Saint Petersburg in Russia is a long way from Aleppo in Syria.Yet a sinister thread surfaced on Monday when ten people were killed in a Metro explosion in the historical Russian city. Till the morning of Tuesday, no group in Russia had claimed responsibility; this has made confusion worse confounded. Suffice it to register that  more than the Kremlin's intervention in Chechnya, suspicion has  increasingly been riveted to the ISIS in Syria. Is it possible that Moscow's offensive against the Caliphate, most particularly in Aleppo and Damascus, has prompted the Islamists to retaliate?  Monday’s explosion has been described by the Kremlin as the worst act of terror outside southern Russia since a 2011 suicide attack at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, which killed 37 people. A not dissimilar blast had convulsed the Moscow Underground some years back; the explosion was then ignited by the Black Widows, so-called, of Chechnya. Though the possible involvement of the Chechen rebels cannot readily be ruled out, the number of such attacks has declined  dramatically in recent years.

The demand for Chechen independence isn't as vociferous as it was at least a decade ago; to an extent it has been overshadowed by  Russia's expansionist design in Ukraine. If contemporary geopolitics is any indication, Vladimir Putin's resolve to confront the ISIS in Syria has, as it now turns out, made the scenario decidedly explosive within Russia though he has spoken in favour of a probe into "all variants".  There is significant circumstantial evidence that Russian security services ignored the movement of suspected militants who have left the country for Syria. It was generally presumed that  they would be less of a threat outside Russia than inside.  Furthermore,  many Muslims from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia have reportedly been  radicalised while working on construction sites in Russia. They too have subsequently left for Syria.
President Putin has directed investigators to probe the disaster from "all possible angles ~ accidental, criminal and first of all… terrorist". Further comment must await the outcome of the investigation, yet there is little doubt that he has to countenance a powder-keg  of Russian  adventurism ~ on the side of Bashr al-Assad ~ and fundamentalist fury.  The first is primarily his creation. The risk of a catastrophe was dangerously real ever since the expansionism in Ukraine was followed by adventurism ~ exemplified by bombardment from the skies ~ in Syria.

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The slaughter in  Russia's Metro lends a hideous dimension to terrorist strategy in a country  whose public transportation network has been ever so vulnerable. Post the suppression of the Chechen rebellion, the Kremlin's military intervention in Syria has made Russia a potential target for ISIS attacks. This succinctly is Monday's signal from St Petersburg.