Living in a police state means you're governed by criminals who ignore threats to public safety.
It turns out that the four terror suspects were from Tajikistan though living in Russia. This is essentially an internal matter. Putin's secret police were too busy murdering political opponents and harassing dissidents to be concerned about the threat of terrorism from within.
Moscow terror attack: Russian massacre suspects’ homeland Tajikistan is plagued by poverty and religious strife
Putin buddy Emomali Rahmon is Tajikistan's kleptocratic “Leader of the Nation” – essentially dictator for life. Like Russia, the country is undemocratic but holds sham elections for window dressing.
The pro-democracy organization Freedom House lists Tajikistan as a Consolidated Authoritarian Regime. It's a place only a dictator would love.
Tajikistan: Nations in Transit 2023 Country Report | Freedom House
Terror Attack at Afghanistan Maternity Hospital - Men, Women, Newborn Babies Killed
Terror Attack at Afghanistan Maternity Hospital – Men, Women, Newborn Babies Killed
Terrorists stormed an Afghanistan materinity Hospital in Kabul, killed at least 15 people. Just hours before in Nangarhar Province, terrorists used a suicide bomb to kill at least 25 people in a funeral procession. While the Taliban claimed no knowledge of the attacks, it appears their “peace deal” may be “dead on arrival.” Death toll numbers may change.
Deadly attacks and avoidable disasters that have punctuated his rule undermine the Kremlin’s portrayal of President Vladimir Putin as a guar
A reminder: DICTATORS WILL NOT KEEP YOU SAFE
Some people think that letting a dictator run the country will keep them safe. But a dictator's primary motivation is to accrue personal wealth and power – not to benefit the country or its people.
Vladimir Putin's ambition is to become known as the Peter the Great of the 21st century. He aims to achieve that by restoring the territory and hegemony of the decrepit Soviet Union. So far, Putin's invasion has cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, has been a serious drain on the country's resources, and has caused Russia's international reputation to plummet.
The Kremlin casts President Vladimir Putin as something close to a savior, a strong leader who has brought stability and security following the chaos of the Soviet collapse.
The mass-casualty events that have punctuated his nearly 25 years as president or prime minister -- and the recurring images of explosions, flames, and helpless victims desperate to escape harm -- badly undermine that narrative. Instead, analysts say, they tell a story of a leader whose focus on the protection and prolongation of his own power have come at the expense of the security of the people.
Putin’s critics say that more than three decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia remains a country in which the state puts its own interests far above those of its citizens.
The biggest example is the war against Ukraine: Before the full-scale invasion of February 2022, when Russia was massing tens of thousands of troops at the border and the United States was warning that the onslaught could begin any day, many observers predicted Putin would hold back because a massive attack would harm Russia’s security, not improve it.
Putin's secret police are too busy hunting dissidents, liberals, anti-war activists, and gays to be much concerned about genuine security threats. And this culture of repression was already in place before Putin started the war.
This leaves Russia highly vulnerable to real extremists, analysts say, and to deadly disasters in which corruption, corner-cutting, and negligence cause or exacerbate the effects of avoidable accidents like the fire at the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo in March 2018, seven days after Putin was declared the winner of that month's presidential election.
“The intelligence services are focused on political investigation and intimidation of citizens. They do not fulfill their direct responsibility to protect society from real threats,” Russian political observer Dmitry Kolezev wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Putin's control of media has made sure that nobody can criticize the way things are run. So everything the government does is publicly portrayed as wonderful. Then when something goes badly wrong and is too big to cover up, people are puzzled at how such a thing could possibly take place.
The March 22 attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow “looks like a grandiose failure” on the part of the state, he wrote. “Fantastic amounts of money are spent on ‘security,’ but in reality, this security is not provided.”
Under different circumstances, the political opposition and independent journalists would press the government on this problem, seeing to ensure that security forces do their job and that money is not misspent, Kolezev wrote. “Unfortunately, neither of these groups has access to national television, where they could speak quite loudly about this.”
Instead of serving as checks on the state authorities, in other words, these groups are their targets.
“Russian security personnel have been trained to look at specific, politically important ‘threats,’” Andras Toth-Czifra, a fellow with the Eurasia Program at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote on X, adding that “due to resource/time/manpower constraints this means that they have less capacity to look at and prevent actual threats.”
When dictators are responsible to no one, they have no obligation to act responsibly.
Putin’s sluggish reaction to the Kursk submarine disaster during his first year in office is an example, and experts say bungled responses to the Nord-Ost theater attack in Moscow in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia in 2004 increased the casualty counts.
The predominance of the priorities of the state and its senior leaders over the interests of citizens is not a new problem: It stretches back to Soviet times and the tsarist era, and it’s a phenomenon that dissidents, rights activists, and opposition politicians say must be reversed if Russia and its people are to thrive.
But Kremlin critics say it has become more pronounced as Putin’s rule drags on.
Among other things, they point to the war in Ukraine, which has caused hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties even as Putin, securing a new six-year term in what opponents and analysts say was a tightly controlled vote marred by millions of falsified votes, used the election to portray himself as the indispensable leader of a deeply united country.
A U.S. intelligence warning to Moscow two weeks ahead of a deadly March 22 terrorist attack included specific reference to the Crocus City H
When the US warned Russia about the likelihood of a terrorist attack, the Crocus City Hall venue was specifically mentioned in the warning. Of course Putin didn't listen and the result was a catastrophe.
A U.S. intelligence warning to Moscow two weeks ahead of a deadly March 22 terrorist attack included specific reference to the Crocus City Hall concert venue that was targeted, The Washington Post reported on April 2.
According to the report, which was later confirmed by The New York Times, U.S. officials told Moscow that the Islamic State extremist group was plotting an attack and that Crocus City Hall was a potential target.
The warning did not include specifics about the timing of the attack but said it could come within days, intelligence sources told the two newspapers.
Four gunmen stormed the concert hall outside of Moscow just before a concert, killing 144 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia since 2004. The Islamic State, a designated terrorist group, quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Putin prefers to live in his fantasy bubble. If Russia mass produces fake news, it's not a stretch for Putin to fabricate his own reality. And it suits him to try to blame Ukraine even when few people with expertise in terrorist activity believe him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials and commentators have claimed without evidence that Ukraine might have played a role in the attack. Ukrainian officials have denied any involvement and have accused Moscow of using the tragedy to ramp up its war against their country.
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The Crocus attack was a major failure for Russia's security forces, which critics say are focused on stifling domestic political dissent and opposition to the war against Ukraine, often prosecuting political opinions as "terrorism" or "extremism."
The Crocus attack and the emerging background details about it show that dictators do not keep you safe.
Like any autocrat, Putin is far more concerned about his own prestige and power than about the lives of his countrymen. Look at the losses he's subjecting Russia to just so he can pretend to be the 21st century equivalent of Peter the Great.
JTAC Sgt Daniel Keller of the Kentucky Air National Guard is set to receive the Air Force Cross on Friday, September 13. He becomes only the 11th Airman post 9-11 to receive the valor award, which will be given by General David Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff. Keller was promoted to Tech Sergeant upon his return from Afghanistan.
HIMARS Takes Down Fifty High Level Taliban Leaders
HIMARS Takes Down Fifty High Level Taliban Leaders
The Pentagon said that last week, the use of a HIMARS system took out around 50 top Taliban leaders in Afghanistan who were at a “command and control” location. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, is capable of firing GPS-guided rockets.
In addition to those, over the last 10 days, US air strikes reportedly took out an “unspecified number” of Taliban, according to Military Times.
Secretary of State Pompeo's Unannounced Stop In Afghanistan
Secretary of State Pompeo’s Unannounced Stop In Afghanistan
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s unannounced stop in Afghanistan on Monday was designed to promote the Trump Administration’s ideas for peace talks between the Afghani government and the Taliban. He stressed that any peace talks would be “Afghan led and Afghan owned” but that the US would participate in the discussions. There is one large hiccup in the plan: jihadists don’t want peace, they want…
Raid in Afghanistan Takes Out Another ISIS-K Leader
Raid in Afghanistan Takes Out Another ISIS-K Leader
As the US investigates the deaths of two Army Rangers in a raid on April 27, they received confirmation on Sunday night that one of ISIS-K’s top leaders was among those killed during the engagement. Sheikh Abdul Hasib is a confirmed kill. “This is the second ISIS-K emir we have killed in nine months, along with dozens of their leaders and hundreds of their fighters. For more than two years,…
