“Ukraine is behind the terror. Give us the nationalists,” Russia demands. Kyiv sees it as cynicism

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that all recent attacks on Russian territory, including the March terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow that left 144 dead, are linked to Ukraine. Russia has called on Ukraine to extradite all Ukrainian officials involved in terrorist attacks on Russian territory. According to Moscow, the head of the Ukrainian secret service SBU Vasyl Malyuk is among them. This was reported by the Russian state agency TASS. Kyiv denies any involvement in the assassination, the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) has repeatedly claimed responsibility for it. Ukraine considers Russia’s challenge cynical.

The Russian ministry says that an investigation into recent attacks on its territory has shown that “all traces of these crimes lead to Ukraine”. In addition to the March attack in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, Russian diplomacy also mentions a bomb attack in a cafe in St. Petersburg that killed a pro-war blogger known as Vladlen Tatarsky, attacks on the Crimean bridge connecting southern Russia with the occupied Ukrainian peninsula, and an attack that killed the daughter of a nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin Darja.

Kyiv denies any involvement in the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall complex outside Moscow, which killed 144 people and injured over 500. Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, began to hint at the connection between the assassination and Ukraine shortly after the attack on March 22. This week, Russian investigators said they had found evidence of financial support for the attackers from “Ukrainian nationalists”. The terrorist organization Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting and the start of the fire, which the White House also considers responsible.

Moscow said it had sent a request to Kyiv to detain and extradite all people involved in the said acts. According to a statement by Russian diplomacy, the head of Ukraine’s SBU Malyuk is also on the list, who, according to Russian authorities, confessed in statements provided to the press to involvement in the bombing of the Crimean bridge in October 2022. Russia also says it will demand compensation from Kyiv for the victims of the attacks .

“The statements about terrorism are extremely cynical considering that they come from the terrorists themselves,” Ukraine’s SBU secret service said in response. She added that the statement came on the day Ukraine commemorates the second anniversary of the liberation of Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, which were briefly occupied by the Russian army at the start of the war in 2022. According to Kyiv, Russian soldiers committed war crimes against the civilian population there. “The Russian Foreign Ministry forgets that it is Putin who is on the international wanted list,” the secret service said. Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president in connection with the introduction of Ukrainian children into Russia.

The Western press believes that the Ukrainian secret services may have been involved in some of the attacks mentioned by the Russian Foreign Ministry. In October of last year, The Washington Post newspaper, for example, wrote with reference to its sources that Ukraine participated in the attack, the target of which was probably Dugin and in which his daughter died, or in the attack on the Crimean bridge.