Ukrainians have reacted with a mixture of concern and derision to the narrative pushed by the Kremlin and Russian state media that Ukraine was behind Friday’s terror attack at a Moscow concert hall, a claim despite Islamic State claiming responsibility .
For some Ukrainians – officials and civilians – the accusations were typical of a Kremlin playbook, blaming Ukraine to justify Moscow’s violence against their country. This includes the false claim that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia used to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, stating that the country was run by neo-Nazi leaders and that the goal of the war was to de-Nazify the country.
“It’s typical for Russia,” Kiev resident Iryna Blakyta, 24, said on Monday, adding that she expected Mr Putin to use the concert hall attack to rally Russians after more than two years of war. “It has to mobilize people,” Ms. Blakyta said. “It has to show who the enemy is.”
But concerns about Mr Putin’s next steps intensified on Monday morning in Kiev, which was hit by two ballistic missiles at midday, the third airstrike against the Ukrainian capital in five days. A university building in a central part of the city was reduced to rubble and officials said at least 10 people were injured.
The United States has confirmed ISIS’s claim of responsibility. And, on Monday night, Mr Putin acknowledged that “radical Islamists” had carried out the attack, but also said that Ukraine, backed by the West, could have masterminded the attack. Ukraine has denied any involvement.
Ukrainian officials said Mr Putin’s insinuations that Ukraine was involved were in line with the Kremlin’s long-standing practice of spreading disinformation to cover up the failures of its security services.
“Putin is a pathological liar,” said Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister. wrote to X on Sunday, listing a series of bombings, assassinations and aggressive actions by Russia that he said were all covered up in lies, including Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the downing of an airliner over Ukraine by fighters backed by the Kremlin in the same year.
“Don’t let Putin and his cronies fool you,” Mr Kuleba said.
Mr Putin had earlier claimed in a statement about Friday’s attack, which killed at least 139 people, that the suspects were “heading towards Ukraine” after running into the concert hall and that “according to preliminary information, a window had been prepared for the Ukrainian side to cross the state border”. He stood by that claim on Monday.
But Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service, ridiculed that claim over the weekend, saying the Ukrainian-Russian border is an active combat zone that is heavily mined and guarded by both sides — making any crossing extremely complicated. and dangerous.
“You don’t need to be a security expert” to figure this out, Mr Yusov told Ukrainian television on Saturday.
He and other officials have pointed to Russia’s use of past terror attacks to pursue political goals, including Mr. Putin using a deadly 2004 school siege to consolidate political control in regions of the country by scrapping direct gubernatorial elections until their rehabilitation in 2012.
Some Ukrainian officials and analysts said Russia’s efforts to shift blame to Ukraine could be used to lay the groundwork for expanding conscription. Russia has seized several towns and villages in Ukraine in recent months, but at a significant human cost, making it vital to replenish its forces.
“Their only goal is to incite more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against Ukraine,” Mr Kuleba said.
Mykola Davidiuk, a Ukrainian political analyst, said Mr Putin wanted to portray Ukraine as “a cruel enemy” linked to terrorism in order to incite “aggressive attitudes towards Ukraine among the Russian people”.
But he added that Ukrainians are “not interested” in that narrative because they have long been accustomed to the Kremlin’s false portrayal of the conflict.
For now, people in Ukraine are wondering whether Mr. Putin would use the terrorist attack to justify more deadly strikes against Ukraine. “He has to constantly create reasons to keep things under control,” Ms. Blakyta said.
On Monday, at around 10:30am, Kyiv residents were startled by a series of loud bangs that rang out less than a minute after air raid alerts sounded across the capital, prompting people to run into the streets to reach in the shelter.
Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted two ballistic missiles fired from Crimea, but the debris that fell destroyed a university gymnasium. “Fortunately, there was no one inside because it was closed,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko as he visited the site of the strike.
Nearby, investigators were busy collecting and marking missile debris to analyze and determine exactly what kind of weapon was used. Because the missiles fell on Kiev quickly after the alarm was sounded, there was speculation that Russia used one of its powerful hypersonic missiles, which fly at several times the speed of sound.
All that remained of the stricken university building was a huge pile of bricks, twisted metalwork and broken concrete slabs. Nearby cars were covered in a thick layer of dust and locals watched as rescuers and firefighters cleared away the debris, still in shock from what had happened.
“A column of smoke and dust arose, as in fog. Then sirens, rescue vehicles, emergency services,” said Evelina Korzova, 30, who was standing in her flower shop overlooking the damaged building. The glass of the store was broken by the explosion.
In his afternoon speech on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that in the past week Russia had launched about 190 missiles, 140 attack drones and 700 aerial bombs into Ukraine.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn, Paul Sonne and Daria Mityuk contributed to the report.
