The former head of the Federal Security Service and current assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev, held rescuers responsible for the killing of the hostages during the Dubrovka incident in 2002.
“I would like to emphasize that the FSB units worked professionally. But the other services did not have such cohesion. The fact is that after the destruction of the terrorists, all the hostages should have received the necessary assistance. It was supposed to be provided by the rescue services that entered the hall after the special forces. But they were confused. As a result, not all the victims were injected with the antidote, and some hostages received a double dose. This led to losses,” Patrushev said in an interview with the Russia Today channel. Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
According to Patrushev, who headed the FSB at the time of the terrorist attack and was supervising the attack, “there were not supposed to be casualties.” He also stated that the attack itself went according to plan, because “the bandits failed to detonate any of the explosive devices.”
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights found the Russian authorities guilty of violating the hostages’ right to life: the court found that the doctors were not immediately warned about the use of gas during the assault, which is why they were unable to provide qualified assistance to the victims. court binding Russia will pay compensation to 64 applicants totaling more than 1.2 million euros and conduct a new investigation into the causes of death. No investigation was conducted.
At the time of the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, the Ministry of Emergency Situations was headed by Sergei Shoigu. Recently, he has significantly lost his influence in power – in May 2024, Shoigu was dismissed from his post as head of the Ministry of Defense, and criminal cases were opened against his former deputies. Now Shoigu is Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.