Russia knew about the preparation for the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall shopping center near Moscow at least a month in advance. However, despite this, the Kremlin decided to allow the shooting of its own citizens.

This was reported by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov.

"At least on February 15, 2024, Russia knew about the preparation (the terrorist attack occurred on March 22). I'll tell you more, this information went through the intelligence department of the group in Syria. From there, it went to Moscow. It's strange how everything materialized," Budanov said.

He clarified that the Russians knew where the combat groups would come from and through which countries they would move to Russia.

According to Budanov, there are several versions of why the Kremlin allowed the terrorist attack.

"The first is, as they usually do, the struggle for power, to remove several officials now. Another 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," believes the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate.

He reminded that the Russian authorities have already changed their version of what happened near Moscow three times, trying to blame Ukraine for everything. In particular, there was a version from the head of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov, who blamed Budanov himself.

"This is nonsense. By the way, if we touch on this painful issue, even if it's the enemy, I do not approve terrorist acts against civilians in principle," he added.

As Budanov emphasized, Russia sowed chaos itself, hoping that it could control it.

"There is such a persistent expression, even a truth. It always works among special services: everyone tries to create controlled chaos. All more or less serious organizations have tried to do this at different times. And the axiom is that none of them could make it controlled. The same thing happened here," he noted.