14/01/2014
Mira Milosevic is a writer and lecturer at Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset
The Russians often say that St. Petersburg is their head, because it symbolises Russia's rational and necessary approach to the West, Moscow, their soul, because it preserves the Russian tradition, and Volgograd their heart, because it is their bridge to the Caucasus. The double bombings on the railway station and on a trolley bus (29 and 30 December), with a balance of 34 dead and dozens injured, is a stab in Russia's heart for different reasons.
Both attacks were well coordinated and point to three directions:
i) They seek to create an insecurity effect only six weeks before the start of the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi (680 kilometres away from Volgograd). Never before have the Games been called so close to a conflict zone. The Games are a project where Vladimir Putin is personally involved to ensure its success and encourage Russia's international prestige.
ii) The attack coincides with the 14th anniversary of Vladimir Putin's coming to power: On December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin announced that Putin would succeed him and on January 1, 2000 Putin celebrated it flying over Chechnya and promising the Russians he would put an end to Islamist terrorism. The attacks have highlighted that after two wars in Chechnya won by Putin, Russia still remains very vulnerable.
iii) Volgograd is the former Stalingrad, the quintessential symbol of national pride and of the Russian character: it is the site of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II (the "Great Patriotic War" as the Russians call it), but also a permanent reminder of the immense suffering that the Russians had to take to defeat the invader. Attacking Volgograd is doing it against the faith in an invincible Russia.
Although the authorship of the double bombings has not yet been claimed by any terrorist group, it shows the general signs of radical Islamism, both in Russia–Dubravka Theatre (2002); Beslan School (2004); Moscow metro (2010); Domodedovo Airport (2011)–and in the rest of the world. The most likely thing is that is that Volgograd's instigator is Doku Umarov, the Chechen terrorist who has proclaimed himself emir of the North Caucasus and recently demanded through a video that his followers use the "maximum force" against civilian targets because of the Sochi Games.
The Volgograd bombings indicate that while the tactics of the jihadists in Russia is the customary one, their strategy is changing: the previous ones were presented as a retaliation against Russian policy in Chechnya, the Volgograd ones have political aims beyond this ancient conflict: tarnishing the image of Russia and its president and, of course, terrorising the Russians and the world.
Putin's tactics and strategy have not changed at all. Fourteen years later, his response has been the same as in January 2000: "fight against terrorists until their complete annihilation".
Charles de Gaulle once said that Russia's biggest problem is that it has an Algeria inside. As long as Russia continues to vow to "annihilate" terrorists without conforming to the parameters of the Rule of Law, the jihadists will continue presenting their terrorism as a holy war of the Muslims against the Orthodox infidels.