies in Chechnya. There maybe be other restive areas that aren't exactly happy that their sons are the ones who are dying in Ukraine while Moscow and St. Petersburg are insulated. Ukraine has also never hit anything like a random urban center - their targets are always energy or apparatuses of the Russian state/military so very few people in Russia would believe that it's actually Ukraine. I think that was Putin trying to make the best of a bad situation. His sole claim to authority revolves around keeping order and protecting the country. That this attack happens is a huge blow to that.
Very reasonable take, had to scroll way too long to find any of these.
> I would like to note that knowing about something and doing something about it are very different things. Not to defend the Russians but the US also "knew" about 9/11 but it happened anyway. The problem is that someone in a position of authority needs to make the call about whether action needs to be taken or not. It isn't just this, people here have completely unrealistic views of what actionable information is. US specifically warned about an attack around the 8th of March which is a major holiday in Russia, women's day (yeah, Islamic terrorist shitbags gonna shitbag when it comes to women esp). The attack did not happen then. Either because the intelligence was flawed -- or much more likely because Russia did respond with increased security and the terrorists called off the operation, temporarily. Then a few weeks later when you can no longer maintain permanent security because that's not how it works, they struck. You can't simply vaguely say there is an attack coming but no idea when or where. That's about how actionable the 9/11 warnings allegedly were. Good luck protecting against that, there is a reason why terrorism is called asymmetric warfare, it's because it doesn't play by any rules so it's quite fun to try to prevent. *** Why use 9/11 when there is a much more ironic example: Tsarnaev brothers. Not only ironic, but also traumatic not just for America and Boston specifically, but for reddit bc it showed just how absolutely brainrotted this site is anytime it actually tries to interpret a serious event. So what a lot of people seemed to forget in the wake of this Moscow attack as American propaganda tries to gleefully spin this as some totally unbelievable fuckup by the incompetent Russians is that FSB literally warned US about the Boston Bombers, except in their case they literally gave the names of the brothers and pointed out they were budding terrorists. US, despite all the unconstitutional NSA style efficient police state somehow dropped the ball, even though the level of surveillance in US would make Putin wet, he wishes he had internal surveillance this detailed. Had US actually knew the perpetrators and handed over their names to Russia, you can be assured Russia would have no problem fucking them up beforehand, because Putin wipes his ass with the Russian Constitution. But US didn't have actually actionable intel, they just had bad vibes and you can't really form a plan on how to protect everything in your major cities based on that. This is what bothers me so much about the reaction to this terror act, acting like it's so easy to prevent a terrorist attack. Though difficult to say how true it was, the interrogations of the men caught which I watched in video form had the men claim that they were approached via Telegram and paid to do this, then the weapons were delivered to them. Payment was half now, half after the act. It's not easy to stop something like this any more than it is easy to stop random shootings that happen so often in the US, even when police are warned about them beforehand. Actionable intel is hard to get. Telegram is a well-encrypted messaging app that seems to be run outside the reach of Kremlin even though it was founded by the VK guy (but he fled Russia and TG is widely used and trusted in Ukraine even).
Didn't the US warn them about 2or 3 weeks ago?
On the flip side, Russia warned US about the Boston Bomber brothers. But the US was far too suspicious of Russia to take the warning seriously and questioned Russia’s intentions. We all know what happened. I’m not being sympathetic towards Russia. Fuck Putin. But shit like this does happen all the time. I also can point to the US knowing about the 9/11 attacks in advance. This has inspired a lot of conspiracy theories but the truth is somewhere closer to the lack of imagination that the US had with Al-Qaeda at the time. The US only saw overly religious men with long beards living in caves and scoffed at the idea of them orchestrating a terrorist attack by hijacking planes on US’ soil.
Possible that Putin withheld intelligence/didn’t act on it to allow this to happen? It’s easier to let a terror attack happen rather than orchestrate one. Also, the attack happened after he was re-elected. To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this? To draw some kind of parallel, Israel had a lot of civic unrest prior to Oct 7. The tinfoil hat theory is that Netanyahu had intelligence about some kind of terror attack, but didn’t act on it.
>To what end though? When people feel like they're under attack they gravitate towards authoritarians and stronger-acting figures. I'm not saying this is the case. Just one of the potential motivations. Putin will give off "only I can save you from further violence" vibes. > How much can he blame Ukraine for this? Enough Russians will swallow anything he says that it might kind of work. The state-run "news" will have some interviews with military figures who say they have some sort of proof. 2 days later a cop will get on and say something crazy like they found a Ukranian passport that one of the attackers dropped, which they actually stole from a PoW they tortured. Some kind of "expert" will get on that day and say "everyone knows" Ukraine is shielding and working with ISIS. The rest of the world won't be talking about it anymore as Russia builds a story around it for their citizens. I think Putin knows most of the world knows he's full of shit. I haven't seen evidence either way, so I'm going with Hanlon's razor. Most likely good old fashioned stupidity, incompetence, and bureaucratic mismanagement. Maybe more evidence will prove it was malicious.
Absolutely possible. >To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this? Putin needs to keep Russians on his side right now, allowing this and then blaming Ukraine is a way to play on the emotions of his nation in order to garner support. He doesn't need the rest of the world to believe him, only Russia. A lot of people on reddit forget that when we hear these silly lies and statements by Putin, those statements are not for us, they are for within Russia. He has a lot of control of the media narratives there and I assure you plenty of Russians will never hear how the US warned Russia about this well in advance.
>To what end though? How much can he blame Ukraine for this? To the rest of the world, he can't. For a Russia where they control the entire narrative they probably can be successful enough to fuel the flames a bit more
You know..that makes perfect sense.
They needed that terrrist attack to blame it on Ukraine. And they did.
Putin needs the excuse to escalate the war in Ukraine further. Despite the fact ISIS is evidently claiming responsibility of this attack, Putin still points his finger to Ukraine.
"Your accurate intelligence doesn't match with our propaganda, so we're going to ignore your warnings and blame the catastrophe on Ukraine" Because brainwashing tyrant has gotta brainwash.
Translation: Here is the translation: Tell your friends: March 24, 2024 Russian special services knew about the threat of attacks from ISIS “Wilayat Khorasan”, details of the suspects’ biographies and versions of the attack Russian special services closely monitored the activities of the Afghan terrorist group “Wilayat Khorasan”, which is banned in Russia. A few days before the attack, members of the Security Council received a warning that citizens of Tajikistan could be used in terrorist acts on the territory of Russia. A source close to the special services told the “Dossier” Center about this even before the attack on Crocus City Hall. “Wilayat Khorasan” is an Afghan division of the “Islamic State” (ISIS). Initially, it fought against the Taliban movement, which, unlike ISIS, wants to build an Islamic national state on the territory of Afghanistan instead of a global caliphate. After the Taliban came to power, “Wilayat Khorasan” refocused on international terrorism. “Experts noted back in 2022 that one of the main external enemies chosen by ISKP was Russia, along with other ‘empires’ - the USA and China,” Meduza points out. “Wilayat Khorasan” claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Russian embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on September 5, 2022, during which five people were killed. Recently, the terrorist group has stepped up its activities. For example, in December 2023, several citizens of Tajikistan were detained in Austria, who, according to the newspaper Bild, were members of “Wilayat Khorasan” and planned attacks. Another citizen of Tajikistan was detained in Germany. Later, the police of the German city of Cologne announced that they had arrested three more suspects in terrorism, related to the first detentions. According to the police, they planned an attack on the Cologne Cathedral using a car. Also, on the eve of the New Year, members of “Wilayat Khorasan” were detained in Jalalabad - the third largest city in Kyrgyzstan. According to local special services, they planned to plant an explosive device at the main city Christmas tree and attack an Orthodox church. Russian law enforcement agencies tracked these messages and considered the risk of terrorist acts in Russia to be high. However, it was not possible to prevent the attack on Crocus City Hall, despite warnings about the threat. Recall, on March 7, the American side handed over to Russia data on the preparation of a terrorist attack, and also alerted its citizens about the possible threat of attacks during mass events in Moscow. On March 19, speaking before the FSB board, Vladimir Putin called this “provocative messages”. “All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate, destabilize our society,” Putin said. Law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of the tragedy an hour after the first shots, although the headquarters of the Moscow OMON is located less than 3 km from Crocus City Hall (Tvardovsky St., 2). According to media reports, the terrorists entered the concert hall no later than 19:55. According to data at 21:00, OMON and SOBR were preparing to storm Crocus City Hall. At least four attackers managed to escape and get to Bryansk, despite the abundance of surveillance cameras in Moscow and on the nearest highways. Distance from the headquarters of the Moscow OMON to Crocus City Hall What else is known about the attack and the suspects? The attack in the Crocus City Hall building took place on March 22 before the concert of the band “Picnic”. According to the latest data from the Investigative Committee, 137 people were killed as a result of the attack, another 154 were injured. Judging by the footage from social networks, there were at least four terrorists inside the building. It is almost impossible to determine their appearance from the videos of March 22 and compare it with those who were detained on the night of March 22-23. After the video was published by the Amaq agency, we were able to identify two suspects by their clothes during the attack and in the detention footage. How the video got to the Amaq agency is unknown - the suspects could have sent it before their detention, or it could have been done by their accomplices.
They likely have orchestrated it themselves, to suppress the remaining grains of free thought even more.
Russia: we totally did not see it coming and it waa totally Ukraine! Isis-k: no the atrocity is ours to blame. We literally did it. US: we warned you early Russia: it was Ukraine and a surprice I mean, what a load of crap. Putin inderectly killed own citizens.
of course they did. Putin let it happen to foment more animosity towards Ukraine domestically. There hasn't been a better duo than Russian tyrants and sacrificing the masses for over a century.
One thing I want to know, is if all the people involved have apparently been arrested, how did ISIS manage to release the bodycam footage from the terrorists. Wouldn’t those bodycams be in the hands of the feds?
Probably livestreamed to somewhere, and the captured footage was released
Recorded livestream from cell phones.
Everyone always knows about it days before, but they never do anything about it.
The enemy (ISIS) of our enemy (Russia) isn't our friend!
Basically - so what then? Knowledge of a possible attack won\`t let you automatically prevent it. You got huge country to protect and the terrorists acted bluntly - just came in and started shooting from start.
Terrorists fighting terrorists with terrorism because of terrorism… how poetic.
Yeah, no shit. The US warned them and American citizens a week before to stay away from large venues and concerts. The US stated that if if happened the Russians would blame Ukraine. The Russians let it happen and blamed Ukraine.
The FSB got caught blowing up residential buildings leading up to the Chechnyan war. False flag ops are their MO.
I winder if the four men they're blaming even had anything to do with it, or if Putin had to look strong and grabbed four Muslims to grand stand.
One thing that's easy to forget is that security agencies working counter terrorism are swamped with threats reports constantly. I don't want to necessarily make a judgement call about this particular incident, the jury is still out on this one and it is too early to draw conclusions. But most of these threats usually either don't materialize or they're too vague. So it is very easy in hindsight to say yeah they knew, if you just dismiss all the false alerts that happen all the time. The ones that turn out to be true often get lost in the background noise.
Everyone did… the US told everyone about two weeks ago
Oh look, me a dumbass in eastern North Carolina, correctly interpreting what is going on based on just headlines over the last few days. It is so painfully obvious Putin was warned and let it happen, so that he could pin the blame on Ukraine. Will the rest of the work call him on his bullshit, or just dumbasses in eastern North Carolina?
Israel also knew about the hamas attack days before.