Nineteen life sentences in one go. Read more: russia closes crocus Even for Russia, that's impressive judicial productivity. This week, a Russian court wrapped up the Crocus City Concert Hall case with an efficiency that would make our French criminal courts green with envy — where it sometimes takes years to try a gas station robbery.
The March 2024 attack remains etched in memory: 150 dead, over 500 wounded, the worst jihadist attack in Russia in more than twenty years according to France24. A carnage that shook a country accustomed to projecting military force abroad, but apparently less skilled at protecting its own citizens in a concert hall.
Express Justice or Political Theater?
Read more: breaking analysis middleLet's look at the numbers: four shooters, fifteen accomplices, nineteen life sentences. Mathematically, it's perfect. Politically, it's even better. Putin can check the "justice served" box and move on. Problem solved, nothing to see here.
Except no. Condemning the executors is like arresting street dealers while ignoring the cartels. Useful for statistics, less effective for solving the underlying problem.
Compare this with our Western democracies. After the Bataclan attacks in France, it took six years to reach trial — and even then, with debates about state responsibility, intelligence failures, and systemic dysfunctions. Slow? Certainly. But at least we asked the real questions.
In the United States, after 9/11, they created the Department of Homeland Security, reformed the FBI, restructured intelligence. Excessive? Maybe. But at least they admitted something in the system needed changing.
In Canada, after the 2014 Ottawa attack, they strengthened parliamentary security and revised protocols. Discreet but effective.
The Russian Art of Not Asking Questions
And Russia? It condemns the guilty and closes the file. No commission of inquiry into FSB failures. No debate about public venue security. No questioning of budget priorities that favor tanks in Ukraine over metal detectors in Moscow.
Yet this is the same Russia that spends billions surveilling its political opponents, tracking "foreign agents," and censoring social media. But protecting a packed concert hall? Apparently, that was less of a priority.
The irony is delicious: a state that boasts of its military might, threatens NATO every Tuesday and invades its neighbors on weekends, proves incapable of preventing four armed men from massacring 150 people in its own capital.
The Real Questions Nobody's Asking
How did these men get into the venue? Where were the security services? Why were emergency exits blocked? How did Russian intelligence, so effective at eliminating enemies abroad, miss a terrorist cell on its own territory?
These questions will never be asked by a Russian tribunal. Too embarrassing. Too revealing of a regime's priorities that prefers controlling its citizens to protecting them.
In China, after the 2014 Kunming attack, Beijing drastically reinforced security in transport and public venues. Authoritarian? Yes. Effective? Undeniably. Since then, no major attacks.
Russia prefers the spectacle method: punish hard, communicate well, and hope that's enough to deter the next ones. Except terrorists don't watch trials on TV to decide their plans.
The True Cost of Systemic Impunity
The most tragic thing about this affair is that the 150 victims of Crocus City Hall didn't die because of four armed fanatics. They died because of a system that considers its citizens' security secondary to its geopolitical obsessions.
When a state spends more spying on its opponents than protecting its concerts, when it prefers funding mercenaries in Africa over metal detectors in Moscow, don't be surprised when terrorists find gaps.
The nineteen condemned will spend their lives in prison. Justice is served, the Kremlin will say. But the real responsibilities — those of decision-makers who let this massacre happen — will remain unpunished. And that's exactly how the next attack is being prepared.
VERDICT: 8/10 for judicial efficiency, 2/10 for political lucidity. Russia excels at punishing consequences but stubbornly refuses to tackle causes. Guaranteed result: we'll be talking about this subject again in a few years.