On March 7, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert.

“The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts,” it read. US citizens were advised to “avoid” such events.

On Tuesday, during remarks to the FSB, Vladimir Putin accused the US of “obvious blackmail” in connection with the warning, which he said was issued “to intimidate and destabilize” the Russian populace. He also said Ukraine was plotting attacks inside the country and intended to target public venues where Russians congregate “in large numbers.”

Less than four days later, a team of gunmen wearing camouflage opened fire in Crocus City Hall — a 7,000-capacity venue which once hosted Donald Trump’s Miss Universe pageant — killing at least 40 and injuring more than 100, in what appeared to be Moscow’s deadliest terrorist attack since the Nord-Ost siege.

The incident occurred as Russians lined up for a concert. A fire ensued, reportedly trapping some concertgoers inside the building, where the roof was on the verge of collapsing.

ISIS-K, the group’s Afghanistan branch, later claimed responsibility. US officials confirmed the claim, presumably based on the same intelligence that prompted the Embassy to issue the security alert earlier this month.

In the minutes after the attack, Volodymyr Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak disavowed any knowledge of, or participation in, the massacre. Russia carried out a sweeping attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure hours before the melee in Moscow.

In two prior high profile incidents — the assassination of Daria Dugina and the sabotage of the Nord Stream — the US eventually came to the tentative conclusion that Ukraine or its associates were responsible, despite official denials from Kyiv.

Putin has, at times, been accused of committing acts of terrorism against his own people for political purposes and as a pretext for military action. Copious evidence suggests Putin might’ve murdered 300 Russians in a series of apartment bombings blamed on Chechen militants in 1999, for example. Similarly, world leaders, in their zeal to enlist Putin in the war on terror after 9/11, gave short shrift to the possibility that Putin (through the FSB) played a role in staging the Moscow theater hostage crisis which ended with at least 120 Russian civilian deaths in 2002.

In the immediate aftermath of Friday’s shootings, John Kirby told the press it wasn’t Ukraine. Maria Zakharova, Putin’s de facto propaganda minister, shot back: “On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of a tragedy about someone’s innocence?” she wondered.

Friday’s bloodletting came at a critical juncture for the Kremlin. The Russian military has the upper-hand in Ukraine, however tenuously, and Putin just cemented his grip on power via another sham election.

The concern, obviously, is that irrespective of who was responsible for Friday’s concert attack — ISIS claim or not — Putin would find a way to blame Ukraine or at least to leverage the incident to galvanize public support for the war, or to excuse a further crack down on domestic dissent or even some new “special military operation” somewhere else.

One way or another, the Crocus City Hall attacks could be a pivotal moment in Russian history. Putin isn’t someone to pass up an opportunity. And as calamitously grim as Friday’s events in Moscow most assuredly were, they’re an opportunity for the Kremlin.