Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan has accused Western intelligence of "direct participation" in a massacre at a Moscow concert hall that has killed at least 115 people and left hundreds injured.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for Friday night's attack on Crocus City Hall in which armed men entered and opened fire. The U.S., which had warned of an imminent terrorist attack this month, said that theory is credible.
However, in a post on Telegram and X, Simonyan, who is editor-in-chief of the RT channel and an ally of Vladimir Putin wrote: "Western intelligence agencies knew yesterday that the perpetrators were similar to ISIS. That's why they started feeding this version.
"Again. They KNEW who the performers were. Before their arrest," Simonyan added. "This is direct participation."
In a follow-up post, she wrote: "It immediately becomes obvious why yesterday the American media shouted in unison that it was ISIS.
"Because this is not ISIS. It's just that the performers were selected in such a way that they could convince the stupid world community that it was ISIS," Simonyan added.
"Even before the arrests, even before the names and names of the perpetrators, Western intelligence services began to convince the population that it was ISIS," she wrote.
"This is a well-coordinated team of several other, also widely known, abbreviations," she added, without specifying further. Simonyan also posted a video of one of the alleged suspects being questioned by police in which he says he was offered half a million rubles ($5,400) to carry out the attacks.
He is asked, "What did you do yesterday?" and replies, "We shot people." When asked why, he says, "for the money," in the clip which has not been independently verified.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's Investigative Committee by email for comment.
There is claim and counterclaim about the attacks. On Friday night, Ukrainian military intelligence said it had been planned by Moscow to blame Ukraine so as to escalate the war and get support for mobilizing the population to fight.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has issued a statement that the terrorists involved in the Moscow attack were planning to cross the border with Ukraine, which Kyiv dismissed as "absurd."
Andriy Yusov, Ukrainian military intelligence directorate spokesperson, told the BBC that the border area with Ukraine is "full of special services and military." The Russian border region of Belgorod has been the scene of recent skirmishes blamed on Ukraine.
"To suggest the suspects were heading to Ukraine, would suggest they were stupid or suicidal," Yusov added.
Meanwhile, Andrey Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region, says the number of victims could still "rise significantly" and more than 140 other people have been wounded, with 16 in an "extremely serious condition."
Update 03/23/24, 8 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further information.
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Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
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