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Russia’s Medvedev promises ’crueler’ measures

01 April 2010 14:24 (UTC +04:00)

Medvedev told local officials on Thursday "the measures to fight terrorism should be expanded, they should be more effective, more harsh, more cruel." Russia has been struck by two major terrorist attacks this week. On Wednesday, two suicide bombings killed 12 people in Dagestan and on Monday, suicide bombers killed 39 people and injured scores in attacks on the Moscow subway. Wednesday’s suicide bombings killed 12 people in Dagestan, a volatile southern province east of Chechnya. Putin said they could have been planned by the same group behind the Moscow bombings.
"I don’t rule out that this is one and the same gang," he said at a televised Cabinet meeting. President Dmitry Medvedev later called the attacks "links of the same chain."
The suicide bombings in Moscow were the first in the capital in six years and served as a wake-up call for many Russians, who had come to feel insulated from the violence raging in the country’s predominantly Muslim southern corner. The bloodshed has continued despite Kremlin efforts to stem it. Medvedev, who claims the militants have spread through the North Caucasus "like a cancerous tumor," this year appointed a deputy prime minister to oversee the region and address its dire poverty and corruption.