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Politics & Society

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Some commuters called for a government crackdown in the Caucasus.

“The federal authorities have increasingly relied on eco- nomic methods in dealing with the problems of the North Caucasus,” says Nikolai Petrov, a security analyst with Moscow’s Carnegie Centre. “An example is the recent ap- pointment of liberal Alexan- der Khloponin as the presi- dent’s representative in the re- gion. “However progress has been relative,” Petrov added. “This attack shows that weapons remain long after a war is over and that the insurgency is still strong. In fact, the Caucasus has been unstable since Sovi- et times.” Monday’s bombs were de- signed to sow fear and cause the maximum amount of cas- ualties. Two female suicide bombers detonated explosive belts laced with sharp metal on the busy trains in the Lu- byanka and Park Kultury metro stations, both major hubs where business com- muters and students change trains on their way into work and school.

Prime minister Vladimir Putin cut short his trip to Si- beria to get back to Moscow and take the lead on the emer- gency response. “The terror- ists will be destroyed,” he said. “Ironically, Putin’s success in bringing order and some measure of stability to the re- gion is fuelling the fi re of ex- tremist resistance,” says Lilit Gevorgyan, a political analyst with Global Insight. “It is a backlash to the state which has recently renewed its ef- forts to bring the region under control.” Reports in the Russian media state that $1bn slated for eco- nomic reconstruction in the region had been mishandled. The attack is a text book copy

of Russia’s last major metro attack in February 2004, when suicide bombers killed 41 people and injured 250 by detonating bombs at 8:31am on a commuter train at the Paveletskaya metro station. The force of the blast caused the car to swell and tore a hole in its roof, eyewitnesses said. Police say Chechen terrorists were responsible although no one has ever been charged with masterminding that at- tack.

Despite the chaos and confu- sion, crowds trapped in the station on Monday remained calm and climbed the stairs to the adjacent circle line trains or left by the exits to the street. So many people called loved ones that mobile coverage came to a stop; some mobile phone networks were briefl y overloaded by the demand, others may have been blocked as authorities tried to deter- mine whether phones were involved in the attack. Initial reports suggested that emergency services were quick on the scene and the station staff remained at their posts to usher the crowds to safety. But the heavy Moscow traffic held up rescue efforts until helicopters arrived to ferry the seriously injured to hospital.

Russia has had altogether too much experience with this sort of tragedy. In addition to the Paveletskaya metro bombing there have been at least fi ve other bomb attacks in public places since the start of the fi rst Chechen war in the mid Nineties. Perhaps the best remembered terrorist attack is the Beslan school siege that began on September 1, 2004. Three hundred and thirty one peo- ple, including more than 200 children, were killed. While the number of militant groups in the Caucasus has fallen, those that remain have grown more extreme. “The separatist movement

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Under attack: terror grips Moscow

‘I WAS IN SHOCK. I WAS DEAFENED BY THE BLAST, BUT AT FIRST I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS A TERRORIST AT- TACK. THEN I SAW THE SMOKE AND REALISED IT HAD BEEN AN EXPLO- SION. MY ONLY THOUGHT WAS TO GET AWAY.’

Alexandra Antonova, eyewitness

was facing an uphill struggle that was becoming increas- ingly hopeless,” says Gevorgy- an of Global Insight. “The in- creasing prosperity in the re- gion split the groups so the re- maining fighters have embraced progressively more fundamentalist ideas.” Initially the rebels wanted to secede from the Russian fed- eration, but many have been co-opted into the new admin- istration, said Gevorgyan, adding that the leaders of the remaining groups have a new goal and are calling for the es- tablishment of an Islamic caliphate in the north Cauca- sus and Caspian region. Grinding poverty in the re- gion has fed the movement; while the rest of the country has seen incomes rise tenfold in the last decade, unemploy- ment in Chechnya is a stag- gering 80pc. And resentment over the brutal handling of the locals by Russian forces during the two wars lingers, creating a ready supply of rebels and suicide bombers. “If [the Kremlin] resorts to a strong-hand response,” says Petrov, “we’ll again see the pointless suppression of cer- tain religious elements and a vicious cycle of attacks and counterattacks. The most im- portant thing is to deal with the situation in the North Caucasus. Young people – in some cases, from wealthy and infl uential families – are still drawn into the insurgency movement, and this indicates the problems are deep-rooted and complex.” Both stations where Monday’s bombings occurred also have a special signifi cance. Luby- anka square is home to the headquarters of the Russia se- curity forces (FSB), which are housed in the former KGB building there. And Park Kul- tury, just across the river from Gorky Park, is home to sever- al large Russian news agen- cies, including the state- owned giant Ria Novosti.

NEWS IN BRIEF

United Russia proposes amnesty for 300,000

The pro-Kremlin United Russia party has proposed granting an amnesty to more than 300,000 convicts to mark the 65th anniversa- ry of World War II, according to Vedemosti. The govern- ment last granted an am- nesty on such a large scale in 2000, when more than 200,000 prisoners were freed. Human rights activist Valery Borshchev said that it was a mere “drop in the ocean” as the freed places would quickly be refi lled.

Times are changing as Russia drops two zones

On March 28, Russia shed two of its 11 time zones. The Samara and Udmurtia re- gions in European Russia have switched to Moscow time, while Chukotka and Kamchatka in the northern far east have joined the ad- jacent Magadan zone. Re- cently proposed by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, the change leave Russia with nine time zones. Mr Medvedev stated: “The ex- ample of other countries, such as the United States and China, shows that it is possible to make do with a lesser time difference.” It would, however, be impos- sible to adopt a single time zone, due to Russia’s enor- mous size of more than 6.6 million square miles.

Exploration American astronauts are hitching a ride with the Soyuz space programme

Russia provides space for US participation

While Moscow expands its space programme and designates 2011 as the year of the Russian cosmonaut, the United States is cutting back on its investment in space exploration and preparing for increased cooperation with the Russians.

KEVIN O’FLYNN

SPECIAL TO RUSSIA NOW

On April 2, new Soyuz crew members, two Russians and one American, are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Circling the planet, the crew will engage in intense coop- eration unknown on the ground. Down on earth, Russian- American space cooperation has increased, but there is also unease as the power of the players is shifting. Russia will fuel space exploration once again, while the US vi- sion appears dampened. America is relying more and more on the Russian federal space programme for key as- sistance. As the United States reprioritises its programmes, the country will rely on Rus- sia to take its astronauts into space.

Nasa has long spent more money on more programmes than Russia’s space agency. But President Barack Obama has slashed Nasa’s dreams of returning to the moon. Build- ing new spacecraft for the ex- ploration of Mars is again a fl ight of fancy. At the same time, the Russian space industry is once more

in future spacecraft. In the meantime, US astronauts will hitch a lift on Russian spacecraft, a move that has Nasa supporters crying foul. Russian academic Yury Zait- sev told Interfax news agency that he thought the United States would be dependent on Russia to transport its astro- nauts until at least 2020. “In order to bring a craft to the standards of quality and safe- ty for a piloted fl ight, you need years and years,” he comment- ed.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) as maintenance and construction continue on the International Space Station

feeling the warm glow of state backing. There has been concerted investment in re- cent years, an investment that fi ts in well with the Putin doctrine of trying to restore Russian pride through ca- pacity.

And while both countries feel they are the front runners, their dominance could be challenged in the next dec- ade by India and China as they fund their own pro- grammes.

The Russian government has increased spending on the space industry by a remark- able 40pc for each of the past

five years, spending just under £2bn in 2009, Euro- consult reported. “It’s like night and day,” said Igor Lissov, editor of Novosti

Kosmonavtiki (Cosmonau-

tics News), comparing fund- ing today with funding in the penurious Nineties. President Putin launched an initial £6.5bn programme for the space industry between 2006 and 2015. When Mr Putin congratulated space industry workers in 2008 on Cosmonauts’ Day, he called on them to pursue “really am- bitious projects”.

The US Constellation hu-

man-fl ight programme that President Obama has all but abandoned was designed, ac- cording to President George W Bush, to “establish an ex- tended human presence on the moon” that would then lead to fl ights to Mars. Presi- dent Obama cut it from the 2011 budget as the effects of the fi nancial crisis continue to be felt and programme ex- penditure soared. The gov- ernment said that though Nasa has already spent £6bn on it, the programme is “fun- damentally unexecutable”. Instead, America will look to private companies to invest

Nasa has signed a £200m contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Ros- cosmos) for US astronauts to fl y to the International Space Station in 2012. While it is hard for some to get used to the power shifts, others support the new spirit of cooperation, a far cry from the start of the space race when new fl ights and feats in space were spurred by Cold War fear and one-upmanship as well as scientifi c endeav- our.

The space conquests of the USSR pushed the United States to greater feats in space, such as the fi rst man on the moon in 1969. Cosmonauts’ Day on April 12, the day of Gagarin’s fi rst fl ight, is still celebrated in Russia. The 50th anniversa- ry of the fl ight will be cele- brated in 2011, and the year has been renamed the year of the Russian cosmonaut. The abandonment of the US manned-fl ight programme has led to a great disap- pointment, particularly in Russia. There was a sense that Constellation could

have been another opportu- nity for international coop- eration. Russia, too, must strategise its space agenda rather than burn with dif- fuse ambition. “Russia also needs to rethink its priori- ties,” said Valery Kabusov, a former deputy head of En- ergiya, Russia’s rocket and space corporation. The closing down of Constel- lation comes as Russia and the United States are wary of China and India, who have been pouring money into their own space programmes. The Chinese launched for the third time its Shenzhou VII spacecraft and also their fi rst spacewalk in 2008, while India is planning a manned fl ight by 2014. “We are a little envious of China,” said Mr Lissov. “They have a very accurate programme and can go far.”

Some astronauts and cos- monauts suggest the kind of international cooperation found in the space station is the only way to keep the vi- sion for space exploration moving forward. What if all space-exploring countries got together to send a hu- man-fl ight to Mars? Cosmonaut Alexander Ser- ebrov fl ew into space three times for the Soviet Union and once for Russia. “I have thought all my life that a flight to Mars is a great opportunity for hu- mankind to move forward. You can’t stop progress. That is impossible,” said Mr Serebrov.

“It has to be done through international cooperation.”

Nuclear-powered spacecraft

The government has this year set aside 500m roubles (£11m) toward the development of nuclear-powered spacecraft, which could be used “for long- distance missions to the moon and Mars”, explained Ana- toly Perminov, head of Rus- sia’s Space Agency. The agen- cy hopes to have the new engines ready for use “within nine years”. Vitaly Lopota, head of the En- ergiya corporation (responsi- ble for developing spacecraft engines), added that “the so- lar system could only be con- quered on the basis of nuclear energy”. The idea dates back several decades. Between 1970 and

1988, the Soviet Union sent 32 craft into orbit that had ther- mo-electric nuclear-powered engines. The “nuclear engines” were less powerful than tradi- tional gas-powered propulsion systems and posed a threat if they fell back to the earth at the end of their service life. For this reason, nuclear-pow- ered spacecraft were outlawed by a series of international treaties in the Eighties. Russian space officials hope the trea- ties can be re-examined amid global plans for more long-dis- tance space missions. Lopota said that nuclear spacecraft would not be sent “to orbits from which they could fall to the earth”.

Soviet space myths debunked

There are lots of conspiracy theories about space in Rus- sia, perhaps because there have been so many lies. There are conspiracy theories that say that Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, who died in a plane crash in 1968, was mur- dered. And there are plenty of conspiracy theories about the United States’ moon mission. Alexander Serebrov is a scien- tist and a devout debunker of space myths, especially those connected to the lunar land- ing. He likes to explain why the American flag waved in space without wind. And Serebrov likes nothing better than con-

verting Russians who claim that the United States did not make it to the moon at all. A more difficult myth to demol- ish is that astronauts encoun- tered extraterrestrial life, from moon people to angels and even Porfiry Ivanov, a Rus- sian mystic known for walking around in his shorts. “When I tell Russians that it is all rubbish, they say: ‘How do you know, you were never on the moon?’ So I took Buzz Aldrin aside without the KGB or the CIA and he said there were no moon people, no an- gels, and now I can tell the Russian people,” says Serebrov.

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