The Russian Federation must have heaved a huge sigh of relief at the end of the three-day nightmare that had unfolded in a Moscow theatre. Of course, its success in resolving what had emerged as the biggest terrorist challenge facing the country triggered by ethno-religious separatist rebels came for a heavy price: some 90 hostages were killed in the operation. Over 40 heavily armed Chechen desperadoes, including ten women, had laid down near impossible conditions for allowing the hostages to go free. Their demands for an end to the war against separatism and the start of withdrawal of Russian military from Chechnya challenged the integrity of Russian Federation at a fundamental level. The crisis had presented Vladimir Putin with the most serious problem he has had to face since he became president of the Russian Federation. Whether the high number of deaths of hostages could have been avoided will certainly be the source of much public speculation and even official inquiry. But, in cases like this, casualties should also be seen in relation to what was at risk otherwise — the lives of several hundred people. The deadline set by the terrorists had been reached and they had started to kill hostages, including those trying to run away from the theatre, when the Special Forces went in.Russian authorities did well to ensure that the total response to the hostage taking and killing was not allowed to be influenced by the inevitable psychological pressures from various quarters which can often create complications at a time when there is a premium on cool professional handling of a crisis affecting the lives of a large number of innocents. The media was debarred from the scene after the initial reporting, and so were the demonstrators and sympathisers. This was quite a different approach from what was witnessed here in the case of the hijacking of IC-814 in December 1999. This is not so much because of insensitivity to the agony of people in and outside the theatre, but to ensure that all action during an extremely sensitive period could be kept free of emotional influences.
