What Does the Moscow Terror Attack Say About Vladimir Putin?

In the wake of the Moscow terror attack, outlets across the spectrum have published opinions on President Vladimir Putin’s leadership.

A Matter of Trust: Marc Champion of Bloomberg (Lean Left bias) cited the reported warning the U.S. sent the Kremlin about an extremist threat and Putin’s downplaying of it as a barometer for the lack of trust between the two nations. Champion argued Putin “fell victim to paranoia” as a result. He also noted that the Islamic State likely sees Russia as part of the “Christian West” and has a similar distaste for its standing as a global power as it does for that of the U.S.

Ukraine Obsession: Hanna Notte, writing for Financial Times (Center bias), claimed “Putin’s Ukraine obsession” has “blinded” him to other national security threats at home. Notte claimed that in the early 2000s, Putin exaggerated al-Qaeda's links to Chechen fighters as a way to get closer to the U.S., but that his paranoia has now left Russia vulnerable to the “real dangers… lurking abroad and at home.”

Power Grabbing: Gary Kasparov, writing for The Wall Street Journal (Lean Right bias), likened the wake of the attack to that of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that Putin used to platform his presidential campaign. Kasparov, who blamed the Biden administration for “a cowardly new world order,” accused Putin of “creating the conditions to radicalize the Russian population further” by invading Ukraine and using the Moscow attack to “fulfill his new mobilization orders.”