'I'm a spy chief - here's the two reasons why Putin didn't stop the Moscow terror attack'

By Oli Smith, News Reporter

Video shows concert hall in Moscow under attack by gunmen

Ukraine's top spy chief has claimed Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin inner circle allowed the Crocus City Hall terror attack to go ahead. Kyrylo Budanov disclosed shocking intelligence which revealed that Moscow knew substantial details about the terror attack by February 15 - more than a month before the attack took place.

These details included the routes through which the terrorists intended to enter Russia. Mr Budanov claimed that Russian security services gathered information about the attack through the country's "intelligence directorate in Syria".

Speaking at the Third International Forum on Strategic Communications on Wednesday, the head of Ukraine's Military Intelligence (HUR) said there were just two reasons why Russia didn't stop the attacks.

Budanov said Putin and his Kremlin circle allowed the Crocus City Hall terror attack to go ahead (Image: GETTY)

Mr Budanov said that President Putin either wanted to exploit the terror attack to purge several senior officials or the Russian state underestimated the scale of the plot.

He said: "Don't let them tell fairy tales that strangely everything materialised out of nowhere. Why they allowed this to happen — there are several options.

"The first, as is their custom, is a fight between the 'towers' in order to remove several high-ranking officials now.

"The other option is that they actually underestimated the scale of what would happen. They thought it would be more local and wanted to blame Ukraine for everything."

The massacre was the deadliest extremist attack on Russian soil in nearly two decades (Image: GETTY)

This comes as the death toll from last week’s Moscow concert hall attack rose to 143. Around 80 other people wounded in the siege by gunmen remain hospitalized. The Friday night massacre on the outskirts of Moscow was the deadliest extremist attack on Russian soil in nearly two decades.

President Putin has acknowledged the role of "radical Islamists" in the attack but has continued to accuse Kyiv of aiding the suspects’ escape into Ukraine - a claim Kyiv categorically denies.

Mr Budanov said that Ukraine would never carry out terror attacks against civilians, saying: "Even though this is the enemy, I do not approve in principle of terrorist acts against civilians."