MOSCOW – An Islamic militant group in Russia’s North Caucasus claimed responsibility Sunday for twin suicide bombings in the southern city of Volgograd last month and posted a video threatening to strike the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Also on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered new assurances to gay athletes and fans attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics next month. Yet, he defended Russia’s anti-gay law by equating gays with pedophiles and said Russia needs to “cleanse” itself of homosexuality if it wants to increase its birth rate.
Putin’s comments in an interview broadcast Sunday with Russian and foreign television stations showed the wide gulf between the perception of homosexuality in Russia versus the West.
A Russian law passed last year banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among minors has caused an international outcry.
For the bombings, which killed 34 people and heightened security fears before next month’s Winter Games, there had been no previous claim of responsibility.
In the video, two Russian-speaking men warned President Vladimir Putin that “If you hold these Olympics, we will give you a present for the innocent Muslim blood being spilled all around the world: In Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Syria.”
They added that “for the tourists who come, there will be a present, too.”
In a statement posted with the video on its website, the militant group Vilayat Dagestan claimed responsibility for the Volgograd bombings.
The video claims that the two men, identified as Suleiman and Abdurakhman, were the suicide bombers and purports to show the explosives being prepared and strapped to their bodies.
There was no immediate reaction to the video from the Russian security services.
During much of the 49-minute video, the two men speak to the camera while holding Kalashnikov automatic rifles. Behind them hang black banners with Arabic religious phrases similar to those used by al-Qaida.
Vilayat Dagestan is one of the groups that make up the so-called Caucasus Emirate, which seeks to establish an independent Islamic state in the North Caucasus, a region just to the east of Sochi on Russia’s southern border.
Dagestan, one of several predominantly Muslim republics in the North Caucasus, has become the center of the Islamic insurgency that has spread throughout the region after separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.
In response to the threat, Russia has introduced sweeping security measures for the Sochi Games.
The Chechen leader of the Caucasus Emirate, Doku Umarov, had ordered a halt to attacks on civilian targets in 2012, but he rescinded that order in July and urged his followers to try to undermine the Olympics.
The Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya claimed last week that Umarov was dead, but the claim couldn’t be verified.
The Vilayat Dagestan statement said the Volgograd attacks were carried out in part because of Umarov’s order but didn’t specifically say he had ordered them.
In addressing international concerns about Russia’s legal status of gays, Putin refused to say whether he believes that people are born gay or become gay. The Russian law, however, suggests that information about homosexuality can influence a child’s sexual orientation.
The law has contributed to growing animosity toward gays in Russian society, with rights activists reporting a rise in harassment and abuse.
International worries about how gays will be treated in Sochi have been met with assurances from Russian officials and Olympics organizers that there will be no discrimination, and Putin reiterated that stance.
“There are no fears for people with this nontraditional orientation who plan to come to Sochi as guests or participants,” Putin declared in the TV interview.
He said the law was aimed at banning propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia, suggesting that gays are more likely to abuse children.
Making another favorite argument against homosexuality, Putin noted with pride that Russia saw more births than deaths last year for the first time in two decades. Population growth is vital for Russia’s development and “anything that gets in the way of that we should clean up,” he said, using a word usually reserved for military operations.
The law on propaganda has been used to justify barring gay-pride rallies on the grounds that children might see them. This has raised the question of how athletes and fans would be treated and for any gay-rights protests during the Olympics.
When asked about this by the ABC TV channel, Putin said protests against the law itself would not be considered propaganda.
Putin then hit back, accusing the United States of double standards in its criticism of Russia, pointing to laws that remain on the books in some U.S. states classifying gay sex as a crime. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled in 2003 that such laws were unconstitutional.
Homosexuality was a crime in the entire former Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. It was decriminalized in Russia in 1993.
The Sochi Winter Olympics run Feb. 7-23.
