President Ramaphosa has Expressed his condolences to Russia over ISIL Attacks

President Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed his condolences to Russian President Vladimir Putin after 133 people were killed in an attack on Moscow.¹ The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is being blamed.² Other than to discuss these latest attacks on Russian soil, Ramaphosa will discuss with Putin the Ukraine-Russia conflict.² Director-General in the department of international relations Zane Dangor and Ramaphosa’s legal advisor NokuKhanya Jele were In Kyiv, Ukraine this week where they met with senior officials to discuss the peace process.³ Ramaphosa had led a delegation of six African leaders to Ukraine and Russia last year where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin.⁴ The President said he was sorry about the events on Saturday in Russia.^{4 (IOL)}

“We were shocked and saddened to hear that that up to 40 people, if not more have been killed, we pay our condolences to the people of Russia.⁵ I will be talking to president Putin in the next few days and intend to pay our condolences and, of course, we congratulate him on his victory and to discuss many other things, including the Ukraine-Russia war or conflict.⁶ “its always sad when so many people are killed in a terror attack. Our condolences go to the people of Russia during this difficult time for them,” said Ramaphosa during his campaign in the Eastern Cape on Saturday.^{7 (IOL)}

Earlier he addressed the youth on a number of issues.⁸ Ramaphosa said government will spend R300 billion in infrastructure projects across the country.^{9 (IOL)}

So, President Ramaphosa has expressed his apologies and regret over the attacks that occurred in Russia. As it is with the death toll climbing to 300 people, this could spell doom for Czar Vladimir Putin after his sham presidential election earlier this week. There will be mounting public anger against the despot, despite having fought a prolonged war in Ukraine, over his failure to have prevented the massacre. The question is why was Russia targeted now, during the “special military operation” (war) it is waging in Ukraine. The reason why Ramaphosa was so swift in condemning these attacks and expressing his shock is because Russia is a founding member of BRICS Plus. South Africa has close economic ties to the Great Russian Bear which is lashing out for survival. 

Putin’s Kremlin now has its work cut out for it. This is due to the war it is fighting in Ukraine as well as the recent attacks at a concert in Moscow which saw the deaths of the 133 people. The ordinary Russian will be demanding answers as to how the Kremlin’s intelligence, the FSB allowed something such as this to happen. Heads are bound to roll, over this embarrassing fiasco. Who will take the fall for what happened? This was an event that not only sent shock waves around the world but could be a nail in the coffin for a regime that prides itself in bringing stability and security to Russia if not democracy. These are events that should be closely watched.

Meanwhile President Ramaphosa has continued to make promises concerning the improvement of infrastructure, the questions being where will he get the money and why did he not focus on this before elections. Meanwhile Putin’s regime continues to question the involvement of the ISIL in the Moscow Concert Hall attack.^{10 (The Guardian)}

Russia has cast doubt on assertions by the United States that the Islamic State militant group was responsible for the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall outside Moscow which killed at least 137 people and injured 182 others.¹¹ On Sunday, the ISIL group released new footage of Friday’s deadly attack, corroborating the terror group’s claim to have masterminded the massacre, even as the regime in Moscow sort to place blame on Ukraine’s government which they denied.¹² Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has now called into question US assertions that ISIL, which once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, was behind the attack.¹³ “Attention – a question to the White House: Are you sure it’s ISIS ?¹⁴ Might you think again about that?” Zakharova said in an article for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.^{15 (The Guardian)}

There is a great amount of mystery surrounding the origin and rise of ISIL and its goals. It has officially been alleged that they are an off shoot of Al-Qaeda, in Iraq. No one knows where the founder of the group Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi came from. However, it has been alleged that this man who was supposedly killed on October 27 2019 is in fact an agent of Israeli Intelligence – Mossad – known as Simon Elliot. Who ever controls the group ISIL now, may just be another pawn of Mossad and the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)? The matter of who should bear direct responsibility for the attacks should be determined by an impartial investigation. How ever this is impossible given the current atmosphere in Russia. In any other more democratic society, the President would have stepped down. Not so for Putin who has been President for more than one term and is to set in his ways to step aside.

Its all a matter of time to be determined by faith.