Putin visits School No. 1 in Beslan for first time ahead of 20th anniversary of hostage crisis

Vladimir Putin has made an unexpected visit to School No. 1 in the North Ossetian city of Beslan, almost 20 years after an Islamist attack claimed the lives of 334 people, of whom 186 were children.

Footage released by the Kremlin on Tuesday showed Putin kneeling in front of the City of Angels, a memorial honouring the children who were killed in the siege, and then, for the first time, entering the ruins of the school, which have been turned into a memorial complex.

Putin also met with the mothers of Beslan victims, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday, publishing a four-minute video that showed Putin equating the fight against Islamist terrorists to the fight against “those who commit crimes in the Kursk region and Donbas”, adding that there were attempts “from abroad” to justify the Beslan terror attack and “provide the terrorists with moral, political, financial and military assistance”.

Though the three women seen meeting with Putin do not speak in the video released by the Kremlin, one of the women, Aneta Gadieva, who lost her nine-year-old daughter in the siege, later told independent media outlet Agentstvo that they had discussed the ongoing investigation into the attack, which has yet to conclude despite opening over 20 years ago.

Putin reportedly told Gadieva that he “did not know” why the investigation was taking so long, and assured her that he would ask the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, about the case.

The Beslan school siege, the deadliest terror attack in Russian history, began on 1 September 2004 when armed Chechen rebels stormed the building in the North Caucasus on the first day of the school year and took over 1,100 people hostage.

The siege ended three days later when the Russian security services stormed the building, attacking it with aerosol bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. However, survivors of the attack and the relatives of those killed have always been highly critical of the authorities’ response and have for years accused the Russian government of mishandling the crisis and subsequent rescue operation.

In 2017 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russia had failed to protect the Beslan hostages, and had not acted to prevent the attack despite receiving intelligence beforehand warning of a terror threat in the area. The ECHR also ruled that the Russian security services had used “powerful weapons such as tank cannons, grenade launchers and flame-throwers” in the rescue operation, which contributed to the enormous number of fatalities. 

Since his initial visit to a hospital in Beslan the day after the school was stormed, Putin has been to the city only once, visiting the city cemetery in August 2008 in an unpublicised trip that wasn’t revealed for over a decade. Until Tuesday, Putin had not returned to the city for 16 years, staying away on both the 10th and 15th anniversaries of the attack, preferring to make state visits to Mongolia on both occasions.