Free to kill: where were Russia’s law enforcement officers when they were needed?
How were the gunmen at Moscow’s ‘Crocus City Hall’ able to calmly murder or cause injury to 551 people - and drive away unhindered? Russia’s security services have questions to answer.
By Ilya Abishev.
How was a small group of gunmen able to turn the Crocus City Hall concert complex into a slaughterhouse and then disappear from the scene?
How should the security services have acted?
How did it happen that the security team for an event involving thousands of people had only civilian means of self-defence at their disposal?
Why was it that, close to the Russian capital, where the proportion of law enforcement officers per capita is one of the densest in the world, there was nobody with a weapon capable of defending peaceful civilians when they needed it?
Why did the Russian government ignore US warnings of an imminent terrorist attack?
There are still no convincing answers to these and other awkward questions facing the authorities in Moscow.
How are special forces supposed to act when there is a report of an armed attack?
According to a retired KGB-FSB special forces officer, the actions of such teams in similar situations are clearly laid out in their instructions. Our source was previously a specialist in capturing especially dangerous criminals and freeing hostages, and spoke anonymously to the BBC Russian Service.
"There is no lengthy approval process now. As soon as the duty officer receives information about a shooting, or hostages, he gives the order, and the first group - which is always at full combat readiness at the base - immediately deploys to the scene, while other combat groups are put on alert,” he says.
“The commander of the first group acts according to the circumstances, reinforcements are called in if necessary, an operational headquarters is set up, and further decisions are made.
“The task of the first, standby group is to arrive as soon as possible. It doesn't matter how - by helicopter, by car, whatever. And if that’s not possible – well, arrive by donkey, then," says the former special forces officer.
When did the Special Rapid Response Unit (SOBR) of the Russian National Guard arrive at Crocus City Hall?
The first report of SOBR fighters entering the building came out at 21:32 on the Mash Telegram channel, which often publishes operational information from the police and the security forces.
Clearly, their arrival had taken place earlier than it was reported – time was needed for Mash to process the news and publish it. And it is understandable that the SOBR unit did not enter the building as soon as they appeared on the scene – they needed time to take in what was going on, orientate themselves, check the surrounding area, seal off the building and block possible escape routes.
A TASS news agency correspondent reporting from the scene said the SOBR unit appeared as early as 21:06. The information may be inaccurate since in some videos the first appearance of vehicles with flashing lights takes place roughly half an hour earlier, at 20:30. But given the darkness, there is no way of saying which emergency department those vehicles belonged to.
One thing is absolutely certain: by that time, there were no gunmen left in the building and reports of the building being ‘stormed’ were untrue: there was nobody left to storm, and the SOBR operation became focused on rescue instead. Thirty minutes after they entered the building, the roof began to collapse.
The head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, reported on the investigation to President Putin on Monday. He said the attackers arrived at the building at 19:58 and had left at 20:11. Media outlets, by contrast, calculated that the gunmen were inside for longer – for at least 18 minutes.
Again according to the media, the first calls for ambulances and emergency services began to come in at 20:01. And the first reports of shooting at Crocus City Hall appeared on Telegram channels at about 20:05.
The headquarters of the Main Directorate of Russian National Guard troops in Moscow is located just three kilometres from the concert hall, in the neighbouring district of Strogino. Of course, on a Friday night, there are traffic jams all over the place and the Moscow ring road is often congested. But to get to Crocus, there is no need to use the ring road at all. An alternative route is available via Myakininsky Drive. And even in full combat gear, a unit could have covered the distance in 15 minutes’ quick march.
Pictures from inside the Crocus City Hall.
When Chechen fighters captured the Dubrovka Theatre Centre in 2002, rapid response units arrived at the scene in about 55 minutes. But the situation then was different, and the delayed start of the operation had no effect on its outcome – the gunmen took members of the audience and the performers hostage, set out their political demands, and negotiations began.
At Crocus, events took a different turn. One which, perhaps, the security forces were unprepared for. It could be that the SOBR unit took the alert at Crocus to be a routine call-out. In the previous week, their website says, Moscow-based National Guard teams had responded to alarm signals more than 4,000 times.
So where was the regular police?
Stationed even closer than the SOBR unit, in the next-door Crocus-Expo centre, is a police precinct of the Pavshinodistrict.
“It isn’t some kind of distant outpost, but a serious detachment,” according to a source from the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. “They have their own parking lot with guarded entry right next to the Expo building, usually with 12-15 police vehicles parked there. Patrols from the precinct keep an eye on law and order across the Pavshino floodplain. They have their own passport desk and armoury. A large number of officers.
“If this group of officers had come to the aid of people in mortal peril, they would have saved them, without a doubt,” the source said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Irina Volk, claims that police arrived at the scene five minutes after the report of shooting reached the duty unit. She was responding to claims that the police had failed to react appropriately to the emergency at Crocus, and about reports of a video that appeared to show a police dog handler leaving the scene immediately after the start of the shooting.
"The information provided does not correspond to reality. The person in camouflage uniform with a dog, captured on video, has nothing to do with interior ministry units," Volk said.
She does not specify when the alert call was received at the duty unit, but suggestions that the police arrived at the shooting scene rapidly are neither borne out by numerous eyewitnesses or by video recordings. Were it otherwise, the gunmen would not have been able to make their getaway unhindered.
As for the man with the dog, the statement from Volk indeed chimes with a video made just before the attack started, which shows that he had no dog service chevrons on his uniform and was most likely an employee of a private security company. But in that same video, published by the Baza Telegram channel, there is a second man, in police uniform, standing beside him. Whether this man remained in the building during the attack, and whether he was armed, is not known. It was not possible to identify him in other videos.
“As a rule, and especially when Russia has been at war for two years, big events [like the concert at Crocus City Hall] should have a police security presence,” says the KGB-FSB ex-officer.
“At the very least, there should have been an armed patrol at the entrance. And if there was a police presence in the next door building, they should have been the first to arrive. I simply cannot understand why there was no advance security and why police did not rush in immediately when these morons entered and were able to open fire for 20 minutes. Whether in this case it was cock-up or cowardice, it comes to the same thing.”
"They’re not even security guards"
Crocus City Hall is guarded by a private security company, ‘Crocus Profi’. Their security guards, at the entrance and inside the premises, did not have weapons. Some of them managed to hide, while others were shot on the spot.
"The terrorists themselves entered to the left side of the entrance,” one eyewitness told the well-known journalist Andrei Kolesnikov. “They were walking slowly, you know. Probably, they understood there was no security at the place. Guards were only checking bags, we saw a male dog handler, and there was just one policeman present... It's horrific, of course, horrific..."
The owner of Crocus City Hall, Araz Agalarov, told the RBC channel: “They came in not through the door, but through the window of the adjoining exhibition centre. Their had their weapons at the ready. They started shooting at everything they saw. At everyone, people and security guards. One guard dead, another wounded. And they’re not even security guards – we just call them ‘controllers’.”
Alexander Khinshtein, an MP and advisor to the National Guard director, confirms that the guards at Crocus City Hall were on shift without specialised equipment. That’s despite the fact, as he asserts, that the Crocus-Profi private security company next door had lots of firearms available – several dozen IZh-71 pistols and Saiga-20KV semi-automatic rifles.
There is a rapid response group based there, too. But it failed to respond, Khinshtein claims. He also says that the first National Guard officers arrived at Crocus 15 minutes after the tragedy was first reported.
“Nobody says that security guards are meant to fend off armed attack,” Ivan Rudin, the former director of a private company specialising in protecting concerts and mass events, told the Military Informant Telegram channel.
“Current legislation does not permit security guards to bear weapons in places of mass gatherings. Security is not allowed to use weapons where there are large crowds. In other words, inside the cordon, security has to be unarmed,” he said.
The MP, Alexander Khinshtein, concurs. “It’s true that according to the law, private security organisations are not permitted to deploy armed men at major events. The law simply requires them to have weapons in their armoury, if they’re guarding such sites.” Khinshtein believes the law must be changed.
What is the FSB saying?
In March, the United States shared intelligence information with the Russian authorities about a possible attack in the Russian capital.
“Earlier this month, the U.S. Government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts – which prompted the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia,” stated Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council .
“The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy,” Watson added.
CNN reported that since November there had been a steady stream of intelligence warning of an Islamic State attack in Russia.
The Russian authorities say that the American intelligence did not contain specific information about the place of the planned terror attack, its organisers or perpetrators.
“The information conveyed by Washington about the preparations for the terrorist attack was of a general nature, and Russian special services responded to it,” FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said on Monday.
What Bortnikov did not say was exactly how Russia’s special services reacted. On the one hand, Moscow is a big city, you can’t keep track of everyone, and you can’t assign armed guards to every possible spot. On the other, what we know of the tragic events at Crocus suggests that the special services did not play any role in organising security for the event.
Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the warning from Washington was especially illustrative. "Let me remind you of recent, frankly speaking, provocative statements by a number of official western structures about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia. All this resembles blatant blackmail with the intention of intimidating, destabilising our society," he told a gathering of FSB officials on March 19th - just three days before gunmen opened fire in Crocus City Hall.
If, taking their lead from Putin, Russia’s security services reacted to the US warnings of possible terrorist attacks as ‘blackmail,’ it would explain much, if not everything, that was to follow.
Read this story in Russian here.
English version edited by Chris Booth.
