US covering up for Crocus venue attackers, distorting events: Russia
4 Min Read
The Russian SVR asserts that US special services are working to remove suspicions from the world's views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's involvement in the Crocus attack.
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A suspect in the deadly attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue is escorted by police in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP)
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) asserted on Monday that the United States is covering up for the Crocus concert terrorists while the administration of US President Joe Biden is aiming to distort the events of what took place.
"The US is covering those responsible for the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reports that Joe Biden's administration is stepping up work to form a distorted picture of the large-scale terrorist attack that took place in Russia on March 22," the statement said.
It added that US special services are working to remove suspicions from the world's views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's involvement in the Crocus attack.
"The murder of civilians in the Moscow region [in the Crocus City Hall] is a directly related to the massive shelling and attacks of the Ukrainian sabotage groups in the Kursk and Belgorod regions. At the same time, the data received by the SVR indicates that when organizing attacks, Ukrainians actively use satellite information provided to them by US intelligence," the SVR statement continued.
Read next: Former CIA analyst suspects Washington knew about Russia terror attack
According to the SVR as well, opposition forces operating outside the official political establishment have been ordered to popularize the "unreasonableness of attempts by the Russian authorities to use the terrorist attack to justify their actions in Ukraine".
Evidence of a cover-up?
Russia believes that it is "extremely hard to believe" that ISIS is behind the wide and fatal attack on the Moscow concert hall, as Russian intelligence and security officials believe Ukraine and allied Western backers are behind it.
Speaking last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova cast the ISIS claim into serious doubt.
"In order to ward off suspicions from the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS (Daesh), 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," she stressed.
The Russian Federal Security Service has also revealed the gunmen were planning on traveling to Ukraine, where they were to be welcomed as "heroes", adding that Western intelligence services supported these attackers.
Just last week, the Russian Investigative Committee announced that evidence has been gathered linking the terrorists who attacked the Crocus City Hall music venue to Ukrainian nationalists.
According to the committee's Telegram post, initial results "fully confirm the planned nature of the terrorists' actions, careful preparation and financial support from the organizers of the crime. As a result of working with detained terrorists, analyzing the technical devices seized from them, analyzing information about financial transactions, evidence of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists has been obtained."
Russian investigators divulged that the terrorists obtained considerable sums of money and cryptocurrencies from Ukraine with the report confirming that such funds were used "in the preparation of the crime."
Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that someone on the Ukrainian side had readied a "window" for the gunmen to flee across the border, before they were caught in western Russia on the night of March 22.
In his address, Putin denounced the perpetrators as "international terrorists" and pledged to collaborate with any state willing to combat such threats. He vowed to identify and punish all involved in the planning and execution of the attack.
