Opinion: Jihad reloaded - the IS attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall marks a new global campaign of terror

The 22 March attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow, claimed by an Islamic State affiliate and carried out by gunmen from Central Asia, killed 144 people. And yet according to Vladimir Putin, who continues to insist without evidence that Ukraine had a hand in the incident, “Russia cannot be the target of terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.” In reality, however, the mass casualty event near Moscow was part of a broader campaign to rebrand the Islamic State as the world's most dangerous terrorist organization, writes Antonio Giustozzi, a senior fellow at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI) and an IS researcher. The attack by the Afghan offshoot of the Islamic State, known as IS-K (the Khorasan branch), serves more ambitious goals than settling scores with Russia for its participation in the war in Syria or its friendships with the Taliban and Iran. Russia has proven to be easy prey for radical Islamists because of its flawed law enforcement system and proximity to Central Asia.