MOSCOW, 6 September 2004 — The bloody end to a school siege by Chechen gunmen throws in doubt how President Vladimir Putin’s hard-line policy in turbulent south Russia can end separatism there and the wave of savagery it has brought.
The siege, and the storming by troops which ended it with more than 330 dead, broke grim new ground, even by the brazen and bloody standards of past Chechen rebel attacks.
Children had never been the target before.
In two weeks of deadly attacks in Russia, what is perhaps most ominous is that no one seems sure who is leading them.
The men routinely denounced as instigators — fugitive Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and radical separatist Shamil Basayev — appeared little more than bystanders this time.
“This is the beginning of a new political-military force joining the war against Russia. It is unclear what the force is, but people like Maskhadov or Basayev are merely its puppets,” said Sergei Markov, an analyst close to the Kremlin.
“I think the latest series of terrorist acts was aimed at Putin and authorities closely dependent on Putin. They were intended to show that Putin is not in control of the situation,”
In just over two weeks, separatists have been blamed for a brazen attack in Chechnya killing over 100, bringing down two passenger airliners with a death toll of 90. And last week, a suicide bomber killed nine people in central Moscow.
But as Russia declared a second period of national mourning in as many weeks, the country’s top security officials have mostly stayed in the Kremlin shadows.
During the school siege, Putin himself kept a low profile.
“In France, they had two hostages and their leader was out every day. Where’s our president? Why did our children die?” one unidentified man said on television in Beslan, the town in Russia’s turbulent North Caucausus where the school was seized.
It was only 24 hours after the shootout that Putin went on television, calling for an overhaul of security force tactics and pledging — again — to ensure Russian territorial integrity.
Chechnya went unmentioned in his address as did any ideas that he might review his policy toward the unruly province. The Kremlin has been very sensitive to any suggestion of giving away more land following the huge territorial losses that accompanied the Soviet Union’s collapse 13 years ago.
Few expect the latest crisis to do much serious political damage to Putin’s position — his standing in polls has remained very high in the six months into his second four-year term and it was his tough approach to Chechen separatism that was a major factor in his rise to the presidency in 2000.
In the face of the latest violence, Putin has shown no sign of ending his policy of dealing with the decade-long separatist war in Chechnya. Human rights advocates say it has been so brutal that it has radicalized many Chechens.
