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      Russia Arrests 4 Suspects in Moscow Attack as Death Toll Climbs to 133

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      The Russian authorities said on Saturday that they had arrested the four individuals suspected of setting a suburban Moscow concert on fire and killing at least 133 people, one of the worst terrorist attacks to jolt Russia in President Vladimir V. Putin’s nearly quarter century in power.The Islamic State has taken responsibility for the brutal assault in three different messages issued since Friday. But Mr. Putin, in his first public remarks on the tragedy more than 19 hours after the attack, made no mention of the extremist group or the identities of the perpetrators, broadly blaming “international terrorism,” while Russian state media quickly began laying the groundwork to suggest that Ukraine and its Western backers were responsible.The Russian leader did take a swipe at Ukraine, saying that the suspects were apprehended while traveling to the Russian border, where he alleged a crossing was being prepared for them from “the Ukrainian side.” Kyiv has denied any involvement in the attack.Russian state news broadcasts largely ignored or cast doubt on the ISIS attribution, and commentators focused on trying to blame Ukraine. As of Saturday, the authorities had not disclosed the identities of the alleged gunmen.But state news media did show what it described as footage of interrogations of at least two of the suspects, including one who spoke in Tajik through an interpreter and another who said he carried out the killings for money after being recruited over the messaging app Telegram. Russia’s Interior Ministry said the four suspects were all foreign citizens.In his video address, Mr. Putin said the four main perpetrators had been apprehended, as well as seven other individuals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Piknik, a longtime Russian rock band, is now at the center of a tragedy.

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      Early Saturday, Piknik, one of Russia’s most popular heritage rock bands, published a message to its page on Vkontakte, one of the country’s largest social media sites: “We are deeply shocked by this terrible tragedy and mourn with you.”The night before, the band was scheduled to play the first of two sold-out concerts, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, at Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow. But before Piknik took the stage, four gunmen entered the vast venue, opened fire and murdered at least 133 people.The victims appear to have included some of Piknik’s own team. On Saturday evening, another note appeared on the band’s Vkontakte page to say that the woman who ran the band’s merchandise stalls was missing.“We are not ready to believe the worst,” the message said.The attack at Crocus City Hall has brought renewed attention to Piknik, a band that has provided the soundtrack to the lives of many Russian rock fans for over four decades.Ilya Kukulin, a cultural historian at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said in an interview that Piknik was one of the Soviet Union’s “monsters of rock,” with songs inspired by classic Western rock acts including David Bowie and a range of Russian styles.Since releasing its debut album, 1982’s “Smoke,” Piknik — led by Edmund Shklyarsky, the band’s singer and guitarist — has grown in popularity despite its music being often gloomy with gothic lyrics. Kukulin attributed this partly to the group’s inventive stage shows.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Maps and Diagrams of the Moscow Concert Hall Attack

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      The shooting and arson attack that killed at least 133 people and wounded more than 140 in suburban Moscow on Friday night took place at Crocus City Hall, a popular concert venue with a capacity of more than 6,000. The venue is part of a sprawling, upscale complex of buildings that also includes a shopping […] More

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      Putin Tries to Link Moscow Attackers to Ukraine

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      President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia laid the groundwork on Saturday for blaming Ukraine for the Moscow concert hall attack. And in making his first remarks on the assault more than 19 hours after it began, he pledged to punish the perpetrators, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.”Mr. Putin, in a five-minute televised address, claimed that someone in Ukraine had tried to help the attackers escape across the border from Russia before they were apprehended by Russian security services.He did not definitively pin the attack on Ukraine; nor did he refer to the assessment by American officials that a branch of the Islamic State was behind it.“They were trying to hide and were moving toward Ukraine,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the four men who carried out the attack and who the Kremlin said had been captured in western Russia. “Based on preliminary information, a window for crossing the border was prepared for them by the Ukrainian side.”Ukrainian officials have repeatedly denied having anything to do with the attack, and American officials have said there is no evidence of Ukrainian involvement. American officials voiced concern on Friday that Mr. Putin could seek to falsely blame Ukraine for the attack, and some analysts and Kremlin critics have said that he could use such an accusation to justify another escalation in Russia’s invasion.Mr. Putin has in the past blamed the West for stoking terrorist groups to commit violence inside Russia, but he did not refer to the United States or the West in Saturday’s speech. Nor did he mention the March 7 security alert issued by the United States Embassy in Moscow about the risk of attacks on concerts in the Russian capital, which pro-Kremlin figures have used as evidence of possible American complicity.“We are counting here on cooperation with all countries that genuinely share our pain and are ready, in their deeds, to truly unite our efforts in the fight against the common enemy of international terrorism,” Mr. Putin said.He declared Monday a national day of mourning and said that security measures were being tightened across Russia.“The main thing now is to prevent those who were behind this bloody massacre from committing new crimes,” Mr. Putin said. More

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      U.S. Says ISIS Was Responsible for Deadly Moscow Concert Hall Attack

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      A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 60 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward.The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official said.After a period of relative quiet, the Islamic State has been trying to increase its external attacks, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Most of those plots in Europe have been thwarted, prompting assessments that the group had diminished capabilities.“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years,” frequently criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin in its propaganda, said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York. “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood in its hands, referencing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”The attack on Friday in Moscow, like a January assault in Iran claimed by the group, could prompt a reassessment of its ability to strike outside its home territory.In addition to publicly warning on March 7 about a possible attack, U.S. officials said they had privately told Russian officials about the intelligence pointing to an impending attack. It is not clear how much information the United States gave Russian officials beyond what was in the public warning.American intelligence agencies have a “duty to warn” potential targets of dangers when they learn of them.The United States had warned Iran of a possible attack ahead of twin bombings in January that killed scores and wounded hundreds of others at a memorial service for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years before.Western intelligence agencies had collected intelligence about possible planning by ISIS-K to bomb the service. As in Russia, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for that attack. More

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      Five Takeaways From Putin’s Win in Russia

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      President Vladimir V. Putin is expected to use the scale of his victory to justify more aggression in Ukraine. Many Russians are uneasy about what comes next.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emerged from the three-day, stage-managed presidential vote that ended Sunday declaring that his overwhelming win represented a public mandate to act as needed in the war in Ukraine as well as on various domestic matters, feeding unease among Russians about what comes next.Mr. Putin said the vote represented a desire for “internal consolidation” that would allow Russia to “act effectively at the front line” as well as in other spheres, such as the economy.The government was dismissive of a protest organized by Russia’s beleaguered opposition, in which people expressed dissent by flooding polling places at noon. A correspondent for the state-run Rossiya 24 channel said that “provocations at polling stations were nothing more than mosquito bites.” Official commentators suggested that the lines showed a zeal for democratic participation.Mr. Putin, 71, will now be president until at least 2030, entering a fifth term in a country whose Constitution ostensibly limits presidents to two. The vote, the first since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, was designed to both create a public mandate for the war and restore Mr. Putin’s image as the embodiment of stability. Still, Russians are somewhat edgy over what changes the vote might bring.Here are five takeaways:While the victory was a foregone conclusion, Putin’s numbers exceeded expectations.There is a pattern to presidential votes involving Mr. Putin: His results get better each time. In 2012, he received 63.6 percent of the vote, and in 2018, after presidential terms were extended to six years, he got 76.7 percent. Pundits were expecting the Kremlin to peg the result at around 80 percent this time, but Mr. Putin received an even higher percentage, closer to 90 percent, although the count wasn’t yet final.Mr. Putin’s reported share of the vote has gotten higher with each presidential election.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Putin Plays Down Threat of Nuclear War in Pre-Election State TV Interview

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      The Russian leader struck a softer tone in an interview with state television than in last month’s state-of-the-nation address. He is aiming to project stability before this weekend’s vote.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to play down fears of nuclear war in an interview released on Wednesday and denied having considered using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, aiming to bolster his domestic image as a guarantor of stability before the Russian presidential election this weekend.In a lengthy interview released by Russian state television, Mr. Putin struck a softer tone than in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he said that the West risked nuclear conflict with Russia if it intervened more directly in Ukraine. In the interview, Mr. Putin described the United States as seeking to avoid such a conflict, even as he warned that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if its “sovereignty and independence” were threatened.“I don’t think that everything is rushing head-on here,” Mr. Putin said when asked whether Washington and Moscow were headed for a showdown. He added that even though the United States was modernizing its nuclear force, “this doesn’t mean, in my view, that they are ready to start this nuclear war tomorrow.”“If they want it — what can we do? We’re ready,” Mr. Putin said.The comments appeared aimed in large part at the Russian electorate, coming two days before polls open in the presidential election, which runs from Friday to Sunday. While Mr. Putin is all but assured to win a fifth term, the Kremlin is keen to drive up turnout to present the vote as a stamp of approval for the president and his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, critics of Mr. Putin have increasingly taken aim at what he has long presented as perhaps his biggest domestic selling point: the notion that he brought security and stability after Russia’s chaotic 1990s. Russians appear particularly nervous about the prospect of nuclear conflict; 55 percent of respondents told an independent pollster in January that they feared a new world war.But in his dealings with the West, Mr. Putin sees the threat of Russia’s enormous nuclear arsenal as one of his most effective instruments. He has repeatedly made reference to that arsenal when trying to deter Western nations from more actively supporting Ukraine, most recently in his Feb. 29 annual address, when he portrayed the deployment of forces from NATO countries to Ukraine as a step that would lead to nuclear war and the “destruction of civilization.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tucker Carlson Urges Putin to Release American Journalist

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      The Russian president was noncommittal after Mr. Carlson asked about Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held in a Moscow prison for nearly a year.In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year.Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. Putin directly addressed a case that has galvanized press freedom groups and strained diplomatic relations with the United States.Large portions of the two-hour interview were taken up by Mr. Putin’s recounting hundreds of years of Russian history. But in the final minutes, Mr. Carlson asked, “as a sign of your decency,” if he “would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.” Mr. Carlson added: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a superspy, and everybody knows that.”Mr. Putin was noncommittal in his response. “We have done so many gestures of good will out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks by Mr. Carlson’s team.Pressed about the case by Mr. Carlson, Mr. Putin later added: “I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I’m absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialogue continues.”The Russian leader suggested that he wanted additional concessions from American officials before he would consider releasing Mr. Gershkovich. Mr. Putin suggested that he might be willing to trade the reporter for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More