Regardless of ISIS’s claim, reaffirmed 24 hours later, Vladimir Putin raises the specter of Kiev’s responsibility in the massacre at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, warning that those “behind this barbaric terrorist act will be punished”. Russia’s number one suspect appears to be Ukraine, where the four perpetrators of the attack wanted to take refuge thanks to a “window” prepared for them across the border, the president accused. A reconstruction that the Ukrainian presidency rejected as “absolutely unsustainable”. The toll of the attack, carried out while around 6,000 spectators were waiting for the start of a concert by the rock band Picnic, has meanwhile risen dramatically. The Investigative Committee said that the confirmed dead were 133, after around twenty lifeless bodies were recovered from under the rubble of the concert hall, partially destroyed by a fire that the four terrorists started using flammable liquid, according to some witnesses . The director of Russia Today television, Margarita Simonyan, spoke of 143 killed, but the news was not officially confirmed. There are 121 injured, and since the early hours of today hundreds of Muscovites have queued in front of hospitals and medical centers to donate blood. Among the victims there are also children, and many mothers were found dead hugging their children, wrote the Baza newspaper. Putin, in a televised speech to the nation, spoke of a “mass murder” of which adults and children were victims, like those carried out “by the Nazis in the occupied territories” in the Second World War. The domestic intelligence service, the FSB, reported that the four accused of carrying out the attack were arrested with seven other people in the Bryansk region, about 350 kilometers south-west of Moscow. The suspected attackers, who according to Russian authorities are all foreigners, were traveling in a white Renault, which was blocked after a chase. Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, head of the Duma information policy committee, said Tajik passports were found on board. According to the FSB, the suspects tried to flee towards the nearby border with Ukraine, a country in which they had “contacts”. And the spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, underlined that “in recent years the Kiev regime has conducted active and systematic terrorist activities against Russians”, recalling among other things several “attacks against public figures and journalists”. But Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikaylo Podolyak responded that “any attempt to link Ukraine to the terrorist attack is absolutely untenable” and that the Russian intelligence version is “absurd.” While Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he hoped Russia would not use Moscow’s attack “to escalate violence” in Ukraine. In a three-minute video released by Margarita Simonyan, one of the four arrested admitted in an initial summary interrogation that he had agreed to participate in the action for money after having followed the “lessons” of a “preacher” online, but did not no mention of Ukraine. Instead, ISIS once again claimed responsibility for the attack, through its Amaq news agency, confirming that it was carried out by four of its “fighters”, whose photographs it published. “The attack comes in the context of a raging war between the Islamic State and countries fighting Islam,” Amaq added, in apparent reference to, among other things, Russian military interventions in Syria and Africa. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, condemned “the terrible attacks on Moscow and terrorism in all its forms”. And the White House confirmed that the United States had warned the Russians in early March of a terrorist attack that could target “large gatherings” in Moscow, including concerts, as the US embassy wrote on its website. The willingness to cooperate with Russia in the fight against terrorism was underlined in telephone conversations with Putin by the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkey. The attack on Moscow “proves that regional crises must be resolved peacefully as soon as possible”, underlined the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently confirmed his willingness to act as a mediator in the Ukrainian conflict.
The day after the attack claimed by ISIS that caused 133 deaths in the suburbs of Moscow, the White House said that the jihadist group is a “common terrorist enemy”. “ISIS is a common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere”, assured White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, specifying that the American presidency “strongly condemns the atrocious terrorist attack in Moscow”, which affected “civilians innocent.”
The West unanimously condemns, without ifs or buts, the terrorist attack in Moscow which relaunches the ISIS nightmare and expresses its solidarity with the victims and their relatives. From the USA to the EU leaders passing through the European capitals – the firm condemnations of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came from Rome – everyone expressed their disdain for a massacre of civilians which closely resembles the one committed in the years passed by the men of the Islamic state, starting with that of the Bataclan which took place in Paris in 2015.
Faced with the emotion aroused by the images of what happened in the Crocus City Hall for one day, since Russia invaded Ukraine, we went beyond the theme of war. It was a “terrible attack” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who reiterated the need to fight all forms of terrorism. This after the President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council Charles Michel had already expressed their indignation at the massacre of civilians that took place in Moscow. And words of firm condemnation had also come from Paris and Berlin. As NATO also did through one of its spokespersons who underlined that “nothing can justify such a heinous crime”.
But beyond the circumstantial words used to comment on the massacre in Moscow, the West remains firm in its determination to stop Putin in the war started against Ukraine. The EU summit held in Brussels a few hours before the terrorist attack in Moscow confirmed this.
The Union, despite the resistance of some of its members, in particular Viktor Orban’s Hungary, wants to provide Kiev with all the ammunition and military equipment necessary to repel the Russian advance. However, it is grappling with a puzzle that is not easy to solve: how to finance this operation and, at the same time, find the resources to move forward on the path of a common European defense starting from the creation of synergies between companies operating in the sector. At the end of the summit, von del Leyen and Michel also showed optimism about the possibility of using the proceeds from Russian assets frozen under EU sanctions. A move that could make around three billion euros available to European coffers in 2024, of which one billion already in July “if all the necessary steps are taken”, specified the president of the EU Commission.
However, the road to achieving this objective, as well as that of getting weapons and ammunition to Kiev in large quantities, does not yet appear to be smooth sailing. We will have to wait for the Union’s next moves and yet another summit, set for 17 and 18 April, to see if the good intentions will translate into concrete and effective moves.
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