| The religion of peace. |
The attack also raised security fears less than four months before the Winter Olympic Games arrive in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, a prestigious event secured personally for Russia by President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
Militants want to establish an Islamist state across the North Caucasus.
In July, guerrilla commander
Doku Count DokuUmarov
... Self-styled first emir of the Caucasus Emirate. Count Doku has announced that his forces will not target civilians, but qualified that statement by saying there aren't any civilians in Russia...
vowed to resume attacks against civilian targets after a brief hiatus, and to also target the February 7-23 Sochi Games.
Police on Monday identified the Volgograd suicide bomber as 30-year-old Naida Asiyalova, a native of the North Caucasus region of Dagestan
...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
.
The mass-circulation Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said Asiyalova was a known figure among the country's Islamist fighters.
The pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily added that she had met her 22-year-old husband Dmitry Sokolov -- an ethnic Russian -- online.
Komsomolskaya Pravda said Asiyalova had introduced her husband to myrmidons, adding that he received the Islamic name Abdulzhabar but was also known under the nickname "Giraffe."
Russian officials said on Tuesday they were now looking for Sokolov in Dagestan as well as Moscow.
Sokolov, who went missing in July 2012, converted to Islam and is believed to have developed an interest in explosives.
The newspaper said that Sokolov is believed to have made Asiyalova's suicide belt.
Russian security services also suspected Sokolov of making explosives that maimed 15 people in two attacks in the Dagestani city of Makhachkala earlier this year, the newspaper said.
The lifenews.ru website, which relies extensively on security services sources, said both Asiyalova and Sokolov were listed on a federal wanted list at the time of the attack.