In every nation’s history, there comes a pivotal moment that upends everything.
Some events are so epoch-shattering that they introduce a new age or era into the historical record.
The Crocus City Hall attack is one such political altering event. This terror attack was to Russia what 9/11 was for the United States of America.
And to put it in terms everyone can understand, these events and others like them, have had the same impact the Chicxulub asteroid had on the course and evolution of Life in the last 65 million years.
The Game Changes
Before 9/11, the United States of America was the leader of the post-Cold War unipolar world.
It had no contenders. It ruled the waves supremely confident in its capacity to project military might farther than any power in the history of the world. It ruled the air, too. It could bomb, in fact it had bombed Yugoslavia into submission, in short it had the capacity to demolish any civilized country’s infrastructure from above, with impunity.
It reigned supreme over all small and great powers of the Earth.
Its People were free and could move from one state to the next, or travel anywhere in the world, safe in the knowledge their country would move heaven and hell to protect them lest anything bad happen to them while abroad.
In fact, this freedom of movement extended to other denizens of North America. I am talking about Canadians, of course. Before the World Trade Center attacks, Canadians would routinely cross the U.S. border with just their driver’s license.
Commerce abounded. People mingled and frolicked under the happy rays of the 90s sunshine.
That all changed on that fateful day in September 2001.
Whereas before you could board a plane anywhere in the world relatively fast and efficiently, nowadays one must remember certain words cannot be uttered inside an airport, not even in jest. One cannot be too anxious if one doesn’t want to elicit the attentions of the TSA. One cannot bring liquids aboard the plane. One cannot bring certain innocuous items about it either.
In fact, one is forced to defer or cancel travel plans because of the air travel list of do’s and don’ts that borders on the insane.
Such is life in the post-9/11 world.
But these are just some of the effects felt by the populace.
As for America, after a series of 20-year long wars, that saw trillions of dollars wasted, millions killed or displaced, countries destroyed, occupied, and liberated in the name of democracy, America is coming to terms with its declining economic power.
It is being quickly replaced at the top of the geopolitical pyramid by the likes of China and India.
But what does this history lesson have to do with the consequences of the Crocus City Hall attack on Russia?
Context
Russia is currently engaged in a special military operation but not a state of war with Ukraine. At least not yet. Russia is leading an existential fight against the Collective West, which has armed, supported and backed Ukraine financially, diplomatically, and militarily.
Russia has been keeping up with the escalation race implemented and delivered by the West in Ukraine since 2014.
It has gone to lengths not to jump the gun, so to speak, and invade UKR in force with its entire Army because of multiple strategic and tactical reasons. It could have done so. But fact is that invading and conquering UKR from Kharkov to Lvov has never been in the books for Putin.
This was truly a special military operation on both sides.
Russia wanted to bring its population on board with the notion that it is fighting an existential war against the intruding West, seeking to strangle her economically and strategically. But it could not do it in one fell swoop. It had to raise awareness as to the mortal danger it is facing, incrementally.
Ukraine, acting as the proxy country of choice for NATO (i.e., America), was selected in this role, for its capacity to play an IN into Russia’s “near abroad” backyard. What is sad, is that the Ukrainian people, who are basically half Russian and half Russian-Polish culturally and genetically, had no say in the matter.
A minority of business interests associated themselves with a minority of nationalists reviving Bandera’s Nazi murderous ideals of racial purity, seeking to promote Washington’s geostrategic interests in the region. Their goal? That’s easy. Do Russia in and get away with it.
But after two years of trench warfare that saw the demise of hundreds of thousands of combatants on both sides, the displacement of the Ukrainian people, and the bilateral escalation of hostilities, the Western backers decided that something must be done to disrupt the status quo.
As Russia was winning the war by degrading the UKR army, the Collective West decided to change tactics.
They started instigating more and more drone’ and ground forces’ attacks on Russian territory.
Not only that. They contrived to convince their regional NATO allies to get in on the action.
They somehow managed to get the Romanian volunteers with the UKR army to cross the border into the Russian Federation.
In March 2024, the French President, Macron, said he will be sending French troops on the ground to Odessa.
This is, of course, insane.
The Russians know it. And I wager even the French know that.
But still, diplomats and politicians have to go on the “client’s” material so to speak. And if the client, in this case the French President misspeaks, because he is an imbecile, tough luck.
Btw, as Dr. House reminded us, the word imbecile comes from French. And how appropriate that is, eh, given that an imbecile is an effeminate man. I agree. Macron’s remarks were imbecilic.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, and whether the French will revisit Odessa after a 106 year hiatus or not, fact is that this constitutes an escalation with the potential to trigger a major confrontation between a NATO army playing offense in a non-NATO foreign land, and Russia.
Where this may lead, we cannot know. We can imagine however that one of the potential implications of the French troops exchanging fire with the Russians will lead to French military coffins being sent home.
In military terms, this is called a trip wire.
Throughout history, as recent as the late 1940s, the Soviets tried to cordon Berlin off from Allied occupied Germany. Stalin’s gambit did not work as the Americans instituted an airlift that saved Berliners from starvation. Truman had made it clear that any attempt to forcibly block the airlift would result in war. And so the Soviets stood by while America saved the day. Stalin chose not to trip the wire.
In 2023-2024, rumors started doing the Internet circuit about the possibility of French-Romanian-Moldavian troops invading Transnistria, a Russia-held enclave situated between Moldova and Ukraine home of the biggest arms depot in Eastern Europe until the 2014 UKR-RUS conflict. Again, Russia let it be known in non-ambiguous terms, that any such attempt to force the issue, would result in a state of war.
So, this is how trip wires operate. They are basically designated lines in the sand that signify that beyond a certain limit, a new operational reality begins.
Motives
What was the motivation behind the Crocus Hall terrorist attack?
To undermine the home front and introduce public distrust in the government and its elected leaders during wartime.
Furthermore, there are data supporting the fact that anti-immigrant sentiment has been stoked by this terror attack. Not only that. I suspect this might have been one of the intended outcomes sought by the masterminds behind this act of terror.
Whereas before the attack, Russia was a multi-ethnic diverse and tolerant society, welcoming and in fact embracing both Christianity, Islam and Mosaicism next to many others religions and faiths, or brands of agnosticism, in the wake of the Crocus City Hall attack, things are a-changing.
And not for the better, either.
There are multiple reports showing that the attack and its coverage by the Russian media have caused an increase in xenophobic and anti-immigrant attitudes among Russians. People are jumpy and for all the good reason.
You hear that certain people have just killed 135 of your peers, you stop giving a damn about political correctness and dispense with the modern niceties. You start judging things empirically.
And empirically, meaning on the face of it, four Tajiks got inside the mall with automatic rifles and killed and wounded 200+ people. After which they torched the place down and fled in their car towards the UKR border.
When people heard about this, they started thinking differently about people coming from Tajikistan and by extension, Central Asia.
And that’s how I realized that this was in fact, the most important outcome of this terror attack.
Whoever orchestrated this mass murder wanted to foster disunity, distrust, and ethnic hatred where none had been before. They wanted to make Russians hate all foreigners, and make them hate the peoples of the former USSR.
Post-scriptum
This impression has been reinforced by conversations with private people from Russia’s Central Asia’s near-abroad. Although, the emphasis is on Central Asians’ perception of RUS in the wake of the Special Military Operation. In short, there are some who fear Russia might be trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union.
I am not totally sure if this perception is widespread or just the valid concern of some individuals of private means. It could be that some more affluent Central Asians have had the opportunity to visit the West, and ignoring its obvious failings, imagine it for the Xanadu it never was.
In point of fact, the West is going down hard and fast.
Such is the folly of Man, that he ignores the hard reality, and projects his hopes and aspirations on countries that do not deserve to be put on a pedestal. The world is not ideal. It is Real. And because it is so, it does not suffer fools.
The Future will reveal the Truth anyway.
Götterdämmerung 