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Russian National Guard soldiers near Crocus City Hall
Photo: Vitaly Smolnikov/dpa
Around 8:30 p.m. on Friday evening, panic broke out in the popular Crocus City Hall event center near Moscow. Shortly before the band “Piknik” concert, shots were suddenly heard, then the sounds of explosions. A fire breaks out.
»They shoot. They shoot machine guns. "Some people are shooting," a man's excited voice can be heard in a shaky video circulating on social networks. The shots don't stop, they echo loudly in the large hall.
Russian authorities later spoke of a terrorist attack with 60 dead and at least 145 injured (read the minutes of the events here).
A few hours after the first shots, the terrorist militia “Islamic State” distributed a letter of responsibility. Kiev representatives rejected suspicions of Ukrainian involvement. The USA recently warned of a possible terrorist attack in Russia and, in an initial reaction, warned not to establish a connection with Ukraine.
No right to “grant absolution in advance”
This has now been criticized by the Russian Foreign Ministry. The fact that the USA is exonerating Ukraine as the possible mastermind of the attack on the Moscow concert hall while the tragedy is still ongoing raises questions, a spokeswoman for the ministry said on Russian television on Friday evening.
"If the USA or another country has reliable facts, they should provide them to the Russian side," said the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. If there were no such facts, neither the White House nor anyone else would have the right to grant absolution in advance.
Terror expert Peter Neumann from King's College in London believes IS's letter of responsibility is genuine. Even before the Russian Foreign Ministry's announcement, he had warned about fake news circulating on Russian Telegram channels. It says that the IS communication was fake. “Probably to spin the narrative that Ukraine was responsible for the attack,” said Neumann.
The letter of responsibility alone is not a 100% reliable indication, but in conjunction with the other evidence, he considers it "pretty certain that it has something to do with IS," said Neumann. He considers it very unlikely that IS would claim responsibility for the attack without actually being behind it.
Neumann refers in particular to the IS offshoot in Afghanistan, which calls itself the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISPK) and has been waging an armed conflict with the militant Islamist Taliban for several years. The ISPK recruits very actively in ex-Soviet states in Central Asia and the Caucasus and is also associated with plans for Christmas attacks in Cologne, Vienna and Madrid.
vet/dpa