The Nevsky Express train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, carrying 661 passengers, yesterday suffered a serious impact or explosion, derailing several cars and killing at least 26 people, near the village of Uglovka. A small crater found near the tracks and an engineer’s testimony that an explosion had occurred have led investigators to suspect a bomb attack as the cause for the tragedy.

The prosecutors’ office is said to be calling the incident a terrorist act and seeking charges on crimes related to illegal possession of explosives and terrorist activity. Vladimir Yakunin, head of the Russian Federation’s rail authority, says an “unidentified device” exploded under the train, causing three cars to derail. Reports from the scene clearly suggest certain cars were mangled and burned, while others remain nearly intact, possible evidence of a concentrated fire.

There are also indications one or more cars may have had a section of roof blown out, but there was no confirmation on what had caused specific visible damage to the cars. A forensic investigation is underway, with a focus on searching for evidence of explosives or any kind of illegal interference with the train’s normal functioning.

One witness told Russian radio that there had been an “almighty crash”, suggestive of breaking through a “some kind of obstacle”. He specified that he heard no explosion. But the terrorist angle is a focus for prosectors. There was a similar derailment, “analogous” in Yakunin’s words, on the same line, three years ago.

According to the Guardian:

Russian prosecutors blamed the earlier derailment on Chechen extremists, who have been fighting an on-off war against the Russian state for two decades. There are daily attacks on security forces in the republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan.

The attack, if attributed to any separatist element in the Caucasus region, could lead to a military response and deteriorating security conditions well outside the conflict zone. The derailment is likely to inflame tensions and put Pres. Medvedev’s efforts to secure peace under severe stress. More hardline elements in the Russian government, like those loyal to Vladimir Putin, are likely to seek to raise their profile on security grounds.

The government of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has been hard to characterize, seeming one day to be a mouthpiece for the bellicose policies of his predecessor, now PM, Vladimir Putin, and another day to be the first Russian leader ever to express interest in a uniform standard of global governance and cooperation, rooted in democratic principles. Now, Mr. Medvedev’s political stock has gained, as ongoing nuclear negotiations with the US, at Pres. Obama’s urging, have resulted in a unanimous Security Council counter-proliferation vote.

Resolution 1887 is historic, for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a counter-proliferation measure that works within the logic of Pres. Obama’s proposal for eventual total global nuclear disarmament, and it won the support of all 5 permanent Security Council members, all nuclear powers. It is historic also because it is a product of the first ever Security Council session chaired by a US president. Obama dropped the gavel to open and close the vote, and in the process, due to the cooperation of Russia and China’s presidents, he won major support for global disarmament.

Pres. Medvedev should be commended, in part because his participation in strategic arms reduction with Pres. Obama signals an important shift away from the more bellicose Bush-Putin era, but also because he has signaled the possibility that Russia will now be a committed global partner in fostering international peace and security. This last point will be where Medvedev is most severely tested as the Putin-centered power-bloc that brought him to power still favors much more aggressive action in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Abkhazia and Georgia.

Pres. Obama and Pres. Medevedev have diametrically opposing views on Russia’s proper role in those fractious ongoing and emerging conflicts. The US wants Georgia, and also Ukraine, to be brought into the NATO security umbrella, whether as full member states or “full partners”, and Russia wants to maintain something resembling its Soviet-era “sphere of influence”.

The US president’s less anti-Russia posture regarding US-EU missile defense plans —his pledge not to station new missile bases in Poland— has led to European proposals to negotiate with Russia for a NATO-plus-Russia security umbrella, with a shared missile-defense network that both protects the broad coalition and also builds that coalition, by encouraging partnership and long-term collaborative security efforts.

But Mr. Obama can also feel good about another important achievement of his “new era of engagement”: it appears his overtures to Pres. Medvedev have yielded some of the harder to reach fruit of the diplomatic canopy. Russia now appears ready to support tougher sanctions against Iran, should the Islamic Republic refuse to cooperate fully with the IAEA’s inspection and verification.

Russia provides much of Iran’s military machinery, but Pres. Medvedev recently told Fareed Zakaria, on CNN, that Russia would not intervene militarily on Iran’s behalf and that it would never supply Iran with offensive weapons, only defensive. He was clear, also, that Russia would not provide technology to enable the building of nuclear weapons. Now, there are signals from the UN that Medvedev might side with western powers if Iran breaks from the IAEA’s regulatory framework.

Pres. Medvedev, like most powerful leaders, has to balance the competing interests of his nation’s image abroad with the view his own people hold of him. He would like to shape a view positive on both sides of the border, but from abroad, the deliberate enhancement of Russian power and influence is viewed with suspicion, and is the failure to achieve it at home.

But the Obama-Medvedev era of US-Russia relations may be shaping up in light of Pres. Obama’s language about enhanced responsibility and increased cooperation. If Mr. Medvedev joins in this resuscitation of the international diplomatic system, he could be strengthened at home, by way of improving Russia’s image abroad.

The US and Russia are, as Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon noted at the UN, “leading by example”. They have taken major steps to reduce their respective nuclear arsenals and guarantee the security of spent nuclear materials. This is a major first step toward enacting Pres. Obama’s proposed long-term framework for a comprehensive system of global nuclear disarmament. That achievement of diplomatic cooperation may be one of the great political moments of this century.

During his presidency, now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin consistently enforced a brutal policy of confronting any and all activities of separatist groups in the north Caucasus, specifically Chechnya, as issues of warfare with high national security stakes for the Russian Federation. Atrocities committed in Chechnya, both during and after the war, and including recent political killings, have yet to be fully investigated, and violence is now spreading across the north Caucasus region into other republics.

The spreading violence, which is now overtaking Ingushetia, and which led to Russia invading neighboring Georgia last year, is a sign that Putin’s aggressive war strategy for the republics of the Caucasus may be failing utterly. Even authoritarian Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov is said to be losing control of violent factions that the former rebel leader had previously countered with brutal raids.

Kadyrov blames his own enemies for the rash of political killings that have decimated the community of human rights workers and investigators looking into atrocities committed during and after the Chechen war. That stance is widely seen as mere political posturing by an authoritarian ruler who wants to avoid blame for the brazen murder of some of his staunchest and most insistent critics. But some say Kadyrov’s regime is too corrupt and unpopular to achieve lasting peace.

Meanwhile, Ingushetia has seen itself hit by a wave of bombings, gunfights and killings. Its president was nearly assassinated in a targeted bombing in June, and the Kremlin has ordered Kadyrov to use his security forces to carry out raids against militant groups and those suspected of sympathizing with them. The Putin plan of using overwhelming and unrelenting military force to crush the separatist movements appears only to have sown unrest across the region.

Today a bombing in Ingushetia has reportedly killed 20, when a truck laden with explosives was driven into a police station. The blast was so powerful it not only destroyed the vehicle and ripped a hold in the police station, but also sheered balconies and roof sections off a neighboring apartment block. Escalating violence in Ingushetia was initially seen as “spillover” from the unresolved conflict in the neighboring republic of Chechnya.

According to the Reuters news agency, “Human-rights monitors say what began as spillover violence from the neighboring Russian republic of Chechnya has been stoked by excessively harsh methods used by security forces in an attempt to quell the violence.” A mounting campaign of attacks against Ingush institutions, including not only police and military positions, but the president of the republic, suggests the harsh tactics used by security forces to eliminate the threat of separatist movements have contributed to the violence.

In a cryptic response to the violence, Pres. Medvedev dismissed the Ingush interior minister, charging that “This act of terror could have been averted”, and saying the police and Ingush security forces need to be able to detect threats and “defend themselves”. Medvedev has also urged Ramzan Kadyrov, president of Chechnya, seen as many to rule by unrestrained use of force against political enemies, to send forces into Ingushetia to fight what appears to be morphing into a full-blown insurgency.

But with separatist violence spreading like contagion across the north Caucasus, Russia’s hardline military strategy to dissuade insurgents appears less effective than in the past. There is growing sentiment, both among rights activists, and among political rivals to the Putin-Medvedev bloc, that the brutal application of military force in Chechnya has sown conflict, instead of putting a stop to it.

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More reporting on political killings in Russia and the north Caucasus:

• Chechen Children’s Aid Worker & Husband Gunned Down
• Who Killed Natalya Estemirova?
• Open Letter to Pres. Obama from Reporters without Borders
• Frontline UK Hosts Debate on Gov’ts Impeding Press Freedom in War Zones (video)
• Court Clears Three Accused in Politkovskaya Murder
• Trial of Accused in Politkovskaya Murder to Be Held in Open Court
• Politkovskaya Investigation in Disarray, Supporters Say Russian Gov’t Sabotaged Case
• Russian State-Owned Media Launch Smear Campaign Against Litvinenko
• Litvinenko Poisoning Death Now Carries Stain of Blame-the-Victim Allegations
• ‘Objectively Verifiable Truth Now Suspect’