Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB the Russian security service, accused on Tuesday the Ukrainian and Western secret services if there is facilitated the outrage last Friday in Moscow, which caused 139 deaths and has been claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State. Ukraine, which has repeatedly denied any link to Friday’s attack, dismissed Russia’s accusations as lies. But the presidential thesis has also been challenged from where the Kremlin least expected it. The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has said that the terrorists who attacked Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on Friday They initially tried to flee to Belarus, not Ukraine as Moscow has insisted.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the mass shooting, but both Vladimir Putin and his government continue to point out that, even if the perpetrators were radical Islamists, Ukraine and the West in general are behind it. Putin maintains that Ukraine had prepared a “window” for the attackers to cross the border, which is quite risky for criminals considering that that area is highly guarded because it is currently next to a war zone.
Lukashenko, un close ally of Putin for decades told reporters that the Belarusian and Russian security services had coordinated their actions when the suspects’ car fled southwest of Moscow. towards the Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine and Belarus, where it was intercepted.
Belarus, as Lukashenko explained, had quickly established border checkpoints. “That’s why they couldn’t enter Belarus. When they saw him, they turned around. and they headed to the border area between Ukraine and Russia,” Lukashenko told the state news agency BelTA.
But Moscow continues to subscribe to the thesis of the international conspiracy against Russia. “We think that the action was prepared by radical Islamists and that, of course, it was facilitated by Western special services, and that the Ukrainian special services are directly involved,” Bortnikov said.
“The person who ordered it has not been identified”
The head of the FSB has also stated that it has not yet been determined who ordered this attack. “We know and see who organized this process, who recruited and set specific tasks,” he assured, specifying that “who ordered it has not yet been identified.”
Bortnikov, 72, has also indicated that the suspects in the attack “planned to travel to Ukraine and that there they should be received as heroes.” He has offered no specific evidence for the claims, accusations that hardliners in Moscow could use to justify an escalation of the war in Ukraine while also explaining how Russian security services failed to prevent the attack despite being warned by the US.
The Russian media outlet SHOT published a video in which a journalist asked Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, if it was “ISIS or Ukraine.” “Of course, Ukraine,” Patrushev responded without stopping to speak. When asked later about the comment, he said there were “many” indications of Ukrainian involvement.
Patrushev and Bortnikov’s comments are an example of the story that the Kremlin is trying to impose at a time when, with Putin victorious in the elections and Ukraine experiencing supply problems, the Russian regime aspires to definitively bend the will of Kiev. redoubling their attacks and perhaps carrying out a second mobilization of recruits.
Eight suspects are now in preventive prisin after Russia took into custody on Tuesday a Kyrgyz-born man who may be involved in the mass shooting.