Putin’s secret gas, the massacre at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater two decades later

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to the hostage-taking at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater was devastating 20 years have passed since a Chechen commando stormed into full operation and kidnapped 850 people At least 170 people died, most of them because of the lethal gas used by the Russian forces in the assault on the buildingKamikaze women with bombs attached to their bodies. Corpses sitting upright in the red seats of the theater. The harsh images went around the world. Vladimir Putin was already in power when that happened. Now, twenty years after the fatal outcome of the hostage-taking in the Dubrovka theater in Moscow, the questions are still in the air. And the chemical composition of the gas used by the Kremlin’s special forces in their assault on the building is still a locked secret. Twenty years later, too, Chechnya is no longer a problem for Russia and its current leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, is a faithful ally of Putin in his war against Ukraine. That October 23, 2002, a Chechen commando of between 40 and 50 people , led by Movsar Barayev, interrupted the performance of the popular musical Nord-Ost. The terrorists were carrying explosives, hand grenades, heavy bombs, Kalashnikov assault rifles and pistols. They took 850 people – artists and spectators – hostage and threatened to start killing them if, within a week, the Russian troops did not withdraw from Chechnya. A dramatic countdown was then unleashed to try to stop the massacre. During the first day, the Chechen militiamen released about 200 people (children, some women and foreigners) who carried abroad the message that the captors were ready to cause a bath of blood if their demands were not met. In the harrowing days that followed, negotiations intensified and food and water were brought into the theater. During the second day, another 39 hostages were released. But the tension intensified. A young woman who was outside it, Olga Romanova, skipped all the controls and managed to gain access to the interior of the theater. After asking to speak with the leader of the Chechens, she was executed with three shots. Exterior of the Dubrovka theater on October 24, 2002, in Moscow. Getty Images Among the negotiators was the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an expert on the Chechen conflict. The hours passed, there was no agreement. Three days later, Russian special forces came to the rescue. Through the ventilation ducts of the theater, they injected a numbing gas that acted as a sleeping pill. The soldiers stormed the building and killed the terrorists. But some 130 hostages also died (in total there were at least 170 dead) and almost all, as it turned out later, because of the gas used by the Russian forces. The lethal gas used by the KremlinThe Kremlin did not acknowledge that it had used this gas until several hours later. And when he did, he assured that it was not lethal. Moscow’s chief anesthesiologist, Yevgeny Evdokimov, said at the time that it was “a narcotic substance used as a general anesthetic.” The chief doctor of public health, Andrey Seltsovskiy, insisted that the gas could not have caused the death of the hostages. So did President Vladimir Putin. Details were not disclosed. But “if it was so harmless, why is the formula a state secret?” one of the survivors, Svetlana Gubareva, told the BBC years later. Russian soldiers surrounding the Dubrovka theater on October 24, 2002 in Moscow. Getty Images Some reports alluded to a composition of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid capable of causing a fatal overdose similar to that of heroin. But there was no official confirmation. And, despite everything, Putin awarded the deputy director of the secret services, Vladimir Pronichev, who led the rescue operation, the title of Hero of Russia. The role of the authorities was not investigated and no responsibility was assumed for the deaths. Attempts to promote parliamentary commissions to carry out the inquiries were blocked. Funeral for the victims in the Moscow theater, on October 30, 2002. Getty Images The demands of the relatives of the victims to investigate what happened fell on deaf ears. Like that of Nina’s father, a 14-year-old girl who died in the assault. He told Reuters a decade later that the chemical gas “affected her respiratory system and stopped her breathing … That’s what they did to our children.” His drama was also that of many other relatives. Her daughter, he explained, “was never taken to a hospital, never offered medical help. They just threw her on a bus to hide her from the TV cameras.” Exact data on the number of victims was also not offered. A survey released ten years after what happened claimed that 74% of Russians did not trust the official version of events. Two decades later, the shadows have not been cleared up.