Multiple gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, on the evening of March 22, killing at least 143 people, according to the latest from Russian authorities. An offshoot of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack shortly afterwards.
Currently, the Russian authorities have arrested eight people who were allegedly involved in the armed attack. Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have tried to link the attack to Ukraine without providing any evidence. The White House said there was no indication that Ukraine was behind the attack.
According to Budanov, Russian intelligence agencies knew where the attackers would come from and through which countries they would enter Russian territory.
“Don’t let them tell you stories that this (attack) appeared mysteriously out of nowhere,” the military intelligence chief commented.
Speaking at the third annual Kyiv Stratcom Forum 2024, Budanov said that one possible explanation for the fact that Russian authorities allowed the attack to occur is an internal power struggle aimed at removing high-ranking officials from their positions .
“Since at least February 15, 2024, the Russian Federation has been aware of the preparations. I will tell you even more: this information was transmitted through the Syrian intelligence agency of the group (ISIS, no). (…) There are several possible explanations for why they let this happen. The first, as is customary in Russia, is a power struggle – the removal of several high-ranking officials. Another option is that they may have underestimated the severity of the situation. They assumed that (the attack) would be smaller and wanted to blame Ukraine for everything,” Budanov said.
Ukraine’s spy chief has denounced the Kremlin’s attempts to blame the attack on Kiev, saying it was “nonsense”. Budanov revealed that Russian officials have already changed their version three times in order to link the attack to Ukraine.
“There were explanations from Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, no) and Bortnikov (head of the Federal Security Service of Russia, FSB, no), who accused me personally and said that everything was done by Ukraine. This is nonsense. By the way, if we touch on this painful issue, even if it is the enemy, I do not agree in principle with terrorist acts against civilians,” the Ukrainian general said.
He added that Russia “sowed the chaos” and was overconfident in its ability to control it.
“There is a well-known proverb, even a kind of parable. And it always applies to the Secret Service, where everyone is trying to create controlled chaos. At various times, almost every serious organization has tried to do this. And the axiom says that none of them managed to make it controllable. The same thing happened here,” Budanov commented.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described Russia’s attempts to blame Ukraine for the attack in Moscow as “completely predictable”, adding that “Putin and the other scoundrels are just trying to blame someone else… It’s happened before.”
Photo: Profimedia Images
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