Putin downplays Isis role in Moscow attack
Russian president Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the deadly attack on a Moscow concert venue was carried out by radical Islamist actors, but he continued his earlier attempts to pin it on Ukraine. He cast doubt whether a branch of the Islamic State had orchestrated it, saying there were many “unanswered questions,” including whether the United States was covering up Kyiv’s role in the assault.
Ukraine strongly denied any involvement in the Friday assault on the Crocus City Hall. The death toll has now risen to 139.
“We know that the crime was committed by radical Islamists,” Putin said in a televised government meeting on Monday evening, local time.
“We also know that the US via various channels tries to persuade their satellites and other countries that, according to their intel, there is allegedly no Kyiv trace in the Moscow terrorist attack and that it was carried out by members of Isis.”
Putin then implied that Ukraine, having failed at the last year’s counteroffensive in the war against Russia, could “benefit” from carrying out an “act of intimidation” against Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy angrily rejected Russia’s earlier accusations that Ukraine prepared a getaway corridor at the Russian-Ukrainian border, calling it an attempt by Putin to shift the blame to Ukraine while treating his own people as “expendables.”
A Moscow court has arraigned three more suspects, accused of providing transport to the four men who carried out the assault.
The four suspects arrested over the weekend appeared in court on Monday showing signs of torture – confirming videos and photographs that had surfaced after their arrest suggesting brutal treatment at the hands of Russian authorities.
A barrage of videos had emerged of Russian security agents torturing the suspects – including forcing one to chew on a piece of his own ear, while another was stripped half-naked and subjected to electric shocks with wires attached to his genitals.
Russian authorities identified the four suspects as migrant workers from Tajikistan.
Putin conferred over the weekend with the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan – an apparent nod to the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility even as Putin and Kremlin-controlled media have pointed fingers at Ukraine. The video and photo evidence of torture were only part of the clear thirst for revenge. In the days since the attack, several senior Russian officials have called for reinstating the death penalty, fuelling fears among opposition figures that the Kremlin and security services will use the attack to toughen repression even further.
Calls have grown to restore capital punishment, and some Kremlin propagandists have suggested the death penalty was insufficient.
“I look at these faces and again think that the death penalty is too easy,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of propagandist RT network. She suggested “lifelong hard labour somewhere underground, without the opportunity to ever see the light, on bread and water, with a ban on conversations and with not very humane guards.”