Russian authorities immediately called the Moscow restaurant explosion a terrorist attack — then stopped talking about it

On the evening of August 1, an explosion occurred at the upscale restaurant Balzi Rossi on Kudrinskaya Square in central Moscow. Within two hours, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee officially stated that it had been a bomb explosion, and the next morning Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin called what happened a terrorist attack and promised that those responsible “will definitely be found.” After that, the authorities stopped commenting on the incident altogether, with one exception: a single…