Russian apartment bombings

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Russian apartment bombings
Location	Russia (Buynaksk-Moscow-Volgodonsk)
Date	September 4-16, 1999
Attack type	Time bombings
Deaths	Nearly 300
Injured	More 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.

Contents 1 The bombings 1.1 Moscow mall 1.2 Buynaksk 1.3 Moscow, Pechatniki 1.4 Moscow, Kashirskoye highway 1.5 Moscow, attempted bombings 1.6 Volgodonsk 1.7 Ryazan incident 1.8 The talk show with people of Ryazan and FSB members 2 Explosives controversies 3 Other incidents 3.1 Publications about advanced planning of the bombings 3.2 Incident in Russian Parliament 3.3 Statements about GRU involvement in Buynaksk 4 Official FSB investigation 4.1 Suspects and convicts 5 Attempts at independent investigation 6 Prospects for future investigation 7 Theory of Russian government involvement 8 Books and movies about Russian apartment bombings 8.1 Non-fiction books and documentaries 8.2 Fiction books 9 Criticism and support of the FSB involvement theory 9.1 Criticism 9.2 Support 9.3 Neutral 10 Chronology of events 11 See also 12 External links 13 References

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] Moscow, Pechatniki

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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Ryazan incident

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] He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the people were gone.

The policemen found three 50kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 in the morning.^[2] Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and the timer and tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyzer. The device detected traces of hexogen, the military explosive used in all previous bombings.^[4] A test detonation of 3 kilograms of the substance was conducted later, but failed to produce an explosion.^[15][16][17]

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents were evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers armed 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.

In the morning of September 23 Russian television networks reported the attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan using hexogen.^[16] 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 Ryazanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny.^[18]

In the evening of September 23, the perpetrators were caught. A telephone service employee tapped into long distance phone conversations and 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 traced to a telephone exchange unit servicing FSB offices. 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 remain unknown as of 2008.

The next morning, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise.^[19]

[edit] The talk show with people of Ryazan and FSB members

On March 24, 2000, two days before the presidential elections, NTV Russia featured Ryazan events of the Fall 1999 in a talk show Independent Investigation. 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. 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.^[20]

NTV general manager Igor Malashenko spoke at the JFK School of Government on the day of airing the show and said that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin warned him on several occasions. Malashenko's recollection of Lesin's warning was that by the talk show airing NTV "crossed the line and that we were outlaws in their eyes".^[21]

According to Alexander Goldfarb, Igor Malashenko told him years later that Valentin Yumashev brought a warning from the Kremlin one day before airing the show. Goldfarb wrote that the warning in no uncertain terms said that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they would go ahead with the broadcast.^[22]

[edit] 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 ^[23][24]. 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 ^[25] or stolen from munition storage facilities.^[26][27][28]. 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.^[29] 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][30]

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 sacks 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.^[31]

[edit] Other incidents

[edit] 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".^[32]

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.^[33]

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.^[32]

[edit] 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".^{[34][35][36][37]} 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.^[38][39]

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 destroy any buildings, and which indeed happened in Volgodonsk.^[40][41] It remains unclear why Seleznev reported such an insignificant incident to Russian Parliament and why he did not explain the misunderstanding to Zhirinovsky and other Duma members.^[40]

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.^[42]

[edit] Statements about GRU involvement in Buynaksk

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.^[43] 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.^[44][45] Pelton describes the interview with Galkin in his book Three Worlds Gone Mad.^[46]

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.^[43][1] Galkin did not tell anything at all about the alleged GRU involvement in the bombings during his interview to Novaya Gazeta,^[43][44] thus he "did not deny" the GRU operation according to Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky.^[1]

[edit] 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.^[47]

The official investigation was concluded only in 2002. According to the Russian state Prosecutor office,^[24][48] 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.^[48]

The explosives were prepared at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan] Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer",^[23] or by also putting their RDX and TNT,^[24] although the explosives used in Moscow have been initially identified by the FSB as RDX (unlike explosives in the Ryazan 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.^[49]

[edit] 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.^[50] 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

• Achemez Gochiyayev (An ethnic Karachai,^[51] has not been arrested; he is still at large^[52])
• Denis Saitakov (An ethnic Tatar from Uzbekistan,^[53] killed in Goergia in 1999-2000^[54][24])
• Khakim Abayev (An ethnic Karachai,^[55] killed by FSB special forces in May 2004 in Ingushetia^[56])
• Ravil Akhmyarov (Russian citizen,^[57] Surname indicates an ethnic Tatar, killed in Chechnya in 1999-2000^[24])
• Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (Ethnic Karachai and Resident of Kislovodsk^[58][59], arrested in Georgia in December 2002, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004, after a two-month secret trial held without a jury^[23][2])
• Stanislav Lyubichev (A traffic police inspector, Resident of Kislovodsk, Stavropol Krai,^[60] who helped the truck with explosives pass the checkpoint after getting a sack of sugar as a bribe, sentenced to 4 years in May 2003^[61])

Volgodonsk bombing

• Timur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai,^[62] killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested^[24])
• Zaur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai^[63] killed in Chechnya in 1999-2000^[24])
• Adam Dekkushev (Ethnic Karachai,^[64] 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^[23][2])

Buinaksk bombing

• Isa Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar^[62] and native of Dagestan,^[65] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001^[66])
• Alisultan Salikhov (Ethnic Avar^[62] and native of Dagestan,^[67] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001^[66])
• Magomed Salikhov (Ethnic Avar^[62] and native of Dagestan,^[68] 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,^[69] 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.^[70] 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.^[71])
• Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (Native of Dagestan,^[72] arrested in Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002^[73])
• Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (Ethnic Avar^[62] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001^[66])
• Magomed Magomedov (Name indicates a native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001^[66])
• Zainutdin Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar^[62] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty^[66])
• Makhach Abdulsamedov (Native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty^[66]).

On January 18, 2003, Yuri Felshtinsky provided Novaya Gazeta with a video recording and its transcript.^[74] 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.^[75]

[edit] Attempts at independent investigation

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.^[76][77] 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.^[78][79][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][80][81] 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.^[82][83] Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was assaulted in November 2003^[84] and two years later on November 3, 2005, died in hospital after a car accident.^[85]

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.^[86] He was sentenced by a military closed court to four years.^[87] 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".^[88] 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".^[89]

The chairman of the committee, Kovalev summarized their findings as follows: ^[90]"What can I tell? We can prove only one thing: there was no any training exercise in the city of Ryzan. Authorities do not want to answer any questions...".

[edit] Prospects for future investigation

It has been recognized by many observers that the case was far from being solved. Too many questions remain unanswered ^[90]. Relatives of the victims published an open letter to president Dmitry Medvedev asking him to resume the official investigation and put an end to "this dark period in Russian history", which he can do since he "was not involved" in the bombings ^[91]

[edit] 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.^[92] 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."^[93]

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][94] 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]

[edit] Books and movies about Russian apartment bombings

[edit] 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.^[95]

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".^[96][97]

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.^[98]

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.^[99] 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.^[100] 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."^[101]

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.^{[102][103][104]}

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."^[105]

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.^[106][107] 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.^[108][109] David Satter heavily relies on research sponsored by Berezovsky in his book.^[110][95]

[edit] Fiction books

Russian writer Alexander Prokhanov authored a political thriller Mr. Hexogen which describes the bombings as a "chekist electoral technique".^[111][112]

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.^[113]

[edit] Criticism and support of the FSB involvement theory

[edit] Criticism

According to Russia's official investigation Caucasian 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.^[48] 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".^[114]

Sergei Markov, an advisor to the Russian government, 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 between the film and the conspiracy theory that the United States and/or Israel organized the 9/11 attacks to justify military actions.^[115]

[edit] 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".^[116][117] Russian governor and retired army general Alexander Lebed, asked if he thought the government had organized the terrorist attacks, said: "I am almost convinced of it."^[118]

Some publications tell that "being prone to conspiracy theories, as Russians certainly are, doesn’t mean that someone is not conspiring against them".^[119][120] 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".^[121] 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".^[122]

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".^[114]

GRU defector and author Viktor Suvorov said that the Litvinenko's 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 predecessors NKVD and KGB. He added: "The book proves: Lubyanka [the KGB headquarters] was taken over by enemies of the people. (Is it possible to call them friends of people, them who put their own people on the needle and blow up sleeping children?)."^[123] "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."

[edit] 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)".^[124]

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".^[114]

In his book Inside Putin's Russia, Andrew Jack mentions several aspects in favour and against the conspiracy theory.^[125]

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also

• Maxim Lazovsky
• Strategy of tension

[edit] External links

• Приговор Крымшамхалову и Деккушеву (Russian) translation
• Full Text of Robert Young Pelton's 1999 interview with GRU officer Alexei Viktorovich Galkin in Grozny
• "Poisoned spy defiant in final interview before his death". Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor, The Times, November 23, 2006.
• "The Shadow of Ryazan: Who Was Behind the Strange Russian Apartment Bombings in September 1999?", David Satter, The Hudson Institute, April 19, 2002.
• "Fear of Doing the Boss a Disservice", Moscow Times, April 11, 2002, p. 8.
• "'Gospodin Geksogen' ('Mr. Hexogen')", Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, NewsMax.com, July 19, 2002.
• "'Mr. Hexogen' (Continued)", Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, NewsMax.com, July 23, 2002.
• JF: U.S. Grants Alyona Morozova Political Asylum.
• The blasts which shook Russia, August 10, 2000, BBC
• Russia apartment bombs: Two jailed, January 12, 2004, CNN.
• "Assassination of Russia" — "Покушение на Россию" (Russian) A 52-minute documentary (in Russian), using footage originally shot by NTV is available for downloading from this site. The film examines Russian apartment bombings and focuses on the foiled bombing in Ryazan. It can be viewed in English online via an Indymedia upload or ordered at the Terror 99 web site. The script in English is available on Yuri Felshtinsky's website.
• Timeline: Terrorism in Russia, February 6, 2004, CNN
• The Terror of 9/99: Fact Sheet
• The request of the Chairman of the public inquiry committee Kovalyov to the Director of FSB (Russian), translation, April 8, 2002.
• The answer of the Secretary of the Director of FSB to the Kovalyov's request (Russian), translation, May 8, 2002.
• The answer of the General Prosecutor office to the request of the Duma member Kulikov (Russian), translation, Spring, 2002.
• Journalist investigation by Novaya Gazeta (Russian); computer translation.
• 'Disbelief' by Andrei Nekrasov — documentary about Moscow Apartment Bombings; Google Video (English), (Russian).
• The Operation "Successor" by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky (in Russian).
• Четыре туза (Russian) Computer translation
• Террористы всегда платили наличными (Russian) Computer translation
• Взрывы в Москве (Russian) Computer translation

[edit] References