Vladimir Putin recognized for the first time, Monday March 25, that the attack near Moscow, claimed three days ago by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), had been committed by “radical Islamists” – while continuing to imply a link with Ukraine.
kyiv and the West have vigorously denied any relationship between the Ukrainian authorities and the perpetrators of this attack which, according to a new report announced Monday evening, left at least 139 dead and 182 injured.
More than two years after his large-scale offensive against kyiv, presented as an existential conflict, Vladimir Putin once again raised the theory of Ukrainian involvement, which he had already put forward this weekend, without mentioning the track jihadist.
“We know that [this] crime was committed by radical Islamists with an ideology that the Islamic world itself has been fighting against for centuries,” he told a government meeting.
“What interests us is the sponsor,” he added, calling for a “professional” investigation. "Why did the terrorists, after their crime, try to leave for Ukraine? Who was waiting for them there? Those who support the Kiev regime do not want to be accomplices of terror and supporters of terrorism, but many questions arise. pose,” he said.
“We wonder who benefits from this? This atrocity may be a new episode in the series of attempts by those who, since 2014, have been fighting our country through the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev,” he said.
“And the Nazis, it is well known, never disdained to use the dirtiest and most inhumane methods to achieve their goals,” he said, repeating his story claiming that the offensive in Ukraine aims to overthrow a “neo-Nazi regime”.
Also readMoscow attack: Zelensky accuses Putin of wanting to “shift the blame” onto Ukraine
Outstanding issues
Earlier, the Kremlin refused to comment on the IS claim. Three days after the tragedy, many questions remain unanswered, particularly regarding the identity and motivations of the four main suspects.
The latter, at least one of whom is from Tajikistan, in Central Asia, have already been placed in pre-trial detention until May 22. They face a life sentence.
Three other suspects were detained on Monday until the same date. According to the Ria Novosti news agency, it concerns a father and two of his sons, one of whom, born in Tajikistan, has Russian nationality.
Russian authorities announced on Saturday that they had arrested a total of eleven people.
Read alsoMoscow attack: Tajikistan, the weak link in Central Asia facing the jihadists
The Islamic State group, active in the Russian Caucasus and which Russia is fighting in Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack. But Russian authorities assure that the alleged killers were trying to reach Ukrainian territory after the attack.
kyiv denied any “link with the incident”. The United States also rejected the Russian president's version.
13 minute attack
The number of injured, all seriousness combined, reached 182, indicated Monday evening Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, during the government meeting with the Russian president.
According to him, according to the first elements of the investigation, 40 people were killed by bullets and 45 others as a result of the fire. The attack only lasted thirteen minutes, between 7:58 p.m. and 8:11 p.m., the time the attackers fled, according to Alexandre Bastrykin.
Allegations of torture against the arrested suspects emerged after videos emerged showing them with bloody faces. Another video, the authenticity of which has not been confirmed, appears to show one of the suspects having his ear cut off with a knife.
During the suspects' hearing in a Moscow court on Sunday evening, one of them had a white bandage on his ear while another arrived in a wheelchair.
“Total international cooperation”
One of the Russian opposition figures in exile, Leonid Volkov, denounced on Monday an attempt by the Russian security services to “divert attention from [their] helplessness and [their] failure” by showing these videos.
The attack comes just a few days after the re-election of Vladimir Putin, without opposition and for six years, when he had promised security to his fellow citizens in the midst of an upsurge in attacks from Ukraine on Russian soil.
The fight against terrorism "requires total international cooperation", Dmitri Peskov said on Monday, but this "does not exist at all".
French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, assured that he had offered Moscow "increased cooperation" on the subject, specifying that the branch of IS "involved" in Friday's attack had carried out "several attempts" in recent months on French soil.
With AFP and Reuters
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