Gunmen stormed an event center on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday evening, shooting and setting fires. At least 40 people died and the perpetrators were initially unknown.
At a chic cream-colored leather couch next to escalators in the huge shopping center, a young couple is lying on the floor in front of the couch in jeans and a dark jacket, she is slumped on the couch in dark pants and some kind of denim jacket. Streams of blood flow from both of them, collecting in paint under the bodies, on the cream-colored couch, on the beige marble floor.
Nearby, long trails of blood run across the marble floor, bodies lie on the floor and in the entrance area to the hall, people run past screaming, forming queues in the nocturnal area of the SCS-format shopping center on the outskirts of Moscow trying to escape the horror costumes, including many children, you can hear them shouting, while in the background the place from where they come is burning ablaze.
Earlier that Friday evening, shortly after 8 p.m. local time, at least four gunmen stormed the “Crocus City” shopping center on the Moscow outer ring highway near Krasnogorsk, northwest of the capital. In particular, the target was the Crocus City Hall, a venue where the rock band Picnic was to perform, and where a dance competition for children was taking place in at least one other hall.
Assault rifles, flamethrowers
Videos shared online show how the attackers, dressed in civilian clothes and firing assault rifles, stormed into the center’s huge marble halls. They shot individual people and fired continuous fire into groups of people. One attacker may have been carrying a flamethrower.
The balance sheet and the background to the attack were still unclear on Saturday night. Russian authorities said later that night that at least 40 people had died and more than 100 were injured. The names of at least three people under the age of 12 who were killed were included in a list whose authenticity could not be verified. Most of the hall burned out and there was even talk of the roof collapsing.
There was space for up to 6,000 people in the main concert hall and the concert was reportedly well attended; The band Picnic, which has existed since 1978, has made itself unpopular, at least in Ukraine, because it performed in Crimea, which was occupied by Russia in 2014 and has since been annexed, and openly stated that it did not care about Western sanctions against Russia.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of police and National Guard soldiers as well as firefighters raced to Crocus City in the evening. There were reports of skirmishes, but according to reports from police sources, the attackers may have escaped, with figures of up to ten men also being given. Specifically, a search was also underway for at least one getaway vehicle, a white Renault Symbol with a dark roof without a license plate. Late in the evening it was said that at least one Crocus City Hall employee had been arrested, but his possible involvement in the bloodbath remained unclear.
Kyiv denies involvement
Who the attackers were remained the subject of sometimes wild speculation. The Ukrainian presidential office said it had nothing to do with the attack. A spokesman for the Ukrainian secret service told the media that it was a “deliberate provocation by Russian security services” – that is, a staged act that was intended to be blamed on others.
Other sources and external observers suspected militant Russian opponents of the regime were behind the attack; Armed units, such as the “Russian Volunteer Corps”, have already carried out attacks from Ukraine on individual towns in the Russian border area on several occasions, most recently around March 12 in the Kursk and Belgorod regions.
The Russian authorities, however, held back from assigning specific blame; It is the task of the judiciary and secret services to find the culprits. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the attack a “bloody terrorist attack.” And: “The entire global community must condemn this despicable crime,” wrote ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Telegram.
There were Western warnings
Interestingly, however, speculation about a possible attack in Moscow had been circulating since the beginning of the month. The US embassy in Moscow issued such a warning on March 7th, and a short time later the British embassy; This was adopted on March 8th by the Austrian Foreign Ministry, among others. Specifically, concert halls and large gatherings of people were named as possible dangerous places; US citizens should avoid these, according to the US Embassy.
President Vladimir Putin, in turn, on Tuesday strongly denounced “provocative statements by a number of official Western structures” about a possible terrorist attack in Russia. “All of this is reminiscent of open blackmail and the intention to spread fear and destabilize our society,” he explained to the top brass of the FSB, the domestic secret service responsible for combating terrorism.
The mayor of Moscow canceled all major events over the weekend. Security measures were increased at the capital’s airports and train stations, and ongoing events were evacuated in several other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg, and security forces were deployed.
The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, who recently died under mysterious circumstances in Siberian custody, expressed her condolences to the victims’ families. Navalnaya lives in exile.
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