The Kremlin on Monday refused to comment on the Islamic State (IS) armed group’s claim of responsibility for the attack near Moscow, which left 137 dead, as long as the investigation is ongoing, while searches in the rubble continue.
This weekend, Vladimir Putin and his powerful security services, the FSB, did not mention jihadist involvement either, alluding to a Ukrainian lead vigorously denied by kyiv and the West.
The Russian president, who only spoke in a brief speech on Saturday, is due to hold a meeting during the day with security and political officials.
However, he has not planned to go to Crocus City Hall, the scene of the worst attack known by Russia in twenty years and the deadliest claimed by ISIS on European soil.
Three days after the tragedy, many questions remain unanswered, particularly regarding the identity and motivations of the four suspects.
Dmitri Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, did not provide any answers on Monday.
“The investigation is ongoing and the presidential administration would be wrong to comment on the progress of the investigation,” he simply told the press.
The Islamic State group, which Russia is fighting in Syria and which is active in the Russian Caucasus, claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russian authorities said the suspected killers were trying to reach Ukrainian territory after the attack.
kyiv, which has been fighting an assault by Russian troops since February 2022, has denied any “link with the incident”. The United States also rejected the Russian president’s version.
On Monday, Russian state television made no mention of ISIS or Ukraine, but noted that patriotic education classes in the country’s schools today focused on terrorism.
On site, investigators continued to search the rubble of the concert hall, ravaged by a gigantic fire started by the attackers.
The number of injured rose to 182, of whom 97 were still hospitalized Monday, according to authorities.
” Divert attention “
Dmitri Peskov also did not want to comment on the suspects’ allegations of torture, which emerged after the publication of videos on social networks and photos showing them with bloody faces.
In images of their arrests, broadcast on Russian public television, three of the four alleged attackers had blood on their faces.
Another video, posted online and whose authenticity has not been confirmed, appears to show one of the suspects having his ear cut off by someone off-camera.
At the suspects’ hearing in a Moscow court on Sunday evening, one of them had a white bandage on his ear while another arrived in a wheelchair with his eyes closed.
One of the Russian opposition figures in exile, Leonid Volkov, denounced on Monday an attempt by the Russian security services “to divert attention from [leur] helplessness and [leur] failure” by showing these videos, while repression has intensified in recent months.
In total, Russian authorities said they had arrested 11 people, including these four alleged attackers, but their profile remains very vague.
Shame for Putin
The four individuals were placed in pre-trial detention overnight from Sunday to Monday until May 22, awaiting their trial, the date of which has not yet been set.
If they face life imprisonment, executives of Vladimir Putin’s regime have increased calls in recent hours for the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty for “terrorists”.
Despite his promises of severe punishment, the snub remains enormous for Vladimir Putin. The attack occurred just days after his re-election without opposition for six years, when he had promised security to his fellow citizens in the midst of an upsurge in attacks from Ukraine on Russian soil.
The attack on Crocus City Hall also recalls other terrorist acts during Vladimir Putin’s first years in power, on the embers of the war in Chechnya: the Dubrovka hostage taking in Moscow in 2002 and the tragedy of the Beslan school two years later.
The fight against terrorism “requires total international cooperation”, Dmitri Peskov said on Monday, but this “does not exist at all”.
French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, assured that he had offered Moscow “increased cooperation” on the subject, specifying that the branch of IS “involved” in Friday’s attack had carried out “several attempts” in recent months on French soil.