Xavier Colás

Updated Tuesday, March 26, 2024-19:36

  • Attack Putin admits that the Moscow attack was the work of "radical Islamists" and insists on the connection with Ukraine

Alexander Bortnikov,

head of the FSB

, the Russian security service, accused the

Ukrainian and Western secret services

on Tuesday of having

facilitated last Friday's

attack

in Moscow, which caused 139 deaths and was claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State. Ukraine, which has repeatedly denied any link to Friday's attack, dismissed Russia's accusations as lies. But the presidential thesis has also been challenged from where the Kremlin least expected it. Belarusian President

Alexander Lukashenko

has said that the terrorists who attacked Moscow's Crocus City Hall on Friday

initially tried to flee to Belarus, not Ukraine

, as Moscow has insisted.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the mass shooting, but both Vladimir Putin and his government continue to point out that, even if the material perpetrators were Islamist radicals, Ukraine and the West in general are behind it. Putin maintains that

Ukraine had prepared a "window"

for attackers to cross the border, which is quite risky for criminals considering that this area is heavily guarded because it is currently next to a war zone.

Lukashenko, a

close ally of Putin for decades

, has told reporters that Belarusian and Russian security services had coordinated their actions as the suspects' car fled southwest of Moscow

toward the Bryansk region

, on the border with Ukraine. and Belarus, where it was intercepted.

Belarus, Lukashenko explained, had quickly established

checkpoints on the border

. "That's why they couldn't enter Belarus.

Seeing him, they turned around

and headed to the border area between Ukraine and Russia," Lukashenko told the state news agency BelTA.

But Moscow continues to subscribe to the thesis of an international conspiracy against Russia. "We think that the action was prepared by radical Islamists and that, of course, it was facilitated by Western special services, and that the Ukrainian special services are directly involved," Bortnikov said.

"The person who ordered it has not been identified"

The head of the FSB has also stated that it has not yet been determined who ordered this attack. "We know and see who organized this process, who recruited and set specific tasks," he said, specifying that "it has not yet been identified who ordered it."

Bortnikov, 72, has also indicated that the suspects in the attack "planned to travel to Ukraine and that there they should be received as heroes." He has offered no specific evidence for the claims, accusations that hardliners in Moscow could use to justify an escalation of the war in Ukraine while also explaining how Russian security services failed to prevent the attack despite being warned by the US.

Russian media outlet SHOT published a video in which a journalist asked Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, whether he was "ISIS or Ukraine." "Of course, Ukraine," Patrushev responded without stopping to speak. When asked later about the comment, he said there were "many" indications of Ukrainian involvement.

Patrushev and Bortnikov's comments are an example of the narrative that the Kremlin is trying to impose at a time when, with Putin victorious in the elections and Ukraine experiencing supply problems, the Russian regime aspires to definitively bend the will of Kiev. redoubling their attacks and perhaps carrying out a second mobilization of recruits.

Eight suspects

are now in

pretrial detention

after Russia on Tuesday took into custody a Kyrgyz-born man who may be involved in the mass shooting.