Putin says radical Islamists carried out Moscow concert hall attack but doubles down on blaming Ukraine – as it happened

That concludes today’s updates on the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Here’s what happened today:

• Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that the Moscow concert hall attack is “part of Kyiv regime’s attacks on Russia”. In remarks made Monday, Putin called the attack an “act of intimidation” and said that Russian officials are “interested in who benefits from it”.

• Three more people were detained as a “preventive measure” in connection with the Moscow concert hall attack. The three men were detained after being accused of committing crimes under Russia’s Terrorist Act.

• Some of the gunmen accused of carrying out the attack were briefly in Turkey to renew their Russian residence permits, Reuters reported, citing a Turkish security official. The Turkish official added that the men were not radicalized in Turkey.

• The White House dismissed Russia’s claims that the attack is linked to Ukraine, calling the assertion “Kremlin propaganda”. On Monday, White House spokesperson John Kirby addressed the accusation, saying: “There was no linkage to Ukraine ... This is just more Kremlin propaganda.”

• The cost of repairing the damage caused by Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last week will probably run into the “billions”, the country’s energy minister said. In terms of the cost of repairs, “the real figures will be after assessment of the damage but I think it is in the region of billions, for sure,” German Gerashchenko told reporters.

Thank you for following today’s latest news.

The Moscow concert hall attack poses new questions for Russia’s intelligence agencies, Reuters reports.

More from Reuters:

Russia’s security state has been ruthlessly effective at detaining Vladimir Putin’s opponents but was caught off guard by a mass shooting near Moscow, raising questions about its priorities, resources and intelligence gathering.

Charged with hunting down Ukrainian saboteurs inside Russia, with keeping anti-Kremlin activists in check, and with disrupting the operations of hostile foreign intelligence agencies, the FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, has its hands full.

That, say former US intelligence officials and Western security analysts, helps explain why it may have overlooked other threats, including that posed by Islamist militants, such as ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

“You can’t do everything,” Daniel Hoffman, a former senior CIA operations officer who served as the agency’s Moscow station chief, told Reuters.

“It’s possible they’re overextended dealing with the war in Ukraine and dealing with political opposition. This one slipped through the cracks.”
The FSB has said Friday’s concert hall attack was “painstakingly” planned and that the gunmen had carefully hidden their weapons.

Putin on Monday said that radical Islamists were the ones who had carried out the attack, but said that Russia still wanted to understand who had ordered it and said there were many questions for Ukraine to answer. Ukraine denies any involvement.

The full article is available here.

Putin added that the Moscow concert hall attack fits into a larger trend of intimidation from Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Here are more of Putin’s remarks:

This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime …

[Those who planned the attack] hoped to sow panic and discord in our society, but they met unity and determination to resist this evil.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that the Moscow concert hall attack is “part of Kyiv regime’s attacks on Russia”, Reuters reported.

In remarks made on Monday, Putin conceded that the attacks were committed by Islamic State, but added that officials do not know “who ordered it”.

“We’re interested in who benefits from it,” Putin said, adding that the attack is an “act of intimidation”.

The gunmen accused of carrying out the Moscow concert hall attack were briefly in Turkey to renew their Russian residence permits, Reuters reported, citing a Turkish security official.

The official, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said that two of the accused attackers had traveled to Turkey briefly, but had been living in Moscow for a long period of time.

The men left on 2 March, more than two weeks before the 22 March shooting.

There were no arrest warrants for the men at that time, allowing them to travel between Russia and Turkey freely.

The unnamed official also told Reuters that the radicalization of the accused gunmen did not happen in Turkey.

Three more people have been detained as a “preventive measure” in connection with the Moscow concert hall attack.

Isroil Ibragimovich Islomov, Dilovar Isroilovich Islomov, and Aminchon Isroilovich Islomov were all detained after being accused of committing crimes under Russia’s Terrorist Act, according to a post on Telegram from the courts of general jurisdiction of the city of Moscow.

The three men will be detained until until 22 May 2024.

The White House has dismissed Russia’s claims that the Moscow concert hall attack is linked to Ukraine, calling the assertion “Kremlin propaganda”.

On Monday, White House spokesperson John Kirby addressed the accusation from Russian officials that the attack is connected to Ukraine, Reuters reported.

“There was no linkage to Ukraine ... This is just more Kremlin propaganda,” Kirby said to reporters during the briefing.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to meet with members of his security council later today to discuss Russia’s reaction to the Moscow concert hall shooting in which at least 137 people were killed.

The Kremlin has so far declined to comment on growing evidence that the Afghan branch of Islamic State (IS), known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), masterminded the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall on Friday.

Putin has claimed without evidence that Ukraine had aided the attackers and had planned to “open a window” for the gunmen to escape. Kyiv has denied any involvement in the attack. We will bring you the latest on the security council meeting as we get more information on it.

• There were reports of several explosions rocking the centre of Kyiv this morning, with Ukraine’s air force saying it had shot down two ballistic missiles targeting the Ukrainian capital. “Again this morning Russia is attacking Ukraine with hypersonic missiles. Loud explosions in Kyiv,” the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, wrote in a post on X. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, and the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, reiterated calls asking international allies to supply more air defences to Ukraine in the wake of the attack.

• Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, called into question assertions by the US that IS was behind Friday’s Crocus City concert hall attack in Moscow, in which at least 137 people were killed. “Attention – a question to the White House: Are you sure it’s Isis? Might you think again about that?” Zakharova said in an article for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, said the investigation is still ongoing into the Moscow concert hall shooting but vowed that “the perpetrators will be punished” and that “they do not deserve mercy”.

• France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said all signs indicated that the attack was carried out by Islamic State, adding that it would be “cynical and counterproductive” for Russia to try to blame Kyiv. Macron said the Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack had also tried to commit attacks in France. The country’s prime minister, Gabriel Attal, meanwhile, said that France would increase the numbers of soldiers for its Operation Sentinelle unit, which deals with handling terrorist threats. Attal said an extra 4,000 members of the military would be put on standby for the Sentinelle division.

• Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and prime minister, discussed the suspects charged over the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall on his Telegram channel. “Everyone asks me. What to do? They were caught. Well done to everyone who caught it,” he wrote. “Should they be killed? Necessary. And it will be. But it is much more important to kill everyone involved. Everyone. Who paid, who sympathized, who helped. Kill them all.” The Kremlin said on Monday that it would not participate in conversations about lifting the moratorium on the death penalty.

• Poland’s foreign ministry said on Monday that the Russian ambassador in Warsaw failed to show for a summons issued after a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace over the weekend. Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, told state-run RIA Novosti that he did not visit the foreign ministry since, he said, the Polish side did not provide evidence of any airspace violation.

• Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia had launched 190 missiles, 140 drones and 700 aerial bombs against Ukraine over the last week.

• One of the Russian landing ships hit during a recent missile strike on occupied Crimea was “critically damaged”, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) said. The Ukrainian military claimed on Sunday it had hit two large Russian landing ships as well as other infrastructure used by the Russian navy in the Black Sea during overnight strikes on the annexed Crimean peninsula. In a post on Telegram on Monday, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said the “Yamal” suffered a “hole in the upper deck that caused it to roll to the starboard side”.

The cost of repairing the damage caused by Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last week will probably run into the “billions”, the country’s energy minister has been quoted as saying.

In terms of the cost of repairs, “the real figures will be after assessment of the damage but I think it is in the region of billions, for sure”, German Gerashchenko told reporters.

More than a million Ukrainians have been left without power on Friday after Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure to date.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 88 missiles and 63 Iranian-made Shahed drones. Of them, 37 and 55 respectively were shot down, but others hit the country’s largest dam and caused blackouts in several regions.

You can read more about the major assault on Ukraine’s energy system here:

The attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people has raised fresh security fears for the Paris Olympics, which begin on 26 July.

The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said that the Paris Olympics were an obvious future target.

“France, because we defend universal values, and are for secularism … is particularly threatened, notably during extraordinary events such as the Olympics,” he told reporters.

“The French police, gendarmes, prefects, intelligence services, will be ready,” he added, saying that “we have a very effective intelligence system. We stop plots developing almost every month.”

The heads of intelligence services would hold a meeting on Thursday “to discuss all the conclusions of the attack on Moscow,” he added.

France will increase the numbers of soldiers for its Operation Sentinelle unit, which deals with handling terrorist threats, the country’s prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said.

Attal said an extra 4,000 members of the military would be put on standby for the Sentinelle division, on top of the 3,000 military staff already on deployment for Sentinelle, which guards sites such as railway stations, places of worship, schools and theatres across the country.

On Sunday, the French government raised its terror alert warning to its highest level after the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow that left at least 137 people dead.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has warned Russia against blaming Kyiv for the massacre, saying that such a move would be “cynical” and “counterproductive” (see earlier post at 11.05 for more details).

The Russian ambassador did not attend the foreign ministry in Warsaw despite being summoned to do so, a Polish spokesperson said on Monday, after a Russian missile flew into Poland’s airspace.

Russia violated Poland’s airspace early on Sunday with a cruise missile launched at targets in western Ukraine, Poland’s armed forces said.

“The ambassador of the Russian Federation … did not attend the foreign ministry today to explain the incident concerning the Russian cruise missile that violated Polish airspace on 24 March,” foreign ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski told reporters.

Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, told state-run RIA Novosti that he did not visit the foreign ministry since the Polish side did not provide evidence of any airspace violation.

This is not the first such reported violation of Polish territory.

According to the general staff of the Polish armed forces, a Russian missile entered the airspace of the Nato member at the end of December.

In April 2023, a military object was found in a forest close to the village of Zamość near the northern city of Bydgoszcz. It was later reported to be a Russian missile.

In November 2022, a stray Ukrainian missile struck the Polish village of Przewodów in the south, killing two people and raising fears at the time of the war in Ukraine spilling over the border.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia had launched 190 missiles, 140 drones and 700 aerial bombs against Ukraine over the last week.

“Our sky defenders shoot down practically all targets, but even the most agile need support to defend our people from Russia’s terror,” the ministry said in a post on X.

Both Russia and Ukraine have increased the tempo of their air attacks in recent weeks as Kyiv, which has struggled to find weapons and soldiers after more than two years of war, has promised to retaliate by taking the fighting to Russian soil.

Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, said the investigation is still ongoing into the Moscow concert hall shooting but vowed that “the perpetrators will be punished” and that “they do not deserve mercy”.

The attack on Friday night on Crocus City Hall on the western outskirts of Moscow left 137 people dead and over 180 injured, proving to be the deadliest in Russia in years. A total of 97 people remain hospitalised, officials said.

The suspects, identified as Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, Dalerdzhon Barotovich Mirzoyev, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov, face charges of a “terror attack committed by a group of individuals resulting in a person’s death”, according to the Tass news agency. All four reportedly pleaded guilty.

Russia’s ambassador to Poland did not go to the foreign ministry despite being summoned on Monday, a spokesperson for the ministry said, Reuters reported.

The ambassador was called in after a Russian missile entered Poland’s airspace on Sunday.

The US embassy in Budapest has published a video taking aim at Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó’s latest trip to Russia, pointing out that other countries in the region have reduced their dependency on Russian energy, while Hungary’s leadership has chosen not to do so.