Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan, "The Siege That Still Scars Russia" https://cepa.org/article/the-siege-that-still-scars-russia/

« The Russian security services learned several lessons from the events of October 2002; that they can lie with impunity, and that they would never be criticized, let alone punished for a failure unless that failure didn’t put the political regime at risk. And they got a license to attack the independent media at will. Not only was the assault on independent media fully supported by the Kremlin, and by Putin personally, but by Russian society too. The FSB harassed the relatives of Nord-Ost victims to keep them from talking to journalists, and even that was met with silence. No one was really bothered.

The terrified middle classes of Moscow and the big cities fully supported the Kremlin narrative, accusing journalists of vilifying the government and undermining stability. Society made its choice – as long as the FSB and other agencies delivered security, they would have a carte blanche from the Kremlin and Russian society. Their methods, however brutal, the special operations’ costs in human lives, however high, were excluded from public discussion. Without much debate or noise, society surrendered its right to hold the security services, and by extension Putin, accountable for their actions. This understanding became an essential element of the pact between Putin and Russia. »