‘Children got scared, teachers were all in shock’: a ‘spontaneous’ hostage drill terrified everyone at a Gelendzhik public school

A drill simulating a hostage situation took place at the First Gelendzhik public school on October 19. Armed people “took hostages” in the school building, firing shots into the ceiling.

In her comment on the Gelendzhik Mayor Alexey Bogodistov’s Telegram channel, Zinaida Yakovidi, a student’s mother, described what happened:

No one had been warned; people with machine guns burst in and started firing; the children got scared, teachers were all in shock! And what if someone jumped from a second-floor window? Or had a seizure? Who was going to answer for that?

When Yakovidi appealed to the local education department, the officials replied:

Everything should be spontaneous, so that everyone learns how to behave in such situations. Or do you want you child to get shot?

The Mayor replied that he will look into the situation. “This isn’t a good time for spontaneity,” he remarked.

Gelendzhik’s city authorities claim having informed the school about the upcoming drill. “Teachers had been instructed. Students had been notified over the intercom that this is a drill,” a municipal representative insisted.

• On September 29, a similar unannounced drill took place at an agrarian college in the Nizhny Novgorod region. College administrators started a drill without telling the students, who were locked in the classrooms, and began to text their friends about a terrorist attack at the school.

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