Translated material
Margarita's cry
Having heard in Simonyan’s report that there are 354 hostages, the terrorists threaten to increase their number to this figure. But there is no remorse, but there is another wampuka
AUDIO VERSION
This material has an audio version on Youtube. Read by Irina Petrovskaya.
The whole week passed under the sign of memory of the Beslan tragedy that happened 20 years ago. YouTube was filled with films, programs and interviews, which still contained more questions than answers:
How did this become possible?
Why didn't negotiations take place?
who started the storming of the school?
The most ambitious project has released a new YouTube channel “Minute per Minute”. Previously, its creators published their investigations in the Telegram channel, but here for the first time they talked about the Beslan terrorist attack in a video version: without judgment, in strict chronological order, hour by hour, based on eyewitness accounts and including footage of amateur chronicles and archival state news releases. And more often than others, fragments of live broadcasts from the scene of the tragedy of the then young Vesti special correspondent Margarita Simonyan were shown.
Here she reports on September 1: “Finally, late in the evening, contact was established with the militants, and therefore now there is some information from the inside. It consists of children being treated tolerably, being taken to the toilet, being offered water and drink, and being kept separate from adults.” On the same day, for the first time, she voiced to the whole country the version that there were 300–400 hostages. Together with the country, numb with horror, these reports are watched by terrorists. Having heard in her next report that there are 354 hostages, they promise to bring their number to the figure announced on TV.
On the 20th anniversary of the Beslan school siege, the same Simonyan made her own film with her own interpretation of the events. It was shown by the Russia-1 TV channel on the night of September 3-4 as part of the “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov” program. The film was widely advertised on the channel.
Vesti devoted exactly a minute to the memorial events in Beslan itself in the evening edition towards the end. The voice-over said that today is the day of remembrance for victims of terrorism. Memorial vigils were held throughout the country.
In Beslan itself, mourning events, which traditionally last three days, ended. 334 white balls soared into the sky - exactly the number of people killed in the terrorist attack.
The screening of the film was preceded by an introductory speech by Solovyov himself and the author via video link. Solovyov mournfully remembered the terrible tragedy and pain that cannot be forgotten, the feat of our special forces guys. And he mentioned “the hooting of scum among liberals who almost justified this crime of terrorists.” Simonyan confirmed: “Yes, Volodya, there is, of course, about these scoundrels you are talking about, but very little.”
I had a rough idea of what kind of “scum” and “scoundrels” these two crystal-honest and pure people meant. Five years ago, on the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attack in Beslan, two documentaries were released on YouTube - by Yuri Dud* and Ksenia Sobchak.
Then, in the same Solovyov’s studio, the assembled experts called for a fight against “all the abominations that we allow to raise their heads and de facto justify terrorism.”
In Simonyan’s new film they are not called by their last names, but Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina and Yuri Dud briefly appear in the frame for illustration purposes. The author calls them and others like them stray seagulls, who “according to a well-known manual, repeat the same thing: it was the officers who killed people, and the terrorists are great fellows and freedom fighters.”
Why are they “vagrant gulls”? Yes, because, according to the author’s version, they, the “strays,” were not in Beslan during the bloody events, but she - “no matter what anyone says” - was here and remembers everything clearly. “We journalists stood next to people, and no one knew how many people were in the gym or what to do.”
Margarita is silent: from the first day, the relatives of the captured children, distraught with grief, stood right there with posters that read: “There are at least 800 of them there!!!” But she adhered to the official data, and these people with posters were not included in her stories.
Justifying himself, Simonyan accuses the liberal media (and primarily Novaya Gazeta) of publishing the same figures as hers - they say that there were no others. And again it is silent about the fact that Novaya and others referred to official data only at the beginning - while their correspondents were still getting to Beslan ( Anna Politkovskaya was supposed to come, but still unknown persons stopped her, simply poisoned her on the plane; the journalist miraculously survived . - Ed. ).
And he doesn’t talk about the main thing: the terrorists did NOT read newspapers or listen to the radio during the days of the terrorist attack. They watched TV, became wild and tightened the conditions for keeping the hostages hour after hour.
Commenting on the negotiations captured on camera with the terrorists of Ruslan Aushev (the only one who managed to enter the seized school and take mothers with infants out of there), Simonyan reports with a mocking intonation: “The former president of Ingushetia was allowed into the school with all the respect due in the Caucasus. It has long been said in the Caucasus that the former Ingush government was on friendly terms with the militants. In these shots, Aushev is busily inspecting the place of execution of the fathers of families who were shot in the very first hours. But on the soft chairs the terrorists are having a nice conversation with Aushev.”
On the same tape, the school director asks the militants not to harm her children, and one of them replies: “You’re asking Putin for this.” Simonyan picks up: “But this was a rare case in the history of our country when nothing depended on Putin.”
Of course, there was no explosion from outside, because it simply could not have happened. And no one still knows what it was. But, at least, “in the first minutes and hours, when no seagulls had yet arrived, everyone said one thing: the explosions occurred inside the gym.”
Susanna Dudieva, head of the Mothers of Beslan committee, has questions that she still cannot find an answer to. She believes that no one was punished for the death of her son. And in a short conversation with Simonyan he mentions shooting tanks, but the author quickly turns away from this topic. Because, be that as it may, life goes on, the victims of the terrorist attack, who became disabled, undergo rehabilitation in excellent domestic medical centers.
The children of Beslan grew up and already gave birth to children of their own. Former hostages, in memory of the fallen special forces officers, volunteer to serve in the Northern Military District. The grapes are ripening.
In Beslan, the holiday is the first bell, for which the whole city gathers. Multi-colored balls soar into the sky.
Margarita herself mournfully wanders through the destroyed gymnasium, turned into a memorial, looks at photographs of the dead children and shudders with sobs. At some point, as if knocked down, she falls to her knees in front of a large cross installed here (and at the same time in front of her own husband Tigran Keosayan, who for some reason stands behind the cross), raises her eyes to the sky and admits to involuntary blasphemy: then, 20 years ago, she first had questions to the Lord. Why are these people doing this? How was this possible? The Lord, like the authorities, does not give an answer. Margarita does not lose hope of getting an answer. From the Lord, of course. What questions do you have for the authorities?
In the meantime, she leaves the terrible hall and rushes, still bursting into tears, with hugs to an elderly woman - a teacher, a former hostage who lost two children here. She gently pushes away the visiting, sorry, VIP guest and asks: “Don’t cry, Margarita, we can’t, because then I’ll melt down here completely.” By the way, only Margarita sobs bitterly in the film - the victims of the terrorist attack themselves somehow hold on. “And thank you for your big heart,” as Ksenia Sobchak recently wrote, addressing her “sworn friend.” True, she had a slightly different reason in mind.
AUDIO VERSION
This material has an audio version on Youtube. Read by Irina Petrovskaya.
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