Serangan teroris berdarah di sebuah aula konser di dekat Moskow baru saja mereda ketika Rusia meluncurkan kampanye disinformasi menunjukkan bahwa Ukraina dan Barat entah bagaimana terlibat di baliknya, mendorong versi peristiwa yang disesuaikan dengan narasi perang Kremlin dan mengurangi kegagalan keamanan yang signifikan.
Presiden Vladimir V. Putin telah beberapa kali memberi isyarat bahwa Kyiv dan Washington turut serta, dan yang terbaru bergabung dengan sorak-sorak itu adalah Aleksandr Bortnikov, direktur Federal Security Service, agensi keamanan teratas di Rusia. Pada hari Selasa, ia mengatakan, tanpa menawarkan bukti apa pun, bahwa serangan “disiapkan oleh para Islamis radikal sendiri dan, tentu saja, difasilitasi oleh layanan khusus Barat.”
Amerika Serikat dan pemerintah Barat lainnya telah berkali-kali mengatakan bahwa Negara Islam – yang sendiri telah mengklaim bertanggung jawab dua kali – berada di balik serangan tersebut. Para pejabat keamanan AS menamakan cabang spesifik organisasi tersebut, Negara Islam di Khorasan. Selain itu, Washington memperingatkan Rusia baik secara publik maupun secara pribadi pada tanggal 7 Maret tentang ancaman serangan di tempat konser yang tidak ditentukan.
Namun, pada Jumat malam, para penembak bersenjata merangkap ke Crocus City Hall dan membuka tembakan, menewaskan 139 orang dan melukai banyak lainnya.
“Hal klasik bagi Putin untuk mendiscounting peringatan-peringatan itu,” kata Fiona Hill. mantan direktur senior urusan Eropa dan Rusia di National Security Council. “Layanan keamanan tidak memiliki jangkauan. Mereka tidak pernah memiliki karena mereka begitu fokus pada represi internal, dan begitu fokus pada Kyiv, dan mereka ingin segalanya sesuai dengan narasi itu.”
Menerima secara publik bahwa militan Islam sendirian bertanggung jawab atas serangan teroris terburuk di Rusia dalam dua dekade terakhir mungkin juga dapat melemahkan pesan Kremlin bahwa rakyat Rusia perlu bersatu di sekitar perang dengan Ukraina, kata Ny. Hill. “Anda sedang melakukan pertempuran eksistensial besar dengan Barat, jadi Anda tidak dapat mengalihkan perhatian dari itu.”
Ketika datang ke manajemen krisis, disinformasi telah menjadi alat favorit dari Kremlin Mr. Putin, dan pemain luar seperti Amerika Serikat seringkali menjadi penjahat pilihan. Contoh-contoh meluas sampai kembali ke serangan teroris di sebuah sekolah di Beslan, Rusia pada tahun 2004, yang menewaskan lebih dari 330 orang, sebagian besar anak-anak.
Moskow telah menangkap delapan orang terkait serangan aula konser, sebagian besar dari Tajikistan, negara Asia Tengah yang warganya memegang posisi penting di Negara Islam. Grup itu telah menegaskan ancamannya terhadap target-target Rusia dan Eropa lainnya, bahkan setelah runtuhnya kekhalifahan mereka di Suriah dan Irak pada tahun 2019.
Pada hari Senin, Putin menyatakan kaget bahwa ekstremis Muslim akan menyerang Rusia mengingat bahwa, katanya, Rusia “menyuarakan solusi yang adil untuk konflik Timur Tengah yang meruncing.”
Namun, Rusia telah menjadi sasaran ekstremis Muslim Sunni, khususnya Negara Islam, sejak 2015, ketika mereka mendeploy-kan angkatan udara mereka di Suriah untuk mendukung pemerintahan brut…
President Alexander Lukashenko of neighboring Belarus, a close ally of Mr. Putin’s, seemed to cast doubt on that scenario. His nation had sealed its borders — the nearest to Moscow — after the attack, at the request of Mr. Putin, he said on Tuesday. Given the heightened security measures, the men “went toward the Ukrainian-Russian section of the border,” Mr. Lukashenko said, according to the state-run news agency Belta.
The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the assault. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior Ukrainian presidential aide, called Mr. Bortnikov’s statements “lies,” and in a post on social media, said, “This is now chronic.”
For almost a day after the attack, Mr. Putin remained silent. Only three days later did he describe it as having been carried out by “radical Islamists” — and even then he insisted that Ukraine may have had a role.
The Kremlin is often at a loss for how to address such crises, analysts noted, and needs time to figure out how they can be used to advance its aims. The message that eventually emerges is often meant more for the domestic audience than the international one, to distract Russians from casting blame on their government.
Independent voices abroad were not buying it this week, but their reach inside Russia is limited. Many critics noted, for example, that the Russian government had been busy labeling gay rights organizations as “extremist,” while failing to find the real extremists right under its nose.
Russia’s security forces can “see rainbow earrings a kilometer away, but not a car with heavily armed terrorists,” wrote Leonid Volkov, a senior figure in the opposition organization of the Aleksei A. Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last month.
There is a pattern to the claims, analysts note.
In 2004, during the attack on the Beslan school, the Kremlin first denied that the attackers were Chechens retaliating against Russia for the war in their region, where Moscow had been using scorched-earth tactics against Islamist separatists. Russia instead pointed a finger at neighboring Georgia, accusing it of harboring terrorists.
The same playbook seems to be in use now, and not just in Kremlin statements. Russia’s broader disinformation machine has also cranked into full gear, spreading baseless accusations and conspiracy theories in state-controlled media and online.
The social media accounts of Russian embassies have been “fairly conspiratorial,” said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who studies information manipulation, “kind of en masse pushing out content that is effectively saying this wasn’t ISIS, or if it was ISIS, it was ISIS under the loose — or in some cases more explicit — direction of Washington and Ukrainian intelligence.”
Most Russian propaganda since the full invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 has sounded a similar theme: that Russia was forced into the war because the West was using Kyiv as a stalking horse to undermine Russia.
“I think we’ve moved to a period where the West and Ukraine are behind all the nefarious actions in Russia,” said Prof. Edward Lemon of Texas A&M University, who specializes in authoritarian governments across Central Asia. “There cannot be a bad action now without the hidden hand of Ukraine and its Western puppet masters.”
Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.