Photos circulating on the Russian Internet show Russian soldiers preparing to fire into Ukraine missiles inscribed: “For those who died in Crocus City Hall.”  The photos are part of a disinformation campaign to pin on Ukraine blame for Friday’s Moscow massacre.

The concert hall was still ablaze when the Islamic State claimed authorship of the attack that left 137 dead and 182 wounded. On Saturday, the terror group’s official Al-Amaq outlet posted on Telegram a video taken by one of the four gunmen. Striding out of the concert hall, he shouts “Allahu Akbar” and boasts punishing the “kaffir” — or infidels.

Over the weekend, official Moscow started to twist the truth. In face of all evidence, the regime started to blame Ukraine. President Putin gave the green light in a Saturday afternoon national address. After taking 19 hours to hammer out an official line, he told the nation that the terrorists had been arrested as they headed toward “a window” in the  Russia-Ukraine border.

Mr. Putin neglected to note that if the terrorists intended to cross one of the world’s most heavily militarized borders, a “window” would have to be opened by both sides. “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,” Mr. Putin said.

Russia’s president also failed to mention Islamic State in his address and subsequent broadcasts on state TV either failed to mention the ISIS claim or downplayed it. Kremlin propagandists are spouting the new line. State television aired a fake video “implicating” a Ukrainian security official. Key government ideologue Aleksandr Dugin assured viewers on state-run Channel 1 that the attack was organized by Ukraine’s leaders and “their puppet masters in the Western intelligence services.”  He urged Russians to unite behind Mr. Putin in the war with Ukraine.

A pro-Kremlin analyst favored by Russian state television, Sergei Markov, wrote on Telegram:  “Russia’s task is to ensure the political isolation of the Ukrainian terrorist regime, maximally pointing out the connection of the terrorist attack, not with ISIS, but with the Ukrainian authorities.” Mr. Markov added that “to do this, it is necessary not only to show the connection between terrorists and Ukraine, but also to destroy the American version of the terrorist attack.”

On March 7, Washington publicly warned the Kremlin that terrorists were planning a major attack in Russia. Three days before the actual attack, Mr. Putin publicly dismissed the warning as “blackmail” and “an attempt to scare and intimidate our society.” American officials blame the massacre solely on ISIS. A National Security Council spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson, said: “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.”

On Sunday Vice President Harris was asked on ABC’s “This Week” if Washington has evidence of a Ukraine link. She answered: “There is no, whatsoever, any evidence. And, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually, by all accounts, responsible for what happened.”

ISIS-K, or Islamic State Khorasan, is largely based in Afghanistan and Central Asia. The four men charged Sunday with terrorism are from Tajikistan, a majority Muslim nation bordering on Afghanistan. The Moscow court identified them as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni, and Muhammadsobir Fayzov.

After Mr. Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 against ISIS, the terror group placed Russia on a par with America in its “hatred” of Islam. The broader Islamic State group has claimed deadly attacks across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Europe, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka.

“This is not ISIS. It’s just that the performers were selected in such a way that they could convince the stupid world community that it was ISIS,” state TV director Margarita Simonyan posted on Telegram. Ms. Simonyan, whose understanding of America dates back to 1995 when she won a State Department-funded scholarship to study for a year at Bristol, New Hampshire, added: “Even before the arrests, even before the names and names of the perpetrators, Western intelligence services began to convince the population that it was ISIS.”

Blaming Ukraine serves several purposes. By spending billions of dollars on defense production, Mr. Putin has created a severe labor shortage. An estimated 3 million Tajiks work in Russia, about a third of the nation’s population. At the same time, some analysts fear that, with his re-election behind him, Mr. Putin plans to further place Russia on a war footing and to declare another nationwide callup of draftees.

Finally, by shifting the focus to Ukraine, attention is turned from the security and fire safety lapses that allowed the occurrence of a tragedy with 300 casualties. Most died due to the fire and smoke inhalation. More bodies are expected to be uncovered after the remains of the roof are removed.

Kyiv fears that the Kremlin’s blame Ukraine game dovetails with a ramp up of the war. On Friday,  Russia launched its heaviest bombing campaign yet against Ukrainian power suppliers. Rockets hit Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. By the end of the two-day bombing campaign, DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power supplier, had lost half of its generating capacity. 

“What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious — both Putin and other scoundrels simply are trying to blame everything on someone else,” President Zelensky said Saturday in his nightly talk to the nation. “This absolutely miserable Putin, instead of attending to his own citizens of Russia, addressing them, remained silent for a day — thinking about how to link this with Ukraine.”

Ukrainian officials and others suspect that the massacre could be a “false flag” — an atrocity conducted by Russian authorities to justify ramping up the war against Ukraine. “The Moscow shootings make me think of two things: the absolute absence of safety for ordinary people despite an ever-growing enforcement apparatus; and second, it smells [like] a false-flag operation,” a former Russian diplomat, Boris Bondarev, posted on X.