The bomb attack that killed 14 and injured almost 50 in St Petersburg has left Russia grappling not only with the root causes of the fresh terror threat but also its potential fallout for turbulent domestic politics.

Russian authorities on Tuesday named a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen as the suspected suicide bomber who blew himself up on a St Petersburg metro train a day earlier. The Federal Investigative Committee said it had used security camera footage and DNA traces from a second, unexploded device to identify Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in 1995 in Osh, a restive region in southern Kyrgyzstan.

The focus on a Central Asian suspect highlights one of the key terrorism risks for Russia. Its military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad has convinced many Sunni Muslims from Russia and other Soviet republics, who are fighting with jihadist groups in the conflict, that Moscow is waging war against them. It has also made Central Asian Muslim migrant workers in Russia, often marginalised and discriminated against, easier targets for jihadist recruiters.