The deadly attack on the well-known and commonly much anticipated Crocus City Hall venue carried away lives of over a hundred people (29.03.2024 11:20 EDT – 144) and left over a hundred (29.03.2024 11:20 EDT – 165) people more, some of whom were later pronounced deceased, in need of hospitalisation. Attack took place on a Friday evening of 22 March 2024 with an executionist precision and unlike Nord-Ost did not seek hostages. Four individuals armed with automatic weapons, explosives, and means of arson unleashed a murderous spree on the attendees of the music concert booked to be held that night at the Crocus City Hall venue.

Numerous groups and powers are explored to be behind the terrorist attack and while many acts of terror are prevented and intercepted in Russian Federation on regular bases, the Crocus City Hall can be seen as the deadliest attack since the Russia’s 2000s noted by Nord-Ost and Beslan. The rampant critique of Russian Federation’s presence in the Middle East along side the oppositional USA raises discussions of Salafi jihadist Islamic State’s interests to retaliate or rather direct its terror agenda against Russian Federation. ISIS explicit claiming of the attack falls under scrutiny of potential opportunism to gain political advantage. The current special operation, armed conflict in Ukraine and the conflicting situation with the Western powers in United States and Europe leave the concerns open to broader pool of participants in the executionist terror attack in the well-known venue near Moscow.

The news of extremist gun violence have became widespread issue across the world, but have been for the most part still new to the Russian Federation. The Crocus City Hall executionist attack, while could be compared to other prominent and not lacking condemnation attacks such as the Mumbai attack carried out by militant Islamits from Pakistan, potentially lacks context and sets the contemporary premise that terror can happen with a dissonance to the history of terrorism encountered to date. United States shootings bleed onto headlines. European countries, while less accultured to guns, encounter incidents carried out by the Islamic extremists, but also by a student carrying out the shooting as recent as in Prague on 23 December 2023. Serbia’s gun violence with recent request for public disarmament after the Belgrade school shooting 3 May 2023 followed consequentially and incidentally by several other incidents. Execution becoming the norm that unlike Nord-Ost can be streamlined and mediated to thousands of people worldwide in an online click as was seen from the audience gathered for Gradačac murders. Unlike Norway, New Zealand, or Pittsburgh those are not some infamous instances of violence, but complex processes where expression by violence became the norm and sets certain standards for the public’s exposure to violent content.

The lives are suspected to have been claimed by the non-Russian citizens who have received monetary compensation to carry out the attack, while captured shortly after fleeing the Crocus City Hall premises with an attempt to head for the boarder to leave the Russian Federation through the Russia-Ukraine boarder. Raised security following the aftermath of the terrorist attack adds to the counter-terrorism efforts already heightened by the Ukrainian ideology inspired attempts at armed attacks and acts of terrorism, paid acts of propaganda creation, as well as malicious phone calls across the Russian Federation including the sensitive to particular terrorism layout Crimea and the dangers of the Ukraine border proximate Belgorod.