Russia says West behind Moscow attack

MOSCOW — The director of Russia's most powerful security agency said on Tuesday that he believed Ukraine, along with the United States and Britain, were involved in the attack on a concert hall just outside Moscow that killed at least 139 people.

"We believe that the action was prepared by both the Islamist radicals themselves and was facilitated by Western special services," Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said on television.

"The special services of Ukraine are directly related to this," Bortnikov said, adding Kyiv had helped prepare Islamist radicals at an unidentified location in the Middle East.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the mass shooting.

When asked by Russian reporters if Ukraine and its allies, the United States and Britain, were involved in the attack on the concert hall, Bortnikov said: "We think that's the case. In any case, we are now talking about the texture that we have. This is general information."

Ukraine, which has repeatedly denied any link with Friday's attack, dismissed Russian claims.

Britain said they were "nonsense".

Bortnikov, 72, who has served as head of the FSB since 2008, said Russia had yet to identify those who specifically ordered the deadliest attack in Russia for two decades, but said that retaliatory measures would be taken.

He offered no specific evidence for the claims, which hard-liners in Moscow could use to justify an escalation of the war in Ukraine and to explain how Russian security services failed to prevent the attack.

Russian news outlet SHOT published a video of an exchange in which a reporter asked Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, whether it was "ISIS (Islamic State) or Ukraine?"

"Of course Ukraine," Patrushev replied. Asked about the remark later, he said there were "many" indications of Ukrainian involvement.

However, senior Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak, said, "The lies are officially spread by Patrushev, and after that by the head of the FSB Bortnikov."

Two members of the Islamic State group had briefly entered and exited Turkiye to extend their residence permit, local media reported on Tuesday.

Anonymous Turkish security sources informed Hurriyet Daily News that the Tajik assailants had been living in Moscow for a long time and needed to leave the country to extend their residency in Russia.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday the attackers who carried out last week's massacre at a Moscow concert hall tried fleeing to his country first, but were turned away because of checkpoints.

Lukashenko told journalists that Belarusian and Russian security services had coordinated their actions as the suspects' car fled southwest from Moscow to the Bryansk region, bordering both Ukraine and Belarus, where it was apprehended.

He said Belarus had quickly set up checkpoints at the border.

Agencies - Xinhua