After Friday’s attack on a Moscow performance hall, allegations were leveled against Kyiv. They could see the blame game coming.
The US acknowledged earlier this month that it had communicated threat information, and President Putin asserted that the assailants had attempted to flee to Ukraine. In a disturbing video captured by bodycams, radicals of the Islamic State organization (IS) unleashed a brutal assault, with assailants yelling “Allahu Akbar,” among other things.
Incensed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the Russian president and those in Moscow “scum” for associating the incident in Russia with Kyiv. He proceeded to accuse Moscow of sending hundreds of thousands of terrorists to Ukraine since the full-scale assault started in February 2022.
The Russian assertion that the shooters were apprehended while attempting to breach the Ukrainian border was termed “absurd” by the military intelligence directorate in Kyiv. Russian military and security services are abundant on this busy battle line. Anyone going there after planning a big assault on Moscow, according to Andriy Yusov, must be “stupid” or “suicidal.”
The Russian government claims that the individuals were apprehended in the Bryansk region while en route to Ukraine from the West. If it had indeed been the location where their vehicle was held, they could have been on their way to Belarus.
The alleged assailants’ arrest and some of their questioning are captured in videos that have recently gone viral on social media. The reliability of any confessions obtained through such torture is questionable.
In his speech, Mr. Zelensky urged the Russian people to stop criticizing Ukraine and start investigating their intelligence services. The question of whether US information was disregarded would fall within this category.
Ukrainian President Poroshenko made oblique references to a conspiracy theory put out by his military intelligence service earlier in his speech: namely, that the Russian government was complicit in the attack on Moscow. Proposed goals included increasing mobilization, strengthening Mr. Putin’s grip on power, and rallying support for his war.
Nevertheless, in addition to battling on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine are involved in an information war. Similar to how the IS video and assertion that it was responsible for the assault would sever the charges from Moscow, it would do the same to Kyiv.
