Rocked by Deadly Terror Attack, Kremlin Amps Up Disinformation Machine - The New York Times

The bloody terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow had barely subsided before Russia launched a disinformation campaign suggesting that Ukraine and the West were somehow behind it, pushing a version of events molded to fit the Kremlin war narrative and downplay a significant security failure. 

 President Vladimir V. Putin has hinted several times that Kyiv and Washington played a part, and the latest to join the chorus was Aleksandr Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, the top security agency in Russia. On Tuesday he said, without offering any evidence, that the assault "was prepared by both radical Islamists themselves and, naturally, facilitated by Western special services."…

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/europe/russia-terror-attack-ukraine.html