Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with representatives of the “Mothers of Beslan”, the association of victims of terrorist acts, in Beslan, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia, August 20, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (August 20, 2024) compared Russia’s incursion into Ukraine to the 2004 Beslan school massacre, in which around 330 people were killed while hostages were being held.
Mr Putin visited the school for the first time in nearly 20 years and paid tribute to the victims at memorials, including at a cemetery and the site of the destroyed school where Chechen militants took more than 1,000 people hostage.
Referring to Ukraine, Mr Putin, while meeting mothers who lost their children in the siege, said Russia’s enemies were again trying to destabilise the country.
“Just as we fought terrorists, today we have to fight those who are committing crimes in the Kursk region,” Putin said, referring to Ukraine’s cross-border offensive that began two weeks ago.
“But just as we achieved our goals in the fight against terrorism, we will achieve these goals in the fight against neo-Nazis,” Putin said, sitting in front of three women from the Mothers of Beslan group.
“And we will definitely punish the culprits, there is no doubt about that,” Mr Putin said.
The Mothers of Beslan group has long been calling for an impartial investigation into the attack and the Russian authorities’ response.
The September 2004 siege lasted nearly 50 hours, ending in a shootout when Russian special forces stormed the building after an explosion in the school’s gym, where the hostages were being held.
The siege in the Caucasus region of North Ossetia comes amid a guerilla insurgency by Islamist Chechen separatists, whom Mr Putin has labelled “terrorists”.
Mr Putin launched a major Russian offensive to crush Chechnya’s armed bid for independence in late 1999, just weeks before he became president.
The war against the Chechen insurgency helped boost Putin’s initial popularity, but in late 2019 he described the Beslan siege as a “personal pain” that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
At the time, Mr Putin and the Kremlin were criticised for their handling of the attack.
‘Personal suffering’
At the meeting with Mr Putin, the Mothers of Beslan complained that Russia’s investigation into the school siege was never completed, Anita Gadiyeva, co-chair of the group, told the Agentsvo outlet.
Unlike Putin’s remarks about Ukraine, this part of the meeting was not televised.
Gadiyeva said Putin told the women he was not aware of this and would ask the head of the Investigative Committee to intervene.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2017 that Russia’s handling of the siege had “serious flaws” in its failure to prevent the attack and the use of excessive lethal force and called on Moscow to take steps to find out the truth.
The attack comes two years after Chechen fighters took hundreds of people hostage at a Moscow theater, leaving more than 130 people dead – most of them from sleeping gas pumped into the theater by Russian special forces.
On Tuesday (August 20, 2024), Mr Putin laid red roses at the foot of a monument at the cemetery, where he bowed to “honor the memory of the victims of the terrorist attack”, the Kremlin press service said.
He also laid red roses at the memorial to Russian special forces members killed during the attack on School Number One.
The Kremlin’s press service said over Telegram that “an international cultural and patriotic center for the prevention of terrorism” has been set up on the site of the former school.