Ukraine had “no involvement whatsoever” in the massacre in a Moscow music venue that killed more than 130 people, the White House said Sunday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed a link to Kyiv.
“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” said White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson, using an acronym for the Islamic State group, which has claimed the attack.
There was “no” evidence that Ukraine was involved, agreed Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview with ABC News’ “This Week” that was aired Sunday.
“ISIS-K is actually, by all accounts, responsible for what happened,” she said.
The “K” refers to Khorasan, with the attack being claimed by IS’s branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On Friday evening, masked gunmen entered and set fire to the Crocus City Hall in Moscow’s northern district of Krasnogorsk, killing at least 137 people.
On Saturday, the Islamic State organization announced on Telegram that the attack was “carried out by four IS fighters armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives, and firebombs,” as part of “the raging war” with “countries fighting Islam.”
According to the SITE intelligence agency, a video lasting approximately a minute and a half appears to have been shot by the gunmen and released on social media sites generally used by IS.
Putin has vowed to punish those responsible for the “barbaric terrorist attack,” but in his only public comments about the massacre, he made no mention of IS’s claims of culpability.
Instead, he said four gunmen attempting to flee to Ukraine had been apprehended.
“They attempted to flee and were heading towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window had been prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” he said in a televised address to the country on Saturday.
Kyiv has flatly denied any connection, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Putin of attempting to transfer blame to them.
IS-K is a Sunni militant group that developed in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province in 2015 and aspires to establish a hardline Islamic caliphate spanning India, Iran, and Central Asia.
The group has launched scores of strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Analysts say that under the Taliban, which considers it an adversary, its effectiveness in Afghanistan has dwindled — but that it has increased its global activities in recent months.