The mass shooting which took place in Crimea on Wednesday is an unfortunate result of globalization and a collective failure to adapt to it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russian president suggested that the suspected shooter, who killed 20 people in a polytechnic college in Kerch, where he himself studied, was inspired by similar sprees of violence in the United States.

“Strange as it seems, it’s a result of globalization. There are entire communities dedicated to it in the social media online. It all started with well-known tragedies in schools in the US. Young mentally unstable people invent false heroes for themselves,” Russian leader said as he attended a Valdai Club plenary session in the Russian southern city of Sochi.

The striking resemblance between how the Kerch shooter was dressed and the outfit used by one of the 1999 shooting in Columbine can hardly be overlooked. The Russian investigators are yet to confirm whether the violence in Russia was inspired by the notorious American incident.

Putin said the tragedy in Kerch is a signal that the humanity is failing to adapt to new realities of the globalized world.

“We collectively react badly overall to the changing conditions. We fail to create a necessary, interesting and useful content for the youths. They grab on to this surrogate heroism. And tragedies like this one happen,” the Russian president said.

The incident in Kerch was the bloodiest school shooting in Russia’s history. This kind of violence is relatively rare in the country, but not completely unheard of. When students do try to go on a rampage, they usually fail to get their hands of firearms and instead use a knife of an axe, which means the casualty numbers are relatively small.

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