As news of the Moscow concert hall attack broke on Friday, Ukrainians knew what was coming: Kyiv would be blamed.
The next thing they expected was more drones and more missiles.
The accusations began almost immediately.
They were just hints at first, until President Vladimir Putin openly claimed that the men who attacked Moscow had tried to flee to Ukraine, helped by contacts there.
Then shortly before dawn on Sunday came the sound of explosions in Kyiv.
Shit Muslims Do. Warning Graphic.
From the outset it was obvious to seasoned observers who massacred more than 130 Russians at a concert hall Moscow on Friday evening. It wasn’t, as some in the Kremlin claimed, Ukraine. What would they stand to gain from such indiscriminate slaughter?
The people who opened fire in the Crocus City Hall cleaved to the same ideology as those who have this century murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children in New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Brussels, Paris, Manchester and Nice. According to reports, the group that carried out the Moscow attack is known as Islamic State Khorasan (Isis-K) and it has a reputation for ‘extreme brutality’.
(AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish those behind a “barbaric terrorist attack” on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133, saying Russia had arrested four gunmen who were trying to flee to Ukraine.
Kyiv has strongly denied any connection, and Putin made no reference to claims of responsibility by the Islamic State in his first public remarks on the attack.
Eleven people have been detained after gunmen stormed a concert hall in Moscow and opened fire on the crowd, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service told President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said four people among those detained were directly involved in the attack.
They were stopped in the Bryansk region of western Russia, “not far from the border with Ukraine,” it said.
At least 115 people were killed in Friday’s attack, including three children, authorities said.
⚡️⚡️⚡️ Interrogation of a suspect in the shooting of people in Crocus City Hall in Moscow 🇷🇺
– What were you doing in Crocus?
– Shooting.– Whom?
– People– For what reason?
– For moneyIncreasingly it looks like the terror-act may have had 🇷🇺 FSB hands in its planning. pic.twitter.com/Q2C81tgO9u
— Jason Jay Smart (@officejjsmart) March 23, 2024
A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 40 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward.
The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official said.
Dozens of people have been killed at a Russian concert hall in what Moscow has called “a bloody terrorist attack.” Our report from Moscow. Team: @BenTavener @AntonChicherov pic.twitter.com/NZgF8QBno4
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) March 22, 2024
A renowned Moscow region concert venue and shopping centre is on fire on Friday evening, following reports of a mass shooting incident.
At least three gunmen, wearing combat fatigues, burst into Crocus City Hall and fired automatic weapons, injuring dozens of patrons and killing a significant number of them, according to Russian media.
A group of unidentified men, ranging from two to five people, dressed in tactical gear and armed with automatic weapons, opened fire on the guards at the entrance of the concert hall. They then began shooting at the audience in the foyer. #Moscow pic.twitter.com/QjHU0DmW6A
— Russian Market (@runews) March 22, 2024
BREAKING:
Hundreds of people likely being held hostage at the Crocus Concert Hall near Moscow.
At least 40 have been killed.
Large parts of the building are on fire.
SWAT teams have arrived but can’t enter due to the hostage situation. pic.twitter.com/4AkIZ2XvFV
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 22, 2024
🚨🚨🚨 Warning Graphic footage: What looks like a major terror attack now happening in Moscow.
— Inc.Monocle (@IncMonocle) March 22, 2024
Twitter – #Moscow
Moscow is evoking German war crimes in its row over Ukraine — but it’s not the only country with demands
Berlin has rejected a demand by Moscow that it should acknowledge the 900-day siege of Leningrad as genocide and pay compensation for 1.1 million people who died at the hands of the German army.
In a response to a diplomatic note sent by Russia, the German foreign ministry said the blockade of what is now St Petersburg between September 1941 and January 1944 was a “terrible war crime that the German Wehrmacht brought on Leningrad and its population” but fell short of calling it a genocide. It said the German government had emphasised this repeatedly and was maintaining this legal opinion.
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has suffered “grave reputational damage” and lost the trust of some western partners after one of its senior officers was outed as an alleged Russian spy, the organisation’s chief has said.
The Federal Intelligence Service (BND), which loosely speaking combines the roles of MI6 and GCHQ in the UK, has been dragged into a Berlin court to address one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in its 70-year history.
China and Russia are planning to install a nuclear power unit on the surface of the moon by the middle of the next decade, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency has said.
Beijing and Moscow announced plans in 2021 to build a permanently manned research station on the moon’s south pole. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project aims to establish a basic outpost in the next few years before completing construction in the 2030s.
Russia using militias in Africa to ‘weaponise’ flows of people in attempts to influence elections
Russia is using private militias to control and “weaponise” immigration into Europe, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Kremlin has influence over a number of the main routes into the continent and border police are warning that, with the arrival of spring, Russia is likely to “intensify” its efforts to move migrants.
It has been widely feared that Vladimir Putin is using the tactic to destabilise Europe.
For about 49 minutes Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a member of a suspected FSB squad that poisoned Alexei Navalny, thought he was talking to an official on Russia’s national security council.
The man on the phone was demanding answers about the failed attempt to kill President Putin’s most prominent critic in August 2020.
Putin says Biden is ‘predictable,’ not a characteristic that a president should be known for.
Russian President Vladimir Putin loves to mock the United States and everything we do. His poker-faced announcement that he has endorsed Joe Biden in the 2024 election was more than just mockery. Putin’s statement was a factual condemnation of Biden’s presidency.
Putin said he prefers Old Joe over former president Trump because Joe is an old school politician with more experience than Trump.
Russian medical workers discovered bruising on Navalny’s body consistent with him being restrained while suffering a seizure, a new report has said.
Novaya Gazeta, a highly regarded opposition newspaper, said that it had managed to contact an inmate at IK-3, who said that a “mysterious commotion” had erupted at the prison the night before news of Navalny’s death broke.
It was in June of 2021 that Joe Biden promised that the “consequences” if opposition figure Alexi Navalny died in Vladimir Putin’s custody “would be devastating for Russia.” Biden didn’t qualify his statement. Rightly enough, he made no bones about how Russia’s foremost opposition figure would have to succumb to trigger an American response. Only that Moscow must take the utmost care of Navalny while he was in their custody, or else. Well, on Friday, following several years of imprisonment, mistreatment, and conspicuous poisonings, Russian authorities revealed that Navalny had mysteriously died. So, now what?
To the extent that there is any opposition to Vladimir Putin, “President of All the Russias (Including Ukraine)”, it was led by Alexei Navalny, who died today, at the age of 47, after collapsing and losing consciousness at the a notorious 1K-3 penal colony in Kharp,.north of the Arctic Circle. Here is the last known picture of the deceased, taken on January 10th..
