As the investigation into last Friday's deadly attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall continues, Russian officials are casting doubt on the ability of Islamic State to have carried out the massacre, which has claimed the lives of at least 143 people. Despite the terrorist group's claim of responsibility and U.S. intelligence pointing to its Afghan branch, Islamic State Khorasan, as the perpetrator, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated on Wednesday that it was "extremely hard to believe" that Islamic State had the capacity to launch such an attack.
Zakharova reiterated Moscow's assertions, for which it has yet to provide evidence, that Ukraine was behind the attack, the deadliest Russia has suffered in 20 years. She accused the West of rushing to pin responsibility on Islamic State as a means of deflecting blame from Ukraine and the Western governments that support Kyiv.
"In order to ward off suspicions from the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS, pulled an ace out of their sleeve, and literally a few hours after the terrorist attack, the Anglo-Saxon media began disseminating precisely these versions," Zakharova said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has also suggested that while Islamist militants carried out the attack, it was to Ukraine's benefit, and Kyiv may have played a role. He claimed that someone on the Ukrainian side had prepared a "window" for the gunmen to escape across the border before they were captured in western Russia on Friday night. However, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko contradicted this claim on Tuesday, stating that the gunmen had initially sought to cross into Belarus before turning away and heading towards Ukraine once they realized that crossings into Belarus had been sealed.
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Meanwhile, fears are growing that the final death toll from the attack could be much higher than the 143 confirmed dead. The Russian investigative committee reported that it had received 143 reports about missing people, with 84 bodies identified so far. Baza, a Telegram channel with ties to Russia's security services, reported that 95 individuals not listed among the 120 names in the official registry of victims were unaccounted for after the attack, with their relatives unable to establish contact with them since Friday.
Many of the victims are believed to have died as a result of smoke inhalation after the attackers set the building on fire, causing the roof to collapse. A source in Russia's emergency services told the 112 Telegram outlet that the fire and the collapse of the roof made some of the victims' bodies unrecognizable. "In many cases, only fragments of the bodies remain," they added.
Despite the mounting evidence pointing to Islamic State's involvement, senior Russian officials close to Vladimir Putin have given the clearest indication yet that Moscow plans to blame Ukraine and the West for the attack. Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), claimed that the action was prepared by both Islamist radicals and facilitated by Western special services, with Ukraine's special services "directly related to this." Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the security council of Russia and a close ally of Putin, echoed these sentiments, stating that Ukraine was "of course" behind the attack.
The West has lambasted Moscow for accusing it of involvement in the attack, with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron stating on social media platform X that "Russia's claims about the West and Ukraine on the Crocus City Hall attack are utter nonsense." Ukraine has also denied any involvement, with officials in Kyiv ridiculing the claim that the attackers planned to flee into Ukraine, given the heavy presence of Russian military, including special forces, in the border area.
