Russian president says he is interested in ‘who ordered’ terror attack as US and France say Islamic State branch was responsible

Vladimir Putin has said that the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow was conducted by radical Islamists but reasserted his earlier claims that Ukraine could have been involved in the shooting that left 139 people dead.

“We know that the crime was committed by the hands of radical Islamists,” Putin said during a meeting with government officials late on Monday.

“We are interested in who ordered it,” he said, adding that the shooting fit in to a wider campaign of intimidation by Ukraine.

“This atrocity may be just one part 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.”