{"id":1875,"date":"2024-03-26T06:37:38","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T06:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2024-03-26T06:37:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T06:37:38","slug":"vladimir-putin-blames-isis-and-ukraine-for-moscow-concert-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/cover-stories\/vladimir-putin-blames-isis-and-ukraine-for-moscow-concert-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin blames ISIS and Ukraine for Moscow concert attack"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0admitted Monday that \u201cradical Islamists\u201d were behind the\u00a0massacre of nearly 140 people\u00a0at a Moscow concert hall last Friday \u2013 but he still pointed to Ukraine as the hidden hand behind the terror attack.<\/p>\n

“The question that arises is who benefits from this?” Putin said at the Kremlin\u00a0during a video conference\u00a0with leaders of Russia’s security forces. “We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it.”<\/p>\n

Four attackers stormed the Crocus City Hall in Moscow last Friday night, raking gunfire across hundreds of people there to see the Soviet-era rock band Picnic, in the\u00a0deadliest attack inside Russia\u00a0in two decades. The death toll was raised to 139 on Monday, Alexander Bastrykin, chairman of the state Investigative Committee, said.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s \u201cradical Islamists\u201d comment was his first acknowledgement of what the U.S. \u2013 and on Monday, France \u2013 have been saying\u00a0since the slaughter took place: ISIS-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based branch of the ultraviolent movement that sought to take over Syria and Iraq a decade ago, was behind the attack and had claimed responsibility.<\/p>\n

France joins U.S. in blaming the Islamic State<\/h2>\n

“The information available to us\u2026as well as to our main partners, indicates indeed that it was an entity of the Islamic State which instigated this attack,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters during a visit to South America. “This group also tried to commit several actions on our own soil.”<\/p>\n

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State terror group massacred 90 people at a Paris concert hall in November 2015 during a night of coordinated attacks across the city that killed 130.<\/p>\n

On March 7, the U.S. embassy in Moscow warned of a possible replay of the Paris slaughter in a public advisory that it was \u201cmonitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks later the killers struck.<\/p>\n

“Some thought it was a kind of special effect of some sort,” one witness, Anastasia Rodionova, told Reuters. “Then I saw with my own eyes how people were dropping and the automatic gun fire began.”<\/p>\n

Russia still accuses Ukraine; Zelenskyy lashes out at Putin and ‘other scums’<\/h2>\n

In a televised address on Saturday,\u00a0the Russian leader\u00a0said 11 people had been detained, including the four gunmen. “They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose troops are fighting to expel Russian forces more than two years into Moscow\u2019s grinding, stalemated invasion, dismissed this suggestion. “What happened in Moscow yesterday is obvious, and Putin and other scums are trying to shift the blame to someone else,” he fired back. “Their methods are always the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Signs of torture<\/h2>\n

The four shooting suspects appeared in a Moscow court on Monday. Unverified videos of their interrogations circulated on social media. One suspect was shown with part of his ear cut off and stuffed into his mouth.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t answer when a reporter asked him about treatment of the detainees.<\/p>\n

Despite\u00a0the American warning, Putin pointed the finger for Friday\u2019s massacre at Kyiv.<\/p>\n

America running interference, Putin says<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe know that the crime was perpetrated by radical Islamists,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Islamic world itself has been fighting this ideology for centuries.\u201dPutin then accused the U.S. of \u201cusing different channels to try and convince its satellites and other countries of the world that, according to its intelligence, there is supposedly no sign of Kyiv\u2019s involvement in the Moscow terrorist attack, that the deadly terrorist attack was perpetrated by followers of Islam, members of ISIS, an organization banned in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

“This atrocity,” he said, ”may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0admitted Monday that \u201cradical Islamists\u201d were behind the\u00a0massacre of nearly 140 people\u00a0at a Moscow concert hall last Friday \u2013 but he still pointed to Ukraine as the hidden hand behind the terror attack. “The question that arises is who benefits from this?” Putin said at the Kremlin\u00a0during a video conference\u00a0with leaders of Russia’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1877,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions\/1877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webpressglobal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}