Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 288 - The Beslan School Siege: Part 2

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

*CONTENT WARNING* The conclusion to the Beslan School Siege *LIVE SHOW TICKETS* Night one: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-live-podcast/ Night two: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-live-podcast-27jan24/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the

show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me here in this very much not depressed at what we're about to talk about room is Tom. Hey, buddy. I had a very disappointing sandwich before we started recording this, and this morning I knew we were recording this, and I was like, I'm not looking forward to it. Then I had a disappointing sandwich, and I was like, oh, looking forward to it then I had a disappointing sandwich and I was like oh maybe that'll be the worst thing that happens to me today and then I remembered what we're recording. Should have pre-ordered your sandwich again. Yeah I did I didn't get the

pre-order sandwich I like went across the street to a coffee shop and like got a sandwich and a coffee the weird thing about coffees over here is that like they're really small so like the standard your most standard large coffees like a latte should be 12 ounces. And then like something like a flat white should be about eight. For any of the baristas out there, a flat white and a latte are pretty much the same coffee, just less milk.

Wait, really? Yeah. I learn something new every day on the show. Yeah. So I was once upon a time a barista and how did I not know this? how did I not know about the Tom Barista arc? yeah I'm like

Jamie Heineman from Mythbusters I've kind of done everything but yeah when you're texturing the milk you texture lattes and flat whites the same so if you have your big milk jug and you're like steaming it and texturing it you can make like two flat whites with a big jug or like one latte and have like a little bit of milk left over a cappuccino has denser foam um and more of it for those that are interested but yeah so like the the cappuccinos are like and lattes

are like the same size and they're really small and then a flat white is tiny and i'm kind of like what oh this is my what happened to coffee flavored coffee moment is like what happened to big coffees look as someone like i understand and a lot of things I'm very good at assimilating wherever I move. But one thing I will never not want from the United States anywhere I go is when I go to a coffee place, I'm like, I want a large coffee. And it is literally like 1.5 fucking liters of coffee. Everybody be proud of me. I'm learning leaders. Woo!

Yeah, see, you're becoming more and more uh you're asian now and you're getting a reason i have no choice uh you know and on the most stereotypical way you know how i'm learning kilos you already know the answer to this i know it's gym plates yep barbell math yup um yeah so like yeah bigger coffees and like the coffee shop i usually go to has started stocking larger cups which is great but i've never really understood the like american like big gallon coffee i'm like that's surely not enjoyable to drink by the end look don't get me wrong the coffee sucks um it's not the quality like most things in america it's the quantity um in coffees and food and in people.

Yeah, and before we get into the episode for anyone who's listening, live show in London 26th of January. Tickets should be on sale now. The link will be in the description of this episode. The venue is probably at this time. We're recording

this a couple of weeks beforehand should be sorted so you'll have a location but yeah 26th of January first ever Lines Out By Donkeys live show in London there will be goofs, gaffs, jokes

animal facts, exclusive live show merch and a chance to meet Mr Joke Sabian in the flesh. You actually just brought the experience down a bit. If you are lucky, Joe will tell you a depressing fact in person. Just make eye contact. It's the opposite,

because the episode I have planned, which I'm not going to give away, is going to be very funny. We're going to be doing a redo of what most people consider one of the funniest episodes we've ever done. I'm going to do the opposite of what we're going to do today. Every few minutes, I'm going to tell you something horrifically depressing to bring down the room. Speaking of horrifically depressing things, Tom, we're on part two of the beslan school siege now before we continue i gave a content warning at the beginning of the last episode

i'm going to reiterate that content warning on this one this is the conclusion this is only a two-parter so this episode is wall-to-wall awful shit. I don't do content warnings very often because, in my opinion, when it comes to history, you need to look it in the eye. However, there's a lot of objectionable shit in here, things that most people, even people who like looking history dead in the eye and not blinking, really rather not hear about. So content warning everything if I mean if you listen to the last episode you know where this one is leading

yeah and as always I have my cute animal facts queued up and ready to go whenever Tom wants to tap out let's open with an animal fact let's you know set this steep gradient at a high. Okay so

the list I found is not just cute animal facts it's just cute facts in general. Okay. So the people who voiced Mickey and Minnie Mouse were also married in real life. Aww that's cute. That's adorable. That's just method acting. To get in the mind of

the mouse you gotta of the mouse, you gotta fuck the mouse. Ha ha, bust it open, Minnie. Ha ha, will you marry me? Ha ha. I can't do a Mickey voice anymore. Now, when we left you last time, a team of mostly Chechen and English terrorists broke into the Beslan School No. 1

and seized over 1,000 hostages on September 1st, 2004, Knowledge Day, at 9.17 a.m. in North Oshetia, which is part of the Russian Federation. Now, Beslan is a small town, about 40,000 people, so it did not take long for word of what was happening at the school to spread. Around 50 people had made it out of the school, and the police officer who they'd hijacked also ran back into town, and, you know, people could hear automatic gunfire.

However, when people asked the local police what exactly was going on, they kind of just shrugged and said that they didn't know. So parents and relatives who weren't at the Knowledge Day celebrations as well as just concerned bystanders began to jump in cars and hail cabs to go over to the school and see what was going on for themselves. After all, it was the late 90s.

Beslan, like we talked about in the last episode, was hardly a stranger to terror attacks at this point. So people kind of had an idea of what could be happening, but of had an idea of what could be happening, but they had no idea of the scope of what was actually happening. By 10am,

all of the hostages had been pushed into the school's gym, around 1,200 people, into an area compared to the size of about a swimming pool. Oh god, no. As you can imagine, people were freaking out, wondering

what exactly was going to happen to them. The terrorists tried to get the situation under control, however, they did this by mostly just firing their weapons into the air, which, as you can imagine, just made people panic more. Yeah, it definitely didn't help.

The roof tiles were definitely made out of asbestos so you got that coming down on you as well there's not a lot of situations where wildly firing an ak-47 to the air makes things better yeah you know certain weddings i suppose i don't know acts of celebration yeah this is not one of them one man man, Ruslan Petrozov, who had somehow managed to remain completely calm this entire time, walked over to the terrorists and told him, hey, people would probably calm down if you stop shooting your guns. So they kicked him to the ground and shot him in the face in front of everybody. Fuck, Jesus. When the terrorists shot him in the face in front of everybody fuck jesus when the terrorists ordered everyone in the room to only speak russian because obviously everybody speaks russian in this

in this room but as is the case regional languages and dialects exist throughout the russian federation the caucuses in general and they were mostly speaking a shetty in which the terrorists did not understand so when they demanded everyone to speak only Russian, not everybody's Russian was great. Especially like children, they speak Oshetian in the home. Older people who speak Oshetian in everyday conversation, their Russian isn't great. So when a man stood up and attempted to translate the order, giving it to them in Oshetian so they could fully understand it, they shot him as well. Fuck. A third man, who was told to kneel in front of the group

and give them the crucifix that he was wearing around his neck, refused. They murdered him as well. After this, the crowd finally fell silent. Fuck. The terrorists then began to rip up floorboards and plant bombs that they had brought with them. Remember, they were also wearing suicide vests

as well as suicide underwear. They began to attach... Wait, wait, wait. Suicide underwear? That's right. It's explosive panties. How does that work? There's actually a more

recent incident of something like this happening. When a guy hijacked the plane. I believe it was coming from Europe and landing in Detroit, and he attempted to blow up the plane with explosive underwear, and it failed, and he just kind of burnt the living shit out of his dick and balls. Yeah, like becoming the booty hole bomber is probably not the smartest idea. Yeah, some things have to occur in your life before you do that. Now, the bombs that they were planting in the floorboards had a very important detail

in them. Dead man switches. Now, for people who are unaware, a dead man switch is a pressurized device that when someone stands on it, it triggers, and the bomb will then go off once they step off of it meaning they've come off that switch for any reason say a hostage rescue attempt or their shot the bombs would go off so now it's kind of like that trope in like movies of the

soldier stepping on the landmine and it's like don't move don't move exactly famously featured in your book yeah yep hey i'm nothing if not a trope whore all right tropes are tropes because they're fun that's what i say a lot of times they're no that's cliches cliches are cliches for a reason because they're often true also yes um so that meant sprinkled throughout this very very packed gymnasium there are several terrorists standing in dead man switches now as the male terrorists went around strapping more and more bombs all over the place

because they also set up like tripwires he like hung a bomb suspended in the air over the crowd and things like that this process took over an hour the women went around forcing hostages to give up their cell phones. Men and women were separated as well as children. Younger men were taken out of the room, not boys, teenagers, young adults, and only those that

looked to be about 50 years old or older were left to stay in the gymnasium with everybody else. Now, there's a reason for this, and I'm sure people have already kind of come up with that. These younger men, these young adults were seen to be the men most likely to put up any kind of resistance. They were ordered to go around the school dragging furnitures into places that act as barricades, crossed hallways in front of doors and windows. And because the terrorists assume at some point there might be a rescue attempt and they're going to make it as hard as possible. Yeah.

When they're all done, these young adults were shoved into a side room and told to sit down and put their hands behind their backs. Then an argument started between the terrorists. Because remember in the last episode, I told you that there's a very good possibility that the vast majority of the people involved

in this operation did not exactly know what they were to be doing so this is where we have our best bit of evidence about this the women in the terror group began to loudly complain to their commander ruslan kuchparov that targeting children and women and demanded the release of the young hostages immediately. They're like, we did not fucking sign up for this. What are you doing? One survivor of the attack said he heard one of the women say, quote, no, I won't do it.

You said we were attacking a police station. This went on for several minutes before Ruslan and the rest of the men left the room, leaving the adult men alone with the women segment of the terror squad. Then Ruslan remotely triggered their suicide vests. Fuck. The women were blown to pieces, taking out most of the adult men with them, turning the room into a fucking charnel house.

Jesus Christ. Holy fuck. Then terrorists forced other men from the gym, mostly preteens and the elderly, to then carry these corpses, most of which were blown into pieces, from that room and throw them out of the window of the school. Oh, fuck. Like, that is just, like, a level of just sadistic cruelty that, like, you just can't even comprehend. Like, that is so evil. level of just sadistic cruelty that you just can't even comprehend. That is so evil. It's an unfathomable amount

of hatred for me. It's hard for me to understand how someone is so full of hatred and so motivated. There's a difference between being a racist or being a xenophobe or whatever

being a freedom fighter or even a terrorist no matter what way you look at it and being willing to do something like this like there's a very distinct fucking like that line despite what people say is not gray it's a very big line um like it it kind of it begs the question then were they brought along purely for a situation like that like that they were just like well they're probably not going to fight when it comes down to it so you know a walking bomb i think ruslan kuchparov was really hoping for like the milgram experiment to kick in when he just told them what to do and they would listen. And whatever convictions they had, they stood by. Because obviously many, not all,

but many people of the Chechen resistance had no problem targeting Russian civilians and Oshetian civilians, as we talked about in the last episode, especially those who followed Shamil Basayev because he believed in the concept of targeting all of them to spread the suffering of the conflict and then pressure the government to possibly

end the war and the occupation because so many people were dying but not everybody my question is obviously they were blockading exits what sort of operational information but not everybody yeah my question is like obviously they were blockading like exits and stuff was like what sort of like operational information did they have before this in terms of like you know entries exits floor plans for the building was it just because they had like done recon on it or was it just like they knew every single possible exit and entry point and just hedged their bets.

It depends. So we don't actually know, and there's a fair amount of conspiracy theory that goes into it. There is not, and I'm not saying I believe in or there's evidence to support these conspiracy theories, but there's a fair amount of people

that believe the FS Bay was involved because there was, and still is, depending on what you look at it, a lot of assets that either part like Shamil Basayev himself, who once worked for the FSBA, or maybe they worked for the GRU. And they kind of sort of went rogue, but not really. And the FSBA agents were also still giving them information. However, the best anybody can guess, because remember, the only survivor is the guy that was supposedly kidnapped hours before this began. So we don't actually know. And like we pointed out in the last episode, the Russians aren't Yeah. But the best anybody can tell is there's a core group of leaders, Kuchburov among them, who did all of the planning themselves. And then the vast majority of people really didn't know.

Yeah. Because they weren't really well organized. The only reason it succeeded as far as it did is the complete disorganization of the Russian security apparatus. Okay. But this is very common for conspiracy theories when it comes to Chechen attacks within Russia. And this doesn't happen a vacuum in Russia only. attacks in general, is that sometimes they're so successful due to the total incompetence of the security apparatus meant to stop them. So people who are lured into this false sense of security and impregnability think that the only way they could have succeeded is some kind of insider help. I mean, that is 9-11 conspiracy theories happen that way.

The bus bombings in the UK happen that way. The train bombings in Spain, people constantly, every time there's a terror attack or every time there's a mass shooter even, which is a form of terror depending on what they believe in. Every time something like that happens, people are just so stunned that something could happen they're like there must be more to it when in reality occam's razor says this is just this is just what happened yeah um like a really good example of a very widely held uh belief in the conspiracy world is that the fs bay helped plan and conduct the apartment bombings that led to the Second Chechen War. Now, there's a lot going on there.

And when we cover the Second Chechen War, we'll definitely have to talk about it. But as everybody knows, I tend to be a very practical, non-conspiracy-minded person. But we'll get there at some point. By now, the Russian state had officially and finally begun to respond. At first, this was only the local police, right? And this is also when the terrorists first made contact with authorities. They sent out a hostage with a note with orders to only give it to the cops, but not speak to them. The note was not a list of their demands, however.

Instead, it was only they wanted to speak to the presidents of Ingushetia and North Oshetia. Because remember, this is a Russian federation. Every republic has its own elected head and they want to speak specifically to the presidents of Oshetia

and Ingushetia, as well as a local doctor that they trusted. The note also said that if any terrorists were killed, they would kill hostages and eventually blow up the entire school. If they turned off the electricity, they would start shooting people. And at the top of the paper was a cell phone number. However, later when the Russian authorities actually tried to call that number, it was found that the number didn't work.

They had actually given them the wrong number, so they just sent out another hostage with the correct phone number. The hostages also immediately told police that there were over a thousand people trapped inside, and under no circumstance should they shoot towards the school, because the terrorists not only had bombs everywhere, but

they were standing on dead man's switches. So this will become important later. Weirdly, the same hostage that gave the cops the letter remembered that it didn't seem like Ruslan, the terror leader, even knew exactly what he wanted. Hence why they had no demands. They weren't demanding anything, right?

Another doctor who was inside and treating various wounded people, terrorists and civilian alike, said that one of the gunmen, when asked why they attacked children, said that their only demand was the removal of Russian troops from Chechnya, something that their leader, Ruslan, would only demand hours later. This kind of total dysfunction is kind of proven by the fact that they didn't actually want to talk to a local doctor, but a local politician who had shared a similar name to the doctor. But they didn't actually

remember it. Though that man did show up eventually anyway. However, the terrorists were not the only confused ones. Well, after this exchange, broadcasters in Russia began reporting on the siege and got everything wrong. Despite a hostage telling the cops exactly what was going on, a radio host announced that only a

few hundred people were inside the school, none of whom were children. And because there was a working radio inside of the school that the terrorists were listening to, the hostages themselves heard this. This also pissed off the fucking terrorists, thinking that the government was purposefully underplaying what was going on, which they almost certainly were. The reason that this is, I said almost certainly, rather than some conspiracy theory, is that according to even official student lists, there was at least 800 students enrolled there, where the government reported that there was only 350 adults trapped inside, which makes no sense. It's knowledge day and it's morning. Another example as proof that the government almost certainly knew the reality of how many people were inside that school,

whereas local people began taking their own counts and rolls, trying to figure out who was inside and who wasn't, and then turn those numbers over to local authorities who then reported there were still only 350 hostages inside the school none of whom were children I mean like that could have been you know we're going to get into it but obviously as Nate

said on a previous episode that a meme about you know when the Spetsnaz get involved it's like 400 civilian casualties 12 spetsnaz dead successful mission oh like maybe we'll get there maybe they were uh proactively trying to play it down to justify the what's about to come i think it was information control. Yeah. Because let's just say the rescue attempt wasn't very well planned. At this point, the terrorists began

to yell at the hostages, pointing to the radio report saying, quote, nobody even wants you. See, they've abandoned you. Yeah. Then they enforced what was optimistically called a hunger strike, meaning the hostages are not allowed to eat or drink, which became

one hell of a problem as over 1,000 people were packed into a small room in September in Russia. Temperatures began to fucking skyrocket. Yeah. And this is also when the media reported the negotiations had started, which they hadn't. However, evidence that authorities knew that there was much more going on than they let on began to mount for example it's not a hunger strike it's you're just starving your hostages like is a hunger strike is an agreed upon collective effort or individual effort to forego food water other forms of sustenance in a in a either political

form of protest or you know that sort of thing but because being forced upon it you can't really call it a hunger strike you're just starving people yeah that means every siege in military history is actually just a hunger strike. Yeah. Now, for example, journalists from all over Russia, a place not exactly known for its press freedoms, began to rush towards the town at the same time as the Russian security apparatus had. The local police are joined by special forces of just about every security agency in the country. This included teams from the FSB, like the Alpha Group, who are supposed to be the best that they have to offer, whatever that means.

The VIMPL team, which actually wasn't a hostage rescue team, but rather in charge of securing strategic sites within Russia. Now, a lot of people just use the term Spetsnaz. That's not a single term or a unit. It's an umbrella term for any special team within the russian military or police it's like slf i suppose kind of um now these teams would routinely be used for

things outside of what they should have been and what they had trained for that's really a fucking surprise right it's the only laugh you're going to get out of me for the next half an hour. For example, the VIMPL operators, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing incorrectly, had been used as effectively a hit squad on more than one occasion. They were joined by soldiers from the Interior Ministry,

which is now known as Rusgardia, or the National Guard, today. Now, they are well known for other things that have happened recently, but that's their more common name these days, is the Russian National Guard today. Now, they are well known for other things that have happened recently, but that's their more common name these days is the Russian National Guard. Think of these guys as a little more of riot cops. They're not soldiers. They're meant for internal unrest, right?

They're not meant for combat operations. Yeah, it's like movement control, crowd control, stuff like that. Right. In case you were wondering, no. There was absolutely zero command and control or even situational commanders in place that could unify or even identify all of the different agencies and units and manpower on site, creating complete and total operational chaos, which was compounded when local militias and randomly armed civilians who wandered into the clusterfuck to start shooting at the school.

Yes, throw lit matches on the giant pile of matches. Yes, armed militiamen. Very, very good idea. That's what this situation calls for, is local dickheads with guns. Also, the mafia showed up of course of course you did you had fucking vigo mortensen running around with a linoleum knife oh fuck me nobody to this day is even sure how many people responded though the number most commonly given is 5,000. All of these security forces, without any command,

control, or even orders, didn't even bother to secure Koronov or surround the school in a complete way. This led to episodes where random armed men from the town just wandered up to the school to try to break their loved ones out of it. This led to, like, confused, crazed, and close-quarters gun battles between families and terrorists and even sometimes the security forces. I mean, like, look, I completely understand that impulse. Oh, me too, me too. At the same time, it is the security force's job to make sure that does not happen

because they've been told, man, there are so many bombs in here, please do not shoot towards the school. Yeah, you don't want a greased up Chechnyan Sam Fisher trying to wriggle into the air vents. Now, when they finally did attempt to come up with a local command system called the Crisis Committee, it was a complete shitshow. The people who are listed as being on the committee had never even been informed that they were put on it. The head of the local branch of the FSB was put in charge, but officers from the other

branches, like overall FSB leader from Moscow, led small coup attempts within the committee attempting to take charge. This is really what you want. This is like bureaucratic bickering while there's like hundreds of children locked in rooms

with bombs still other groups from other units that responded simply ignored the committee altogether and decided they would set up their own command centers and operate independent the fs bay at one point just in general said fuck it and set up their own command posts none of these different elements bothered to write anything down that survives. Now, most people probably agree that they wrote some things down, but they destroyed it. So we literally have no idea how any of these independent groups functioned, or if they did, or if they even spoke to one another. All evidence points to the fact that they did not.

Yeah, like, look, honestly, in a situation like this, spoke to one another all evidence points to the fact that they did not yeah like look honestly in a situation like this you need a clear command structure that has cohesive uh in like in cohesive commands that are like flowing down to the lowest ranking person so you have a coordinated response obviously of course with like if you like read anything about like hostage negotiation they say that like timing is everything in terms of like a aptly quick response but having one that is like coordinated because like at the end of the day people's lives are at risk so you have to one have risk mitigation in in place to figure out well how can we either safely secure the hostages while you know neutering the potential violence from hostage takers you need to figure out okay if there demands, what can we reasonably meet? The whole process in general is about de-escalation.

So that's like trying to de-escalate the potential violence that could happen, say, if there's demands that are made that can't be met. There's a change in situation internally. Obviously, you have a situation here where there are hundreds of people that are boiling hot thirsty hungry there's children involved it's very like it's literally a powder keg no pun intended but like like this just seems well one it's russian in the early 2000s so i'm not surprised by this at all but like it just seems like this could be just turned into an example of this is what you absolutely should not do. Yeah. Now, all of those things that you just listed led to situations or random elements from the security forces contacted the terrorists, but didn't tell anyone else about it.

but didn't tell anyone else about it. At any given time, the terrorists inside the school were negotiating with, at minimum, three different competing power structures within the Russian government's response. Though they were negotiating and issuing demands at this point, something that the government has never acknowledged. Instead, it was reported that the terrorists had refused to make contact with the government and issued nothing, which is a lie in several different levels by now. Though to make things easier going forward, we're going to boil these groups down into two different kinds, the civilian and the military. The military faction is routinely called the heavies. The civilians continually attempted to make contact with

the terrorists and negotiate with them, while the military actively stopped them. Even though the Russian government announced that as of day one, because we're only on day one of the response, they would not use force to rescue the hostages. The military contingent of the on-site leadership, all of those competing structures, had been planning for an assault for about as long as they've been there. That's the only solution to this they ever thought of. So on day two, the terrorists began to make their rules for their hostages more and more strict. Throughout the first day, they allowed people in groups of 10 to use the bathroom. On day 2, they decided that that

would no longer be allowed. So, an already sweltering gym packed full of over 1,000 people was also to be used as a bathroom. Like, combined, like, I just can't stop thinking about, like,

those people who were killed with the suicide vests like imagine how terrifying it would have been to be in the gymnasium and hearing that go off yeah and then just silence it's like it's just so like the psychological effect that would have on you like you're sitting in this like sweltering hot room and you hear just an explosion and then silence it's yeah and they're like they were they were beyond like people were described as being in like a catatonic state of fear so yeah it's it's it's real bad and they've come they've completely abandoned the tactic of peaceful hostage taking in that like when you are a hostage taker you try to create

a like a calm environment with your hostages in that yeah what's unique is they never even attempted that uh yeah it was just like straight away the use of like you know shooting three people execution style in order to enforce, like, you know, them following what they wanted. Mm-hmm. There were other changes as well. Tanks and armored personnel carriers began to arrive on scene

being brought in from Vladikavkaz. Meanwhile, in a town just a few miles away, local police were scared shitless because someone had heard gunfire coming from their local school worried there was another attack they ran to investigate only to find members of the FS Bay

shooting up the empty school planning for their future operation in Beslan they hadn't bothered to tell anybody and despite the fact specific statement saying that they would not be attempting any assaults this is going to go well. I am so fucking depressed already. Joe,

do you want to give me an animal fact? Bob Ross donated all of the paintings he made on each episode of The Joy of Painting and was not paid to be there. That's cool. Bob Ross seems like a really good dude. It's a shame what his estate has done to his legacy. Bob

Ross. One of the good ones. There's no Bob Ross anymore. No one even comes close. Maybe John Cena. Yeah, I saw a really good mashup Halloween costume the other day. That was a mashup between Steve Harvey and Bob Ross. Oh, God. Then the terrorists allowed the former president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Ashev, to come in to the school and talk to them. Now,

Ashev was respected by the terrorists due to his role in the first Chechen war. Now, obviously, Ingushetia is part of the Russian Federation, but he opposed the Russian invasion of Chechnya and cared for Chechen refugees in his republic. Vladimir Putin also fucking hated him for keeping his republic out of the greater war in Chechnya. So he was seen as a sympathetic figure to the rebels, terrorists, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, he's an amenable middleman. Now, this is despite the fact they had not requested him to be there and every member of the dueling power structures telling him that if he went into that school, he was signing his own death warrant. that if he went into that school, he was signing his own death warrant.

Ashev went in anyway. People cheered when they saw him, and despite him only being inside for a few minutes, he managed to convince the terrorists to release all the nursing mothers and their babies. But only their babies. If they had other kids in the school, which many of them did, they couldn't leave. So many of the mothers handed their babies off to Ashev to take them out of school and stayed with the other children. 26 people were able to leave. Like, yeah, you know,

handing your infants over to Russian security forces, it's better, but... It's not a great option in most situations. Yeah, yeah oh god this is so fucking miserable joe now the terrorists also gave ashev a videotape and a letter to give to the russian authorities he did this oh no oh no i've heard of this but the russian government refused to acknowledge their existence and continued to do so to this day. Now, the note was written by Shamil Basayev,

the overall commander of the operation who was not there at the time. In the letter, he demanded formal Chechen independence and offered to take responsibility for the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which we just talked about a little bit ago. And Basayev himself refused and denied having anything to do with them.

And he actually did, I think, until the day he died. This is a bit like a Gaddafi Lockerbie bombing type situation. Probably. Now, obviously, the Russians denied his demands because the Russian government, to this day, insists that the terrorists never made any. Now, this also led to conspiracy theories on both sides quickly forming around Ashev, with the Chechens claiming he worked for the FSB and the FSB insisted that he worked for the terrorists, while others said that he only freed people

that he knew personally, despite the fact he was not from Oshetia. So, whatever. We don't know. I'm going to assume none of those things are true. There's no evidence to suggest them anyway. Now, deep into day two, the conditions

within the gym began to deteriorate. Temperatures quickly reached over 100 degrees within the school. Desperate to escape the heat, people began to strip naked, but that still obviously wasn't enough. Others attempted to drink their own urine, which only

made them sick. Some of the nursing mothers offered people their own breast milk to try to alleviate their suffering. People began to pass out from heat exhaustion and stroke. The terrorists responded to this by dragging them out of the room, dumping water on their heads until

they woke up, and then throwing them right back into the gym. Here, deep into day two, the terrorists finally gave up hiding their faces, taking off their ski masks, I assume because they were also hot as fuck. They were also not eating or drinking water, and witnesses all say they began to get increasingly short-tempered, angry, and violent.

They not only snapped at hostages in random acts of violence, like smashing them in the head with their rifles or kicking them, but also one another. Their commander, Ruslan, had told other terrorists not to drink water from the tap for fear that the government had poisoned it. Because, let's be

honest, it does sound like something the Russian government might do. Yeah, they're not benefiting from what I said in the first episode of like you know packing a nature valley bar in your suicide bomb vest they didn't know now this could have been for a lot of reasons for starters well they're fucking terrorists who targeted children to begin with so any amount of empathy they might have should maybe be forgotten who would have? The stress of the ongoing siege also can be ignored. Security forces and terrorists had been shooting at one another

pretty consistently throughout day two, and maybe they began to understand that they are not getting out of the situation alive. These men were also not sleeping, which after two days going on three days would absolutely cause them to slowly lose a little control they previously had.

So they turned to meth. This was why is it always meth? This is not uncommon in Chechen militia circles or terrorists the world over, even militaries, depending on what year we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Like it all. It always ends up with meth. Like, I texted you the other day with an idea for an episode that involved meth. That's right.

Now, belief only gets one so far when facing down thousands of soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and your own certain death. of soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and your own certain death. So when belief fails, they turn to methamphetamine, which kept them functioning for days at a time without food, water, or sleep. And by functioning, I mean awake. I don't mean functioning so far as high functioning. They also blasted heavy metal music from radios

to keep themselves awake and on edge. If the Russian government is to be believed, they listen to Rammstein. I don't know why that's important but the russian government made sure we knew it oh this is this is just harrowing like i and i have made it even worse for myself by the fact that i am looking at still frames from the asher of tape. Oh yeah. Why do you do this to me, Joe? So with that, we go to day three.

The final day of the siege. And if you've been listening so far and have no idea how the siege ends, I'm going to go ahead and say this is another content warning because this is going to go about as bad as it possibly could. Also, I should say that due to this happening within the Russian Federation, we have no real accepted central story of what happened since the government isn't talking and any reports they have run is in direct opposition to eyewitness statements and accounts in regards to what was going on inside the school and during what's about to happen. The lack of information and transparency, as always, makes fertile ground for conspiracy theory,

which tends to murky the waters just a bit. So with that, I'll do my best to recreate what happened using eyewitness accounts from both inside and outside the school, the testimony of the only surviving terrorists, and reports from reputable sources that are notably not the Russian government. By the morning of the third day, things had deteriorated to the point that most people in the gym were in some kind of starvation and heat-induced daze. People were so weak now they could hardly get up. Most kids simply lay on the ground, half-conscious at best. I'm surprised that some people didn't go into convalescence and stuff.

Some did. Oh, okay. The terrorists had cut a deal with some people within the battling factions of the crisis committee to send a van to pick up the corpses they had thrown out the window because they were beginning to stink. That's the only deal they really made. Then we don't know what happens next exactly, but something explodes.

Oh no. According to the survivors within the school's gym and the only surviving terrorists, a Russian government sniper shot one of the terrorists who was standing on a dead man's switch, causing a bomb to tear through the center of a thousand or so people sitting inside the gym. We have no idea how many people were killed or wounded by that first bomb, but survivors say it was easily dozens. They also suggest the terrorists had absolutely no idea what

was going on and were as shocked by the bomb going off as everybody else. All control they had over the situation evaporated in the blink of an eye people who survived the bomb blast got up and ran for their lives if they were still physically capable of doing so in the smoke and the chaos caused by the bomb blast many people found their way to one of the school's exits

at which point the military opened fire on them while simultaneously ordering them back into the school Jesus fucking Christ the terrorists then opened opened fire on them, while simultaneously ordering them back into the school. Jesus fucking Christ. The terrorists then opened fire as well, both on the military and the hostages as they ran, trapping them in the

middle of a crossfire. People jumped out of windows and managed to find their way through the poorest government cordon. The only kind of rescue waiting for them came from local civilians who ran through a hail of gunfire in their own cars or on foot, bringing with them food, water, and shelter. Then another bomb went off. As soon as this happened, the Russian military's armored personnel carriers began pouring automatic weapon fire into the school from machine guns that were mounted on the top of them.

fire into the school from machine guns that were mounted on the top of them. As soldiers blindly shot into the smoke and fire that had ripped through the school, all while hostages attempted to run to safety, being forced to evacuate themselves through a combat zone. Jesus Christ. At 1.30pm,

a third explosion went off, setting the roof of the gym on fire, weakening the structure and causing it to collapse onto the crowd of hostages below a few minutes later. According to a state Duma member, this was not caused by a terrorist, but rather an RPO-A rocket

assisted flamethrower fired by the Russian military. Oh, fuck off. The evidence used in his argument was an expended RPO-A shell being found on a nearby rooftop, which would have given them the angle necessary to hit the roof of the gym. According to him, they used as many as nine rockets.

Yeah, these are like fucking shmailed hermobaric rockets. Yeah, it's a rocket-assisted flamethrower. Jesus fucking Christ. Survivor accounts also said that the terrorists had planted no bombs on the roof and the explosion had come from the outside. This is all denied by the official report, which somehow blames the explosion on a suicide vest worn by a terrorist. Inside the school, the surviving terrorists had forced around 300 hostages into the canteen area of the school, as the gym had become a firestorm that was still being pounded by Russian military fire,

including rockets, grenades, and the main cannons of battle tanks. The Russian government later insisted they did not deploy the tanks till after all of the hostages had been removed from the school, but as easily discounted by survivor accounts and the Russian media, who at this point were recording ongoing fighting and caught footage of the tanks shelling the school in the middle of all of this. Jesus.

Every minute or so, I know it gets worse, but I question how much worse can it get? And this is just, this is harrowing. Did you know when llamas are happy or content, they hum? That's good for llamas. It's not good for me right now. It's a fun fact, but it doesn't really help.

Now the tanks, while not only shelling the gym, were shelling the canteen of the school as well, which now housed hundreds of still-alive hostages inside. In total, according to General Victor Sobolev, commander of the 58th Army, which is where the soldiers and those tanks had come from, they fired six high-explosive shells into the

school from three different tanks. Regular soldiers fled the fighting as civilians with their own guns soon joined in. Somehow, this is also reported in the... Also, the mafia showed up again? What?

Did they, like, go and get fucking lunch while this was going on? Union break. So, all of these people are firing into this school with no coordination whatsoever not if any coordination to make this better um like the soldiers the police the fucking mafia civilians every apparatus of the the russian security forces all with no leadership we're going

absolutely mad firing into the school and firing in every direction, including at each other. In the canteen, the terrorists had hoped that their hostages would convince the military to hold their fire, and maybe they would be able to leverage them into an escape route. They were very, very wrong. So when the terrorists forced women to put themselves and their children in the windows, thinking that would stop the Russians from shooting, even the terrorists were surprised when they watched these people get cut down by gunfire. Jesus Christ. One woman in the room, a nurse, describes something

that sounds an awful lot like white phosphorus being fired by the Russian military. I'll read her full quote here. Quote, a shell was fired into the room. It came spinning in, smoking, and then burst into flames, burning six-year-old Zelina and filling her body with shrapnel. She then goes on to say how quickly the fire spread throughout the room, and then when someone tried to put it out with cloth and water,

it didn't work. My head is in my hands. I'm just actually speechless right now. When the Russian assault into the school began, it went as well as you can imagine. To this day, nobody agrees on who ordered it, but the civilian leadership of the committee saying it was the so-called heavies,

while the other part of the heavies, for instance, the local head of the Oshetian FSB, saying he had nothing to do with it, while still others blame a man, uh, the, the head of the federal FSB special operations, a Colonel named Alexander Tikhonov.

Nobody will take responsibility for this. And the state is not willing to find out. They stormed into the building firing the entire time at anything that moved. According to the local police who joined in on the attack, one part of the command was ordering them to stop shooting into the school, while others were demanding that they continue. When they ran into human shields, the hostages were forced to stand in the line,

blocking their path, and the security forces shot them. For many of the hostages, the first government rescue that they saw was not in the form of these Spetsnaz groups that quickly morphed into something akin to a chaotic death squad, but rather it was local cops who wandered into the area after the assault team went through and pulled out who they could. When the assault team made it into the canteen, they got into a point-blank gunfight with the terrorists with hundreds of hostages trapped between them. Most of them died. By 3 p.m., a full two hours after it had all begun, the security forces were mostly in control of the school, with a small group of terrorists hiding in the school's basement. Nirpashi, the only

surviving member of the terror squad, was captured while hiding under a truck in the nearby parking lot unarmed. Another terrorist attempted to blend into the crowd of fleeing hostages, only to be recognized and beaten to death by survivors. One lone bright spot. A small group of terrorists, thought to be around 10, broke out of the ongoing chaos and fled into a nearby building,

which was then promptly pounded with helicopter gunships. The final members of the terror squad fought on until around midnight, when they were finally wiped out. In the aftermath, the local hospitals were completely overwhelmed. And despite having three days to plan for any of this, there were not enough ambulances to take around 780 wounded to the hospital. So people were loaded up in any vehicles that happened to be nearby. And if you thought that the government was done fucking all of this up, you're very, very wrong. Rather than order any kind of investigation of the scene itself, the Russian government simply ordered bulldozers to clear the ruins of the school, which still contained dozens of

dead bodies, at which point they were chucked into the local dump to be discovered later. It's almost like they tried to get rid of evidence. Almost! Interesting, I'll say. Hmm. You wonder why people have conspiracy

theories about it. Exactly exactly that is why i constantly say the lack of transparency the lack of information is what breeds conspiracy theories not always mind you but most of the time yeah to this day no real investigation has been carried out by the russian government and the one that they did championed their own actions, absolving them of any fault that went into their psychotic assault with tanks and rocket-propelled flamethrowers on a school full of children. Instead,

they simply blamed everything on the failure of the local Eshedian police. And when the director of the FSB was summoned to testify at Narpashi's eventual trial, he simply ghosted that shit rather than testify under oath. He didn't get in any trouble. Probably because if he did show up,

he would have been asked questions about the Novaya Gazeta report that showed that the FSB very possibly knew about the attack beforehand from a Chechen source and disregard the tip, either because they didn't believe him or didn't care. Shamil Basayev himself credits the FSB for knowing something of the attacks, but not what their exact target was. As he correctly points out that all of the normal roadblocks that would have been in the way from their staging area to the attack point were gone. Now, this is probably because they thought that he was

planning to attack the Yashodin Parliament building in Vladikavkaz and planned to ambush them somewhere down the road. However, the government plan went haywire when the Chechens busted a left and attacked a nearby school. We don't know. This could have been

a combination of things. Like one person, as we have established, these different branches don't speak to one another. This could have been a 9-11 situation where different branches

knew little pieces and if they all talked to one another, they could have pieced it all together, but they didn't. We honestly will never know. The government response

did serve its purposes. They quickly enacted strict and harsh anti-terror laws, which remain in place in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and North Oshetia to this day, which are mostly used for the repression of the Federation's Muslim population in the North Caucasus. This, of course, only made animosity worse between the Oshetian, Ingush, only made animosity worse between the Asherian, Ingush, and Chechen people. It also led to a further crackdown of Russian censorship, as well as the rise of

known Putin shitbird, Margarita Simonian, as a government mouthpiece within the media. Not all Armenians are good. She is hyper fucking racist towards Armenians, actually. She's banned from entry into Armenia. In the end, we actually still don't know an accurate casualty number for the hostages in the school,

as the Russian government never took them. And if they did, they're very much different from the locals, say, who actually lost their friends, their neighbors, and their family members. who actually lost their friends, their neighbors, and their family members. According to the best numbers available, at least 330 hostages were killed. 188 of them were children. Nearly 800 people were hurt, and this is not counting for bystanders who were wounded while attempting to help those while trapped inside. Only three Russian government officials were ever prosecuted for the role in their botched rescue mission.

Those being three men from the local Lushanian police department who are charged with failing to stop the terrorists from gaining entry into the school. The trial was met with immediate fury in the community and people rioted until the judge granted amnesty in all three cases. Censorship and terror laws have been in turn used to silence local organizations such as the Voice of Beslan and the Mothers of Beslan who advocate for a full international investigation

into the obvious government cover-up of the massacre. Nurpashi Kuliev was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the attack and since then he has kind of vanished into the Russian penal system with rumors of his death popping up like once every couple of years. And it's likely when he dies or if he's already dead, that too will be covered up. I mean, like, yeah, that probably makes sense when he does die. They don't want to, you know, the worst thing you can do is make a martyr. the worst thing you can do is make a martyr. Right.

And there's even segments of the population who think that he shouldn't have been prosecuted because he was kidnapped. There's elements of the population that think they need to bring back the death penalty for him. Let's just say people's opinions on him varies quite wildly, I'll say. Yeah, yeah.

It's a big range. Fair enough. I get it. And that is the Siege of Beslan. Fuck me. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough, I get it. And that is The Siege of Beslan. Fuck me, that was miserable. Like, the very little jokes in this episode

well done for everyone involved and everyone listening to making it to this point. That is like, thinking about 180, was about 180, was it 180, 185 children that died? 188.

Like, that is soul-destroying. I'm going to have to go stand outside the studio for, like, a good, like, 10 minutes in silence once we stop recording. That's what you get for working here on the Lions Head by Donkeys podcast. Tom! Occupational hazard. We do a thing on this show called questions from the legion if you'd

like to ask us a question legion donate to the show um you can message us on patreon you can message us on discord and we will answer it on the show and today's question is what is your worst restaurant experience oh i don't have like an insane amount of really bad ones like for some reason in loads of restaurants they just forget my food my worst restaurant experience by far i was probably 15 or 16 um still living with my with my parents or my mom more specifically. And we went to this shitty mid-range diner,

and we all got food poisoning. We all got horrible food poisoning. Mind you, we're American. We're poor. We don't have healthcare. So we just ride it out, right? Drink water, fluids vomiting out of every orifice.

And my mom calls them. This had to have been early 2000s, maybe late 90s. So you can't leave a bad review or whatever. So my mom calls them and just screams at them for sickening four members of our family. And the restaurant's response is, we're so sorry to hear that your next meal is free why the fuck would i want to come back yeah we didn't like for me if like if i have a bad experience in a restaurant i've never had

one bad enough where i want to leave a review i just don't go there ever again that's my response as well i don't think i've ever left a bad review anywhere because i just it's not something i do i just like yeah i don't go there anymore this is what happened to me yeah like in general like hospitality workers are just trying their best so like most of the time if you have a bad dining experience it's just like a combination of cascading factors before it gets to you yeah yeah of course like my brother was a a very very successful chef uh before he died so i i kind of got i kind of learned how the inners of a kitchen work when it comes to having a bad dining experience to me me, that's not a bad review. A bad review for me is something fundamental like, they almost killed you with rotten food.

But there's no bad review to leave. We just were offered more poisoned food and we turned it down. Yeah, I only ever really remember in terms of when i think about like old restaurants that like stick out in my mind it's always like good meals in terms of the food or the experience or whatever like if i have a bad meal i'm just like okay i'm not gonna go there and then just like it's wiped out of my mind yep so that is a podcast tom thank you so much congratulations condolences, whichever for joining me on these last two episodes

of this series. And plug your show. Listen to Beneath Skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. It is markedly less depressing than this. Recently we had

Joe on to talk about the history of the Mutiny on the Bounty in the Pitcairn Islands and their interesting intersection with tattoos. We do a lot of cool, interesting stuff over there, so even if you don't have tattoos, there might be an interesting history story there for you.

And everybody, thank you so much for listening to this show. If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like like this early you get years and years of bonus content get discord access ebooks audiobooks stickers you name it and check our show notes for the link for our live show get tickets come see us live uh maybe i won't fuck it up. Look, even if you do, that's the wonderful world of live performance. Yeah, 26th of January, London.

Tickets will be I think between like £10 and £15. The exact number hasn't been decided yet. We are negotiating that with the venue. But yeah, it's not super expensive. Keep an eye on ryanair easy jet and booking.com it we picked january because it's a bit more affordable for people because

there's a lot of sales on in terms of you know accommodation tom recommended ryanair because he hates you all if if i hated them i would have recommendedizz Air that's fair yeah don't fly Wizz Air or fly one if anybody is out there flying and you see flying one as an option don't do it and everybody thank you so much for joining and until next time

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