President Vladimir Putin called the attack on Crocus City Hall a “cruel” and “bloody” terrorist attack that killed “dozens” of Russians, including children and teenagers. He promised to help all families. Putin declared March 24 a day of national mourning.
According to Putin, additional anti-terrorism measures have been introduced in Moscow and the Moscow region. “The main thing now is to prevent those who are behind this bloodbath from committing new crimes. As for the investigation of this crime and the results of operational search actions, we can now say that all four direct perpetrators of the terrorist attack, all those who shot and killed people, have been found and detained. They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” Putin claims.
In total, he said, 11 people were detained. Now the security forces are “working to identify and expose the entire accomplice base of terrorists — those who provided them with transport, planned escape routes from the crime scene, prepared caches, caches of weapons and ammunition,” Putin said. He promised that investigators would do “everything to establish the details of the crime,” but it is already obvious that Russia is faced with “not just a carefully and cynically planned terrorist attack, but a prepared and organized mass murder of peaceful, defenseless people.” “The criminals cold-bloodedly and purposefully set out to kill, shoot our citizens, our children, at point-blank range, just as the Nazis, who carried out massacres in the occupied territories, once planned to stage a show execution, a bloody act of intimidation,” the president compared.
He promised that the customers would be punished, “whoever they are, whoever directed them.” He called on other states to join forces in the fight “against the common enemy — international terrorism, with all its manifestations.” Discussing “international terrorism,” he noted that the common duty of Russians—“all those at the front, citizens of their country”—is to be “together in one formation,” so no one can “shake our unity and will.”