Russian President Vladimir Putin has, as expected, responded to the murder of the children in North Ossetia by declaring that there will be no surrender over Chechnya.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 460.

He did look rather chastened in his television address to the Russian people, and well he might. He had just got back from a visit to the survivors and to the scene of the crime, where he will have experienced, as watching on television can never do, the reality of a policy which has not brought the security he promised. But he gave no ground. And he did the two things he had to do. He threw all the blame for the tragedy on the hostage-takers, thereby implying that he had fulfilled his promise to do nothing to harm the children. In doing so, he made the predicted accusation that foreign terrorists were involved. "We are dealing with a direct intervention of international terror against Russia, with a total, cruel and all-powerful war," he said. And he declared that there was no other way than his for dealing with Chechnya, thereby scotching any suggestion that a change of policy might be in prospect.

'Unprotected'

There was no talk of talk with the Chechen rebels. Indeed he announced that security measures would be stepped up, with a shake-up in the security forces, better crisis management (in the expectation of further attacks presumably) and stricter border controls.

“We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten”
President Putin

He spoke almost nostalgically for the old days of tight Soviet border policing. "Our country, which used to have the strongest defence system of its external borders, instantly became unprotected from either the West or the East," he lamented. If there was any admission of failure, it was that he had not been tough enough. "In general, we need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world. In any case, we couldn't adequately react... "We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he declared.