Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said on Tuesday that Ukraine is behind the deadly terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall convert venue near Moscow.
"Of course, Ukraine," Patrushev told reporters when asked if Ukraine or the Islamic State* is responsible for the attack.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the terrorist attack at the Crocus concert hall was carried out by radical Islamists, five of whom have already been arrested.
But although Russia knows who committed the attack, the mastermind behind it is still in question, and it's necessary to find out whether radical Islamists really decided to attack the country, the Russian president said.
On the evening of Friday, March 22, before a concert at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, a shooting and fire took place. A Sputnik correspondent who witnessed the incident reported that several men in camouflage and without masks broke into the hall, shot people at close range and threw incendiary bombs.
The terrorists killed 139 people and injured 182 more, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported.
*a terrorist group banned in Russia and other countries