Doku Umarov, a leader of the Chechen resistance, has used a YouTube video to take responsibility for the two suicide bombings on Moscow's subway Monday that killed 39 people.
Umarov is a veteran of the 20 year long conflict where nationalist Chechens fought for an independent Chechnya in the Caucasus Mountains region.
Now 45 years old, Umarov appears to have renounced his previous attempts to limit civilian casualties and is seeking to take the notoriously brutal Chechnya war into the heart of Russia.
In the video, Umarov specifically calls out ordinary Russians for ignoring the horrors of the war in Chechnya.
"This is why I state with full responsibility that [as] I promised", he says, "you Russians watch the war only on television and on the radio, and this is why you are quiet, you don't react to the atrocities committed by your bandit groups led by Putin which are sent to the Caucasus."
The attack and video has reopened a Russian wound many had forgotten about. "The silent war of the North Caucasus has come to the streets of Moscow," said Grigory Shvedov, editor-in-chief of the 'Caucasian Knot' www.kavkaz-uzel.ru Internet news agency.
Umarov began the war as a nationalist, but, reports the New York Times, he was one of many Chechan nationalists to convert to jihadi radicalism in the last few years. In 2007, Umarov declared himself "emir of the Caucasus Emirate, which aimed to establish a Shariah-based state independent of Russia."
WATCH the video below and scroll down for NYT's English translation
Praise Allah, our God and prophet, to his family, to his followers and to all those who stand for the name of Allah in this world. I am the emir of the Kavkaz mujahideen, Dokku Umarov. I am making this statement on the 29th of March 2010. As you all already know, on the 29th of March two special operations were carried out in Moscow to destroy kafirs and to send a greeting to the F.S.B.
Both operations were carried out on my orders and they are not the last ones, inshallah, and I would like to stress why they have been carried out. As we all know, On the 11th of February, 2010, officers of the criminal formation known as the F.S.B. carried out an operation to destroy peaceful citizens in the area of the village of Arshty -- some of the poorest people who made their living by picking up wild garlic shoots and selling it.
These people were mercilessly destroyed, killed by those bandit groups under the name of the F.S.B. There were stab wounds, signs of degradation of the corpses. I think that today's operation, carried out on my order, was carried out against not the poorest Russians, because these operations were carried out in Moscow. And today any politician or journalist or any person who will condemn me for those operations, or who will accuse me of terrorism, I am laughing at those people. I can only grin, because I haven't heard that Putin was accused of terrorism for the murder of civilians who were killed at his order on the 11th of February.
I guarantee you and guarantee all the Russians who send and support all those special services which are sent here which commit all those atrocities -- your bandit groups which are on our territory of the Caucasus -- this is not the last operation. These operations will continue. They will continue on your territory, inshallah.
As for the operation to revenge for those mujahideen who died on the 11th of February, you will see it soon, and hear it. It will be carried out with use of special measures, inshallah. This is why I state with full responsibility that [as] I promised, you Russians watch the war only on television and on the radio, and this is why you are quiet, you don't react to the atrocities committed by your bandit groups led by Putin which are sent to the Caucasus. This is why I promise you: the war will come to your streets, inshallah, and that you will feel it on your own lives and on your own skin. Allahu Akbar!