"I feel some responsibility." Emin Agalarov spoke about the terrorist attack at Crocus, fire safety and fake news about the tragedy
The son of billionaire Araz Agalarov, musician and businessman Emin Agalarov gave an interview to Forbes, in which he spoke about how the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall affected him, what he did in the first minutes after the tragedy and why fire extinguishing systems could not prevent the loss of life. .
For a long time, Agalarov was directly involved in the activities of the Crocus Group, which owned the concert hall; he was vice president of the company, but left this position in 2023. However, he still remains in the know.
According to Emin Agalarov, he learned that there was shooting in the concert hall from one of the employees who called him. Within 40 minutes, Emin was at the scene of the tragedy, where he saw a terrible picture: “There were dead people on the street, an opening shot through by terrorists. They entered the hall through the window, there were also many dead there. Together with the guys, including the head of the hall, Roman Grachev, they began to search possible survivors. Unfortunately, there were no survivors. We walked through the entire lobby, the hall was already on fire. Most people left the building."
Agalarov met two security guards who reported that they were able to bring out several people hiding in the dressing rooms. Emin Agalarov and his employees were unable to get into the hall, but they entered the building through emergency exits, went up to the fourth floor and found a metal door behind which there were servers. They stored information from CCTV cameras, which is why it was so important to preserve them - the servers were handed over to law enforcement agencies. Together with Emin Agalarov, his father Araz Agalarov entered the building.
At that moment, there were no emergency services in the building yet, they had just begun to approach the territory, but it was not clear exactly how many terrorists were in the concert hall, everyone was confused, then the rescuers began to carry out the first bodies of the dead.
“By the time I arrived, about six thousand people had managed to leave the building. There is another important note here: the entrances through which people enter the hall itself are also evacuation ones. Since the terrorists opened fire and started the arson precisely in the area of these entrances, people did not have the opportunity to use them. If you saw in the footage, many left Crocus through the stage, and there is one evacuation corridor that leads to the street, and its continuation leads back to the foyer. And people, naturally, understanding that they again end up at the place where the terrorists are, they fled in the opposite direction, to the technical premises area. Therefore, there are a lot of fakes that the doors were closed and people could not find a way out," Agalarov said.
He said that he “perfectly understands” that people got into the technical rooms by mistake, because they were “in terrible shock and fear”: “They, unfortunately, ended up in the technical rooms, which are only intended for staff with cards, and the doors, leading virtually to nowhere - studios, warehouses, recording technical rooms. But, thank God, even they found a way out of the building. In fact, among the dead, as far as I understand, except those who were killed on the spot by direct bullet hits, unfortunately, died "There are also those who, in this horror, hid in the premises and did not come out. And thank God that the Crocus employees were able to identify such people during the first minutes of the incident and helped them get out of the hall."
Agalarov emphasized that the evacuation system was disrupted due to the terrorist attack: “In most cases, people made the right decision on where to run, how to look for a way out. But in some cases, unfortunately, they were already cut off by fire, and nothing was possible there anymore.” was to be done." 
Emin Agalarov noted that even if the police were nearby, they would be powerless against four trained terrorists with machine guns, and the guards did not have weapons, since according to the law, the private security company does not have the right to carry them in crowded places. He emphasized that the hall operated for 15 years, more than four thousand events took place there, it was visited by “presidents, and the entire Russian and not only the government” - and there were never any problems. “The hall is constantly checked. When I met Dmitry Medvedev, who came to the Elton John concert, they came and checked all the premises, all services for safety. This hall was always under supervision. It’s not like we commissioned it in 2009 and Everyone forgot about him."
Emin Agalarov also said that he had recently encountered a huge amount of criticism and fake news; it was reported that the corridors were closed, that the building was not put into operation, that security guards and other employees ran away, leaving people behind. Yana Rudkovskaya also joined in the criticism, asking what the guards were doing, but Emin Agalarov refused to comment on this issue. He recalled that there were many employees who took people out, including 15-year-old schoolboy Islam, a cloakroom attendant who saved about a hundred people, as well as an employee of the VIP box who helped Sergei Svetlakov get out. At first, according to Emin Agalarov, they barricaded themselves, but then were able to leave the building.
Emin Agalarov said that he felt pressure on the family and called Crocus their home, their favorite hall, which was not a commercial facility. And as a result of the terrorist attack, he and his family were accused of the fact that some people were unable to escape: “We are in no way trying to abstract ourselves in any way. For example, I have not been an employee of Crocus for a year, I’m sitting in a completely different place and I am engaged in another business. I am not a co-owner. But, naturally, this is our family business, as I perceive it, the owner is my father, I love and respect my father very much, I cannot help but be around. Although I have such an opportunity. I can say that ", I am an artist who sometimes performed there. But it is impossible to distance myself from this situation, I am not able to do it. I want to be part of what is happening because I feel some share of responsibility."
According to him, if it had been an ordinary fire without the use of incendiary mixtures, everyone would have been saved, but this was a situation where people were also shot at.
Earlier, Araz and Emin Agalarov donated 100 million rubles to victims of the terrorist attack at Crocus.
