Tag: vladimir putin

‘Old friend’ Putin arrives in China for state visit, summit with Xi Jinping | Politics News

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in China for a two-day state visit, as the two countries look to further deepen a relationship that has grown closer since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

The visit comes days after Russia launched a new offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, and as it claims advances on the 1,000km (600-mile) long front line where Kyiv’s forces have been hampered by delayed deliveries of weapons and ammunitions from the United States.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a “no limits” partnership between Russia and China days before Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022. In March 2023, when Xi visited Moscow, he described a “new era” in the countries’ relationship while in October, when Putin was last in Beijing, Xi spoke of the “deep friendship” between the two leaders who had met 42 times over the previous decade.

China’s state news agency Xinhua confirmed Putin’s arrival for what Chinese media have described as a state visit from an “old friend”.

Ahead of the trip, 71-year-old Putin said his choice of China as his first foreign destination since being sworn in as president for a fifth term underlined the “unprecedentedly high level of the strategic partnership” between the two countries as well as his close friendship with Xi, who is 70.

“We will try to establish closer cooperation in the field of industry and high technology, space and peaceful nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, renewable energy sources and other innovative sectors,” Putin told China’s Xinhua state news agency.

The two leaders will take part in a gala evening celebrating 75 years since the Soviet Union recognised the People’s Republic of China, which was declared by Mao Zedong following the communists’ victory in China’s civil war in 1949.

Putin will also visit Harbin in northeastern China, a city with strong ties to Russia.

In his interview with Xinhua, Putin also appeared to give his backing to a 12-point Ukraine peace plan that Beijing released to a lukewarm reception on the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2023.

He said the proposals could provide the basis for discussions and that Moscow was “open to a dialogue on Ukraine”. He reiterated the long-held Russian position that “negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said any negotiations must include a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression, and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Switzerland is convening a peace summit for Ukraine, focusing on Kyiv’s framework, next June. At least 50 delegations have already agreed to attend, but Russia has not been invited.

China claims to be neutral in the conflict but has not condemned Moscow for its invasion of a sovereign country.

Russia ‘useful’ for China

The Kremlin said in a statement that during their talks this week, Putin and Xi Jinping would “have a detailed discussion on the entire range of issues related to the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” and set “new directions for further development of cooperation between Russia and China.”

The two countries have made clear they want to remake the international order in line with their own visions of how the world should be.

Speaking on Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Moscow and Beijing played a “major balancing role in global affairs”, and that Putin’s visit would “strengthen our joint work”.

Both countries are veto-holding members of the United Nations Security Council, alongside the US, United Kingdom and France.

“We should not underestimate Russia’s ‘usefulness’ as a friend without limits to China and Xi Jinping,” Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, told Al Jazeera in an email. “Russia is a valuable partner in displacing the US and changing the global order to a favourable one for China and Russia alike. Russia also sees Taiwan as an integral part of China, and we have already seen speculation about the war scenario in the Indo-Pacific and whether Russia would step up to help and join China in possible war efforts.”

Moscow has forged increasingly close ties with Beijing, diverting most of its energy exports to China and importing high-tech components for its military industries from Chinese companies amid Western sanctions.

The two countries have also deepened military ties, holding joint war games over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, and organising training for ground forces in each other’s territory.

China has stepped up military activity around self-ruled Taiwan as the island prepares for the May 20 inauguration of William Lai Ching-te, who was elected president in elections in January.

China claims the territory as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goal.

With reporting by Erin Hale in Taipei

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US, UK, most EU nations to boycott Putin inauguration | Vladimir Putin News

Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be sworn in for a fifth term as president in a ceremony at the Kremlin later on Tuesday.

The United States and most European Union nations have said they will not send envoys to Tuesday’s inauguration of Vladimir Putin as Russian president.

Putin, 71, secured a fifth term in office in a March election that critics said lacked democratic legitimacy.

He gained 87.28 percent of the vote, weeks after the sudden death of his most vocal critic, Alexey Navalny, in an Arctic prison.

“We will not have a representative at his inauguration,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters. “We certainly did not consider that election free and fair but he is the president of Russia and he is going to continue in that capacity.”

The United Kingdom and Canada said they would not send anyone to the ceremony, while a spokesperson for the European Union told the Reuters news agency the bloc’s ambassador to Russia would not attend the inauguration, in keeping with the position of most of the EU’s member states.

The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – which have withdrawn their ambassadors from Moscow – ruled out attending the inauguration.

“We believe that the isolation of Russia, and especially of its criminal leader, must be continued,” Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said.

“Participation in Putin’s inauguration is not acceptable for Lithuania. Our priority remains support for Ukraine and its people fighting against Russian aggression.”

The Czech Republic is also expected to snub the ceremony, while Germany’s Foreign Office said its representative would not attend – it earlier recalled its ambassador over alleged Russian cyberattacks.

An aide to Putin said the heads of all foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow including those from “unfriendly states” had been invited to attend the inauguration, which starts at noon (09:00 GMT) and will be broadcast live on Russian television.

Putin is due to arrive in a luxury motorcade – state-run RT reported modifications to his armoured Aurus limousine including improved sound insulation and all-round cameras – at the Grand Kremlin Palace. The one-time KGB spy will then walk through the palace corridors to the ornate Saint Andrew Hall, where he will take the presidential oath and make a brief address. He will also received a blessing from the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The ceremony is taking place a day after Russia announced plans for a tactical nuclear weapons drill, blaming what it said were “provocative” moves by Western countries over Ukraine. Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

“Ukraine sees no legal grounds for recognising him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony, it said, sought to create “the illusion of legality for the nearly lifelong stay in power of a person who has turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship”.

Despite the apparent boycotts, France, Hungary and Slovakia are all expected to send representatives to the ceremony, Reuters reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

Speaking alongside China’s president on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “We are not at war with Russia or the Russian people, and we have no desire for regime change in Moscow.”

The source said France had previously condemned the context of repression in which the election was held, depriving voters of a real choice, as well as the organisation of elections in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, which France considers a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.

Franco-Russian relations have deteriorated in recent months as Paris has increased its support for Ukraine.

Last week, Macron said it would be legitimate for France to send troops to Ukraine if Russia broke through the Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv requested assistance.

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Two Russian journalists arrested over alleged work for Navalny group | Freedom of the Press News

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin deny ‘extremism’ charges related to group founded by late anti-Putin dissident.

Two Russian journalists have been arrested by their government on “extremism” charges and ordered by courts to remain in custody pending investigation and trial on accusations of working for a group founded by the late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin both denied the charges for which they will be detained for a minimum of two months before any trials begin. Each faces a minimum of two years in prison and a maximum of six years for alleged “participation in an extremist organisation”, according to Russian courts.

They are just the latest journalists arrested amid a Russian crackdown on dissent and independent media that intensified after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

The Russian government passed laws criminalising what it deems false information about the military, or statements seen as discrediting the military, effectively outlawing any criticism of the war in Ukraine or speech that deviates from the official narrative.

A journalist for the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, Sergei Mingazov, was detained on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military, his lawyer said on Friday.

Gabov and Karelin are accused of preparing materials for a YouTube channel run by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which has been outlawed by Russian authorities. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, died under murky circumstances in an Arctic penal colony in February.

Gabov, who was detained in Moscow on Saturday, is a freelance producer who has worked for multiple organisations, including the Reuters news agency, the court press service said.

Karelin, who has dual citizenship with Israel, was detained on Friday night in Russia’s northern Murmansk region.

Karelin, 41, has worked for a number of outlets, including for The Associated Press. He was a cameraman for German media outlet Deutsche Welle until the Kremlin banned the outlet from operating in Russia in February 2022.

“The Associated Press is very concerned by the detention of Russian video journalist Sergey Karelin,” the AP said in a statement. “We are seeking additional information.”

Russia’s crackdown on dissent is aimed at opposition figures, journalists, activists, members of the LGBTQ community, and Russians critical of the Kremlin. A number of journalists have been jailed in relation to their coverage of Navalny, including Antonina Favorskaya, who remains in pre-trial detention at least until May 28 following a hearing last month.

Favorskaya was detained and accused by Russian authorities of taking part in an “extremist organisation” by posting on the social media platforms of Navalny’s foundation. She covered Navalny’s court hearings for years and filmed the last video of Navalny before he died in the penal colony.

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said that Favorskaya did not publish anything on the foundation’s platforms and suggested that Russian authorities have targeted her because she was doing her job as a journalist.

Evan Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is awaiting trial on espionage charges at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. Both Gershkovich and his employer have vehemently denied the charges.

Gershkovich was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip and has spent over a year in jail; authorities have not detailed what, if any, evidence they have to support the espionage charges.

The United States government has declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained, with officials accusing Moscow of using the journalist as a pawn for political ends.

The Russian government has also cracked down on opposition figures. One prominent activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

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How will the Moscow concert hall attack affect Putin? | Vladimir Putin

On Friday, armed men stormed the Crocus Concert Hall outside Moscow, killing at least 137 people and injuring more than 100. A day later, President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation, promising to “identify and punish everyone who stands behind the terrorists who perpetrated this atrocity”.

Some observers may see this moment as history coming full circle. Once again Russia is in the midst of a bloody war and facing terrorist attacks and once again Putin is in charge.

The Russian president came to power in 2000 amid war in Chechnya and in the wake of bombing attacks in Moscow. His promise as a young and energetic leader was to bring stability and security to the country. And he did.

Putin managed to put an end to the Second Chechen War with a combination of brutal military force and political manoeuvring. He managed to split the Chechen forces by putting their religious leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, the father of the current ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, in charge of the republic. As the Chechen rebellion was suppressed, terrorist activity also dwindled. The last major terror attack in Russia took place in 2011.

His success in the Russian “war on terror” has been one of the major achievements of Putin’s rule and one of the main reasons for his political longevity. He is being widely credited for bringing security and a semblance of order to Russia after the turbulent decade that followed the collapse of the USSR.

Today, 30 years later, the threat that Russians hoped they would never face again is back, causing anxiety and demoralising society. A much older Putin is making the same promise amid a crisis that at least some Russians blame on him. Will he be believed?

The attack on the Crocus Concert Hall, which the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) has claimed responsibility for, comes against the backdrop of Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, within hours of the tragedy, Putin and his security bodies were already linking it to Ukraine.

Their claims derived from the fact that four of the suspects, who had made it out of the burning venue by blending into the fleeing crowd, were detained about 140km (90 miles) from the Ukrainian border. In his address to the nation, Putin claimed that they had been offered an “open window” at the border, supposedly by Ukraine’s security services.

Ukraine denied any involvement in the attack. United States officials were adamant that it was carried out by ISKP and Ukraine had nothing to do with it. The US had indeed warned about the possibility of an attack in Moscow, citing its own intelligence, which it said it had shared with the Russians.

Pro-Kremlin commentators and media who have pushed the theory of the Ukrainian connection have pointed to suspected Ukrainian involvement in the bombing attacks that killed prominent pro-war blogger Maksim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky, as well as Daria Dugina, the daughter of the far-right ideologist Aleksandr Dugin. Another bombing destroyed a section of the bridge that connects Russia to occupied Crimea.

A few pro-Kremlin commentators like the war-monitoring collective Rybar have also gone as far as pointing a finger at the US and claiming that it supports ISKP in Afghanistan to undermine the Taliban.

Pro-Ukrainian commentators, on the other hand, have been quick to revive a longstanding theory suggesting that Putin could have staged a bombing in Moscow in 1999 to seize power. The Crocus attack, they claimed, was another false flag operation staged by his regime.

The suspects arrested by the Russian security services appear to be ordinary Tajik migrants, like the 1.3 million Tajiks working in Russia. Russian independent media have confirmed that photos of the arrested men match those in the numerous visuals of the attackers in the concert hall.

One of them said he was recruited by an aide to a Muslim preacher and offered about 5,000 euros ($5,420) for the attack. The testimonies were obtained through torture that Russian security services weren’t shy of circulating online; suspects were electrocuted, one had his ear cut off.

No matter who recruited them to carry out the attack, its aim was to demoralise the Russian population.

So will Russians blame Putin for failing to avert the tragedy? Collective psychology is notoriously unpredictable. Some may, but it is unlikely that anything would come of it.

Even without this attack, it has been clear to the Russian population that the period of stability, security and economic growth that Putin has been lauded for is long over. War is literally at the door with Ukrainian forces conducting incursions into Russian territory, sending drones to strike oil refineries and destroying Russian battleships in the Black Sea.

The thinking behind the idea of bringing war into Russian territory – aired by many in Ukrainian security circles since 2014 – assumes that instability and the lack of security would somehow shake Putin’s regime and eventually lead to its downfall. But this idea has proved irrational and delusional over and over again.

Unlike Ukraine, which has the backing of the West behind it, Russians don’t have an alternative guarantor of security they could swap Putin for, even at their own peril – the way Ukrainians did it in the last decade. No matter what they think about Putin, they are existentially dependent on him in the situation that most of them see, like it or not, as a proxy war the West is waging against Russia rather than Russia’s own aggression against neighbouring countries.

Their current security arrangement is a trap with no other option but to sit tight and hope that a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine will be found and life will return to normal.

The way things are going on the front lines in Ukraine at the moment, this hope is far more grounded in reality than a nebulous better future they could achieve by attempting to topple Putin, which in current conditions would most likely precipitate a civil war. There is doom, gloom and a firm determination to sit it out until the age of troubles is over one way or another.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Who’s to blame for the Moscow massacre? ISIL, Ukraine or Russia itself? | Vladimir Putin News

Aleksandra Chanysheva is convinced that lax security is what made the Friday night attack on a concert hall just northwest of Moscow possible.

“Guards are the most ridiculed and underpaid people in Russia,” the 51-year-old teacher of Russian language and literature at a public school told Al Jazeera. “And they do their work in the worst way possible.”

The attack on the Crocus City Hall killed at least 133 people, including three children, and wounded more than 100 others, Russian investigators said on Saturday.

Several heavily armed, camouflage-wearing men sprayed a crowd of spectators that gathered to hear Soviet-era rock band Picnic with bullets, set the building on fire and escaped in a “white Renault,” officials said.

Some experts agree with Chanysheva – given post-Soviet Russia’s history of lethal attacks on crowded public places that dates back to when Moscow started the second Chechen war a quarter of a century ago. But other analysts and Russian opposition groups argue that an even darker possibility cannot be ruled out: they point to potential political gains for President Vladimir Putin from the Friday massacre.

Back in the late 1990s, Chechen separatists and fighters from the mostly Muslim North Caucasus region, launched a wave of attacks, seizing concert halls, hospitals and public schools; sending suicide bombers to Moscow’s sprawling subway system; and detonating explosives on buses and planes.

The Friday attack “showed complete impotence” of Russia’s special services, national guard and the entire law enforcement system, Nikolay Mitrokhin, research fellow at Germany’s University of Bremen told Al Jazeera.

The intelligence services received repeated warnings from the West – including a public alert from the United States on March 8.

“The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and US citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,” the country’s mission in Moscow wrote on X.

But days later, on March 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin snubbed that warning about possible attacks in Moscow, and described it as “blackmail”.

A brand new, comprehensive face-recognition system across Moscow that has been widely used to identify opposition protesters also failed to stop Friday’s attack.

And it took authorities an hour and a half to deploy special forces to the site in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk because of heavy traffic jams.

“Where are the helicopters for speedy deployment to critical sites in the metropolitan conditions of Moscow? Where are the armed vehicles? Where are these pumped-up stern guys from [promotional] videos?” Mitrokhin asked.

“We know where they are – burned down with their vehicles on the roads of the Kyiv region, sitting in underground holes near Donetsk or patrolling the Luhansk region … not where the real danger is but there the crazy president decided to wage a war,” he said.

A boy places flowers at a fence beside the Crocus City Hall, on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, March 23, 2024, following an attack for which the ISIL group claimed responsibility [Vitaly Smolnikov/AP Photo]

ISIL claims responsibility

The Afghan arm of ISIL/ISIS – known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province or ISIS-K – has claimed responsibility for the attack via the Telegram channel of Amaq, a media outlet affiliated with the group.

It said its fighters attacked “a large gathering of Christians”, killing and wounding hundreds and causing “great destruction” before withdrawing “safely”. ISIS-K is waging a war on the Taliban movement that seized power in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US forces in 2021.

Even though Moscow still lists the Taliban as a “terrorist group,” it has intensified contact with it, welcoming its emissaries in Moscow and to regional security conferences.

The US has said that its intelligence backs up the ISIL claim of responsibility for the attack.

But neither Kremlin-controlled media nor Putin’s opponents are as convinced.

A Russian tank fires at Ukrainian troops from a position near the border with Ukraine in the Belgorod region of Russia, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 [Russian Defence Ministry Press Service via AP]

Russia points finger at Ukraine

“These claims could be a fake smokescreen and need a thorough check,” according to an editorial in the Moskovskiy Komsomolets, a pro-Kremlin tabloid, published on Saturday.

Politician Alexander Khinstein claimed that early on Saturday, Russian police stopped a car with suspected attackers in the western Bryansk region that borders Ukraine and Belarus.

Two suspects have been apprehended after a shootout and the remaining passengers fled to the forest, he claimed on Telegram.

Tajik passports were found in the car along with a pistol and ammunition, he claimed, citing police sources. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan, and its residents speak a language related to Farsi.

By Saturday afternoon in Moscow, Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, claimed to have detained 11 men, including four alleged attackers. It said they were going to cross into Ukraine, where they had “contacts”.

In response, a Ukrainian think tank blamed Russian special services. They organised the attack “in order to blame Ukraine and find an excuse for a new mobilisation in Russia,” the Ukrainian Center to Counter Disinformation said in a statement quoted by the Kyiv-based UNIAN news agency on Saturday.

Fire and smoke rise from a destroyed apartment building as Russian Emergency Situations Ministry officers and firefighters try to save people in Moscow, on September 9, 1999 as a massive explosion shattered a nine-storey apartment building. Russia blamed a series of such attacks in the late 1990s on Chechen rebels [FILE: Ivan Sekretarev/ AP Photo]

Memories of Russia’s dark 1990s resurface

Other independent experts also questioned the suggestions of ISIL’s responsibility for the attacks.

“Very probably, Russian special services knew about [the attack] beforehand, and, possibly, they directed it pursuing political goals – to possibly discredit Ukraine, justify a new wave of mobilisation and tighten the screws in general,” Alisher Ilkhamov, head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a think tank in London, told Al Jazeera.

“One just has to ask a question – who will benefit? I’m somewhat doubtful that ISIL has any serious interests in Russia,” he said.

Putin, on the other hand, does gain from the attack, Ilkhamov said. “To become a victim of ISIL is to trigger sympathies worldwide. This is some sort of a public relations [trick] to improve [Russia’s] international reputation. So, there’s a whole bunch of benefits for Putin’s regime,” he said.

“Of course, that cost the lives of his citizens – that he spits on.”

Conspiratorial as these suggestions may seem, they are rooted in what many Putin critics allege is a history of potential false flag operations used by the Russian president to strengthen his political standing.

Putin, a former spy in Germany who briefly headed the FSB, was appointed prime minister in 1999. Months later, explosions at apartment buildings killed dozens of people. The Kremlin blamed Chechen separatists and used the attacks as a pretext to start the Second Chechen War: Putin’s approval ratings skyrocketed and paved the way for his first election as president in 2000.

Fugitive ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko claimed that Putin ordered the attacks. Putin repeatedly called him a “traitor,” and in 2003, Litvinenko died an agonising death in the United Kingdom after being poisoned with radioactive polonium. The UK said Putin “may have been” behind the murder.

A Russian opposition group also referred to the late 1990s to suggest that Putin’s own hand in the Moscow killings could not be ruled out.

“We remember how Putin’s regime and his special services paved the way to the Second Chechen War,” the Forum for Free Russia, an alliance of exiled opposition activists, said in a statement.

“It’s highly possible that this terrorist attack was organised by Russian special services. If it is so, then we can surely expect that the responsibility for this attack will be blamed on Ukrainians or on armed Russian opposition,” it said.



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Moscow concert hall attack: Why is ISIL targeting Russia?  | ISIL/ISIS News

More than 133 people have been killed and more than 100 others were injured following a brazen attack on concertgoers at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall before a performance by a Soviet-era rock band on Friday.

Assailants dressed in camouflage uniforms opened fire and reportedly threw explosive devices inside the concert venue, which was left in flames with its roof collapsing after the deadly attack.

Eleven people had been detained, including four people directly involved in the armed assault, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported early on Saturday.

ISIL’s Afghan branch – also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) – has claimed responsibility for the attack and United States officials have confirmed the authenticity of that claim, according to the Reuters news agency.

Here is what we know about the group and their possible motive for the Moscow attack.

ISIL’s Afghanistan branch

The group remains one of the most active affiliates of ISIL and takes its title from an ancient caliphate in the region that once encompassed areas of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.

The group emerged from eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and was made up of breakaway fighters of the Pakistan Taliban and local fighters who pledged allegiance to the late ISIL leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The group has since established a fearsome reputation for acts of brutality.

Murat Aslan, a military analyst and former Turkish army colonel, said ISIL’s Afghanistan affiliate is known for its “radical and tough methodologies”.

“I think their ideology inspires them in terms of selecting targets. First of all, Russia is in Syria and fighting against Daesh [ISIL] like the United States. That means they see such countries as hostile,” Aslan told Al Jazeera.

ISIL fighters who surrendered to the Afghan government are presented to the media in Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, in November 2019 [Parwiz/Reuters]

“They are now in Moscow. Previously they were in Iran, and we will see much more attacks, maybe in other capitals,” he added.

Though its membership in Afghanistan is said to have declined since a peak in about 2018, its fighters still pose one of the greatest threats to the Taliban’s authority in Afghanistan.

Previous attacks by the group

ISKP fighters claimed responsibility for the 2021 attacks outside Kabul airport that left at least 175 civilians dead, killed 13 US soldiers, and many dozens injured.

The ISIL affiliate was previously blamed for carrying out a bloody attack on a maternity ward in Kabul in May 2020 that killed 24 people, including women and infants. In November that same year, the group carried out an attack on Kabul University, killing at least 22 teachers and students.

In September 2022, the group took responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul.

Last year, Iran blamed the group for two separate attacks on a major shrine in southern Shiraz – the Shah Cheragh – which killed at least 14 people and injured more than 40.

The US claimed that it intercepted communications confirming that the group was preparing to carry out attacks before coordinated suicide bombings in Iran in January this year killed nearly 100 people in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman. ISKP claimed responsibility for the Kerman attacks.

Why is ISIL attacking Russia?

Defence and security analysts say the group has targeted its propaganda at Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years over the alleged oppression of Muslims by Russia.

Amira Jadoon, assistant professor at Clemson University in South Carolina and co-author of The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries, said Russia is seen as a key opponent of ISIL, and Moscow has become a focus of ISKP’s “extensive propaganda war”.

“Russia’s engagement in the global fight against ISIS [ISIL] and its affiliates, especially through its military operations in Syria and its efforts to establish connections with the Afghan Taliban – ISIS-K’s rival – marks Russia as a key adversary for ISIS/ISIS-K,” Jadoon told Al Jazeera.

Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria, in March 2018 [Omar Sanadiki/Reuters]

Should the Moscow attack be “definitely attributed” to ISKP, Jadoon said, the group hopes to win support and advance “its goal to evolve into a terrorist organisation with global influence” by demonstrating that it can launch attacks within Russian territory.

“ISK [ISKP] has consistently demonstrated its ambition to evolve into a formidable regional entity … By directing its aggression towards nations such as Iran and Russia, ISK not only confronts regional heavyweights but also underscores its political relevance and operational reach on the global stage,” Jadoon said.

Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the Strategic Studies Programme of the Observer Research Foundation – a think tank based in New Delhi, India – told Al Jazeera that Russia is seen by ISIL and its affiliates as “a crusading power against Muslims”.

“Russia has been a target for ISIS and not just ISKP from the beginning,” Taneja, author of the book The ISIS Peril, said.

“ISKP attacked [the] Russian embassy in Kabul in 2022, and over the months Russian security agencies have upped their efforts to clamp down on pro-ISIS [pro-ISIL] ecosystems both in Russia and around its borders, specifically Central Asia and the Caucusus,” he said.

In early March, Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, said it had thwarted an ISIL plan to attack a Moscow synagogue.

ISIL and Russia have also long been enemies in other battlefields, such as Syria, where Moscow’s airpower and support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime were critical in pushing back gains made by ISIL fighters in the early years of the civil war. Russian forces have also been accused by rights groups and other opposition fronts in Syria of carrying out abuses and excesses against civilians through their bombing campaigns.

Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM jet fighters landing on a runway at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia, October 3, 2015 [File: Komsomolskaya Pravda/Alexander Kots/AFP]

Moscow’s close relations with Israel are also anathema to ISIL’s ideology, Taneja said.

“So this friction is not new ideologically, but is so tactically,” he told Al Jazeera.

There’s another factor too: Largely away from the world’s attention, the armed group has regrouped into a formidable force after setbacks in Syria and Iran.

“ISKP in Afghanistan has grown in strength significantly … and it’s not just ISKP, ISIS in its original regions of operations, Syria and Iraq, also sees [an] uptick in operational capabilities,” Taneja said. Today, he added, it is “ideologically powerful even if not politically, tactically or strategically … that powerful any more”.

That poses a challenge for a distracted world, he said.

“How to combat this is the big question at a time when big power competition and global geopolitical churn has put counterterrorism on the back burner,” Taneja added.

Firefighters walk near the Crocus City Hall concert venue following Friday’s deadly attack, outside Moscow, Russia [Sergei Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency/Handout via Reuters]

ISKP social media channels are “jubilant” following the attack on Moscow, said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.

“They are celebrating the attack,” Basit told Al Jazeera, adding that supporters are “translating and recirculating the responsibility claim” issued by the ISIL-linked Amaq News Agency.

Basit said that ISIL’s method of operations involve amplifying a propaganda campaign in advance of large-scale attacks and this had been observed in recent anti-Russian messaging. Such attacks “add to the credibility” of armed groups, Basit explained, which then “increases the scope of their funding, recruitment and propaganda”.

More attacks are possible in Russia and elsewhere, he added, given the key role that ISIL recruits of Central Asian origin – particularly Tajiks – played when the group held territory in Syria. They have now returned to the Central Asia region and their intent to carry out attacks has now materialised in capability, Basit said.

Previous attacks in Russia

Moscow and other Russian cities have been the targets of previous attacks.

In 2002, Chechen fighters took more than 900 people hostage in a Moscow theatre, the Dubrovka, demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and an end to Russia’s war on the region.

Russian special forces attacked the theatre to end the standoff and 130 people were killed, most suffocated by a gas used by security forces to leave the Chechen fighters unconscious.

The deadliest attack in Russia was the 2004 Beslan school siege which was carried out by members of a Chechen armed group seeking Chechnya’s independence from Russia. The siege killed 334 people, including 186 children.

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Putin wins again but what happened in Russia’s election protests? | Vladimir Putin

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Russia’s President Vladimir Putin claimed a record landslide victory in an election without serious opposition – but many voters got round the crackdown on dissent to take part in a mass protest on polling day. Here’s what happened.

Published On 18 Mar 2024

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Putin poised to win Russian presidential election by a landslide | Vladimir Putin News

Early results show Putin winning some 87 percent of the vote, the highest-ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history.

President Vladimir Putin is set to win a record post-Soviet landslide victory in Russia’s election, cementing his grip on power, despite a large number of opponents staging a noon protest at polling stations.

Shortly after the last polls closed on Sunday, early returns pointed to the conclusion everyone expected: that Putin would extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years.

According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, he had some 87 percent of the vote with about 60 percent of precincts counted. The result means Putin, 71, will overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.

Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov came second with just under 4 percent, newcomer Vladislav Davankov third, and ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky fourth, early results suggested.

Nationwide turnout was 74.22 percent when polls closed, election officials said, surpassing 2018 levels of 67.5 percent.

For Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, the result is intended to underscore to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or in peace, for many more years to come.

The United States said the vote was neither free nor fair.

“The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him,” said the White House’s National Security Council spokesperson.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “this election fraud has no legitimacy and cannot have any”.

The election came more than two years after Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

On Sunday, thousands of Putin’s opponents staged a protest against him, although there was no independent tally of how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the demonstrations.

Supporters of Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out to a “Noon against Putin” protest.

Putin was first nominated as acting president when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. He then won his first presidential election in March 2000 and a second term in 2004.

After two stints as president, Putin switched back to being prime minister in 2008 to circumvent a constitutional ban on holding more than two consecutive terms as head of state.

But he returned to the presidency in 2012, winning a fourth term in 2018.

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‘Noon against Putin’ protests as Russian leader set to extend rule in polls | Elections News

Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to tighten his grip on power in an election that is certain to deliver him a landslide victory, though thousands of opponents have staged a symbolic noon protest at polling stations.

Supporters of Putin’s fiercest political foe Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out for a “Noon against Putin” protest to show their dissent against a leader they cast as a corrupt autocrat.

Navalny’s associates, including his widow Yulia Navalnaya, have urged those unhappy with Putin, 71, or the ongoing war with Ukraine to protest by coming to the polls at noon on Sunday, a strategy endorsed by Navalny shortly before his death.

Team Navalny described it as a success, releasing pictures and videos of people crowding near polling stations in cities across Russia around noon.

At a polling station in southwest Moscow, Leonid, an 18-year-old student, said there were “not that many people” taking part in the protest but he was “just happy that some people came”.

The polling station was in a school where Navalny scored his highest result – 70 percent – in his failed bid to become Moscow mayor in 2013. He later attempted to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election but his candidacy was rejected.

After casting his ballot at a polling station where Navalny used to vote, IT worker Alexander said he came because this was one of the few ways he could protest.

“If I hadn’t done this, I would have felt like a coward,” the 29-year-old said.

Elena, 52, said people were “too afraid” to come out in large numbers. “I don’t want Russia, my homeland, to be like this … I love my country; I want it to be free.”

Putin, who rose to power in 1999, is set to win a new six-year term that would enable him to overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

While Putin’s re-election is not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy wants to show that he has the overwhelming support of Russians.

Several hours before polls were due to close at 18:00 GMT, the nationwide turnout surpassed 2018 levels of 67.5 percent.

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At gunpoint, Ukrainians in occupied regions vote in Russia’s election | Russia-Ukraine war News

Since February 25, women with name tags and huge stacks of papers have been knocking on every door in the Russia-occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions or approaching residents outside their apartment buildings or houses.

The documents are lists of voters, and the women and, rarely, men are election officials who usually teach in nearby schools, accept utilities payments or work as government clerks.

They ask residents for their IDs and nudge them to fill in an early ballot form with the names of four candidates in Russia’s presidential election, current and former residents of the occupied areas told Al Jazeera.

One of the candidates is Vladimir Putin, who is all but certain to win his fifth election, and the remaining three presidential hopefuls are figureheads from pro-Kremlin parties whose participation is widely understood by observers as an attempt to create an illusion of choice.

The Ukrainians rarely refuse to fill in the ballot for a very persuasive reason – a masked, gun-toting Russian serviceman towering next to the official and a car filled with more armed men nearby, Al Jazeera has learned.

The “voting” usually takes place near the entrance of an apartment, and the election official along with the armed soldier can see whose name is ticked off on the ballot.

“There’s no secrecy of vote,” a former resident of Mariupol told Al Jazeera, speaking about how her friends and relatives voted on Wednesday.

“People who love Ukraine must submit to the regime and pretend they support everything that’s going on because they’re afraid for their lives.”

She added, however, that there are resistance groups that largely consist of young people who leak information about the numbers and location of Russian soldiers and weaponry to Ukrainian intelligence services.

Some locals hope that their participation in the vote will give them a literal free pass out of the occupied area.

“My father-in-law had a heart attack and died. My mother-in-law’s hair turned grey because of what we had gone through. All we want is to leave and never look back,” Tatyana, who lives in the port of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine, which was occupied in late February 2022, told Al Jazeera.

She and her husband voted early, on Monday, unsurprisingly for Putin because they don’t want to be blacklisted by Russia-appointed authorities.

They plan to cross into southern Russia and take a plane to Kazakhstan, where their relatives agreed to shelter them.

The few Ukrainians who refused to vote or badmouthed the election have been rounded up and taken to “basements”, as informal prisons are known in Russia-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, according to the Eastern Human Rights Group, a Ukrainian watchdog.

The rights group and the three Ukrainians Al Jazeera interviewed for this article, whose full names will not be used for safety reasons, reported the threat of guns at polling stations in the occupied regions.

So the only way to safely say “no” is to keep the door closed to election officials and avoid the polling stations that opened on Friday, the first day of Russia’s three-day election.

“Nobody touches” those who stay at home, said a former resident of the Russia-occupied southern town of Enerhodar who fled to Kyiv but is in constant contact with her family and friends at home.

The reason is simple – vote-rigging, which has been documented in Russia in previous elections and is widely expected to be even more pronounced in the occupied parts of Ukraine.

“I think the turnout will be 120 to 150 percent,” the former resident quipped.

Observers agreed – and said Kremlin-appointed officials will compete with each other in vote rigging to report large turnouts and a big percentage of votes for Putin.

“At the pseudo-elections, there will be maximal vote-rigging because local ‘viceroys’ will try to surpass the ‘Chechen count,’” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera, referring to the nearly 100 percent turnouts and pro-Putin votes in Chechnya.

Moscow-appointed “viceroys” openly urge residents of the occupied regions to vote for Putin.

“I’m confident that the activity of our citizens will be high and every resident of the region will vote for our president,” the Russia-installed governor of Zaporizhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, said on Telegram.

On Friday morning, Russian officials reported the early vote turnout – 45 percent in the occupied part of Zaporizhia and 58 percent in the Donetsk and Kherson regions.

The RIA Novosti news agency filed the report at 8:05am (06:05 GMT), five minutes after polling stations opened in public schools and government buildings in the occupied regions.

The election provides the Kremlin with an opportunity to create an illusion for state-controlled media and their Russian audience.

“The authorities formed groups of people who gladly pose for videos to provide a pretty picture. They don’t need to force anyone to go voting. No one is going to riot, get angry,” the former Enerhodar resident said.

Russia permits voting even for those who haven’t yet obtained red Russian passports in a blatant violation of its own election laws.

Wannabe voters can present any valid ID, including a Ukrainian passport or driving license.

Moscow announced strict security measures amid what they call Ukraine’s “information diversions”.

It says Ukrainian intelligence services fish for voters’ information and send threats to election officials.

The threats “look copied and pasted. Only some words are changed” in each of them, Vladimir Vysotsky, chief election official in the Russia-occupied part of the Donetsk region, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

“For the first time, we are holding elections in such a complicated, extreme situation, when such a toxic international situation is created with constant threats and a mass of other negative things,” Russia’s chief election official, Ella Pamfilova, said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian observers wonder aloud about the necessity of elections in Russia, where Putin has become the longest-serving leader since Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin.

“The deep split within the totalitarian reality is manifested through the way Putin fanatically clings to the necessity of extending his endless cadences through ‘election’ while fully neutering the very essence of competition and open ending,” said Svetlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists, a group in Kyiv.

“In Russia, they consider elections as the most prestigious way to legitimise power,” she told Al Jazeera. “But totalitarian reality doesn’t generate any prestige. It only generates fear and submissiveness.”

Kyiv predictably lambasted the vote in the occupied areas.

“The campaign to imitate a presidential election shows Russia’s further insolent disregard for the standards and principles of international law,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.

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