At least 144 people are reported dead following a March 22, 2024, terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall, a concert hall and entertainment venue in the northwest Moscow suburbs. Just before the start of an evening performance by the Russian band Picnic, four gunmen opened fire on the concertgoers and set the venue itself on fire with incendiaries. Four Tajik nationals were arrested by Russian security forces the day after the attack, and several others allegedly tied to the attackers have since been detained by Tajik security.

The ISIS-affiliated group IS-KP claimed responsibility for the attack not long after it was over. US intelligence also released its assessment that an ISIS group was responsible. Russian officials, including Putin, have rejected this conclusion, instead claiming that the terrorists were connected to Ukraine and had Western backing. This interpretation of the attack—as an extension of the war with Ukraine—appears to also resonate with the Russian public, with some post-attack polls suggesting that a majority of Russians believe Ukraine was responsible.

This scale of violence in a European capital is unusual, not least because the Russian government maintains tight control over the flow of information. Yet Russia, and Moscow more specifically, have a history of suffering terrorist attacks by Islamist and separatist actors, though they have been infrequent since the end of the second war with Chechnya. Within that history of terrorism, however, there are several examples of large-scale attacks in the Putin era that are immediately comparable to the events at Crocus City Hall.

In September 1999, when Putin was prime minister for the first time, a series of apartment building explosions linked to Chechen separatists killed more than 300 Russians. The attacks are shrouded in suspicion due to the arrest, several days after the last explosion, of three FSB agents who seemingly planted an explosive device in a building in Ryazan. The apartment bombings also dramatically boosted Putin’s popularity, propelled him to the presidency, and set the scene for the second Chechen war.

Three years later, in October 2002, 132 people died when Russian special forces gassed Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater in an effort to rescue more than 900 theatergoers taken hostage by Chechen terrorists. Most of the deceased hostages died from the effects of the gas, and Russian officials were found to have been uncooperative with doctors attempting to treat the survivors.

In the most notorious example, 334 people, including nearly 200 children, were killed during a three-day school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004. After Ingush and Chechen terrorists took those in School Number One hostage, Russian special forces besieged the school’s gymnasium, causing the building to catch fire and the roof to collapse. Like the attacks that preceded it, Beslan is shrouded in uncertainty due to the Russian government’s extensive efforts to hide the nature of the disaster. It is, for example, widely believed that several dozen more terrorists were involved in the hostage-taking than was reported by the Kremlin.

So, what does this mean?

Like the three terrorist attacks described above, the Crocus City Hall attack brings several questions to mind. Why did Russian intelligence fail to detect the attack, and why were the terrorists so successful? As with the September 1999 apartment explosions, the simplest answer—that Russian intelligence failed to effectively respond to warnings of an impending attack—is likely the correct one, though the coming weeks will undoubtedly yield compelling new conspiracies.

The more interesting question is: how will Russia and/or Putin respond in the short and medium term to the attacks? Putin currently occupies a position of extreme strength, so it is unlikely that he will face domestic consequences. In the above examples, Putin was able to leverage the devastation in ways that enhanced his own image and consolidated centralized state authority. He will certainly attempt to do the same now, with his dominance burnished by being recently re-elected. Nor will Tajikistan, Russia’s closest ally among the former Soviet republics in Eurasia, face meaningful repercussions.

Ukraine will likely bear the brunt of the retaliation, as Putin and his inner circle of elites have indicated, despite the absence of evidence that Kyiv was involved. Putin may also attempt to use the “rally around the flag” effect generated by the attack as cover for another round of mobilization. Further mobilization for the war in Ukraine is expected to be publicly unpopular, but it could be made more palatable if the Russian state communications apparatus continues to insist that Ukraine planned the terrible events at Crocus City Hall.