The Beslan tragedy claimed the lives of so many children. It’s almost impossible to find any information about any of them on the Internet besides their photos and names. Of course, their parents and relatives still cherish memories of them in their hearts, but the broader public doesn’t know much about those perished kids.  There are a lot of stories of Beslan survivors available in open sources. There are also many stories of the heroic rescuers who died saving Beslan hostages.

But let’s remember that our society lost 186 Beslan children. They could have grown up to become doctors, teachers, artists, builders, firemen and so on. Somebody could have become a famous writer, scientist or sportsman. Somebody could have invented a cure for cancer.  Somebody could have composed a beautiful music piece or written poems. They could have fallen in love and gotten married. They could have become caring parents and grandparents. It never happened because instead some of them died in a crossfire, others – from a tank or grenade fire.

Let’s remember each of these children.

The Beslan school siege (September 1-3, 2004) involved the capture of over 1,100 people as hostages including 777 children. It ended with the death of 333 people including 186 children.

The crisis began when a group of Islamic terrorists occupied School #1 in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia on September 1, 2004. The terrorists were sent by the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who demanded recognition of the independence of Chechnya and the UN and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. On the third day of the standoff, Russian security forces stormed the school building with the use of tanks, incendiary rockets, and other heavy weapons.

#PutinKIlls:

– because the rescue operation wasn’t properly prepared and conducted, the battle was chaotic, excessive force was used and many people were killed in a crossfire between local militia and militants,  and from rockets and tank fire.

– because he used this event to push through with security and political repercussions in Russia; most notably, it contributed to a series of federal government reforms consolidating power in the Kremlin and strengthening the powers of the Russian President.

– because the Russian government and President Putin lied to families and misinformed the public and media about all the aspects of the tragedy, disregarded human lives and even lives of children, and up to today the Russian leadership neglects the rights and needs of Beslan mothers.

Olga Romanova, 26, entered an occupied hall full of terrorists where there were about a thousand hostages.

Olga Romanova voluntarily went to the terrorists. Or rather, to the hostages – to comfort them, as they were paralyzed by the fear of death. She shouted from the doorway with a clear message: «Don’t be afraid of them, get out of here right now»! Then to the terrorists: «Immediately release them all»!  She was taken to the foyer and shot down.

Olga went to the theatre at night – to stop the criminals. She went with the intention of saving the children and all those caught up in this calamity. Her family tried to stop her. And they heard in response: «Someone must stop them. I will»!

What she did changed the situation dramatically. After murdering Olga Romanova, the terrorists began to release children and pregnant women.

The Moscow Nord-Ord theatre siege was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka theatre on October 23, 2002 by around 40-50 armed Chechen terrorists who claimed allegiance to the Islamic militant movement in Chechnya. They took around 800-900 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and the end of the Second Chechen War. The Nord-Ost siege was led by Movsar Barayev.

After a two-and-a-half day siege and the execution of two female hostages, Spetsnaz from Federal Security Service Alpha and Vega Groups, supported by a Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs SOBR unit, pumped an undisclosed chemical agent into the building’s ventilation system and raided. All attackers were executed; over 130 hostages died including nine foreigners, due to adverse reactions to the gas.

Some estimates have put the civilian death toll at more than 200 names on the list. Some former hostages and relatives of the victims claim that the death toll from the chemical agent is still being kept secret.

#PutinKills – because the rescue operation wasn’t properly carried out and caused so many deaths, the authorities didn’t provide the medical assistance needed in a timely manner and didn’t conduct the proper investigation of that terrorist attack, and as usual Putin’s regime lied and spread disinformation and used the tragedy to curtail civil rights covering it with the war with terrorism.

“It is sad and painful to write about those who left us already leaving just memories and pain in the eyes of relatives and friends.

One year ago we saw each other at his daughter Natasha’s birthday party. Children were playing, reading poems, and Dima kept taking pictures of the kids. Vacations were almost over; the last vacations for him. It is like he felt it. He tried to finish renovation in his apartments, packed his days with tours, visited museums. He had such a passion for life.

On the Kursk submarine, Dima was the commander of energy facilities. The Kursk nuclear reactor was shut down properly. He has paid in full his duty for his Motherland. Whether the government will do the same for the widows and their children – time will tell. So far the boys, even dead, are at their posts.

You will stay in our hearts forever.” – From memoirs of D. Kucherenko, Dima’s friend

On August 12, 2000, the Kursk submarine sank in the Barents Sea during a massive Russian Navy summer exercise. It was the first military exercise at such a large scale after the collapse of the Soviet Union. All 118 sailor, officers, and civilian contractors on board were killed.

Two explosions occurred on the submarine were registered by nearby ships, and the second was powerful enough to register by seismographs even in Alaska.

The Russian Navy didn’t recognize the submarine had sunk for more than six hours. It took 16 hours to locate the sunken vessel. The Russian government mislead and manipulated the public and media, and refused international help. The assistance from the UK and Norway was accepted only on the fifth day of the rescue operation. On the seventh day, Norwegian divers finally opened a hatch of the ship and found it flooded. Analysts later concluded that 23 sailors had survived the initial explosions for more than six hours.

The Russian Navy tried to cover-up the accident and offered a variety of reasons for the submarine’s sinking including blaming it on a collision with a NATO ship. However, the most cynical explanation was given by Russian President Vladimir Putin in “Larry King Live” show (“It sank”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDqvKYDv9M.

Russian President and Commander in Chief Vladimir Putin was vacationing on the Black Sea when the Kursk tragedy happened. #PutinKills – because he didn’t care about people’s lives. He unwillingly interrupted his leisure time to deal with the issue. His Navy wasn’t ready for the rescue operation. Everything was done slowly and in an inefficient manner. There were endless cover-ups and lies. Putin blamed the media in discrediting Russia and used the tragedy to continue his attack on the independent media.

Let’s set it straight: the UN stage is not the right place for him. However, Putin is obviously following the trend and general behavior of every dictator who has lived on this planet in last 70 years. Fidel Castro, Muammar Gadhafi, Hugo Chaves, Nikita Khrushchev and many others were stood on that stage and gave passionate speeches denouncing the bloody hegemony of the United States and dictatorship of the “West,” and calling for the multi-polarity of the world.

Vladimir Putin, Russian dictator, will now attempt to secure his “great place” in world history and, yes, to blame the West again. We can’t cancel his speech, but we can help Vladimir Putin to secure his proper place in the history – as an immoral cold-blooded murderer, an international criminal and the leader of one of the biggest criminal communities in the world.

Let’s use his speech as a chance to tell people about the wars in Eastern Ukraine, in Georgia, and now in Syria; about all the tragedies that happened in Russia during Vladimir Putin’s rule including Kursk, Nord-Ost, Beslan, and many others; all those political assassinations, abuses of human rights, oppressions and crackdowns. 118 dead sailors in the Kursk Submarine Disaster, 333 dead hostages in Beslan attack, 174 hostages in Nord-Ost Attack, 298 in MH17 plane crash, at least 5000 dead during conflict in Eastern Ukraine – this is even not a full list of tragedies that happened due to the direct or indirect involvement of Vladimir Putin. The World will never remember all the names of people hidden by those scary numbers, but it will remember the names of many of them – our friends and colleagues -who were killed because of their investigations, political and human rights activities: their names are Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estimirova, Stanislav Markelov, Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov.

This week we are launching the awareness campaign #PutinKills in order to tell people about the victims of Putin who is going to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly. And we are looking for your help!

Please join our campaign:

Use hashtag #PutinKills to tell people who is Mr. Putin;

Share and like the stories of the victims that we will post for a next week;

Join the Twitter storm on September 27 – 28;
Facebook event: goo.gl/Xy6BSB

Join us for rallies in New York on September 27 – 28;
Facebook event: goo.gl/XAHU9d

Together we can use Putin’s visit to the UN as a tool to make this world less comfortable for the dictators.

A London court has openly said that the murder of Litvinenko was personally ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian propaganda, meanwhile, continues to stubbornly stand on its own, broadcasting in various ways, two mutual theses: “It’s not us” and “we just defended.”

However, the Russian authorities, and after them, the media, have, for several years, successfully proven to townsfolk that any meanness and crime are justified by the unprecedented state of “external threat”. It turns out that the United States is to blame for all that today makes Russia an “organized” orange revolution” at the Russian border, supporting and continuing to support the opposition, cultivate a” fifth column “, lobby their interests in Russia” and so on.

As the hysteria on this subject in Russian society, not only does not subside, but is also gaining momentum, let’s try to understand one of the most common propaganda theses “The US organized Maidan in Ukraine.”

First, it is worth saying that the statement that the United States doesn’t support anyone and will never support anyone, is untrue. World reality is that there are no Saints – every country supports movements in other countries that are close to them, but does not go with the defined framework and rules. Revolution will also occur where there are strong and appropriate sentiments in society. Without them it is impossible to organize a revolution from outside that particular country. For this reason pro-Kosovo rallies in Serbia in 2013 could not develop into a revolution, as well as opposition rallies in Belarus in 2011 which did not lead to the victory of the “Revolution through social networks” not only because of the repressive machine of Lukashenko, but also because, his popularity was really high among the people.

In short, the revolution can be supported, but not organized, and both Russia and its opponents are doing it well. The “Winner” is the one whose interests most correspond to the real aspirations of the people of a country, that’s all. “Blood” is a revolution that happens when the dictator, against the will of the people, usurped power and does not want to leave. Unfortunately, practice shows that dictators do not really go without a lot of blood.

Thus, it is no secret that the United States at the diplomatic level supported the Maidan in Ukraine, but not to organize or hold it they simply would not do. Ukrainians took to the Maidan, because corruption and gangster lawlessness under the regime of Yanukovych rolled over, and to top it all, he sharply and severely ruined the dream of the majority of Ukrainians, which he himself had previously entertained. Add to that the brutal crackdown on students’ rally; it becomes clear why the Ukrainian revolutionaries were set up so strongly.

Some advocates go further and argue that the very mentality of Ukrainians was also a product of the influence of the United States. In a sense, this is true: the value of life and human dignity, the desire to live by the law and not by the bandit concept of law, protest against corruption, the corruption of judges and officials, and the arbitrariness of the siloviki, the value of freedom as such are all indicators of Western, and not Soviet mentality. It is clear that the mentality was formed over decades, and there are some absolutely legitimate means of broadcasting values through culture and education.

On the other hand, is the mood of the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine not a product of Russian influence? The only difference being that in their “wards” Russian political technologists produced no values, but fears, moreover, false fears. Do not forget the fact that the flag and the symbols of the DNR arose long before the Maidan and that throughout Eastern Ukraine Cossacks and other groups acted, distributing books about “Ukrainian fascism” and in this manner acted Russian propaganda. If we talk about the clash of the two poles of influence on the public mood – Russian and American – it cannot be denied that the US was at least more honest, because it aired universal values, not invented fears.

The next argument is that Russian propaganda has, for several years, fanned the fear of “foreign agents.” Many subjects of propaganda films have intended to illustrate the central idea of the Kremlin – “financed by the US, Russian NGOs currently allow too much.”

If you understand the issue, it appears that this is a blatant lie, or we will have to admit that financed by Russia, NGOs can afford in the US and Europe much more than “too much”. For example, in America there are a variety of affiliated Russian NGOs formally aimed at improving Russian-American relations, that is, in fact, the NGOs, which in Russia would be called foreign agents. However, these organizations exist in the United States quite easily, and there is no pressure against them.

The members of these NGOs are very active. Their members come to the US-Ukrainian conferences at local universities, behave defiantly, organize provocations actively debated with the speakers and even publicly called them liars. Members of these organizations are trying to disrupt any pro-Ukrainian activities, including marches, and are making alternative actions, including in support of the pro-Russian militants, in short aggressively and openly spreading Russian propaganda worldwide.

Similar actions are taking place in other countries. Recall how an unknown person tried to disrupt, by shouting pro-Kremlin slogans, the speech the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko at the Institute of Europe at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). Russian security services behave in the Baltic States pretty cheeky. I’m not talking about the many Kremlin “trolls”; mudslinging authors of different articles other than Putin’s propaganda.

And it refers only to ordinary propagandists, not professional spies, who also turn out to be numerous. Take for example the scandal exposing the ten Russian agents in 2010, the year or winter spy scandal in New York. But it pales in comparison to recently published data on the bribery of politicians and Putin’s secret service in the European Parliament and the parliaments of some European countries.

So, summarizing the above, the question arises: why in this case has the United States or Europe not built up arms and seized foreign territory under the pretext of protection from the invisible but tangible pressure from Moscow? Why has it happened that Russia has turned out to be so “sensitive” to the much milder manifestations of “soft power”?

In my opinion, the answer here lies in the phenomenon of the perception of bias. The fundamental difference between the United States from Russia is that the United States government does not to get involved in the foreign opposition – real or imaginary – of ordinary people, in other words, does not solve their problems at the expense of society. In normal countries the state’s task is to ensure a calm and peaceful life for its citizens, even if in some moments it would be advantageous to resort to the help of citizens, violating peace. However, the Americans are willing to take risks and to allow the Russian agents of influence to openly promote their views, but do not allow aggression and “witch hunt” into its society.

Just imagine what would happen if US media broadcast, local pro-Russian propaganda coming out in protest with banners DNR “is a foreign agent”, “it is financed by Russia”, “they are traitors, and a fifth column” “Ten friends of terrorists” and all the like. Imagine if all of these revelations were accompanied by the angry complaints about the fact that these “enemies and traitors” act with impunity, because they not formally violate the law. To what hatred of the Russians came from the Americans in this case?

However, the Americans have not fallen so far as to begin to poison the people, borrowing the rhetoric of Kremlin’s “Goebbels-TV.” For centuries, developed in the United States, the balance between private and public has been too expensive for the American nation, to put it in jeopardy because of a few strange people with no less bizarre posters. And in that respect – and to their own people – and to the “enemy” this is a special honour.

The situation is different in Russia, where people have always been used, not as an end in itself, but as a tool that is easy for the state to sacrifice their interests. “Cannon fodder”, “consumable” – the attitude of the Russian authorities to their own people has led to the extraordinary aggression in Russian society.

The authorities feared the “Bolotnaya” protests in 2012, and incited one side of the people against the other. The Russian government is frightened by the repetition in Russia of a Ukrainian Maidan, and incited the Russians against the brotherly Ukrainian people. Afraid of American influence the Russian government threw society into the abyss of militant chauvinism. One need only recall the recently published, in social networks, “manual for informers”, which in plain text said: “It is foolish to rely on the intelligence services in this situation. The special services should be the whole of Russia. ”

This mobilization of society might at some stage be profitable, but it has one very significant drawback in a country that has nothing to defend. There is no society – one big “secret service”. There is no peace and no quiet people, instead there is one big war. No stability – only economic collapse and calls “to survive under the pressure of the enemy.” No joy and friendship – only aggression and hatred. There is no truth, no freedom, no human happiness, because “consumables” cannot be happy, and should not. And this means that such a country has no future.

By Ksenia Kirillova
Translated by Steve Doyle