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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The Ostankino inferno
By Abdel-Malek Khalil
Television screens in Moscow went blank this week as one of the Russian capital's most outstanding Soviet-era landmarks, the Ostankino Media Tower, was engulfed in the flames of a raging fire. At 540 meters the Ostankino Tower, Europe's tallest building, housed most of the Russian capital's television stations, only one of which survived the blaze. Authorities are still calculating the cost of the damage. The fire started in the tower's thin spire and because of a short circuit spread downward, cutting broadcasts to the capital and burning the observation deck and restaurant. The burning down of Moscow's Ostankino television tower comes barely two weeks after the sinking in mysterious circumstances of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea killing all 118 crew members aboard. It also was preceded by a blast in an underground station in Moscow that claimed the lives of 12 people. The number of catastrophes that struck Russia in August was so alarming that the Russian media now refers to the month as "Black August."
Like the underground blast, the Russian authorities suspect that pro-independence Chechen warriors were behind the latest disaster. The internet site www.Kavak.org claims that separatist Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev was behind the inferno that gutted the Ostankino Tower. It statedd that Sunday's disaster was in retaliation for the bombing of the Chechen separatists' own television tower by Russian troops during their Chechen campaign last winter. According to the statement by www.Kavak.org , Basayev was also behind the destruction of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea, which it claimed was a suicide mission carried out by a Caucaus-born sailor sympathetic to the Chechen cause.
Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry which is dealing with the after-effects of the Ostankino Tower inferno said that automatic fire-fighting systems within the tower appeared to have failed or had run out of fire-suppressing foam. The Ostankino Tower inferno is the latest in a series of disasters in Moscow and around the country such as gas explosions, industrial accidents and breakdowns in the power grids. These have highlighted the sorry state of Russia's infrastructure which is in steep decline thanks to poor funding and lack of maintenance.
Russia's Minister of Information and Media, Mikhail Lasin, said that the Ostankino Tower will be broadcasting television signals to the Moscow Metropolitan region's 12 million people within the one-week deadline set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who again expressed his "shock, sorrow for those killed and condolences to the relatives and friends, and deepest regrets."
When Putin took office in January, the Russian people welcomed the change from his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Only a few weeks ago, he enjoyed popular approval ratings as high as 73 per cent. Today, however, after a series of disastrous events, Putin's image has been seriously dented. The Russian media is controlled to a great degree by the oligarchs who oppose Putin. Not surprisingly, the tycoons have ruthlessly exploited the grim mood of the country to tarnish the President's image. After the sunken nuclear submarine disaster, furious relatives denounced official incompetence and secrecy on highly publicised national television shows. Some commentators have even ventured so far as to say that the burning of the Ostankino Tower was a deliberate and thinly veiled warning to Russia's increasingly critical media. The way it looks, September might well cast an even darker cloud over troubled Russia.
