Friday
My initial hopes, that the storming of a theatre just outside Moscow (the name of which doesn't appear to be published anywhere, incidentally) by a gang of heavily-armed Chechenhawks was merely the execution of a piece of bizarre and shocking performance art, have now ebbed away.
"I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,""Even if we are killed, thousands of brothers and sisters will come after us, ready to sacrifice themselves," said a female among the group, only her eyes peering from a head-to-toe black robe."
As substitute for hope, I now have the tangibly queasy feeling that this is all going to end very badly.
Debka refers to the hall as the "Hall of Culture of the State Ball-bearing Factory".
May or may not be accurate.
Posted by Philip Chaston at October 25, 2002 08:11 AM
The theater is in a working-class neighborhood, so it may be true. It's not a very snappy name, though.
Posted by Ralf Goergens at October 25, 2002 08:38 AM
The theater is indeed attached to a ball bearing factory.
I have a very bad feeling about this.
Posted by michele at October 25, 2002 01:11 PM
The only hope I see is for Putin to announce that if any more hostages are killed a major rebel installation or encampment in Chechnya will be utterly destroyed immediately, starting (if possible) in the home neighborhood of the leader, whose name is know, and when targets there are exhausted, at random, with the price rising steeply for each dead hostage.
And then to do it.
Even then, I would not be optimistic.
Posted by Jim at October 25, 2002 04:03 PM
Would be possible, if the hostages die, that Putin would use a tactical nuke on a Chechen stronghold? Nightmare thought but I think it is possible.
Posted by Rich Cook at October 25, 2002 04:29 PM
damn... this is a terrible situation. I share all your fears, & I'm hard put to think of a scenario which won't end in hundreds of deaths.
& Jim, I understand you're trying to be pragmatic, & look at it in terms of lives saved, but if you start randomly punishing elements of a population for the actions of a minority, how can you then claim any moral superiority over a terrorist?
Posted by A_t at October 25, 2002 06:23 PM
What I think is the highest probability outcome is that Putin makes no threats, carries out no reprisals and offers no concessions, and in a few days there will be hundreds of deaths as they blow up the theater.
Once scenario leading to catastrophe is that the terrorists start murdering hostages. (With hundreds to work with, they can start shooting ten per hour.) At which point the Russians storm the place, and the terrorists set off their bombs. If I had to put my money on anything, that would be it. It's maybe one chance in three, with all other possibilities even lower odds.
There's virtually no chance of any outcome involving less than 100 deaths.
Posted by Steven Den Beste at October 26, 2002 07:38 AM
I wrote the previous post before I saw this. (Truly!)
Looks like they did start murdering hostages and the Russians did attack. No word yet on the total body count. The report says "Scores died".
Posted by Steven Den Beste at October 26, 2002 07:48 AM
Looks like it might have gone fairly well! The Russkies seems to have rescued most people and killed those evil murdering terrorist gobshites as well. Way to go, Ivan! Nice!
Posted by molly at October 26, 2002 02:33 PM
A_t: I thought I made it clear that I had military targets in mind. But after the deaths of 90 hostages (and I agree, this is a better outcome than we reasonably could have hoped for), I doubt that President Putin will be too picky about such things. Hold onto your hats! It's not over.
Posted by Jim at October 27, 2002 03:12 PM
