Representatives of Avtoradio station (part of Gazprom-Media Radio) visited Beslan, the town where one of the most brutal terrorist acts in Russia’s history occurred 15 years ago. The delegation, with Gazprom-Media Radio’s general manager Yuri Kostin at the helm, has been coming to Beslan since 2004 to support those who have survived the tragic event and to pay tribute to its victims and the heroes who have sacrificed their lives to save children held hostage in School Number One for three days.
This year, Autoradio’s delegation also included representatives of the radio station’s regional branches from Samara, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Perm and Kazan. As has become tradition, they visited the “City of Angels” and School Number One, where the siege started in 2004 during a morning ceremony to mark the first school day of the year. The radio staff laid flowers at the memorial sculpture gifted by Avtoradio - an open book installed next to a Russian birch, a symbol of the country-wide support for Beslan’s residents. Employees of the radio station planted the birch there 15 years ago, on soil that was collected from all the Russian regions during a car rally “Rady Zhizny” (For Life), which spanned more than 9,000 kilometers from Vladivostok to Moscow.