C.J. Chivers (thanks, Nigel): Sergei Babayan was trapped. Minutes before, wisps of smoke had begun flowing through cracks in his classroom door at the private Moscow Institute of Government and Corporate Management.
There had been no other warning, he recalled, not even an alarm. Now smoke filled the room and flames roared in the corridor, where the steel door to the sole fire exit was locked. The only escape was out the windows, four stories above the street.
Students jostled at the sills and screamed. One young woman scrambled to the ledge and fell, slamming onto a canopy two stories below. Gasping, Mr. Babayan, 17, crawled out and clung to an air-conditioner.
There, he said, he saw his chance: a cigarette-thick cable dangling nearby from the roof. He grabbed hold and descended — a sensation, judging by his injuries, like sliding down a knife. Other students and teachers started to leap, shattering themselves on the ground. So far 11 people have died as a result of the fire, including 5 whose blackened remains were found in a classroom after firefighters cut through the locked fire door.
Eight years into the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian government has filled its coffers with cash and its ministries with swagger, allowing the Kremlin to reclaim a place on the world’s stage. But the fast-moving fire on Oct. 2, and the grotesque panorama of desperation, injury and death that accompanied it, underscored the enduring disorder beneath Russia’s partial revival.
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