(Moscow) During his first visit Tuesday to the Beslan school, the scene of a bloody hostage-taking 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin compared the massacre to the ongoing Ukrainian military offensive in the Russian region of Kursk.
“Just as we fought terrorists, today we must fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region, in Donbass, in Novorossiysk,” the Russian president said in a video posted on Telegram.
Donbass is a region in eastern Ukraine, largely controlled today by Russian troops, and the term “New Russia” refers to a plan to create Russian territory in the south and east of the same country.
“Just as we have achieved our goals in the fight against terrorism, we will also achieve them in the fight against neo-Nazis, and we will undoubtedly punish the criminals,” added Vladimir Putin, resuming his argument on the “denazification” of Ukraine.
He made these remarks on the sidelines of a visit to Beslan School Number One – his first to the scene of the tragedy – in the Russian Caucasus, to pay tribute to the victims of the bloody hostage-taking that a Chechen commando carried out there 20 years ago.
PHOTO SERGEI KARPUKHIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Vladimir Putin
More than 1,000 people were taken hostage on the 1ster September 2004 and held for 50 hours in atrocious conditions. The ordeal ended in a bloodbath: some 330 dead, including 186 children.
In addition to visiting the school, Mr Putin visited the cemetery where most of the victims are buried. He knelt at a memorial and laid red roses, according to footage released by the Russian presidential press service.
According to the same source, he then placed flowers at a monument to Russian special forces soldiers killed during the assault on the school.
“This tragedy will undoubtedly remain an incurable wound in the historical memory of all of Russia,” Putin said.
His visit comes as Russia has been in the grip of a Ukrainian military offensive of unprecedented scale for two weeks on its own soil.
After months of retreating in the face of the advance of Russian troops in the east of its territory, Ukraine took the fight to Russia by launching a cross-border assault on August 6 against the Kursk region.
On March 22, Russia experienced the worst attack in the country since the one in Beslan in 2004.
Gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall concert hall on the northwestern outskirts of the Russian capital and set it ablaze, killing 145 people and injuring hundreds more.
More than 20 people have since been arrested, including four suspected attackers, all from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan.
Although the attack was quickly claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS), Russian authorities continued to see the hand of Ukraine in it, where Russia launched an offensive in February 2022.
Kyiv categorically rejects any involvement.