Jeremy Hunt warns that UK has to be ‘on our guard’ after Moscow terror attack

The Chancellor has said the UK has to be “on our guard” and “vigilant” following the Moscow terror attack which left at least 143 dead and 150 injured.

Jeremy Hunt told Sky‘s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that Britain’s intelligence service is the “very best in the world” when asked about any possible terror attack on home soil.

Eleven people – including four of the suspected gunmen – have been detained by Russian security services following the atrocity at the Crocus City Hall music venue, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

Speculation has since mounted as to who was behind the attack with Russian President Vladimir Putin claiming the assailants were aided by Ukraine – despite Kyiv rejecting any links to the incident and the US verifying the Islamic state’s claiming of responsibility for the attack.

Mr Hunt then went on to claim the UK should be aware that news from Moscow should be treated with a “massive pinch of salt” and that they are “creating a smokescreen of propaganda”.

The chancellor said any loss of civilian life is “horrific” even if it “happens in countries whose governments we strongly disapprove of”, adding “We can only hope that the perpetrators are caught.”

Vladimir Putin called the attackers “Nazis”, a word he often deploys to describe Ukrainians to justify his invasion, and Alicia Kearns, Conservative chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee reported Russian media circulated deep fake videos of Ukranian officials attempting to paint Ukraine as the mastermind behind the attack.

However, the chancellor said: “We have very little confidence in anything the Russian government says” after Putin claimed the attackers “tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, previously, a window had been prepared for them to cross the border.”

Ms Kearns said: “Russian media channels are already circulating deep fake videos of Ukrainian officials in an attempt to blame Ukraine and provide Putin some defence for the war crimes he’s committing in Ukraine or worse, pretext for further atrocities.

“There is no indication of any link to Ukraine, nor any credible reason to suggest their involvement.”

The US embassy in Moscow had warned its citizens to stay away from large groups after gathering intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) – based in Afghanistan – was planning an attack in the capital.

Professor Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert at the University of Buckingham, said the “success of the attack from an IS-K point of view” makes this type of terrorism “more potent to copycats.”

Professor Glees said that historically, learning from the Islamic State (IS) militant group’s mass shooting in Paris’ Bataclan in 2012 and the Manchester Arena attack in 2017, IS groups “love attacking pop concerts”.

Calling Putin’s Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) “useless”, Professor Glees said we listen to the USA’s warnings and our MI5, which is “far better” than Putin’s FSB which is stretched to deal with Russia’s war.

He said: “I’ wouldn’t say we need to ban pop concerts here, we’re not in the IS-K’s main line of fire. But we need to watch out for copy-cats. Here, MI5’s threat level will be an indicator.”

Amid fears the Kremlin will use this attack as justification for escalating violence in Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he hoped “this terrible tragedy will not become a pretext for anyone to escalate violence and aggression”.

Similarly, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said they feared Putin’s baseless accusations would galvanize any “anti-Ukrainian hysteria” in Russian society, “creating conditions for strengthening the mobilisation of Russian citizens to participate in criminal aggression against [the] state”.

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