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1999 Russian apartment bombings

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Russian apartment bombings
LocationRussia
(Buynaksk-Moscow-Volgodonsk)
DateSeptember 4-16, 1999
TargetLow-income apartment buildings
Attack type
Time bombings
DeathsNearly 300
InjuredMore than 1,000

The Russian apartment bombings was the largest series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Russia's history.[1] Five bombings took place in Moscow and two other Russian towns during ten days of September 1999, and several bombings have been prevented. Altogether nearly 300 civilians were killed at night. The bombings, together with the Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War. Chechen militants were blamed but no Chechen field commander accepted responsibility for the bombings and Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement of his government.

The bombings ceased when a similar bomb was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on September 23. Later in the evening Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryzanians and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War.[2] A few hours later, three Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had planted the bomb were caught by the local police. This incident was declared to be a training exercise by the FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.

These suspicious events led to allegations that the bombings were in fact a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the FSB in order to legitimize the resumption of military activities in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin and the FSB to power, as described in books by David Satter,[3][4] Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky,[1] and by Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, who were both assassinated.[5] Russian Parliament member Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Russian State Duma in March 2000. An independent[6] public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev was hampered by government refusal to respond to its inquiries,[7] and its chairmen admitted that he has no evidence to support any version of the events.[8][9] Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations. The Commission's lawyer, Mikhail Trepashkin, was arrested and jailed.

An official FSB investigation of the bombings was completed three years later, in 2002. Seven suspects have been killed and six have been convicted on terrorism-related charges. According to the investigation, all the bombings were organized and led by Achemez Gochiyaev (an ethnic Karachai, who as of 2007 remained at large) and were ordered by the Arab-born Mujahid Ibn al-Khattab (who was killed by the FSB in 2002). Both denied any involvement in the bombings. The bomb in the city of Ryzan was declared to be a fake.

The bombings

The five apartment bombings took place, and at least three attempted bombings have been prevented.[4] All bombing had the same "signature", judging from the nature and the volume of the destruction. In each case the RDX explosive was used, and the timers had been set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties.[2] The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, critical elements of the buildings and force the buildings to "collapse like a house of cards".[4] The terrorists were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia.

Moscow mall

The first bombing, which did not target an apartment block, occurred in Moscow on August 31, 1999. A bomb exploded in a mall, killing one person and leaving 40 others wounded.[4]

Buynaksk

At 9:40 p.m. on September 4, 1999, a car bomb detonated outside a five story apartment building housing Russian border guard soldiers and their families in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan. Sixty-four people were killed and 133 were wounded.[2] On the same day, a car containing 2,706 kilograms of explosives was found in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings. It was discovered by local residents, not by the security services or police.[1]

Moscow, Pechatniki

Bombing at Guryanova Street. One stairway of the building completely collapsed.

On September 9, shortly after midnight, 300 to 400 kg of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in south-east Moscow (19 Guryanova Street). The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people inside and wounding 249 others. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An anonymous caller to a Russian news agency said the blast was a response to recent the Russian bombing of Chechen and Dagestan villages.[10] An Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) spokesman identified the explosive as hexogen.[4] President of Russia Boris Yeltsin ordered to search 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives.[11]

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

September 13, 1999, was supposed to be a day of mourning for the victims of the previous bomb attacks, but on that day a large bomb exploded at 5:00 a.m. in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of yards away. In all, 118 people died and 200 were wounded.[2] The basement of the destroyed building was checked by police three hours prior to the blast.[4]

Moscow, attempted bombings

On September 13, a bomb was defused in a building in Kapotnya area. A warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices have been found at Borisov Ponds.[12] How these sites have been discovered was never officially announced.

A Karachai businessman Achemez Gochiyaev claimed that it was him who called to police and warned about these bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev said that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer[13] who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" on four locations where bombs have been later found. When two first bombs run off, Gochiyaev realized that he was framed and called to police to warn about the bombing.[14]

Volgodonsk

A truck bomb exploded on September 16, 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people and injuring 69 [4]. The bombing took place at 5:00 a.m., exactly as the previous bombing in Moscow. Thirty seven surrounding buildings were also damaged.

Ryazan incident

File:Ryazan-report-on-prevented-explosion--interior-minister.png
Interior minister Vladimir Rushailo reports on a diverted apartment bombing attack in Ryazan, September 24, 1999. Putin would give the same explanation some time later.

On the evening of September 22, 1999, a resident of an apartment building in the town of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate.[4] When alerted police arrived, the car with people was gone.

The policemen found three hundred-pound sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and turned on. The timer was set for 5:30 in the morning.[2] Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected a detonator and a bomb timing device and tested three sacks of white substance with a gas analyzer MO-2. The substance was identified as hexogen, military explosive used in all previous bombings.[4]

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents have been evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers with automatic weapons set up roadblocks on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to hunt the terrorists down. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege".[4] Composite sketches of two men and a woman terrorist suspects were shown on TV.

At 8 a.m. September 23 Russian television networks reported the attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan using hexogen. The minister of internal affairs Vladimir Rushailo announced that police prevented a terrorist act. Later in the evening Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryzanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny.[15]

In the evening of September 23, the perpetrators were caught. A telephone service employee tapped into a long distance phone conversations managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was found to belong to an FSB office in Moscow. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They soon have been released on orders from Moscow. The names and further fate of three FSB agents who conducted this operation remained unknown as of 2007.

Next morning FSB director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise.[16]

File:Ryazan-report-on-training--fsb-director.png
FSB director Nikolai Patrushev reports on an emergency readiness exercise in Ryazan. September 24, 1999, 30 minutes after Rushailo's report.

On March 23 2000, a few days before the Putin's election, Igor Malashkevich, the president of NTV Russia was going to broadcast The Sugar of Ryazan movie about the events. He was warned that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they will go ahead with the broadcast. The warning allegedly came from Vladimir Putin and was brought by Valentin Yumashev, son-in-law of President Yeltsin.[17] The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB members Alexander Zdanovich and General Sergeyev was filmed earlier, on March 20, 2000, and aired on March 24. The FSB members refused to provide the name of the head of the training exercise, if there was any. On March 26 Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk.[18]

Explosives controversies

It has been initially reported by the FSB that explosives used by terrorists are RDX (or "hexogen"). However, it has been officially declared later that the explosive was not the RDX, but a mixture of aluminium powder, nitre, sugar, and TNT prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya [19][20]. The RDX explosives are produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm[4], although they might be also smuggled from suppliers outside of Russia [21] or stolen from munition storage facilities.[22][23][24]. According to the book by Satter, the FSB changed the story about the type of explosive, since it was difficult to explain how huge amounts of RDX disappeared from the closely guarded Perm facility.

Another controversy was related to the type of explosives that were used by FSB agents in Ryzan. Russian Deputy Prosecutor declared in 2002 that a comprehensive testing of the samples showed no traces of any explosives, and that sacks from Ryzan in fact contained only sugar.[25] However Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was real. Tkachenko said that the explosives, including a timer, a power source, and a detonator were genuine military equipment and obviously prepared by a professional. He also said that the gas analyzer that tested the vapors coming from the sacks unmistakably indicated the presence of RDX. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyzer could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyzer was of world class quality, costing $20,000 and was maintained by a specialist who worked according to a strict schedule, checking the analyzer after each use and making frequent prophylactic checks. Tkachenko pointed out that meticulous care in the handling of the gas analyzer was a necessity because the lives of the bomb squad experts depended on the reliability of their equipment. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.[4][26]

In March 2000, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported about a Private Alexei Pinyaev of 137th Regiment who guarded a military facility near the city of Ryazan. He was surprised to see that "a storehouse with weapons and ammunition" contained sucks with the word "sugar" on them. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and made a tea with the sugar taken from the bag. But the taste of tea was terrible. They became suspicious since people were talking about the explosions. The substance turned out to be the hexogen. After the newspaper report, FSB officers "descended to Pinyaev unit", blamed them of "divulged a state secret", and told that "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you've yourselves tangled up in." The military regiment later sued Novaya Gazeta for insulting honor of Russian Army, since there was no private Alexei Pinyaev in the regiment, according to their statement.[27]

Other incidents

Publications about advanced planning of the bombings

On June 6 1999, three months before the bombings, Swedish journalist Jan Blomgren wrote in newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that one of options considered by the Kremlin leaders was "a series of terror bombings in Moscow that could be blamed on the Chechens".[28]

On July 22, Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published leaked documents about an operation "Storm in Moscow" by organizing terrorist acts to cause chaos in introduce emergency ruling, thus saving the Yeltsin regime.[29]

Russian Duma member Konstantin Borovoi said that he had been "warned by an agent of Russian military intelligence of a wave of terrorist bombings" prior to the blasts.[28]

Incident in Russian Parliament

On September 13, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made a surprising announcement: "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night".[30][31][32][33] However the bombing in Volgodonsk took place only three days later, on September 16. When Volgodonsk bombing happened, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation in Duma, but Seleznev turned his microphone off.[34][35]

Two years later, in March 2002, Seleznyov told in an interview that he had been referring to an unrelated hand grenade-based explosion, which did not kill anyone and did not destroyed any buildings, and which indeed happened in Volgodonsk.[36][37] It remains unclear why did Seleznev reported such an insignificant incident to Russian Parliament, and why did not he explain the misunderstanding to Zhirinovsky and other Duma members.[36]

FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko described this as a "the usual Kontora mess up": "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around," he said. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin confirmed that the man who gave Seleznev the note was indeed an FSB officer.[38]

Sttatements about GRU involvement in Buynaksk, obtained under torture.

In December 1999, journalist Robert Young Pelton interviewed GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Army) officer Aleksey Galkin in the captivity of Chechen rebels.[39] Galkin confessed that the bombing in Buynaksk was organized by a GRU team under the general command of the head of the 14th section of the Central Intelligence Office, Lt. Gen. Kostechko, and GRU director Valentin Korabelnikov.[40] [41] Pelton describes the interview with Galkin in his book Three Worlds Gone Mad.[42]

Galkin escaped from captivity at the beginning of 2000. After his escape he stated that Chechen rebels had tortured him to force statements he made to Pelton. His claims have been supported by medical expertise [39][1]. Galkin did not tell anything at all about the alleged GRU involvement in the bombings during his interview to Novaya Gazeta[39][40], thus he "did not deny" the GRU operation according to Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky [1].

Official FSB investigation

Just a few days after the bombings, on September 23, the head of Moscow FSB Alexander Tsarenko announced that all Chechen perpetrators had been already apprehended. However, the people mentioned by Tsarenko turned out to be not Chechens but from Ingushetia and were later released as not having any relation to the explosions.[43]

The official investigation was concluded only in 2002. According to the Russian state Prosecutor office,[20][44] all apartment bombings were executed under command of ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev. The operations were planned by Ibn al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents (both of them were later killed during the Second Chechen War). The planning was carried out in Khattab's guerilla camps in Chechnya, "Caucasus" in Shatoy and "Taliban" in Avtury, according to the prosecution.[44]

The explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan] Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer",[19] or by also putting their RDX and TNT,[20] although the explosives used in Moscow have been initially identified by the FSB as RDX (unlike explosives in Ryzan incident, which have been identified by a local police explosive expert as RDX but later declared by the FSB to be sugar). From there they were sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk, which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, had leased a KamAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organized into several groups which then transported the explosives to different cities. Most of the people participating were not ethnic Chechens.

Batchayev and Krymshakhalov admitted transporting a truckload of explosives to Moscow but said "they have never been in touch with Chechen warlords and did not knew Gochiyaev".[2] They said that someone "who posed as a jihad leader had duped them into the operation" by hiring to transport his explosives, and they later realized this man was working for the FSB.[2] They claimed that bombings were directed by German Ugryumov who supervised the FSB Alpha and Vympel special forces units at that time.[45]

Suspects and convicts

Main article: List of people allegedly involved in Russian apartment bombings

In September 1999, hundreds of Chechen nationals (out of more than 100,000 permanently living in Moscow) were briefly detained and interrogated in Moscow, as a wave of anti-Chechen feeling swept the city.[46] All of them turned out to be innocent.

According to official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harbored other suspects:

Arab-born Mujahid Ibn al-Khattab who was killed by the FSB in 2002.

Moscow bombings

Volgodonsk bombing

  • Timur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai,[58] killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested[20])
  • Zaur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai[59] killed in Chechnya in 1999-2000[20])
  • Adam Dekkushev (Ethnic Karachai,[60] arrested in Georgia, threw a grenade at police during the arrest, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004, after a two-month secret trial held without a jury[19][2])

Buinaksk bombing

  • Isa Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar[58] and native of Dagestan,[61] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001[62])
  • Alisultan Salikhov (Ethnic Avar[58] and native of Dagestan,[63] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001[62])
  • Magomed Salikhov (Ethnic Avar[58] and native of Dagestan,[64] arrested in Azerbaijan in November 2004, extradited to Russia, found not guilty on the charge of terrorism by the jury on January 24, 2006; found guilty of participating in an armed force and illegal crossing of the national border,[65] he was retried again on the same charges on November 13, 2006 and again found not guilty, this time on all charges, including the ones he was found guilty of in the first trial.[66] According to Kommersant Salikhov admitted that he made a delivery of paint to Dagestan for Ibn al-Khattab, although he was not sure what was really delivered.[67])
  • Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (Native of Dagestan,[68] arrested in Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002[69])
  • Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (Ethnic Avar[58] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001[62])
  • Magomed Magomedov (Name indicates a native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001[62])
  • Zainutdin Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar[58] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty[62])
  • Makhach Abdulsamedov (Native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty[62]).

On January 18 2003, Yuri Felshtinsky provided Novaya Gazeta with a video recording and its transcript.[70] The video dated August 20 2002, contained an interview with main suspect of the case Achemez Gochiyayev. According to Gochiyayev, he was an unknowing participant in a plot organized by an undercover FSB agent, his former acquaintance Ramazan Dyshekov.[71]

Attempts at independent investigation

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.[72][73] The Duma, on a pro-Kremlin party block vote, voted to seal all materials related to the Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.[74][75][7] In 2002 and 2003 prominent members of the Kovalevs commission underlined they had no information about the initiator of the bombings, but stressed, that the theory of the FSB involvement, published in the book of Litvinenko and Felshtinsky seems to be even more doubtful than the results of the official investigation.[7][76][77] Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively.[78][79] Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was assaulted in November 2003[80] and two years later on November 3 2005, died in hospital after a car accident.[81]

The commission of Sergei Kovalev asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to investigate the case. Trepashkin found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. However Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003, allegedly for "disclosing state secrets", just a few days shortly before he was to make his findings public.[82] He was sentenced by a military closed court to four years.[83] Amnesty International issued a concern that "there are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges which may be politically-motivated, in order to prevent him continuing his investigative and legal work related to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities".[84] Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run accident in Cyprus.

According to Trepashkin, his supervisers and people from the FSB, promised not to arrest him if he leaves the Kovalev commission and starts working together with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".[85]

Theory of Russian government involvement

The bombings happened over a span of two weeks in 1999 and stopped when three FSB agents were caught by the local police while planting a similar bomb in an apartment block in the city of Ryazan. Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Rushailo congratulated citizens with preventing the terrorist act soon after the incident, but FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise, when he had learned that the FSB agents were caught. The next day, President Boris Yeltsin received a demand from 24 Russian governors to transfer all state powers to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to Yushenkov.[86] Second Chechen War began on September 23, a week after the last bombing and a day after Ryazan incident. This war made Putin very popular, although he was previously unknown to the public, and helped him to win a landslide victory in the presidential elections on March 26 2000.

These events were a successful coup d'état organized by the FSB to bring future Russian president Vladimir Putin to power according to a theory that was put forward by writer David Satter, political scientist Vladimir Pribylovsky, historian Yuriy Felshtinsky, former FSB officer and writer Alexander Litvinenko, Russian Duma lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov, film maker Andrei Nekrasov, investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, and others. Some of them described the bombings as typical "active measures" practicised by the KGB in the past. David Satter[4] stated during his testimony in the United States House of Representatives that:

"With Yeltsin and his family facing possible criminal prosecution, however, a plan was put into motion to put in place a successor who would guarantee that Yeltsin and his family would be safe from prosecution and the criminal division of property in the country would not be subject to reexamination. For “Operation Successor” to succeed, however, it was necessary to have a massive provocation. In my view, this provocation was the bombing in September, 1999 of the apartment building bombings in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. In the aftermath of these attacks, which claimed 300 lives, a new war was launched against Chechnya. Putin, the newly appointed prime minister who was put in charge of that war, achieved overnight popularity. Yeltsin resigned early. Putin was elected president and his first act was to guarantee Yeltsin immunity from prosecution."[87]

According to book by Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, the September 4 terrorist attack in Buynaksk was probably conducted by a sabotage unit of twelve Russian GRU officers who acted on the orders of Colonel-General Valentin Korabelnikov.[1][88] They referred to the testimony of GRU officer Aleksey Galkin. According to this version, all other attacks were organized by FSB forces based on the following chain of command: "Putin (former director of the secret service, future president) - Patrushev (Putin's successor as director of the secret service) - secret service General German Ugryumov (director of the counter-terrorism department)." FSB officers Vladimir Romanovich, Ramazan Dyshenkov and others who directly carried out the bombings. Several Chechens were recruited by FSB agents to deliver explosives disguised as bags of sugar to Volgodonsk and Moscow: Adam Dekkushev, Tysup Krymshamkhalov, and Timur Batchaev. The Chechens believed that apartment buildings were merely temporarily storage places, and that explosives will be used against federal military targets. Ethnic Karachai Achemez Gochiyaev rented the apartment basements as storage spaces on request from FSB agent Ramazan Dyshenkov.[1]

Books and movies about Russian apartment bombings

Non-fiction books and documentaries

The theory of FSB involvement has been described in several books and documentaries, including Darkness at Dawn by American writer and scholar David Satter.[4] He wrote before publishing the book that, if the theory is confirmed, Putin's government in not legitimate since it came to power due to staged terrorism acts.[89]

The BBC Channel 4's Dispatches programme Dying for the President screened on March 9, 2000 and a subsequent article in The Observer also alleged that their journalists put Russian "secret police in [the] frame for Moscow atrocities".[90][91]

Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and historian Yuri Felshtinsky, published book Blowing up Russia: Terror from within about the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts that have been allegedly committed by Russian State Security Services to justify Second Chechen War and bring Vladimir Putin to power. On December 29 2003, Russian authorities confiscated over 5000 copies of the book en route to Moscow from the publisher in Latvia.[92]

In a next book, Lubyanka Criminal Group, Litvinenko and Alexander Goldfarb described transformation of the FSB into a criminal and terrorist organization.

A documentary Assassination of Russia was made in 2000 by two French producers who previously worked with Russian NTV channel on Sugar of Ryazan program.[93] The movie was shown by the main channels of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russian Duma lawmaker Yuri Rybakov brought a hundred of copies to St. Petersburg, but the copies were confiscated at customs, in violation of his parliamentary immunity. No TV station in Russia was able to show the film.[94] However tens of thousands of pirate copies were sold in Russia in 2002. On April 23, 2002, Sergei Yushenkov brought to Washington, D.C., a box with copies of "Assassination of Russia". He tried to convince U.S. administration that bombings were committed by the FSB, however there were no official statements. A staffer in Senate Foreign Relations Committee explained: "We just cannot go out and say that the president of Russia is a mass murderer. But it is important that we know it."[95]

A documentary Nedoverie ("Disbelief") about the bombing controversy made by Russian director Andrei Nekrasov was premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the story of Tatyana and Alyona Morozova, the two Russian-American sisters, who had lost their mother in the attack, and decided to find out who did it.[96][97][98]

Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko have published a book Death of a Dissident. They asserted that Litvineko murder by Russian agents was "the most compelling proof" of the FSB involvement theory. According to the book, the murder of Litvineko "gave credence to all his previous theories, delivering justice for the tenants of the bombed apartment blocks, the Moscow theater-goers, Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya, and the half-exterminated nation of Chechnya, exposing their killers for the whole world to see."[99]

Books by Litvinenko and movies Assassination of Russia and Disbelief were sponsored by a controversial self-exiled Russian tycoon and Putin ally-turned-enemy Boris Berezovsky.[100][101] Co-author of the Gang from Lubyanka and Death of a Dissident Alexander Goldfarb is an executive director of International Foundation for Civil Liberties (established by Berezovsky) since November 2000.[102][103] David Satter heavily relies on research sponsored by Berezovsky in his book.[104][89]

Fiction books

Russian writer Alexander Prokhanov authored a political thriller Mr. Hexogen which describes the bombings as a "chekist electoral technique".[105][106]

Russian author and businessman Yuli Dubov, author of The Big Slice, wrote a story The Lesser Evil. Two main characters of the story are Platon (Boris Berezovsky) and Larry (Badri Patarkatsishvili). They struggle against an evil KGB officer, Old man (apparently inspired by the legendary Philipp Bobkov), who brings another KGB officer, Fedor Fedorovich (Vladimir Putin) to power by staging a series of apartment bombings.[107]

Criticism and support of the FSB involvement theory

Criticism

According to Russia's official investigation Chechen separatists were responsible for the bombings. The FSB said the Ryazan bomb was a dummy, planted by security officers as part of a secret civil defense drill, the sacks being filled with sugar. The purpose of the terrorist acts was to distract attention of Russian authorities from the battles in Dagestan between the federal forces and rebels, including Chechens and headed by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab.[44] Basayev and Khattab invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan on August 7 1999, in support of the Islamic Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels. The bombings and the invasion prompted Russian authorities to break the Khasav-Yurt Accord, even though the invasion was opposed by Aslan Maskhadov. An FSB spokesman said that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings".[108]

Russian panelist Sergei Markov criticized the film Assassination of Russia which supported the FSB involvement theory. Markov said that the film was "a well-made professional example of the propagandist and psychological war that Boris Berezovsky is notoriously good at." Markov found parallels with a conspiracy theory that the United States and/or Israel organized the 9/11 attacks in order to justify military actions.[109]

In his book Inside Putin's Russia, Andrew Jack mentions several aspects in favour and against the conspiracy theory.[110]

Support

U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain said that there remained "credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these [Moscow apartment bombing] attacks".[111][112]

Some publications tell that "being prone to conspiracy theories, as Russians certainly are, doesn’t mean that someone is not conspiring against them".[113][114] Paul Saunders commented that Putin's willingness to shut down the Novaya Gazeta could be understood because "most dismiss the involvement of the Russian government in the apartment bombings as an unsupported conspiracy theory though it has received widespread attention".[115] Vanora Bennett said that although "it sounds far-fetched at first",

"remember that the FSB is simply the renamed KGB, whose raison d'etre for decades was essentially institutional terror in the service of the government. Putin is himself an ex-KGB man, and he has twice blocked, through the Duma, any independent investigation into the bombings. No evidence of Chechen involvement has ever been forthcoming, and the Chechen groups have claimed that they were not responsible - although they admit to other acts of violence. The Ryazan "training exercise" excuse is preposterous. It does seem to suggest that the Russian secret services were caught red-handed".[116]

Former KGB colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky said that "Litvinenko's accusations are not unfounded. Chechen rebels were incapable of organising a series of bombings without help from high-ranking Moscow officials".[108]

GRU defector and author Viktor Suvorov said that book Lubyanka Criminal Group describes "a leading criminal group that provides "protection" for all other organized crime in the country and which continues the criminal war against their own people", like their KGB and NKVD predecessors. He added: "Book proves: Lubyanka [the KGB headquarters] was taken over by the enemies of the people (who else would put their own people on the needle and blow up sleeping children?)."[117] "If Putin's team can not disprove the facts provided by Litvinenko, Putin must shoot himself. Patrushev and all other leadership of Lubyanka Criminal Group must follow his example."

Neutral

A summary of a conference at Princeton University concluded that although "the Russian leadership has exploited the tragedy of the bombings for political purposes", there is no convincing proof of any version, including the "Chechen guilt" or "the 'conspiracy theory' that ties responsibility to the Russian FSB (the successor to the KGB)".[118]

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer noted: "The FSB accused Khattab and Gochiyaev, but oddly they did not point the finger at Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov's regime, which is what the war was launched against".[108]

Chronology of events

  • June 6 1999: Swedish journalist Jan Blomgren wrote in Svenska Dagbladet about "a series of terror bombings in Moscow that could be blamed on the Chechens".
  • July 22 1999: Newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda described an operation "Storm in Moscow", which included organizing terrorist by Russian security services acts to introduce emergency ruling and save the Yeltsin regime.
  • September 4 1999: Bombing in Buynaksk, 64 people killed, 133 are injured.
  • September 9 1999: Bombing in Moscow, Pechatniki, 94 people are killed, 249 are injured.
  • September 13 1999: Bombing in Moscow, Kashirskoye highway, 118 are killed.
  • September 13 1999: A bomb was defused and a warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices have been found in Moscow.
  • September 13 1999: Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement about bombing of an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk that took place only three days later, on September 16.
  • September 16 1999: Bombing in Volgodonsk, 18 are killed, 288 injured.
  • September 23 1999: An apartment bomb was found in the city of Ryazan. Vladimir Rushailo announced that police prevented a terrorist act. Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the citizens and called for the air bombing of Grozny.
  • September 24 1999: FSB agent who planted the bomb in Ryazan were caught by local police. Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise.
  • September 24 1999: Second Chechen War begins.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuri Felshtinsky) The Age of Assassins. The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin, Gibson Square Books, London, 2008, ISBN 190-614207-6; pages 105-111. Cite error: The named reference "Assassins" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Alex Goldfarb, with Marina Litvinenko Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press, 2007, ISBN 1-416-55165-4
  3. ^ David Satter - House committee on Foreign Affairs
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n David Satter. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-300-09892-8, pages 24-33 and 63-71. Cite error: The named reference "Satter" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  5. ^ Tegenlicht documentary VPRO 2007, In Memoriam Aleksander Litvinenko, Jos de Putter, Moscow 2004 Interview with Anna Politkovskiya.
  6. ^ Russian Federation: Amnesty International's concerns and recommendations in the case of Mikhail Trepashkin - Amnesty International
  7. ^ a b c All versions cast doubts Moscow News.
  8. ^ MN.RU: Московские Новости
  9. ^ Радиостанция "Эхо Москвы" / Передачи / Интервью / Четверг, 25.07.2002: Сергей Ковалев
  10. ^ Взрыв жилого дома в Москве положил конец спокойствию в столице
  11. ^ Darkness at Dawn, page 65
  12. ^ Death of a Dissident, page 264
  13. ^ «Я Хочу Рассказать О Взрывах Жилых Домов»
  14. ^ Achemez Gochiyaev: I’ve been framed up by a FSB agent by Prima News, July 25, 2002
  15. ^ "Death of a dissident", page 196
  16. ^ Williams, Bryan Glyn (2001). The Russo-Chechen War: A Threat to Stability in the Middle East and Eurasia?. Middle East Policy 8.1.
  17. ^ "Death of a dissident", page 198
  18. ^ ФСБ взрывает Россию. ФСБ против народаTemplate:Ru icon, Alexander Litvinenko, Yuri Felshtinsky, Novaya Gazeta, August 27, 2001. Computer translation.
  19. ^ a b c d Template:Ru iconTwo life sentences for 246 murders, Kommersant, January 13, 2004. (Russian:"в бетономешалке изготовила смесь из сахара, селитры и алюминиевой пудры" Cite error: The named reference "Kommersant2004-01-13" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Only one explosions suspect still free, Kommersant, December 10, 2002.
  21. ^ Tamil Guerrillas in Sri Lanka: Deadly and Armed to the Teeth
  22. ^ Template:Ru iconСпециалист по утилизации взрывчатки похитил 11 килограммов гексогена
  23. ^ Template:Ru iconЗавод Пластмасс
  24. ^ Template:Ru iconБорис Березовский нашел тонну гексогена
  25. ^ Answer of the General Prosecutor's office on the deputy request (on explosions in Moscow)
  26. ^ " The Shadow of Ryazan: Is Putin's government legitimate?", David Satter, National Review, April 30, 2002.
  27. ^ "The Age of Assassins", pages 127-129
  28. ^ a b "Darkness at Dawn", page 267
  29. ^ "Darkness at Dawn", page 63
  30. ^ "Death of a Dissident", page 265
  31. ^ HAUNTING YUSHENKOV LECTURE BROADCAST
  32. ^ CDI
  33. ^ NewsRu.com: "Gennadiy Seleznyov was warned of the Volgodonsk explosion three days in advance"Template:Ru icon
  34. ^ "Death of a Dissident", page 265
  35. ^ Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in Russian Duma: "Remember Gennadiy Nikolaevich how you told us that a house has been blown up in Volgodonsk, three days prior to the blast? How should we interpret this? State Duma knows that the house was destroyed on Monday, and it has indeed been blown up on Thursday [same week]. ... How come, ... the state authorities of Rostov region were not warned in advance [about the future bombing], although it was reported to us? Everyone is sleeping, the house was destroyed three days later, and now we must take urgent measures..." [Seleznev turns his microphone off].[1]
  36. ^ a b "Darkness at Dawn", page 269.
  37. ^ Reply of the Public Prosecutor Office of the Russian Federation to a deputy inquiryTemplate:Ru icon.
  38. ^ "Death of a Dissident", page 266
  39. ^ a b c >Template:Ru iconThe first voluntary interview of Alexey Galkin, comments by journalist Roman Shleinov and conclusion of psychologist Michail Istomin Novaya Gazeta N 89, December 2, 2002.
  40. ^ a b Template:Ru iconOur group prepared diversions in Chechnya and Dagestan. Testimony of senior lieutenant Alexey Galkin, Novaya Gazeta N 89, December 2, 2002
  41. ^ The Operation "Successor"Template:Ru icon by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky.
  42. ^ Robert Young Pelton Three Worlds Gone Mad: Dangerous Journeys through the War Zones of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific, The Lyons Press; (2003), ISBN 1-592-28100-1
  43. ^ The Age of Assassins, page 109
  44. ^ a b c Results of the investigation of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk and an incident in Ryazan.Template:Ru icon The answer of the Russian state Prosecutor office to the inquiry of Gosduma member A. Kulikov, circa March 2002. computer translation
  45. ^ Hexogen trail, Novaya Gazeta
  46. ^ Chechens rounded up in Moscow, The Guardian, September 18 1999
  47. ^ ACHIMEZ GOCHIYAYEV: RUSSIA’S TERRORIST ENIGMA RETURNS
  48. ^ Gochiyayev's wanted page on FSB web site.
  49. ^ Russia: Grasping the Reality of Nuclear Terror
  50. ^ Putin’s defense sector appointees
  51. ^ ACHIMEZ GOCHIYAYEV: RUSSIA’S TERRORIST ENIGMA RETURNS
  52. ^ Karachayev terrorists found in the morgue, Kommersant, June 8, 2004.
  53. ^ Процесс о взрывах жилых домов: адвокат Адама Деккушева просит его полного оправдания
  54. ^ Court starts hearings into 'hexogen case'
  55. ^ http://eng.terror99.ru/publications/094.htm Separatists Tied to '99 Bombings.
  56. ^ Court starts hearings into 'hexogen case'
  57. ^ A terrorist has imprisoned a policeman, Kommersant, May 15, 2003.
  58. ^ a b c d e f ПРИЧАСТНЫЕ К ВЗРЫВАМ В МОСКВЕ УСТАНОВЛЕНЫ
  59. ^ NEWS FROM RUSSIA",Vol.VI, Issue No.18, dated 1st May 2003
  60. ^ Disrupting Escalation of Terror in Russia to Prevent Catastrophic Attacks
  61. ^ Disrupting Escalation of Terror in Russia to Prevent Catastrophic Attacks
  62. ^ a b c d e f Buinaksk terrorists sentenced to life, Kommersant, March 20, 2001.
  63. ^ Disrupting Escalation of Terror in Russia to Prevent Catastrophic Attacks
  64. ^ Suspect in 1999 Buinaksk bombing brought to Russia
  65. ^ Jury acquitted a Buinaksk suspect, Lenta.Ru, 2006 Jan 24.
  66. ^ Jury acquitted a Buinaksk suspect again, Lenta.Ru, 2006 November 13.
  67. ^ Khattab said: Your task is small, Kommersant, November 13, 2006.
  68. ^ One More Participant of Terrorist Act in Buinaksk, Dagestan, Detained in Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan
  69. ^ They should be blown up, not put on trial, Kommersant, April 10, 2002.
  70. ^ [2] computer translation
  71. ^ [3] computer translation
  72. ^ Duma Rejects Move to Probe Ryazan Apartment Bomb, by Yevgenia Borisova. 21 March 2000.
  73. ^ Duma Vote Kills Query On Ryazan, The Moscow Times, 4 April 2000.
  74. ^ Putin critic loses post, platform for inquiry, Douglas Birch. The Baltimore Sun, 11 December 2003.
  75. ^ Russian court rejects action over controversial "anti-terrorist exercise". BBC Monitoring. 3 April 2003. Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow.
  76. ^ Радиостанция "Эхо Москвы" / Передачи / Интервью / Четверг, 25.07.2002: Сергей Ковалев
  77. ^ MN.RU: Московские Новости
  78. ^ Chronology of events. State Duma Deputy Yushenkov shot dead. Centre for Russian Studies. Norway. 17 April 2003.
  79. ^ Worries Linger as Schekochikhin's Laid to Rest. By Oksana Yablokova. The Moscow Times. 7 July 2003.
  80. ^ Otto Lacis brutally beaten in Moscow. NewsRU. 11 November 2003. computer translation
  81. ^ A prominent Russian journalist Otto Lacis diedTemplate:Ru icon
  82. ^ For Trepashkin, Bomb Trail Leads to Jail
  83. ^ Los Angeles Times - Russian Ex-Agent's Sentencing Called Political Investigator was about to release a report on 1999 bombings when he was arrested
  84. ^ Russian Federation: Amnesty International calls for Mikhail Trepashkin to be released pending a full review of his case
  85. ^ Interview with Mikhail Trepashkin, RFE/RL, December 1, 2007. Russian: "давай вместе работать против Литвиненко и уйди из комиссии по взрывам домов и тогда тебя никто не тронет. Я говорил со своими шефами, совершенно точно, тебя не тронут. Кончай с Ковалевым Сергеем Адамовичем контактировать в Госдуме и так далее."
  86. ^ Sergei Yushenkov: That was a coup in 1999.
  87. ^ Satter House Testimony, 2007.
  88. ^ "Our group prepared diversions in Chechnya and Dagestan", Testimony of Senior Lieutenant Alexei Galkin, November 1999.
  89. ^ a b The Shadow of Ryazan
  90. ^ Britain's Observer newspaper suggests Russian secret service involvement in Moscow bombings, By Julie Hyland 15 March 2000
  91. ^ Johann Hari. "Conspiracy theories: a guide". New Statesman. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  92. ^ Russian editor questioned over seizure of controversial book
  93. ^ Death of a Dissident, pages 249-250.
  94. ^ Death of a Dissident, pages 249-250.
  95. ^ Death of a Dissident, pages 259.
  96. ^ Screening Horror; A new film seeks the truth behind the 1999 bombings., The Moscow Times]
  97. ^ Disbelief. The record in IMDb.
  98. ^ Google Video
  99. ^ Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press (2007) ISBN 1-416-55165-4
  100. ^ Boris Berezovsky organized "Assassination of Russia"
  101. ^ 'Orange Plague' Kills Concert
  102. ^ BEREZOVSKY THREATENS TO OPEN PANDORA'S BOX...
  103. ^ The Litvinenko Case
  104. ^ Re: 7727 #11, Jeremy Putley's review of "Darkness at Dawn" by D. Satter
  105. ^ "The age of assassins, page 183
  106. ^ Gospodin Geksogen' ('Mr. Hexogen'), by Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, NewsMax
  107. ^ New story by Yuli Dubov about Putin coming to power, RFE/RL
  108. ^ a b c Olga Nedbayeva. "Conspiracy theories on Russia's 1999 bombings gain ground". Agence France-Presse.
  109. ^ "Assassination of Russia"- Film Screening and Panel Discussion, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, April 24 2002.
  110. ^ Andrew Jack. Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  111. ^ McCain Decries, November 4, 2003, Friends of John McCain.
  112. ^ Articles on Russia & Chechnya
  113. ^ Johann Hari. "Conspiracy theories: a guide". New Statesman. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  114. ^ Steven Lee Myers. "The New York Times". Retrieved 2008-01-28.
  115. ^ Paul J. Saunders (2000-05-09). "Russian Villain or Hero?". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  116. ^ "From Russia with secrets". Times Online. May 13, 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  117. ^ Why United States have no "external intelligence", by Victor Suvorov
  118. ^ "The Crisis In Chechnya: Causes, Prospects, Solutions" (PDF). Princeton University. Retrieved 2008-01-28.
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