Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday that it was very difficult to believe that Islamic State could have been able to attack a concert hall in Moscow last Friday, killing at least 143 people.
Zakharova said again that Moscow believes Ukraine was responsible for the attack on the Crocus City Hall, even though they haven’t shown any proof. This was the worst attack Russia has had in 20 years.
The Russian government’s emergency department released a list of names showing that 143 people died in a mass shooting last Friday. Before, the official count said 139 people died.
The Islamic State said they caused the massacre, and US officials think it was their Afghanistan group, Islamic State Khorasan, based on their information. Ukraine keeps saying it didn’t do the attack.
Zakharova said the West blamed Islamic State to take the focus away from Ukraine and the Western governments that support Kyiv.
“They needed to make the Western countries trust them, so they used ISIS as a distraction. The media started spreading this right after the attack,” she said.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that the attack was done by Islamic militants. He also hinted that Ukraine may have benefited from the attack and might have been involved in it.
He said that someone in Ukraine had made a way for the gunmen to escape to Russia before they were caught on Friday night.
On Tuesday, the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, said that the gunmen first tried to enter his country but then went to Ukraine instead when they saw that the borders of Belarus were closed.
The head of Russia’s FSB security agency said that he thinks Ukraine, the United States, and Britain were part of the attack in Moscow.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron replied on social media platform X, saying: “Russia’s claims about the West and Ukraine on the Crocus City Hall attack are complete nonsense. ”
The leader of Ukraine’s main intelligence department, Kyrylo Budanov, said at a conference in Kyiv that he thinks Russian officials knew about plans for a big attack since at least mid-February.
Budanov, who was mentioned in Ukrainian media, said that the authorities didn’t say anything about the attack because they either didn’t realize how big it was, or they wanted to blame Ukraine and fire some officials.
After the shooting, a US official said the US had told Russia recently that an attack might happen.