March 23, 2024 Shooting at Moscow concert venue leaves over 130 dead

Leaders around the world have expressed their condolences and condemnation of the terror attack that took place on the Crocus City complex near Moscow on Friday night.

Defense Intelligence of Ukraine spokesperson Andrii Yusov firmly denied his country had anything to do with the terror attacks at a concert hall in Russia's Moscow region.

Earlier Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Russian people that the perpetrators had “tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border." A handful of Russian officials have suggested without evidence that Ukraine may have been involved in the attack as well.

Yusov called Putin's comments "completely false and absurd."

He said that Russia had disregarded warnings, such as those from the US Embassy under its "duty to warn" policy, that terrorist attacks could be possible in large crowds. Putin had told Russia's Federal Security Service on Tuesday that warnings from the US were "provocative" and "outright blackmail."

A new satellite image, taken by Umbra Space's synthetic aperture radar (SAR), shows just how badly the fire that started during the terror attack on Friday night damaged the Crocus City Hall complex. 

In the image, taken at 9:26 a.m. local time Saturday, a large hole that is over 150 feet wide in diameter is seen in the roof of the complex directly over where the concert venue is located.  

About SAR images: They are not like normal satellite images. The SAR images are created by a satellite transmitting radar beams capable of passing through clouds, like the ones currently preventing satellites from imaging the area. Those radar beams bounce off objects on the ground and echo back to the satellite. What they bounce off of is then mapped out by the satellite, which is then translated into the image.  

Anastasia Rodionova, a survivor of the Moscow region's Crocus City Hall attack, told Reuters Saturday that the armed assailants were "gunning down everyone methodically in silence" inside the venue on Friday night.

"It is unbelievable. You understand only now that you are lucky, really lucky. I came home; my coat was just covered in blood,” she added.

Another survivor of the attack, Margarita, who did not provide her last name, told Reuters that “the gunshots were going on and on.”

“We went down to some kind of ground floor, some dark room, and I saw only 'exit' word shining in the darkness, and we just did not know whether to run or not. Who is there in the dark? What is there in the dark?” she said.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published on Telegram the purported confession of one of the men apprehended in connection with the attack on the Crocus City Hall complex. 

In the brief video, a man with a bloodied bandaged head speaks in halting Russian. He gives his name and says he is 30 years old. 

His interrogator asks him where the weapons used in the attack were dropped off, whether near Moscow or closer to the venue site. He replies, “I don’t know the city, ask my friends, they know.”

RIA also posted images of three of the alleged attackers after they were detained, images that match videos uploaded on unofficial channels earlier Saturday showing the men being apprehended in Bryansk region. No image or video of the fourth alleged attacker has been published on Russian state media. 

In an accompanying commentary, RIA Novosti said the alleged attackers all speak Russian "extremely poorly," with one of the men speaking "in Tajik through an interpreter."

It added that one of the men said he’d been promised by an unnamed person who called himself “an assistant to the preacher” a half-million rubles (about $5,000) to carry out the attack. He later gave a different figure.

RIA Novosti said one of the alleged attackers had mentioned returning to Russia from Turkey earlier this month. The men lived together in a hostel in the north of Moscow, and two of them met only “10-12 days ago," according to RIA. The car they drove to Crocus City Hall and then used to escape had been bought through a family connection, it reported.

CNN cannot independently verify the veracity of the RIA Novosti report or the statements made by the alleged attacker, which may have been made under duress.

The United States “strongly condemns” the Moscow concert venue shooting that has left more than 130 people dead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Saturday.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack but did not provide evidence to support the claim. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack a "barbaric terrorist act."

Gunmen in an entertainment venue. Bodies lying on the cold concrete. Horror that such murder could strike the safety of the Moscow bubble.

These were all present in the horrific aftermath of Friday night’s savage attack outside Crocus City Hall just as they were almost 22 years ago when I was outside the Dubrovka Theatre, where Chechen gunmen took 800 hostages, and a standoff ended with a special forces raid.

While the theatre attacks of 2002 marked just one of many horrific low points in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Islamist extremism, last night showed that the brutal past has come back to haunt the Kremlin – if, indeed, it ever left.

Yet Putin faces the same sort of Islamist enemy as 2002, in a world transformed. If indeed ISIS-K – the militant group’s Afghan branch – were responsible, as their claim and advance warnings from US officials suggest, it means a new generation of extremists have Russia in their sights, following Russia’s bloody suppression of Islamism in the south.

Read the full story here.

Russian state media is reporting that, according to the interior ministry, “all terrorists detained in the Bryansk region are foreign citizens.”

Russian authorities earlier said that four people suspected of being directly involved in the attack on Crocus City were apprehended in Bryansk in southwestern Russia and were being brought to Moscow.

Belarusian special services helped Russia prevent the "terrorists" who allegedly carried out the deadly Friday night attack on a concert venue complex from escaping across the border Friday night, the country's ambassador in Moscow said.

“Since yesterday, active interaction has been carried out through special services. The head of the State Security Committee is in direct contact with his colleague,” Ambassador Dmitry Krutoy said Saturday, according to Belarus’ official news agency BELTA.

"And in fact, the main task of last night was to prevent terrorists from escaping across our common border. This task has been completed."

Some background: Russian authorities said the four men who allegedly carried out the attack on the Crocus City complex on Friday evening near Moscow were apprehended early Saturday in the region of Bryansk, a large region of southwest Russia which borders Ukraine and Belarus, without giving the exact location. The capital city of the region is some five hours drive from Moscow.