With almost more than two years of armed conflict and enmity to the bone, Russia ignores that a branch of the Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terrible attack near Moscow, or that senior government officials of Kyiv have denied that they are involved in the killing. The Russian authorities were yesterday investigating the Ukrainian track, which seems to be their main theory to investigate and find those responsible for an attack that left 133 dead and more than 140 injured. In the first public appearance after the events, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to Ukraine as an accomplice. He promised revenge and assured that, when they were arrested, the terrorists “fled to Ukraine”.
The head of the Kremlin confirmed the arrest of 11 people, as the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, had informed him hours earlier. At the time of the arrest, Putin pointed out, the bandits “were trying to hide and were heading towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a hole had been prepared on the Ukrainian side through which they could cross the state border” , Putin said.
Among those arrested are the four armed men who on Friday, March 22, armed with automatic weapons, grenades and dressed in camouflage clothing, entered the Crocus City shopping center, located in the municipal district of the city of Krasnogorsk, northwest of the Russian capital and only 25 kilometers from the Kremlin.
It was eight o’clock in the evening in Moscow (two hours less in Barcelona) when, after entering the compound, they began the bloody orgy, shooting everyone they saw with assault rifles. They then burst into the Crocus City Hall concert hall, where about 6,000 people were waiting for the concert by the Russian rock group Piknik to begin.
There the carnage continued. “They were shooting from everywhere”, said a witness to the Russian medium RBK. In video footage released Friday, people can be seen sitting down and then running in panic for the exits as gunshots from powerful repeating weapons rang out over screams. Several explosions were also heard and the attackers caused a fire that surrounded that part of the complex and made it difficult to evacuate hundreds of people who had been trapped there. The auditorium was completely burned and part of the roof collapsed.
Telegram channel Baza reported that 28 corpses were found in a bathroom and 14 more in a stairwell. “Many mothers hugged their children,” he said.
Putin assured that the investigators had identified and arrested all the executors of the attack. “Terrorists, murderers and beasts, who do not have and cannot have nationality, a fate awaits them: revenge and oblivion. They have no future”, promised the Russian president.
Russian lawmaker Aleksandr Khinxtein said the attackers fled in a white Renault Symbol vehicle that was stopped by police on Friday night in Bryansk Oblast, about 340 kilometers southwest of Moscow. The car did not obey and during a pursuit it overturned. Two men were arrested. In the car, they found a pistol, a magazine for an assault rifle and passports from Tajikistan, one of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
The Russian Ministry of the Interior assured that the terrorists were foreigners and denied the information that had appeared in some media according to which they had obtained Russian passports.
Putin described the attack as “bloody and barbaric” and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and the dead. He recalled that the dozens of victims of the attack were peaceful and innocent people.
He further expressed gratitude to the doctors, rescue teams and firemen for doing their best to save people’s lives. Sunday, March 24, is an official day of mourning throughout Russia, the president announced. The mayor of the capital, Serguei Sobianin, canceled all events that could gather a large number of people, sports and cultural included. Similar measures have been taken by Moscow Province, Saint Petersburg and other cities and regions of the country.
According to data from the Investigative Committee, which in Russia is responsible for investigating the most serious crimes, the number of dead reached 133 yesterday. The Health Services of the Moscow Province, on which Krasnogorsk is administratively dependent, counted number of injured in more than 140.
Prominent figures of the Ukrainian Government denied, both Friday and yesterday, Kyiv’s involvement in the bloody assault. “Undoubtedly, Ukraine has nothing to do with the shooting or explosions at Crocus City Hall. It doesn’t make any sense,” said Mikhailo Podoliak, adviser to the Office of the Ukrainian Presidency, on the X social network. And he added that “Ukraine has never resorted to terrorist methods” to fight Russia.
“Despite the fact that the world warned of this kind of terrorist attack on the territory of the Russian Federation, the Putin regime did nothing to prevent it or is involved in the organization”, he said yesterday on the television of the his country Andrí Yussov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence (GUR). “We consider these accusations a provocation by the Kremlin to encourage anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society, strengthen the mobilization of Russian citizens to join the criminal aggression against our state and discredit Ukraine before the international community,” he said on Friday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
On Friday, a group called the Islamic State of Greater Khorassan (or EIIS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack, and yesterday released an image of the four alleged shooters at the Krasnogorsk concert hall. In a non-explanatory image, released by the Amaq agency, IS’s main propaganda channel, four people appear with half their faces covered, caps and pixelated eyes in front of an Islamic State flag.
But Russia seemed to insist on the Ukrainian track yesterday. The FSB said the commandos had contacts with Ukraine and were arrested near the border. Neither the security agency nor Putin publicly offered evidence of links between the terrorists and Kyiv.
Russian deputy Andrei Kartapolov, who chairs the Duma’s Defense Committee, said that if Ukraine is involved, then Russia will have to apply a “dignified, clear and concrete” response on the battlefield.
Former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, now vice-president of the Security Council and one of the hawks of Russian politics, spoke in similar terms, promising the organizers of the attack “retaliation terror”. “If it is determined that they are terrorists of the Kyiv regime, it is impossible to deal with them and their ideological inspirers in any other way. All must be found and ruthlessly destroyed as terrorists, including the officials of the state that committed this atrocity. Death for death,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
