Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Monday that “radical Islamists” were behind the massacre of nearly 140 people at a Moscow concert hall last Friday – but he still pointed to Ukraine as the hidden hand behind the terror attack.

"The question that arises is who benefits from this?" Putin said at the Kremlin during a video conference with leaders of Russia's security forces. "We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it."

Four attackers stormed the Crocus City Hall in Moscow last Friday night, raking gunfire across hundreds of people there to see the Soviet-era rock band Picnic, in the deadliest attack inside Russia in two decades. The death toll was raised to 139 on Monday, Alexander Bastrykin, chairman of the state Investigative Committee, said.

Putin’s “radical Islamists” comment was his first acknowledgement of what the U.S. – and on Monday, France – have been saying since the slaughter took place: ISIS-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based branch of the ultraviolent movement that sought to take over Syria and Iraq a decade ago, was behind the attack and had claimed responsibility.

France joins U.S. in blaming the Islamic State

"The information available to us…as well as to our main partners, indicates indeed that it was an entity of the Islamic State which instigated this attack," French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters during a visit to South America. "This group also tried to commit several actions on our own soil."

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State terror group massacred 90 people at a Paris concert hall in November 2015 during a night of coordinated attacks across the city that killed 130.

On March 7, the U.S. embassy in Moscow warned of a possible replay of the Paris slaughter in a public advisory that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts…”

Seeking to limit criticism, Putin refuses to blame IS

Russian President Vladimir Putin insinuated that Ukraine was linked.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is refusing to blame the Islamic State (IS) for the Moscow attack despite a claim by the extremist group, instead insinuating a link to Ukraine in a possible bid to limit the responsibility of the Russian security services.

IS claimed the attack Friday evening on the Crocus City Hall concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow that left at least 137 people dead, with Western governments also saying the extremist group appeared to be responsible.

In his latest comments on the attack Monday, Putin acknowledged that "radical Islamists" had carried out the attack but made a link with Ukraine, over two years into Moscow's invasion of its neighbour.

"The US... is trying to convince its satellites that there is not a Kyiv trace in the act of terror and that members of ISIS carried out the attack," Putin told a security meeting.

"We know who carried out the attack. We want to know who the mastermind was," said Putin, repeating the allegation that the perpetrators tried to flee to Ukraine after the attack.

Ukraine has already vehemently denied any involvement in the attack, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying Putin was always seeking to blame "someone else".

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday warned Moscow against any "exploitation" of the attack, saying it would be "cynical and counterproductive for Russia to use this context to try and turn it against Ukraine".

He said it was a branch of Islamic State that "planned the attack and carried it out", adding this outfit had also plotted attacks in France.

In early March the US had warned Russia of a risk of an attack, a message Moscow appears to have batted away.

- 'Responsible for everything' -

"There is an exploitation (of the attack) because Vladimir Putin is obsessed with Ukraine," said Sylvie Bermann, former ambassador of France to Russia. "It is in his logic of the war in Ukraine and the Ukrainians are responsible for everything," she told AFP.

The attack came as Russia scents it has the upper hand on the battlefield over two years into the war but with the Kremlin still wary of ordering a new military mobilisation.

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik consultancy, described Putin's link to Ukraine as "cautious", arguing that if there had been any evidence of such a role reactions would have been even more explicit.

"The IS is testing a new tactic that involves newcomers who had not been flagged as extremists in police databases and that implies a much shorter period of preparation," she told AFP.

But many commentators on pro-Kremlin media were in no doubt where to lay the blame.

"We are not talking about ISIS here. It was the khokhly," said the editor-in-chief of the RT channel Margarita Simonyan, using a term used pejoratively in Russia to denote Ukrainians.

Mass-circulation newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda even quoted one commentator as blaming the "British special services and the Americans and Ukrainians" for the attack.

After Putin's latest comments, Stanovaya wrote on Telegram that it appeared Putin was carefully using the conditional in his language and "does not yet have evidence of the involvement of either the US or Ukraine."

"But he is convinced they would benefit from such an act of terror".

- 'Security lapses' -

Meanwhile, the failure to avert the attack -- in particular after possible intelligence from Moscow's adversary the US -- could be seen in some quarters as a major failure for the Russian security services.

Ex-agent Putin has sought to portray the KGB successor the Federal Security Service (FSB), which he himself used to head, as all powerful and able to protect Russians from threats to their homeland.

After the hostage massacre at a Moscow theatre showing the Nord-Ost musical in 2002 and the Beslan school siege in 2004, the Crocus City Hall is the latest atrocity claimed by jihadists under Putin that has put the role of security forces under the microscope.

While jihadists carried out a string of previous attacks, Putin will be mindful of the risk of disrupting Russia's delicate society which includes more than 20 million Muslims.

Admitting that the attack was committed by IS would be to acknowledge that the image of a secure and stable Russia "where the state is omnipotent and the all-powerful security services control everything is a myth," said Tatiana Kastoueva-Jean, Russia specialist at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).

She said that Putin's priority is to divert attention from "security lapses" and rally "all those who are still hesitating on the domestic scene" to the need to fight the West and Ukraine.

Multiple victims of Moscow attack including children are in serious condition, Russian officials say

Twenty-two victims of the Russia concert hall attack that killed more than 130 people remain in serious condition in the hospital, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said Tuesday, according to state news agency Tass. Two of them are children, it said.

Russia is still reeling from the attack Friday in which gunmen killed 139 people in a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the gunmen are “radical Islamists,” but despite all evidence pointing to the involvement of Islamic State, Putin repeated his accusation that Ukraine could have played a role. Kyiv has strongly denied any link to the attack.

Four men accused of carrying out the attack appeared before a Moscow court on Sunday on terrorism charges and showed signs of severe beatings. One appeared to be barely conscious during the hearing.

The men are citizens of Tajikistan, authorities said, and were named by investigators as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32; Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30; Shamsidin Fariduni, 25; and Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19. They were charged with committing a terrorist attack resulting in the death of others. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Russian officials said they detained a total of 11 people over the attack. Another of those detained appeared in court Monday. Alisher Kasimov, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, was charged over renting an apartment to the men accused of carrying out the attack.

A senior Turkish security official confirmed Tuesday that two of the Moscow attackers had spent a “short amount of time” in Turkey before traveling together to Russia on March 2.

One of the attackers, Fariduni, entered Turkey on Feb. 20, checked into a hotel in Istanbul’s Fatih district the next day and checked out on Feb. 27, the official said. The other, Rachabalizoda, checked into a hotel in the same district on Jan. 5, checking out on Jan. 21.

The official said Turkish authorities believe the two suspects “became radicalized in Russia" because they were not in Turkey for long. There was no warrant for their arrest so they were allowed to travel freely between Russia and Turkey, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements.

The attack Friday night at the Crocus City Hall music venue on Moscow’s western outskirts was one of the deadliest in Russia in years and left more than 180 people injured.

Two days after the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack at the music venue, Putin acknowledged during a meeting with government officials that the killings were carried out by extremists “whose ideology the Islamic world has been fighting for centuries.”

Putin, who declared over the weekend the four attackers were arrested while trying to escape to Ukraine, said investigators haven’t determined who ordered the attack, but said it was necessary to find out “why the terrorists after committing their crime tried to flee to Ukraine and who was waiting for them there.”

The IS affiliate claimed it carried out the attack, and U.S. intelligence said it had information confirming the group was responsible. French President Emmanuel Macron said France has intelligence pointing to “an IS entity” as responsible for the attack.