Suicide terrorist strikes at Moscow Airport

[Das war einmal]

http://rt.com/news/deadly-blast-moscows-domodedovo/

"Up to 23 people have reportedly been killed in an explosion at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport according to the Russian Health Ministry. Some 130 more are said to have been injured.
There is smoke in the terminal building and people are being evacuated. Aiport workers destroyed a brick wall near the luggage claim area to let the passengers leave the area of the explosion.
An initial probe indicates the blast was a terrorist attack caused by a suicide bomber. Moscow police have been put on alert over possible terror attacks in the capital. Police are also on alert at Vnukovo airport and Sheremetyevo international airport in Moscow, and in the metro system.

International flights are being redirected to other Moscow area airports. Over 20 emergency teams are already on the spot, about 170 places are reserved in the nearby hospitals for the injured. The first groups of injured passengers have already been taken to the nearby hospitals.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been informed about the explosion, his press-secretary said.

According to reports the explosion happened at 4:30pm in the luggage claim area in the international arrivals wing of the airport. The investigators say the bomb may have arrived in one of the bags."

[Die Neue Zeit]

Very likely this means Medvedev is out of the informal presidential race.

[Das war einmal]

This shows that despite the claims of the media, the situation in the Caucasus is still anything but under control. Furthermore, the authorities seem unable to secure something important as an airfield.

[hatzel]

I've heard from a few friends 'on the ground' in Russia that the main response so far has been for taxi-drivers to up their fares to 20.000 rubles (about 500€) to take people away from the airport. Great opportunity to line your pockets, a terrorist attack. Good ol' supply and demand, eh? Fucking wankers...

[Das war einmal]

I've heard from a few friends 'on the ground' in Russia that the main response so far has been for taxi-drivers to up their fares to 20.000 rubles (about 500€) to take people away from the airport. Great opportunity to line your pockets, a terrorist attack. Good ol' supply and demand, eh? Fucking wankers...

Not an ounce of decency.

[punisa]

Interesting documentary:
MHVKSW6NKPk

[gorillafuck]

I've heard from a few friends 'on the ground' in Russia that the main response so far has been for taxi-drivers to up their fares to 20.000 rubles (about 500€) to take people away from the airport. Great opportunity to line your pockets, a terrorist attack. Good ol' supply and demand, eh? Fucking wankers...
Taxi drivers aren't exactly living in luxury.....

[Red Future]

Russian Neo- Nazis implicated do you think, they've had a surge in membership recently ??

[Das war einmal]

Taxi drivers aren't exactly living in luxury.....

Ok then its ok to rip other people off in times of disarray.

[Dire Helix]

I expect a new spike in xenophobic sentiment as a result of this. Moscow migrant workers better stay in for a few days, because nationalists love to retaliate on them for terrorist attacks.


This shows that despite the claims of the media, the situation in the Caucasus is still anything but under control.

The situation has actually gotten a lot more worse since Putin`s presidency. The war in Chechnya has effectively spread to other republics in Caucasus. There are almost daily reports of explosions and shootouts coming in from Dagestan, Ingushetiya, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkariya. This was unthinkable even during the 90s.

[hatzel]

Taxi drivers aren't exactly living in luxury.....

They will be now :rolleyes:

Seriously, it represents a jump from 30€ to 500€, which is quite the price hike. It also just so happens to be an issue which seemed to cut Russians pretty deeply, from my experience, and it seems surprisingly high up on their list of concerns. They were all very quick to mention it, 'oh, have you heard about the taxi drivers?', followed by a host of Russian expletives I won't repeat here...so they seem to feel collectively hurt by it, and for that reason we shouldn't gloss over it, uninteresting as it may seem in the grand scheme of things...

The question still remains, though...whose initiative was it? This I haven't been able to find out yet. It's possible that the normal airport cabbies all bandied together amongst themselves to agree on this little deal. Another possibility is that their individual agencies may have declared that they wanted the 20.000 rubles, and it was out of the drivers' hands. The third possibility is that Moscow city cab drivers specifically went out of their way to go to the airport to charge extortionate prices, perhaps because the official agencies had halted services. I haven't been able to find out anything about concurrent services, if bus / train connections have been canceled etc. I would have to assume so, though, because the train costs 72 roubles (or 300, for the 'luxury' connection), so I guess that nobody in their right mind would pay 20.000 when they can pay 72...perhaps I'm wrong, though...

I admit that it would probably be officially classed as 'danger money'. I've heard that a few of the people who lost their lives were cabbies waiting for passengers. Perhaps there was a fear of a third explosion (likely, if people would be willing to pay so much to get away), but it still stinks of something to me, no matter who decided it was a good idea, and for what reasons. I think that's the issue that got Russians so riled up. Perhaps they expected this type of situation to bring out some sense of human charity and compassion. Perhaps one would hope that kind-hearted people would even wave the charge, and just shuttle people to safety as a matter of course, as a gesture of good-will and all that hoo-haa. I think that's what's really got to some Russians, some feeling of betrayal, of somebody, somewhere, trying to make a quick buck off the back of it. One could also ask why it fell on private individuals at all. Why didn't the state or somebody else direct whole fleets of buses to the airport to evacuate stranded passengers, if they were so scared for their lives? Questions which might be informally discussed amongst Russians over the next few days...

I've also heard a rumour coming out of Russia that Medvedev found out about the attacks by reading it on Twitter. That might tell us something about the organisation at the Kremlin. I mean, I'm pretty sure most country's would find it a problem if their acting-president had to rely on social networking sites to find out about major terrorist attacks. What wonderful communication they have between the state and the minions out there :confused:

[the last donut of the night]

I expect a new spike in xenophobic sentiment as a result of this. Moscow migrant workers better stay in for a few days, because nationalists love to retaliate on them for terrorist attacks.


I was about to say this. Seeing you live in Moscow, is this xenophobia very common among the ethnic Russian working class?

[Ocean Seal]

I've heard from a few friends 'on the ground' in Russia that the main response so far has been for taxi-drivers to up their fares to 20.000 rubles (about 500€) to take people away from the airport. Great opportunity to line your pockets, a terrorist attack. Good ol' supply and demand, eh? Fucking wankers...
What seriously, why doesn't the government evacuate the people.

[gorillafuck]

They will be now :rolleyes:

Seriously, it represents a jump from 30€ to 500€, which is quite the price hike. It also just so happens to be an issue which seemed to cut Russians pretty deeply, from my experience, and it seems surprisingly high up on their list of concerns. They were all very quick to mention it, 'oh, have you heard about the taxi drivers?', followed by a host of Russian expletives I won't repeat here...so they seem to feel collectively hurt by it, and for that reason we shouldn't gloss over it, uninteresting as it may seem in the grand scheme of things...
Holy shit, that's a massive hike.

Are these self employed taxi drivers or employed taxi drivers? I must confess, believe it or not I don't know a whole lot about the taxi industry.:lol:

[hatzel]

I hate to go on about the whole taxi thing, but it does really seem to be the big issue, for some reason. A disproportionate amount of anger directed at the cabbies, when it might be expected to be directed at the bombers, the Kremlin, anywhere...but the cabbies?! Here's a picture of Muscovites (if we still call them that) with little signs calling for taxi fares to be waved:

http://l-pics.livejournal.com/drugoi/pic/012wxfee.jpg

My research suggests, Mr Zeekloid, that they are mainly independent taxi drivers. I'm not sure if the ones who are linked to companies are still running, or if these companies have decided to recall their fleets...at the airports in Moscow, one will usually find that the minority of drivers are tied to 'official' taxi companies. Perhaps you've booked the cab beforehand, or at the info desk at the airport. If not, you'll just walk out into a swarm of independent, often unlicensed cabbies, who will happy rip you off for being stupid enough not to book in advance...these are those people...

There's something juicier, though, a few ideas floating around the people in Russia at the moment. Some think that these were orchestrated attacks, organised by the Kremlin to distract people from the various internal problems in Russia, and direct everybody's attention towards the threat of terrorism. This is a relatively widespread view on the Russian blogosphere, but I don't know how much credibility it attracts in 'the wider world'. A much less popular opinion is that it was a US-Israel-UK attack. I have only found one blog post (http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3470210.html?thread=383973250#t383973250) forwarding this theory, and the comment to it told it all: 'you're crazy'. Pinning the blame on the Kremlin is currently attracting somewhat more respectability than pinning the blame on the CIA, that's the situation in Russia at the moment...

[Dimitri Molotov]

hello, thank you for putting this on RevLeft, i can always count on this site for the latest news and every time something important like this happens i just love hearing what you guys have to say :) but i have a question, does this have anything to do with the Chechen rebels? or is this a different rebel group? i am in 10th grade in high school and we just started learning about human rights violations and the teacher mentioned something about Chechnya and how there are terrorists who want to break off of Russia but use incredibly violent tactics to accomplish it, and from the kind of things iv heard they do this sounds like it might be them. thanks guys:D

[Die Neue Zeit]

When I first heard about this, I thought the Russian authorities would find some way to pin it down on Afghanistan-trained terrorists, Chechen or otherwise:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA25Df02.html


Why such venom toward America's own one-time prot้g้? Washington finds Karzai increasingly acting as an Afghan nationalist rather than as a US surrogate. What is at issue is how to secure a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan. Washington is negotiating a new Status of Forces Agreement with Kabul but Karzai is resisting the US plan to keep permanent military bases. US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Kabul last month failed to clear the deadlock.

Meanwhile, Karzai is making sustained efforts to develop ties with Iran and Russia, including military cooperation, so as to reduce his dependence on the US by the 2014 timeline. Moscow has proposed a key role for Kabul in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Last week, Karzai visited Moscow and openly said that the Russians made better friends for the Afghan people than the Americans. This was the first official visit by an Afghan head of a state to Moscow since the departure of Soviet troops in 1989. The US reportedly tried to dissuade Karzai from undertaking the visit.

That is, find some way to get back into Afghanistan through Central Asia and settle old scores.

[Dire Helix]

I was about to say this. Seeing you live in Moscow, is this xenophobia very common among the ethnic Russian working class?

Very much so, yes. Xenophobia is an endemic problem here and it affects all strata of Russian society not just the working class.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Very much so, yes. Xenophobia is an endemic problem here and it affects all strata of Russian society not just the working class.

I saw a pretty horrific documentary on that stuff recently. I was wondering, is it mostly just directed against Central Asian and Caucasian people, or do Ukrainians, Belarusians etc. get it as well?

[Dire Helix]

I saw a pretty horrific documentary on that stuff recently. I was wondering, is it mostly just directed against Central Asian and Caucasian people, or do Ukrainians, Belarusians etc. get it as well?

It`s directed against people of non-European appearance.

[Bardo]

I've heard from a few friends 'on the ground' in Russia that the main response so far has been for taxi-drivers to up their fares to 20.000 rubles (about 500€) to take people away from the airport. Great opportunity to line your pockets, a terrorist attack. Good ol' supply and demand, eh? Fucking wankers...

Taxi fares are nothing compared to the money the weapons manufacturers will be raking in pretty soon. "Retribution is inevitable"