UKRAINE: THE SITUATION 762 - MARCH 25, 2024

The attack by the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) on the Moscow Crocus City Hall on March 22 is a remarkable failure of the Russian intelligence services and executive branch, and there is no need for a more comprehensive and complicated conspiracy theory, neither within nor against the Russian state, to explain the evidence currently available.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in a speech on March 25th that "radical Islamists" carried out the attack, but immediately accused the United States of trying to cover up the "Ukrainian trace" of the attack, and directly accused Ukraine of being the mastermind behind the attack. ISW continues to believe that the attack itself and the claiming pattern after the attack closely match the way the IS conducts and claims such incidents, and has found no evidence of Ukrainian involvement in the attack.

The complete Russian Offensive Update 762 is available directly from UNDERSTANDING WAR.

UNDERSTANDING WAR