Part 3/4
Beslan school siege
When: Sept. 1-3, 2004
What happened? Terrorists motivated by Chechen separatism invaded a school in Beslan, North Ossetia in the Caucasus region, taking over 1,200 children, parents and teachers hostage during the opening ceremony for the school year. An operation by Russian special services to release the hostages resulted in 334 deaths, with most dying from the explosives the Russian troops used to breach the school.
How did Putin use it to his advantage? Following the tragedy, the Russian state, including Putin, propagated the false narrative that the terrorists had made no demands, when in fact they had demanded that Russian forces leave Chechnya and recognize its independence. Dmitry Peskov, then one of Putin’s press secretaries and now the Kremlin’s top spokesperson, was key in managing the coverage of the situation.
Later, Putin leveraged the Beslan massacre to justify legislative changes that abolished the election of governors in all 89 Russian regions, allowing him to appoint stooges and tighten his grip across the country. Additionally the Kremlin toughened laws on terrorism, expanded the powers of law-enforcement agencies, repeatedly amended the election system for the State Duma, consolidated its control over the Russian media and increasingly attacked non-governmental organisations.
Moscow subway bombings
When: March 29, 2010
What happened? A pair of Chechen militant suicide bombers detonated explosives at two of Moscow’s central subway stations, killing 39 people and wounding more than 100.
How did Putin use it to his advantage? Then-President Dmitry Medvedev, who briefly held the top job while Putin pulled the strings as prime minister, heightened security measures on public transport across Russia. This led to the testing of CCTV cameras with facial recognition systems in the Moscow subway system.
More than a decade later, Russia has installed around 500.000 CCTV cameras with facial recognition technology nationwide. The system is often used to track and detain opposition activists.
St. Petersburg subway bombing
When: April 3, 2017
What happened? A suicide bomber from a militant Islamist group in Russia detonated a bomb in a train car between two stations on the St. Petersburg subway system, killing 16 people. At the time, the Islamic State was at loggerheads with Russia, with Putin delivering deadly assistance to Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad who was fighting off rebel groups.
How did Putin use it to his advantage? The investigation suggested that the terrorists used the Telegram messaging app for communication, citing its relative security. The Russian government ramped up pressure on Telegram’s management, leading to the complete blocking of the app in 2018.
Telegram agreed to share user information with law enforcement that same year; the app was unblocked in 2020.
Since then, Telegram’s management has appeared more compliant with the Russian state. In 2021 it blocked opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Vote” bot ahead of elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. The bot was a crucial tool for distributing voting instructions, sending users the names of contenders most likely to defeat pro-Putin candidates.
Additionally the Kremlin used it for an aggressive crackdown on migrants with televised hunts for terrorists, and frighten the population. There were also allegations that the FSB used abductions, staged arrests and torture in their "investigations".
@freerussia_report
