Every explanation offered for Monday’s Moscow metro bombings is connected in some way with the North Caucasus. Most refer to the fact that Federal Security Service commandos killed several well-known separatist leaders in the region over the past few weeks. But despite what would seem to be a logical connection, the theory that the Moscow bombings were a revenge killing remains extremely doubtful.
It surely took the terrorists more than a month to prepare for the metro bombings. After all, the organizers had to bring the suicide bombers to the capital, obtain the explosives and select a secret apartment as a safe house. It thus seems clear that the metro bombings were not a reaction to the March killings of separatist leaders as the FSB has claimed.
In fact, the militants began building up suicide bomber units as long as two years ago. Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov announced in April 2009 that the Riyadus Salikhin battalion of suicide bombers created by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who was killed in 2006, had been fully restored. He then repeatedly warned that the jihad would spread to all of Russia. After suicide bombings began in Vladikavkaz, it was clearly only a matter of time before they came to Moscow.
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