by Dmitry Zaks
MOSCOW, Aug 25 (AFP) - Terrorism jitters spiked Wednesday in Russia after two passenger planes crashed simultaneously but far apart soon after leaving the same Moscow airport, an improbable and unexplained event ahead of a key vote in Chechnya.
Officials said they were investigating the possibility that terrorists brought the planes down, but there were no claims of responsibility and no suggestion that the terrorism theory was being treated more seriously than any other explanation.
"We are looking at various possibilities, including a terror attack and other, technical problems," Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cut short his Black Sea vacation after the crashes.
Dressed in a black suit and a black tie, Putin was shown on Russian television as he opened an emergency Kremlin meeting, demandeding "honest" answers from investigators and expressing his condolences to the victims` families.
The crashes brought the specter of terrorism in the heart of Russia to mind for many Russians still shuddering from Chechnya-related bomb attacks in the capital earlier this year, among them an attack on the Moscow subway which killed 40 people.
"It is not a pleasant day," said one tense Moscow taxi driver as he concentrated on radio news bulletins on the twin crashes.
Police and undercover security service agents flooded the Russian capital that was already shaken Tuesday by a bomb attack at a bus stop on the city outskirts that left four people wounded.
Whatever the ultimate explanation for the plane crashes that claimed 89 lives, they clearly inflamed an underlying climate of fear in the Russian capital, already used to a steady stream of bombing attacks linked either to gangster rivalries or the five-year Chechen war.
"I think the terrorism theory looks like the most likely one," said Gennady Gudkov, a pro-Kremlin official who heads parliament`s security committee, in radio remarks.
One of the planes fell to the ground near the city of Tula around 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Moscow. The other crashed in a field outside the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
They disappeared from air traffic controllers` radar screens within three minutes of each other.
Both planes were heading to southern destinations relatively near Chechnya, where elections were scheduled for Sunday to replace Akhmad Kadyrov, a controversial former mufti killed in a bomb blast in Grozny last May.
Political analysts said the public was nervous, understanding that the Chechen elections could spell trouble even if the plane crashes were in no way linked to the war.
"If this really was a terrorist attack, then the public`s opinion will immediately link it to Chechnya," said Yury Korgunyuk of the INDEM research institute.
"This will not improve Putin`s image. But people have been scared before, there have been so many bombings, so many attacks.
"In either case, it is clear who will win" the vote in Chechnya.
The Kremlin-annointed candidate is Alu Alkhanov, the republic`s interior minister, widely expected to win the poll.
But the separatist Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov has said in a statement published on a rebel Web site that he would kill the next pro-Moscow leader since he still recognized himself as the leader of the breakaway republic.
He has also vowed future attacks on Russian territory, in the process losing complete support from Washington, which at one stage recognized him as the one man with whom Moscow could negotiate peace.
Maskhadov`s influence in the region now appears to be limited, the republic overrun by various pro-Russian security forces and rebels who are splintered into rival groups.
But violence has errupted in Chechnya in recent days, with rebels killing at least 30 Russian troops and policemen over the weekend in Grozny, the rebel capital. Twelve civilians also died in the fighting.