Attack in Russia: cui prodest scelus, is fecit

By proxy, it was anyone. Anyone with resources, ambition and a powerful motive.

The problem is that not everything is possible, no matter how much it is said, not everything goes, not for moral reasons, but for crashing against a stubborn reality.

Killing someone is relatively simple, planting a bomb is something more sophisticated, but within the reach of many. Organizing an attack is not a trivial task, but neither is it alien to someone who has not received adequate preparation. It is enough to go out into the street with a knife or, for that matter, a knife killer, and hit the first person who appears.

No, this is something else. Russia is as different as it is traditional. However, for the sake of being professionals, let's go with the theories. It has not been Ukraine, it does not benefit it, and let no one forget the most obvious, cui prodest scelus, is fecit. For the most extremist Russians, or those who wish to intoxicate the personnel, or both, Zelenski could well have ordered the execution of the massacre.

The real analysts, those who do not talk to the media and those who listen to the media and those who listen to those in charge, know that Ukraine has no reason to plan such an orgy of bloodshed for the simple reason that it does not wish to inflame a Russian population fed up with a war in which Russia has already lost about half a million men. 

What about the Yankees? The CIA has been destabilizing the Russian bogeyman for a whole existence, and vice versa. The US intelligence service neither wants, nor promotes, nor advocates, however, the collapse of the largest country in the world because Uncle Sam has already identified its main and greatest enemy, and this one does not have Slavic features, but is located further east and whose capital is Beijing.

Speaking of capitals, Moscow has the highest police density in the world, and this is true for two reasons: first, Russia is at war with Ukraine. Secondly, and this is what is really relevant, Russia is a paranoid country and has always bet everything on red, i.e. communism, which means strict and draconian control of its borders, diplomatic personnel, foreign journalists and agents of all kinds, even those coming from allied countries like Cuba or Venezuela.

The Kremlin knows who and where are those likely to stick a knife, shoot or bomb, for the simple reason that they are convinced that their lives depend on it.

If the place chosen was a shopping mall in a dormitory town of Moscow, it was not because of the inability to carry out an attack in Moscow due to the police control of the capital. It was not about security, any more than it was about ease. No, it was about letting the perpetrators of the massacre escape. Why? To keep them quiet.

ISIS terrorists don't run away, they don't look for emergency exits and they don't come up with Plan Bs.
ISIS activists accept their missions as a one-way ticket because they know they are not coming back. If, indeed, the plan had come from the warmed-up mind of an ISIS battalion commander, the attack would have taken place in Moscow, St. Petersburg or another large and symbolic city, and the commando members would have been shot dead or immolated themselves by pressing a button connected to two kilos of dynamite.
 
There are more alternatives, three to be precise. The first, the most tawdry one, would have a local, internal aroma, an affair between local gangs, a mafia settling of scores. The problem, of course, is that the Kremlin retains the reins of all state power, as well as of the criminal underworld, because Putin is the real leader of the mafia conglomerate.

We could think that it is a fight between two middle bosses, or the will to collect insurance, but the modus operandi would have been otherwise.

Secondly, and very appetizing, is the Chinese option. Recently, hoax or not, the international press published a Russian military plan to bomb China when things get really bad. The Chinese leadership is as paranoid or more paranoid than the Russians and they also read the newspapers. The bombing could be China's response, a warning to sailors. Since Chinese agents do not go unnoticed in a Western city for obvious reasons, when the government wants to kill, it outsources, and that is where the role of ISIS could be understandable.

Finally, there is Russia itself. It is a country as tawdry and bumbling as it is brilliant when it comes to security. Those who believe at face value that the Kremlin is unaware of the movements of foreign operators, especially British, Americans and Islamists of all kinds, on its own soil, are either drunk, lying, or both.

Of course, the United States or Great Britain could organize an attack, but they refrain from doing so because it is not in their interest and they would be held accountable, which is not the case in Russia. While the FSB gathers vital information from all over the world, the MVD controls and combs Russian territory.

So, cui prodest scelus, is fecit. Well? Well, Putin, only Putin. The president is immersed in an unpopular war with disastrous casualties and a war economy that has further ruined the Russian population. There is more. Putin has ordered to eliminate or let die his main rival and only real and realistic alternative, Alexei Navalny.

Putin has won the Russian elections with a result that would put any Bulgarian or Romanian Cold War leader to shame. His is a flight forward, like Pedro Sanchez, but with nuclear missiles, gas, oil and a culture of violence running through his veins.

Hiring, manipulating and using Muslim terrorists in exchange for who knows what has been the daily bread of the Russian intelligence services for much longer than Putin has been in power, and he has suckled from the same teat that makes Russia a country surrounded by a country that is surrounded by a world of terror.
that makes Russia a country surrounded by enemies that no one understands and everyone mistreats.

At this hour, the alleged perpetrators arrested with surprising speed on their way to Ukraine, according to Russian authorities, can only serve as scapegoats, something similar to what happened to those who pulled the trigger to kill Kennedy. That is an interesting fact to reconstruct the operation, but, in the end, irrelevant.

The worst, the most pestilent, is that there is nothing new. Russia is as virulent as it is predictable, and some are still there are still those who are surprised when something like this happens in a dirty context, but so difficult to analyze, because history is recalcitrant and provides the necessary data.

So, cui prodest scelus, is fecit, because life is worth nothing to him, not even that of a fellow countryman. The only thing worthwhile is the power to which he has bolted himself and which he will only abandon by force or feet first.

Pedro Lasuén is the author of the novels Tal Vez, Ǫuizá and A lo Mejor.