Meduza geolocated a video of the alleged detention of one of the suspects in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. It was filmed on the Ukraine highway, 140 kilometers from the border.

Meduza journalists have identified the location of the video recording, which allegedly shows the moment of the arrest of one of the suspects in the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert hall.

The video, allegedly provided by the FSB, was filmed near the turnoff from the M3 "Ukraine" highway to the village of Khatsun (approximately 30 kilometers from Bryansk and 140 kilometers from the border with Ukraine).

The arrest video and Google Maps street view (shot in July 2018) show similar landmarks: blue-green posts between a pine and oak tree near the road, as well as a fire ditch located along the road.

One of the members of the GeoConfirmed community, which deals with video geolocation, came to the same conclusions.

The video shows a man who introduced himself during interrogation as 30-year-old Rajab Alizadeh. The footage shows his face covered in blood. Judging by another video, this man had part of his ear cut off after his arrest.

The fact that the suspects in the terrorist attack were detained near the village of Khatsun, Karachevsky district, Bryansk region, was first reported by Russian State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein.

At the same time, information initially appeared that a car with alleged criminals was stopped near the village of Teply, a few kilometers from the border with Belarus and Ukraine. The village of Teply is located 16 kilometers from the border with Belarus and about 200 kilometers from the village of Khatsun. In addition, the Ambassador of Belarus to the Russian Federation Dmitry Krutoy stated that the Belarusian special services “helped prevent terrorists from escaping across the common border.”

At the same time, the State Traffic Inspectorate reported at about nine in the morning on March 23 that traffic was temporarily limited along the section of the M-3 “Ukraine” highway between the 368th and 385th kilometers, southeast of Bryansk.

• The place of Alizadeh’s alleged detention is located seven kilometers south of the intersection of the M3 “Ukraine” and P-120 highways. From the intersection, the P-120 leads west to the Belarusian border, and the M3 south to Ukraine. Thus, the location where the suspect was detained allows the Russian authorities to claim that the terrorists were heading specifically to Ukraine. However, earlier - after the 2017 terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro - the FSB filmed the false detention of suspects in the Moscow region,wrote experts from the human rights society Memorial (in reality, one of them was detained in Bishkek and extradited to Russia, and the other was in prison for several weeks in a certain basement under the control of the secret services).