A series of attacks at Russian schools
By
Clara Weiss
31 January 2018
Two major attacks on high school students by fellow teenagers occurred in Russia this month. In all, within one week, three schools witnessed attacks, and another school a stabbing. Dozens of children and several teachers were wounded.
The most widely covered attack occurred on January 15, at school No. 127 in Perm, an industrial city in the Urals. Two 16-year-olds, wearing masks, burst into a fourth-grade classroom and attacked the teacher and then the children with knives. Twelve youth, including the assailants, and the teacher were wounded.
The teacher, Natalia Schegulina, who was stabbed 17 times, and two children were listed in critical condition. One of the alleged assailants attended the 11th grade (the last year in Russian high schools) at the same school. He is the son of a relatively successful local designer, and, judging by media reports, had done fairly well in school.
The other alleged attacker had been suspended from school, reportedly at the request of his parents, because of mental health issues. According to Russia Today, he is the son of a successful local businessman, who owns numerous companies in the city. A widely discussed YouTube video shows the youth, who was in psychiatric treatment, rambling in an apparently intoxicated state. On social media, he expressed support for the campaign of right-winger Alexei Navalny, arguing that it didn’t matter who would “ruin the country,” which he described as a “country of slaves.” He also participated in a closed group on Vkontakte (VK), the Russian equivalent of Facebook and one of the most popular websites in the world, which glorified the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.
On January 17, a student at a…