The four men suspected of carrying out the attack on the Crocus City complex near Moscow on Friday were arrested while trying to cross Russia's border with Ukraine, the Russian Investigative Committee has said.
“Special services and law enforcement agencies in the Bryansk region, near the border with Ukraine, detained four suspects from among those who committed a terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall concert hall,” the Committee said.
According to state media RIA Novosti, "the weapons used by the terrorists were prepared in advance in a cache, the FSB [Security Service] reported.”
“After the terrorist attack, the criminals intended to cross the border of the Russian Federation and Ukraine and had relevant contacts on the Ukrainian side, the FSB said,” according to RIA.
State-owned Russian news agency TASS also reported that the assailants had “contacts on the Ukrainian side. The terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall was carefully planned.”
Neither agency specified the nature of the alleged contacts.
Ukraine has strenuously denied any connection with the attack. One official, Mykhailo Podolyak said in a post on X on Friday that Ukraine “has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods. It is always pointless.”
Earlier, unofficial sources had published images of a white Renault car - similar to that caught on video outside the hall on Friday - that had been stopped on a highway south of the city of Bryansk in the early hours of Saturday. The images showed it had been extensively damaged.