Joby Warrick, a
national security reporter
for The Washington Post,
author of the fascinating book
Black Flags The Rise of ISIS.
Also with us is Steve Hall, former CIA
chief of Russia operations.
Steve,
what do you make of Vladimir
Putin's comments today?
You know, not a big surprise, Anderson.
He's going to try to make
that Ukraine connection,
even though he has to sort of admit
that it does appear
to have been ISIS care that was involved.
I think he's looking forward
to trying to figure out
how to increase conscription
and to energize, you know,
the Russian populace
of such thing as possible
to support his war against Ukraine.
And this is the best way to do it.
That is not ruling out Ukraine, saying
there is a window for these people
asking like, who was really behind this?
And he hopes, again,
to get more support
for his continued invasion efforts
in Ukraine.
I think, Joby,
one of the things that Putin said today,
he said, quote, are radical
and terrorist linked to Islamist
organizations, really interested
in striking Russia,
which stands for a fair solution
to the exacerbated conflict
in the Middle East, end quote.
I assume the answer is yes,
that they are interested.
I mean, why, in your opinion, is ISIS k
interested in striking inside Russia?
Yeah, they are very interested.
These are equal opportunity haters,
but they really, really hate
the Russians most of all.
And this is a hatred
that goes back decades.
It dates back to the early Afghan wars
in the eighties, to the Chechen,
you know, uprising in Chechnya
and in southern Russia
and more recently to the Syrian campaign.
Russia intervened
on behalf of Syria's dictator.
We have to remember
fighting Syrian rebels
included a lot of these militant groups.
And it was because of Russia
essentially that
that that
Syria won and these groups were defeated.
And so they don't forget this.
They talk about it
a lot in their social media.
They they're vowing to go back
and get the Russians and make them pay.
And this just just
looks like one step out of perhaps many.
I mean, Steve, you know,
we see these videos of these
the accused attackers in court
and those videos
that have been released of their arrests.
I mean, an ear being cut off
by Russian forces.
It's. What does it say about
the fact that Russian
authorities would release
those videos, that they are proud,
I guess, of those videos,
it says a lot about them.
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things.
First of all, you know,
I like to talk a lot
about the difference in values
between what's going on in Russia
and what's going on in the West.
Even though if something like
this happened in the United States,
there would certainly be
or anywhere else in the West,
there would certainly be people
who would be
who would be saying eye for an eye.
And, you know,
they deserve whatever
they get, that sort of thing.
But that's not really civilized society.
Civilized society is rule of law
and treating suspects,
even if you're pretty sure who they are
with some degree of you
know, humanity and respect,
which is totally,
you know, not understood
and not followed,
there is no rule of law in Russia.
I think if you ask
most Russians on the streets,
if these guys got the got the treatment
that they got
while they were interrogation,
I think there would be probably
a lot of support
among the Russian people.
It's just a different way
of looking at it.
Russia is a very different place.
They are proud of it.
I mean, knowing how ISIS uses
video and social media, where they use
the videos of the attack,
I mean, they were certainly
used to videos of the attack
to promote themselves selves.
I'm wondering how the videos
of the alleged attackers being,
you know, having their ear
cut off
and being beaten, how that would be used?
Oh, it'll definitely be ISIS propaganda.
It's perfect fodder for that.
And they'll talk about these guys
as martyrs and the abuses
which which the Russians, the infidels
inflicted on them.
I have a feeling that the next group of,
you know, ISIS volunteers
who tried to take on a mission like this
will try very hard not to be survivors,
because one could only imagine
if we've seen these videos,
what comes next
for those four individuals.
But it's it's
something that will be echoed
and repeated by by the Islamic State
and its affiliates around the world,
because they do want
to get mileage out of this.
And, Joey, just in terms of ISIS,
I mean, what are their capabilities?
You know, these guys are
these alleged attackers
who are in custody,
I believe, are all from Tajikistan.
Would they have
I mean,
would they have already been in Russia
and just radicalized inside Russia
or would they have been sent into Russia?
So we'll have to see like trace back
where they you know,
where they ultimately
got their instructions
and who coached them.
They didn't
have a lot of training, apparently,
just by the way,
this was carried off
was fairly clumsy in many ways.
So these were professional soldiers.
But what we do know about ISIS
in recent years
is they've gone from being a group
that was really focused on the Taliban,
really focused on the Afghan struggle
to being one that is is probably above
all, the ISIS group's
the one that's most focused
right now on external operations,
which means attacks overseas.
They really want to strike
targets in places
like Russia,
as they have done in the last few days.
They went after Iranian targets,
as we remember, back in January,
and they have a long list of other plots
in plans,
including attacks against Westerners,
against the United States.
And we've seen this
because of intel intercepts showing
specifically they were planning attacks.
They didn't have the
the networks to carry them out.
But they do have this
this aspiration and goal to attack
us, too.
Steve,
do you expect
to see
military retaliation
by Russia against ISIS?
Or do you think they'll
just try to focus this
on Ukraine to your point?
I think they'll try to
try to
focus it mostly on Ukraine and again,
try to energize and,
you know,
if there's going to be an increased
conscription call up,
they're going to try to say,
well, this is
this is the kind of horrific thing
that we're fighting against.
It is interesting
that these guys were Tajiks.
It's interesting
because what happens in
Russia is there's a lot of Central Asian
sort of seasonal labor that happens.
A lot of people come in from Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
to do menial jobs,
and they're looked down upon
by most of Russian society.
And they do the
you know, the nastiest work in Moscow.
But it is an easy way
to get into Russia from the Central Asian
republics, formerly
part of the Soviet Union.
They can get a work visa very easily.
So if you're a terrorist
looking for a way
to get in a police state,
in an authoritarian state like Russia,
this is the way to do it.
And so that part at least
was pretty smart.
And Joe,
I mean, this hasn't
gotten a lot of attention,
but I mean, what's happening in
you know, we're seeing affiliate groups
in particularly in West Africa
really gain territory
and be able to hold territory.
Yeah.
And we
haven't really been paying attention
to this in the West,
but it's it's been quite alarming.
Obviously, we're focused on on Gaza,
on the fighting in Ukraine.
But very gradually but steadily,
these groups have been gaining strength,
particularly in Africa.
You see
in Mali, for example,
in north central Africa,
the groups taking over
territory again,
holding and controlling towns
and fighting off
government forces who come after them.
The same is true
in parts of
even Somalia, down
the southeastern coast in Mozambique.
So it's it's it's a phenomenon.
And we even see in the old heartland
of the Islamic State
some return to at least ability to
to carry out
small scale
attacks and aspirations
to knock over prisons
and free prisoners and things like that.
So they've they've disappeared
from the headlines to some extent.
They have not gone away.
Joby Works. Deval, thanks so much to.