According to Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, she finds it “extremely hard to believe” that Islamic State could have carried out last Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall. The attack resulted in the deaths of at least 143 people.
Zakharova restated Moscow’s claims, which it hasn’t yet shown proof for. These claims assert that the attack on Crocus City Hall, the worst Russia has seen in twenty years, was orchestrated by Ukraine.
The mass shooting on Friday claimed the lives of 143 people, according to a list of names released by Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. Previous government totals had indicated that 139 people had died.
The atrocity has been attributed to Islamic State. According to U.S. authorities, their intelligence indicates that Islamic State Khorasan, the network’s Afghan branch, was responsible for carrying it out. Ukraine has consistently denied any involvement in the incident.
However, Zakharova claimed that the West hastily assigned culpability on the Islamic State, often known as ISIS. This was done in an attempt to shift the blame away from Ukraine and the Western countries that back Kyiv.
“In order to ward off suspicions from the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS, pulled an ace out of their sleeve, and literally a few hours after the terrorist attack, the Anglo-Saxon media began disseminating precisely these versions,” she continued.
Although he acknowledged that Islamist militants were responsible for the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin also hinted that Ukraine may have benefited from it.
He claimed that before the gunmen were apprehended in western Russia on Friday night, someone on the Ukrainian side had set up a “window” for them to cross the border.
However, on Tuesday, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus stated that the gunmen had first attempted to enter his nation. They abandoned their plan upon realizing that the borders with Belarus had been closed. Subsequently, they were moving towards Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), stated that he believed the United States, Britain, and Ukraine were all complicit in the attack on Moscow. He accused them of involvement in the incident. The accusations were made amidst escalating tensions between Russia and these nations.
Responding on social networking platform X, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron stated: “Russia’s claims about the West and Ukraine on the Crocus City Hall attack are utter nonsense.”
At a security conference in Kyiv, Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, stated he thought Russian officials had knowledge of plans for a significant attack since at least mid-February.
Budanov, whose remarks were picked up by Ukrainian media, stated that the authorities refrained from commenting. They either misjudged the attack’s magnitude or aimed to place blame on Ukraine and proceed with firing officials. According to him, this was their motive.
Following the shooting, a U.S. official stated that Moscow had received warnings from Washington about the potential for an assault in recent weeks. Additionally, the official emphasized the need for heightened security measures in light of these warnings.
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