MOSCOW, 26 October — Gunmen holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater to press their demand that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya threatened to begin killing their captives today at sunrise, while the Kremlin scrambled yesterday to frame a counteroffer that would avert bloodshed.
After a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev promised the hostage-takers’ lives would be guaranteed if they freed their captives.
Putin said that "the preservation of the lives of the people who remain in the theater building" was his overriding concern. But aside from Patrushev’s brief statement, the Kremlin’s strategy has not been made known, and Putin in the past has vowed not to countenance negotiations with Chechen rebels unless they focus on disarmament by the rebels and an end to their independence drive.
It was unclear whether that guarantee had been transmitted to the gunmen, much less whether it would be received with anything other than disdain. The heavily armed hostage-takers have said they are ready to die and take the estimated 600 to 800 hostages with them if their demands aren’t met, and they repeated yesterday that they will negotiate only with a Putin representative.
Daria Morgunova, a spokeswoman for the musical that was in progress when the assailants stormed the theater Wednesday night, told The Associated Press that an actor who was among the hostages called her to say that the captors had threatened to begin killing hostages at dawn. She said she received the call about two hours before Patrushev’s statement.
With less than hours to go before dawn, several influential figures entered the theater in efforts to mediate with the captors, including former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Aslanbek Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the Russian Parliament and is despised by rebels as a tool of the Kremlin, and Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia, a region bordering Chechnya.
Aushev said the assailants told him they would only negotiate with a presidential representative, and he added that there was a risk they might take "extreme measures." The hostage-takers have derided the Kremlin for refraining from sending high-level officials to negotiate.
All the other would-be mediators returned from the building except for Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta who is admired in Chechnya for her bold criticism of Russia’s war there. Earlier in the day,
Politkovskaya said that the Chechens would let their captives go if President Vladimir Putin said the war in Chechnya was over and the withdrawal of Russian troops from part of the region could be verified. She emerged after about five hours of talks with the hostage-takers inside the theater. Asked if she thought they were preparing to take action by killing the hostages, Politikovskaya said they told her ‘"We’re going to wait only a little while"’ for the demands to be met.
The gunmen released 19 hostages yesterday, including eight children, but a promise to free the estimated 75 foreigners among the captives went unfulfilled.
The children, dressed in winter coats — and one clutching a teddy bear with aviator goggles — appeared unharmed and healthy as they left the building.
Hostages gave varying accounts of conditions in the theater. "We are safe and sound, it’s warm and we have water and there’s nothing else we need in a situation like this," captive Anna Adrianova told Ekho Moskvy radio early yesterday, but she later said conditions had deteriorated. Another hostage said the situation was tense and the captives hadn’t received food or water and been using the theater’s orchestra pit as a toilet.
Yelena Malyonkina, another spokeswoman for the Nord-Ost musical that was being staged in the theater, said she spoke to a captive official from the production, Anatoly Glazychev, who told her that a bomb was placed in the center of the theater and all the aisles and stage were mined.
A group of about 80 demonstrators outside the theater carried banners and chanted anti-war slogans. Several said they were responding to requests from relatives who were among the hostages.
Alexander Petrov, a demonstrator who said he had friends inside the theater, said that previously he had not been opposed to the Chechen war, but now "what way out is there?"
Dozens of Nord-Ost cast members showed up later to sing tunes from the musical, tears coursing down their faces, in a gesture of support and concern for their comrades inside.
Russian Deputy Interior Minister Vasily Vasilyev accused Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov of personally organizing the hostage-taking. He said his allegations were based on the hostage-takers’ comments to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network.
