MOSCOW, June 11. /TASS/. Russian special services have implicated Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency in the March terrorist attack on a concert hall outside Moscow, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and chairman of the National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC).
"Ukrainian and Western special services have been recruiting increasingly more perpetrators for heinous attacks in Russia <…>. We, for one, have exposed the role of the Ukrainian military intelligence in the Crocus City Hall attack near Moscow," Bortnikov said in a video address released by the NAC.
On the evening of March 22, four terrorists attacked the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region, just outside the Moscow city limits. The death toll is 144 and 551 more people were injured, according to the latest data. By the next morning, the four gunmen — Dalerzhon Mirzoev, Saidakram Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Faizov — were detained in the Bryansk Region, southwest of Moscow, as they attempted to flee to Ukraine across the nearby border. Later, individuals suspected of being complicit in the attack were detained and placed under arrest.
The Russian Investigative Committee said that it had established the connection between the suspected terrorists and Ukrainian nationalists.