Who Was Real Mastermind Behind Shooting in Moscow?
© Sputnik / Konstantin Mihalchevskiy
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At least 143 people were killed in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack outside Moscow on March 22, with the death toll expected to increase further.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov reported on Friday the arrest of 11 suspects in connection with the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue, including all four supposedly directly involved in it.
The suspects were detained in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, according to Bortnikov.
Vladimir Putin on the Moscow Crocus City Hall terrorist attack:
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) March 23, 2024
▪️Investigative and law enforcement agencies will do everything to clarify all the details of the attack;
▪️It is obvious that we are faced with a planned mass murder of civilians;
▪️Criminals went to kill in cold… pic.twitter.com/zBoLzEs2gq
The fact that the suspected terrorists were going to cross the Russian-Ukrainian border shows that they planned their evacuation routes via Ukraine, Andrey Popov, a reserve FSB colonel and member of the Association of Veterans of the Alfa anti-terror group, said in an interview with Sputnik.
“It would be unrealistic for the terrorists to cross the Ukrainian border without contacts with the country’s special services or the Ukrainian side on the whole,” Popov said.
"In other words, the version about ISIS’* involvement in the Crocus City Hall attack – claimed by the US-led West - holds no water. All these citizens with Tajik passports were moving towards Ukraine, which indicates that it was the Kiev regime who ordered this atrocity," the reserve FSP colonel added, referring to the attack.
He also suggested that Washington could "directly or indirectly" organize this deadly shooting rampage and that the US could “definitely” finance it, because "terrorism in the form of Ukraine has no other sources of funding except from the US and the UK."
He recalled in this vein that the US had not extended condolences to Russia in connection with the Crocus City Hall attack, which was not the case with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who offered his condolences in light of the 9/11 terrorist attack in America.
Popov also praised the work of the FSB, suggesting that the Federal Secret Service was keeping an eagle eye on the terrorists from the crime scene from the Crocus City Hall in order to find out more information about the accomplices, the means of communication, and their direction of travel. “So after the FSB obtained the information in full volume, a decision was taken to detain the terrorists,” Popov went on, recalling that they were taken alive.
The death toll from the Crocus City Hall attack currently stands at 143, with the Russian Investigative Committee warning that the number of those killed in the bloodbath may be further on the rise.
*ISIS (ISIL/Islamic State/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries
