American certainty about Ukraine’s innocence is strange, Dmitry Peskov has said
Flowers and toys are placed on the roadside in front of the burnt-out Crocus City Hall following a terrorist attack in Moscow Region, March 27, 2024 © Sputnik / Grigory Sysoev
Washington’s insistence on a narrative about the Crocus City Hall massacre is odd, since the Russian investigation is still ongoing, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
Within hours of Friday’s terrorist attack, which claimed 143 lives at a Moscow concert venue, the US and EU began insisting that Ukraine had absolutely nothing to do with it and that the terrorist group Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) was the sole culprit.
“It’s strange, to say the least, that the Americans have dared to announce a single narrative,” Peskov told the Russian outlet Izvestiya on Wednesday. “This suggests at the very least that they are trying to shift attention away from something,” he added.
Peskov also noted that these claims came in before Moscow had formulated an official version of events, since Russian law enforcement is still working on the case.
Four men suspected of being the perpetrators were arrested early on Saturday as they attempted to flee into Ukraine, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). They were identified as nationals of Tajikistan.
While acknowledging the assessment by security services that the men were “radical Islamists,” Putin noted on Monday that many questions remained unanswered. He also noted that such terrorist attacks fit the pattern of hostile actions against Russia by Ukraine’s foreign sponsors.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also commented on Washington’s strange insistence on the ISIS-K narrative. The US is obviously biased and trying to “get Ukraine out of harm’s way,” she said during the daily briefing on Wednesday.
Had Kiev truly been blameless, the US would have called for a full investigation, Zakharova argued. Instead, both the White House and the State Department simply announced that “Ukraine has nothing to do with this.”
“Based on what data and what information?” Zakharova wondered. “Only one thing is clear – they began to excuse the Kiev regime in order to excuse themselves. Because everyone understands perfectly well that there is simply no independent [Ukraine] without Western financial and military assistance.”
The US and its allies have sent over $200 billion in weapons, ammunition and equipment – not counting financial aid – since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022. They have ignored Moscow’s warnings that this could lead to a direct confrontation, insisting that this does not make them a party to the hostilities.
According to US media reports citing American spies, CIA-trained Ukrainian operatives have been responsible for several assassinations of Russian civilians, though Kiev has officially denied this.
