Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that it was "extremely hard to believe" that the "Islamic State" would have had the capacity to carry out the attack on a concert hall in Moscow last Friday, in which at least 140 people were killed, Reuters quoted her as saying.
In a briefing with reporters, Zakharova instead repeated Moscow's claims, which she has yet to provide evidence of, that Ukraine was behind the Crocus City Hall attack, Russia's deadliest in 20 years.
"Islamic State" claimed responsibility for the attack, and US officials said they had intelligence indicating it was carried out by the Afghan branch of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province network. Ukraine has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the attack.
But Zakharova said the West had been quick to blame Islamic State as a way to deflect blame from Ukraine and the Western governments that support it.
"In order to ward off the suspicions of the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS, pulled an ace up their sleeve, and literally a few hours after the terrorist attack, the Anglo-Saxon media began to spread exactly these versions,", she said.
President Vladimir Putin said the attack was carried out by Islamist militants, but suggested it was in favor of Ukraine and that Kiev may have played a role.
He said that someone from the Ukrainian side had prepared a "window" for the gunmen to flee across the border before being captured in western Russia on Friday evening.
On Tuesday, however, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said the gunmen initially tried to cross into his country before turning away and heading for Ukraine after realizing crossing into Belarus was impossible.
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The director of Russia's FSB security agency said on Tuesday that he believed Ukraine, along with the United States and Britain, were involved in the Moscow attack.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron responded on social media platform X, saying: "Russia's claims to the West and Ukraine about the attack on the "Crocus City Hall" are complete nonsense".