Putin admits 'radical Islamists' were behind Moscow massacre, but still blames Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Monday that “radical Islamists” were behind the massacre of nearly 140 people at a Moscow concert hall last Friday – but he still pointed to Ukraine as the hidden hand behind the terror attack.

"The question that arises is who benefits from this?" Putin said at the Kremlin during a video conference with leaders of Russia's security forces. "We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it."

Four attackers stormed the Crocus City Hall in Moscow last Friday night, raking gunfire across hundreds of people there to see the Soviet-era rock band Picnic, in the deadliest attack inside Russia in two decades. The death toll was raised to 139 on Monday, Alexander Bastrykin, chairman of the state Investigative Committee, said.

Putin’s “radical Islamists” comment was his first acknowledgement of what the U.S. – and on Monday, France – have been saying since the slaughter took place: ISIS-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based branch of the ultraviolent movement that sought to take over Syria and Iraq a decade ago, was behind the attack and had claimed responsibility.

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France joins U.S. in blaming the Islamic State

"The information available to us…as well as to our main partners, indicates indeed that it was an entity of the Islamic State which instigated this attack," French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters during a visit to South America. "This group also tried to commit several actions on our own soil."

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State terror group massacred 90 people at a Paris concert hall in November 2015 during a night of coordinated attacks across the city that killed 130.

On March 7, the U.S. embassy in Moscow warned of a possible replay of the Paris slaughter in a public advisory that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts…”

More: Moscow concert attack survivors describe nightmare of fear and death

Two weeks later the killers struck.

"Some thought it was a kind of special effect of some sort," one witness, Anastasia Rodionova, told Reuters. "Then I saw with my own eyes how people were dropping and the automatic gun fire began."

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Russia still accuses Ukraine; Zelenskyy lashes out at Putin and 'other scums'

In a televised address on Saturday, the Russian leader said 11 people had been detained, including the four gunmen. "They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose troops are fighting to expel Russian forces more than two years into Moscow’s grinding, stalemated invasion, dismissed this suggestion. "What happened in Moscow yesterday is obvious, and Putin and other scums are trying to shift the blame to someone else," he fired back. "Their methods are always the same.”

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Signs of torture

The four shooting suspects appeared in a Moscow court on Monday. Unverified videos of their interrogations circulated on social media. One suspect was shown with part of his ear cut off and stuffed into his mouth.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn't answer when a reporter asked him about treatment of the detainees.

Despite the American warning, Putin pointed the finger for Friday’s massacre at Kyiv.

More: ISIS behind brutal Moscow terror attack, France tells Russia, as Kremlin points to Ukraine

America running interference, Putin says

“We know that the crime was perpetrated by radical Islamists,” he said. “The Islamic world itself has been fighting this ideology for centuries.”

Putin then accused the U.S. of “using different channels to try and convince its satellites and other countries of the world that, according to its intelligence, there is supposedly no sign of Kyiv’s involvement in the Moscow terrorist attack, that the deadly terrorist attack was perpetrated by followers of Islam, members of ISIS, an organization banned in Russia.”

"This atrocity," he said, ''may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime.”

Contributing: Reuters

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Vladimir Putin blames ISIS and Ukraine for Moscow concert attack