Chechnya already had Russia as an enemy. Chechnya had some outside report during its last conflicts with Russia. If Chechnya has no support and no sympathizers this would seem likely to end up with a bad result for Chechnya. The actions of the Boston Marathon bombers may end up killing way more Chechnyans than Americans over the next ten years.
“Russia has long warned the Americans that flirting with various separatist and terrorist organizations of the North Caucasus would not lead to anything good,” Sergei Mikheyev, a political analyst, told the Pravda news Web site.
Looking back to Russia’s two military campaigns against Chechen separatists in the 1990s, Mr. Mikheyev said, “It is an open secret that separatists enjoyed the support from external forces for quite a long period of time, including the Americans and their allies from other countries.”
Despite the Russian commentariat’s reaction, there has been no suggestion that the brothers had anything to do with groups operating from Chechnya, even if the woes of their native Caucasus region animated their motives in some way — which has also not been established.
Nonetheless, Russia Today — a broadcaster seen as close to the Kremlin — said the suspects’ Chechen connection had already led the U.S. establishment “to perform a rapid volte-face towards the previously sympathetically-viewed region and cause.”
“The standard U.S. portrayal of the restive region focused on the David and Goliath scale of the adversaries, the ‘denial’ to Chechens of their right to self-determination, and the abuse of human rights,” according to RT.
Echoing long-standing complaints of Western double standards toward what Russia regards as its own war on terror, RT concluded, “It is one thing to castigate a nation overseas for its approach to terrorism, but it is something else to encounter it face to face, when citizens of your own country die in acts of calculated violence.”
The reaction reflected what Clifford J. Levy, the former Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, described as a “we told you so” attitude on the part of the Russians.
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Ooof, in the context of 2016 and later events of Russian entanglement in US affairs – the entire Boston Marathon bombing event begins to look decidedly more sinister.
Who knows exactly who the bombers came across prior to their terrorist actions and whether they were manipulated into it by Russian interests for the sake of destroying any sympathy in the US for Chechnya – for certain they have done at least as much to lift sanctions over Ukraine.