Moscow
Russia’s REN TV, which published the first image of a person who planted a bomb on a train in St Petersburg’s metro, reported that the security services are not ruling out the possibility that his clothes and beard may have been a disguise used to fool the authorities.
But since racial profiling is practised as a matter of course in Russia, it would seem peculiar for a would-be terrorist to dress up in an Islamic disguise, especially considering that there are even more police than usual out on the streets and in the metros of major Russian cities after the recent anti-corruption protests.
Out in the Moscow snow, I heard old women mention a Ukrainian nationalist and, on Twitter, world chess champion and liberal activist Garry Kasparov remarked on the convenient timing of the attack for Putin’s political agenda. The media initially reported that the bomber had avoided martyrdom and left bombs on the trains rather than blown himself up.
In the 2000s, Russia was constantly under attack by separatists from the North Caucasus. Remember the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002 (174 dead), the 2004 Beslan school attack (385 dead, mostly children), the 2009 Nevsky Express bombing (27) and Moscow metro bombings of 2004 (10) and 2010 (40)? A major attack hasn’t occurred on Russian soil outside its volatile south since the Moscow Domodedovo Airport bombing of 2011, which killed 37. This is largely thanks to the FSB’s snooping and the strongman pact between Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. (Despite the success of this joint effort, the FSB despises and hopes to depose the Head of the Chechen Republic, who has his own private army numbering thousands of former rebels and might just be serious when he says he sees himself as the heir to Putin.)
A more recent worry for all those responsible for Russia’s security is the threat of Isis-inspired fighters. It’s estimated that 7,000 Russians have travelled to Syria to join extremist groups. Russian support for Bashar al-Assad has led to a string of recent defeats for Isis, and a number of fighters are thought to have returned from Syria to cause havoc in the motherland. This fear will have grown significantly after reports that those responsible for the 2016 Ataturk Airport attacks (41 killed) were Isis fighters from the Russian North Caucasus, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
However, if recent reports are to be believed, the threat may be even closer to home. According to ntv.ru, investigators have confirmed that the suicide bomber’s DNA is that of as Akbarjon Djalilov, from Kyrgyzstan. Djalilov, who lived in St Petersburg, working as a sushi chef and a car-body repairman, may have been radicalised by a group linked to Isis. Since Kyrgyzstan is the most secular of the countries in the region and Central Asians perform the bulk of low-skilled and unskilled labour in Russia’s larger cities, the security services may have a new problem on their hands.
In a post on Instagram (his preferred method of communication), Kadyrov called for those who organised and carried out the attack to receive the harshest possible punishment, and went onto say that those who target the innocent deserve no mercy or pity and that their treatment should be cruel rather than tough. He has much to lose from any change to the recent peaceful status quo, along with everyone else in the country.
Rufus Larkin is a journalist based in Russia
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