After Boston and Tsarnaevs, Russians Urge U.S. to Rethink Chechnya

LONDON â€" Russian commentators are speculating that a Chechen connection in the Boston Marathon bombings will force the United States to reassess its view of the Kremlin’s actions in the troubled Caucasus region.

After the capture on Friday night of Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the second suspect in Monday’s attack, following the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, his brother, in a gun battle with police, U.S. authorities have yet to establish a motive for the crime.

In Russia, as in the United States, attention focused on whether the bombings were connected with the politics of Chechnya, where the brothers’ family originated.

The possibility of such a connection being established is already raising questions about what it means for the recently strained relationship between Moscow and Washington.

“Russia has long warned the Americans that flirting with various separatist and terrorist organizations of the North Caucasus would not lead to anything good,” Sergei Mikheyev, a political analyst, told the Pravda news Web site.

Looking back to Russia’s two military campaigns against Chechen separatists in the 1990s, Mr. Mikheyev said, “It is an open secret that separatists enjoyed the support from external forces for quite a long period of time, including the Americans and their allies from other countries.”

Despite the Russian commentariat’s reaction, there has been no suggestion that the brothers had anything to do with groups operating from Chechnya, even if the woes of their native Caucasus region animated their motives in some way â€" which has also not been established.

Nonetheless, Russia Today â€" a broadcaster seen as close to the Kremlin â€" said the suspects’ Chechen connection had already led the U.S. establishment “to perform a rapid volte-face towards the previously sympathetically-viewed region and cause.”

“The standard U.S. portrayal of the restive region focused on the David and Goliath scale of the adversaries, the ‘denial’ to Chechens of their right to self-determination, and the abuse of human rights,” according to RT.

Echoing long-standing complaints of Western double standards toward what Russia regards as its own war on terror, RT concluded, “It is one thing to castigate a nation overseas for its approach to terrorism, but it is something else to encounter it face to face, when citizens of your own country die in acts of calculated violence.”

The reaction reflected what Clifford J. Levy, the former Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, described as a “we told you so” attitude on the part of the Russians.

“They have complained for a long time that the West doesn’t appreciate how difficult it has been for them to put down what they refer to as terrorism,” Cliff told Marcus Mabry, Rendezous’s editor.

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency stressed there was no evidence so far linking the suspects to any established terror network. “But in piecing together their personal motivation, the metastasizing violence plaguing the North Caucasus over the past two decades may be a piece of the puzzle.”

The Kremlin said on Saturday that the United States and Russia might cooperate on the investigation into the Boston bombings if the suspects’ ties to Russia were confirmed.

“As all the circumstances and details get cleared, I think, our intelligence agencies will be in contact,” Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, told Rossia 24 TV.

His comments followed a Friday evening call in which President Obama thanked Mr. Putin for unspecified cooperation in the investigation so far.

Mr. Putin first offered Russia’s help on Tuesday when he condemned the Boston attack as a barbarous crime and expressed the view that the fight against terrorism required the active coordination of efforts by the global community.

The exchanges on the Boston attack came at a time of otherwise strained relations between Moscow and Washington, focusing on their differences over how to respond to events in Syria, and U.S. concerns about the Kremlin’s treatment of its opponents.

As the investigation into the brothers and their motives continues, the Kremlin might choose to stress a connection between the Islamist threat from the Caucasus and that posed by Islamist factions in Syria fighting to overthrow President Bashar Al Assad, in order to justify its continued support of him.

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IHT Quick Read: April 20

The teenage suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, whose flight from the police after a furious gunfight overnight prompted an intense manhunt that virtually shut down the Boston area all day, was taken into custody Friday night after the police found him in nearby Watertown, Mass., officials said. The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was found hiding in a boat just outside the area where the police had been conducting door-to-door searches all day, the Boston police commissioner, Edward Davis, said at a news conference Friday night. Katharine Q. Seelye reports from Boston and William K. Rashbaum and Michael Cooper report from New York.

The banks that created risky amalgams of mortgages and loans during the boom â€" the kind that went so wrong during the bust â€" are busily reviving the same types of investments that many thought were gone for good. Once more, arcane-sounding financial products like collateralized debt obligations are being minted on Wall Street. The revival partly reflects the same investor optimism that has lifted the stock market to new heights. With the real estate market and the economy improving, another financial crisis seems a distant prospect. What’s more, at a time when the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates close to zero, the safest of these new investments offer interest rates almost double that paid by ultrasafe United States Treasury securities, according to RBS Securities, which was involved in such instruments in the past. Nathaniel Popper reports from New York.

The Group of 20 countries called on Friday for a coordinated effort to stop international tax evasion, urging governments to systematically share bank data. Finance ministers and central bankers of the G-20, meeting in Washington, said in a communiqué that automatic exchange of tax-relevant bank information should be adopted as the global standard. The officials also noted the problems of economic weakness and high unemployment in many countries, and called for more action “to make growth strong, sustainable and balanced.” David Jolly reports.

British antitrust authorities on Friday accused the pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline of paying three rivals to delay the introduction of a generic version of an antidepressant drug. It is the latest so-called pay-for-delay case drawing scrutiny from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The Office of Fair Trading in Britain contended that Glaxo had abused its dominant position in the market, kept prices artificially high and denied “significant cost savings” to Britain’s state-run health provider, the National Health Service. Stephen Castle reports from London.

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IHT Quick Read: April 20

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The banks that created risky amalgams of mortgages and loans during the boom â€" the kind that went so wrong during the bust â€" are busily reviving the same types of investments that many thought were gone for good. Once more, arcane-sounding financial products like collateralized debt obligations are being minted on Wall Street. The revival partly reflects the same investor optimism that has lifted the stock market to new heights. With the real estate market and the economy improving, another financial crisis seems a distant prospect. What’s more, at a time when the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates close to zero, the safest of these new investments offer interest rates almost double that paid by ultrasafe United States Treasury securities, according to RBS Securities, which was involved in such instruments in the past. Nathaniel Popper reports from New York.

The Group of 20 countries called on Friday for a coordinated effort to stop international tax evasion, urging governments to systematically share bank data. Finance ministers and central bankers of the G-20, meeting in Washington, said in a communiqué that automatic exchange of tax-relevant bank information should be adopted as the global standard. The officials also noted the problems of economic weakness and high unemployment in many countries, and called for more action “to make growth strong, sustainable and balanced.” David Jolly reports.

British antitrust authorities on Friday accused the pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline of paying three rivals to delay the introduction of a generic version of an antidepressant drug. It is the latest so-called pay-for-delay case drawing scrutiny from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The Office of Fair Trading in Britain contended that Glaxo had abused its dominant position in the market, kept prices artificially high and denied “significant cost savings” to Britain’s state-run health provider, the National Health Service. Stephen Castle reports from London.

ARTS On Tuesday, a fascinating auction, the second of its kind, put together at Bonhams by Rupert Worrall and Tanya Grigoroglou, turned the spotlight on “The Grosvenor School and Avant-Garde British Printmaking.” The sale opened with an artist whose willingness to experiment in almost every register of the artistic spectrum underlines how little inclination toward modernity mainstream printmakers had when they used traditional techniques, from wood-block to etching. “ Souren Melikian reports from London.

SPORTS One of the most dominant basketball players in recent memory came out as gay Wednesday, casually mentioning the fact in an interview as if it were an afterthought. The news media and the sports world seemed to treat it as such, too, with little mention of the star’s sexuality showing up on social media or on message boards, and virtually no analysis of what the revelation meant for tolerance in society as a whole. Sam Borden reports.

IHT Quick Read: April 20

The teenage suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, whose flight from the police after a furious gunfight overnight prompted an intense manhunt that virtually shut down the Boston area all day, was taken into custody Friday night after the police found him in nearby Watertown, Mass., officials said. The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was found hiding in a boat just outside the area where the police had been conducting door-to-door searches all day, the Boston police commissioner, Edward Davis, said at a news conference Friday night. Katharine Q. Seelye reports from Boston and William K. Rashbaum and Michael Cooper report from New York.

The banks that created risky amalgams of mortgages and loans during the boom â€" the kind that went so wrong during the bust â€" are busily reviving the same types of investments that many thought were gone for good. Once more, arcane-sounding financial products like collateralized debt obligations are being minted on Wall Street. The revival partly reflects the same investor optimism that has lifted the stock market to new heights. With the real estate market and the economy improving, another financial crisis seems a distant prospect. What’s more, at a time when the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates close to zero, the safest of these new investments offer interest rates almost double that paid by ultrasafe United States Treasury securities, according to RBS Securities, which was involved in such instruments in the past. Nathaniel Popper reports from New York.

The Group of 20 countries called on Friday for a coordinated effort to stop international tax evasion, urging governments to systematically share bank data. Finance ministers and central bankers of the G-20, meeting in Washington, said in a communiqué that automatic exchange of tax-relevant bank information should be adopted as the global standard. The officials also noted the problems of economic weakness and high unemployment in many countries, and called for more action “to make growth strong, sustainable and balanced.” David Jolly reports.

British antitrust authorities on Friday accused the pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline of paying three rivals to delay the introduction of a generic version of an antidepressant drug. It is the latest so-called pay-for-delay case drawing scrutiny from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The Office of Fair Trading in Britain contended that Glaxo had abused its dominant position in the market, kept prices artificially high and denied “significant cost savings” to Britain’s state-run health provider, the National Health Service. Stephen Castle reports from London.

ARTS On Tuesday, a fascinating auction, the second of its kind, put together at Bonhams by Rupert Worrall and Tanya Grigoroglou, turned the spotlight on “The Grosvenor School and Avant-Garde British Printmaking.” The sale opened with an artist whose willingness to experiment in almost every register of the artistic spectrum underlines how little inclination toward modernity mainstream printmakers had when they used traditional techniques, from wood-block to etching. “ Souren Melikian reports from London.

SPORTS One of the most dominant basketball players in recent memory came out as gay Wednesday, casually mentioning the fact in an interview as if it were an afterthought. The news media and the sports world seemed to treat it as such, too, with little mention of the star’s sexuality showing up on social media or on message boards, and virtually no analysis of what the revelation meant for tolerance in society as a whole. Sam Borden reports.