Only Half of Russia’s Schools are Secured Against Violent Attacks, Russian Education Ministry Concedes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 5 – Only about 50 percent of the 100,000 schools in the Russian Federation are currently secure against a violent attack either of the Columbine type or terrorism, Deputy Education Minister Andrey Korneyev concedes, and providing protection for all of them would cost 42 billion rubles (600 million US dollars).

            Such funds are not now available, and consequently, relatively few of those schools which do not have adequate defenses are likely to get them anytime soon, something that is agitating both Russian parents and the leaders of the Just Russia fraction in the Duma (dailystorm.ru/news/minprosveshcheniya-priznalo-nalichie-problem-s-bezopasnostyu-uchebnyh-zavedeniy).

            In recent years, the greater availability of guns and reports about attacks on schools abroad have sparked Columbine-like attacks on Russian educational institutions, attacks that Moscow has tried to minimize (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/russia-has-yet-another-columbine-and.html).

            Many Russians had been encouraged to think that one of the functions of the Russian Guards would be to defend schools and kindergartens, but that has not happened. The Guards want too much money, and at the moment, only the city of Moscow has signed a contract with them to guard schools.

            If another Columbine-type attack occurs in Russia anytime soon, the Moscow authorities almost certainly will blame it on the Ukrainians and seek to use it as a justification for restricting gun ownership and increasing repression generally. But as other countries have discovered, neither of those steps is likely to eliminate such horrors in the future.