Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory has brought the reality of war and its uncertain aftermath closer to home for Russian citizens. In public, however, President Vladimir Putin acts as if the extension of the fighting this August is a minor event.
Instead of going to the front and showing solidarity with his fellow citizens in the affected regions (the border regions of Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod), Putin, commander-in-chief of the Russian Armed Forces, travelled last week to the Caucasus. There, he recalled old events – the terrorist attack on the school in Beslan in North Ossetia on 1 September 2004 – and fraternised with Ramzan Kadyrov, the top leader of the nepotistic and archaic regime installed in Chechnya (a territory with Muslim traditions) by Moscow after two wars against local independence movements.
Putin refuses to use the word “war” to describe the conflict with Ukraine, and those who use this term in Russia can be sentenced to prison terms by the courts. In meetings with military and civilian commanders since August 6, the president has labeled the Ukrainian incursion “another major provocation” and “the events in the Kursk region.”
Official Russian terminology has separated the events of a single war into two categories: the fighting on Russian territory is an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a “Special Military Operation (SMO).” Apart from fragmenting and diminishing the perception of the conflict, the play on terms also allows one to avoid formal demands that “war” would impose on the status of prisoners and the rules of the war game, for example. Today, Russia can treat fighters for Ukraine as common criminals.
On August 20, Putin visited Beslan, the scene of the September 2004 terrorist attack that left 334 people dead (186 of them children). There, the president visited the attacked school, the cemetery where the victims are buried, and met with the mothers’ association. In the nearly 20 years since the attack, the president had made two lightning trips to Beslan: on the night of September 3-4, 2004, when he visited the hospitalized victims, and in 2008.
In 2004, in Beslan, Putin considered that the fight against terrorism should be a “common task of the entire state” for which “all resources” should be mobilized and international cooperation should be used. At that time, Russian solidarity had not yet been extinguished in the wake of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.
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Now, the mood is different. “We know well that not only did they try to justify this horrible crime (the Beslan massacre) from abroad, but they also helped the terrorists morally, politically, in an informational, financial and military way,” said the Russian president in Beslan, as if he had forgotten that the brutal attack on the school had provoked a resounding and widespread international condemnation and numerous emotional gestures of solidarity around the world.
Beslan has served as a parallel for Putin between the 2004 terrorist attack and the Ukrainian incursion into Russia. “Our adversaries and enemies (…) continue their attempt to destabilise our country. This is obvious. And just as we fight terrorists, we must fight today against those who commit crimes in the Kursk, Donbas and Novorossiya regions (Russian historical-administrative concept of the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine in the Russian empire).” “And just as we achieved our goals in the fight against terrorism, we will achieve these goals in this direction as well, in the fight against neo-Nazis, and we will certainly punish the criminals,” the Kremlin leader said.
In 2004, under the pretext of wanting to strengthen the legislature to fight terrorism, Putin replaced the system of electing provincial governors that had been in force until then with one based on his own appointment. There was no indication that the elected status of the governors had in any way influenced the prevention or consequences of the attack, but Putin used the school takeover to exert greater control over the Russian political system.
Visit in Chechnya
In Chechnya, where he also visited North Ossetia on August 20, Putin expressed his support for Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of a patriarchal and authoritarian regime that takes the legal arbitrariness prevailing in Russia to extremes.
In the Chechen town of Gudermes, at a university set up to train assault corps, Putin applauded Adam Kadyrov, Ramzan’s son, from a platform. Adam, who at 16 already heads his father’s security service, gave a demonstration of target shooting with a machine gun for the Russian leader. In 2023, the same teenager kicked and punched Nikita Zhurabel, a 19-year-old Russian accused of burning a Koran. The attack took place in a pre-trial detention centre in Chechnya to which the prisoner, defenceless against his spoiled attacker, had been transferred from the Russian province of Volgograd, where the burning took place, on the orders of the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrikin, and to be tried by the offended Muslims. None of the officials accompanying Adam tried to stop the vile beating, which was widely broadcast on video.
The boy was decorated as a “hero of Chechnya” and praised by his father and other leaders of Muslim-majority Russian territories. The situation was scandalous for the self-esteem of senior officials of the Russian judiciary, but they remained cowardly silent. Attempts to get the detainee out of Chechnya and move him “to a safer place” were unsuccessful, Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council of Russia, told this journalist. She questioned the Russian prosecutor’s office and the penitentiary service about the case.
In the information about Putin’s visit to Chechnya (the first official one in 13 years) published on the Kremlin’s official website, the president is not shown applauding Adam Kadyrov or kissing a copy of the Koran during the inauguration of a mosque, both images of which were disseminated on social networks.
In exchange for his loyalty, Putin has allowed Kadyrov to have his own army. According to the Kremlin website, the Chechen leader reminded Putin that his republic is actively participating in the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. “From the very beginning, we have sent more than 47,000 fighters to the SMO zone, including about 19,000 volunteers,” he said. “We have formed a reserve of several tens of thousands of trained and equipped fighters, ready to go to the SMO zone at your command,” the Caucasian leader stressed to the head of state. He concluded: “We will not let you down.” […]. We are ready to carry out any order you give.”
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