About "soft targets": it didn't start in Beslan or Nord-Ost theatre. It have begun in 1995, when a Chechen gang assaulted a small town of Budennovsk in Stavropol region (Cossack lands). They started with shooting everyone in the streets and then took hostages in a local maternity hospital... At that time Yeltsin's gang of morons have let them go and even provided terrorists with buses to Chechnya...
Then - Kizlyar attack, again failure, then - infamy of "peace treaty" with terrorists in 1996...
Then - 1999 invasion into Dagestan, where Russian Army mostly supported local militants fighting Chechen invaders with artillery and air support.
It resulted in apartment-house bombings, 4 explosions killing over 500 civilians sleeping in their beds at night.
It's why second Chechen war began.
Now we have anti-terrorist measures against such bombings - all apartment blocks in Msk have steel doors with code-locks, basements and attics are checked, most of the transport entering Msk is checked for explosives...
Then were Nord-Ost and subway bombings. I don't know how they prevent new subway bombings, maybe they simply have a huge network of informers inside terrorist organisations. I think it's the only way to stop such things. Now they plan to have TV cameras in every subway car, but AFAIK in London they already have such stuff and it didn't help. But it should help against installing a time-bomb in a car late at night when subway is almost empty.
