subway cars on Monday were almost certainly the latest salvo in a
slow-moving war of attrition between the Russian government and
militants in the restive, mostly Muslim republics of the Caucasus.
rebels ever since he rose to the presidency a decade ago. At times,
violence has threatened to erode the social contract he’s struck with
the Russian public: Forgo some of their democratic rights in exchange
for, above all, stability.
And yet, many analysts say Putin consolidated his
power by waging a war in Chechnya — his strength was built by
convincing people to unite with him against dangerous threats. The
militants have menaced and fueled Putin’s leadership, they say.
On Monday, two female suicide bombers climbed into packed subway cars in
bustling downtown in the middle of rush hour and blew themselves up,
killing at least 38 people and injuring dozens more. It was the first
such attack to reach
The killings seemed intended to rattle the very core of Russian national identity.
the first to be attacked, holds a deep and unsettling place in the
Russian consciousness as the headquarters of the Soviet KGB, and now
its successor, the FSB. Next came Park Kultury, another iconic station
alongside
Investigators said they had identified one of the
bombers, and were hunting for two women who were seen on surveillance
camera footage accompanying the attackers to the doors of a Metro
station in southwest
Some of the suicide attackers’ remains were found in
the bombed trains, and were sent for forensic identification. The
remains included the head of a woman believed to be a bomber, unnamed
investigators told Russian news agencies.
“Probably it was a reply to some injustice or
atrocity done to their fathers or brothers, whoever, but it’s only the
end of a tentacle,” said
the Caucasus department at the Russian Academy of Science. “And the
tentacles converge in a large, loose body of separatism and
pseudo-Islamic fanaticism.”
Women have been responsible for a number of past
attacks by Chechen militants, but there was no immediate claim of
responsibility for Monday’s bombings.
However, some officials speculated that the blasts
could be an act of vengeance from supporters of Sayed Buryatsky, an
Islamist ideologue who was reported killed by security services earlier
this month in the republic of Ingushetia. The Russian government had
blamed Buryatsky for a spate of recent attacks, including the bombing
of a high-speed train linking
An Islamist Web site later confirmed Buryatsky’s death. Another rebel leader,
threatened Russian cities in a February interview with a Web site
linked to the Islamists. “Blood will no longer be limited to our cities
and towns,” Umarov said. “The war is coming to their cities.”
The explosions come just a few days after the 10th
anniversary of Putin’s election to the presidency. Putin was forced
from the presidency by term limits, and now serves as prime minister.
But he is widely seen as
Much of Putin’s time in power has been defined by the struggle with Islamic militants.
Putin was elevated to national power by Boris N.
Yeltsin, who had fought a disastrous campaign in Chechnya. Putin
brought Chechnya back under
control in a second war. After the installation of proxy leadership to
crack down on Chechen separatists and lingering, heavy-handed efforts
to squash violence, bloodshed has surged again on the southern edge of
Amid increased fighting and instability in Chechnya, as well as neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan,
has stepped up abductions and assassinations of Islamist leaders. The
Islamists, in turn, have vowed to visit bloodshed on cities in the
heart of
Now Russians are watching keenly to see how
will respond. The public has largely ignored the rampant killings,
disappearances and torture that plague its southern flank — until it
spills suddenly into
In the past, bombings in
have sparked war in Chechnya — and, analysts say, helped Putin cement
his grip on power. Many opposition figures argue, at least privately,
that the FSB was behind the bombings of apartment buildings in 1999
that became the impetus for the second Chechen war.
The government has vigorously denied involvement,
but unexplained contradictions still surround the foiled bombing of an
apartment house in the Russian city of Ryazan. People who have noisily
called for investigation have, at times, been mysteriously assassinated.
“If you follow Russian events, you note that almost
every such attack was exploited and taken as a pretext for restricting
democratic freedoms in
a political analyst with the Russian Academy of Science. “It’s the
usual paradox: It shows the weakness of the government, but at the same
time, they may use it to get more power.”
The Monday morning carnage piles extra pressure onto
a government already struggling to tamp down public discontent over
economic woes.
“Obviously, we have not done enough,” President
Medvedev later visited Lubyanka station, where he
took the escalator down to the platform and laid flowers at the scene
of the explosion. “They are beasts,” he told reporters outside,
referring to those responsible for the blasts.
Putin cut short a working trip to
vowing to unleash vengeance on the groups that organized the attack.
This was the man, after all, who famously vowed to hunt terrorists all
the way to the toilet.
“I am confident that law enforcement agencies will
do everything to find and punish the criminals,” Putin said in a video
conference carried by state media. “The terrorists will be destroyed.”
Putin later ordered that families of the dead would be paid 300,000 rubles, about
None of that meant much to Yekaterina Marishina, a
32-year-old, pregnant housewife who was taking the Metro to the
hospital to visit her disabled, 6-year-old son. When the train pulled
into Lubyanka, the train shook, there was the rattling sound like a toy
gun and her vision turned to black and white. She thought she was
fainting because of her pregnancy.
She woke up to hear voices calling for survivors.
She managed to scream, and was pulled from the wreckage, her feet
mangled and her eye wounded by shrapnel. Monday afternoon, she lay in a
hospital ward. A doctor whispered that her eye was in very bad shape.
“I don’t know if my husband knows what happened to
me. I don’t remember his number. It was in my cell phone but my cell
phone is dead,” she said. “Why me?”
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