Yesterday's air crashes may be a Chechen copycat version of the al-Qaeda attacks in the US, writes Chris Stephens.
The apparent double-suicide hijacking of Russian jets by Chechen rebels yesterday appears aimed at striking a powerful blow against the Kremlin in the run-up to controversial elections to be held in the war-torn province this Sunday.
Moscow has banned rebel leaders from standing in polls they are in any case boycotting, and many human rights groups doubt conditions exist in the province for genuinely fair and open voting.
The attacks on the planes bring the Chechen war home to Moscow in the most brutal way, with a kick in the teeth both for the travelling public, the Kremlin, and Western businessmen flocking to Russia in ever-growing numbers.
Sunday's elections were called after the previous provincial president, Kremlin-backed former warlord Akhmed Kadyrov, was shot dead in May.
Last weekend President Vladimir Putin made only his third-ever visit to the republic, laying a wreath at Kadyrov's grave and endorsing the Kremlin's preferred choice, Chechen interior minister Alu Alkhanov.
Whether this election is any better barometer of Chechen opinion than Kadyrov's is open to question: With fighting raging across the province the act of voting is impossible for many thousands of Chechens, and any candidates who back the rebels have been banned. The normal conditions for an election, including hustings, a free press and ease of travel are drastically restricted.
Already this week rebel units have killed 23 Russian soldiers in a chain of attacks on polling stations, many of which have been turned into virtual fortresses in a bid to give at least the appearance of fair and open voting.
The air crashes are the harshest attack on the Russian psyche since rebels took over a Moscow theatre in December 2002 and more than 100 died when the authorities pumped immobilizing gas into the building.
The hijacking is the first time Chechens have staged what may be a copycat of the al-Qaeda bombing of the World Trade Centre, but it is only the latest in a series of hijackings that began in 1996 when Chechen units took control of a cruise ship in Turkey.
Five years later rebels took 100 guests hostage in an Istanbul hotel, though, like the cruise ship hijacking, it ended without bloodshed, as did the hijacking of a Russian airliner flown by the rebels to Saudi Arabia in 2001.
The worst attack on an aircraft was two years ago this month when 116 people died when a rebel missile downed a giant Mi-26 Russian transport helicopter as it came into land near the capital, Grozny.
Putin now faces a war where both the fighting and political processes are deadlocked. Russian troops have proved unable to deliver a decisive blow against rebel forces. Kadyrov was seen as the only Kremlin-backed figure with the muscle to impose his will on the province. But Kremlin hopes that it could continue a handover to his "loyalist" Chechens have evaporated with his assassination, and while Alkhanov is expected to win Sunday's poll, he will be little more than a figurehead, with Moscow again forced to take direct control once more of the security situation.
With rebels banned from standing, the only spice in this election has come from the surprise decision of Kadyrov's son, Ramiz, not to endorse the Kremlin's favoured candidate, Alkhanov. Despite accompanying Putin at last Sunday's wreath-laying, Ramiz, installed as deputy president after the assassination of his father, has backed another candidate, Vahu Visaev.