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MOSCOW — A deadly suicide bombing at a crowded railroad station in southern Russia on Sunday, followed by a blast in a trolley bus on Monday in the same city, raised the specter of a new wave of terrorism six weeks before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin ordered security to be tightened across Russia after a suicide bombing on a trolley bus in Volgograd killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens on Monday, the second bombing in the city in two days.
President Vladimir V. Putin’s government has worked to protect the Olympics with some of the most extensive security measures ever imposed for the Games. But the bombings, in Volgograd, underscored the threat the country faces from a radical Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus that has periodically spilled into the Russian heartland, with deadly results.
The bomb exploded during the morning rush hour, a little more than a mile and a half from Volgograd’s main railroad station, where a suicide bomber detonated a backpack filled with explosives and shrapnel on Sunday.
Security has become a paramount concern at all major international sporting events, especially in the wake of the bombing at the Boston Marathon in April, but never before has an Olympic host country experienced terrorist violence on this scale soon before the Games. And would-be attackers may have more targets in mind than the Russian state.
The twin bombings appeared to be part of a deadly campaign of terror ahead of the Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to begin in six weeks in Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea only 400 miles away.
Current and former American law enforcement and intelligence officials said Sunday that they were more concerned about security in Russia during the Sochi Games than they have been about any other Olympics since Athens in 2004.
Together, the attacks killed at least 32 people and sowed panic across the country, prompting false reports of other bombings and the brief evacuation of Red Square in Moscow after a woman left a package or bag near St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Russian officials attributed the explosion on Sunday to a bomb packed with shrapnel, possibly carried in a bag or backpack. It was detonated in the main railroad station in Volgograd, a city 550 miles south of Moscow and 400 miles northeast of Sochi. The bomb blew out windows in the building’s facade and left a horrific scene of carnage at its main entrance. At least 17 people were killed, and nearly three dozen others were wounded, some of them critically, meaning the death toll could still rise.
Mr. Putin made no public remarks by Monday evening, but he held a series of meetings with senior government and security officials, according to the Kremlin. He also dispatched the chief of the Federal Security Service, Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, to Volgograd to oversee the investigation and enhanced security measures.
On Monday morning a blast struck a trolley bus in the city, killing at least 15 people, including an infant, according to preliminary reports. Photographs posted by Russian news organizations showed that the force of the blast tore open the bus and shattered windows nearby. Nearly two dozen others were wounded in what officials immediately described as a suicide bombing.
“I think we will be able to solve these crimes, particularly because we have some clues,” Mr. Bortnikov said after arriving there, without elaborating. He said that additional security had been deployed at public places, including the city’s transportation and energy facilities.
The Sunday blast, captured on a surveillance video camera from across the central plaza in front of the station, occurred near the station’s metal detectors, which have become a common security fixture at most of Russia’s transportation hubs. That raised the possibility that an attack deeper inside the station or aboard a train had been averted.
Vladimir I. Markin, a spokesman for the main national criminal investigation agency in Russia, the Investigative Committee, said a man carried out the second attack, detonating a bomb with more than eight pounds of explosives on Trolley Bus No. 15, which witnesses said was full of morning commuters. The force of the blast tore the bus open, hurling bodies into the street and breaking windows in nearby five-story apartment buildings.
Vladimir I. Markin, a spokesman for the main national criminal investigation agency in Russia, called the railway station bombing an act of terror, though the exact motivation, target and perpetrator were not immediately clear. Within hours of that attack, the authorities blamed a suicide bomber, and cited the gruesome discovery of the severed head of a woman, which they said could aid in identifying her as the suspect. Officials later said they had found a grenade and a pistol, and suggested that the attack might have been carried out by a man and a woman working together.
In a statement on the committee’s website, Mr. Markin said the bombs used in both attacks were similar, packed with shrapnel to make them more lethal. He cited that as evidence that the two attacks were connected. “It’s possible they were prepared in one place,” he said of the bombs.
“Most likely, the victims could have been much higher if the so-called protective system had not stopped the suicide bomber from getting through the metal detectors into the waiting room, where there were passengers,” Mr. Markin said in a statement on the agency’s website.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they have renewed attention on a threat issued in July by Doku Umarov, the Chechen leader who heads the Caucasus Emirate, a nebulous organization that seeks to carve an independent state out of Russia’s mostly Muslim republics in the south. In a video, he called on his followers to do whatever possible to disrupt the Olympics in Sochi, which begin on Feb. 7.
Volgograd was also the scene of a suicide bombing in October, when a woman identified as Naida Asiyalova detonated a vest of explosives aboard a bus in the city, killing herself and six others.
Aleksandr D. Zhukov, the president of Russia’s Olympic Committee and the first deputy speaker of Parliament, said that all necessary security measures had been taken to protect athletes and visitors in Sochi. “No additional security measures will be taken in Sochi in light of the terrorist attack,” he said, according to the Interfax news agency. “Everything necessary has been done.”
In that case, the authorities said she was linked by marriage to an explosives expert working with an Islamic group in Dagestan, a republic in southern Russia where the police have struggled to suppress a Muslim separatist insurgency. A month later, the authorities announced that they had killed her husband and four others in a raid. But the attack on Sunday indicated that the threat was far from extinguished.
His remarks did not address the threat outside of Sochi, however. With security already heavily tightened there, experts have warned that insurgents who want to disrupt the Olympics might turn instead to “softer” targets elsewhere.
It was not clear why suicide bombers have chosen targets in Volgograd, a city of 1 million that was formerly called Stalingrad, the site of one of the crucial battles of World War II. It is the nearest major Russian city to the Caucasus, and its proximity may play a role.
The bombings prompted political recriminations that, in Mr. Putin’s Russia, have generally been fairly muted except among his most ardent critics. Sergei M. Mironov, a member of Parliament who has been a close ally of Mr. Putin’s, called for the resignation of the governor of the Volgograd region, Sergei A. Borzhenov.
Roman Lobachov, who was among those injured on Sunday, said he was at the station’s security checkpoint when the blast occurred. “I passed through the metal detector, and at that moment there was an explosion,” he said in remarks on the official Rossiya television network. He said he felt a shock like a blow to the head, “and I kind of dropped to the floor.”
Sergei S. Mitrokhin, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, which is usually more critical of the Kremlin, called for an investigation into any security lapses that might have allowed the attacks to occur, and suggested that the security services spent more time harassing political opponents than fighting terrorists and other criminals. “Society must know what the security services are doing these days,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Putin vowed on Sunday to redouble security at Russia’s railway stations and airports, which are especially busy around the New Year’s holiday.
Suicide bombings have become a favored tactic of Mr. Umarov’s fighters and other Islamic extremists along Russia’s southern frontier in the North Caucasus, though for a time Mr. Umarov’s group observed a sort of cease-fire.
The autonomous republics of the North Caucasus, including Dagestan and Chechnya, have been roiled for nearly two decades by armed insurgencies — complex, ever-shifting conflicts that the International Crisis Group recently called “the most violent in Europe today.” The violence has claimed hundreds of lives this year, prompting the Russian authorities to make extraordinary efforts to keep it from reaching Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea coast among the foothills of the Caucasus. The city will effectively be locked down starting Jan. 7, with all traffic banned except officially registered vehicles. Visitors to the Olympics, which begin on Feb. 7, will be required to obtain a special pass to enter the region.
Mr. Markin initially said that the attack on the railroad station had been carried out by a woman — and some news organizations published her name and gruesome photographs of her severed head — but by Monday officials suggested that both attacks had been carried out by men.
With security so tight at the site of the Games, experts have warned that insurgents who want to disrupt the Olympics might turn instead to “softer” targets elsewhere. On Friday, an explosion in a car killed three people in Pyatigorsk, another city in the Caucasus; details of that attack remain sketchy, and it was not clear whether it was related to the bombings Sunday and Monday.
Officials braced themselves for more attacks, while residents in Volgograd expressed fear of taking any form of public transportation.
Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel fighter who now leads a terrorist group known as the Caucasus Emirate, vowed in July to attack in Sochi, calling the Games “satanic.”
Monday’s attack was the third suicide bombing in Volgograd in recent months. In October, a woman identified as Naida Asiyalova detonated a vest of explosives aboard a bus in the city, killing herself and six others.
“They plan to hold the Olympics on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many dead Muslims, buried on the territory of our land on the Black Sea,” Mr. Umarov said in a video. He emerged from the ruins of Chechnya’s separatist movement, which was largely defeated by the authorities under Mr. Putin. His group has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Moscow in 2010 and 2011; like the Volgograd attacks, they were both against transportation-related targets.
In that case, the authorities said she was linked by marriage to an explosives expert working with an Islamic group in Dagestan, a republic in southern Russia where the police have struggled to suppress Islamic extremism that, according to experts, is only loosely linked with Mr. Umarov’s organization. A month later, the authorities announced that they had killed her husband and four others in a raid. But the attack on Sunday indicated that the threat was far from extinguished.
One reason American law enforcement and intelligence officials are concerned about Sochi is that the United States has more of an arms-length relationship with Russia than with most Olympic host countries. The United States provided extensive security resources to the Greek government in 2004, but the Russians have stronger capabilities than Greece and almost always refuse American offers of help.
It is not clear why suicide bombers have now three times chosen targets in Volgograd, a city of a million people that was formerly called Stalingrad, the site of one of the crucial battles of World War II. It is the nearest major Russian city to the Caucasus, and a transportation hub connecting the region to major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Rick Nelson, a former counterterrorism official in the George W. Bush administration, pointed out that the Athens games came relatively soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“You can see it as a gateway out of the Northern Caucasus, which shows that it is possible to reach other destinations,” said Grigory Shvedov, editor in chief of the Caucasian Knot, a website that closely tracks violence in the region. “If they can reach Volgograd, they can show that the Northern Caucasus is not protected by a great Chinese wall that is not allowing terrorists to get out.”
“The Greeks did not have the resources and ability to provide a lot of internal security, there were a lot of high-profile targets that were spread out, and Al Qaeda was looking for a high-profile target,” he said. “But there weren’t a series of attacks in Greece leading up to the Olympics like there have been in Russia.”
Current and former American officials said they had confidence in the Russians’ ability to protect Sochi and the Olympic venues. “There’s every belief they’ll make it secure and do whatever it takes to do that,” said one senior law enforcement official. “But it is a large country, and these groups can get a lot of bang for their buck if they are able to do something in the country, wherever it is, during the Olympics.”
Another complicating factor is that the United States does not direct a significant portion of its intelligence capabilities toward groups that mount attacks in Russia, because American officials see terrorists in countries like Pakistan and Yemen posing a greater threat to American interests. And even though the Boston Marathon bombers had ties to Dagestan, officials don’t believe the attack was plotted with the help of groups there.
“We share some enemies, but not that many,” Mr. Nelson said. “The U.S. just doesn’t put the resources into those areas like it does elsewhere in the world, and there isn’t a ton of intelligence sharing on these groups.”
Reporting was contributed by Nikolai Khalip and Viktor Klimenko from Moscow, and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington.
Reporting was contributed by Nikolai Khalip and Viktor Klimenko from Moscow, and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington.
