The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack has not stopped the battle of mutual accusations between Moscow and Kiev.

The massive terrorist attack in Moscow on the evening of March 22, which killed at least 133 people and injured 154 others, is sparking a battle of accusations, despite ISIS claiming responsibility for the attack. Politico writes about this.

The publication recalls that as soon as “the echo of gunfire and grenade explosions barely subsided on Friday,” Russian and Ukrainian officials began exchanging accusations of each other in the terrorist attack.

“But the exchange of accusations between Moscow and Kiev after the terrorist attack was interrupted by the Islamic State terrorist group, which claimed responsibility,” the media writes.

Journalists have drawn parallels with the Islamic State attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, which killed 90 people, and the siege of the Nord Ost theater in 2002, when a group of Chechen armed men and women occupied a crowded theater in eastern Moscow and demanded an end to the Second Chechen War.

The publication also quotes the words of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who called such Russian accusations “a planned provocation by the Kremlin with the aim of fanning anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society” with the aim of “discrediting Ukraine in the eyes of the international community.”

Terrorist attack in Moscow on March 22

On the evening of March 22, a large-scale terrorist attack occurred in Moscow. According to Russian media, unknown persons in camouflage opened fire from machine guns at visitors to a concert of one of the Russian rock bands.

At least 133 people were killed in the attack and another 154 were injured.

The terrorist organization ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. At the same time, Russian leader Vladimir Putin made an appeal in which he linked the terrorist attack with Ukraine and drew an analogy with the crimes of the Nazis during the Second World War.