With parliamentary elections due in December, the attack on a mall that had been a pet project of Moscow mayor and leading Yeltsin opponent Yuri Luzhkov even had some in the chattering classes speculating darkly about acts of political provocation — even imagining the bomb as a pretext for declaring a state of emergency that would allow the elections to be called off. But bomb attacks have also become a staple for gangsters engaged in turf wars, and the Manezh Square blast could just as likely have been gang-related. A list of potential suspects and scenarios as long as a Russian winter is just one more reminder of Moscows unending tribulations.
Whodunit? In Moscow, the Suspect List Is Long
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Who would want to blow up a mall in Moscow? It might be easier to ask who wouldn't. Forty-one people were injured by a bomb inside a video game machine Tuesday evening at the upscale Manezh Square shopping center near the Kremlin. And a note found at the site claiming responsibility on behalf of an obscure anti-consumerist writers group will only fuel speculation as to the real authors of the attack. After all, such drivel as "a hamburger not eaten in the end by a dead consumer is a revolutionary hamburger" suggests the note may just as easily be a red herring. Early favorites in the perpetrator stakes were the Chechen-Islamic secessionists who are still skirmishing with Russian forces in the southern republic of Dagestan. Throughout the 1994-96 war in neighboring Chechnya, the separatists kept their media profile high by periodically engaging in spectacular terrorist attacks throughout Russia but the Chechens, like the growing list of secessionist-minded rebel movements in Russias southern republics, would have no reason to hide behind oddball anti-consumerism, because the very point of terrorist acts in Moscow would be to send a clear message.