Russia knew in advance to prepare a terrorist operation at Crocus City Hall near Moscow, but allowed it, either because of a “summit conflict” or underestimating the scale of what would happen, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Kirill Budanov, claimed.

“At least from February 15, 2024, Russia knew about (the terrorists’) preparations. I will tell you more, this information passed through the intelligence section of the (Russian) echelon in Syria. From there they went to Moscow. And let’s not tell fairy tales that in a strange way everything materialized out of nowhere,” Budanov said at a conference, according to Ukrainian Interfax.

According to him, Moscow knew where the fighting groups would come from, and through which two countries they moved into the territory of the state under attack.

“Why did they allow this to happen – there are many options. The first is, as usual, a “peak” clash in order to remove several officials».

The other option is that in they actually underestimated the scale of what was going to happen… They thought it would be more local and they wanted to offload it all to Ukraine,” the head of Ukraine’s main intelligence service said.

According to him, the Kremlin has already changed three times the version of what happened in the shopping center near Moscow, trying to somehow connect the so-called “Ukrainian trace” with the terrorist attack.

“There were explanations from Petrusev (Secretary of the Security Council of Russia) and Bortnikov (Director of the Federal Security Service of Russia), who accused me personally and said that Ukraine did all this. This is nonsense. By the way, if we touch on this painful subject, even though it is about the enemy, I do not in principle approve of terrorist acts against civilians”the intelligence chief said.

Budanov added that Russia itself sowed the chaos and believed for sure that he could control it.

“There is such a fixed expression, even a truth. It always works between special services: everyone is trying to create controlled chaos. It is certain that more or less all serious organizations have attempted to do this at different times. And the axiom is that none of them couldn’t do it controllably. The same thing happened here,” he noted.

It is noted that Russia’s Investigative Committee announced today that it has discovered evidence showing that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in Friday’s attack on a concert hall in Moscow are linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”.