Beslan

I know I'm very late to the party, but I was driven truly speechless by the massacre.

I find that Ken MacLeod sums up the situation best.

The Beslan massacre is Russia's 9/11. It is Islamism's Abu Ghraib. It is the moment when the cause becomes filth.
...
The atrocity doesn't subtract one iota from the justice of the demand for an end to the long catalogue of horrors Russia has inflicted on the Chechens. It does make any progress towards that end far harder. The Chechens might seem to have already suffered everything that Russia might inflict. They haven't.

I'd add:

1. The massacre was as evil an act that as you could possibly name
2. This does not now invalidade Chechen greivances against the evils the Russians have perpetrated
3. This has caused Putin's worst impulses to surface
4. Putin's response suggests that terrorism feeds warmongering authoritarianism and vice versa, in a spiral of madness

God help us all.