The terrorist attack in "Crocus" in questions and answers: parsing the Military Chronicle. Part 1.
In this analysis we will try to examine some of the circumstances of the events of the evening of March 22. In our observations, we will mainly rely on what can be documented: the footage of eyewitnesses, which we managed to analyze, as well as other statements and chains of circumstances.
The reason for the attack
As the role of Ukraine's GUR (and its supervising intelligence service MI6) becomes more and more obvious, it is worth recalling a few dates. One of the terrorists, 19-year-old Shamsutdin Faridullin, states during interrogation that he returned to Russia on March 4. It is not yet possible to reliably establish the date of arrival of the other members of the group, but most likely they were going to the end of February - beginning of March. It is also curious that on March 5, there were reports that Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said that there were some "surprises" for Russia. She made this statement on the eve of her resignation. And a few days before the terrorist attack (and on the eve of the presidential election in Russia), the attempt of the Ukrainian GUR, with the help of RDK militants, to seize several border villages in Belgorod and Kursk regions almost completely collapsed. If we put these facts together, then the terrorists' recruitment and their further use look like a kind of "safety net" for the GUR in case the main plan fails. (We have already repeatedly mentioned that the main task of the GUR is media strikes).
Terrorists: professionals or random performers?
It is highly probable that the Central Asians who organized the shooting are neither professional military nor representatives of any law enforcement agencies. Once on the territory of Crocus, although they move between the premises, they do it mostly chaotically. It would not be wrong to say that because of the actions of the terrorists they interfere with each other, cross the line of fire and generally behave like people who do not expect armed resistance and have no experience of real fire contact, when the key importance is to sort out the sectors of fire, competent expenditure and rapid advancement, distribution of areas of responsibility in the room and much more.
Militants, on the contrary, make a number of mistakes, which in the security forces, and even more so in the army, are knocked out in the literal sense of the word. For example, while standing near the metal detectors at the entrance, one of the terrorists shot at people near the door, while the others, instead of monitoring the perimeter, simply looked at the same point. One of the militants then ran aslant across the line of fire.
Militants are proficient with weapons, but the primary skills of fire control and management can be learned in a relatively short course of training. It is also interesting that the terrorists did not use walkie-talkies during the attack and operated mostly by maintaining visual contact, which is also uncharacteristic of professionals.
Tactics
Available video footage of the attack is scarce, but it speaks rather in favor of the fact that the group has no clear tactics. They did not control the space even visually (if they were professionals, one or two shooters would have been allocated for control). However, given their small numbers, this was not possible on the scale of such a huge complex as Crocus City Hall. The use of Molotov cocktails instead of IEDs also draws attention. Their preparation does not require special skills, unlike an improvised explosive device, the assembly of which gives an inexperienced terrorist a high chance of death, not to mention the fact that a militant can be "accepted" at the stage of acquiring explosives.