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Terrorism in Russia has a long history starting from the time of the Russian Empire. Terrorism, in the modern sense, [1] means violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating extreme fear. [2]
Terrorism was an important tool used by Marxist revolutionaries in the early 20th century to disrupt the social, political, and economic system and enable rebels to bring down the Tsarist government. Terrorist tactics, such as hostage-taking, were widely used by the Soviet secret agencies, most notably during the Red Terror and Great Terror campaigns, against the population of their own country, according to Karl Kautsky and other historians of Bolshevism [ citation needed ].
Starting from the end of the 20th century, significant terrorist activity has taken place in Russia, most notably the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, the 1999 apartment bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Beslan school siege, and most recently the Crocus City Hall attack and the 2024 Dagestan attacks. Many more acts of terrorism have been committed in major Russian cities, as well as the regions of Chechnya and Dagestan.
German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky traces the origins of terrorism, including the terrorism seen in the Russian Empire, to the "Reign of Terror" of the French Revolution. [3] [4] Others emphasize the role of Russian revolutionary movements during the 19th century, especially Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will") and the Nihilist movement, which included several thousand followers. "People's Will" organized one of the first political terrorism campaigns in history. In March 1881, it assassinated the Emperor of Russia Alexander II, who twenty years earlier had emancipated the Russian serfs. [5]
Important ideologists of these groups were Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev, who was described in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed . [5] Nechayev argued that the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain the support of the masses, but on the contrary, to inflict misery and fear on the common population. According to Nechayev, a revolutionary must terrorize civilians in order to incite rebellions. He wrote: [5]
According to historian and writer Edvard Radzinsky, Nechayev's ideas and tactics were widely used by Joseph Stalin and other Russian revolutionaries. [5]
The SR Combat Organization was founded in 1902 and operated as an autonomous branch of the Socialist Revolutionary Party responsible for assassinating government officials, was led by Grigory Gershuni and operated separately from the party so as not to jeopardize its political actions. SRCO agents assassinated two Ministers of the Interior, Dmitry Sipyagin and V. K. von Plehve, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, the Governor of Ufa N. M. Bogdanovich, and many other high-ranking officials. [6] It has been estimated that all together in the last twenty years of the Tsarist regime (1897–1917) more than 17,000 people were killed or wounded in terror attacks. [7]
A series of three bombings in Moscow on 8 January 1977 killed seven people and seriously injured 37 others. No one claimed responsibility for the bombings, although three members of an Armenian nationalist organization were executed early in 1979 after a KGB investigation and a secret trial. Some Soviet dissidents said that the bombings were allegedly organized by KGB to frame-up Armenian nationalists who were executed. [8] [9] [10] [11]
The Soviet Union and some its allies have sponsored international terrorism on numerous occasions, especially during the Cold War.
The First Chechen War (1994-1996) and the Second Chechen War (2000-2009) saw Chechen nationalism transformed into jihadism. In later years, the conflict extended beyond Chechnya, inspiring jihadist movements in Dagestan and Ingushetia. Since the First Chechen war, there has been a number of attacks by jihadists in various Russian cities, with the Doubrovka Theatre hostage crisis in Moscow (over 150 dead, including 130 hostages, in 2002) and the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia (334 dead, including 186 children, in 2004) peaking. There have been numerous other bloody jihadist terrorist attacks, notably at airports and in the Moscow and St Petersburg metros, with dozens of deaths. [12] [13]
Other types of terrorism in modern Russia are less significant (the activity of such radical left-wing groups as New Revolutionary Alternative and terrorist attacks by racialist Russian nationalists, such as 2006 Moscow market bombing and the assassinations commited by Battle Organization of Russian Nationalists).
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of bombings in Russia that killed 300 & injured over 1,700. And, together with the Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War. The four bombings took place in the Russian cities of Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk during early days of September 1999. [14]
The bombings were followed by a controversial episode when a suspected bomb was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September, which was then explained to be an exercise by the Russian security services, the FSB. [15]
An official investigation of the bombings was completed only three years later, in 2002. Seven suspects were killed, six have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, and one remains a fugitive. According to the investigation, the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings were organized and led by Achemez Gochiyaev, who headed a group of Karachai Wahhabis, while the Buinaksk bombing was organized and perpetrated by a different group of Dagestani Wahhabis. [16]
The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively. The commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 to become one of the better-known political prisoners in Russia. [17] [18] [19]
2002
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of a crowded Dubrovka Theater by 40 to 50 armed Chechens on 23 October 2002 that involved 850 hostages and ended with the deaths of at least 170 people.
2004
A suicide bombing in downtown Moscow Metro killed 41 people on February 6. Simultaneous suicide bombings brought down two passenger aircraft within one hour of leaving from the Domedodovo airport, Moscow, killing 90 people total on August 24. Chechen terrorists seized over 1,000 hostages at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia on September 1. The siege ended on September 3, with more than 300 people dead, most of them children.
2006
The 2006 Moscow market bombing occurred on 21 August 2006, when a self-made bomb with the power of more than 1 kg of TNT exploded at Moscow's Cherkizovsky Market frequented by foreign merchants. [20] The bombing killed 13 people and injured 47. In 2008, eight members of the neo-Nazi organization The Saviour were sentenced for their roles in the attack. [21]
In March 2010 suicide bombings were carried out by two women who were aligned with Caucasus Emirate and Al-Qaeda. The terrorist attack happened during the morning rush hour of 29 March 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro (Lubyanka and Park Kultury), with roughly 40 minutes interval between. At least 38 people were killed, and over 60 injured. [22] [23]
The Domodedovo International Airport bombing was a suicide bombing in the international arrival hall of Moscow's Domodedovo International, in Domodedovsky District, Moscow Oblast, on 24 January 2011.
The bombing killed 37 people [24] and injured 173 others, including 86 who had to be hospitalised. [25] Of the casualties, 31 died at the scene, three later in hospitals, one en route to a hospital, [26] one on 2 February after having been put in a coma, and another on 24 February after being hospitalised in grave condition. [24]
Russia's Federal Investigative Committee later identified the suicide bomber as a 20-year-old from the North Caucasus, and said that the attack was aimed "first and foremost" at foreign citizens. [27]
In December 2013, two separate suicide bombings a day apart targeted mass transportation in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia, killing 34 people overall, including both perpetrators who were aligned to Caucasus Emirate and Vilayat Dagestan. The attacks followed a bus bombing carried out in the same city two months earlier. [28] [ citation needed ]
On 21 October 2013, a suicide bombing took place on a bus in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia. The attack was carried out by a female perpetrator named Naida Sirazhudinovna Asiyalova (Russian: Наида Сиражудиновна Асиялова) who was converted to Islam by her husband, she detonated an explosive belt containing 500–600 grams of TNT inside a bus carrying approximately 50 people, killing seven civilians and injuring at least 36 others. [29]
On 5 October 2014 a 19-year-old man named Opti Mudarov went to the town hall where an event was taking place to mark Grozny City Day celebrations in Grozny coinciding with the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Police officers noticed him acting strangely and stopped him. The officers began to search him and the bomb which Mudarov had been carrying exploded. Five officers, along with the suicide bomber, were killed, while 12 others were wounded. [30]
On 4 December 2014, a group of Islamist militants, in three vehicles, killed three traffic policemen, after the latter had attempted to stop them at a checkpoint in the outskirts of Grozny. [31] The militants then occupied a press building and an abandoned school, located in the center of the city. Launching a counter-terrorism operation, security forces, with the use of armored vehicles, attempted to storm the buildings and a firefight ensued. [32]
14 policemen, 11 militants and 1 civilian were killed. Additionally 36 policemen were wounded in the incident. The Press House was also burned and severely damaged in the incident. [33] [34]
Metrojet Flight 9268 was an international chartered passenger flight operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia (branded as Metrojet). On 31 October 2015 at 06:13 local time EST (04:13 UTC), an Airbus A321-231 operating the flight disintegrated above the northern Sinai following its departure from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport, Egypt, in route to Pulkovo Airport, Saint Petersburg, Russia. All 217 passengers and seven crew members who were on board were killed. [35] [36] [37]
Shortly after the crash, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)'s Sinai Branch, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility for the incident, which occurred in the vicinity of the Sinai insurgency. [38] [39] ISIL claimed responsibility on Twitter, on video, and in a statement by Abu Osama al-Masri, the leader of the group's Sinai branch. [40] [41] ISIL posted pictures of what it said was the bomb in Dabiq , its online magazine.
By 4 November 2015, British and American authorities suspected that a bomb was responsible for the crash. On 8 November 2015, an anonymous member of the Egyptian investigation team said the investigators were "90 percent sure" that the jet was brought down by a bomb. Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam said that other possible causes of the crash included a fuel explosion, metal fatigue, and lithium batteries overheating. [42] The Russian Federal Security Service announced on 17 November that they were sure that it was a terrorist attack, caused by an improvised bomb containing the equivalent of up to 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of TNT that detonated during the flight. The Russians said they had found explosive residue as evidence. On 24 February 2016, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi acknowledged that terrorism caused the crash. [43]
Several terrorist incidents occurred in Russia during the year of 2019:
A German court sentenced Russian agent Vadim Krasikov to life imprisonment for the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili which the judge called "state terrorism". [59]
On 2 April there was an explosion in a Saint Petersburg café.
On 22 March, a group of four gunmen from IS-KP, also known as ISIS–K, opened fire on the public and then set fire to the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, a city on the Western edge of Moscow. [60] ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. [61] [62]
On 23 June 2024, Telegram channel Baza reported a terrorist attack in the city of Derbent on the Orthodox Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on Lenin Street. [63] Not long after, a similar attack occurred in the regional capital Makhachkala. The Head of the Republic of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, confirmed that the attacks had indeed took place. [64]
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the government of the Russian Federation has been frequently accused of sponsoring or inspiring terrorist activities inside the country and in other countries in order to achieve its political goals.
Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter, [65] Russian lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov, historian Yuri Felshtinsky, politologist Vladimir Pribylovsky and former KGB general Oleg Kalugin asserted that Russian apartment bombings were in fact a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the FSB (successor to the KGB) in order to legitimize the resumption of military activities in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin and the FSB to power. FSB operatives were actually briefly arrested in the case, but their presence at the crime scene was explained as "training". [66] [67] This view was disputed by philosopher Robert Bruce Ware and Richard Sakwa, [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] but supported by historians Amy Knight [73] [74] and Karen Dawisha [75]
Former FSB officer Aleksander Litvinenko and investigator Mikhail Trepashkin alleged that a Chechen FSB agent directed the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002. [76] [77]
In May 2016, Reuters published a Special Report titled "How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria" that, based on first-hand evidence, said that at least in the period between 2012 and 2014 the Russian government agencies ran a programme to facilitate and encourage Russian radicals and militants to leave Russia and go to Turkey and then on to Syria; the persons in question had joined jihadist groups, some fighting with the ISIL. According to the report, the goal has been to eradicate the risk of Islamic terrorism at home; however Russian security officials deny that terrorists were encouraged to leave Russia. [78]
Russian authorities routinely extort confessions from suspected terrorists using torture, instead of engaging in genuine investigative efforts. [79] According to Vyacheslav Izmailov, the terrorist kidnappings of journalists and members of international NGOs in 2005 in Chechnya, along with Andrei Babitsky from Radio Free Europe, Arjan Erkel and Kenneth Glack from Doctors Without Borders were organized by FSB agents. [80]
Investigative journalist Yulia Latynina has accused the Russian security services of staging fake terrorist attacks to report false successes in solving those cases, instead of investigating the actual terrorist attacks. [81]
Russia reportedly abuses its anti-terrorism and anti-extremism laws. [82] On February 10, 2020, seven Russian anarchists and anti-fascist activists were sentenced to six to eighteen years in prison, based on fabricated terrorism charges. The activist were accused to be members of "The Set" an alleged terrorist organization from Penza that aimed to "overthrow the Russian government". [83] [84]
In December 2019 President of Russia Vladimir Putin thanked his American counterpart Donald Trump for a tip which allowed the prevention of a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. [85]
The Moscow theater hostage crisis was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater in Moscow by Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, resulting in the taking of 912 hostages. The attackers, led by Movsar Barayev, claimed allegiance to the Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya. They demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. The crisis was resolved when Russian security services released sleeping gas into the building, and subsequently stormed it, killing all 40 hostage takers. 132 hostages died, largely due to the effects of the gas.
The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) which was reorganized into the FSB in 1995. The three major structural successor components of the former KGB that remain administratively independent of the FSB are the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Protective Service (FSO), and the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation (GUSP).
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev, also known by his kunya "Abu Idris", was a Chechen guerilla leader who served as a senior military commander in the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He held the rank of brigadier general in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and was posthumously declared generalissimo. As a military commander in the separatist armed forces of Chechnya, one of his most notable battles was the separatist recapture of Grozny in 1996, which he personally planned and commanded together with Aslan Maskhadov. He also masterminded several of the worst terrorist attacks that occurred in Russia.
In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.
On the night of 24 August 2004, explosive devices were detonated on board two domestic passenger flights that had taken off from Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, causing the destruction of both aircraft and the loss of all 90 people on board them.
The Beslan school siege was an Islamic terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004. It lasted three days, and involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages, ending with the deaths of 334 people, 186 of them children, as well as 31 of the attackers. It is considered the deadliest school shooting in history.
Doku Khamatovich Umarov, also known as Dokka Umarov as well as by his Arabized name of Dokka Abu Umar, was a Chechen mujahid in the North Caucasus. Umarov was a major military figure in both wars in Chechnya during the 1990s and 2000s, before becoming the leader of the greater insurgency in the North Caucasus. He was active mostly in south-western Chechnya, near and across the borders with Ingushetia and Georgia.
Human rights violations were committed by the warring sides during the second war in Chechnya. Both Russian officials and Chechen rebels have been regularly and repeatedly accused of committing war crimes including kidnapping, torture, murder, hostage taking, looting, rape, decapitation, and assorted other breaches of the law of war. International and humanitarian organizations, including the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, have criticized both sides of the conflict for blatant and sustained violations of international humanitarian law.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
German Alexeyevich Ugryumov was a Soviet and Russian navy and security services official. During his childhood he lived in Chelyabinsk Oblast.
The February 2004 Moscow metro bombing occurred on 6 February 2004 when a male suicide bomber killed 41 people near Avtozavodskaya subway station on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line in Moscow. Up to 250 people were injured in the incident, some of the more common injuries being broken bones and smoke inhalation.
Riyad-us Saliheen was the name of a small "martyr" (shahid) force of suicide attackers. Its original leader (amir) was the Chechen separatist commander Shamil Basayev. In February and March 2003, the group was designated by the United States and subsequently by the United Nations as a terrorist organization. After several years of inactivity, Riyad-us Saliheen was reactivated by the Caucasus Emirate in 2009 under the command of Said Buryatsky; following his death, Aslan Byutukayev became its new leader.
The insurgency in the North Caucasus was a low-level armed conflict between Russia and militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, from June 2015, the Islamic State, in the North Caucasus. It followed the (Russian-proclaimed) official end of the decade-long Second Chechen War on 16 April 2009. It attracted volunteers from the MENA region, Western Europe, and Central Asia. The Russian legislation considers the Second Chechen War and the insurgency described in this article as the same "counter-terrorist operations on the territory of the North Caucasus region".
The 2010 Moscow Metro bombings were suicide bombings carried out by two female Islamic terrorists during the morning rush hour of March 29, 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro, with roughly 40 minutes in between. At least 40 people were killed, and over 100 injured.
On 4 December 2014, a group of armed militants of the jihadist organization Caucasus Emirate attacked a traffic police checkpoint outside the city of Grozny, Chechnya, Russia. The militants then entered the city and occupied the "Press House" building in the city center and a nearby school.
On 3 April 2017, a terrorist attack using an explosive device took place on the Saint Petersburg Metro between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations. Eleven people were initially reported to have died, and five more died later from their injuries, bringing the total to 15.
On 13–14 December 2017, Russian security authorities arrested seven members of an ISIL terrorist cell during a police operation in St. Petersburg. The suspects were alleged to have plotted suicide bombings in St. Petersburg on the weekend of 16–17 December 2017, with the Kazan Cathedral among the targets. Both the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) were involved in the operation.
The divergent assessments of the same evidence on such an important issue shocks a leading terrorism researcher. 'The notion of terrorism is fairly straightforward – it is ideologically or politically motivated violence directed against civilian targets.'" said Professor Martin Rudner, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Ottawa's Carleton University.
The April 3 bombing on the St Petersburg metro was the highest-profile terror attack on Russian soil since a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport in January 2011.
В результате взрыва в метро Санкт-Петербурга погибли 14 человек, сообщила министр здравоохранения России Вероника Скворцова. [In the aftermath of explosion in the metro of Saint Petersburg 14 people have died, reported by the minister of health of Russia Veronika Skvortsova]
The Russian Investigative Committee has qualified the blast as a terrorist attack, but other versions are looked into.
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has generic name (help)The evidence provided in The Moscow Bombings makes it abundantly clear that the FSB of the Russian Republic, headed by Patrushev, was responsible for carrying out the attacks.