Putin blames Islamists for attack

Russian leader still sees connection to Ukraine

Vladimir Putin blamed Islamist militants for the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall for the first time, even as he persisted in seeking to tie Ukraine and the West to the worst atrocity in the Russian capital for two decades.

The Russian president said radical Islamists carried out the assault that killed 139 people at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow on Friday night, but that investigators were digging deeper to establish who was behind it.

“We know whose hands committed this atrocity against Russia and its people,” Putin told a meeting of officials late Monday. “We are interested in who ordered it.”

Putin had avoided mentioning Islamists on Saturday in his first public comments on the violence Friday, even as Islamic State claimed responsibility. Ukraine has rejected any involvement, while U.S. officials say Islamic State is solely responsible for the attack.

“We also see that the United States, through various channels, 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, that the bloody terrorist attack was carried out by followers of Islam, members of the ISIS organization banned in Russia,” Putin said.

The Kremlin’s “only goal is to motivate more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against

Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a post on X. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the attack a false-flag operation by Russia.

This month, the U.S. shared information with Russia about a possible terrorist attack in Moscow, which Putin publicly dismissed as an attempt “to intimidate and destabilize our society” three days before Crocus City Hall was hit.

Earlier on Monday, Russian authorities showed footage of four men charged in court with carrying out the concert hall attack after interrogations that traced their origins to Tajikistan. Two of the men pleaded guilty to involvement, the Moscow courts service said on its Telegram channel.

A Moscow court also ordered three more people be held under arrest in connection with the assault.

Tribune News Service This combination of pictures created Sunday shows, from left, concert hall massacre suspects Rachabalizoda Saidakrami, Dalerdjon Barotovich Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov inside a defendant cage in a Moscow courtroom.