I know this is a big news day, but you Tom Clancy fans out there might want to take note of what’s going on in Moscow.
A group of 40 Chechen militants are holding a theatre full of some 700 people hostage. About 75 of them are foreign nationals, including Australians, Netherlanders, Germans, Brits and Yanks. One out of four of the hostage-takers are strapped with explosives.
They are armed to the teeth. When a couple of women managed to escape, the militants shot at them with RPGs.
Their demands are completely unreasonable: pull all troops out of Chechnya right now. Vladimir Putin is sounding very pissed off: “The main goal of our law enforcement agencies and special services in planning measures is aimed at freeing the hostages with the maximum ensurance of their safety.”
The interesting thing is this: the Russians are still the caretaker of one of the largest “special services” in the world, whatever they’re calling Spetsnaz these days. In theory, they should have some very mean anti-terrorism teams.
Obviously, nobody wants this to go toe-to-toe, but the situation appears to be intractable, and the Chechens are claiming they are suicidal and are threatening to start killing ten people an hour.
If this goes down, it will be the largest known hostage rescue attempt since Entebbe, and it will be studied by hostage-rescue teams for decades.
Keep an eye on it, and if you’re the praying type, you might want to start now.