The Crocus City Hall, a music venue located in the Moscow region, was still burning when White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby asserted to the press that "there is no indication" that Ukraine was involved in the shooting.
The US State Department doubled down on Ukraine's supposed non-involvement on March 23, despite Russia's investigation being far from over.
A social media account allegedly belonging to ISIS* released a statement of responsibility hours after the attack. As if that were not enough, an additional statement by the group popped up later, accompanied by what appeared to be bodycam footage of the attack.
The repeated statements have only triggered skepticism among netizens and international observers, especially given that the Russian Security Service (FSB) announced that four suspects with contacts in Ukraine had been arrested while en route to the Eastern European state on Saturday. New evidence suggested the case is far more complicated than Team Biden imagined.
"The Biden Administration has scant credibility left whether in official statements or in off-the-record communications, particularly when it comes to matters outside America’s nominal 'borders'," Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik. "The real question is what shadowy actors acquired the resources and training to perpetrate these vile acts and who are the ultimate paymasters, masterminds and 'beneficiaries'."
Why It's Hard to Trust Team Biden
According to Washington, the perpetrators belonged to ISIS-Khorasan, the terror group's affiliate that is active in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. However, there are at least two reasons why international commentators reacted to Team Biden's assertions with disbelief, according to Ortel.
"Joe Biden, the Biden family, the Clinton family, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and George Soros (directly or indirectly) apparently have deep, unexplained ties to oligarchs and individuals inside Ukraine who have funneled money into and outside Ukraine, for which there has never been an honest and rigorous accounting," the analyst said, referring to Washington policymakers' motif to divert any possible suspicions from Ukraine.
Team Biden's finger-pointing at Islamists does not make matters any easier for the West, the analyst continued. The attack spells reputational damage to the West given its intelligence operatives' decades-long hand-in-glove cooperation with jihadist elements, involving using them as proxies.
Strange Bedfellows: NATO, Jihadists and Neo-Nazis
In 2019, French investigative journalist Maxime Chaix published a book called "The Shadow War in Syria". The book sheds light on the CIA's Operation Timber Sycamore and describes how several Western European intelligence services provided aid to Islamists in Syria to overthrow the country's legitimate President Bashar al-Assad.
The West's "war on terror" in Syria raised a lot of questions, starting from the Obama administration's inability to separate "good moderate" jihadists from Islamic terrorists to ensure the Russia-US-brokered cease-fire in 2016. There were also reports that US military choppers were detected evacuating ISIS commanders amid the Syrian Armed Forces' advance. On another occasion, Pentagon- and CIA-backed Syrian insurgents were seen clashing with each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border.
"Use of Islamist proxies by elements allied to the US and the UK (among others) is, sadly, an old play carried out by muddy thinkers who foolishly believe 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'," Ortel said.
13 February 2023, 06:37 GMT
"Before Timber Sycamore, one must remember how the West funneled money to radical Islamists fighting the Soviet Union prior to September 11, 2001, and that the West provided arms, money and other resources to Saddam Hussein to fight Iran. Then, vaunted (and patently undeserved) Nobel Peace laureate Barack Obama spent eight long years upending national governments in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere to the profound detriment of American interests, in my opinion," the analyst continued.
But that is not all. Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a statement on February 13, 2023, saying that it obtained intelligence indicating that "the US military were actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda* to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia and the CIS countries. Particular attention is paid to attracting people from the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia to cooperation."
The 2014 February coup in Kiev and subsequent events indicated that US officials, military and intelligence services had likewise no scruples about instrumentalizing Ukrainian neo-Nazi elements to reach their goals in the Eastern European state.
The analyst wondered whether those weaponizing jihadists and outright neo-Nazis truly believe that those thugs could be controlled and whether these "collabs" are overseen by the US government.
11 February 2023, 15:39 GMT
Nord Stream Blast: Act of International Terrorism
To make matters worse, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's Nord Stream bombshell suggests that decisions to conduct acts of international terrorism could be made at the top level of the US government.
According to Hersh, US President Joe Biden and his administration were directly involved in plotting and then giving orders to destroy the pipelines carrying Russian gas through the Baltic Sea to Europe.
The journalist noted that Western elites are trying to keep the matter on the hush-hush: Europeans have yet to complete their probes into the sabotage attack while Team Biden has not lifted a finger to find out what had happened.
"It is not surprising that the Biden Administration and the American uniparty would fail to investigate themselves," Ortel said. "What is surprising is that 'mainstream journalists' would continue pretending most are anything more than purveyors of pap and propaganda, hoping to remain in favor of senior American government officials and bureaucrats so they can continue to pump out ink and fill up airtime with obvious nonsense, even bold lies."
"What is also surprising is the degree to which nations closer to Russia would fail to appreciate how dangerous it is to take direction, potentially ruinous direction, from an American administration that has a nasty habit of cutting and running on short notice as it did in Afghanistan, leaving widening mayhem behind," the analyst added.
*ISIS, al-Qaeda are terrorist organizations banned in Russia and many other countries.