The final death toll from the Moscow concert hall terrorist attack could be much higher than 140 confirmed dead, with Russian state investigations saying they have received 143 reports about people who had gone missing.
The investigative committee said in a statement that 84 bodies had so far been identified.
Earlier on Wednesday, Baza, a Telegram channel with ties to Russia’s security services, reported that 95 individuals not listed among the 120 names in the official registry of victims were unaccounted for after last week’s shooting at the Crocus City Hall. Their relatives have been unable to establish contact with them since Friday’s attack, Baza said.
It was not immediately clear whether the 84 bodies identified included those listed in the official registry or not.
Many of the victims are believed to have died as a result of smoke inhalation after the attackers set the building on fire, which also caused the roof to collapse.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, its deadliest on European soil and the deadliest by any group in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege.
Both the fire and the roof’s collapse made some of the victims’ bodies unrecognisable, a source in Russia’s emergency services told the 112 Telegram outlet. “In many cases, only fragments of the bodies remain,” they added.
In the aftermath of the attack, some Russians took to social media in an attempt to track down missing relatives.
“I beg you, please help me find any information. There are many of us, we are looking at all the lists and going to the hospitals,” Luydmila Sitkikova, who was looking for her parents, wrote on the platform VK.
On Tuesday, senior Russian officials close to Vladimir Putin gave the clearest indication yet that Moscow is planning to pin the blame for the attack on Ukraine and the west, despite evidence that Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an Afghan offshoot of the terrorist group, was responsible for the attack.
“We believe that the action was prepared by both the Islamist radicals themselves and was facilitated by western special services,” Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said.
“The special services of Ukraine are directly related to this,” he said, before claiming that Kyiv had helped prepare the militants at an unidentified location in the Middle East.
When asked by Russian reporters whether Ukraine and its allies the US and Britain were involved in the concert hall attack, Bortnikov said: “We think that’s the case. In any case, we are now talking about the texture that we have. This is general information.”
His words were echoed by Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the security council of Russia and a close ally of Putin, who told journalists that Ukraine was “of course” behind the attack.
Despite blaming the west, Bortnikov admitted that the US earlier this month passed on information to Russia about a possible terrorist attack being prepared in the country.
“The information [relayed by the US] about the preparation of terrorist acts in places of mass gathering of citizens was of a general nature, we reacted to this information,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Belarusian president and Putin ally, Alexander Lukashenko, appeared to contradict the Russian leader’s claim that the suspects were planning to cross Ukraine where, Putin alleged, “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for them before they were arrested.
Lukashenko said on Tuesday that the attackers initially intended to enter Belarus rather than Ukraine, but were forced to divert to Ukraine after the Belarusian authorities had quickly set up checkpoints at the border.
“That’s why they couldn’t enter Belarus. They saw that, so they turned away and went to the area of the Ukrainian-Russian border,” he was quoted as saying by the state news agency BelTA.
Ukraine has denied Russian accusations that is was involved in the attack. There is no evidence of Kyiv’s or the west’s involvement.
Officials in Kyiv have also ridiculed the claim that the attackers planned to flee across into Ukraine, pointing to the fact that the border area is full of Russian military including special forces.
“To suggest the suspects were heading to Ukraine, would suggest they were stupid or suicidal,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence directorate, told the BBC.
Russian authorities have said men were caught in the southern Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine and Belarus.
The official rhetoric about alleged Ukrainian and western involvement has been accompanied by a coordinated state media campaign.
Argumenti i Fakti, a magazine owned by the government of Moscow, published a front-page story on Wednesday that read: “We know the architect of the Crocus terrorist attacks. And who organised it. May they burn in the hell. All this about Islamic State is rubbish.”
The article was accompanied by photographs of the Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak.
The west has lambasted Moscow for accusing it of involvement in the attack. The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, on Tuesday wrote in a post on X: “Russia’s claims about the est and Ukraine on the Crocus City Hall attack are utter nonsense.”