Terror in Moscow
Over 140 people are believed to be dead, and over 150 wounded, after a terrorist attack in Moscow reminiscent of the 2015 Bataclan mass shooting at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris.
The mass shooting at the Crocus City Hall music venue in the Krasnogorsk suburb of Moscow took place at a venue hosting a concert by the Russian rock band Piknik (footage of a different Piknik concert below for our fellow music obsessives.)
Conspiracy theorists, many of them mainstream government figures, lobbed competing and contradictory accusations. The Ukrainian government in Kyiv accused FSB of committing a false flag attack, Putin aired vague accusations of Ukrainian involvement in the mass shootings, Alex Jones blamed NATO, and antisemites across social media blamed Israel, somehow.
"This is a deliberate provocation by Putin's special services, about which the international community warned," Andrii Yusov, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence, told Ukrainska Pravda.
These conspiracy theories were seemingly unaffected when the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch (known as ISIS K) took credit for the attack in Moscow, just as ISIS/ISIL did for the extremely similar 2015 attack in Paris at the Bataclan.
On March 7, the U.S. Embassy in Russia issued a warning, which it reportedly shared with the Kremlin, that "extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow," and suggested that any American citizens stay away from large gatherings of people.
Footage shot by a Piknik concert attendee shows the terrorists sweeping the lobby of the concert venue, gunning down civilians as they lazily make their way deeper into the venue.
Video shot by another concert goer from inside the venue, and shared by Astra, an independent Russian media company, starts with attendees calmly milling about before gunshots ring out, as those in the venue begin scrambling for cover and hiding as screams pierce the venue.
Extremely graphic footage also emerged of the Russian FSB special forces assaulting several suspects thought to be involved in the attack. In a pair of videos which can be seen below, soldiers chase down a suspect before punching, kicking, and beating him as he lays on the ground curled in a fetal position, attempting to protect his head. In the second video, a Russian soldier cuts off a suspect’s ear and attempts to force feed it to him.