Moscow’s most wanted Islamist militant Doku Umarov warned that Russia would be the target of a newly strengthened insurgency in a video posted on an Islamist affiliated website on Monday. A decade after federal forces drove a separatist government from power in Chechnya, Moscow is struggling to contain an insurgency that seeks to carve an Islamic state out of Russia’s North Caucasus region. Chechen-born Umarov, 47, claimed responsibility for masterminding the January suicide bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, which killed 37. He has also promised a year of “blood and tears” for Russia ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in 2012. Security will be a main priority leading up to the elections for both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who led the country into a second devastating war against Chechen rebels in 1999.
