Russia is still cleaning up in the aftermath of a bomb that exploded outside the Southern Russian city of Volgograd on Monday.

President Vladimir Putin

President Vladimir Putin travelled to the Russian city of Ufa on Tuesday to meet with Muslim clerics.

He took the opportunity to warn unspecified foreign rivals not to use Islam to weaken the Russian state: “Some political forces use Islam – the radicals within it who are not typical of Russian Muslims – to weaken our state and create conflicts on Russian soil that can then be controlled from abroad.”