I'm surprised the siege ended this way, especially after the criticism Putin received after what happened in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis. IMO if they weren't going to try and negotiate for the hostages, Putin should've just taken action and stormed the building, instead of sitting around and having the Russian Special Forces get surprised and
force into action.
At least if they went gung-ho and took decisive action, Putin could have said "I had to be tough; we don't negotiate with terrorists"... but now, what he has on his hands is a situation that was clearly out of his control.
Sure, granted the magnitude of the situation, it's extremely difficult to conduct a hostage rescue operation, but for a country/city that's had experience with this sort of event before, you'd surely expect them to be better equipped and prepared for such a crisis. Remember after the Israeli team murders at 1972 Munich Olympics, the GSG-9 was created, since it was clear that the Munich police weren't equipped to handle such delicate situations... from the footage I saw of the Beslan hostage crisis, the Russian army were nowhere near organised enough.
Initially, figures were released saying that there were about 300 people in the school altogether, and only 17 terrorists, but it soon became apparent that there were many, many more numbers on both sides. What I'm not sure about is whether the figures were blatantly incorrect, or whether they authorities actually didn't know how many hostages were in the building. I presume the former though.
Putin should be grateful that they didn't have chemical weapons this time
++ [ originally posted by K10 ] ++
I am kinda ignorant on this subject.
What do terrorist want?