The shooting at the Crocus City Hall concert outside of Moscow on Friday night and subsequent fire that took more than 143 lives and left hundreds more injured made headlines around the world, and just hours afterward, the news began to circulate that ISIS terrorists were behind it.

A short time later, the terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack via a short statement released on Telegram. However, some people believe that it’s nothing more than a false flag operation on the part of Ukraine and the West.

This is according to the editor in chief of the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya, Margarita Simonyan. She said that authorities are already aware of the identities of those who carried out the attacks and that they disclosed their true motives and backing during interrogations.

Simonyan maintains that those responsible were instructed to conduct their attack in a way that would make it easier for the West to convince the world it was the work of ISIS – and she thinks the Western media’s eagerness to pin the incident on ISIS is a dead giveaway that it’s fake news.

She said: “Basic sleight of hand. The level of a railway thimble-rigger. It has nothing to do with ISIS. It's Ukrainians."

Suspects were planning to flee to Ukraine

When the four suspects accused of staging the attack appeared in a Moscow court on Sunday, they appeared to have been badly beaten and were barely conscious as they faced formal charges of terrorism. Russian media reported that they were tortured by Russia security services during interrogation and that one suspect had his ear cut off during his questioning.. Two of them reportedly admitted their guilt, but there were some doubts about whether they were speaking freely. All four men are citizens of Tajikistan.

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The suspects were detained in the Bryansk region of Russia close to the border with Ukraine, and law enforcement says they had a support base just across the border.

Ukraine has vehemently denied involvement in the attack, and Kiev has accused Putin and other Russian politicians of making a false connection to create more support for Russia in its war in Ukraine. However, Ukraine’s secret service has a history of carrying out attacks in Russia, with recent examples including the assassinations of journalists and political scientists and shelling in Belgorod.

Attack came shortly after Russian elections and U.S. warnings of impending attack

Crocus City Hall is a large complex that holds a music hall and shopping center. The attack took place just before the band Picnic was set to take the stage, and crowds of people could be seen panicking and trying to move out of the line of fire. Some people were seen breaking windows to try to escape the gunfire.

It took several hours to get the fire under control, and the roof of the venue partially collapsed. According to the state-run news agency RIA Novosti, armed individuals opened fire using automatic weapons and threw a bomb or grenade to start the fire before fleeing in a white Renault vehicle.

The incident came less than a week after elections in Russia in which President Vladimir Putin won yet another term in office.

The attack prompted Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to cancel all cultural, sports and other public events in the city over the weekend.

The U.S. embassy in Russia had warned Americans to avoid concert venues recently because of potential terrorist attacks, and the U.S. had given Russia intelligence about a potential impending attack as part of the Duty to Warn agreement in the intelligence community.

Sources for this article include:

CBSNews.com

SputnikGlobe.com