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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian authorities said on Thursday they had found “evidence” that the perpetrators of the attack that left more than 140 dead at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”.
Moscow pointed the finger at Ukraine in the wake of the attack, believing that Kyiv was linked in one way or another to this attack, which Ukrainian authorities deny. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Russian National Investigative Committee announced in a press release that it had discovered initial evidence of Ukrainian involvement, without making it public.
Citing the interrogations of the “terrorists” who were arrested, the examination of the electronic devices with which they were equipped and the analysis of financial transactions, Russian investigators said they had established that the attackers were “in links with Ukrainian nationalists “.
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They claimed that the suspects, of Tajik nationality, received large sums of cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine.
In the first twenty-four hours following the attack, Russian authorities arrested 11 people. Eight of them, including the four suspected perpetrators of the attack, were detained pending trial.
The United States repeated Thursday that it had alerted Russia to the risk of an imminent attack by Islamist extremists.
(Reuters editorial)
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