Summary
That concludes today’s updates on the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Here’s what happened today:
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that the Moscow concert hall attack is “part of Kyiv regime’s attacks on Russia”. In remarks made Monday, Putin called the attack an “act of intimidation” and said that Russian officials are “interested in who benefits from it”.
Three more people were detained as a “preventive measure” in connection with the Moscow concert hall attack. The three men were detained after being accused of committing crimes under Russia’s Terrorist Act.
Some of the gunmen accused of carrying out the attack were briefly in Turkey to renew their Russian residence permits, Reuters reported, citing a Turkish security official. The Turkish official added that the men were not radicalized in Turkey.
The White House dismissed Russia’s claims that the attack is linked to Ukraine, calling the assertion “Kremlin propaganda”. On Monday, White House spokesperson John Kirby addressed the accusation, saying: “There was no linkage to Ukraine ... This is just more Kremlin propaganda.”
The cost of repairing the damage caused by Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last week will probably run into the “billions”, the country’s energy minister said. In terms of the cost of repairs, “the real figures will be after assessment of the damage but I think it is in the region of billions, for sure,” German Gerashchenko told reporters.
Thank you for following today’s latest news.
Updated
The Moscow concert hall attack poses new questions for Russia’s intelligence agencies, Reuters reports.
More from Reuters:
Russia’s security state has been ruthlessly effective at detaining Vladimir Putin’s opponents but was caught off guard by a mass shooting near Moscow, raising questions about its priorities, resources and intelligence gathering.
Charged with hunting down Ukrainian saboteurs inside Russia, with keeping anti-Kremlin activists in check, and with disrupting the operations of hostile foreign intelligence agencies, the FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, has its hands full.
That, say former US intelligence officials and Western security analysts, helps explain why it may have overlooked other threats, including that posed by Islamist militants, such as ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
“You can’t do everything,” Daniel Hoffman, a former senior CIA operations officer who served as the agency’s Moscow station chief, told Reuters.
“It’s possible they’re overextended dealing with the war in Ukraine and dealing with political opposition. This one slipped through the cracks.”
The FSB has said Friday’s concert hall attack was “painstakingly” planned and that the gunmen had carefully hidden their weapons.Putin on Monday said that radical Islamists were the ones who had carried out the attack, but said that Russia still wanted to understand who had ordered it and said there were many questions for Ukraine to answer. Ukraine denies any involvement.
The full article is available here.
Updated
