Terrorism and Explosives – Never Far From You (in Russia)

300 grams of TNT less than four blocks away from my parents’ house were found yesterday. Dad came over today – we live in different cities now – and told me that there was an explosive found yesterday in the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, where my parents are. There were several explosions in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, just yesterday – not very far from us. And a couple of weeks ago, there were 3 explosions in Sochi and some other smaller cities in the same area – not too far from us either. But you’ll barely find any info about those terracts (short for “terroristic acts”, is what we call it here), opposing to the Ukrainian ones – the info was cut short a couple of hours later, and no major news channels, papers or internet websites are telling you about this. No info about the explosives found in Kamensk either, except for its newspaper’s website, because their newsman happened to pop around the place when police were holding cordon while waiting for the special team to arrive and defuse the explosives. Not that anyone really cares about explosives and terrorism anymore. Might be hard to imagine if you’re from a quiet country, but in Russia we’re all pretty much used to the knowledge that you may be blown apart at any given time, and no one really gives a crap.

Mom just shrugged it, not being concerned at all about an explosive found a few blocks from her home; she’s more concerned about Ukrainian ex-prime minister’s health conditions (the woman was beaten severely by prison guards and is refusing to eat anything in protest now). The bomb was defused, didn’t blow up anyone, so who cares? I don’t know if this sounds wild to anyone reading this.

During late 90’s and early 00’s, Russia suffered through 2 internal wars with Chechen Republic, which is a part of Russian Federation. They are Muslims there, with a lot of radicalism-loving bastards and unending help from other, radical, Muslim countries. These lot are some really fucked-up bastards and they sure did what they could to drown us in our blood and fear. There were countless buses and cars whose passengers were blown apart or held hostages – and planes, and ships, and buildings, and whole cities.

In 1995, a band of Chechen terrorists came to Budennovsk, a small city in Stavropol’ area, where they started a bloodbath, holding hostage a whole hospital, 83 people died and the terrorist’s leader escaped into mountains. In 1996, a small terrorist army (around 500) attacked city is Kizlyar (Republic of Dagestan, part of Russian Federation) and held hostage around 3,000 people (yes THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE) in maternity hospital and several other buildings. To escape the fight that broke out, surviving terrorists took about 165 hostages with them and attacked several other small settlements; 82 of those people made it alive. The whole hostage thing was going on from 9 till 18 January. November 1996 – a house blown in Kaspiysk (Dagestan), 67 dead.

In 1997 and 1998 several metro and railroad stations were blown up, by 1999 there were 4 explosions in Moscow. 1999 was particularly bad.

21 August 1999 – the day i turned 14 – an explosion went off in an underground trade center attached to a metro station in Moscow, hurting 40 and killing a few people. A couple of days later - 4 September - a house in Buynaksk (Dagestan) was blown, 61 dead, 140 hurt. Just a couple of days later – the night between 8 and 9 September, and later 13 September, two more houses in Moscow was blown apart – 94 dead and 164 hurt in one explosion, 121 dead and 9 hurt in another. 16 September – a 9-story house went down in Volgodonsk (Rostov area), 310 were hurt, 18 killed. The city of Volgodonsk is 160 km from Kamensk where i was born and lived then – really close. There were people who lived next door to us and they moved to Volgodonsk; they were hurt when that house went down, a member of their family died. I knew them.

After that, people understood one simple thing: you can go to sleep and never come back because some bastard sheep-fucker will blow your ass right out from under you. Folks gathered into night patrols, and people installed locks on all and every door found in a house – leading to collective basements, attics and general entrances. There was so much anxiety and fear, that free hotlines here opened for people to speak to psychologists. But after some time, people seemed to understand another thing: you can’t live in fear. If someone is determined to kill you in your sleep, you barely can do anything about that. So why worry. So they stopped those patrols and generally forgot about those locks.

In 2000, a metro station in Moscow was blown again, 100 hurt and 13 dead. I remember news on TV – metro escalators covered in blood and flowers people brought there. In 2001, another metro station blown up. No matter what our special forces did then, one or the other metro stations were turning into a kill traps on yearly basis. I still wonder how many terracts were averted back then. In 2001, 3 more explosions in South Federal District (Rostov area is a part of it), in different cities, with several hundreds hurt and dead.

9 May, 2002 in Kaspiysk again, when people gathered for the laying of wreaths on the graves of soldiers (9 May is when the World War II ended, one of the biggest celebrations in Russia), a bomb went off, killing 44 and hurting 177, over 70 of whom were children. October 23, 2002 – what is known as “Nord-Ost” to Russians – a theater in Moscow was attacked by a group of terrorists who held the whole audience hostages for 3 days, woman and children included, with no food or water. People were forced to gather urine and give it to kids to save them from dehydration. 177 were killed when SWAT finally went on to storm the theater. I remember how all of us sat during these 3 horrible days, watching every news flash, completely horrified.  There were small children, and who held them? Women with fiery death strapped to their belts. We weren’t expecting that. Not THAT. My mom had to drink hearth drops every day, until we told her to stop watching TV. There were many more terracts after that.

In 2004, August 24, two planes (TU-134 and TU-154) were blown right in the sky, both heading from Moscow where women carrying explosives boarded them. One of those planes fell down about 15 or 18 kilometers from our house in Kamensk. The explosion went between night and morning, and we heard it – mom even woke up, but not knowing what it was, she want back to sleep. I was going to travel to Rostov with my dad, to take my enrollment exams into an institute (Russian equivalent of a college) the next day. We hit the road early and heard the news on radio…

A huge area was covered with the remains of the plane and those who died in it, and people woke up to see parts of frozen mauled corpses on their backyards. They had to be recovered, and a convoy of special military cars – the ones they use to carry dead on the front – went out from Rostov. I saw those cars, a long line of black military trucks converted into moving freezers. I had a nervous breakdown and my temperature raised to 39’C, i had to take my exams in that state. Then we went back home, and there were those endless newspaper articles and TV newsflashes, and people finding torn out hands weeks after the crash. I remember a particular photo of an undamaged plane seat, complete with locked belt and all. A woman said to be sitting in it. She was dead long before she hit the ground because the change of pressure killed her, and the wind torn her apart. But the damn seat looked like it was ready to be installed back on some other plane.

But the biggest and the bitterest of those terracts happened a couple of days later, at 1 September, the day when school starts – when small kids go to school for the first time and older kids get back from their summer vacation. Terrorists attacked a school in Beslan (North Ossetia, part of Russian Federation), holding hostage over 1000 – their teachers, the children who came to school, their younger siblings who weren’t old enough to attend school, but who came with their parents, the parents themselves… There was no food or water that time too, and those terrorist Muslim bitches were around. They knew what they did: with no water, children would have started dying on 4th day, and either terrorists were getting what they wanted or those kids were doomed. They were doomed nonetheless. All of those people were held in a gym, and the terrorists suspended explosives on a wire pulled across the gym. Those explosives were enough to blow the whole city apart in case that a SWAT team would try to storm in. For 3 days, negotiations were going on; general public didn’t knew what these bastards wanted, but the negotiations had no result, and people were killed one by one because terrorists weren’t getting what they wanted. No one was going to storm it.

Then, September 3rd – when terrorists were giving away bodies of 21 they killed, one of the bombs they had around blew apart, blowing a car full of explosives, and the terrorists thought that SWAT began storming them, and blew a bomb in the middle of those poor hostages. Then SWAT had no choice but to really storm the school. 335 people were killed – most of those were kids. 20 terrorists were killed – 9 Arabs and 1 Niger among them.  They had a lot of women around, wearing belts with explosives – we call them “suiciders” – but these men weren’t going to die if all went according to their plan. They came all the way down to torture and kill helpless Russian kids, and brought along women to die for them.

The kids – those, who survived the attack – did not cry after they were freed. They had no water for tears. SWAT soldiers and civils who went after them we re carrying children out of the area – starved, naked, hurt. Google is full of photos, look up “Беслан” if you have the nerve. They don’t show these kind of things on a new Bruce Willis movie with happy hostages running to kiss the police. The kids were sent to hospitals all around South Federal District and Moscow, some of them  arrived to Rostov-on-Don’s military hospital. People went on to gather toys and food and clothes all around the area, to bring it to Rostov from different cities and give it to those poor kids. We sent them some of my old clothing, whatever we had left. There were talks about moving the School Day to some other day, but then people decided that it would mean we are beaten. We weren’t going to let that bunch of heartless motherfucking bastard cocksuckers to feel like they beaten anyone.

You’d think it stopped? No way. In 2010, two explosions went off in Moscow’s metro again, 38 dead and over a hundred hurt. In 2011, there was a terract in Moscow’s international airport Domodedovo, with 30 killed and over 150 hurt.

Everything happened to us, Russians: we ourselves and our kids were killed in cars, busses, trolleys, metro, restaurants, markets, shops, ships, planes, airports, theaters, schools, police stations and in our own homes. Oh, and on rock concerts too – there was huge blast in an open field where over 30,000 gathered to listen to music. There’s no safe place if a sick fuck is carrying a blast around. Zero fucks given anymore. These days, people are gathering in huge number specifically so say “no, fuck YOU!” to those sick fucks; to show, they’re not afraid even if they’ll get killed. But still, with all those zero fucks given, my parents would have a fit if i went to watch an open air show.