The shooting and bombing of a school in Russian occupied Crimea this week which was at first reported as a possible terrorist attack (see our related coverage) turned out to be a mass school shooting by a lone gunman, the first of its kind in Russia.
With 20 dead and 50 wounded for no apparent reason, Russians need answers to understand what exactly happened. Their media has quickly labeled it ‘Russia’s Columbine’ whilst President Vladimir Putin is pointing fingers to the west.
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Mr. Putin stated that the tragic shooting was a "result of globalization," adding that "everything started with the tragic events in schools in the US."
Related coverage: <a href="http://thegoldwater.com/news/39608-Kremlin-Confirms-Crimea-School-Terrorist-Attack-There-Are-A-Lot-Of-Bodies-Of-Children-Video"> Kremlin Confirms Crimea School Terrorist Attack “There Are A Lot Of Bodies Of Children” (Video)</a>.
Russians have turned inwards in recent years as the West has slapped them with sanctions over the occupation of the Crimean peninsula, which belongs to Ukraine. As the society grows more and more conservative and committed to what is considered traditional family values, the West is therefore often portrayed as a corrupting influence in the state-controlled media. This time around, US mass shootings like Columbine and Parkland are blamed for influencing the troubled 18-year-old attacker, named as Vladislav Roslyakov.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">In Kerch school shooting, Russian media increasingly focusing on mother's reported status as a Jehovah's Witness, a religious faith that has been deemed extremist in Russia. <a href="https://t.co/TF1x7K4JgT">https://t.co/TF1x7K4JgT</a></p>— Andrew Roth (@AndrewRoth) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewRoth/status/1052844093037051904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2018</a></blockquote>
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According to his former girlfriend, who spoke on Russian TV yesterday, Mr. Roslyakov had been bullied and this was his revenge. He at first detonated a bomb and then shot as many students as he could during the ensuing panic.
Russian media, which is freshly realizing that a split in the Russian Orthodox Church is also due to its occupation of Crimea, now says that the mother of the Kerch gunman was probably a Jehova's Witness, a group that Russia declared last year to be extremist.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kerch?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kerch</a> massacre 'a result of globalisation' - <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Putin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Putin</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Crimea?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Crimea</a> <a href="https://t.co/pbhZfqmG2i">pic.twitter.com/pbhZfqmG2i</a></p>— Ruptly (@Ruptly) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ruptly/status/1052937355932393474?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2018</a></blockquote>
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However, there are also voices within Russia blaming the Kremlin itself for the event, with Russian journalist Viktoria Ivleva commenting: "I can't help but think that there hasn't been one single terrorist attack with victims in Ukraine since 1991. There wasn't one until the war [in Eastern Ukraine] there. Until we came there."
As Russian society, just like the ethnic European one is a shrinking population, the shooting of children is especially hard to cope with.
The Kerch attack was the deadliest incident of school violence on Russian territory since the 2004 attack on a school in Beslan, located in southwest Russia. At that time, Chechen separatists forces occupied a school and took over a thousand hostages. In the end, over 300 people were killed, many of the victim's children.
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