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Welcome to Travel with Harvey, LLC 

Your Gateway to Unforgettable Journeys!

Embark on a captivating voyage with Brittany and Dennis Harvey, a dynamic husband-and-wife duo dedicated to turning your travel dreams into vibrant realities. With a passion for both exploring the world and meticulously planning every detail, we've transformed our love for travel into a shared adventure with you.

Through engaging TikToks and insightful YouTube channels, we invite you to join us on our exhilarating journeys while entrusting us with the opportunity to bring your travel aspirations to life. Whether you crave the encompassing luxury of All-Inclusive Resorts, the varied pleasures of Caribbean Cruises, or the enchanting realms of Disney and the serene luxury of tropical paradises for your special celebrations, we're here to curate your perfect escape.

Discover the art of personalized travel experiences with Travel with Harvey, where each trip is crafted with care and expertise. Let us be your guides to turning your wanderlust into vivid memories that last a lifetime.

At Travel with Harvey, LLC, we take pride in being a Mississippi-based concierge travel agency dedicated to crafting personalized travel experiences. Since our inception, our primary mission has been to assist travelers in unveiling the countless wonders our planet has to offer.

We are committed to guiding you seamlessly through the entire process, from tailoring your trip to your specific preferences to ensuring you won't miss any of the attractions your destination has in store. Whether it's booking a trip or curating your dream trip, we are here to make your travel experience exceptional and unforgettable.

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Heading out to another big adventure? Plan your next trip with Harvey's Travel Service in Shelbina, MO! With Dana Harvey as your travel agent, traveling is made easier. Enlist Dana’s travel services today, and start planning your trip! Whether you’re backpacking solo or traveling with family and friends, Dana will help you out with all your travel booking needs.

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Whether you are going out on a holiday vacation with your family or preparing a retreat with your workmates, Harvey's Travel Service will make sure to assist you from planning to booking and everything in between. Hire Dana Harvey as your travel agent today, and make your upcoming trip a complete success! Browse through this website or dial the provided phone number for more details about Dana’s travel services.

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Moscow Vacation Packages

Moscow vacations are always a great idea when it comes to traveling in Russia. Plan your trip to Moscow with a leading tour operator for Russia and enjoy the ease and pleasure that comes from it. You will stay at the centrally-located hotels, enjoy guided tours to Moscow's best sights with charming local guides, and, most importantly, feel relaxed and immersed in the Russian culture at all times. Wondering what the ideal way to see the best of Moscow is? Well, with a private tour to Moscow, of course! We will listen to your travel preferences and prepare a custom Moscow itinerary just for you. Let's start talking about your upcoming vacation to the gorgeous capital city of Russia.

Moscow Tour Highlights

Explore the capital of the largest country in the world, Russia.

Learn about the most visited sights in Moscow that are worth adding to your Russian itinerary. Create a fantastic tour to Moscow with a destination, choosing your wished activities.

• Moscow walking tour
• The Red Square
• St Basil's Cathedral
• Moscow Subway ride
• Tretyakov Gallery
• The Red Square in Moscow
• The Bolshoi Theater
• Cathedral of Christ the Savior
• Moscow's Kremlin exploration
• 'Seven Sisters' Skyscrapers

Tips for Moscow Travel

Take a look at the good-to-know tips before visiting Moscow and have a fantastic time in the capital.

What to pack

Make sure to check the weather prognosis before your trip and pack accordingly.

When to travel

Moscow is beautiful all around the year. Choose traveling time according to preferred activities.

We suggest to always have some cash with you. You will need Rubles (RUB) for Russia.

How much to tip

Tipping is not required in Russia, but it's considered good etiquette, tip 10%-15% of your bill.

The average summer temperature is approx 18°C (64°F), and winter is around -6°C (22°F).

Some of the most popular souvenirs from Moscow are caviar, Krasnaya Moska perfume.

Best Moscow Sights

One of the highest points in Moscow and one of its most breathtaking places - the Sparrow Hills.

See the 344-feet Cathedral of Christ the Savior - the tallest Orthodox church in the world.

Enjoy masterpieces of Russian opera and ballet in Moscow's legendary Bolshoi Theater.

Being the most recognizable symbol of Russia in the world, Red Square is an absolute must see when in Moscow. 

The famous GUM is a large department store in the Kitai-gorod part of Moscow facing Red Square.

St. Basil’s Cathedral is Moscow’s most famous artistic work of architecture set in the romantic Red Square.

History and luxury is revealed inside the Kremlin as the Armoury Chamber displays treasures like Faberge Eggs.

The symbol of Moscow and entire Russia, the Kremlin is often described as the 8th Wonder of the World.

Moscow Metro is like a whole underground city that holds the world's largest collection of Stalinist Art.

I am very satisfied.

I have been using the Firebirds (Travel All Russia) services for a while. I am very satisfied.

WOW. From the choice of hotels to...

WOW. From the choice of hotels, an itinerary that ran to plan, the amazing Guides and drivers, and of course the stunning cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. No long queues for entry to museums, churches, and palaces.  I would gladly recommend using Firebird Tours (Travel All Russia) to anyone.

THANK YOU for making this happen for me !!!

I must say from the day I started to book my tip till the day I got home I had one GREAT trip and experience I always felt safe and cared for help was seconds away not that I needed any I will defiantly highly recommend your company to any traveler to Russia WELL DONE to the Whole team THANK YOU for making this happen for me !!!

We enjoyed the whole trip a lot

Overall we enjoyed the whole trip a lot. Moscow is beautiful and clean. Thank you very much for your patience and excellent organization of this tour. Everything ran very smoothly and according to schedule. The guides met us on time at hotels or at our train carriage on arrival. They all spoke good English, had a good local knowledge and were very kind and helpful.

The tour lived up to all expectations

I’m most pleased with Travel All Russia in arranging our ‘Volga Dream’ Russia tour, I would recommend using your services again as every aspect of our tour went off without a hitch. The communication between our tour representative was excellent as we required additional days on both ends of our tour. The visa process and the logistics were flawlessly implemented.

We had a great time in Moscow!

Everything was perfect and we are very satisfied with services and accommodations.

Loved my time in Russia

The trip was great. Especially want to mention the guides I had on the extra days were exceptional. Both guides and drivers worked out well. Thanks again for all your help and attention. Loved my time in Russia, and still haven’t stopped talking about it.

Exploring Magnificent Russian Capitals, June 2017

Just want to say that our guide in St Petersburg was really outstanding. You really felt like someone was looking after you. Very observant - knowledgeable. We really enjoyed time spent with her.

Exploring Vibrant Moscow, June 2017

The experience was great!!! We had an excellent guide. The hotel was fabulous.

Thank you for your help !!! was an unforgettable trip.

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Monrovia Travel Service

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401 S Myrtle Ave

Monrovia, CA 91016

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Arpi has been such a pleasure to work with. She has gone above and beyond with helping to arrange our trip! She's supper attentive to detail, communicates effectively and takes the stress out of planning trips on your own. Highly recommended!!

Excellent all rounded services from Denise Harvey, the owner, who has been @ helm for over 40 years. Visualize your dream vacation, take your budget, and have Denise make your dreams come true! My last trip to Mexico City with a friend that needed special services (wheelchair) was designed for two solo women in a safe Polanco- Condesa Boutique Hotel. We felt safe and attended with private, reliable destination specialists The travel experience should include to and from the airport services, which Monrivia Travel Services include!

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Denise at Monrovia Travel has arranged three wonderful vacations for me and family members in recent years. And in situations where there was trouble, such as a problem with a hotel in Dublin, despite the time difference, she stepped in and helped smooth things over. I have always found her to be incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and generous with her time. Of course, it's possible to spend hours on the Internet, comparing rates for flights and accommodations. I've done that too. But it's great to have someone on your side who can recommend the cool stuff to do, the off the grid places to visit that you may not have considered. And if something goes wrong, it's a comfort to have someone in your corner who has the connections and experience to fix it! Just recently, she helped me work out some convoluted problems which were affecting a trip to Kauai. I hope use her expertise again soon.

My wife asked me to post this review which she wrote; "In September 2017 we took a month long vacation to Spain, Italy and the Greek Isles. The trip consisted of a 9 day tour with Globus Travel, a side trip to Barcelona, a flight to Rome where we stayed for 4 days prior to a nine day cruise to the Greek Islands. We did a lot of the research for the trip ourselves (side tours, sights to visit etc.) but we also worked with Monrovia Travel Service and Denise specifically. The trip was amazing and in large part it was due to Denise's help in the planning and coordinating, and making flight and train reservations. She met with us on several occasions, asking thought provoking questions and lending helpful suggestions. She was quick to respond to my calls and emails. And the best part is that she found us an awesome deal on the flight to Europe. About half the cost we were going to book. Thank you Denise!"

Just got back from a weeks vacation in the Mexican Riviera. Denise sent us on the perfect trip. She was on top of things and made sure we had the best time ever. Thank you Denise, we will only use you from now on.

You'd be better off probably financially doing a lil research and booking your trips online really. The place is run by a few middle aged ladies who are very nice. They have a selection of brochures to go through in the back and will help you book your trip, but it really is not that hard to do. They appear to just search online for deals and put you on them, nothing you can't do yourself. It may be a little cheaper cuz they get a discount and share some savings with you, but they appear to try to sell you expensive tours. Do research for a lil bit and you will, as I have, find similar tours for much less money. If you are super lazy and just wanna hand off cash and get on a plane, go for it, they will take it, but get on the laptop and find a tour for yourself, as that is all these people seem to be doing. Edit: 2 weeks later and no phone call still, WTH!~

If I could give half a star, I would! I just spoke with Denise and I got so frustrated. We had been trying to work together for over 4 weeks to get the trip planned. She hadn't looked into booking my flight-which, by the way, is supposed to be in 5 days!!! Doesn't she know that when she tells a CLIENT(me) that she was too busy helping OTHER IMPORTANT CLIENTS, it can be kinda rude? She actually told me that she would try to get to it but had some very important people she was helping instead! She seems very nice but that doesn't really matter, when you have no hotel to check in to or plane to catch! If you want to be frustrated, irritated or just down right mad, stop into Monrovia Travel. They will certainly help.

Very nice agent when we first met. She was supposed to get back to us on prices to go to Europe, and she never did! I emailed her twice and she replied, telling me she would have an answer in 2weeks, but that never happened. Very unprofessional, she just lost a customer & many more that I was planning on referring.

Monrovia Travel has been in business for years and years and this is a great local travel agency. Denise is very nice and knowledgable about travel and I highly recommend her to you for all of your travel needs.

Well everything went ok - Denise worked within the many facets of varied family requests on making a Bahamian vacation package work with different budgets & price means. I wish she was a bit more diligent on working thru the final details but she was responsive when we had direct issues/requests.

So far so good, I have never used a travel agent - I have usually booked my travel on line, a la carte - being an independent sort of person and traveler I was ok with that. But now we're in the midst of planning a family vacation to the Bahamas to celebrate a 50th birthday for a party of 8 - So I wanted to use a travel agency that way each family can have someone to in regards to the packages they select. As opposed to Greg P. who reviewed previously ) - I sent an email and got a response from Denise (the owner) within an hour. WOW. That was impressive - and she shared with me a lot of insight as alternatives to places to go or things to do. I look forward to working with her. I'll be back with an update on this review.

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Moscow Travel Guide

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Why travel to Moscow

Contrasts: 12th century monasteries and some of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe can be found side-by-side in this complex and captivating city. The diversity of this mega-city is astounding. Only a few steps away from the solemn red facade of the Kremlin and the sounds of righteous church bells, a buzzing night scene and alternative-fashion boutiques can be found.

Culture: In Moscow only the best goes. Be it a theatre, restaurant or gallery, the standards are certain to be world-class. The Bolshoi ballet company is reputed to be even better than the Mariinsky’s and “MMOMA” (Moscow’s museum of modern art) exhibits works of art as profound as any that could be found in the famed MOMA.

Convenience: Unlike the rest of Russia, it’s easy enough to get by with just English in Moscow and, driving excepted, it is surprisingly safe: the murder rate is lower than in some of America’s major cities.

Top Sights in Moscow

St. Basil’s

Novodevichy Convent

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Why visit Moscow

It would take more than two days to walk around the perimeter of the biggest city in Europe, Moscow. Many of its inhabitants barely know what’s beyond the few blocks around their flat and there are so many attractions that it’s almost impossible to know where to start. If there is such a thing as an antidote to boredom, Moscow City is it. The mind-boggling range and diversity of things to do, places to eat, parks, historical monuments and more means that a vacation in Moscow has a wealth of activities to offer for every type of traveler, from young families to retirees.

Reasons to Vacation in Moscow in 2022

The Bolshoi theatre is familiar to almost everyone as Russia’s grandest theatre, but what people don’t know is that there are many more bolshoi (big) sites in Moscow that are worth travelling all the way to Moscow to see. For more than 100 years, the world’s biggest bell has been hidden behind the Kremlin’s walls and inside Moscow’s main park (which is bigger than some countries!) there is the world’s largest outdoor ice-rink. Travelers that visit Moscow can stay at the Izmailovo, Europe’s biggest hotel, then eat at the largest and most historic McDonald’s in Europe and after that have fun at the largest European indoor theme park!

Ancient Past & Stunning Architecture:

As those who travel to Moscow will see, just because Moscow is a city of record-breaking, glitzy high-rises doesn’t mean that there is no history. On the famous Arbat street, time-worn, wooden storehouses and century-old churches are squashed up against grey, soviet blocks which are then towered over by 21st century office-blocks. Unlike its much younger sibling, St Petersburg, Moscow’s roots stretch way back to the 12th century. Within the walls of the Kremlin, the city’s oldest building the Cathedral of Assumption can be admired in all its 500+ years of age.

Culture & Convenience

For a foreigner who has never visited Russia, Moscow is the perfect stepping stone into this great land of mystery. From the country’s best classical ballet troupes to snow-white troikas trotting through the parks, all the highlights of Russian culture can be had in Moscow without any of the complications that would be expected in other, less developed regions of Russia.

Cheap as Caviar

In Moscow, everything is bargain when with the current foreign exchange rates being what they are. Even caviar doesn’t seem so dear when the exchange rate is at 60rub to the dollar, so go on indulge yourself! Take your 2022 vacation in Moscow and have the best of both worlds, with European luxury at very affordable prices.

Lena, our guide in Moscow was excellent. She was very knowledgable and could answer any question we had for her. We liked that she could pick up on our interests and take us places we might not have thought of to go. When we realized that one of the places we had chosen to see would probably not be that interesting to us, she was able to arrange entry to the Diamond Fund and the Armoury for us. Riding the Metro with Lena was a real adventure and a lot of fun. In Saint Petersburg we found Anna well versed in the history of the Tsars and in the Hermitage collection. Arkady in Veliky Novgorod was a very good guide and answered all of our questions with ease. Novgorod was perhaps a long way to go for a day trip, but we did enjoy it. Vasily was a great driver to have and kept us safe with good humour and skill. We enjoyed ourselves so much, my daughter says she is already planning to return. We would both have no hesistation to recommend ExpresstoRussia to anyone we know.

Just wanted to let you know that My grandson Bruno and I couldn´t have been more pleased with our week in Moscow (6/15 - 6/21). We were absolutely enchanted with the whole experience, including getting lost a couple of times in the Metro during our free time. Although both our guides (both Eleanas) were excellent, I would particularly commend the first one (she took us to the Tatiakov, the KGB tour, and to that beautiful cemetery where so many great Russian artists, authors, composers, musicians, militarists, and politicians are buried). Her knowledge is encyclopedic; and her understanding of today´s Russia as a product of its past was, for us, truly enlightening. I will be taking another tour in Russia, with my wife, within the next two or three years. I will be in touch with you when the time comes. Meanwhile, I will refer you to other potential visitors to Russia as I meet them.

We had a great time both in Moscow and St Petersburg. Your travel agency was excellent in coordinating the whole trip. Everything worked like clockwork. The guides assigned to us were very nice and friendly. They had a great knowledge of their subjects. The cars and the drivers were great. The hotels were good and the itinerary was good. All in all, it was a wonderful experience. It was nice dealing with you and your company. Thank you very much for a great Russian experience. Have a great future ahead

• 31 reviews of Express to Russia Moscow Tours in Moscow

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Visit Moscow Tours

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Welcome to visit moscow tours.

We provide authentic, informative and memorable tour packages and city tours, at very competitive prices. Visit Moscow Tours are available not only in Moscow, but also in other cities: Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Suzdal and Sergiev Posad.  We also organise customised individual programs tailored just for you.

Our guests come in large groups, small private groups, as couples or as single travellers. We take care of and treat our guests with respect in a friendly and warm family environment. We show people our beautiful cities with passion and deep knowledge of their history, culture and traditions.

Our guides are extremely hospitable, helpful and well-informed. They are simply the best because only by providing the best services can we make the world fall in love with Russia. And we are very happy when our guests say that they will definitely come back to Russia and that they will tell all their friends how great Russia is! That is what inspires us to put even more dedication and hard work into our tours, knowing that what we do is positive and meaningful.

Our classic tours include tours of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, two main Russian cities.

Moscow is a big and busy  megalopolis and Russia’s capital city, where more than 12 million people live and work. Our capital city is happening place; it is mysterious, elegant, luxurious, fashionable, clean and bright, with its unique legends, traditions and events. It is with great pride that we show the Red Square and the Kremlin, our Underground and Tretyakovskaya Gallery, among other stunning attractions.

Saint Petersburg is our second capital,  the second largest city in the Russian Federation. This wonderful city has a strong and lively aristocratic spirit, uniquely Russian royal architecture, magnificent museums and theatres. Saint Petersburg bears the royal heritage of Russia, which can be felt in its air, its streets, parks, monuments, museums and citizens.  In Saint Petersburg tours, we will take you to the Hermitage, Peter and Paul Fortress, Faberge Museum and Orthodox Cathedrals. We’re sure you will love it!

If you have a few more days to spare, venture into the dreamy Russian countryside in Suzdal or Sergiev Posad. Suzdal is a small town with a population of about ten thousand people, situated on less than 15 square kilometres. This tiny area is home to 53 historic cathedrals, five monasteries and a kremlin. Church domes are visible like mushrooms from anywhere and everywhere in the town like in a fairy tale. No wonder Suzdal is called the ‘Town Museum”.  It is definitely worth visiting!

Just try any of Visit Moscow Tours’ tour packages or any individual city tour, and we promise that you will want to come back to Russia again.  Russia is huge with countless amazing places to visit. There are so many unique experiences to be had and energies to be felt that one tour is definitely not enough to explore this vast land. It is also a very safe destination to travel, and we have a tradition of warm hospitality. Our people adore and take care of visitors as our own guests, and even if they do not know your language very well, they still try to be helpful and hospitable.

Our guides will show you the most interesting attractions and historical places, taking you on a journey to the past to enjoy stories of medieval times, the Romanov monarchy, the Soviet Era. And of course, we will show you the contemporary life of our country through authentic local experiences.

We look forward to meeting you soon!

Security Questions Emerge as First Charges Are Filed in Russia Attack

Russian officials formally charged four men in the attack, which killed at least 137 people at a Moscow-area concert hall on Friday. American officials blamed a branch of the Islamic State.

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• A memorial outside the Crocus City Hall concert venue. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
• People waiting to visit a memorial at Crocus City Hall. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
• Leaving flowers outside the site of the attack. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• Mourners at a memorial in St. Petersburg, Russia. Anton Vaganov/Reuters
• Firefighters and rescuers clearing debris after the deadly attack. Reuters
• Police officers outside the Basmanny District Court in Moscow. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press
• People waited to donate blood near Crocus City Hall on Saturday. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• A flag flying at half-staff as policemen guard the closed entrance to Red Square in Moscow. Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via Shutterstock
• A billboard on Saturday noted the date of the concert hall attack in Moscow. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• The Crocus City Hall concert venue in suburban Moscow after it was attacked Friday night. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Paul Sonne and Neil MacFarquhar

Here’s what to know about the attack.

Russian officials have brought charges against four men they said were responsible for a fiery terrorist attack on a suburban Moscow concert venue that killed at least 137 people last week.

Four men were arraigned late Sunday night on terrorism charges in the attack at Crocus City Hall, just outside the Russian capital. A court spokesman identified them as Dalerjon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov, a 19-year-old who appeared in court in a wheelchair, according to Russian media outlets.

Mr. Mirzoyev, Mr. Rachabalizoda and Mr. Fariduni told the court they were from Tajikistan, and Russian media outlets reported that Mr. Fayzov was also from the Central Asian nation. All four had visible injuries; Mr. Rachabalizoda’s head was heavily bandaged and Mr. Fayzov had to be wheeled in and out of the courtroom.

Earlier Sunday — which had been declared a national day of mourning — people visited the scene of the attack to lay flowers and light candles at a memorial. Scores of people waited in a long line under a gray sky, many clutching red bouquets, as efforts were underway inside to dismantle the remains of the stage. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country, and state media released a video of President Vladimir V. Putin lighting a memorial candle in a church.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law-enforcement body, said on Sunday that 137 bodies had been recovered from the charred premises, including those of three children. It said that 62 victims had been identified so far and that genetic testing was underway to identify the rest.

There are two primary narratives about the violence on Friday night, Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years . American officials say it was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an Islamic State offshoot that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran . But on Saturday, Mr. Putin did not mention ISIS in his first public remarks on the tragedy , and hinted at the possible involvement of Ukraine, which has issued a strong denial .

Here’s what to know:

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge . Many of the more than 100 people wounded in the attack were in critical condition. The search for bodies continues.

As Russia mourned, the war in Ukraine continued. Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Piknik, the Russian rock band that was to play a sold-out concert at the suburban venue on the night it was attacked and burned to rubble, now finds itself at the center of the tragedy .

The attack dealt a political blow to Mr. Putin , a leader for whom national security is paramount.

Neil MacFarquhar

Russia charges four people with terrorism after attack on concert hall.

The four men suspected of carrying out a bloody attack on a concert hall near Moscow, killing at least 137 people, were arraigned in a district court late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act.

The four, who were from Tajikistan but worked as migrant laborers in Russia, were remanded in custody until May 22, according to state and independent media outlets reporting from the proceedings, at Basmanny District Court. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the court only announced that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, pleaded guilty to the charges. It did not specify any plea from the other two, Mediazona, an independent news outlet, reported.

The men looked severely battered and injured as each of them was brought into the courtroom separately. Videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, was rolled into the courtroom from a hospital emergency room on a tall, orange wheelchair, attended by a doctor, the reports said. He sat propped up in the wheelchair inside the glass cage for defendants, wearing a catheter and an open hospital gown with his chest partially exposed. Often speaking in Tajik through a translator, he answered questions about his biography quietly and stammered, according to Mediazona.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, 30, had a large bandage hanging off the right side of his head where interrogators had sliced off a part of his ear and forced it into his mouth, the reports said, with the cutting captured in a video that spread online.

The judge allowed the press to witness only parts of the hearings, citing concerns that sensitive details about the investigation might be revealed or the lives of court workers put at risk. It is not an unusual ruling in Russia.

Russia’s Federal Security Services announced on Saturday that 11 people had been detained, including the four charged men, who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by the authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In the attack, on Friday night, four gunmen opened fire inside the hall just as a rock concert by the group Piknik was due to start. They also set off explosive devices that ignited the building and eventually caused its roof to collapse. Aside from the dead, there were 182 injured, and more than 100 remain hospitalized, according to the regional health ministry.

President Vladimir V. Putin used the fact that the highway where the men were detained leads to Ukraine to suggest that the attack was somehow linked to Ukraine’s war effort. But the United States has said repeatedly that the attack was the work of an extremist jihadi organization, the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility.

The first charged, Mr. Mirzoyev, who had a black eye and cuts and bruises all over his face, leaned for support against the glass wall of the court cage as the charge against him was read. Mr. Mirzoyev, 32, has four children and had a temporary residence permit in the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired, the reports said.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, married with a child, said he was legally registered in Russia but did not remember where.

The fourth man charged, Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, married with an 8-month-old baby, worked in a factory producing parquet in the Russian city of Podolsk, just southwest of Moscow. He had also worked as a handyman in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the attack took place at Crocus City Hall, at a concert venue within a sprawling shopping complex just outside the Moscow city limits.

The Islamic State has been able to recruit hundreds of adherents among migrant laborers from Central Asia in Russia who are often angry about the discrimination they frequently face.

Alina Lobzina , Paul Sonne and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

Maps and Diagrams of the Moscow Concert Hall Attack

The mass shooting and arson at a suburban Moscow concert venue, which killed more than 130, were attributed by U.S. officials to members of a branch of the Islamic State.

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The other two men charged in the attack are Shamsidin Fariduni, 26, and 19-year-old Muhammadsobir Fayzov, who appeared in court in a wheelchair. All four men who've been charged have been identified by a court spokesman on Telegram. They appeared separately before a judge on charges of committing a terrorist act and were remanded in custody until May 22.

Russian authorities have begun naming the suspects in the attack. The first two suspects have been identified as Dalerjon Mirzoyev and Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, which is reporting from the court. Both have been charged with committing a terrorist act and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

RIA reported that Mirzoyev is a 32-year-old from Tajikistan who had an expired three-month permit to be in the southern Russian city of Novosibirsk. Less information was immediately released about Rachabalizoda, but state media reports said he was born in 1994.

Valerie Hopkins and Alina Lobzina

Concertgoers describe screams, smoke and stares of shock in a night of horror.

Once they heard the shots ring out on Friday night at Crocus City Hall, Efim Fidrya and his wife ran down to the building’s basement and hid with three others in a bathroom.

They listened as the gunfire began and thousands of people who had come to a sold-out rock concert on Moscow’s outskirts began screaming and trying to flee.

Horrified and scared, Mr. Fidrya did the only thing he could think to do: He held on tight to the bathroom door, which didn’t lock, trying to protect the group in case the assailants came to find them.

“While we could hear shooting and screaming, I stood the whole time holding the bathroom door shut,” Mr. Fidrya, an academic, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “The others were standing in the corner so that if someone started shooting through the door, they wouldn’t be in the line of fire.”

They didn’t know it then, but they were sheltering from what became Russia’s deadliest terror attack in two decades, after four gunmen had entered the popular concert venue and began shooting rapid-fire weapons.

Their story is one of many harrowing accounts that have emerged in the days since the attack, which killed at least 137 people. More than 100 injured people are hospitalized, some in critical condition, health officials said.

Mr. Fidrya’s small group waited and waited, but the attackers had started a fire in the complex and it was spreading. Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, showed everyone how to wet their T-shirts and hold them to their faces so they could breathe without inhaling toxic smoke.

And then a second round of shots rang out.

After about half an hour, it was so smoky that Mr. Fidrya, 42, thought even the assailants must have left. As he ventured out, he saw the body of a dead woman lying by the escalator. Later he saw the body of another woman who had been killed in the carnage, her distraught husband standing over her.

His group went down into the parking garage and eventually emerged on the street as the emergency service workers were carrying victims from the building.

The Islamic State, through its news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. officials said the assailants were believed to be part of ISIS-K, an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. On Saturday, Russia’s Federal Security Services announced that 11 people had been detained, including four who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In interviews, survivors described how what started as a typical Friday night out devolved into a scene of panic and terror. The venue, which seated 6,200 people, had been sold out for a show by a veteran Russian band called Piknik.

Video footage from the scene shows the assailants shooting at the entrance to the concert venue, part of a sprawling, upscale complex of buildings that also includes a shopping mall and multiple exhibition halls. They then moved into the concert hall, where they sprayed gunfire as well, videos show.

The attackers also set the building on fire using a combination of explosives and flammable liquid, Russian authorities said.

Like the Fidryas, Tatyana Farafontova initially thought the sound of the shooting was part of the show.

“Five minutes before the show was supposed to start, we heard these dull claps,” she wrote on her VK social media page. Ms. Farafontova, 38, said in a direct message on Saturday that she was still in shock and was slurring her speech after the attack.

Then the claps got closer and someone shouted that there were attackers shooting. She scrambled onto the stage with the assistance of her husband.

“At the moment when we climbed onto the stage, three people entered the hall with machine guns,” she wrote in her VK account. “They shot at everything that moved. My husband from the stage saw bluish smoke filling the hall.”

Ms. Farafontova said that being on the center of the stage made her feel exposed and targeted.

“It felt as if they were poking me in the back with the muzzle of a machine gun,” she wrote, adding, “I could feel the breath of death right behind my shoulders.”

She crawled under the curtain and eventually followed the musicians, who had already started to flee, and ran as far as she could from the building.

Up on the balcony, Aleksandr Pyankov and his wife, Anna, heard the gunshots and lay on the floor for some time before joining others who jumped up and began running to the exit.

As they fled, they encountered a woman who had slumped down on an escalator and was blocking their route. She was alive but staring blankly ahead, Mr. Pyankov, a publishing executive, said. He told her to keep running, but then turned his head and saw what she was staring at.

“I started to look,” Mr. Pyankov, 51, said in a telephone interview. “And first I saw a murdered woman sitting on the sofa, and there was a young man lying next to her. I looked around and there were groups of bodies.”

It all happened in a matter of seconds, he said, and he tried to keep fleeing.

“The worst thing is that in this situation you’re not running away from the shooting, but toward it,” he said. “Because it was already clear that there would be a fire there, we know how it would burn. And you’re just running to figure out where else to run.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV, a state channel, that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the assault. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

“I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t hear the call,” Ms. Volkova told the broadcaster, adding that her mother had been “really looking forward to this concert.”

Accounts emerging about others who died in the assault also told tales of eager concertgoers who had made special efforts to get to the show.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, traveled hundreds of miles — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present, the newspaper Komsomolsaya Pravda reported. He did not live to celebrate his 35th birthday, which is this week. Both he and his wife died in the attack.

And Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing Piknik , a heritage rock band that was playing the first of two sold-out concerts accompanied by a symphony orchestra.

Mr. Baklemyshev’s son told local media that his father had traveled solo from his hometown of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he had heard from him.

“There was no last conversation,” his son said. “All that was left is the video, and nothing more.”

Mr. Fidrya said he felt grateful to be alive, and that four of the assailants had been captured.

“Now there is confidence that the crime will be solved and those non-humans who organized and carried it out will be punished,” he said. “This really helps a lot.”

But images of the victims remain seared in his memory, in particular that of the husband, his back burned from the fire, standing over his dead wife outside the building as medics attended to the wounded.

The man was talking to Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, saying they were from the city of Tver northwest of Moscow, had been together for 12 years and had three children.

“For us it’s all over, by and large,” Mr. Fidrya wrote in a message after the phone interview. “But for that guy who stood over the body of his wife, and for their three children, the worst is yet to come. And there are so many people like him there.”

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, released video of suspects being led, blindfolded, into its headquarters on Sunday. The agency said the investigation at the scene of the attack was continuing.

Ivan Nechepurenko

As questions about security failures swirl, Russian state media focus on a different narrative.

As Russia mourned the victims of the worst terrorist attack in the Moscow area in more than two decades on Sunday, differing narratives about the attack were spreading and taking hold in the country.

The attack late Friday on a concert hall near Moscow left at least 137 people dead and represented a significant security failure for the Kremlin. While the Russian authorities said they had arrested the four attackers, speculation over their identities and motivations was widespread. There also were open questions about whether Russia had adequately followed up on a warning from the United States about the threat of such an attack, and about how specific that warning was.

But most Russian commentators and state media devoted little time to those issues, instead pointing fingers elsewhere. The reaction reflected in part the state of anxiety that Russia has been living in since the start of the war in Ukraine, with propaganda outlets competing to advance one narrative, conspiracy theory or bit of speculation after another.

Many nationalist commentators and ultraconservative hawks on Sunday continued to push the idea that Ukraine was the obvious culprit, despite a claim of responsibility and mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State was responsible.

Hard-line anti-Kremlin activists speaking from abroad, meanwhile, speculated that the Russian state could have orchestrated the attack so that it could blame Ukraine or further tighten the screws inside the country.

Some lawmakers in Parliament argued that the government needed to get tough on migrants, after the authorities said that the four assailants were foreign citizens. Lawmakers also pledged to discuss whether capital punishment should be introduced in Russia.

“Different political forces are starting to use” the attack, said Aleksei Venediktov, a Russian journalist and commentator and the former editor of the influential Ekho Moskvy radio station. “The Kremlin, most of all,” he said in an interview broadcast on YouTube. “But others too, who say that it was all organized by the Kremlin.”

Some nationalist activists said that such a sense of disorientation could have been the attackers’ ultimate goal.

Yegor S. Kholmogorov, a Russian nationalist commentator, wrote in his blog on the Telegram messaging app that Russian society was “strongly united by the war and President Vladimir V. Putin’s victory in the election” before the attack.

But after the tragedy, he lamented on Sunday, Russia had turned into a “society that is split.”

Mr. Putin has done little to clear things up. On Saturday, he vowed to inflict “fair and inevitable” punishment on both the terrorists and the unknown forces behind them. Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was tied to the tragedy but stopped short of directly laying blame.

But many of Mr. Putin’s subordinates and public supporters appeared to have made up their minds about who was responsible.

Sergei A. Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst who often appears on Russian state television, wrote in a post on Telegram that Russia must work at isolating the Ukrainian leadership by “connecting the terrorist act not with ISIS, but with the Ukrainian government as much as possible.”

Russian state news outlets barely mentioned the claim of responsibility made by ISIS. United States officials have said the atrocity was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an offshoot of the group that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Sunday that the West was pointing at ISIS in order to shift the blame away from Ukraine.

Russia has not presented any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement in the attack. Ukrainian officials have ridiculed the Russian accusations, and U.S. officials also have said there is no indication Kyiv played any role.

“There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday when asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had evidence that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack.

Some commentators did criticize Russian security services for failing to prevent the tragedy. On Saturday, the state news agency Tass reported , citing a source in the Russian special services, that they had received a warning from the United States but that it was “broad, without any concrete information.”

Maggie Astor

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had any evidence to back up Vladimir Putin’s hints that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack. “No,” she said. “There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, said 137 bodies have been recovered from the site of the attack, including those of three children. It said 62 victims had been identified and that genetic testing was being carried out on the remaining bodies to establish identities.

Jason Horowitz

Pope Francis offered prayers today “to the victims of the vile terrorist attack carried out the other night in Moscow,” telling the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for Palm Sunday Mass that he hoped God would comfort and bring peace to their families and “convert the hearts of those who plan, organize and implement these unhuman acts.’”

He also prayed for all those suffering because of war: “Especially I think of martyred Ukraine, where many people find themselves without electricity because of the intense attacks against infrastructure, which, beyond causing death and suffering, bring about the risk of a human catastrophe of even greater dimensions."

Search and rescue workers are dismantling the remains of the stage at Crocus City Hall so that a giant crane can be brought in to clear debris from the collapse of the roof, the regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said on Telegram. Late last night, he said 133 bodies had been recovered from the scene of the attack, of which 50 have been identified. Another 107 injured people were in area hospitals, he said.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg

As the investigation into the Moscow attack continues, the war in Ukraine carries on. Ukraine's air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia's defense ministry.

Crocus International, the company that owns the concert hall, vowed in a statement to restore everything that was destroyed during the terrorist attack. The cost of restoring the concert hall, one of the biggest and best-equipped in Moscow, will likely exceed $100 million, real estate experts told RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

The complex was developed by the Azerbaijan-born billionaire Aras Agalarov, whose son, Emin, is a famous pop star. Former President Donald Trump held the Miss Universe pageant at the same complex in 2013, and world-famous performers like Eric Clapton, Dua Lipa and Sia have also performed there.

Sunday is a national day of mourning in Russia. The state media is airing footage of flags flying at half-staff on government buildings and foreign embassies, and of people bringing flowers, candles and toys to spontaneous memorials across the country.

Alex Marshall

Piknik, a longtime Russian rock band, is now at the center of a tragedy.

Early Saturday, Piknik, one of Russia’s most popular heritage rock bands, published a message to its page on Vkontakte , one of the country’s largest social media sites: “We are deeply shocked by this terrible tragedy and mourn with you.”

The night before, the band was scheduled to play the first of two sold-out concerts, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, at Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow. But before Piknik took the stage, four gunmen entered the vast venue, opened fire and murdered at least 133 people .

The victims appear to have included some of Piknik’s own team. On Saturday evening, another note appeared on the band’s Vkontakte page to say that the woman who ran the band’s merchandise stalls was missing.

“We are not ready to believe the worst,” the message said .

The attack at Crocus City Hall has brought renewed attention to Piknik, a band that has provided the soundtrack to the lives of many Russian rock fans for over four decades.

Ilya Kukulin, a cultural historian at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said in an interview that Piknik was one of the Soviet Union’s “monsters of rock,” with songs inspired by classic Western rock acts including David Bowie and a range of Russian styles.

Since releasing its debut album, 1982’s “Smoke,” Piknik — led by Edmund Shklyarsky, the band’s singer and guitarist — has grown in popularity despite its music being often gloomy with gothic lyrics. Kukulin attributed this partly to the group’s inventive stage shows.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kukulin said, the band began performing with exciting light displays, special effects and other innovative touches. At one point in the 1990s, the band’s concerts included a “living cello” — a woman with an amplified string stretched across her. Shklyarsky would play a solo on the string.

This month, the band debuted a new song online — “ Nothing, Fear Nothing ” — with a video that showed the band performing live before huge screens featuring ever-changing animations.

Unlike some of their peers, Piknik was “never a political band,” Kukulin said, although that did not stop it from becoming entwined in politics. In the 1980s, Soviet authorities banned the group — along with many others — from using recording studios, while Soviet newspapers complained of the group’s lyrics, including a song called “Opium Smoke” that authorities saw as encouraging drug use.

In recent years, some of Russia’s most prominent rock stars have left their country, fed up with President Vladimir V. Putin’s curbs on freedom of expression, including regular crackdowns on concerts. Piknik had benefited from that exodus, Kukulin said, because the band had fewer competitors on Russia’s heritage rock circuit.

Unlike some musicians, Shklyarsky had not acted as a booster for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kukulin said. Still, Ukrainian authorities have long banned Piknik from performing in the country because the group has played concerts in occupied Crimea. In a 2016 interview , Shklyarsky said he was not concerned about the ban.

“Politics comes and goes, but life remains,” he said.

Kukulin said that among Piknik’s songs was “ To the Memory of Innocent Victims ” — a track that could be interpreted as being about those who were politically oppressed under communism. Now, Kukulin said, many fans were hearing the song in a new way, as a tribute to those who lost their lives in Friday’s attack.

Anton Troianovski

news analysis

A deadly attack shatters Putin’s promise of security to the Russian people.

Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.

Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years.

The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia’s survival — and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.

“The election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “And suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation.”

Mr. Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. It took him more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in the country’s south, which claimed 334 lives. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.

Instead, Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and said the assailants had acted “just like the Nazis,” who “once carried out massacres in the occupied territories” — evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.

“Our common duty now — our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country — is to be together in one formation,” Mr. Putin said at the end of a five-minute speech, trying to conflate the fight against terrorism with his invasion of Ukraine.

The question is how much of the Russian public will buy into his argument. They might ask whether Mr. Putin, with the invasion and his conflict with the West, truly has the country’s security interests at heart — or whether he is woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.

The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist attack is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings and tightening security, he dismissed them as “provocative statements.”

“All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, referring to the Western warnings. After the attack on Friday, some of his exiled critics have cited his response as evidence of the president’s detachment from Russia’s true security concerns.

Rather than keeping society safe from actual, violent terrorists, those critics say, Mr. Putin has directed his sprawling security services to pursue dissidents, journalists and anyone deemed a threat to the Kremlin’s definition of “traditional values.”

A case in point: Just hours before the attack, state media reported that the Russian authorities had added “the L.G.B.T. movement” to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”; Russia had already outlawed the gay rights movement last year. Terrorism was also among the many charges prosecutors leveled against Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who died last month .

“In a country in which counterterrorism special forces chase after online commenters,” Ruslan Leviev, an exiled Russian military analyst, wrote in a social media post on Saturday, “terrorists will always feel free.”

Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin’s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.

Olga Skabeyeva, a state television host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had found assailants “who would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS.” Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT television network, wrote that reports of Islamic State responsibility amounted to a “basic sleight of hand” by the American news media.

On a prime-time television talk show on the state-run Channel 1, Russia’s best-known ultraconservative ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, declared that Ukraine’s leadership and “their puppet masters in the Western intelligence services” had surely organized the attack.

It was an effort to “undermine trust in the president,” Mr. Dugin said, and it showed regular Russians that they had no choice but to unite behind Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Mr. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a car bombing near Moscow in 2022 that U.S. officials said was indeed authorized by parts of the Ukrainian government , but without American involvement.

U.S. officials have said there is no evidence of Ukrainian involvement in the concert hall attack, and Ukrainian officials ridiculed the Russian accusations. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said Mr. Putin’s claim that the attackers had fled toward Ukraine and intended to cross into it, with the help of the Ukrainian authorities, made no sense.

In recent months, Mr. Putin has appeared more confident than at any other point since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian forces have retaken the initiative on the front line, while Ukraine is struggling amid flagging Western support and a shortage of troops.

Inside Russia, the election — and its predetermined outcome — underscored Mr. Putin’s dominance over the nation’s politics.

Mr. Kynev, the political scientist, said he believed many Russians were now in “shock,” because “restoring order has always been Vladimir Putin’s calling card.”

Mr. Putin’s early years in power were marked by terrorist attacks, culminating in the Beslan school siege in 2004; he used those violent episodes to justify his rollback of political freedoms. Before Friday, the most recent mass-casualty terrorist attack in the capital region was a suicide bombing at an airport in Moscow in 2011 that killed 37 people.

Still, given the Kremlin’s efficacy in cracking down on dissent and the news media, Mr. Kynev predicted that the political consequences of the concert hall attack would be limited, as long as the violence was not repeated.

“To be honest,” he said, “our society has gotten used to keeping quiet about inconvenient topics.”

Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

There have been other deadly attacks at concerts and music festivals in recent years.

The attack before a sold-out rock concert near Moscow on Friday was the latest in a series of mass killings at concerts and music festivals around the world in recent years.

During the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel last year, Hamas targeted Tribe of Nova’s Supernova Sukkot Gathering , a dance music festival in Re’im, leaving at least 360 dead , according to the Israeli authorities. Gunmen surrounded the music festival at daybreak, killing and kidnapping attendees as others fled in their cars, only to find roads blocked and the event surrounded. “It was like a shooting range,” said Hila Fakliro, who was bartending around sunrise. Around 3,000 people had come to the event, timed to the end of the harvest holiday Sukkot.

In May 2017, a suicide bombing killed 22 people and injured hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in England. The assailant, a British citizen of Libyan descent, detonated explosives packed with nails, bolts and ball bearings moments after the performance ended, sending the crowd — filled with children and adolescent fans of the pop singer, who was then 23 — into a panic. Intelligence officials found that the bomber had previously traveled to Libya to meet with members of an Islamic State unit linked to terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, which included an assault on a concert venue.

In November 2015, 90 people were killed at the Bataclan , a Paris music venue that holds 1,500, when three men armed with assault rifles and suicide vests stormed a concert by the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The musicians fled the stage as gunfire broke out, and attendees tried to hide from the assailants. A standoff with the police lasted more than two hours, with concertgoers held as hostages, ending when the police entered the club. One attacker was killed; two others detonated suicide vests. “Carnage,” one attendee posted on Facebook from inside the club. “Bodies everywhere.”

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place at a music festival in October 2017, when a gunman fatally shot 60 people and injured hundreds more attending the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas . The assailant had stockpiled 23 firearms in a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, opening fire from his window as Jason Aldean was onstage singing “When She Says Baby.” “It was just total chaos,” Melissa Ayala, who attended the festival with four friends, said. “People falling down and laying everywhere. We were trying to take cover and we had no idea where to go.” The F.B.I. concluded that the motive for the killings was unclear, but released files last year suggesting that the gunman, a gambler, was angry over casinos scaling back on perks. He had searched “biggest open air concert venues in USA” and reserved a hotel room overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago before settling on the Las Vegas event as his target.

The people killed at recent concerts and music festivals were commemorated earlier this year at the Grammy Awards . “Music must always be our safe space,” Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which gives out the awards, said during the telecast. “When that’s violated, it strikes at the very core of who we are.”

Christina Goldbaum

The ISIS branch the U.S. blames for the attack has targeted the Taliban’s links with allies, including Russia.

The ISIS affiliate that American officials say was behind the deadly attack in Moscow is one of the last significant antagonists that the Taliban government faces in Afghanistan, and it has carried out repeated attacks there, including on the Russian Embassy, in recent years.

That branch of ISIS — known as the Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — has portrayed itself as the primary rival to the Taliban, who it says have not implemented true Shariah law since seizing power in 2021. It has sought to undermine the Taliban’s relationships with regional allies and portray the government as unable to provide security in the country, experts say.

In 2022, ISIS-K carried out attacks on the Russian and Pakistani embassies in Kabul and a hotel that was home to many Chinese nationals. More recently, it has also threatened attacks against the Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan and has released a flood of anti-Russian propaganda.

It has also struck outside Afghanistan. In January, ISIS-K carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed scores and wounded hundreds of others at a memorial service for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years before.

In recent months, the Taliban’s relationship with Russia, as well as China and Iran, has warmed up. While no country has officially recognized the Taliban government, earlier this month Russia accepted a military attaché from the Taliban in Moscow, while China officially accepted a Taliban ambassador to the country. Both moves were seen as confidence-building measures with Taliban authorities.

ISIS-K has both denounced the Kremlin for its interventions in Syria and condemned the Taliban for engaging with Russian authorities decades after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Its propaganda has painted the Taliban as “betraying the history of Afghanistan and betraying their religion by making friends with their former enemies,” said Ricardo Valle, the director of research of the Khorasan Diary, a research platform based in Islamabad.

In the more than two years since they took over in Afghanistan, Taliban security forces have conducted a ruthless campaign to try to eliminate ISIS-K and have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory within Afghanistan. Last year, Taliban security forces killed at least eight ISIS-K leaders, according to American officials, and pushed many other fighters into neighboring Pakistan .

Still, ISIS-K has proved resilient and remained active across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Within Afghanistan, it has targeted Taliban security forces in hit-and-run attacks and — as it came under increasing pressure from Taliban counterterrorism operations — staged headline-grabbing attacks across the country. Just a day before the attack at the concert hall in Moscow, the group carried out a suicide bombing in Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban movement — sending a powerful message that even Taliban soldiers in the group’s heartland were not safe.

After the attack in Moscow, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on social media that the country “condemns in the strongest terms the recent terrorist attack in Moscow” and “considers it a blatant violation of all human standards.”

“Regional countries must take a coordinated, clear and resolute position against such incidents directed at regional de-stabilization,” he added.

Oleg Matsnev

Names of the victims are beginning to emerge.

As emergency services combed the scene of the attack on a concert hall in Moscow, details on some of the victims began to emerge from officials and local news media.

Most of those identified so far appeared to be in their 40s, and many had traveled from other parts of the country to attend the concert where Piknik, a Russian rock band formed in the late 1970s, was slated to perform on Friday night.

Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing the band, his son told local media , and had traveled solo from his home city of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he heard from his father.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, also traveled hundreds of miles to attend the concert — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present. He was set to turn 35 next week, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. Both he and his wife died in the attack, the paper reported.

“Very painful and scary,” Ms. Okisheva’s colleagues wrote on a social media page for a photo studio where she worked. “The whole studio team is horrified by what happened.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both of her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the attack. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

As the death toll climbed to 133 people, the Moscow region’s health care ministry published a preliminary list of victims . It had 41 names; Andrey Rudnitsky was one of them.

A forward in an amateur hockey league, he turned 39 years old last week, according to his page on the league’s website. Mr. Rudnitsky’s teammates told Pro Gorod , a local news website, that he had moved to Moscow last year from Yaroslavl but planned to return home to play there. Mr. Rudnitsky had two children.

Ekaterina Novoselova, 42, was also on the list. Ms. Novoselova won a beauty pageant in 2001 in her home city of Tver, 110 miles northwest of Moscow, one of the pageant organizer’s told the local news outlet TIA . It reported that she had moved to Moscow to work as a lawyer and is survived by her husband and two children.

Some people appeared to have been named by mistake. Yevgeniya Ryumina, 38, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she had fled the concert hall to safety. But she had lost her ID, Ms. Ryumina said, suggesting that might have led to the confusion.

This is what we know about the attack.

An attack Friday at a popular concert venue near Moscow killed 137 people, the deadliest act of terrorism the Russian capital region has seen in more than a decade.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack; American officials have attributed it to ISIS-K, a branch of the group.

Russian officials and state media have largely ignored ISIS’s claim of responsibility and instead suggested that Ukraine was behind the violence. Ukraine has denied any involvement, and American officials say there is no evidence connecting Kyiv to the attack.

Russian authorities have detained at least 11 people, including four migrant laborers described as Tajik citizens who have been charged with committing a terrorist act, but they have not identified most of the accused assailants or their motives.

Here’s a closer look at the attack.

What happened?

The gunmen entered the Crocus City Hall building, one of the biggest entertainment complexes in the Moscow area, with capacity of more than 6,000, shortly before a sold-out rock concert was scheduled to start. Armed with automatic rifles, they began shooting.

Using explosives and flammable liquids, Russian investigators said, they set the building ablaze, causing chaos as people began to run. The fire quickly engulfed more than a third of the building, spreading smoke and causing parts of the roof to collapse. Russia’s emergency service posted a video and pictures from after the fire showing charred seating and firefighters working to remove debris.

Russian law enforcement said that people had died from gunshot wounds and poisoning from the smoke.

At least three helicopters were dispatched to extinguish the fire or to try to rescue people from the roof. The firefighters were only able to contain the fire early on Saturday; the emergency service said it was mostly extinguished by 5 a.m.

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge. Many of the more than 100 people injured in the attack were in critical condition.

Where are the assailants?

Attackers were able to flee the scene. Early on Saturday, the head of Russia’s top security agency, the F.S.B., said that 11 people had been detained in the connection to the attack, including “all four terrorists directly involved.” The four men were arraigned late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act, according to state and independent media outlets, and they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the Basmanny District Court said that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, had pleaded guilty to the charges.

It did not specify any plea from the other two — Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, and Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, a married factory worker with an 8-month-old baby — according to Mediazona, an independent news outlet.

The men looked severely battered and injured as they appeared in court, and videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

There were signs that Russia would try to pin blame on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State. The F.S.B. said in a statement that the attack had been carefully planned and that the terrorists had tried to flee toward Ukraine.

How are Russians responding?

President Vladimir V. Putin, who claimed victory in a presidential election last weekend, did not publicly address the tragedy until Saturday afternoon. In a five-minute address to the nation, he appeared to be laying the groundwork to blame Ukraine for the attack, claiming that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for the attackers to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine.

But he did not definitively assign blame, saying that those responsible would be punished, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.”

The attack has punctured the sense of relative safety for Muscovites over the past decade, bringing back memories of attacks that shadowed life in the Russian capital in the 2000s.

Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday as questions lingered about the identities and motives of the perpetrators. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country.

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.