FEAR, SMOKE, AND MIRRORS ⟩ Why Did Putin Decide to Kneel at Beslan Several Weeks Before the 20th Anniversary of the Tragedy?

He directs his "compassionate" and "empathetic" reserves toward people in dire humanitarian situations far from Russia. During the Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region, Putin has already expressed deep concern for the "blockade of Gaza's civilian population" and the humanitarian plight of those previously affected by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Infantilism Gives Way to Panic

This comical "foresight" naturally sparked yet another wave of memes mocking the behavior of Russia's dictator. Until the beginning of this week, these memes primarily targeted Putin's infantilism—his reluctance to accept aspects of objective reality that contradicted his expectations. However, in the last few days, Putin has engaged in actions that reveal emotions far removed from the irritation of a petulant child, resembling more the desperation of a cornered animal.

For many years, Putin has been criticized for always finding something else to do during the early days of September to avoid attending memorial events related to the 2004 Beslan tragedy. He visited other continents, hugged sleeping tigers in the Ussuri Nature Reserve, but never came close to the gatherings commemorating the residents of Beslan who survived the deaths of hundreds of children.

It has, of course, never been difficult to understand Putin's desire to stay away from that city. Propaganda successfully framed the high number of Beslan tragedy victims as a result of the terrorists' ruthlessness for most of the Russian Federation's population.

This narrative held little sway with the Beslan mothers, for it is much harder to deceive those who have personally endured the loss of their children. Thus, Putin's wish to avoid confronting those who have every reason to see him as a mass murderer is entirely understandable.

On the anniversaries of the Beslan tragedy, Putin previously visited other continents, hugged sleeping tigers in the Ussuri Nature Reserve, but never came close to the memorial gatherings of the town's residents who had survived the deaths of hundreds of children.

On August 20, 2024, something highly unusual happened for Putin. He visited the "City of Angels", Beslan, where he toured School No. 1 and met with the mothers of the victims from the tragic events 20 years ago.

However, in the video footage of the meeting, the mothers are not given a moment to speak, and Putin himself avoids discussing 2004, instead focusing on current "enemies of the motherland," resulting in a heavily censored media product. All official news channels in the Russian Federation also broadcast footage of Putin making the sign of the cross and kneeling at the "City of Angels" memorial.

This image starkly contrasts with how Putin has traditionally sought to assert his authority among Russian citizens, and it appears so bizarre at a moment when an "invader's boot has stepped onto Russian soil" that its appearance on federal television seems almost surreal.

It is hard to interpret this as anything other than a crisis response measure. It seems that Putin is so bewildered by how to respond to Ukraine's military advances in the Kursk region that he is desperately trying to sell his compatriots something he has never sold before—an image of "humanity" supposedly inherent to him. The urgency was so great that he couldn’t wait a few weeks to time his display of grief precisely with the 20th anniversary of the Beslan nightmare.

Kadyrov as the Savior

On the same day, the same news channels also broadcast footage of Putin's second trip—to Grozny, to meet with Ramzan Kadyrov. The coverage of this visit was likely intended to reinforce the narrative built up by Putin's trip to Beslan: to remind the public that the Beslan tragedy was allegedly caused by "Chechen separatism" and to portray Ramzan Kadyrov as both the symbol of eradicating this "evil" and the sign of the "triumph of goodness," embodied in the preservation of Chechnya and the Caucasus within the framework of Russian statehood.

The most remarkable aspect of this scenario is that even if someone were to accept this falsehood, it’s unlikely that even Putin himself still believes it. His arrival in Grozny is clearly an act of desperation, based on the utterly unrealistic expectation that Kadyrov's forces might be motivated to stop the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region and, perhaps, in the Belgorod area as well. It  was proven two weeks ago, that Kadyrov had no intent of letting his fighters die in order to stop or delay Ukrainian advance in Russia.

It's likely that in early September, the anniversary of the Beslan tragedy will no longer be prominently featured in Russia's official media; the topic has already been covered, as they say, in advance. However, Western media will undoubtedly publish many recollections and analytical pieces on the subject, many of which will likely be accompanied by a brand-new photo of Putin kneeling in the "City of Angels". Hopefully not as a mourning head of state, but as the perpetrator whose incompetence and negligence resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Russian children.

Putin Has Long Revealed Himself as a Murderous Maniac

Currently, the debate over Russia's responsibility ranges between the events of 2008 and 2014: some argue that the West should have renounced Russian energy resources and labeled Russia as an aggressor only after the annexation of Crimea, while others believe it should have acted sooner, immediately following the events in Abkhazia. Yet this debate loses some of its weight when one considers that before Vladimir Putin began his mass killings abroad, he was already committing such atrocities within his own country.

It was particularly difficult to overlook this in September 2004, yet the "collective West" managed to do so, setting itself on a perilous path that eventually made February 2022 possible. The deeper the West comprehends the extent of its long-term errors, the more resolute and unyielding it must become in addressing their consequences. Challenger tanks in the Kursk region are a strong step forward, but much more is required for Ukraine to decisively succeed.