Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

From preliminary reports it looks like a deadly blast at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport was caused by a suicide bomber .  The explosion ripped through the international arrivals hall, killing at least  35 people  and injuring around 130. Domededovo is Russia’s busiest airport and a major hub for flights to and from the rest of Europe.  I have experience of the long queues which congregate at the immigration desks, and there must’ve been thousands of passengers in the terminal when the bomb detonated.  Some eye witness accounts of the aftermath are beginning to emerge and they are horrific. This is another attack clearly calculated to maximise loss of life and injury.  Last March, 39 people were killed during a series of coordinated suicide attacks on the Moscow metro, attributed to the Chechen ’Black Widows’ group. Female suicide bombers also blew up two aircraft, which had taken off from Domodedovo, back in 2004.  Whoever is responsible for the l...

A sniper keeps watch as Terek play Dynamo Moscow. The Independent asks whether it might be  ’the worst football transfer in the world’ .  On his blog, ‘I - Kadyrov’, the President of Chechnya has already announced that he expects a top five finish .  Ruud Gullit is certainly taking on a different type of pressure by accepting the manager’s post at Terek Grozny. Ramzan Kadyrov , whose authority in Chechnya is total, is the president of Terek, as well as the autonomous Russian republic.  There's plenty of back material on the blog dealing with the unpalatable compromise which Moscow reached with this thug, in order to achieve a little stability in the Caucasus. Gullit will answer to him and, in any clash of egos, the gangster and former guerrilla fighter could be substantially more formidable than Ken Bates. Terek currently play in the Russian Premier League, bankrolled by Kadyrov.  The club’s most famous achievement was an unlikely victory in 2004 , when...

We’ve become accustomed to blogging politicians in the UK. Some of their offerings are relatively thoughtful, others are little more than a sequence of press releases, penned by a member of staff. In Russia the President himself keeps a Livejournal blog , comprising mainly video entries, in keeping with his modernising image. A less likely newcomer to Russian political blogging has now emerged from Chechnya . President of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. His first article, entitled, I - Kadyrov , is presumably as thrilling in the original Russian, as it is in translation, judging by the scornful reaction reported in the Moscow Times. Unnervingly the Chechen hardman wants to be friends and describes himself as ‘sociable’. The authorities in Chechnya are clearly delighted with the traffic so far and I would imagine it is inordinately healthy as media outlets pick up the story.

Fountains at the Park Kultury, close to the scene of the second explosion. In today's Belfast Telegraph I provide analysis of the week's events in Russia. Last Tuesday, just 24 hours after suicide bombers killed 39 people on the Moscow metro, a pair of explosions claimed 12 more lives in Dagestan, a republic near Chechnya, in Russia's troubled south. Wednesday saw two further fatalities, as another bomb went off in the same region. It was a bloody week in Russia and there is apprehension that terrorist violence, linked to Islamist separatists in the Caucasus, could escalate yet further. Life has remained cheap in Chechnya and Dagestan, but the carnage on Moscow's metro demonstrated that insurgents are willing and able to wreak havoc right at the centre of Russian power. I highlight the role of 'The Black Widows' and the leader who recruited them. Under the tutelage of Chechen terror chief Doku Umarov, it is feared that 30 new members have been trained to commit...

The Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, which borders Chechnya, has long provided a transit route for money, weapons and militants into and out of the Russian republic. It has been alleged that al Qaeda operates training camps in the region . Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s FSB, has gone further and claimed that his security organs have gathered audio evidence that Georgia has been actively involved in training and lending safe passage to terrorists operating in Chechnya and Dagestan. Naturally the Georgian authorities have denied strenuously any cooperation with al Qaeda. Tbilisi can point to forces which it has contributed to struggles against Islamist terror, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bortinkov’s allegations might simply represent another front in the propaganda war between Russia and Georgia. However President Saakashvili has demonstrated a penchant for rash and underhand tactics, as well as pathological dishonesty. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Georgia has somet...

Sean’s Russia Blog is one of the best English language sites featuring comment on Russia. It carries a balanced assessment of the Estemirova murder and examines exactly what it tells us about Moscow’s relationship with Russia’s southern reaches, and the nature of stability in Chechnya. Sean suggests that the most significant aspect of this incident is not Kadyrov’s involvement (or lack of it), but rather the flimsy nature of law and order in the region, which the killing exposes. The long arm of the Kremlin retains only a loose grip on its troubled Caucasian republics, any perception of Chechnya and Ingushetia as predominately peaceful is largely misplaced, and Kadyrov is a symptom of the disease of lawlessness, rather than its root cause. When Memorial chairman, Oleg Orlov, declared, “I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia. His name is Ramzan Kadyrov”, in the aftermath of Estimrova’s death, the world’s media interpreted his statement as a direct accusati...

In the wake of Natalia Estemirova’s murder in Chechnya, Dmitry Medvedev has rubbished suggestions that Ramzan Kadyrov, the region’s president, sanctioned her killing. Although, ostensibly, it is possible that the Memorial activist was abducted by a group which was not linked to the Chechen authorities, the incident will raise more questions about the methods by which Kadyrov has stabilised the Russian republic. After the last campaign in Chechnya the Kremlin’s pressing priority was to restore order without expending needlessly the lives of more Russian soldiers. Clearly Kadyrov, with his rapid ascent through government posts and his strong arm tactics, has succeeded in pacifying the republic. There is scarcely any doubt, however, that the thirty two year old is a highly unsavoury character, given to autocratic and violent methods. Knowingly, Vladimir Putin entered into a Faustian pact when he allowed Kadyrov free rein to subdue separatism in Chechnya. The former rebel, who fought ...

One of the failures of Vladimir Putin’s administration has been his handling of the nationalities issue in the Russian Federation. I discussed the ethnic basis of regional government which Putin has been happy to perpetuate in a previous post . A failure to attempt to foster civic coherence and act against preferential treatment based on ethnicity is a dangerous recipe for ethnic strife when coupled with a preference for strong armed regional leadership. In the Caucasian Republic of Ingushetia ethnic violence has been a daily occurrence for some months now . A mixture of nationalist separatism which for years has spilt over from neighbouring Chechnya, Islamist terrorism and resentment at the imposition by Putin of President Murad Zyazikov, is contributing to a potentially explosive situation. It is no mere coincidence that the violence has taken a predominantly ethnic form with all non-Ingush possible targets.

I was impressed and compelled reading Anthony Loyd’s “My War Gone By, I Miss it So” recently. It is a personal and visceral account of the Bosnian and Chechen conflicts and addiction. Loyd was driven to these warzones by his own inner demons and confronts the genesis of his horror tourism with admirable honesty and frankness. As an account of the horror of war the book is excellent, as an exposition of the character of addiction it is equally good, as an examination of the vicarious thrills derived from conflict it is peerless, however as an analytical account of either war it is deeply flawed. Loyd expresses a detestation of nationalism at several points in his book, but this sentiment is patchily applied. For an avowed opponent of nationalism he seems to harbour disturbing degrees of sympathy for separatist terror. Whilst Serb irredentism may compare unfavourably with the vision of a multi-cultural, inclusive Bosnia, he pays scant regard to the gathering tide of Muslim nationalism ...