MOSCOW, March 29. /TASS/. The terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow late last week bore all the typical earmarks of assaults carried out by Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups, Vasily Prozorov, a former member of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said.

"I am absolutely sure that there are Ukrainian fingerprints on what happened at Crocus City Hall; it’s a Ukraine-invented pattern of action," he pointed out at a press conference dedicated to the terrorist attack. "As for the terrorists’ behavior, professionals will immediately say that it looks more like a special operation code-named ‘Raid,’ <...> similar to what special forces operatives carry out. They launch an attack, cause as much damage as possible, and then retreat," Prozorov said.

According to him, the Crocus City Hall tragedy is nothing like terrorist attacks "conducted by Islamic fundamentalists, whose ultimate goal is to die battling infidels." "In this case, it was a sabotage operation," the ex-SBU operative noted.

He added that the very direction in which the terrorists retreated "obviates the need to even ask whether Ukraine was involved."

On the evening of March 22, a terrorist attack targeted the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region, just outside the Moscow city limits. According to the latest data, 144 people were killed and 382 people were injured, 217 of whom received outpatient care. All four gunmen were apprehended in the Bryansk Region, southwest of Moscow, apparently while attempting to seek refuge by crossing the nearby Ukrainian border. Another five people suspected of involvement in the terrorist attack have been detained. The Russian Investigative Committee said that investigators had found evidence of the perpetrators’ connections to Ukrainian nationalists. President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address that, according to preliminary information, the Ukrainian side had prepared "a window" at the border especially for the terrorists to cross undetected.