President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called the Beslan hostage crisis \"an attack on our country.\" \"What has happened now is an inhuman, unprecedentedly cruel terrorist crime. It is not a challenge to the president, parliament, or government. It is a challenge to the whole of Russia. To all of our people,\" Putin said in a televised address. \"It is an attack on our country,\" he said. \"What we face are not individual acts of intimidation or isolated terrorist attacks. What we face is a direct invasion of Russia by international terror. An all-out, full-scale war, which is claiming the lives of more and more of our fellow citizens,\" the president said. \"The entire world experience shows that such wars do not, unfortunately, come to an early end. For this reason, we simply cannot and must not lead a life as carefree as before,\" Putin said. \"Terrorists think they are more powerful than we. That they will be able to intimidate us with their cruelty, paralyze our will, and demoralize our society. And it might seem we had a choice of either to rebuff them or accept their claims. To surrender, let Russia be ruined and taken to pieces in the hope that they will ultimately leave us alone,\" the president said. \"As president, head of the Russian state, as a man who has sworn to defend the country and its territorial integrity, and simply as a Russian citizen, I am convinced that in actuality we do not have any choice. Because if we let ourselves be blackmailed and submit to panic, we will plunge millions of people into an endless series of bloody conflicts, such as Karabakh and Transdniestria, and other similar tragedies. It is impossible not to see the obvious,\" Putin said. (Interfax)