Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Saturday that it has apprehended 11 individuals in connection with the incident, including four that were directly responsible for the heinous crime. The FSB also reported that these four were detained in the Bryansk region of Russia, which shares a border with Ukraine, with only a few hours between each arrest.
Sputnik sums up all the facts that are known at this moment thanks to the interrogation of the terrorists by the investigative authorities:
All four terrorists speak Russian extremely poorly (or pretend to speak Russian poorly). One communicates in Tajik through an interpreter;
The terrorist attack was carried out “for money”: one of the detainees said that he was contacted via Telegram by a man “without a name or surname” who called himself “an assistant to a preacher.” At the same time, the terrorist could not name the exact amount of the reward for the attack: first he said that he was promised half a million rubles (more than $5,400), then “about a million” (approx. $10,800);
The name of the “preacher” is not mentioned, but one of the terrorists admitted that he listened to his “lessons and sermons”;
One of the terrorists returned from Turkey 2.5 weeks ago. Whether he met the “preacher” or his people there is unclear;
The “assistant to a preacher” also transmitted the coordinates of the location of the terrorist attack himself, while the organizers provided them with weapons — Kalashnikov assault rifles;
The terrorists lived together in a hostel in the north of Moscow, and were unlikely to have known each other for a long time: at least two of the four terrorists met only “10-12 days ago”;
They bought the car used in the crime via their relatives because they “wanted to work as a taxi.” During their escape to the border with Ukraine, the weapons were thrown away.
Thus, it is not completely clear what exactly connected these people, what motives guided them to organize this terrorist attack.
The Russian authorities are urging the public to wait until the investigation is complete, promising to identify all those involved and bring them to justice.