Russia hunts for answers amid its grief and anger

Hope, consternation, anger, frustration, despair: these were the reactions that engulfed Russians as they watched live television coverage of the end of the two-day school siege in Beslan.

Hope, consternation, anger, frustration, despair: these were the reactions that engulfed Russians as they watched live television coverage of the end of the two-day school siege in Beslan.

Anticipating the worst, as the first pictures of bodies on stretchers rolled across the screens, some started crying softly. When the presenter on NTV, the only Russian channel to cover the unfolding drama live, quoted officials as saying that "most" of the hostages had survived, people shook their heads and deduced: "That means some of the children are dead."

NTV's live coverage was a first for Russia, and appeared to be a response to widespread criticism of the media's failure to cover the disastrous end of the Moscow theatre siege in October 2002. It was also apparent that the codes applying to reporters, producers and presenters in Britain and many other countries were either non-existent or unheeded. Reporters interviewed clearly traumatised children and made no effort to disguise the identity of any of the children, including the dead or seriously injured, who were filmed being carried on stretchers towards waiting ambulances.

While families of the hostages had, understandably, urged the government to accede to all the demands of the hostage-takers to secure the release of their children, opinion across Russia seemed set firm against making any concessions to the Chechen militants who were presumed to be responsible for the siege.

The conservative (mostly former Communist) press toed the same hard line before yesterday's denouement as the majority of the pro-government and liberal media. Newspapers, such as Novaya Gazeta, whose correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya, has been among the fiercest critics of President Vladimir Putin's hardline policy towards Chechnya, condemned the hostage-takers almost as fiercely as those with no time for the Chechen separatist cause.

That it was a school, and children who were taken hostage, seemed to cross a line for most Russians. "No Caucasus code of honour bestows the right to wage war on children," was the headline on one commentary in the newspaper Trud. Komsomolskaya Pravda asked in its front-page headline: "How much are the bandits paid for their acts of terrorism?"

While demanding a swift and decisive end to the siege, however, Russians also wanted the children to be rescued unharmed. Everyone well remembers the Moscow theatre siege, when a successful operation to overcome the attackers and rescue the hostages turned into a catastrophe because there were insufficient supplies of antidote to treat the freed hostages after their ordeal.

Watching the live television reports yesterday, Russians turned away in disbelief at the chaotic scenes that followed the release of the first hostages in the early afternoon. The lack of on-site medical treatment, the shortage of stretchers, the clear lack of co-ordination between different branches of the emergency services ­ all against the constant sound of gunfire.

As the number of reported casualties mounted, the number of questions mounted as well. Most frequently, people asked why, given that this was hardly the first siege the Russian authorities had faced, the authorities seemed so poorly prepared. "And we claim to be a First World country," was one bitter epitaph.

The fact that the militants holding the hostages made no public demands led analysts to suggest that the main goal may have been to show their might. It is unlikely that the militants harbour any hope that MrPutin will buckle under the recent wave of attacks and soften Russia's hard line against the separatists.

The attackers' goal is "only to frighten, to show Russians that all of them are in danger", said Alexander Golts, a military analyst for the Russian weekly Yezhenedelny Zhurnal. "The organisers of these attempts have to understand that they cannot change Russian policy in the Caucasus," he said, referring to the restive swath of mountainous land that includes Chechnya and North Ossetia, where the school in the town of Beslan was seized as students returned for the new school year.