Investigations Continue Into Deadly Metro Explosion In St. Petersburg
Investigations Continue Into Deadly Metro Explosion In St. Petersburg
Ten people were killed and many more injured after an explosion Monday in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg. The blast at one of the metro stations caused havoc amid the afternoon commute.
No one has claimed responsibility, but Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is calling it a terrorist attack.
<em>The Washington Post</em>'s Andrew Roth shares the latest updates.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
A bomb exploded today on the subway in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. It killed at least 10 people and injured many more. Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, is calling it a terrorist attack. And earlier today, we talked to Andrew Roth at The Washington Post on the phone in St. Petersburg, and he told us what happened.
ANDREW ROTH: So around 2:30 in the afternoon, a blast ripped through the metro in St. Petersburg. That's Russia's second-largest city. This was right in the center of the city underground. A lot of photos and videos came out really quickly. People apparently had to sort of break their way out of the train once the blast happened - a lot of people injured inside of the station.
MCEVERS: And what caused it? Was it a bomb?
ROTH: It took some time, but the Russian government has pretty definitively said that, yes, it was an explosive device that was placed on the train, but it doesn't look like it was a suicide attack. It looks like the person left it and then left the train. Meanwhile, there was another explosive device that was taken and defused at a different site in St. Petersburg today. So it looks like at this point that there's no question of this being any kind of accident. It was a targeted terrorist attack in the heart of one of Russia's largest cities.
MCEVERS: Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting St. Petersburg today. What has he said about the attack?
ROTH: This was quite interesting because Putin sort of made his legacy in Russia very much about being a sort of law-and-order president. He was in the city today. There was concern that maybe he was being targeted. So when he finally came out for a press conference this evening with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, he actually didn't directly address the bomb blast in the city.
So he's been very reserved in terms of talking about this so far. He said earlier that Russia's going to do everything it can to figure out who's behind the attack, that a lot would be done in order to compensate and support people who were injured in the attack and their loved ones. But there hasn't been any sort of direct discussion of who is behind this or what Russia's going to do about it next.
MCEVERS: So there is no claim of responsibility so far.
ROTH: So far, we haven't seen any claim of responsibility, no.
MCEVERS: Are there any leads? Are officials talking about any leads that they have in this investigation so far?
ROTH: You know, officially, officials haven't discussed discussing any leads. Because past attacks of this nature in Russia have often been tied to the insurgency in the Caucasus and Chechnya, I would assume that one of the main sort of suspicions would be that it's an attack by insurgents from that region, but there hasn't been any sort of conclusion of that. Russia's also involved in the conflicts in Syria, and that's also considered a possible motive behind the attack. But in terms of an actual suspect or a person that investigators say that they're looking for, we haven't seen anything in particular yet.
MCEVERS: I guess it's important to know. How common are attacks like this in Russia?
ROTH: So there have been attacks like this before, although this is the largest attack of this kind on Russian soil since 2013. That was several bombings in the city of Volgograd, which is in southern Russia. There's also been bombing attacks on the metro in particular before, like dual bombing attacks in 2010 in Moscow. Those killed several dozen. The main difference between those and this was that those were suicide attacks carried out by women from the North Caucasus.
MCEVERS: That's Washington Post reporter Andrew Roth from St. Petersburg, Russia. Thank you very much.
ROTH: Thank you.
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