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Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday blamed the deadliest attack on the country in more than a decade on Islamist militants, as he also tried to pin responsibility on Ukraine.
Though he acknowledged the attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday was conducted by “radical Islamists”, Putin also said the “evil act can only be another link in a whole chain of attempts by those who have been fighting with our country since 2014 via the Nazi Kyiv regime”.
Putin’s comments came after French President Emmanuel Macron and EU officials called on him not to use the attack on the concert venue, which has been claimed by the Isis militant group, as a pretext to expand the war in Ukraine.
Macron said it would be “cynical and counterproductive for Russia itself and the security of its residents to use this context [of the attack] to turn against Ukraine”.
Jihadi group Isis claimed responsibility after gunmen killed at least 137 people on Friday in the Crocus City Hall, a concert venue on the outskirts of the Russian capital. Four suspects appeared in court on Sunday and were placed into pre-trial custody.
The US and other western nations have said Isis was responsible for the attack.
Putin said the Russian authorities were investigating the attack, and he was interested in “who ordered it” and “who benefits”.
He did not provide any evidence to support his statement that Ukraine was involved.
“We also see that the US is trying to convince its satellites and other countries that according to their information, there is allegedly no trace of Kyiv’s involvement in the terror attack in Moscow,” Putin said. “That the attack was conducted by the Muslim followers of Isis.”
Macron said that “the information available to us, to our [intelligence] services, as well as to our main partners, indicates indeed that it was an entity of the Islamic State that executed this attack”.
Ukrainian officials have called Putin’s insinuations absurd and vehemently denied any involvement in the attack.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this was a ruse by Putin to create a pretext for escalating his war.
In Brussels, officials said they were concerned by Putin’s attempts to establish a link between Kyiv and Friday’s events.
“There is no proof whatsoever that Ukraine was in any way linked to this attack,” said Peter Stano, European Commission foreign policy spokesperson.
“We call on the Russian government not to use this terrorist attack in Moscow as a pretext or as motivation to increase the illegal aggression against Ukraine, nor to use it as a pretext for the increase of internal repressions,” Stano added.
Three of the suspects detained by the Russian authorities were identified as citizens of Tajikistan, the former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan. Tajiks make up a large share of Isis-Khorasan, or Isis-K, according to experts who monitor the group.
The attack has raised concerns over a potential resurgence of Islamist terrorism in Russia, which prior to the launch of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had been the most critical domestic security threat for the country’s intelligence services.
“Let me recall one thing: this is not the first terrorist attack on Russian soil. So far, none of the major terrorist attacks in Russia have been clarified, investigated properly,” Stano told reporters. “So this leaves a lot of questions open, also about the attitudes of the authorities.”
Russia, meanwhile, continued its offensive against Ukraine on Monday, with Kyiv rocked by explosions from air defences intercepting Russian ballistic missiles.
A Financial Times reporter witnessed Kyiv’s air defences shoot down one of the missiles over the city. A second blast rang out moments afterwards and plumes of smoke were visible over the city.
The attack, which came without warning, sent residents running for cover in bomb shelters and underground metro stations.
Several people were wounded and two buildings were badly damaged by exploding missile debris, said Kyiv city military chief Serhiy Popko.
The attack was the fourth in the capital in the past five days, in which Russia has launched hundreds of missiles and drones, targeting energy infrastructure, security installations and residential areas.
Kyiv has also stepped up its long-range drone attacks deep inside Russian territory, mainly aimed at striking oil refineries in an attempt to stifle Moscow’s war effort.
But over the weekend, Ukrainian missiles also struck two more Russian warships as well as a communications centre and other facilities used by Moscow’s Black Sea fleet in occupied Crimea.
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