After Rejecting Interpol Help, Russia Continues to Blame Ukraine, Now Involves Its Allies

Russia persists and signs. After Vladimir Putin’s accusations against Ukraine, according to him involved in the attack claimed by the Islamic State organization, the Russian secret services also point the finger at Western countries.

In Russia, after the attack on Friday March 22 at Crocus City Hall in Moscow, it is now the entire state apparatus that is working as one to feed the same narrative. “Of course it’s Ukraine“, says one of the Russian president’s oldest allies, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council.

Tuesday March 26, the head of diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, took over. He explains without blushing that if his country rejected the service offer from Interpol, the international criminal police organization, it is because it will necessarily focus on “the Western-friendly theory that the Islamic State carried out the attack and that Ukraine had nothing to do with it“.

British and American services “involved”

But the most peremptory remains in fact the boss of the intelligence services, the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, considered one of the “tough guys” of the regime. He assures that the attackers arrested on Saturday were “expected“in Ukraine to be welcomed there”as a hero“. Then he adds, without proof, that the Ukrainians trained the Islamists in the Middle East with the help of Western services, American and British in particular.

These accusations seem mainly intended to distract attention from the fact that his agency, one of the most powerful institutions in Russia, failed to prevent the attack, and that the country has neglected the fight against terrorism to concentrate all its efforts on Ukraine.

Neglected American alert

However, everything proves that neither Ukraine nor the West are involved in the attack. Two weeks before the tragedy, the United States warned Russia of an imminent Islamist attack. This warning was dismissed out of hand by Vladimir Putin, who saw it as a destabilizing maneuver.

Ukraine, of course, but also France, Italy and Great Britain have been denouncing for several days the blindness and manipulations of the head of the Kremlin, obsessed by his confrontation with the West. This obsession which led him, for example, to hold the United States and the United Kingdom responsible for the explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic in 2022.

Gray areas in the official story

The official account of Friday’s attack appears increasingly confused. The chronology of the attack presented by the head of the investigation committee does not clarify any gray areas. Why did specialized police units only arrive an hour after the shooting began? How were the suspects able to safely leave one of the most monitored cities in the world?

Even Vladimir Putin’s ally, the Belarusian president added to the confusion Tuesday by contradicting Moscow’s claim that the attackers wanted to flee to Ukraine. They were on the road to enter Belarus, said Alexander Lukashenko, but they could not, so they changed direction… The question today is: how long will Moscow be stuck in a fantasized story which can be used to justify an intensification of the war against Ukraine, but which no one believes.