Published on •Updated
An explosion Saturday at a Moscow restaurant that killed three people and wounded 21 others was a bombing, Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said.
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“A homemade explosive device blew up at a restaurant in Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow, killing three people,” said the committee, quoted by the Tass state news agency.
The three people killed were a woman carrying the device into the restaurant, a security agent who stopped her and a customer.
Telegram channel Baza, known for its ties with Russian security forces, first talked about a gas explosion that would have come from the restaurant’s kitchen.
The restaurant had been booked for a private birthday party and Alexandre Tchaïko, the commander of the Russian Air Force, was present, reports say.
An earlier statement by Moscow police to the Ria Novosti news agency said investigators and police forensic specialists were at the site.
Images posted on Russian Telegram channels showed fire engines and ambulances outside the building.
Several terrorist attacks in past years
Russia has been the target of several terrorist attacks in the past.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine’s secret service has claimed or been accused of several attacks on Russian military officers and public figures backing the conflict.
Russia blamed Ukraine for the killing of a senior general, Yaroslav Moskalik, in a car bomb in April 2025.
In August 2022, the nationalist Darya Dugina, daughter of hardline Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed outside Moscow when a bomb attached to her car detonated.
Many believe her father was the intended target.
In April 2023, pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky — real name Maxim Fomin — was killed when a statuette he was handed exploded at a cafe in Saint Petersburg.
A bomb attached to a scooter outside a Moscow apartment block killed General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division, and his assistant in December 2024.
And the pro-Kremlin writer and nationalist Zakhar Prilepin was seriously wounded in a May 2023 car explosion that killed another person near the city of Nizhny Novgorod.