Russia Bombings: Close Enough To Sochi Olympics For Terrorists' Aim
By Carol J. Williams
December 30, 2013, 3:53 p.m.
With a little more than 400 miles between them, Volgograd is as far from the southern Russian resort of Sochi as Los Angeles is from Lake Tahoe.
But for the purpose of sowing fear throughout Russia and among foreign athletes and spectators headed to the Olympic Games in the next few weeks, the presumed twin suicide bombings in the Volga River city were close enough to the sporting venue for the Islamic separatists presumed to be behind them.
The Caucasus mountain region between the Caspian and Black seas has for centuries been a seething caldron of ethnic and religious conflict between the Islamic peoples of statelets such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Ossetia and the Russian forces that have sought to vanquish them.
Post-Soviet Russia fought two wars in the 1990s to quell Chechen separatism, and the region has since been a launch pad for dozens of terrorist strikes against Russian cities and symbols. Caucasus militants over the last dozen years have killed hundreds of civilians in attacks on airports, trains, subway stations, schools, hospitals and theaters, all part of a loosely coordinated campaign of terror aimed at forcing Moscow to grant the predominantly Muslim region self-rule.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov warned in July that Sochi would be a target of the multi-pronged insurgency, calling the Winter Games "satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors."
Although the Olympics don't begin until Feb. 7, Sochi is already robustly patrolled by naval vessels along the Black Sea coast, and heavily defended checkpoints are operating along the roads and rail lines leading to the host city on the western flank of the roiling Caucasus.
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http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-volgograd-bombings-sochi-olympics-20131230,0,1781814.story#ixzz2p0TpjEyx
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