Belarusian President Lukashenko has denied his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s version that the Crocus City Hall attackers were headed for Ukraine. Minsk reports that the terrorists were initially on the run towards Belarus. Isw: “Failure of Russian intelligence”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials appear to have difficulty maintaining a coherent rhetoric about the attack on Crocus City Hall. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), this seems to indicate that “the Kremlin has not yet figured out how to reconcile its information operations with the reality of its intelligence and law enforcement failures “.
Lukashenko denies Putin: “Terrorists headed for Belarus, not Ukraine”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated that initially the Crocus City Hall attackers had fled towards Belarus and not towards Ukraine, directly undermining the Kremlin’s narrative of Ukraine’s involvement.
Geotagged footage from March 23 shows Russian personnel capturing the four attackers in a forest area along the E101 highway, about 20 kilometers southeast of the city of Bryansk. The capture site is approximately 95 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian border, or 130 kilometers from the point where the highway crosses into Ukraine. This point is about 124 kilometers from the Belarusian border and about 25 kilometers from the A-240 highway leading to Gomel, Belarus.
Lukashenko’s statement on the activation of Belarusian personnel suggests a scenario in which the attackers were initially traveling along this highway towards Belarusbut they saw checkpoints or other deterrents and changed their route eastwards, through forest roads, to the E101 road.
Lukashenko has very little motivation to lie about the facts of the attack in this way, the ISW says.
While Minsk’s claims subvert the Kremlin narrativethey also reduce their vulnerability to possible pressure from the Kremlin to use non-public information about the attackers’ original escape plans.
