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Forty minutes later, all 53 Chechen rebels were dead or captive. Anya and more than 750 other hostages had escaped alive, including some 30 children and 75 foreigners. But at least 90 Russian citizens died in the operation: killed in cross fire, perhaps, or suffocated by the mysterious gas, or even felled by heart attacks. Russian officials stressed that the deaths resulted from the siege's privations and stress. Nevertheless, Moscow hospitals appealed for blood, and eyewitnesses saw unconscious bodies carried from the theater. Many of the freed were delivered straight to toxicological wards to be treated for gas poisoning. The televised pictures of those female guerrillas, explosive packs still tied to their waists and slumped lifelessly in their seats, offered mute testimony to the fast-acting power of the agent.
By Russian standards, the rescue operation was an unexpected success. Putin made the most of it, donning a white doctor's coat to visit freed hostages at a Moscow hospital. Yet for all the claims of victory Saturday, top Kremlin leaders must face up to the security failures that let the Chechen takeover happen in the first place. While it would be "untimely" to fire the country's security chiefs right now, a top Putin aide reportedly said, the President needs to take steps to ensure that such a terrifying event does not happen again in the middle of Moscow.
Many Russians will cheer the success of the rescue. But the Chechen raid may also kindle fierce debate about Putin's war. He rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000 on a promise to restore Moscow's grip on the rebellious republic of Chechnya. For the past two years, he regularly claimed victory was all but won. As the champion of order and stability, Putin enjoyed strong public standing, while the government's harsh censorship of news from the war zone nearly a thousand miles from the capital has kept the grim realities of the stalemated conflict off the front pages and out of the minds of ordinary Russians. Now the brazen takeover of a theater just three miles from the Kremlin has brought the vicious struggle right to their doorstep.
The Chechen attackers, showing every sign of determination, had made only one demand. Russia must stop the war and withdraw its troops from the mostly Muslim Caucasus republic. No, said Putin. "We will not yield to these provocations." But once complacent Muscovites were beginning to ask whether this war, like the one in Afghanistan, was worth the bloodshed. "This is the logical extension of what they have always been doing, sending our children to die senselessly," said playwright Mark Rozovsky, 65, as he waited for news of his teenage daughter Sasha, a captive inside the theater. "I don't want my daughter to die at 14!"
The crisis began just after 9 on Wednesday night. After an intermission, theatergoers headed back to their seats in the 1,163-seat auditorium for Act II of Nord-Ost (North-East), a popular musical romance. Suddenly, masked attackers in battle dress burst into the building. Some fired into the air, while others raced onto the stage shouting, "We are Chechens!" and "We are at war here!"