Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB (formerly KGB), claims that the Ukrainian intelligence services (SBU) facilitated the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, on the outskirts of Moscow, on March 22, and the arrested Islamists did so. prepared, but “who ordered it has not yet been identified.” For Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council, it was “of course, Ukraine.” Shortly after, the Basmani district court, which is handling the case, declared the head of the SBU, Vasil Maliuk, wanted.
After Vladimir Putin on Tuesday admitted responsibility for the Islamic State (without naming it) and continued targeting Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was asked how it was possible for a Jew like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to ally himself with the Islamic State. Peskov responded that he is “a peculiar Jew.”
When will the Kremlin respond to the “Ukrainian tip,” after Vladimir Putin admitted responsibility for the Islamic State without naming it? According to Oleksyi Aréstovich, Zelensky’s disgraced former advisor, the detainees “still have ears and fingers left for two or three interrogations.” Zelensky called Putin a “cynical and sick beast.”
Another arrest was announced yesterday. The eighth, according to the Russian media, although Alexánder Bórtnikov continued talking yesterday about 11 detainees but without specifying who they were. Alisher Kasimov, 33 years old, a Kyrgyz nationalized as Russian in 2014, father of three children and owner of a cafeteria, would have rented an apartment, through an advertising portal, to the Tajik Shamsidin Fariduni and two other individuals who said they were going to work in the construction. Fariduni is also the one who would have bought the white Renault from Dilovar Islomov, sentenced to two months of preventive detention with his brother and his father. He is also the man apparently photographed days earlier at Crocus Hall, where he reportedly spoke with employees, and the same one who appears on video being tortured with electricity to his genitals after being detained.
But all of these are just fragments of the puzzle. Yesterday, five days after the terrorist attack, authorities had still not offered a sequential account of the events to the shocked Russian public. 139 people died and 182 were injured, 22 of whom were still in serious condition yesterday (two children) and 9 in critical condition.
The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrikin, has said that the attack lasted 13 minutes, between 7:58 p.m. and 8:11 p.m. local time. More than 5,000 people were evacuated from the site and 100 were rescued. There were four attackers and they fled mixed in with the crowd. They had used semi-automatic rifles and flammable liquid with which they caused a terrible fire that caused the roof dome to collapse. The exact number of missing persons is unknown. The Ministry of Emergency Situations finished its work yesterday, removing more than 900 cubic meters of debris. Officially nothing else emerged yesterday.
Russian media (some of them declared undesirable organizations) are trying to reconstruct the events, and among other issues they point out that the attackers left their car in the parking lot and burst into shooting into a general access and then into the large lobby of the Crocus City Hall. Security was provided by a few (three?) sworn guards from the Crocus Profi company equipped only with batons and stun guns. It has not been explained what became of them, although some version says that they went into hiding. Nor were any explanations given as to what action the police station next to the building had or did not have. Apparently, the fire exit doors were closed, and there are doubts about the extinguishing and smoke evacuation system…
Finally, the BBC Russian channel reported that, according to its sources, two of the terrorists were killed. One of them in Bryansk, during the group’s arrest, and another in the auditorium itself, which perhaps would coincide with a first version that said that one of them was immobilized while changing the magazine of his weapon by a man with military experience, a such Pavel, who will be decorated one of these days.
