School hostage tragedy exposes Putin’s weaknesses

On the day Beslan began burying the dead, so many cars laden with coffins blocked the road leading to the cemetery.

In this small Caucasus town, everyone has lost a loved one or knows someone who was killed in the siege of the First School.

The terrorist attack was carried out by heavily armed militants, mainly from Chechnya, and lasted for three days.

Three hundred and thirty-four people died; 186 of them children.

Twenty years ago today, the siege ended abruptly in a devastating explosion, but I could still hear Beslan’s mother crying; grief swept through the town like a wave.

I can imagine 11-year-old Alina’s white casket open in her front yard, her doll carefully placed next to her.

I will always remember Rima, who for three days was packed into a suffocating school gymnasium with her grandchildren and hundreds of other hostages, bombs hanging from the basketball hoops above their heads.

At the time, she admitted she was ashamed that she had survived.

As she and her grandchildren ran for the exit through gunfire, they had to crawl over the body of a young boy.

“God forgive us,” Rima begged through tears.

In 2004, Beslan’s suffering rippled across Russia and resonated around the world.

First, the tragedy was caused by dozens of men and women storming the school, shooting into the air and taking hundreds of terrified people hostage.

They rounded up mothers with babies and balloons, and little girls with big white bows in their hair. The whole family is celebrating the first day back to school. The militants filled the stadium with explosives and began executing male hostages.

That summer, the brutal war against Chechen separatists launched by Vladimir Putin four years earlier had spread beyond the borders of Russia’s southern republic.

The day before the Beslan siege, a Chechen woman detonated a bomb outside a Moscow metro station, killing 10 people. It comes after suicide bombers blew two planes out of the sky and there were deadly attacks on music festivals.

But for two decades, troubling questions have been raised about how Putin and his officials handled the Beslan attack and were determined not to “give in” to the terrorists.

Did they even try to negotiate?

Why do you claim that the attackers made no political demands when calling for Russian troops to withdraw from Chechnya?

Can more children be released?

Most crucially, why did rescuers fire from tanks and use flamethrowers when there were hundreds of hostages inside the school?

For many, the Beslan siege provided important early lessons about Putinism, including that he will spare no effort and no effort to suppress those who challenge him.

It took Putin 20 years to visit the ruins of School No. 1.

Even so, he did not attend the anniversary event with his family. He had traveled there alone just two weeks ago.

Several crumbling walls of the school were left as memorials, eventually wrapped in golden shrouds and filled with framed photos of the deceased.

There, in the center of the stadium where the hostages were being held, Putin placed flowers under a wooden cross.

For most world leaders, this place would be unthinkable if they had not visited it before. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia’s history. But Mr Putin has always preferred to film in fighter jets or surrounded by soldiers.

The graves of the children he could not save did nothing to help his image as a man of action.

In fact, he had been to Beslan before but barely noticed.

After the siege ended, he flew to the hospital late at night under cover of darkness. He told Beslan that all of Russia was mourning with them, but he left at sunrise.

“He came too late,” I remember hearing from the grieving family. “He should stay with us.”

But President Putin did not dare.

An encounter with a grieving woman four years ago left him traumatized and frightened. After the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000, he spent five days on vacation and when he met his relatives, they tore him to pieces.

As a result, Putin began to use the carefully orchestrated meeting as a hallmark of his presidency. Only small, pre-vetted crowds. Everything is under control.

Only three mothers were brought to see him in Beslan last month.

“This was a horrific act of terror that claimed the lives of 334 people,” Putin told them of their tragedy in front of state television cameras.

“136 of them were children.”

The mothers were out of sight, but they certainly cringed at his mistake.

Because 186 children were killed in Beslan.

It’s a number that’s burned into the minds of everyone in the town. This is one thing you won’t forget.

But Putin’s visit to Beslan was not an expression of sympathy. The mother in black is just a prop.

He uses them to make a point.

He reminded Russians that he had won the war on terror two decades ago. Now he is fighting “neo-Nazis” and hostile Western countries in Ukraine, a war he vows he will win too.

Putin’s script in 2004 already contained distortions and lies. Officials then grossly underestimated the number of hostages in Beslan.

I arrived in town on the first day of the siege and quickly realized that there were three times as many hostages held in that school than officials admitted.

Every local told us so. But state television reporters were instructed to continue repeating the lie.

Authorities downplayed the potential number of casualties amid fears the army was preparing to attack the school.

I often wonder what happens to the governments of Western democracies after an attack that kills more hostages than terrorists.

I think it will have a hard time surviving the inevitable official investigation or the next election.

Vladimir Putin need not worry either.

In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia failed in its duty to protect the hostages and used “indiscriminate force” when the siege failed. The case was brought by a desperate, bereaved mother seeking justice.

But there are no new investigations underway in Russia. No senior officials were held accountable.

When three Beslan mothers complained to Putin at a meeting last month, Putin expressed surprise and promised to look into the matter. He has been there for 20 years

He did talk about one thing after the siege, though.

In 2004, Putin announced the cancellation of direct elections for governors in Russia’s regions, claiming it would help improve security. It had nothing to do with the Beslan attack.

As parliament gathered to vote on the measure, opposition politicians picketed the building to warn of spreading dictatorship.

Twenty years later, there is no longer any opposition.

Russian governors are still appointed by the Kremlin. Democracy has been shattered.

The only lesson Putin learned from the No. 1 school siege was to tighten control.