The Times March 31, 2010
"Daily hardships teach Russians to carry on, even after Metro bombing"
Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor
"Russians pride themselves on their stoicism. So it was that, within hours of Monday’s twin suicide bomb explosions on the Moscow Metro, the service was running normally again.
"Some commuters who had narrowly escaped being killed in the morning descended once more into the Metro to take the same train back home in the evening. Millions ignored the very real threat of further attacks and used the underground system again yesterday.
"It is hard to imagine a similar response on the London Underground or in the New York Subway if 39 people had been killed by suicide bombers. The ability to endure adversity is one of the great Russian traits. Russians are tough because they have to be. The climate is forbidding. The authorities offer little in the way of basic healthcare, social security or protection.
"In previous terrorist attacks by Chechen militants — such as the school siege in Beslan in 2004 and the Moscow theatre siege two years earlier — the bungled rescue missions by the authorities contributed to the high death toll.
"But there are signs that the Russians are changing and that perhaps their endurance is beginning to run out. Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, came to power a decade ago by vowing that he would crush the Chechen separatist movement and contain the violence. He certainly succeeded in reimposing the Kremlin’s will over Chechnya by force.
"But the insurgency has spread to neighbouring Dagestan, Ingushetia and beyond. The attacks on Monday demonstrated that the campaign still has the capacity to reach into Russia’s heartland and the very centre of the capital.
"The Moscow Metro, the national railway network and civil aviation are all vulnerable to a domestic terrorist campaign — and there seems to be no shortage of recruits from the young, battle-scarred generation of men and women from the North Caucasus willing to sacrifice their lives for the jihadist cause.
"The normally uncritical Russian media are asking publicly what happened to Mr Putin’s promises. There is also anger with the state-controlled media that it took hours before news of the attacks was broadcast, by which time it was already making headlines around the world.
"The daily Vedomosti newspaper was particularly cutting: “In recent years, the authorities and state television have been singing a lullaby to Russians with the thought that terrorism is localised in the North Caucasus and does not threaten ordinary people,” it wrote.
"Mr Putin’s first great test as leader in 2000 was his handling of the Kursk submarine disaster. Because the authorities dithered before accepting Western help Russian sailors died in the stricken submarine. At the time the Russian leader had to cut short his holiday in Sochi to take personal charge of the crisis and manage the public relations fiasco.
"This time he has responded to the threat from the Caucasus much as he did in 1999, when troops were told to hit the terrorists in the “outhouse”. Now he wants them “scraped out from the bottom of the sewers”.
"The language is typically robust [>what a word to use! How about tacky -- or its euphemism, earthy !]. However, if there are further terrorist attacks on Moscow the Russian leader may discover that his country’s famed patience is wearing thin."
In my estimation, a shrewd comment from John Smith, Mar 31 :
"Russians have waited long enough for Mr. Putin to deliver the goods, be it security or economic.
His time being almost over, the next best thing is to wrap yourself in the national flag and claim an attack on the country.
Works every time, be it Russia or the US. Although my impression of Russians I have met is that they are a lot smarter than what Putin thinks.
However, the same cannot be said of Americans."
[i.e. most Americans hardly question 9/11, which was in my - C5 - opinion was nearly certain to have been a false flag Israeli operation to garner American largesse and moral support for itself and a U.S. war to remove its main enemy in the Middle East, Iraq-- among a vast array of other benefits to Tel Aviv.]