IGOR GIELOW
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, suggested this Saturday (23) the involvement of Ukraine, a country he invaded in 2022, in the terrorist attack that killed at least 133 people on Friday night in Moscow. The action was taken over by the Islamic State group.
The Russian gave his first speech about the tragedy that occurred at a concert hall after the arrest of 11 people, including 4 accused of having shot at the packed audience at the venue.
Declaring official mourning and expressing condolences to the victims' families, he said that the suspects were detained while heading “in the direction of Ukraine”.
According to him, there is “preliminary information” that people were waiting for the attackers to cross the border. The IS released a video reaffirming its responsibility, identifying the attackers and in which it stated that the attack was part of the “furious war” between the group and “the States that fight Islam”.
“Our enemies will not divide us,” the president said on state TV. He called the attack “barbaric, savage, bloody”.
He did not directly accuse the Ukrainian government, despite the insinuation, saying he will punish “whoever”. This week, he had said that warnings of imminent terrorist attacks issued by the US Embassy in Moscow were “blackmail” to “destabilize our society”.
The four accused of the action, one of whom confessed to it in a video, were detained in Bryansk, a region 340 km southwest of Moscow, on Saturday morning. The forest area is about 130 km from the Ukrainian border.
The government in Kiev denied any involvement in the case, which was supported by the United States and European countries. As would be obvious, given that on Friday the Kremlin finally said it was at war with Ukraine and accused the West for that, the statements were dismissed as hasty in Moscow.
Conversely, Telegram channels linked to the Ukrainian government are already flooded with conspiracy theories linking the Russian government itself to the attack, which according to them would serve to intensify the war and internal controls in Putin's country.
Authorities say the number of victims is expected to rise. Earlier, the influential editor-in-chief of the state network RT, Margarita Simonian, had spoken of 143 dead, but the government's Investigative Committee confirmed 133. There are at least three children among the dead, and the city hall announced that it will pay compensation of R$160,000 for each family that lost a relative in the attack.
According to the head of the FSB (Federal Security Service), Alexander Bortnikov, four of the detainees were responsible for the shooting inside the Crocus City Hall concert hall, in the shopping center of the same name in a peripheral district 20 km from the center of the Russian capital.
A deputy, Alexander Khinshtein, reported that the four suspects were in a Renault when they drove past a police roadblock. There was a chase, the car was stopped and two suspects fled into a forest, while the remaining suspects were arrested.
According to Khinshtein, in the end they were all detained and the police seized a pistol, an ammunition clip for assault rifles and passports from Tajikistan, a Muslim-majority republic in Central Asia that was part, with Russia, of the former Soviet Union (1922- 1991).
According to the United States government, the attack was carried out specifically by the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, known as EI-Khorasan.
In the Syrian civil war, the Russians intervened in 2015 in favor of the dictatorship allied with Bashar al-Assad, and began to harshly attack IS. They were responsible, as well as Western and Middle Eastern countries, for a campaign that ended the territorial dominance that the extremist group had over large areas of the Arab country and neighboring Iraq.
Vladimir Putin's government has a long history of conflict with Islamic fundamentalist groups. The leader, re-elected for another six years of government last Sunday (17), came to power as prime minister in 1999 determined to crush radical Muslim separatism in the Russian republic of Chechnya after a deadly wave of attacks in Moscow and other cities.
The success of the brutal campaign there enabled him, as interim president after Boris Ielstin's resignation at the turn of the year 2000, to be elected to the Kremlin for the first time. Afterwards, he faced several crises with Islamic terrorists.
This Friday's attack was the deadliest in history after an episode in 2004, when Chechen and Ingush terrorists took over a school in Beslan, North Ossetia. At the end of the police siege, 334 people died, including 156 children.
Moscow has not faced an attack of this scale since 2011, when 37 people died in an attack at Domodedovo international airport. The action triggered a trigger among Muscovites also because it brought echoes of the seizure of a theater in the center of the capital in 2002 by Chechens, whose clumsy police action ended with the death of 132 hostages, in addition to 40 terrorists.
In Ukraine, Telegram channels, including state-owned ones, celebrated the attack as retribution for Russian aggression in the country – this Saturday, Kiev said it had shot down 31 of 34 drones launched by the Russians.
The all-powerful Nikolai Patruchev, secretary of Russia's National Security Council, stated that everyone involved in the case will be punished.
Images of the attack, captured on cell phones of those present, went viral. They show the terrorists entering the venue and shooting at random at the audience waiting for a concert by the Soviet-era rock band Piknik.
There was a fire at the site, caused by two explosions – initially, the report was that they were bombs, but there is a version that it was rudimentary Molotov cocktails that caused the fire, visible from different parts of the Russian capital.
Opened in 2009, Crocus City Hall was created by the owner of the Crocus Group, the Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov, in honor of Muslim Magomaiev (1942-2008), the “Soviet Frank Sinatra” who was a friend and fellow countryman of the businessman. The venue hosted prominent international shows, such as Elton John and Lana del Rey. Ironically, Agalarov's family, linked to the Baku government, is Muslim.
The city has reinforced policing this Saturday. Police officers patrol metro stations and all roads surrounding the capital are blocked.
