Police detained dozens of people yesterday in sweeps through the Russian city of Volgograd after two deadly attacks in less than 24 hours raised security fears ahead of the Winter Olympics.

A blast that tore through an electric bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd during Monday’s morning rush hour, killing 14, was probably carried out by suicide bombers from the same organisation behind a railway explosion a day earlier, officials said.

At least 10 people have been killed in a bus explosion in Volgograd, Russia’s emergency situations ministry has said.

A suicide bomber struck a busy railway station in southern Russia yesterday, killing herself and at least 15 others and wounding scores more, officials said, in a stark reminder of the threat Russia is facing as it prepares to host February’s Olympics in Sochi.

Dr Michael Pravica is right when he reminds all of us of “the fact that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and other fascist WWII dictators, left a devastating legacy of racism, hatred, and evil in their wake” (Letters, Feb 4).

Today the Russian city of Volgograd — Tsaritsyn until 1925 — will be known again as Stalingrad, the name it lost in 1961 when the USSR tried to purge the memory of one of the greatest, most murderous tyrants and leaders of the last century.

Seventy years ago today Hitler’s armies at Stalingrad surrendered after 200 days of the most savage fighting. Geoffrey Roberts on the moment the long, crooked and twisted journey to today’s democratic Europe began

General Zhukov is seen by many as a hero who defeated Hitler and by others as an egotistical brute. Either way he lives on in public consciousness in Russia today, writes Geoffrey Roberts

The Soviet Army endured terrible suffering — losing eight million soldiers — in its defeat of Nazi Germany, writes Geoffrey Roberts.

Hitler’s attack on Russia on this day 70 years ago was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, writes Geoffrey Roberts

THE MARDYKE still exists.

SEVENTY years after it began, is there anything new to be written about World War II, which killed six people every second for the six years it lasted?

THINGS are bad for Fianna Fáil: on that much the opinion polls are agreed. But are they really behind Labour? Are the Greens going down with them, or holding up well? That’s opinion polls for you: they summarise popular views on a particular day or couple of days.

Chechnya’s parliament today asked the Kremlin to rename the war-ravaged provincial capital after the late Moscow-backed Chechen president who died in a rebel bombing.

Nato chief Lord Robertson was flying east today for talks aimed at strengthening Russia’s relationship with the military alliance and devising ways of making joint decisions in the war against terror.