The terrorists ran down an eight-year-old boy in their car when leaving Crocus City Hall near Moscow

Igor, the father of the injured child Ilya, said that they went to the concert with the whole family - he, his wife, 11-year-old daughter and son.

“When the shooting started, we managed to quickly get out of the hall. At first they wanted to hide in the toilet, but at the last second we changed our minds. Now we understand that this was the right decision. I carefully led the family out of the building, we ran into the street...

"And just as the thought appeared in my head that we were safe, we saw that same Renault car rushing towards us at full speed and deliberately knocking down our son and running into him.

"It [the car] hit my daughter and me tangentially and we suffered minor bruises. My son suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken collarbone and a broken hip. Doctors are not making any predictions yet. We just ask everyone to keep him in your prayers."

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Vladimir Putin and expressed his condolences over the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, the Turkish Presidential Office reported.

In the conversation, he told the Russian president that this terrorist attack demonstrated the need for a speedy resolution of crises in the region.

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A day of mourning has also been declared tomorrow in the Republic of Srpska as a sign of solidarity with Russia, President of the Republic Milorad Dodik stated.

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“The Preacher’s Assistant” and “Abdullo Taxi”: What is known about the Crocus City Hall terrorists?

▪️ They all reportedly speak Russian extremely poorly (or pretend to speak poorly) and one communicates in Tajik through an interpreter

▪️ The terrorist attack was carried out “for money”. One person “without a name or surname” who was contacted via Telegram, calling himself “an assistant to the preacher”, failed to state the exact amount, but first said that he was promised half a million rubles, then “somewhere [around a] million"

▪️ The name of the "preacher" is not named but one of the terrorists admitted that he listened to his “lessons, sermons"

▪️ Turkiye is mentioned, from where one of the terrorists returned 2 and a half weeks ago. Whether he met with the “preacher” or his people there is unclear

▪️ The “assistant preacher” also provided the coordinates of the location of the terrorist attack himself, while the organizers provided them with weapons - Kalashnikov assault rifles

▪️ The terrorists lived together in a hostel in the north of Moscow, they hardly knew each other: at least two of the four actors met only “10-12 days ago”

▪️ The car they drove to Crocus City Hall and then tried to escape in was bought through a family line, “they wanted to work as a taxi.” During the escape to the border, weapons were thrown away

A coherent picture does not emerge from the interrogation fragments. It is not entirely clear how are these people exactly connected, what motives they were guided by in organizing one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in the history of Russia.

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‘They started shooting people without warning, point blank’ – firsthand account of the Moscow terrorist attack

Nikolay Krutov, one of the survivors of the March 22 terrorist attack in Moscow, told Sputnik that the ordeal started around 7:55 p.m. (local time).

According to Krutov, he was on the balcony at the concert venue, waiting for the show to start, when he heard loud bangs, “which sounded like firecrackers”, coming from somewhere in the hall outside.

The terrorists entered the venue through a first floor door on the right, Krutov said, adding that he saw three men dressed in “yellow, sand-color light cammies.”

“They stormed inside and started shooting people without warning: no shots in the air or shouting slogans beforehand. No, they were firing deliberately, point blank,” the eyewitness recalled. “And they were throwing around some kind of incendiary pellets or grenades because the first floor seats immediately caught fire.”

Nikolay also recalled that the security personnel at the venue did not desert their posts when panic began and actively helped people to evacuate.

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The Moscow Region Ministry of Health published new data on the victims of the terrorist attack.

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In the Moscow region, donors donated almost a ton of blood - 2,712 people came to donor centers today, the Moscow region's Ministry of Health reported.

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Crocus City Hall now.

The video was published by Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations.

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🇸🇾🇷🇺 Syrian President Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone and agreed to intensify contacts in the field of anti-terrorism. The Syrian president condemned the attack on Crocus City Hall and wished fortitude to the relatives of the victims and a speedy recovery to the injured.

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Latvian police prohibit Riga residents from bringing flowers to the Russian Embassy. A spontaneous memorial was organized opposite, the diplomatic mission reported.

Latvian authorities have not yet condemned the terrorist attack in the Moscow region, suggesting that Riga is aware of who organized it and approves of it, the Russian Embassy claimed.

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US whipping up fear of Russian bogeyman to bleed Europe dry

Commenting on the anti-Russian hysteria being whipped up in Western capitals and legacy media, from threats to deploy NATO troops to Ukraine to reports of alleged Russian plans to “invade” alliance countries, veteran foreign affairs observer Gilbert Doctorow told Sputnik that it’s all a ploy by the United States to ramp up its domination of Europe.

“For the United States, the war in Ukraine has failed as a means of weakening Russia so that they can proceed with preparations to fight China. But it has succeeded spectacularly as a means of subjugating Europe. Washington now firmly has its knees on the neck of Europe,” Dr. Doctorow said, pointing to the political and economic crises the EU has fallen into thanks to the Ukrainian crisis.

“Here in Europe, the war is now being used to whip up popular enthusiasm for war mobilization of the domestic economies and subjugation of the populace to authoritarian and unlimited powers of the ruling elite,” the observer emphasized, adding that “what remains of free speech and other freedoms can be snuffed out in war hysteria.”

“An aggressive foreign policy stand is almost always a convenient way of distracting attention away from domestic failures. And thanks to the boomerang of Western sanctions, European economies are doing very poorly as we go into the June elections” to the European Parliament, Doctorow concluded.

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Message from Donetsk: This is a battle for good against evil

Sputnik correspondent Russell Bentley (@TXDPR) gives an impassioned speech at a impromptu memorial in Donetsk dedicated to the victims of the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack.

“Everyone of these war crimes and terrorist acts simply prove that this is a war of evil against humanity. One side can massacre women and children in cold blood, and one side simply can’t. So, we all have to choose sides and do what we can.”

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A minute of silence in memory of those killed in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack took place before a friendly football match in Belgrade between Serbian Crvena zvezda and St. Petersburg Zenit.

Earlier, Crvena zvezda fans called for the arena to be filled to capacity. “When our brothers are having a hard time, they should see all the possible support we can give them,” the message said.

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A 15-year-old boy helped about a hundred people get out of the building during the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall

According to media reports, the eighth-grader's name is Islam; he worked part-time as a cloakroom attendant in the concert hall. When the shooting started, he was able not to panic, quickly find his bearings and save many lives.

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❗️ The rescue operation at the site of the Crocus Concert Hall terrorist attack has been completed, the search operation is still ongoing, said the Governor of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov

EU becomes legally militaristic: European funds can be spent on arms

The European Union has gone through a real militaristic revolution over the last few days as a special “legal task force” is working on allowing the use of EU funds for war, The Financial Times reports – just a couple of days after European leaders agreed to bankroll the so-called European Peace Facility (EPF) buying weapons for Ukraine.

Until now, individual EU member countries paid “donations” to the EPF fund or provided lethal weapons for Ukraine, getting their reimbursement from the body.

The aim pursued by the “legal task force” set up by the European Commission is to make it possible to use the EU’s funds for the EPF and the “Ukraine Assistance Fund” (UAF), created recently within the framework of the EPF.

This will make the flow of cash in the “money for arms” scheme created by the EU a lot easier.
The “European Peace Facility”, officially stewarded by Josep Borrell’s office, was founded in 2021, to “promote peace and prevent wars” in the EU’s proximity, primarily in Africa. In reality, it became one of the main sponsors of the ongoing conflict, funneling money into the Ukrainian military.

Since the EU was conceived as a peaceful organization, its legislation prohibits spending union funds on arms.

If the EU’s legal team’s work is successful, the EU’s Union Treaty will no longer have a provision prohibiting “any expenditure arising from operations having military or defense implications.” (Article 41, point 2 of the Treaty on European Union.) Or, at best, this provision will be removed of legal force by some new additions to European laws.

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Zelensky's accusations against Russia over the terrorist attack at Crocus Concert Hall is a self-disclosure, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The only head of state who managed to accuse Russia of the terrorist attack [at Crocus Concert Hall] is Zelensky. Because the guilty mind is never at ease. No curse could destroy him as powerfully as his own self-disclosing statement," she wrote on Telegram.

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The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) headquarters building was lit up with the Russian tricolour, the Russian Embassy in the UAE said

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❗️ Russia's military is repelling a massive attack on Sevastopol; tentatively, more than 10 missiles have already been shot down, the city's governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said.

A child was injured during the attack, he added.