As we go to press, the number of casualties from the Besian school siege in the Russian region of North Ossetia is still unclear. But reports are still rising from a massive 322 dead and 700 injured, mostly children.
Despite President Putin's promise that the safety of the hostages was paramount, Russian forces nevertheless stormed the building in which up to 1200 children, parents and teachers were being held by gunmen demanding Russia's withdrawal from Chechnya.
The outcome has been a cruel and terrible bloodbath, as was the botched storming of the Moscow theatre siege in 2002, in which 170 people died. It is unclear why this action was taken when negotiations were apparenty progressing.
The hostage-taking itself was a savage atrocity, condemned by nationalist Chechen leaders such as Aslan Maskhadow, who have denied any involvement. Appallingly and tragically it reflects instead the brutalisation and despair resulting from Russia's prolonged war on Chechnya.
During a decade of war and occupation, almost hall Chechnya's population has been killed or fled. Many of its towns and villages have been reduced to wastelands of rubble by tank and arial bombardment. There is no money to rebuild. Poverty is widespread, unemployment 50-60 per cent.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports detail hundreds of disappearances, summary executions, beatings, torture.
Moscow also persistently refuses to negotiate with popularly elected leaders such as Maskhadov (elected as President in 1997) and instead has imposed a series of puppet regimes through blatantly rigged elections.
All this has arisen from Russia's desire to keep control of the small North Caucusus land, which it claims as part of the Russian Federation.
The tragedy of Chechnya is that, although it declared independence in 1991, it was never given recognition by Russia, nor by the rest of the world.
Without this it failed to get aid, trade and investment to develop as a viable state. It was beset from the start by poverty, corruption and division. Russia used this throughout the 1990s as an excuse to intervene to restore stability in its backyard.
President Putin came to power in 1999 promising to sort out the Chechen issue once and for all. His stance was to deny the national struggle for independence in Chechnya and claim his intervention as part of the international "war on terror. In this he has been obligingly backed by western leaders (and in future he hopes by the UN), who are fearful of the oil and gas resources of the Caucusus falling under to control of unpredictable locals.
But this rhetoric is as bogus as that of his Western allies on Afghanistan and Iraq. Putin's strategy has manifestly failed.
Despite the presence of 80,000 Russian troops, Chechnya is a quagmire. Casualties are mounting, and his recently appointed puppet President of Chechnya Kadyrov was assassinated in April.
In addition, resistance fighters are increasingly bringing the war to homeland Russia. Before Besian, 500 people had died in 5 months in a series of bombings and attacks.
Now the siege in North Ossetia, presently a region of Russian influence, threatens to ignite divisions throughout the Caucusus.
To carry on meeting this resistance with continued and Increased repression, as the Russians appear still to be saying, cannot bring a solution.
This can only come with Immediate troop withdrawal and Chechnya's full independence.