DISINFO: US, UK and Ukraine are behind the terrorist attack in Moscow
SUMMARY
Islamist terrorists alone would not have been able to carry out the terrorist attack in Moscow, they were helped. Preliminary data from the detainees confirmed the Ukrainian trail, and Russian special services believe that the US, Britain and Ukraine are behind the terrorist attack.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, depicting Ukraine, the UK and US as terrorist regimes. This disinformation is apart of a wider campaign by Russian officials and media - including by Vladimir Putin himself - to baselessly blame Ukraine and Western actors for the attack.
There is no evidence of Ukraine, US or UK’s involvement in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. Kyiv strongly denied any involvement in the assault on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, and the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
As terrorism experts pointed out, there is no question regarding the authenticity of the statement, made by Amaq, the official Islamic State propaganda media. The Islamic State released multiple evidence, including a gruesome video of the Moscow attack filmed by the attackers themselves, leaving little doubt about its responsibility.
The US was legally obliged to warn Moscow earlier this month of a possible attack in Russia aimed at large gatherings before issuing a public advisory to citizens in the country. The US warning even identified Crocus City Hall as a potential target. As explained by ABC news.
"The United States shared those advance intelligence indications under a tenet of the U.S. intelligence community called the “duty to warn," which obliges U.S. intelligence officials to lean toward sharing knowledge of a dire threat if conditions allow. That holds whether the targets are allies, adversaries or somewhere in between".
The alert was dismissed as "provocative", "blackmail" and an "attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country" by Putin. He said: “I’ll remind you of recent, let’s say directly, provocative statements of certain official Western structures about potential terror attacks in Russia. All of this looks like obvious blackmail and an attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country”.
In a recent development, news have appeared that Iran had warned Moscow a few days before of an imminent attack by ISIS based on information obtained from arrested ISIS terrorists in Iran.
Even Putin himself acknowledged late on 25 March that Islamists were committing the attack.
More debunking false claims are available in English and Russian.
See similar disinformation cases in our database, such as claims that US and Israel created ISIS and now moved this pawn against Russia in Crocus City attack, that Crocus City Hall terror attack was planned and paid for by Ukraine, that Moscow has evidence of the connection between the Crocus City terrorists and Ukraine, that The West is afraid of evidence proving Kyiv's involvement in the Moscow terrorist attack, that Kyiv is behind the attack at the Crocus in Moscow, that ISIS claiming responsibility for Moscow attack looks like a fake, that Ukrainian official admitted Ukraine’s involvement in the terrorist attack in Crocus City, that Ukraine is resorting to terrorism by attacking nuclear sites in Russia, that Ukraine is a terrorist state and the West is to blame for guiding Kyiv, or that The Kyiv regime is a global terrorist threat.