How Not to Criticize Vladimir Putin

In virtually any other country we would place the blame for any loss of life not on the government security forces responding to a terrorist attack but on the terrorists themselves. It wasn’t Russian troops, after all, who stormed the stage at Nord-Ost and held tourists captive at gunpoint. Russian spetnaz did not strap bombs to themselves and herd young children into a school gymnasium. Terrorists did both of those things in order to try to extract political concessions from the Russian government. You can accurately say that the Russian military’s tactical response to both incidents was found wanting, but the only reason those situations existed in the first place had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin and everything to do with Chechen terrorists.