| A terrible tragedy has taken place in Moscow.
The losses suffered during the events in the Moscow theatre are
irreparable. We offer our condolences to everyone who lost loved
ones.
We firmly believe that there can be no excuse for terrorism:
there are neither political or religious grounds, there can be
no reference to good intentions, not even so-called "symmetric
and retaliatory measures", nor anything else. There is no
excuse for murder, threat or blackmail by murder of innocent and
defenseless people. In that sense, the cause of terrorism is not
poverty or suffering, or even revenge (as regards a culprit),
but infinite cruelty.
We realize that those responsible for planning the hostage release
action and the individuals who performed this operation had to
choose between terrible and extremely terrible options. Only the
authorities could make this choice, and they did the best they
could.
Only the people who lived through that tragedy - the hostages,
their families, moscovites, citizens of Russia, and, in the end,
history - can assess the correctness of this choice. The evaluation
of the most difficult and tragic situation by politicians cannot
be full and objective nowadays.
When advocating the settlement of such crises with methods based
on the use of every possibility to release the maximum number
of hostages with the minimum harm, we drew up a different action
plan, involving step-by-step negotiations, during which you can
hope for the gradual release of all hostages or at least some
of them.
We thought that the so-called "demands", which represent
forms of the negotiation process or political gestures, could
be discussed when human lives are at stake.
We think that a decision to launch a forceful operation, for
instance, a storm, should be made exclusively on operative reasons
and not on the basis of political or personal reasons or public
feelings at a particular moment in time.
Can we say with conviction that there was a strong likelihood
that the loss of countless lives would have been prevented by
adopting our proposed plan of action? Nobody can give such guarantees.
However, we thought it necessary to utilize such methods in full.
The president took a different decision: the government does
not negotiatewith terrorists. It is so far impossible to fully
estimate the consequences of the decision. It is hard to dispute
whether it was possible to act differently. Only a thorough elucidation
of all details and factors would make it possible to ascertain
logic for decision-making, which would have no doubt have been
a hard decision to take.
However, it can already be stated that the situation with medical
assistance to the victims and treatment of their relatives was
and remains almost criminal. Physicians saving human lives should
have been given as much information as possible about the reasons
for their state of health. The families of the victims should
have been given as much information about them as possible.
On the whole, the events of October 23-26 are our common defeat
and our common tragedy. No single politician and no single citizen
can absolve himself of responsibility for these events.
The infiltration of a large unit of terrorists in the centre
of Moscow is evidence of the great failure of our secret services
and the law enforcement system in general. We think that the excessive
level of corruption is a key problem here. It is impossible to
work normally and guarantee our citizens' safety, without first
naming the culprits and carrying out an extensive reshuffle of
high-ranking personnel.
There is no doubt that those who take the path of terrorism must
be prosecuted or liquidated if prosecution is impossible. However,
this event makes it even more necessary to resolve the armed conflict
in Chechnya and bring to an end the "mopping up" operations,
tortures, disappearances of people, out-of-court reprisals, humiliation
and unlimited physical violence, to bring to an end the cruelest
war aimed at eliminating an entire people. All efforts to find
political solutions to end the war must be multiplied.
All possible lessons must be drawn from this tragedy.
See also:
Act
of Terror in Moscow
War
in Chechnya | 