Moscow Arena Attack: Putin Close Allies See No Ukraine Link
By Bloomberg NewsMarch 26, 2024 at 11:12 AM EDTBookmarkSaveListen4:33
6–7 minutes
While Vladimir Putin continues to argue that Ukraine may have had a role in the Moscow attack that killed 139 people, some of the Russian president’s own inner circle disagree with him.
There’s no evidence of involvement by Ukraine, according to four people with close ties to the Kremlin. Putin was present at discussions where officials agreed there’s no link to Kyiv, but remains determined to use the tragedy to try to rally Russians behind the war in Ukraine, according to one person with knowledge of the situation, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
Kremlin officials were shocked by the failure of the security services to prevent Friday’s gun attack against people attending a concert in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, according to the people. Almost nobody they know within Russia’s political and business elite believes Ukraine was behind the assault, the people said.
Putin has twice sought to link Ukraine to Moscow’s worst atrocity in more than two decades even as Islamic State has claimed responsibility. The president acknowledged late Monday that Islamist militants carried out the attack but told officials in televised comments that “we are interested in who ordered it.”
The US “is trying to convince its satellites and other countries of the world that according to their intelligence data, there is supposedly no Kyiv trace in the Moscow terrorist attack,” Putin said at a meeting with his security chiefs.
Ukraine has flatly rejected any involvement and has called the attack a false-flag operation by the Kremlin, while US officials say Islamic State is solely responsible.
Putin’s top allies are eagerly taking up his theme. That’s prompting speculation he may leverage public anger over the tragedy to intensify the war against Ukraine, including possibly by ordering another mobilization of reservists to join the army.
“Of course, Ukraine,” Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s security council, told reporters Tuesday in response to a question whether Islamic State or Ukraine was responsible.
“The terrorists and those behind them — the bloody regime of Ukraine, Washington, Brussels — hope that through such terrorist attacks they will be able to split our society,” Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said Tuesday in a statement on its website. “We must do everything to ensure that consolidation is even stronger.”
While Islamist radicals carried out the attack, Ukrainian and US and British intelligence services contributed to it, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, told reporters Tuesday, without offering evidence.
“The security services know this was Islamic State, but after Putin’s remarks they have no choice but to follow orders and prove that there was Ukrainian or Western involvement,” said Andrei Soldatov an expert on the FSB and Russian intelligence.
The US issued a public warning March 7 about the risk of an “imminent” terrorist attack in Moscow including at concerts, and said it shared intelligence with Russia. Putin dismissed that as an attempt to “destabilize our society” at a meeting with FSB officers three days before the gunmen struck.
Russian security services failed to react promptly to the US warning and some officials may be ousted from their posts in retaliation, according to two people with links to the authorities. The attack may prompt a shake-up in the leadership of the security agencies, the people said.
The tragedy has stoked political demands to end Russia’s moratorium on the death penalty that’s been in effect since 1996. There’s “active discussion” on the issue, though it’s for the Constitutional Court to decide, Volodin told lawmakers Tuesday, according to the Interfax news service.
Four men, all from Tajikistan in central Asia, were charged at a closed-door hearing late Sunday with carrying out the concert hall attack and ordered detained through May 22 by a Moscow court. Three more people were arrested Monday and an eighth man was detained on Tuesday.
At his meeting with security chiefs, Putin questioned why radical Islamists would attack Russia when “it supports a fair resolution” of the Middle East conflict, and asked how they could justify committing atrocities in the religious holy month of Ramadan. He also railed at the government in Kyiv and its “Western patrons.”
The FSB detained the four suspects in Russia’s Bryansk region, alleging they were on their way to Ukraine. While he didn’t directly accuse Ukrainian authorities of involvement in the attack, Putin said on Saturday that a “window” had been prepared for the men to cross the border.
Yet even his closest ally, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, appeared to undercut Putin’s claim that the suspects were trying to escape to Ukraine.
Lukashenko told reporters Tuesday that the suspects first headed for Belarus until they saw that border security had been tightened “so they turned away and went toward” Ukraine instead, the state-run Belta news service reported.
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