Vladimir Putin’s address to Russians after the terrorist attack at Crocus

Dear citizens of Russia!

I am writing to you in connection with a bloody, barbaric terrorist act, the victims of which were dozens of peaceful, innocent people – our compatriots, including children, teenagers, and women. Doctors are now fighting for the lives of the victims, those who are in serious condition. I am sure they will do everything possible and even impossible to preserve the life and health of all the wounded. Special words of gratitude to the ambulance and air ambulance crews, special forces soldiers, firefighters, rescuers who did everything to save people’s lives, bring them out from under the fire, from the epicenter of fire and smoke, and to avoid even greater losses.

I cannot ignore the help of ordinary citizens who, in the first minutes after the tragedy, did not remain indifferent and indifferent and, along with doctors and security officers, provided first aid and delivered the victims to hospitals.

We will provide the necessary assistance to all families whose lives have suffered terrible misfortune, to the wounded and injured. I express my deep, sincere condolences to everyone who lost their loved ones. The whole country, our whole people, mourns with you. I declare March 24 a day of national mourning.

In Moscow and the Moscow region, in all regions of the country, additional anti-terrorist and anti-sabotage measures have been introduced. The main thing now is to prevent those who are behind this bloodbath from committing a new crime.

As for the investigation of this crime and the results of operational investigative actions, at present the following can be said. All four direct perpetrators of the terrorist attack, all those who shot and killed people, were found and detained. They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border. A total of 11 people were detained. The Federal Security Service of Russia and other law enforcement agencies are working to identify and uncover the entire accomplice base of terrorists: those who provided them with transport, outlined escape routes from the crime scene, prepared caches, caches of weapons and ammunition.

I repeat: investigative and law enforcement agencies will do everything to establish all the details of the crime. But it is already obvious that we are faced not just with a carefully, cynically planned terrorist attack, but with a prepared and organized mass murder of peaceful, defenseless people. The criminals calmly and purposefully set out to kill, to shoot at point-blank range our citizens, our children. Just like the Nazis once carried out massacres in the occupied territories, they decided to stage a show execution, a bloody act of intimidation.

All perpetrators, organizers and customers of this crime will suffer fair and inevitable punishment. Whoever they are, whoever guides them. I repeat: we will identify and punish everyone who stands behind the terrorists, who prepared this atrocity, this attack on Russia, on our people.

We know what the threat of terrorism is. Here we count on interaction with all states that sincerely share our pain and are ready to actually join forces in the fight against a common enemy, international terrorism, with all its manifestations.

Terrorists, murderers, non-humans who do not and cannot have a nationality face one unenviable fate – retribution and oblivion. They have no future. Our common duty now, our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country is to be together, in the same formation. I believe it will be so, because no one and nothing can shake our unity and will, our determination and courage, the strength of the united people of Russia. No one will be able to sow poisonous seeds of discord, panic and discord in our multi-ethnic society.

Russia has repeatedly gone through difficult, sometimes unbearable trials, but has become even stronger. It will be so now.