Moscow bureau of Reuters has distributed an analytical article on the bombing attack of the Russian elite train "Nevsky Express". The agency said:
"The attack on the luxury Nevsky Express on Friday night on the busy main line between Moscow and St Petersburg was the worst attack outside the turbulent North Caucasus since a string of Martyr bombings by Chechen rebels ended five years ago.
Most major attacks in Russia in recent years have been blamed on Islamic rebels from the North Caucasus who oppose Moscow's rule and want to impose Islamic law.
But no group has yet publicly claimed responsibility for Friday's attack.
Russian nationalists were initially blamed for a similar explosion in August 2007 that derailed a Nevsky Express train on the same route, injuring 30 people.
Prosecutors later arrested two residents of the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of Ingushetia, but said the mastermind behind the attack was ex-soldier Pavel Kosolapov, a former associate of late Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev.
A train filled mainly with middle-class ethnic Russians would be an unusual target for Russian nationalists, who have never carried out an attack on this scale before.
The discovery of bomb fragments appeared to rule out initial concerns that the crash was an accident caused by aging infrastructure.
DID ISLAMIC REBELS PLANT THE BOMB?
"Rebel groups from the North Caucasus would be more than capable of carrying out such an attack, said Grigory Shvedov, editor of the online journal www.Caucasianknot.info, which tracks violence in the North Caucasus.
But the distance from the North Caucasus and the complexity of designing a bomb to derail a high-speed train make the Nevsky Express an unusual target for groups who have in the past preferred simpler Martyr bombs, he said.
On the other hand, a luxury high-speed train taking businesspeople and government officials home from Moscow on a Friday night would make an attractive target for Islamic rebels seeking maximum media exposure.
A claim of responsibility from the rebels would not necessarily settle the matter as such claims have often proved false in the past (thanks to, for example, the agents provocateurs of the Federal Security Service, FSB (former, the KGB), who infiltrated the nationalistic Movement Against Illegal Immigration and publish false claims of responsibility on behalf of other nationalistic organizations - KC).
Chechen rebels claimed responsibility last August -- through the unofficial Islamic rebel website www.kavkazcenter.com -- for a Siberian dam disaster (it was not a dam, it was a hydroelectric power plant - KC) that killed 75 people. But observers (only journalists from the biased media, including Reuters Moscow bureau - KC) dismissed the claim (where do they know it from? - KC).
COULD THIS BE THE START OF A NEW CAMPAIGN?
The last major attack to hit Russia's historic heartland was in 2004, when a string of Martyr bombings targeted planes and metro stations in Moscow.
A surge in violence in Chechnya and Ingushetia this year prompted some analysts to predict a new wave of attacks on the capital. Russian media reported in September that well-prepared Martyr bombers planning an attack on Moscow had been arrested in Chechnya.
"An attack deep inside Russia's heartland would mark a sharp change in tactics. If such a decision has been taken, further attacks would be likely", Shvedov said. "A new campaign would likely be announced publicly", he said.
WHAT DOES THE ATTACK MEAN FOR RUSSIA?
A new wave of Islamic attacks against targets in Moscow and other major cities would have unpredictable results, stoking fears about political stability and possibly spooking Russia's stock, bond and currency markets.
Vladimir Putin is credited with helping to bring Chechen rebels under control when he was president from 2000 to 2008, so a new wave of attacks would undermine that achievement (Reuters explains why Putin "disappeared" after bombing of train with the Russian elite - KC).
"This is actually a very serious political blow to the present Russian regime," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a defense commentator for the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
A series of high-profile attacks could force the government to launch military (!) operations against suspected (!) rebels (in this way Reuters reported - KC), a move that would increase tensions in the already turbulent region", Reuters reports from Moscow.
Meanwhile, Russian bloggers reported that either the Russian Minister of Emergencies, Shoigu, lied to the Russian President Medvedev, or the Russian media lied to their readers when they reported that Shoigu told Medvedev about 18 "missing persons" (whose dead bodies have not yet been found) in the train. In fact, as it turned out, missing were not 18 (on Sunday's night the Russian media voice published the figure of 12 missing person), but about 60 person. Russians write in their blogs:
"There is no reliable data referring to the number of dead. There is no list of dead, only a list of injured has been published. I found a list of passengers who were in the first and the second cars (counting from the end of the train) and compared it with the list of injured. Below is a list of passengers for whom I have no data ....
140 passengers were in the two cars. There is data for 80 of then. For 60 there is no data at all. Among them were our friends. Nothing was reported about them on the hotline. Please help me to make a list of the dead from the train ¹166. I am waiting for your comments. Maybe someone knows something about someone from this list".
In the blogs, Russians give very different opinions and various versions of who really bombed the "Nevsky Express":
1. Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Caucasus
2. Russian nationalists
3. Russian leftist activists to punish capitalist exploiters. After the "Nevsky Express-1" on August 13, 2007, two Russian leftist activists has been arrested and spent a long time in prison. They didn't "confess" under the KGB tortures that it were they who bombed the train only because their friends made a public scandal and reported they participated in a meeting at the time of the bombing and hundreds of people could see them.
4. Vengeance of GRU (Russian military intelligence) officers to the KGB for a recent poisoning of the GRU Army General Surikov and to destabilize the hated KGB regime in Russia (Western media didn't report this murder).
5. Traditional "Western enemy" (the West as a whole, the CIA, Mossad, etc.) through their local agents to destabilize the situation in Russia, to prevent Russia from "rising from the knees" (it is a slogan in Putin's propaganda).
6. Georgian secret services to revenge Russia for the occupation of a third of the Georgian territory during the 2008 Russian-Georgian War, and to destabilize Russia so that it doesn't attack Georgia anymore.
7. An account settling within the ruling KGB elite, aiming to elimination a local political Mafiosi. Some Russian media reported that the explosion was not on the rails, but inside a car.
8. An account settling inside the drug mafia. Drug dealing is known to be the main source of income for the KGB generals and officers bringing them billions of dollars in revenues. The Russia media reported that s suitcase with 1.5 kg heroin has been found in one of the damaged cars.
9. Rich and educated Moscow elite youth, out of boredom. Russian media reported local farmers saw strangers near the site of the blast. The strangers were not hiding, talking loudly and behaved in a rough manner. The strangers talked on mobile phones near the site of the blast.
10. A lone person hating the KGB junta regime.
11. A lone madman with delusions of grandeur and indulgence, for self-affirmation
12. Putin, for intensifying political repressions and to divert attention from the economic crisis in Russia
13. Russian railwaymen. To hide their regular stealings.
14. Local farmers out of envy for rich Muscovites and Petersburgers that travel through impoverished and dark villages in the poor Tver Region in brightly-lit luxury train cars (the peasants could take explosives from WW2 shells scattered in Tver forests).
15. There was no blast at all. The story of the blast is a typical lie of the villain government to hide the crumbling Russian infrastructure.
This list may not be complete, because Monitoring Department of the KC is certainly not able to cover all Russian blogs, websites and forums.
Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
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