Russia commemorates 20th anniversary of Beslan massacre

Russia on Sunday commemorates 20 years since an Islamist commando took hostages at a school in Beslan, in the Russian Caucasus, which resulted in a massacre that left 334 dead, including 186 children, and traumatized the country.

On August 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was already in power at the time of the attack, visited the school for the first time and compared the massacre to the ongoing Ukrainian military offensive in the Kursk region.

On September 1, 2004, the first day of the school year, an armed group of Chechens and Ingush entered School Number One in Beslan, in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, and kidnapped more than a thousand people: parents, teachers, and schoolchildren.

For more than 50 hours, they were held in atrocious conditions, deprived of water, and several of them were executed. On September 3, a double explosion inside the school gymnasium caused panic, with children trying to flee under the gunfire of the hostage-takers.

A man carries a young boy on his back as a soldier and a volunteer stand behind a school fence during the rescue operation at the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, southwestern Russia, on September 3, 2004 © AFP – YURI TUTOV

These explosions, the origin of which is not entirely determined, push Russian special forces to launch a chaotic assault that ends in a monstrous bloodbath: 334 dead, including 186 children, and more than 750 injured.

– Deadliest attack in Russian history –

This attack, the deadliest in Russian history, occurred at a time when the second Chechen war was in full swing pitted the Russian army against a separatist rebellion that was gradually becoming Islamized. The conflict was ultimately won by Moscow, which was accused of killing tens of thousands of civilians.

The Beslan attack marked the peak of the atrocities committed during the two Chechen wars (1994-1996, then 1999-2009).

The poor management of this crisis and the near absence of negotiations led to protests led in particular by the Beslan Mothers Committee, which obtained the resignation of the head of the republic at the time, Alexander Dzassokhov, in 2005.

Commemoration of the Beslan massacre, September 3, 2009 in the gymnasium of the school where the attack took place, located in the southwest of Russia, in North Ossetia © AFP – KAZBEK BASAYEV

In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that the Russian authorities had taken “insufficient” preventive measures and criticized a disproportionate use of force during the assault on the school.

The ECHR ordered Moscow to pay more than three million euros to 409 applicants, former hostages who were injured and relatives of victims.

At Sunday's commemorations, according to the official program, former students who survived the hostage-taking are expected to gather in the schoolyard, arranged by class, carrying portraits of the victims.

Then children, survivors and officials are expected to lay flowers and candles in the school's charred former gymnasium, which has since become a memorial. The Beslan Mothers Committee is to hold a press conference next.

– Putin's recent first visit –

During his recent visit to the Beslan school, Vladimir Putin drew a parallel between this attack and the unprecedented Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, carried out after more than two years of large-scale attacks by the Kremlin in Ukraine.

“Just as we fought the terrorists, today we must fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region, in Donbass,” he declared, resuming his argument on the “denazification” of Ukraine.

Photo published by the official Sputnik news agency showing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the memorial to the Beslan massacre in southwestern Russia on August 20, 2024 © POOL – Vyacheslav PROKOFYEV

After months of retreat in the east of its territory, Ukraine has taken the fight to Russia by launching an unprecedented cross-border assault on August 6 against the Kursk region, where it has conquered dozens of towns.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities also accused kyiv of playing a role in the March 22 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall near Moscow. The attack, the bloodiest in Russia since the Beslan attack, left 145 dead and hundreds injured.

The attack was quickly claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS), but Russian authorities continued to see the hand of Kiev and its Western allies in it, who categorically rejected any involvement.

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