Moscow: what to make of the deadly attack?

For Der Tagesspiegel the attack shows that the danger of Islamist attacks has not been averted:

“Terrorist organisations may have lost some of their power and order thanks to the international fight against terror, but they are still capable of carrying out cruel attacks. ... With this attack, the IS is returning to the international stage - as a player to be taken seriously. It adds another dimension to the complexity of the new multilateral camp formation of China/Russia on the one hand and the West, which is not united on many points, on the other. Because the IS does not fit into this scheme, it's a completely different kettle of fish altogether. It is playing its own brutal, inhumane game.”

Jutarnji list writes:

“The bloody terrorist attack in Moscow has occurred just when Russian President Vladimir Putin was feeling safe: after winning the presidential elections and seizing the initiative on the Ukrainian battlefield. There is no such thing as coincidence in such cases. This was a very well-organised attack, reminiscent of the massacre at the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015. The moment of the massacre was undoubtedly planned to shake the entire Russian state structure and at the same time fuel a sense of fear and insecurity in the heart of Russia, from where it will spread in concentric circles right across the country.”

Putin has two options, Le Figaro comments:

“To stay in this phantasmagoria or accept the more complex reality in which Moscow finds itself in the same boat as Paris or New York. The choice he makes will have an impact on the outcome of the war, as we can only imagine the level of retaliation that could be justified by an official accusation against Ukraine, even a baseless one. No one could have less interest in sponsoring an Islamist attack than a country that wants to be European and depends on the West for its survival. But if Putin continues to drag Russia further and further into a world that does not exist, we are all one step closer to a general conflagration with an enemy who will no longer listen to reason.”

Novaya Gazeta Europe criticises Moscow's attempts to link the terrorist attack with the war against Ukraine:

“Russian propaganda is now desperately looking for a way to connect the Moscow terrorist attack with Ukraine, insisting that 'the enemies of Russia' live there. ... Even if they can't find a single scrap of evidence - except perhaps a confession made under torture. ... You can't wage war against Ukraine for over two years, kill thousands of people, raze cities to the ground and then officially admit that you should have looked for the enemies elsewhere. Now an attempt will probably be made to bring charges against 'Islamist fundamentalists who received their orders from string-pullers in Kyiv'.”

The SonntagsZeitung fears the Russian president will respond to the violence in Moscow with even more violence:

“The sole positive note in this bleak situation is that it was the Americans of all people who warned Moscow of terrorist attacks. And this despite the fact that relations between Russia and the US, between Putin and Joe Biden, are worse than ever before. Perhaps Putin remembers the time at the beginning of the century when Russia and the US tried to make the world a safer place, with considerable success. Alas, there is little hope. And it's to be feared that Putin will take out his anger on the Ukrainians, regardless of whether they are behind the attacks or not.”

Adevărul worries why the US's detailed warnings about the terrorist attack were ignored:

“Intolerance between the global adversaries is currently at such high levels that mutual mistrust has increased exponentially as a result. ... No one believes the warnings of the intelligence services of the opposing powers any more, calling them 'provocations' instead, as the Russians did after receiving warnings from the Americans that jihadist attacks were imminent in Moscow. This is extremely worrying because it reverses years of political cooperation which - albeit in a discreet world to which the public had no access - had coordinated some very effective early warning and direct emergency co-operation mechanisms.”

Exiled politician Maxim Katz says the Moscow security apparatus has been wearing blinders. He writes in Echo:

“The attack took place just hours after Russia's Federal Service for Financial Monitoring added the 'international LGBT movement and its structural subdivisions' to its list of terrorists and extremists. The state has clearly shown who it monitors, who it spends resources on and who it ignores, as it fails to notice real terrorists right under its nose. The upshot: armed gunmen shoot people in the capital and the rapid reaction forces only arrive once it's all over. ... This is happening in a country where the security of the state has been elevated to the status of a religion, and where the regime has organised a tight network of surveillance of its citizens.”