The Moscow Attack - The four men were fleeing toward Belarus when they were captured

 

  The Russia-friendly leader of Belarus contradicted the Kremlin’s narrative about the Friday attack at a Moscow music hall that killed at least 140 people. Russian leader Vladimir Putin said the attackers were linked to Ukraine in his public remarks Saturday. Putin said the suspects were fleeing toward Ukraine when they were apprehended. Alexander Lukashenko of Minsk, however, told reporters Tuesday the four men were fleeing toward Belarus when they were captured.

Digging deeper: Geolocated footage of their capture placed them “about 95 kilometers from the Ukrainian border at the closest point, or 130 kilometers from where [highway] E101 crosses into Ukraine,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday evening assessment.

 That location “is notably about 124 kilometers from the Belarusian border, and about 25 kilometers away from the A-240 highway that runs to Gomel, Belarus,” which would seem to suggest “the attackers were initially traveling along the A-240 highway towards Belarus but saw roadblocks or other deterrents and shifted their course east through forest roads to the E101 route,” ISW notes.

 “Lukashenko has very little evident incentive to lie about the facts of the attack in this way,” ISW writes. But his Tuesday remarks may offer him a kind of protection.