January 28, 2011 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – Jan 28, 2011

davos-1.jpgTODAY: Police draw up North Caucasus suspect list for airport attack; Kremlin’s policy in the region deeply flawed, say commentators. Medvedev takes Putin’s line on Khodorkovsky; justifies protest crackdown; Nemtsov found not guilty of resisting arrest; Moscow attempts to eject democratic monitors.  New ambassador to Britain named; Orthodox Church and United Russia join forces on spiritual handbook; World Cup preparations ride roughshod over citizens?

According to the New York Times, investigators into the Domodedovo airport bombing are convinced that a terrorist cell from the North Caucasus was responsible for the attack, with a list of ten suspects at the present moment.  The Independent reports that their efforts are fixed on an ethnic Russian Christian, Vitaly Razdobudko, who converted to Islam, although police have apparently contradicted this claim.  A Washington Post editorial highlights two cracks in the Kremlin’s current anti-terrorist operations: an intelligence deficit for which the FSB is responsible, and a failure to address ‘the underlying problem that fuels most of the attacks’.  Disparities in the scale of the insurgency and the particularity of socio-economic issues in each of the North Caucasus’ seven republics make a sweeping policy in the territory almost an impossibility, says RFE/RL’s regional expert Liz Fuller.