In his nightly video address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of attempting to shift blame for a massacre at a concert hall near Moscow on Friday. Zelenskiy stated, “It’s obvious that Putin and other thugs are just trying to blame someone else. Their methods are always the same. We’ve seen it all before, destroyed buildings and shootings and explosions. And they always find someone else to blame.”
Chechen rebels previously accused Russian secret services of orchestrating apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynkask, and Volgodonsk in 1999, which killed over 200 people in Russia. This led to Putin sending troops back to Chechnya when he was the prime minister at the time.
A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed Zelenskiy’s accusations, labeling him as “the only head of state crazy enough to blame Russia for the terrorist attack.”
Putin reported that 11 individuals, including four gunmen, had been apprehended following the attack. He mentioned that the suspects attempted to flee towards Ukraine, where they allegedly had assistance to cross the state border.
Zelenskiy urged Putin to focus on combatting terrorism within Russia instead of invading Ukraine. He criticized Putin for ignoring the situation in his own country while involving hundreds of thousands of “terrorists” in Ukraine to fight against them.
Zelenskiy pointed out Putin’s delayed response to the incident, accusing him of taking 24 hours to address his fellow Russian citizens and instead focusing on connecting the incident to Ukraine. Zelenskiy characterized Putin’s actions as “absolutely predictable.”
It remains a developing situation, with Nick Starkov reporting from Kyiv and Elaine Monaghan from Washington, with editing by Jonathan Oatis.
