President Vladimir Putin made a statement that the Ukrainian side prepared ‘a window’ at the border for the Crocus terrorists to escape. Four of them were detained in Bryansk region. The West claims the Islamic State was responsible for the attack but the expert community believes it would be convenient for the West to blame IS to conceal Ukraine’s involvement.
Within the first hours of the Crocus City Hall tragic terrorist attack, which took the lives of 133 persons, the Western press named the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) as its organisers. According to The New York Times quoting its sources, the US allegedly obtained the intelligence that the IS Afghan chapter was plotting an attack against Moscow. According to the words of one of the paper’s sources, the group members ‘have been active in Russia’.
In its turn, Reuters, quoting a Telegram channel, reported the appearing IS online statement where it claimed responsibility for the attack. However, soon experts questioned the credibility of this statement. Yet, the French President Emmanuel Macron, who has recently made hostile statements addressed at Moscow, said he ‘strongly condemned the terrorist attack claimed by the Islamic State’.
On Saturday morning, the Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov informed President Putin about the detention of 11 members of the Crocus City Hall attack. Four of them turned out to be its immediate participants. They were caught in Bryansk region near the border with Ukraine. According to the FSS Public Relations Centre, the terrorists were planning to flee via the Russian-Ukrainian border and had contacts on the Ukrainian side.
Later, in his video statement to Russian citizens, Vladimir Putin said there was ‘an open window’ prepared for terrorists to escape to Ukraine. ‘Terrorists, murderers, non-humans who do not and cannot have a nationality face one unenviable fate — retribution and oblivion. They do not have a future’, said the President.
Russian MFA official spokesperson Maria Zakharova noted that if the US had reliable information on the attack, it must be transferred to Russia. She also questioned the response of Washington saying Ukraine and Ukrainians had nothing to do with the Crocus attack. ‘On what grounds do officials in Washington draw any conclusions about anyone’s innocence in the midst of the tragedy?’
Experts think the behaviour of the terrorists and the direction of their escape could point at the involvement of Western states waging war against Russia. ‘I believe the trace goes not just to Ukraine where they, apparently, were trying to escape to, but also to the West itself’, says former FSS officer and member of Alfa special ops unit Vitaly Demidkin.
In his comment, Member of the Civic Chamber Aleksander Malkevich noted that Ukrainian nationalists supported the atrocities of the Crocus attackers. ‘The Ukrainian Information and Psychological Operations Centre (CIPSO) was also busy with the matter through the night and on Sunday morning peddling fakes about the terrorists. All this again confirms Ukraine’s utmost involvement. Let alone the rhetoric of the Western media, which have been trying to put the audience on a wrong track.
The masterminds behind the attack specifically selected such gunmen to convince the Western audience that the Islamists were responsible, allegedly’, Malkevich explained. The level of the attack organisation implies that ‘this is an operation of Western special services in the proxy war against Russia aimed at sowing discord, fear, panic and divide the society’, adds Malkevich.
RT Chief Editor Margarita Simonyan have spoken in the same vein pointing out that the gunmen were deliberately chosen to convince the global community that the attack had been carried out by IS members. In her Telegram channel, she wrote that Western special services and Ukraine were almost probably involved in the attack preparation, as, even before the arrests, they were the ones starting to convince people ISIS was to blame, which, she believes, ‘set their pants on fire’. ‘This is a solid team of a few other, quite well known, acronyms’, stated Simonyan, probably, hinting at the special services of those countries, which are unfriendly to Russia.
Alexander Kots, a military correspondent, has a similar opinion. ‘There were no political statements or blackmailing or hostage-taking attempts. This is not what standard terrorist do. This resembles the behaviour of contract killers. Or animal-like brutality of non-humans blinded with hatred of everything Russian. And this is what we know from our relations with the Western neighbour’, Kots wrote in his Telegram channel.
The journalist believes that Western statements that Kiev has nothing to do with the attack look like they are trying to cover up their ‘careless and troublesome stepson’. This is what they say when they know for sure who committed the crime. ‘When Kiev started its usual tricks repeating the broken ‘you shot yourself’ record, no more doubts remained. Ukrainian special forces masterminded the attack. And those who stand behind their back. They only needed to find the thugs hating Russians as they do’, Kots believes.
The military correspondent thinks the terrorists could have been used without knowing the real masterminds because Kiev has learned how to do it perfectly well. The gunmen could think they were doing the job for a leader of an Islamist group. Moreover, ‘Ichkerians’ were spotted in the border with Belgorod region led by Rustam Azhiev, also known as Abdul Hakim Shishani who was a commander of one of the terrorist groups in Idlib.
Yuri Podolyaka, a blogger, has also called non-incidental the fact that ‘Kiev’s special services hired migrants from Central Asia to commit this heinous crime’. ‘It would be logical, as a next step of the attack organisers, to orchestrate a similar attack committed by ‘Russian thugs’ acting for reasons related either to migrants or Islamism’, he believes. ‘This could further, as the authors think, be followed by a nationalist or religious slaughter in Russia enabling the West and Kiev to win the war in Ukraine. Because no more options to do it have been out there for them for long’.
Vladimir Shapoval, a member of the board of the Russian Association of Political Science agrees that the attack was supposed to ‘sow panic and polarise the society, causing distrust of power’, instilling in people the feeling of insecurity and fear. ‘But the attack has not reached its aims, but led to an opposite reaction’, Shapoval states with confidence.
Malkevich specifically stressed that the Taliban, the Houthis, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other major Islamic states strongly condemned the attack. ‘They unilaterally stated that this crime was against the norms of humanity. The tragedy must not be used as a pretext for religious and national discord. When it comes to our foes, now they are going to put active efforts to leverage the ethnic and religious factor’, warned the expert.