The Soft Option

Yulia Latynina, writing in Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal about Sunday's bomb blast which derailed a train travelling from Grozny to Moscow:

But never yet has a Chechen organized a terrorist act directed against Chechens in general. To mortar a police station – yes. To place a landmine under a police car – by all means. But even the explosion that killed President Kadyrov spared those who were standing around. Chechens have not blown up aircraft full of Chechens and have not seized Chechen schools. The aircraft were Russian, the school was Ossetian.

So why derail the Grozny to Moscow train? In order to secure the deaths of a few hundred blood enemies in the case of success? And why arrange this simplified act of terror not in Chechnya, where it’s easier for the boyeviks to operate, but 150 kilometres from Moscow, where it’s easier for the Chekists to operate?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all a supporter of the conspiracy theory which supposes that all the terrorist acts in Russia are organized by the FSB. What my theory supposes is that our Chekists lack not only conscience, but also balls. You can’t organize explosions on Kashirskoye Shosse without balls.

It’s simply that the FSB, being unable to save us from real terrorist acts – apartment bombings, “Nord-Ost”, Beslan – are all too pleased to save us from imaginary ones.