The death toll of the March 22 attack on a Moscow concert venue claimed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group has reached 133 and Russian security officials said four suspected gunmen had been detained in connection with Russia’s worst terrorist violence in nearly two decades, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reported.
Russian officials said the suspects were all foreign nationals and that 11 people had been detained.
The day after camouflaged gunmen burst into the Crocus City Hall and opened fire on people waiting for a concert to begin, the national Investigative Committee warned that the death toll was expected to climb further as searchers recovered more victims from the wreckage of the hall. More than 120 people were wounded and remained hospitalized in various conditions, health officials said.
In a recorded video address released by the Kremlin midafternoon on March 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin decried the violence as a “bloody, barbaric terrorist attack” and declared March 24 as a day of national mourning.
Putin also alleged Ukrainian involvement, echoing earlier suggestions by other Russian officials who said that four suspected gunmen had been detained, and that some of perpetrators were arrested in the western Bryansk region, which borders Belarus and Ukraine.
The four “tried to hide and were moving toward Ukraine, where, according to preliminary information, the Ukrainian side had prepared a window for them to cross the border,” he said.
Putin provided no evidence to back up the claim. Ukrainian officials denied any involvement shortly after the violence erupted, and Mykhaylo Podolyak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, repeated those denials shortly before Putin’s address was released.
“First, there are no facts that would in any way indicate a Ukrainian trace. Second, it makes no sense for us to carry out this type of action,” Podolyak told Current Time, a Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. “We are a bit busy with different things. A full-scale war is ongoing in our country.”
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) rejected Putin’s suggestion of a “window” being prepared on the Ukrainian side of the border to help the attackers escape.
Putin’s suggestion of Ukrainian involvement contrasted with the claim by the Islamic State (IS) militant group, which issued a statement of responsibility not long after the attack and on March 23 published photos of four men it claimed were the attackers. Their faces were pixelated to be unrecognizable.
The group said they had dealt a “heavy blow” with assault rifles and explosives by targeting “Christians.” It said it was part of a “raging war” against countries fighting Islam.
“The attack was carried out by four IS fighters armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives, and firebombs,” IS said via Telegram.
The identities and motives of the attackers remained unclear. Aleksander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying 11 people had been detained, including four of the suspected gunmen.
Unnamed officials and Telegram channels known for links to security services suggested that several of the attackers may have been Tajik, or Russian citizens with Tajik background. The reports prompted pushback from Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry, which denied the reports and published detailed information on several of the men whose names were circulating.
Two weeks earlier, on March 7, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had warned Russia that “extremists” had imminent plans for an attack in the capital.
On the same day as the U.S. Embassy announcement, the Federal Security Service claimed it had stopped an attack on a Moscow synagogue by Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).
At the same time, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a stark condemnation of the March 22 attack on the Moscow concert venue, RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi reported.
The Taliban Foreign Ministry “condemns in the strongest terms the recent terrorist attack in Moscow… claimed by Daesh & considers it a blatant violation of all human standards,” ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi wrote on X, formerly Twitter, referring to the Islamic State (IS) extremist organization by its Arabic acronym.
