The dramatic events unfolding in North Ossetia are more likely than not to reach a terrible and bloody conclusion. Subtlety is not a quality that has characterised the Russian response to terrorist challenges in the past and it is not likely to be a quality much in evidence now.
To be sure, what the pro-Chechnya terrorists have done in attacking a school and killing eight, perhaps more, civilians in the process, taking a disputed number of children hostage, perhaps 132, and up to 300 in total, is an outrage beyond justification of any kind.
No weasel words can be allowed to excuse what was done yesterday. As the head of Unicef, the UN children's agency, Ms Carol Bellamy, put it: "Children must never be used for political purposes, and schools must never be degraded to places of violence. If we don't respect the sanctity of childhood, then we have nothing."
Evidently, those behind this outrage respect little, save their own cause. But whatever case can be made in favour of Chechen independence is damaged virtually beyond repair by such activity. And in the awful history that attends the Chechen struggle, this can only be too well known by the perpetrators.
The first Chechen hostage-taking of significance was in 1994 when hundreds of civilians were herded into a hospital in Budyonnovsk in southern Russia. In the subsequent shoot-out with Russian forces, around 100 people were killed.
Six months later, an astonishing 3,000 people were taken hostage by around 250 gunmen in a hospital in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar. Most of them were freed as the terrorists fled back towards Chechnya, taking some of the hostages with them. Several died in the succeeding days as Russian forces closed in on the hostage-takers. Between 1996 and 2000, hostage-taking was so prevalent in Chechnya that few Westerners dared venture into the region. Even now, many media organisations will not risk sending correspondents to Grozny, the capital virtually razed to the ground by Russian forces. Thus, those who wish the world would be on their side have created a situation in which their (legitimate) story of oppression remains untold.
What the world is left with is the horror of events like the 2002 Moscow theatre siege (in which 160 people died when Russian forces stormed the building), random outrages such as last week's blowing up of two aircraft with the loss of 89 lives, Tuesday night's Moscow car bomb in which 10 people died, and yesterday's outrage.
The Russian President, Mr Putin, has pursued a tough policy of confrontation with Chechen terrorists that self-evidently has not worked. But in the face of continuing outrages, he cannot change tack. Those holding the schoolchildren will have to be dealt with but in the aftermath, if a third party could negotiate a breathing space, perhaps Mr Putin could be persuaded to seek a negotiated settlement. The alternative is bleak.