claimed responsibility<\/a>\u00a0on multiple occasions for the March 22 attack, but Russia has repeatedly tried to link Ukraine and the West to the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFSB chief Alexander Bortnikov was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti news agency on Friday that \u201cpreparations, the financing, the attack and the retreat of the terrorists were coordinated via the internet by members of Khorasan Province [ISKP or ISIS-K],\u201d an ISIL branch active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bortnikov did not discard the Ukrainian angle in his statements on Friday, for which it has not provided evidence, saying that \u201cupon completing the attack, the terrorists received clear instructions to move toward the Ukrainian border, where from the other side a \u2018window\u2019 had been prepared for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe investigation continues, but it can already be said with certainty that Ukrainian military intelligence is directly implicated in the attack,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kyiv has dismissed the allegation as absurd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al Jazeera: Russia has arrested more than 20 people in connection\u00a0with an attack\u00a0that killed more than 140 people at a concert hall near Moscow in March, the head of the FSB security service said, adding for the first time that the ISIL (ISIS) group coordinated the assault. ISIL has\u00a0claimed responsibility\u00a0on multiple occasions for the March 22 attack, but Russia has repeatedly tried to link Ukraine and the West to the attack. FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti news agency on Friday that \u201cpreparations, the financing, the attack and the retreat of the terrorists were… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39543,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39541\/revisions\/39543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}