The Kremlin says the United States is attempting to hide “something” related to the recent terrorist attack at a concert hall in the capital Moscow.
Four armed assailants broke into the Russian capital’s Crocus City Hall on Friday and went on a shooting spree at the people who were attending an event. The Daesh-K, an offshoot of the Daesh terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for the massacre that killed at least 143.
Russia, however, blames Ukraine and its Western allies over the carnage as the suspected gunmen, who were arrested early Saturday, were fleeing toward Ukraine, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Kiev has strongly rejected the allegation.
“It’s strange, to say the least, that the Americans have dared to announce a single narrative. This suggests at the very least that they are trying to shift attention away from something,” said Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday.
He added that such claims came in before Moscow had formulated an official version of events, since Russian law enforcement is still working on the case.
While admitting that the assailants were Takfiri terrorists, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that many questions remained unanswered, adding that such terrorist attacks fit the pattern of hostile actions against Russia by Ukraine’s foreign sponsors.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said that it was strange why Washington insisted only on the Daesh-K narrative, noting that the US is obviously biased and trying to “get Ukraine out of harm’s way.”
“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,” Zakharova added.
She argued that if Kiev had been blameless in the massacre, Washington would have called for a full investigation, but now both the White House and the State Department simply say that “Ukraine has nothing to do with this.”
“Based on what data and what information? Only one thing is clear – they began to excuse the Kiev regime in order to excuse themselves. Because everyone understands perfectly well that there is simply no independent [Ukraine] without Western financial and military assistance,” Zakharova further said.
Putin has already suggested that Ukraine reaped benefit from the attack and that Kiev might have played a role, saying that the Ukrainian side had prepared a “window” for the gunmen to escape across the border.
