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

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.

Russia is reeling on Saturday following a deadly assault on the outskirts of the capital that saw armed attackers enter a popular concert venue complex and open fire.

The incident is the deadliest terror attack in Moscow in decades.

Here are the latest developments:

Barely a week since Vladimir Putin secured his fifth presidential term, Russia has been plunged into carnage.

The appalling attack on the vast Crocus City Hall concert venue and shopping complex near Moscow – claimed by ISIS – left more than 100 people dead.

This is hardly the stability and security for which so many Russians voted for Putin. For years, the Kremlin strongman has been cast as a leader able to guarantee order in this vast, turbulent country.

But Russia today seems more insecure and volatile than at any point in Putin’s 24 years in power. The Kremlin’s brutal war in Ukraine, now in its third horrific year, has cost Russians dearly.

Ukrainian drone strikes and cross border raids by Ukraine-based Russian militias continue apace. The mutinous uprising last year of Yevgeny Prigozhin was a shocking, unprecedented challenge to Kremlin authority.

But now, the focus is firmly on the apparent reappearance in Russia of jihadists, unrelated to the Ukraine war or domestic opposition to the Kremlin. To make matters worse, the US and other Western governments warned of intelligence suggesting such an attack in early March.

Perhaps it was distrust, with US-Russian relations at such an historic low. It could also have been that the US intelligence was just too vague or not actionable. But for a leader who has promised security and stability to Russians, a large-scale terror attack on home soil is a powerful blow to his image.

The death toll in the Friday Moscow attack has risen to at least 133, the Russian Investigative Committee said.

The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, published an image Saturday purporting to show the four men who attacked the Crocus City complex near Moscow on Friday.

None of the men are identifiable in the image, which was published by the ISIS-affiliated Amaq agency. All of them are wearing balaclavas and the rest of their faces are blurred.

ISIS described the attack as the "fiercest in years," according to a translation of the message by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors terror groups’ propaganda.

Amaq provided details of the attack, saying three fighters attacked the gathered crowd at the venue with guns and knives while the fourth threw incendiary devices. It said the attack was preceded by an intensive surveillance operation of the venue.

It added that “the attack comes within the normal context of the raging war between the Islamic State and countries fighting Islam,” according to the translation by SITE.