The Dead Are to Blame: Minnikhanov Closes the Case on 13 Fatalities
The head of the republic says the victims would have survived had they taken ‘elementary measures.’ By that logic, even a five-year-old girl failed to do enough. Let us record what this sounds like: not the voice of Tatarstan’s government, but that of Moscow’s administrator.
When thirteen people die, a normal government begins with an investigation. A colonial administration begins by reviewing the behavior of the dead. Rustam Minnikhanov summed up the August 10 attack on Nizhnekamsk this way: ‘if some elementary measures had been taken, none of this would have happened,’ according to Idel.Realii citing Business Online.
Let us recall who, by this logic, failed to do enough. A five-year-old girl who was sleeping on a balcony. Nine workers — eight citizens of Uzbekistan and one citizen of Tajikistan — who had been housed in a hostel inside an industrial zone, practically next to a military target. Residents who had complained for months about locked basements and shelters with no clear addresses — complaints that Minnikhanov himself acknowledges. Meanwhile, the mayor of Nizhnekamsk found culprits one level lower: hostel managers, he said, had been negligent. Who placed migrant workers next to a target, and who turned Nizhnekamsk into a target in the first place, are questions the vertical of power does not ask.
What the Belgorod recipe reveals
Minnikhanov calls for studying Belgorod’s experience — the experience of a city that has lived under strikes for years. Think about what that means: the head of Tatarstan’s plan is not to remove the republic from someone else’s war, but to teach it to die in an organized manner. This is not a slip of the tongue. It is the job description of an appointee who reports to the Kremlin: in such reports there is no word ‘war,’ only victims who were allegedly not quick enough.
We will be told that a siren sounded. It did. At the same time, shelters remained locked — something residents had complained about long before August 10. The duty of government is to protect. Moscow bears responsibility for creating a situation in which such protection became necessary in the first place. Shifting both burdens onto a dead child is a level not every governor-general of past empires managed to reach.
Thank you for the argument
Without intending to, Minnikhanov articulated one of the strongest arguments for independence. A government appointed by Moscow will defend Moscow no matter how many coffins arrive — that is its nature, and decorative elections do not change it. In an independent Tatarstan, a government that blamed the dead would not survive the day; the first parliamentary session would bring it down. As long as the Kremlin signs off on who rules in Kazan, Kazan will keep looking for the guilty among the dead. We will look where responsibility actually lies.