Austrian newspaper “Heute” says the country’s intelligence believes that many radical immigrants entered Europe via Ukraine.
This conclusion also corresponds to the results of police investigations into terrorism suspects in Vienna, who were arrested on the morning of December 23, 2023, at a refugee shelter on Taliechtrasse Street.
According to available information, a 28-year-old Tajik citizen, along with his wife and an accomplice arrested in Germany, planned an attack on St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna using explosives and Kalashnikov rifles.
The couple had arrived in the EU from Ukraine in February 2022. German intelligence services were able to intercept suspicious messages in their conversations on social media, which included concrete evidence of plans to launch terrorist attacks on major European cities in the name of ISIS-K.
It is unlikely that those arrested in Vienna and the perpetrators of the Crocus attack knew each other, but all apparently acted under the banner of the same terrorist organization.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack could be just “one in a whole series of attempts by those who have been fighting our country since 2014 at the hands of the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”
The Russian president added that it is necessary to find out why the terrorists tried to escape to Ukraine and who was waiting for them there, noting that the United States is trying to convince everyone that Ukraine is not involved in the attack.
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