| On September 2, the most unpleasant, most difficult and most important meeting in Vladimir Putin’s presidential career will take place in Moscow. He will meet with the mothers of Beslan. At this meeting, you cannot say routine empty words on camera, you cannot pretend. At this meeting, unlike all others, the president’s interlocutors do not consider it a pleasure to meet with him. They even wanted to refuse, but still decided to give the president a chance to admit some obvious things. Moreover, this is a rare, perhaps the only meeting of its kind, when it is more important for the president to meet with his interlocutors than for them to meet with the head of state.
Beslan is the most bitter page in the modern history of the Russian state. Namely states, not just countries. The only visible consequence of the tragedy, which claimed the lives of 331 people, of which 186 were children, and the most tragic and bloodiest takeover of a secondary school in the history of mankind, has so far been the abolition of direct elections of regional heads. The head of the FSB and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs remained in their places and did not even receive a “reprimand with a record.” The President of North Ossetia was quietly removed nine months after the tragedy - so as not to do this under “pressure from the people.” The grief of mothers whose children were killed not only by the barbarity of non-humans who seized the school, but also by the monstrous corruption of the police, and the flagrant inability of the FSB to prevent terrorists from seizing crowded places (after all, before Beslan there was already “Nord-Ost”), the authorities considered it “pressure.” ", inconvenience.
The reaction of the supreme authorities to the tragedy in Beslan still remains inadequate. The investigation stubbornly refuses to admit testimony that diverges from the official version. The head of state not only did not dismiss the heads of the special services, but also still has not uttered the only words possible in such a situation: “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save your children.” Moreover, he did not prevent a series of official rallies organized from above in support of the president (and not the victims of the tragedy) immediately after Beslan.
Now, a year after the tragedy, the president has decided to take a courageous step. Such is the political tradition of Russia that the norm of behavior of the head of state in our country is courage. The President will listen to the most important mothers of his country. The president will have to answer something to people who have nothing to lose - because everything has already been lost, irreversibly.
The worst outcome of this meeting will be that it is inconclusive. It is clear that you cannot return the children. But the investigation, which until now openly tried in the interests of the supreme power to convict the supposedly one and only surviving terrorist and fundamentally did not analyze the actions of the state’s security forces, should change radically after the meeting on September 2.
Putin must, for the first time in his political career, perhaps for the first time in his life, publicly admit his own guilt and certainly give the command (since the “independent” judiciary does not understand otherwise) to understand, according to the law, the degree of guilt of those representatives of government agencies who are responsible for security children.
Moreover, even having given such a command, even agreeing to such a meeting, the president should not feel like a hero, and the propaganda machine should not make a hero out of him. Looking into the eyes of mothers who have lost their children because of the state (and not just because of terrorists) is immeasurably more difficult than flying a Tu-160 strategic bomber. But this is not heroism, this is part of the job of a person whose position is called “president”.
The meeting should also affect the work of the parliamentary commission investigating the events in Beslan. The parliamentarians who are members of this commission and have already postponed the deadlines for their report more than once must realize that their task is not to draw up a report pleasing to the executive branch, but to honestly and impartially understand the causes of the tragedy. And not only in its “terrorist” component.
For the president, meeting with the mothers of Beslan is not a feat, but a duty. A debt that cannot actually be paid, but must be paid. And thanks to the mothers of Beslan who agreed to this meeting. They give the authorities a chance to save their honor. And in a sense, save the honor of each of us. We are also to blame for the fact that the name of this North Ossetian city will be associated with a terrible tragedy for centuries. Semyon Novoprudsky
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