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The French president and EU officials have urged Vladimir Putin not to use the terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, claimed by the militant group Isis, as a pretext to expand the war in Ukraine.
Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that it would be “cynical and counterproductive for Russia itself and for the safety of its residents” to use this context [of the attack] turn against Ukraine”.
The Russian president said unidentified people “on the Ukrainian side” were preparing to help gunmen fleeing across the border between the two countries after they killed at least 137 people on Friday.
The jihadist group Isis claimed responsibility and shared photographs of the attackers, who appeared in court on Sunday and were remanded in custody.
Macron stated that “the information at our disposal, our [intelligence] services, as well as to our main partners, indicates that it was an Islamic State entity that carried out this attack.”
Ukrainian officials have called Putin’s insinuations absurd and have vehemently denied any involvement in the attacks. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that this was a ploy by the Russian leader to create a pretext to escalate his war.
Officials in Brussels also said they were concerned about Putin’s attempts to establish a link between Kiev and Friday’s events.
“There is no evidence that Ukraine was in any way linked to this attack,” said Peter Stano, the European Commission’s foreign policy spokesman.
“We ask the Russian government not to use this terrorist attack in Moscow as a pretext or motivation to increase illegal aggression against Ukraine, nor to use it as a pretext to increase domestic repression,” Stano added.
Three of the suspects were identified as citizens of Tajikistan, the former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan. Tajiks make up a large part of ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, according to experts who monitor the group.
The attack raised concerns about a potential resurgence of Islamic terrorism in Russia, which before the launch of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, had posed the most critical internal security threat to intelligence services. country’s intelligence.
“I would like to remind you of one thing: this is not the first terrorist attack on Russian soil. So far, none of the major terrorist attacks in Russia have been clarified or properly investigated,” Stano told reporters. “So this leaves many open questions, also regarding the attitude of the authorities.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the United States had “walked itself into a trap” with what she described as “stories” that the attack was perpetrated by ISIS.
Writing in an editorial for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Monday, Zakharova said Washington sought to “protect itself and the Zelensky regime” behind the “scarecrow” of ISIS.
International terrorist groups were created by the United States, he said, to sow chaos and shape “world order.” On the attack in Moscow, Zakharova concluded with a “question to the White House”. “It was definitely ISIS, won’t you change your mind?”
Meanwhile, Russia continued its air offensive on Ukraine, with Kiev rocked by explosions from air defense missiles intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. On Monday, a Financial Times journalist witnessed Kiev’s air defenses shooting down one of the missiles over the city. Moments later a second explosion occurred and plumes of smoke were visible over the city.
The attack, which occurred without warning, prompted residents to run for cover in air raid shelters and underground subway stations.
Several people were injured and two buildings were seriously damaged by the exploding missile debris, Kiev city military chief Serhiy Popko said.
The attack was the fourth in the capital in the past five days in which Russia launched hundreds of missiles and drones, targeting energy infrastructure, security installations and residential areas.
Kiev has also stepped up long-range drone strikes inside Russian territory, aimed primarily at hitting oil refineries in a bid to stifle Moscow’s war effort. But over the weekend, Ukrainian missiles also hit two other Russian warships, as well as a communications center and other facilities used by Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in occupied Crimea.