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Zelensky hits back after Russia links Ukraine to Moscow attack










Ukrainians anticipated that Kyiv would be held accountable as soon as word of the attack on the Moscow concert hall surfaced on Friday.

They anticipated additional missiles and drones coming soon.

The accusations came almost instantly.

At first, they were only suggestions, but President Vladimir Putin later stated categorically that the men who assaulted Moscow had attempted to escape to Ukraine with the assistance of acquaintances there.


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Then, on Sunday, just before morning, there was an explosion sound in Kiev.

Islamic State group (IS) jihadists had already claimed responsibility for the deaths when Russian President Vladimir Putin made his remarks on Saturday during a speech to the country.

Earlier this month, the US had acknowledged that it had shared threat intelligence.

Recently, IS has published an obscenely violent footage of their atrocity that was captured on bodycameras and features the attackers shouting, "God is Greatest"



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was obviously incensed that his nation was being held accountable during his remarks on Saturday night.

He called the president of Russia and other officials in Moscow "scum" for connecting the attack in that city to Kyiv.

He implied that the "miserable" Russian president was more focused on stopping the attack in Kyiv than comforting his own people.

Subsequently, Mr. Zelensky reversed the situation, claiming that since the full-scale invasion started in February 2022, Moscow had dispatched "hundreds of thousands of [its own] terrorists" to Ukraine.



He claimed that rather than defending Russia from the actual threat posed by extremism, those troops were now ruthlessly attacking Ukraine.

"They burn our cities… they torture and rape."

Since February 2022, Ukrainian authorities have filed thousands of criminal complaints against Russian forces. 



The Kiev military intelligence directorate referred to the particular Russian assertion that the shooters were apprehended attempting to breach the Ukrainian border as "absurd" earlier on Saturday.

There are a plethora of Russian soldiers and security services on this busy front line.



Andriy Yusov contended that it would be "stupid" or "suicidal" for anyone to go there following a significant attack on Moscow.

The suspects were apprehended in the Bryansk region while travelling from the west to Ukraine, according to Russian officials. We do not know if that is actually where their automobile was stopped, but if it is, they may have been travelling to Belarus.

Compared to going through a minefield to reach Ukraine, this is a far easier way out of Russia.

Social media users are currently sharing videos of the suspected assailants' incarceration and some of their questioning. In one, a man is shown being forced to eat a chunk of his own severed ear by a Russian spy. He spits it out.



His face is covered in blood and his head is wrapped in another video. Confessions obtained through such torture should not be believed.

The purpose of releasing the video tapes was probably to demonstrate a forceful reaction, although this comes after an assault that the same security services were unable to prevent or predict.

Therefore, instead than blaming Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky recommended in his speech that Russians probe their own intelligence services.

This would include inquiring as to whether US information was overlooked.

However, Putin's Russia is now devoid of independent media and political opposition, meaning that there is no one left to truly hold the government responsible.




The president of Ukraine also made reference in his speech to a gloomy hypothesis that had been previously brought up by his military intelligence agency: that the Moscow attack was actually orchestrated by the Russian government.

The alleged goals were to increase mobilisation, support Mr. Putin's war, and strengthen his grip on power.

The remarks are reminiscent of long-standing concerns in Russia over the bombing of apartment buildings in 1999, which served as the impetus for Vladimir Putin's war against the Chechen Republic as prime minister at the time.

But in addition to battling one other on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine are also involved in an information war. 

Just as the IS video disproved Moscow's charges, so too did Kyiv's, demonstrating that it was the organisation behind the attack.



The missile strikes on Ukraine on Sunday morning don't feel like an escalation in retaliation for the Crocus City Hall attack—rather, they feel like Russia's war as usual.

There were also indications of Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, the peninsula that Russia unlawfully seized from Ukraine in 2014, before daybreak on Sunday.

Large-scale missile strikes need planning, and this is Russia's second since early on Friday.

The attack on that day targeted the nation's energy infrastructure, and the important city of Kharkiv is still mostly without electricity.

Considering all the bluster coming from Moscow, Ukraine is undoubtedly prepared for worse.














However, the attack on Crocus City Hall indicates that Russia is indeed confronting a serious threat inside its borders, not the manufactured one that it created from Ukraine to support Vladimir Putin's invasion of that country in 2022.

The Russian president, a guy who detests seeming weak, is concerned about that.

That's why, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Russia is eager to shift the responsibility to Kyiv.


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