Budanov On Terrorist Attack At Crocus: Russia Knew About Preparations At Least A Month In Advance

Despite this, the Kremlin decided to allow its citizens to be shot.

Russia knew about the preparations for the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall shopping centre near Moscow at least a month in advance. But despite this, the Kremlin decided to allow its citizens to be shot.

This is reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to the statement of the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov.

"At least on February 15, 2024 Russia knew about the preparation (the terrorist attack took place on March 22 - ed.). I'll tell you more, this information went through the intelligence department of the group in Syria. From there it was passed on to Moscow. And let them not tell tales that it all materialised in a strange way," Budanov said.

He specified that the Russians knew where the fighting groups were coming from and through which countries they were travelling to Russia.

According to Budanov, there are several versions of why the Kremlin allowed the terrorist attack.

"The first is, as is their custom, a 'tower' fight to take down a few officials now. Another version is that they actually underestimated the scale of what would happen. They thought that it would be more localised and wanted to blame Ukraine for everything," the MID chief said.

He reminded that the Russian authorities had already changed the version of what happened near Moscow three times in an attempt to blame Ukraine for everything. In particular, there was a version of Russian FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, who blamed Budanov himself.

"This is nonsense. By the way, if we have touched on this painful issue, although it is an enemy, but I do not approve in principle terrorist acts against civilians," he added.

As Budanov emphasised, Russia sowed chaos with its own hands, hoping that it could control it.

"There is such a stable expression, even a truth. It is always working in the environment of special services: everyone is trying to create controlled chaos. Absolutely all more or less serious organisations have tried this at various times. And the axiom is that none of them managed to make it controllable. The same thing happened here," he said.