Russian state media is firmly blaming Ukraine and the West for the deadly attack on the Crocus Hall, echoing similar narratives by the Kremlin while ignoring Ukraine’s denial of any involvement.

Those commentators who are more independent-minded are sceptical of such claims, however, arguing that state security has been distracted by the war in Ukraine and dropped the ball in preventing this attack at home.

The most startling effort at disinformation by Russian state media is perhaps NTV’s broadcast of a video with seemingly AI-generated audio of Ukraine’s top security official Oleksiy Danilov. The clip aired on Russia’s third most-popular channel, just hours after the attack.

It purported to show Danilov saying, “It is fun in Moscow today… I would like to believe that we will arrange such fun for them more often.”

But we have established that the video clip is a composite of two different interviews published in the last week, and that the voice in the video was probably generated using AI technology.

Russian TV presenters and popular pro-Kremlin bloggers have questioned whether the Islamic State group (IS) was behind the Moscow attack, calling this the “Western version” of events.

“There are already attempts to have everyone chasing down the wrong lead,” popular commentator and pro-Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov said during his 24 March prime-time news review programme.

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