WTH is Putin thinking? Didn't he learn anything from the school massacre by the Chechnyans?
Since when KGB agents care about children? They have rather long record of killing or suppressing them and their families. Beside it was not Russian children but Ossetian so even nationalism would not work here.
Sounds perfect to me -- there is virtually no public attention on the Russian genocide and mass destruction of Chechnya, and the more attention focused on the Middle East, the better. It's a get out of Hell free card for Russia, as they are selling to both a secular Baathist regime in Syria and to the mullahcracy of Iran.