The reverberations of gunfire and explosions at the Crocus Concert Hall had almost subsided on Friday before Russian and Ukrainian officials began trading blame for the carnage in which at least 133 people have died.

Despite the fact that the Islamic State officially claimed responsibility, the Russian president indirectly attributed responsibility to the Ukrainian side in his speech yesterday. Russia and Ukraine are now engaged in an attempt to shape a narrative after the attack, with both sides determined to establish their view as dominant, Politico said in an analysis.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned via Telegram that hell would come if Ukraine had a hand in the attack that has shocked the country.

“If it is established that these are terrorists of the Kiev regime, they must all be found and mercilessly destroyed as terrorists,” Medvedev wrote. “Official representatives of the state” would not be immune, he added.

Kiev in turn fired back at Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency accused “Putin’s special services” of orchestrating Friday’s shooting of concertgoers by gunmen dressed in camouflage uniforms, saying it was a “deliberate provocation” intended to justify “even tougher attacks in Ukraine”.

“The public execution of people in Moscow should be understood as Putin’s threat to further escalate and expand the war,” HUR warned. “Putin has extensive experience in organizing such terrorist attacks to strengthen his own power,” the agency added.

Abecause of previous attacks

The attack evoked memories of the 1999 explosions at four apartment buildings in the Russian cities of Moscow, Buyansk and Volgodonsk, which killed more than 300 people and injured 1,000 more, Politico reported. The explosions then sparked the Second Chechen War, which boosted the popularity of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, helping him to be handpicked by Boris Yeltsin to succeed him as President of Russia.

For years, serious questions remained about whether the bombings were so-called “false flag operations” carried out by Russia’s own security services in order to justify the Chechen war.

However, the spikes in the current incident stopped when the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the massacre.

Arguably, writes Politico, the attack in Moscow is reminiscent of the 2015 Islamic State attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris, where it left 90 dead. Friday’s shootings also bore similarities to the 2002 Nord Ost theater siege, when a group of Chechen gunmen and women occupied a packed theater in eastern Moscow and demanded an end to the Second Chechen War. A failed rescue by Russian special forces, using deadly sleeping gas, left more hostages dead than were killed by Islamist gunmen.

Many members of the Islamist Chechen separatist group behind the attack on the theater would later move and recruit to ISIS in Syria. Chechens began arriving in Syria in 2011. They made up the second-largest contingent of foreign fighters for the Islamic State, and their numbers were also disproportionately high among al-Qaeda in Syria. Battle-hardened and experienced, several Chechens rose to become Islamic State commanders, including Umar Shishani and Salahuddin Shishani.

Russian security services estimate that 1,700 to 3,000 Chechens, along with other fighters from the North Caucasus, have gone to Syria to fight. Moderate Syrian rebels have always suspected that Russian intelligence encouraged them to go, making it easier for them to get there by giving them passports, both to get rid of them and to split and divide the rebel groups fighting Russia’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Anti-Assad rebels have also accused the Syrian government of working with Islamic State to weaken them even when it serves tactical military purposes. ISIS was often seen in 2015 and 2016 taking advantage of Russia’s intervention, pressing offensives against moderate rebel groups as they were targeted by Russian airstrikes.

Speculations about Palmyra

The rebels argued that Damascus and Moscow played a complex double game, using jihadists to act as fifth columnists, planning to effectively sabotage the anti-Assad revolution and paint it as extremist. In May 2015, the ease with which Islamic State was able to capture the ancient city of Palmyra prompted some military observers to speculate that Assad and Russia deliberately abandoned the site—with its unique ruins and irreplaceable ancient artifacts and treasures— to win the sympathy of the West.

Moderate rebels said cooperation was clear at times between Russia and the Assad regime and Islamic State. One leader complained to this correspondent in 2015 that “when ISIS tries to invade our positions, the Assad regime and the Russians support them with airstrikes and bombings.” But this marriage of convenience subsequently did not help Russia with radical Islamists from Chechnya and the North Caucasus, who continue to pose a threat to Russia.

Russia’s security agency, the FSB, says it has foiled dozens of Islamic State plots in recent years and earlier this month claimed to have killed two Kazakh nationals near Moscow. They also said half a dozen Islamic State militants had been killed in a shootout in Ingushetia this month.

Despite Islamic State claiming responsibility for Friday’s massacre in Moscow, the Kremlin will likely exploit the concert hall killings for propaganda purposes. Putin’s government will likely continue to suggest that Ukraine is somehow involvedeven though the attack was “an act of terrorism, period,” Sam Greene, an analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis, argued in a post on X.

“Having failed to prevent it, the Kremlin will probably look for a way to use itwhich may well mean it blames Ukraine,” Green wrote, while cautioning: “The fact that the Kremlin will use the attack for political purposes does not mean it was a false flag.”

As soon as Green made this publication on X, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said the attackers had left the scene of the crime and were “traveling towards Ukraine”.

“All four perpetrators were found and arrested. They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, previously, a window had been prepared to cross the border,” he said in his first sermon after the tragedy.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, characterized such Russian accusations of “designed provocation by the Kremlin to further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society,” with the aim of “valuing Ukraine in the eyes of the international community,” according to a ministry statement.