The effort to blame-shift is crucial for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has carefully cultivated a strongman image, given his regime had dismissed U.S. warnings about a potential impending terror attack in Moscow.
On Sunday, Russian state media published footage of what it said were the interrogations of the four Tajiks who Moscow says carried out the attack. In the video, the battered and bruised men look behind the camera and give what appear to be rehearsed responses, claiming they had tried to flee to Kyiv, where a man had promised to reward them with a million rubles (€10,000) each. Russia’s state TV said the four men had Ukrainian flags on their phones.
The Russian defense ministry, meanwhile, gleefully reported last week that recruitment had jumped in the wake of the terror attack, saying: “Over the past 10 days, about 16,000 citizens have signed contracts to participate in a special military operation. The majority of candidates indicated the desire to avenge those killed in the tragedy that occurred on March 22, 2024 in the Moscow region as the main motive for concluding a contract.”
In Sunday’s videos, the four suspects say they were promised safe passage over the border into the Ukraine-controlled Sumy region. That’s an improbable route, given the men would have had to pass territory teeming with Russian troops and security services, before getting to the heavily mined and constantly bombed border zone.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko had more plausibly contradicted his close ally Putin’s claims in the days following the Crocus City Hall attack, saying the terror suspects had actually been headed to Belarus.
Kyiv has repeatedly denied any link to the attack, with military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov telling POLITICO that Russia was using it to spread hatred of Ukrainians and boost troop numbers.
