\n<\/p>\n
Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.<\/p>\n
Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia\u2019s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years.<\/p>\n
The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin\u2019s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia\u2019s survival \u2014 and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,\u201d Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. \u201cAnd suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there\u2019s this demonstrative humiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. It took him more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in the country\u2019s south, which claimed 334 lives. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.<\/p>\n
Instead, Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and said the assailants had acted \u201cjust like the Nazis,\u201d who \u201conce carried out massacres in the occupied territories\u201d \u2014 evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur common duty now \u2014 our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country \u2014 is to be together in one formation,\u201d Mr. Putin said at the end of a five-minute speech, trying to conflate the fight against terrorism with his invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The question is how much of the Russian public will buy into his argument. They might ask whether Mr. Putin, with the invasion and his conflict with the West, truly has the country\u2019s security interests at heart \u2014 or whether he is woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.<\/p>\n
The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist attack is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings and tightening security, he dismissed them as \u201cprovocative statements.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,\u201d Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia\u2019s domestic intelligence agency, referring to the Western warnings. After the attack on Friday, some of his exiled critics have cited his response as evidence of the president\u2019s detachment from Russia\u2019s true security concerns.<\/p>\n
Rather than keeping society safe from actual, violent terrorists, those critics say, Mr. Putin has directed his sprawling security services to pursue dissidents, journalists and anyone deemed a threat to the Kremlin\u2019s definition of \u201ctraditional values.\u201d<\/p>\n
A case in point: Just hours before the attack, state media reported that the Russian authorities had added \u201cthe L.G.B.T. movement\u201d to an official list of \u201cterrorists and extremists\u201d; Russia had already outlawed the gay rights movement<\/a> last year. Terrorism was also among the many charges prosecutors leveled<\/a> against Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who died last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a country in which counterterrorism special forces chase after online commenters,\u201d Ruslan Leviev, an exiled Russian military analyst, wrote in a social media post<\/a> on Saturday, \u201cterrorists will always feel free.\u201d<\/p>\n Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin\u2019s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.<\/p>\n Olga Skabeyeva, a state television host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had found assailants \u201cwho would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS.\u201d Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT television network, wrote that reports of Islamic State responsibility amounted to a \u201cbasic sleight of hand\u201d by the American news media.<\/p>\n On a prime-time television talk show on the state-run Channel 1, Russia\u2019s best-known ultraconservative ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, declared that Ukraine\u2019s leadership and \u201ctheir puppet masters in the Western intelligence services\u201d had surely organized the attack.<\/p>\n It was an effort to \u201cundermine trust in the president,\u201d Mr. Dugin said, and it showed regular Russians that they had no choice but to unite behind Mr. Putin\u2019s war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n