In September 2004, terrorists seized School No. 1 in Beslan, a town in southern Russia. They a thousand children, relatives, and teachers hostage and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.
The siege lasted 3 days. All this time, students and teachers were held in cramped, unsanitary conditions, denied water or food, with no access to toilets. State TV deliberately lied to the public and claimed there were only 350 hostages—knowing damn well over 1,100 hostages were forced to drink urine instead of water.
It was also a pivotal moment for the now-head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, who rose to prominence for her broadcasts during the attack and whose “talents” were noticed.
At some point during the crisis, it became clear that successful negotiations to save the children were highly possible through the mediation of Chechen independence leader Aslan Maskhadov.
But to Putin, who positioned himself as a young and energetic new leader, engaging in dialogue with someone like Maskhadov would mean instant “loss of face”.
To stop Maskhadov from mediating and gaining legitimacy, the Kremlin ordered a sudden, bloody storming. It was not a rescue operation but a heavy military assault.
On Putin’s orders, Russian forces fired thermobaric weapons directly at the mined school building, detonating explosives and igniting a massive, fatal fire. They had one main priority: destroying the terrorists. Saving children came in second, if further down on the list.
Abandonment and Cynicism
The moment the cameras were turned off, the survivors were cut off from aid. The state that vaporized their school didn’t spend a single ruble to fix their shattered bones and burn scars.
I had to personally step in from my prison cell to coordinate and fund their medical rehabilitation because the federal authorities completely abandoned them. Adding insult to injury, when the parents received this financial help, the state sent them tax bills for it.
The political cynicism of the moment was simply astonishing. Putin used the heinous attack on children as the reason for abolishing the direct elections of regional governors.
Of course, in reality, this proposal had nothing to do with security. The sole reason for undoing the gubernatorial elections was to destroy federalism and secure lifelong rule and immunity for himself.
For two decades, Putin boycotted Beslan on the anniversaries of the tragedy. On major milestones like the 10th and 15th anniversaries, he flew to Mongolia to celebrate a century-old battle instead. In 2023, he designated September 3rd as “Victory over Japan”—a new holiday invented entirely to erase Ossetia’s pain from public memory.
The regime has consistently treated grieving families with immense cruelty. In 2016, Golos Beslana (Voice of Beslan)—an organization of mothers who lost their children—staged a public protest.
They wore T-shirts with a simple, devastating message: “Putin is the executioner of Beslan.”
They demanded answers about why the storming was conducted the way it was. Instead of answers, they were met with arrests, fines, and sentences of community service.
Eight years later, for the 20th anniversary in 2024, Putin staged a hasty, televised visit to the grieving town.
He was so unprepared and lacking in empathy that he got the number of dead children wrong on camera, saying 136 died instead of 186. The rest of the time he spent lecturing mothers about imaginary foreign conspiracies.
When the mothers asked why the official investigation remains unfinished after 20 years, Putin responded by saying that he was “hearing about this for the first time” and told them to talk to the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Bastrykin.
His sudden visit after 20 years of silence was nothing but a PR stunt and it had a clear purpose — to distract the country from his massive military failures in the Kursk during the Ukrainian incursion.
Beslan was the definitive, horrific proof that Putin is a sociopath who treats his own citizens as disposable for his power and ratings. If he will do this to his own citizens, he will do it to anyone. This is why I am so convinced that the real threat to global stability is not his departure, but his continued rule.
Thank you for reminding us of this atrocity, one in the long list of horrors for which Vladimir Putin is responsible. And this is the man the American president looks up to, like a puppy to his master.
This is the real lesson people need to learn.