In recent years, a statement about terrorists attributed to the Russian president has been actively spreading on the Internet. We checked whether this phrase has anything to do with Vladimir Putin.
Back in 2015, a quote was published by the website of an American TV channel. Fox News, as well as Fox & Friends talk show profiles in Twitter And Facebook. In Russian, it is often found on information sites (“Ukraine.ru", "Melitopol news feed", "Kherson news feed"), in collections aphorisms, and also in the form demotivator. In October 2022, on the 20th anniversary terrorist attack on Dubrovka, the statement was actively distributed on Telegram - in particular, in the channels “Russia now"(379,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Putin on Telegram" (332,000), "Scott Ritter on Telegram" (275,000) and "Federation"(197,000), in September 2023 - in Facebook and everything is the same Telegram.
Putin's most famous statement about terrorists sounded On September 24, 1999, when he, then still the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, commenting on the renewed bombing of Grozny after militant incursions into Dagestan, said: “We will pursue terrorists everywhere. At the airport - at the airport. So, if you'll excuse me, we'll catch them in the toilet, and in the end we'll soak them in the toilet. That’s it, the issue is finally closed.”
The threat to “wet in the toilet” instantly became Putin’s calling card, although he later confessed, that “blurted out, the form is incorrect, but in essence it is true.” It is worth noting that, contrary to the assurances of the Russian Prime Minister about the bombing of terrorist bases only, within a few days the number of killed civilians in Chechnya numbered in the hundreds.
In the fall of 2015, the topic of terrorism was also relevant in Russia. October 31 over the Sinai Peninsula crashed Airbus A321 airliner flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. 217 passengers and seven crew members (almost all Russian citizens) died. One of the groups controlled by ISIS took responsibility for the incident. On November 16, the head of the FSB of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bortnikov, at a meeting with the president confirmedthat the disaster occurred as a result of a terrorist attack. The next day on the official Kremlin website appeared and Putin’s statements on this matter. He, in particular, stated that the perpetrators “will be found anywhere on the planet and punished,” but he did not say anything about sending terrorists to God.
However, from the publication Fox News, made on November 17, many concluded that it was then that Putin made the now viral statement. Not only because of the date, but also because the channel (or rather, the blogger whose article was published on Fox News) referred to a tweet from a journalist from the Arabic service of the Russian state TV channel Russia Today Remy Maalouf.
When Western journalists could not find the statement in any authoritative source associated with Putin, Maalouf deleted your tweet. In return she wrote: “This is the danger of social networks! I took Putin's quote from a Facebook post, and it turned out to be false. I apologize." And indeed, November 16 the phrase in English started spread across social networks as a quote from the President of the Russian Federation. It was not yet popular in Russian at that time, although it had been spreading at least since summer.
But without mentioning Putin, the statement with minor changes was known before. Over the years, social network users attributed it to the nameless to the Kenyan general, and the Indian army (there is even a photograph of the corresponding poster), and the American military leader Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded international coalition forces during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait in 1990–1991. The latter case is the most notable because it goes back to 2001, in the months following the September 11 attacks. Then the email list began to spread story about how General Schwarzkopf was allegedly asked whether people who harbored terrorists and otherwise assisted them could be forgiven. He said, “I think it’s God’s job to forgive them. Our job is to arrange a meeting for them.” Then the quote went viral periodic publications, and remained viral on the Internet for many years (in 2021, one fasting 373,000 people shared it on Facebook). However, back in 2003, Schwarzkopf denied his authorship on television, although he stated that he was proud of such attribution.
In 2004, the action movie “Wrath” was released with Denzel Washington in the title role. In one episode, his character, a former intelligence officer, pronounces an almost identical phrase: “Forgiveness is a matter between them and God. My job is to organize the meeting.”
Thus, the quote about organizing a meeting between terrorists and God appeared long before it was first attributed to Putin, and has nothing to do with him. Judging by available sources, the President of the Russian Federation has never spoken it publicly and certainly cannot be considered its author.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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