The Golden Gate

This is not good:

OFF DUTY and two weeks into a deployment to the badlands of Dagestan on the border of Chechnya, the Russian Special Forces men thought that they were going to a relaxing bath.
Three lorries carrying the 50 troops had just pulled up at the Ariel public bath-house in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, when a homemade bomb detonated. Shrapnel killed ten soldiers and wounded more than twenty other servicemen and civilian bystanders.

The bombing was the latest indication that Dagestan, an ancient Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, is spinning out of control — and threatening to pull down the rest of Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus.

Dagestan is not only the biggest and most populous of the seven semi-autonomous republics of the North Caucasus — a region dominated by impoverished, non-Russian Muslim peoples — it is also the most strategic: a large chunk of the Russian Caspian coast lies here, making Dagestan a key transport route for trade and oil.