Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday night accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” onto Kyiv for Friday’s Moscow concert hall attack that killed 133 people.
“What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else,” Zelenskyy announced, after Putin said the suspects in the attack had been fleeing toward Ukraine, as quoted by the AFP news agency.
“They always have the same methods,” he added.
His comments came after Putin said earlier on Saturday that the four terrorists arrested for the deadly attack were “traveling toward Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.”
Kyiv has angrily dismissed the claims by the Russian leader.
“That low-life Putin, instead of dealing with his Russian citizens, addressing them, was silent for a day, thinking about how to bring it to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said on Saturday night, adding, “Everything is absolutely predictable.”
The Moscow attack was claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group. It was the deadliest attack in Russia for almost two decades and the deadliest in Europe to have been claimed by ISIS.
The US National Security Council said in no uncertain terms on Saturday night that Ukraine had nothing to do with the deadly concert attack.
"ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever," NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement quoted by NBC News.
Watson noted that the United States "shared information with Russia about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow."