Tatiana Tkachuk: If They Wanted to Blow Us They Would Do It :: Charter'97 :: News

Fear lives in every person, even in those, who decided to commit suicide, taking with them as many souls as possible. This thought has sounded many times during my conversation with Tatiana Tkachuk, midwife of the Minsk regional maternity home, who was taken hostage in Moscow. Tatiana confessed that every time when they heard gunshots they were panicking from fear, the power of which was incomparable. Then it somehow faded away with the thoughts about relatives and children. Living for three days in the atmosphere of constant fear was a terrible nightmare.

“I have never thought that shooting can be so frightening. Once we heard the blast there and all jumped to our feet. A Chechen woman, sitting next to me, said: “See, how scary? And that’s happening in Chechnya every day.”
Sometimes they would open fire in the corridor, simply to intimidate hostages or those outside. But three times they shot at people. At first, they killed the young woman who appeared from nowhere and started yelling at them. A day later there occurred another tragic incident: a man showed up in the hall, claiming that his son was there. The Chechens declared his son’s name to us, but nobody stirred. They led the man into the corridor and shot him dead, thinking he was a FSB mole. During the last night a young person rushed to the Chechen woman to snatch away the gun, but fell down and was riddled with bullets. But at first the gunman missed and wounded a woman in the chest and some man in the eye. Tatiana remembers no more signs of aggression on behalf of the Chechens. She claims that the young Chechen females feared everything just as they themselves did.
“I told my friend: just look into her eyes. They are filled with fear. She would never blow us up. It could well be just my impression, but I saw that she was afraid. I could see her fear when she touched with trembling hands the cords on the explosive…”
It was this Chechen woman who convinced her that they aren’t bluffing. She said: “You are all unbelievers and must die for that”. At the same time Chechen Aslan, who controlled the balcony, soothed the women, saying that they would be all left alive. “We only want Putin to halt war in Chechnya”. “If they truly wanted to kill us, they would do that. But they didn’t. Either they didn’t get a command or may be they simply had mercy on us”. Tatiana says that she is sorry not only for the dead hostages but also for the terrorists, who sacrificed their lives for no good reason. Why, she doesn’t know. Nor wants to know. Now she only wants to recover and return to her normal life, where there is no fear, although this is next to impossible now.