The attack ended with two deaths, a policeman and the assailant, and with five wounded, including four agents and a civilian.
Some initial reports related to the presence of at least three armed people who had attempted to enter the secret service building, but this version was quickly denied.
Despite the absence of claims and official information about the identity and motives of the man, the terrorist track cannot be excluded and the investigators are still at work to find out whether it was a coincidence or an intended fact that the attack against the most powerful entity in the country occurred on the day when the anniversary of the foundation was held and while President Vladimir Putin participated in an event organised in connection with this commemoration.
In Lubyanka square, a man with a backpack on his shoulder tried to pass the controls at the entrance of the historic building that since 1917 has been hosting the secret service offices, originally founded under the name Cheka, which was then gradually transformed into the famous KGB. The result was a scuffle, followed by a heavy round of shooting after the man reveals himself to be armed with Kalashnikovs. The firefight began near the building, but ended in the street after a brief chase.
The famous building is located a short distance from the Kremlin, which is why the city center was closed for a few hours by an imposing safety cordon. In the light of the conflicting reports that speak of a commando of three assailants, of which two had allegedly fled after the killing of the accomplice, five ambulances arrived at the crime scene and President Putin was immediately notified of the incident.
The media and the authorities quickly noticed a disturbing coincidence: the attack took place on the same day that commemorates the birth of the Cheka, the secret police founded on Lenin’s orders in the aftermath of the October revolution that, over time, gradually evolved into the KGB.
A few kilometers away, Putin was thanking the entire body of secret services for their work in keeping the country safe: in fact, 2019 was a very intense year in terms of counterterrorism with 78 neutralized cells, almost 900 people arrested, 50 foiled attacks and over 50 000 websites closed because they contained terrorist propaganda.
And it is precisely on this point that the investigators are focusing their investigations, because if the curious synchronization was the result of a precise plan, it would mean that the lone wolf’s objective was precisely to attack the credibility of the institutions.
In the morning, some Russian media began to spread the first rumors about the identity of the attacker despite having received official confirmation from the authorities. It was a former 39-year-old security guard, Yevgeny Manyurov, originally from Podolsk, not far from the capital, who, according to his parents, had shown increasingly strange behavior in recent times, including growing a beard and long and frequent phone calls to “the Arabs”. The transformation of Manyurov into a “zombie” begin shortly after his recruitment to the United Arab Emirates embassy.
According to the same sources, the man’s residence has already been searched and the agents recovered and seized a small arsenal of weapons, including two guns and two semi-automatic rifles.