1999 Russian apartment bombings

Russian apartment bombings
Location	Russia (Buynaksk-Moscow-Volgodonsk)
Date	4–16 September 1999
Target	Apartment buildings
Attack type	Time bombings
Deaths	293
Injured	More than 1,000

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on September 4, Moscow on September 9th and 14th, and Volgodonsk on September 16. Several other bombs were defused in Moscow at the time.

A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan on September 22, 1999. Two days later, Federal Security Service (FSS) Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise. This led some, such as Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, to speculate that the apartment bombings had been carried out by the Russian secret service FSB (formerly KGB).

Together with the Invasion of Dagestan launched from Chechnya in August 1999 by Islamist militia led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, the bombings caused the Russian Federation to launch the Second Chechen War.

Although on September 2, 1999, the militia commander Ibn Al-Khattab announced that "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia," on September 14 he denied responsibility for the blasts, adding that he was fighting the Russian army, not women and children.

An official investigation of the bombings was completed by the FSS in 2002. According to the investigation and the court ruling that followed, the bombings had been organised by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remained at large as of 2013, and had been ordered by Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who were later killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts.

State Duma member Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Duma in March 2000. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev. The commission was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. The Commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested for exposing classified information.

Although there had been little evidence for their claims Yury Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky (an oligarch in British exile), David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, and the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag attack coordinated by different special services (they mentioned either FSB or GRU) in order either to blackmail each other or to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party to the State Duma and Putin to the presidency within a few months.

Gordon Bennett from Conflict Studies Research Centre, Robert Bruce Ware, Paul J. Murphy, Henry Plater-Zyberk, Simon Saradzhyan, Nabi Abdullaev and Richard Sakwa criticised the conspiracy theory, pointing out problems such as the lack of evidence.

Previous threats and bombings

A bomb detonated in a crowded market in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia–Alania on March 19, 1999, killing 62 and injuring many.

A Finnish journalist who in mid-August 1999, before the bombings, traveled to the village of Karamakhi in Dagestan, interviewed some villagers and their military Commander General Dzherollak. The journalist wrote:

"The Wahhabis' trucks go all over Russia. Even one wrong move in Moscow or Makhachkala, they warn, will lead to bombs and bloodshed everywhere."

According to the journalist, the Wahhabis had told him, "if they start bombing us, we know where our bombs will explode." In the last days of August, the Russian military launched an aerial bombing of the villages.

The bombings

Overview

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

Moscow mall

On August 31, 1999, at 20:00 local time (8:00 PM), an explosion took place in "Okhotny Ryad" shopping center on Manezhnaya Square, Moscow. One person was killed and 40 others injured. According to FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300 grams (0.66 lb) of explosives. On 2 September 1999 an organisation named "The Liberation Army of Dagestan" (Template:Lang-ru) claimed responsibility for the explosion and threatened to continue terrorist acts until Russian Army left Dagestan. According to FSB, the explosion was ordered by Chechen leader Shamil Basayev who had financial disagreements with the owner of "Okhotny Ryad" shopping center, Chechen businessman Umar Dzhabrailov.

Buynaksk, Dagestan

On September 4, 1999, at 22:00 (18:00 GMT), a car bomb detonated outside a five-story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard soldiers and their families. 64 people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion. Another car bomb was found and defused in the same town. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms (5,966 lb) of explosives. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings.

Moscow, Pechatniki

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

On September 9, 1999, shortly after midnight local time, at 20:00 GMT, 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 injuring 249 others. 15 nearby buildings were also damaged. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An FSB spokesman identified the explosive as RDX. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.

The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast. Vladimir Putin declared 13 September a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.

Moscow, Kashirskoye highway

On September 13, 1999, at 5:00 a.m., a large bomb exploded in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 km from the place of the last attack. 119 people died and 200 were injured. This was the deadliest blast in the chain of bombings. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of meters away.

Moscow, attempted bombings

According to FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Oksana Yablokova of The Moscow Times, official investigators defused explosives on Borisovskiye Prudy street in Moscow 14 September 1999. Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko added a site in the Liublino district and another in Kapotnya to the list of caches. Satter wrote that three attempted bombings were prevented.

According to the messages received by Yuri Felshtinsky and by Prima News agency from someone claiming to be Achemez Gochiyaev, on September 13, 1999, a bomb was defused in a building in the Kapotnya area. A warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices was found at Borisovskiye Prudy. The author of the messages wrote that he called the police and warned about the bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev or his impersonators claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.

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. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened nine miles from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centres and nuclear complexes.

Ryazan incident

At 8:30 P.M. on September 22, 1999, a resident of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate. He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three 50 kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. 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 analyser. The device detected traces of RDX, the military explosive used in all previous bombings. 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.

At 1:30 A.M. on September 23, the explosive engineers took a bit of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located some kilometres (about a mile) away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, but their efforts failed, the substance was not detonated, and the explosion did not occur. At 5 A.M. Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing, noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 5:30 A.M. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 8:00 A.M. Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryzan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX. Vladimir Rushailo announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news block at 4 p.m. reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city

At 7 P.M. Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryazanians and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital, Grozny in response to the terrorism acts. He said:

If the sacks which proved to contain explosive were noticed, that means there is a positive side to it, if only the fact that the public is reacting correctly to the events taking place in our country today. I'd like ...to thank the public... No panic, no sympathy for the bandits.

Later, the same evening, a telephone service employee in Ryazan tapped into long distance phone conversations and managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to others that they "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was traced to a telephone exchange unit serving FSB offices. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.

On September 24, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the exercise was carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts. The Ryazan FSB "reacted with fury" and issued a statement saying:

This announcement came as a surprise to us and appeared at the moment when the ...FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the explosive device and was prepared to detain them.

FSB issued a public apology about the incident.

Related events

Ryazan incident controversy

Official explanation of the Ryazan incident

The Russia's General Prosecutor's Office, answering a parliamentary inquiry about apartment bombings in 2002 reported that

The investigation showed that to execute certain theses of the mutual order issued by the FSB Director and Russia's Minister of Internal Affairs about performing the Vortex-Antiterror operation, command of a special FSB unit approved a plan/task in September 20, 1999, which implied assembling groups of fake terrorists to be sent into certain regional cities, with the aim to test the security protection of vital infrastructure objects and apartments houses and to evaluate efficiency of undertaken special investigative techniques and regime measures.

A team of three was assigned to enter Ryazan, study the current situation, and evaluate measures taken by the local law enforcement bodies to counteract possible terrorist acts. They were also to select convenient places to perform a "diversion" (apartments of the ground floor and the floor above in apartment houses, underground or different rooms in inhabited buildings), buy from three to five sacks of sugar and store them at the selected place, and manufacture mock-ups of explosive detonators to be placed on the sacks.

The team arrived in Ryazan on September 20, 1999, in a VAZ-2107 car. During the day of September 21, 1999 they studied the city, the local situation and selected the required object. They chose the house 14/16 at Novosyolov Street, since it matched their task the best — there were a local police office and a big store nearby, and the entrance door to the basement was broken. On the morning of September 22, 1999, at a local market, they bought three sacks of sugar, and batteries and clocks with which to manufacture a mock detonator. In the "Kolchuga" store they bought a 12-gauge shotgun cartridge. At about 9 PM, the sacks of sugar were delivered to the house and brought into the basement; the mock detonator was installed on one of sacks...

Investigation showed that ... operation in the city of Ryazan was not planned and carried out in the proper way, in particular, the question about limits of this action was not regulated, and there was no provision for informing local [security] bodies or police about the training nature of the installation in case it was unveiled.

Along with that, actions of FSB employees did not have dangerous consequences for the society and did not lead to violations of rights and interests secured by the Law.

Explosives in Ryazan

The Russian Deputy Prosecutor declared in 2002 that a comprehensive testing of the samples showed no traces of any explosives, and that sacks from Ryazan contained only sugar. 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 analyser that tested the vapours coming from the sacks unmistakably indicated the presence of RDX. Tkachenko said that it was out of the question that the analyser could have malfunctioned, as the gas analyser was of world class quality, cost $20,000, and was maintained by a specialist who worked according to a strict schedule, checking the analyser after each use and making frequent prophylactic checks. Tkachenko pointed out that meticulous care in the handling of the gas analyser 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.

At a press conference on the occasion of the Federal Security Service Employee Day in December 2001, Yury Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, said that the gas analyser had not been used. He added that the detonator was a hunting cartridge and that it would not be able to detonate any known explosives.

The type of explosives controversy

It was initially reported by the FSB that the explosives used by the terrorists was RDX (or "hexogen"). However, it was officially declared later that the explosive was not RDX, but a mixture of aluminium powder, nitre (saltpeter), sugar, and TNT prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer at a fertiliser factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya. RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm. According to 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.

A military storage with RDX disguised as "sugar"

In March 2000, the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported the account of Private Alexei Pinyaev of the 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 tea with the sugar taken from the bag. But the taste of the tea was terrible. They became suspicious since people were talking about the explosions. The substance turned out to be hexogen. After the newspaper report, FSB officers "descended on Pinyaev's unit", accused them of "divulging a state secret" and told them, "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you've got yourselves tangled up in." The regiment later sued publishers of Novaya Gazeta for insulting the honour of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyaev in the regiment, according to their statement. At an FSB press conference, Private Pinyaev stated that there was no hexogen in the 137th Airborne Regiment and that he was hospitalised in December 1999 and no longer visited the range.

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 an 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". However, the bombing in Volgodonsk took place three days later, on 16 September. When the Volgodonsk bombing happened, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznev turned his microphone off. Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in the 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? The 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 turned his microphone off].

Two years later, in March 2002, Seleznyov claimed 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. It remains unclear why Seleznyov reported such an insignificant incident to the Russian Parliament and why he did not explain the misunderstanding to Zhirinovsky and other Duma members.

FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko described this as "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.

Sealing of all materials by Russian Duma

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

Arrest of independent investigator Trepashkin

The commission of Sergei Kovalev asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to investigate the case. M. 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. Trepashkin was unable to bring the evidence to court because he was arrested by FSB in October 2003 and imprisoned in Nizhny Tagil, allegedly for "disclosing state secrets", just a few days before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a military closed court to a four-year imprisonment. Amnesty International issued a statement that, "[T]here are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run accident in Cyprus. According to Mr Trepashkin, his supervisors and FSB members promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".

In a letter to Olga Konskaya Mr Trepashkin wrote that some time before the bombings Moscow's Regional Directorate against Organized Crimes (RUOP GUVD) arrested several people with regards to selling an explosive RDX. Following that, Nikolai Patrushev's Directorate of FSB officers came to the GUVD headquarters, captured evidence and ordered to fire the investigators. Mr Trepashkin wrote that he learned about the story at a meeting with several RUOP officers in the year 2000. They claimed that their colleagues could present eyewitness accounts in a court. They offered a videocassette with evidence against the RDX dealers. Mr Trepashkin did not publicise the meeting fearing for lives of the witnesses and their families.

Claims and denials of responsibility for the blasts

After the first bombings, Moscow mayor Luzhkov asserted that no warning had been given for the attacks. A previously unknown group, protesting against growing consumerism in Russia, claimed responsibility for the blast. A note was found at the site of the explosion from the group, calling itself the Revolutionary Writers, according to the FSB.

On September 2, Al-Khattab announced: "The mujahideen of Dagestan are going to carry out reprisals in various places across Russia.", but Khattab would later on September 14 deny responsibility in the blasts, adding that he is fighting the Russian army, not women and children.

On September 9, an anonymous person, speaking with a Caucasian accent, phoned the Interfax news agency, saying that the blasts in Moscow and Buynaksk were "our response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan." In an interview to the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny on 9 September, Shamil Basayev denied responsibility, saying: "The latest blast in Moscow is not our work, but the work of the Dagestanis. Russia has been openly terrorizing Dagestan, it encircled three villages in the centre of Dagestan, did not allow women and children to leave." A few days later Basayev denied that Islamist fighters were responsible for the blasts, and instead were connected to "Russian domestic politics." In a later interview, Basayev said he had no idea who was behind the bombings. "Dagestani's could have done it, or the Russian special services."

From September 9–13, AP reporter Greg Myre conducted an interview with Ibn Al-Khattab, in which Al-Khattab as said, "From now on, we will not only fight against Russian fighter jets and tanks. From now on, they will get our bombs everywhere. Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities. I swear we will do it." The interview was published on 15 September. In a subsequent interview with Interfax, al-Khattab denied involvement in the bombings, saying "We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells."

On 15 September, an unidentified man, again speaking with a Caucasian accent, called the ITAR-TASS news agency, claiming to represent a group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan. He said that the explosions in Buynaksk and Moscow were carried out by his organisation. According to him, the attacks were a retaliation to the deaths of Muslim women and children during Russian air raids in Dagestan. "We will answer death with death," the caller said. Russian officials from both the Interior Ministry and FSB, at the time, expressed scepticism over the claims. Sergei Bogdanov, of the FSB press service in Moscow, said that the words of a previously unknown individual representing a semi-mythical organisation should not be considered as reliable. Mr. Bogdanov insisted that the organisation had nothing to do with the bombing. On September 15, 1999 a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".

Evidence that the bombings were staged

In his book Darkness at Dawn Satter reported that on 6 June 1999, three months before the bombings, Swedish journalist Jan Blomgren wrote in 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." Satter also noted that on July 22, the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published leaked documents about an operation, "Storm in Moscow", which, by organising terrorist acts to cause chaos, would bring about a state of emergency, thus saving the Yeltsin regime.

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. This warning, made to the FSB and Russian Security Council, was made after the first explosion in Moscow had occurred.

There was, it was reported in September 1999, a warning delivered to the FSB and the staff of the Russian Security Council on the same day as the Guryanov Street bombing took place (i.e., September ninth). Journalist Elena Tokareva wrote in the 16 September 1999 issue of Obshchaya gazeta: “The special services knew about the terrorist acts that were being prepared…This is maintained by [Duma] deputy [Konstantin] Borovoi….Borovoi told me in a conversation that he was located last Thursday [i.e., on Sept. 9] by an officer of the GRU who had come especially from Krasnodar to see him. Borovoi did not intend to publicize his name… The officer handed the deputy a list, consisting of several names of participants in the terrorist act and communicated that, as much as was known to him, explosions were planned not only for Moscow but for St. Petersburg as well… Borovoi immediately tried to connect the volunteer with members of the Security Council and gave them the officer’s coordinates and the information he had. But the bureaucrats of the Security Council, who were connected with the FSB, said that the officer of the GRU was simply abnormal or was holding a grudge of some kind against his service and did not make use of the exclusive information received. The officer then raced off to Peter[sburg]…”

Tokareva then summed up: “Inasmuch as one of the obligations of the special services is to check such information [i.e., concerning impending terrorist incidents], the impression was formed that the special services intentionally did not conduct active operations and did not inform the government of Moscow concerning a terrorist act that was being prepared, since connivance was profitable for the Kremlin and its political goals.”

Konstantin Borovoi, it should be noted, was an influential and well-regarded liberal, pro-market deputy as well as a well-informed source on developments in the North Caucasus. He had, for example, in an apparent effort to advance the peace process, conducted talks by phone with General Dzhokhar Dudaev, the elected president of the Chechen separatists, in 1995 and early 1996. He had, in fact, been talking on a satellite phone with Dudaev at the precise moment when the general was killed in April 1996 by a Russian missile.

It is striking that the FSB and the personnel of the Russian Security Council chose to ignore the critical information that the GRU officer had to impart on September 9th, especially since—and this seems crucial—the first terrorist bomb had already gone off, shortly after midnight, on that same day on Guryanov Street. According to Argumenty i fakty, for several days the federal authorities had acted as if a gas explosion or other everyday accident had occurred.

During August of 2010, Borovoi recalled during an interview with Ekho Moskvy Radio that he had, in September 1999, received documentary evidence of who it was that was behind the explosions. “In 1999,” he confided, “[Anatolii] Sobchak asked me to support [Putin]; it was in the middle of 1999, but then there began the explosions….To me as a [Duma] deputy was handed a very serious document. As a deputy I held a press conference, during which I said that…these bombings are being organized by the FSB. Putin immediately made a [sarcastic] declaration that this Borovoi should be sent out to de-fuse the bombs. Why was he lying?... My relations with Putin came to an end, so to speak, in 1999.” In a second interview with Ekho Moskvy, in September of 2010, Borovoi recalled what the GRU officer had told him: “The person who presented this witness’s testimony, that the FSB was a participant [in the bombings], that person telephoned me after his meeting with the representatives of the Security Council and said: ‘Why did you send me to the FSB? Those are the very same FSBshniki. I was relating to them what they were [already engaged in] doing.’”

In other words, according to Borovoi, FSB officers serving on the staff of the Security Council, with whom he was acquainted, were, in some sense, also involved in the carrying out of the Moscow bombings.

Investigations and theories

Main article: Explanation attempts for the Russian apartment bombings

Criminal investigation and court ruling

The official investigation was concluded in 2002. According to the Russian State Prosecutor office, 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 Russia and USA accuse Al-Khattab of having direct links with Al-Qaida, though Khattab himself has always denied this. Al-Khattab and al-Saif 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. Gochiyaev's group was trained at Chechen rebel bases in the towns of Serzhen-Yurt and Urus-Martan. The group's "technical instructors" were two Arab field commanders, Abu Umar and Abu Djafar, Al-Khattab was the bombings' brainchild. The explosives were prepared at a fertiliser factory in Urus-Martan Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer", or by also putting their RDX and TNT. 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, leased a KamAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organised into several groups which then transported the explosives to different cities.

However, as John Dunlop states,

"It needs to be emphasized here that virtually all of the available information concerning the Moscow bombers was generated by the Russian authorities, chiefly by the FSB and the General Procuracy. But is this information credible? One significant test of the accuracy, or lack thereof, of this information would be two trials that were held for the accused terrorists in mid-to-late 2001 and in 2003-2004.

The 2001 trial of five ethnic Karachai at an isolated location in Stavropol Krai in southern Russia was so flimsily prepared that the judge and even the prosecutor denigrated the case that had been cobbled together. The judge announced publically that he did not consider the accused to be the direct perpetrators of the terrorist acts. It should be emphasized that the trial was a closed one. It was not open to the public or even to the press.

During 2003-2004, an attempt was made by the authorities to try the aforementioned ethnic Karachai Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov for participation in the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings. It is noteworthy that neither of the two was in fact charged with being present in the capital at the time of the blasts. The newspaper Novye izvestiya reported: “All of the sessions [of the trial], except the final one, took place in a closed regime… Even the sentence was read in an abridged version.” The trial was held in complete secrecy even though, according to one press report, “only five of the ninety-one volumes in the criminal case had been declared secret.” Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev later commented: “This was not a trial. It was an elementary political deceit.” A civilized regime, in his view, would not have permitted such a trial—one which attracted significant public attention—to be closed."

Court ruling on events in Moscow

Al-Khattab paid Gochiyayev $500,000 to carry out the attacks at Guryanova Street, Kashirskoye Highway, and Borisovskiye Prudy, and then helped to hide Gochiyayev and his accomplices in Chechnya. In early September 1999, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes-Benz 2236 trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice, Khakim Abayev, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achemez Gochiyayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosives were left in a warehouse in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiyayev.) The next day, the explosives were delivered in "ZIL-5301" vans to three addresses – Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiyayev supervised the placement of the bombs in the rented cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented. 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 know Gochiyaev". They said that someone "who posed as a jihad leader had duped them into the operation" by hiring them to transport his explosives, and they later realised this man was working for the FSB. They claimed that bombings were directed by German Ugryumov who supervised the FSB Alpha and Vympel special forces units at that time.

There are doubts though as to Gochiyayev's guilt. According to John Dunlop:

In November of 2003, just four months before the holding of new Russian presidential elections, during which Putin was triumphantly returned to the country’s presidency, a remarkable article appeared in the weekly Moskovskie novosti, authored by a leading investigative journalist, Igor Korolkov. “The day before his arrest,” Korolkov wrote, “the former lieutenant colonel of the FSB, Mikhail Trepashkin, was at the editorial offices of Moskovskie novosti. During the course of his interview, he produced a series of facts which make his testimony sensational.”

“One day before his arrest,” Korolkov recalled. “Trepashkin gave me the name and the telephone number of a former businessman who had rented the basement in the apartment house on Guryanov to a person from the Caucasus who today is charged with organizing the terrorist act. Mark Blumenfeld was that very man from whose words the law-enforcement organs had compiled a composite photo [fotorobot] of the criminal whose name on his passport was Laipanov.”

“We met with Mr. Blumenfeld,” Korolkov’s account continued, “at the editorial board of Moskovskie novosti. To a tape-recorder the former businessman made a sensational declaration: the person who was making use of the Laipanov passport, and who was publicly presented by the investigation as Gochiyaev, was not in fact Gochiyaev.”

“In Lefortovo [Prison],” Korolkov quoted from Blumenfeld’s statement, “they showed me a photograph of a certain person, and they said that it was Gochiyaev and that I had supposedly rented the basement to him. I answered that I had never seen that man. But it was insistently recommended to me that I identify Gochiyaev. I understood everything and ceased arguing, and I signed the testimony. In point of fact, the person whose photograph was shown to me, and whom they called Gochiyaev, was not the person who had come to me. I formed the impression that he was a Jew. Moreover, a Jew with Caucasus roots. And I declared that more than once to the investigation.”

“On the photo [Blumenfeld continued] there was depicted a man with a simple [prostovatoe] face, but the person who had come to me, and to whom I had rented the premises, looked externally like an intellectual… In addition to me, False-Laipanov was seen by several persons. They all maintained that the [original] composite photo was very similar to the real person [who rented the storage facilities].” The composite photo which had been compiled with Mark Blumenfeld’s assistance was posted on the Russian Net on 13 September 1999. [You can access it through newsru.com] A photo of Achemez Gochiyaev was subsequently posted on the Novaya gazeta web-site.

The criminal case [Delo] of A. Dekkushev and Yu. Krymshamkhalov, compiled by the Russian Procuracy and released in January of 2004, contains information that appears to support Mikhail Trepashkin’s claim that the accused terrorist Gochiyaev was in fact wrongly identified as “False-Laipanov.” The “Delo,” to take one example, fails to report that either of the two owners of the storage areas that were physically bombed on 9 and 13 September had identified Gochiyaev as the man who had rented the premises.

The explosion in the mall on Manezhnaya Square was the subject of a separate court process held in Moscow in 2009. The court accused Khalid Khuguyev Template:Lang-ru and Magumadzir Gadzhikayev Template:Lang-ru in organisation and execution of the 1999 explosions in the Manezhnaya Square mall and in hotel Intourist and sentenced them correspndingly to 25 years and 15 years of imprisonment.

Court ruling on events in Buinaksk

The September 14 Buinaksk bombings were ordered by Al-Khattab, who promised the bombers $300,000 to drive their truck bombs into the center of the compound, which would have destroyed four apartment buildings simultaneously. However, the bombers parked on an adjacent street instead and blew up only one building. At the trial they complained that Khattab had not given them all the money he owed them. One of the bombers confessed working for Al-Khattab, but claimed he did not know the explosives were intended to blow up the military apartment buildings.

Court ruling on events in Volgodonsk

According to Dekkushev's confession he, together with Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, prepared the explosives, transported them to Volgodonsk, and randomly picked the apartment building on Octyabrskoye Shosse to blow up. Abu Omar had promised to pay him for the job, but Dekkushev never got a single kopeck. According to Dekkushev, it wasn't the FSB that ordered the bombing, as Boris Berezovsky later claimed, but the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Sentences

Two members of Gochiyayev's group, which had carried out the attacks, Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Crymshamhalov, have both been sentenced to life terms in a special-regime colony. Both defendants have pleaded guilty only to some of the charges. For instance, Dekkushev acknowledged that he knew the explosives he transported were to be used for an act of terror. Dekkushev also confirmed Gochiyaev's role in the attacks. Dekkushev was extradited to Russia on April 14, 2002 to stand trial. Crymshamhalov was apprehended and extradicted to Moscow. In 2000, six bombers involved in the Buynaksk attack were arrested in Azerbaijan and convicted of the bombing. Achemez Gochiyaev, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organiser, remains a fugitive, and is under an international search warrant. In a statement released in January 2004, the FSB said, "until we arrest Gochiyayev, the investigation of the apartment bloc bombings of 1999 will not be finished."

Suspects and accused

In September 1999, hundreds of Chechen nationals (out of the more than 100,000 permanently living in Moscow) were briefly detained and interrogated in Moscow, as a wave of anti-Chechen sentiments swept the city. All of them turned out to be innocent. According to the official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harboured other suspects:

• Ibn al-Khattab (a Saudi-born Mujahid), who was killed by the FSB in 2002.

Moscow bombings

• Achemez Gochiyayev (an ethnic Karachai, has not been arrested; he is still at large)
• Denis Saitakov (an ethnic Tatar from Uzbekistan), killed in Georgia in 1999–2000
• Khakim Abayev (An ethnic Karachai), killed by FSB special forces in May 2004 in Ingushetia
• Ravil Akhmyarov (a Russian citizen), Surname indicates an ethnic Tatar, killed in Chechnya in 1999–2000
• Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (an ethnic Karachai and Resident of Kislovodsk), 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
• Stanislav Lyubichev (a traffic police inspector, resident of Kislovodsk, Stavropol Krai), 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

Volgodonsk bombing

• Timur Batchayev (an ethnic Karachai), killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested
• Zaur Batchayev (an ethnic Karachai) killed in Chechnya in 1999–2000
• Adam Dekkushev (an ethnic Karachai), 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

Buinaksk bombing

• Isa Zainutdinov (an ethnic Avar) and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001
• Alisultan Salikhov (an ethnic Avar) and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001
• Magomed Salikhov (an ethnic Avar) and native of Dagestan, 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, he was retried again on the same charges on 13 November 2006 and again found not guilty, this time on all charges, including the ones he was found guilty of in the first trial. 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.
• Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (a native of Dagestan), arrested in Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002
• Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (an ethnic Avar) and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001
• Magomed Magomedov (Sentenced to 9 years in March 2001)
• Zainutdin Zainutdinov (an ethnic Avar) and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty
• Makhach Abdulsamedov (a native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty).

Attempts at independent investigation

The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident.

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings, which was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.

In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy, Mr. Kovalev commented on the Ryazan incident:

In my opinion, the following version sounds quite truthworthy. The explosion of a house was not planned, but a training exercise was not planned as well. What was planned was the following action, a propaganda action, one may say so. First, to show the citizens that terrorists are active, that they did not refuse of their murderous plans, and the second point to hit was to show that the brave [security] services perform their duties excellently, and save denizens unveiling a nefarious plot. Why not a version? That plan, possibly, existed and failed. Truly to say, I am very reluctant to believe, that any sort of security services, obeying our supreme authorities were capable of exploding sleeping citizens of their country.

Years later Mr Kovalev remarked, "What can I tell? We can prove only one thing: there was no training exercise in the city of Ryazan. Authorities do not want to answer any questions..."

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. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was assaulted in November 2003 and two years later, on November 3, 2005, he died in a hospital after a car accident.

The commission asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to investigate the case. Mr. Trepashkin claimed to have 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. Mr. Trepashkin was unable to bring the alleged evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003 for illegal arms possession, just a few days shortly before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a Moscow military court to four years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets. Amnesty International issued a statement 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". V. Romanovich subsequently died in a hit-and-run accident in Cyprus.

However, in 2009 Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper published a note which stated that Romanovich died more than a year before the apartment bombings took place:

According to legally reliable texts of certificates of his [Romanovich's] death (the source is the bodies of power of the Republic of Cyprus), that we obtained after publishing that article, death of Romanovich occurred in April 1998.

Mr. Trepashkin investigated a letter attributed to Achemez Gochiyayev and found that the alleged assistant of Gochiyayev who arranged the delivery of sacks might have been Kapstroi-2000 vice-president Kormishin, a resident of Vyazma.

According to Mr. Trepashkin, his supervisors and the people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working together with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".

On March 24, 2000, two days before the presidential elections, NTV Russia featured the Ryazan events of Fall 1999 in the talk show Independent Investigation. The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed few days earlier. On 26 March Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk. Seven months later NTV general manager Igor Malashenko said at the JFK School of Government that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin warned him on several occasions. Mr. Malashenko's recollection of Mr. Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV "crossed the line" and that the NTV managers were "outlaws" in the eyes of the Kremlin. According to Alexander Goldfarb, Mr. Malashenko told him that Valentin Yumashev brought a warning from the Kremlin, one day before airing the show, promising in no uncertain terms that the NTV managers "should consider themselves finished" if they went ahead with the broadcast.(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007, p. 198)

Artyom Borovik told Grigory Yavlinsky that Borovik investigated the Moscow apartment bombings and prepared a series of publications about them. Mr. Borovik received numerous death threats, and he died in an aeroplane crash in March 2000.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former security service member Alexander Litvinenko, who investigated the bombings, were killed in 2006.

Surviving victims of the Guryanova street bombing asked President Dmitry Medvedev to resume the investigation in 2008.

Theory of Russian government conspiracy

Yury Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, and the secessionist Chechen authorities claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag attack coordinated by the FSB to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party to the State Duma and Putin to the presidency within a few months.

According to the theory, the bombings were a successful coup d'état organised by the FSB to bring future Russian president Vladimir Putin to power. Some of them described the bombings as typical "active measures" practised by the KGB in the past. David Satter stated, during his testimony in the United States House of Representatives,

"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."

In a 2002 interview to Echo Moskvy, Sergei Kovalev referred to the theory of Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky as a "pure conspiracy", albeit stating that every theory should be checked.

Other investigations

Maura Reynolds from Los Angeles Times investigated Ryazan events by interviewing and quoting Alexei Kartofelnikov, one of the 2 residents who persisted in calling militia, Tatyana Borycheva, Tatyana Lukichyova, also residents, Lt. Col. Sergei Kabashov, Yuri Bludov, the spokesman for the regional FSB.

Helen Womack from The Independent quoted Alexei Kartofelnikov's daughter Yulia, police officer Major Vladimir Golev, Lt. Col. of the Ryazan police Sergei Kabashov.

John Sweeney a journalist at Observer, later for BBC, quoted Vladimir Vasiliev, one of the 2 Ryazan apartment residents who tipped militsia, an "inspector" "from the local police" Andrei Chernyshev, "grandmother Clara Stepanovna", "head of the local bomb squad" Yuri Tkachenko, head of the regional FSB Alexander Sergeyev and others.

Statements in support

US 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".

Paul Khlebnikov wrote that former Security Council chief Alexandr Lebed in his February 17, 1997 interview with Le Figaro was almost convinced that the government organised the terrorist attacks against its own citizens.

A famous American author in military strategy J. R. Nyquist suggested that Russian secret military operation should also be considered.

Andrey Illarionov, who until 2005 was a key economic adviser to the Russian president, has no doubts about who was responsible. “[FSB involvement] is not a theory, it is a fact,” he insisted. “There is no other element that could have organized the bombings except for the FSB.”

Criticism

Officials

In 2000, Russia's President Vladimir Putin dismissed the allegations of FSB involvement in the bombings as "delirious nonsense." "There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such crime against their own people. The very allegation is immoral," he said. An FSB spokesman said that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings".

Sergei Markov, an advisor to the Russian government, criticised 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 organised the 9/11 attacks to justify military actions.

Scholars

According to researcher Gordon Bennett, the conspiracy theory that the FSB was behind the bombings is kept alive by the Russian oligarch and Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky. Bennett points out that neither Berezovsky nor his team (which includes Alexander Litvinenko) have provided any evidence to support their claims. In the BBC World Hard Talk interview on 8 May 2002, Berezovsky was also unable to present any evidence for his claims, and he did not suggest he was in possession of such evidence which he would be ready to present in a court. Bennett also points out that Putin's critics often forget that the decision to send troops to Chechnya was taken by Boris Yeltsin — not Vladimir Putin — with the wholehearted support of all power structures.

Professor Richard Sakwa has commented on the claims of Berezovsky and Litvinenko, saying that the evidence they presented was at best circumstantial.

Dr. Mike Bowker, from the University of East Anglia, has said that the inference that the bombings were carried out by the Russian authorities is uncorroborated by evidence. According to Bowker, the theory also ignores the history of Chechen terrorism and public threats by various Chechen rebels following their defeat in Dagestan – which included Khattab telling a Czech and a German newspaper, a few days before the bombings in Moscow, that "Russian women and children will pay for the crimes of Russian generals." and that "this will not happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow"

Dr. Vlad Sobell has pointed out that the proponents of the theory that the second invasion of Chechnya was a plot by Putin to get elected regularly ignore the key fact that Putin's attack on Chechnya in 1999 was preceded by a Chechen insurrection in Dagestan, whose objective was to turn it into another unstable Chechnya.

According to Associate Professor Henry E. Hale of Harvard University, one thing that remains unclear about the "FSB did it" theory: If the motive was to get an FSB-friendly man installed as president, why would the FSB have preferred Putin, a little-known "upstart" who had leapt to the post of FSB director through outside political channels, to Primakov, who was certainly senior in stature and pedigree and who was also widely reputed to have a KGB past?

According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware of Southern Illinois University, "The assertions that Russian security services are responsible for the bombings is at least partially incorrect, and appears to have given rise to an obscurantist mythology of Russian culpability. At the very least, it is clear that these assertions are incomplete in so far as they have not taken full account of the evidence suggesting the responsibility of Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, who may have been seeking retribution for the federal assault upon Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat."

Is it credible though that such a bombing campaign could have been organised and carried out in a few weeks? The theory is even at odds with the official Russian version of events which states that the explosives used were stored in a KamAZ truck for two months. As David Satter states:

"A careful study of the apartment bombings, however, showed that it would have taken from four to four and half months to organize them. In constructing a model of the events, all stages of the conspiracy were considered: developing a plan for the targets, visiting the targets, making corrections, determining the optimum mix of explosives, ordering their preparation, making final calculations, renting space in the targeted buildings, and transporting the explosives to the targets. Assuming that these calculations were even approximately correct, planning for the apartment bombings had to begin in the spring. They therefore could not have been retaliation by Chechen terrorists for the Russian attack in Dagestan, which occurred only days before the bombings took place."

Dr. Kirill Pankratov, in a 2003 letter to the Johnson's Russia List, spoke against Satter's and Putley's theory. He noted that 1) there was no need for "another pretext for military operation in Chechnya at the time of the Ryazan incident", but there were already a "plenty of reasons for decisive military response", 2) the FSB of other security service was institutionally incapable of such a conspiracy after years of decline in the 1990s, 3) the conspirators were not actually trying to blow a building up in Ryazan; however, their sloppy actions are "consistent with the training exercise version of events", 4) the FSB did not have to declare the incident a "training exercise", but "it was much easier to show great relief... and continue trying to find the perpetrators of the bombing attempt."

Security and policy analysts Simon Saradzhyan and Nabi Abdullaev noted that Litvinenko and Felshtinsky did not provide any direct evidence to back up their claims about FSB involvement in the bombings.

Analysts

Andrey Soldatov is sceptical about Mikhail Trepashkin's awareness of the details of the Russian apartment bombings. According to Soldatov, the Russian government's suppression of the discussion of the FSB involvement theory reflects paranoia rather than guilt on its part. He points out that, ironically, the paranoia produced the conspiracy theories that the government was keen to stamp out.

In 2009, Russian journalist and radio host Yulia Latynina, commenting on Scott Anderson's article "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" noted that deaths of Sergey Yushenkov and Yury Schekochihin "in any case, had no relation to bombings in Moscow". Latynina opined, that the version that FSB did the bombings was not only absurd, but purposefully invented by Berezovsky after he was deprived of the power. Her major argument was, that since Berezovsky was one of the key figures to push Putin into the power, he knew for certain the theory was wrong. If Berezovsky felt that "there are some people else beyond Putin, some fearsome siloviks who can explode houses, they [the Family] would throw Putin away, as a hot potato".

Theory of Ibn Al Khattab's Involvement

Paul J. Murphy, a former US counterterrorism expert stated that "the evidence that Al-Khattab was responsible for the apartment building bombings in Moscow is clear". Murphy also states "the findings by the Russian government prove that the Liberation Army of Dagestan, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, is the same as Al-Khattab's Islamic Army of Dagestan, which launched the invasion of Dagestan from Chechnya in August, 1999".

Professor Peter Reddaway and researcher Dmitri Glinski described the involvement of the Liberation Army of Dagestan as the best explanation for the bombings.

According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware, an associate professor of Southern Illinois University, the best explanation for the apartment block blasts is that they were perpetrated by Wahhabis under the leadership of Khattab, as retribution for the federal attacks on Karamachi, Chabanmakhi, and Kadar. "If the blasts were organized by Khattab and other Wahhabis as retribution for the federal attacks on Dagestan's Islamic Djamaat, then this would explain the timing of the attacks, and why there were no attacks after the date on which fighting in Dagestan was concluded. It would explain why no Chechen claimed responsibility. It would account for Basayev's reference to Dagestani responsibility, and it would be consistent with Khattab's vow to set off bombs everywhere... blasting through [Russian] cities."

In a March 2010 article, Yulia Latynina wrote:

The 1999 bombing in Buinaksk, in Dagestan, was carried out by local militants who were fighting to install "pure Islam" in the republic. Several Moscow blasts were orchestrated by two men from the republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia — Achemez Gochiyayev and his brother-in-law Khakim Abayev. Gochiyayev also staged a series of simultaneous bombings in late 2000 and early 2001. He was joined by Denis Saitakov, a Tartar, and Rustam Akhmyarov, who is half-Bashkir, half-Russian.

Six months earlier Miss Latynina had expressed a somewhat different view:

Are the testimonies of Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov exhaustive? No. Their testimony about everything that took place in the training camp of Khattab and Abu Umar has been verified by nothing other than by other unverified testimony. In essence, we can only say one thing: such camps existed, and, in them, by the logic of things, there had to be – there were obliged to be! – not only enthusiastic lads from all over the Caucasus but also agents of the FSB.

The theory of Khattab’s involvement is unconvincing though given the time required to plan, organise and carry out such a bombing campaign. Satter’s estimate of this is four to four and a half months. There is another explanation for the invasion of Dagestan. To quote John Dunlop:

There is abundant evidence that during this period Berezovskii was funneling large sums of money to Chechen extremists. Former MVD chair and deputy prime minister Anatolii Kulikov confided to the weekly Argumenty i fakty in 2002: “I have received a great deal of evidence that Berezovskii was funding Chechen extremists. He did it under the flag of the [Russian] Security Council, which had enormous powers under Boris Yeltsin… On April 29, 1997, I was informed that Berezovskii’s envoy Badri Patarkatishvili had arrived at the Ingushetian airport of Sleptsovsk. He gave Shamil Basaev $10 million—in the presence of Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev and Vice-president B. Agapov…”

Why were both Berezovskii and the Russian special services engaged in de facto funding Chechen extremists? “To the extent that Berezovskii represented the interests of the Yeltsin regime in Chechnya,” the late American journalist Paul Klebnikov has written, “the Kremlin had been undermining the moderates, supporting the extremists financially and politically… At best, it was a misguided policy… The worst-case scenario is that the Berezovskii strategy with the Chechen warlords was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of war.’”

“Nine years later, in September of 2009, a close ally of Berezovskii and a resident of the US, Aleksandr Goldfarb, in effect admitted what the oligarch had earlier heatedly denied. “In two words,” Goldfarb wrote, “in the spring of 1999 on the threshold of the autumn elections, there was achieved a secret agreement [dogovorennost’] between Basaev and Udugov, on the one hand, and the Kremlin top leadership, on the other, for a short victorious (for Russia) war in the Caucasus….Udugov to achieve this end even flew to Moscow. It was proposed that, in response to the provocations of the wahhabis in Dagestan, Russia would begin limited military actions which would be crowned by the return of the Upper Terek district of Chechnya. As a result, the Maskhadov regime in Groznyi would fall, and his place would be taken by Basaev and Udugov.”

“Udugov’s rationale,” Goldfarb had earlier written in a 2007 book, “was geopolitical. Maskhadov’s long-term goal, he said, was to steer Chechnya to full independence and integrate it with the West, eventually joining NATO… This naturally would be bad for Russia. It would also be bad for Islam, Udugov argued, because America is the Great Satan and the ultimate enemy of all Muslims.”

During the period separating his ouster as prime minister in August of 1999 and the election of Putin as Russian president in March of 2000, the former silovik Sergei Stepashin made a number of striking admissions concerning the planning of the top Russian leadership to launch a new war in Chechnya. “In March of 1999…” he said, “we decided to close the border, create a sanitary cordon around Chechnya—like the Berlin wall.” His journalist interlocutor then asked, “An invasion of Chechnya was not on the table?” Stepashin replied: “Yes it was. In the summer, in July [1999] we decided to seize territory [in Chechnya] north of the the Terek. Since Tsarist times this was Russian territory, populated mostly by Cossacks…” Journalist: “Does this mean that Russian forces would have entered Chechnya even if there had been no attack on Dagestan and no acts of terrorism in Moscow?” Stepashin: “Yes.”

It should be underscored here that Stepashin candidly admitted that an invasion of Chechnya had been planned and authorized by himself, and, implicitly, by Vladimir Putin and other Russian siloviki, presumably with President Yeltsin’s consent, before the incursions by rebels into Dagestan in August and September of 1999.

Stepashin made roughly the same admissions to Michael Gordon of The New York Times in an interview published in the newspaper’s 1 February 2000 issue. “Work on the plan of an invasion began,” Gordon noted, “in March 1999 when Mr. Stepashin was interior minister and continued after he was appointed prime minister in May….In July 1999, the plan was broadened to include the seizure of the top third of Chechnya, down to the Terek River… Commando raids would be conducted throughout Chechnya to ferret out rebel leaders. But there would not be any ground operations south of the river and certainly no heavy street fighting in Grozny.”

When Stepashin was asked in mid-September 1999 by journalist Mark Deich whether Berezovskii’s negotiations with the radical Chechen leaders had been aimed at igniting a new conflict, he responded: “As for the version of a conspiracy, one has to realize that having provoked a war, it is difficult in that region to quickly gain a victory… It is another matter altogether that certain agreements were possible, in order to destabilize the situation and to bring it under Emergency Rule. Now that is a version.” (MK, 9/10/99)

What Stepashin appeared to be saying here was that Berezovskii and his allies (including Stepashin himself, as well as Putin) were seeking at the time to provoke a limited conflict, one which would permit the Yeltsin regime to declare Emergency Rule in Russia and thus to postpone the parliamentary and presidential elections.

As Patrick Cockburn of the Independent stated: “The revelation by Mr Stepashin, that Russia planned to go to war long before it has previously admitted, lends support to allegations in the Russian press that the invasion of Dagestan in August and the bombings in September were arranged by Moscow to justify its invasion of Chechnya.”

Chronology of events of June–October 1999

• June 18, — attacks on two pickets of Interior troops at the Chechnya-Dagestan were performed from the side of Chechnya, as well as offence against a company of Cossacks in Stavropol Krai took place. Russian authorities closed most of checkpoints on the Chechen border.
• June 23, — shooting of an Interior troops picket at Pervomaiskoe village of Khasavyurtovsky District in Dagestan from Chechnya.
• July 23, — Chechen militants attacked an Interior troops pictet in Dagestan which defended Kopaevsky Hydro Scheme. MVD of Dagestan claimed that "this time Chechens performed a reconnaissance in force, and soon large scale actions by armed gangs will take place along the whole Dagestan-Chechen border."
• July 29, — Aslan Maskhadov accused Western security services of exacerbating tensions at Chechen-Dagestan border.
• August 1, — Dagestani Wahhabis and Chechens who supported them claimed that Sharia governing was introduced in Dagestan.
• August 2, — first clashes in Tsumadinsky District of Dagestan between local Wahhabis and militia moved from Makhachkala.
• August 7, — massive intrusion into Dagestan from Chechnya by Chechen militants under the command of deputy commander in chief of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Basayev and field commander Khattab (400 people).
• August 9, — heads of Shura of Muslims of Chechnya and Dagestan Shamil Basayev, Dokku Umarov, Khattab, Adallo Mukhammed declared establishment of an independent Islamic state of Dagestan, which included settlements in Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky districts captured by militants. An unofficial television studio started operating in Chechnya and broadcasting video recordings of events in Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky Districts, calls to jihad and other kind of Wahhabi propaganda on Khasaviurtovsky District and Kizilyurtovsky District of Dagestan.
• August 9, — Sergey Stepashin was dismissed from the position of the chairman of the Russian Government, and Vladimir Putin was appointed instead of him.
• August 10, — President of CRI Aslan Maskhadov claimed that only Dagestani are fighting in Dagestan and citizens of Chechnya do not participate in the offensive, "although several misguided ones can be there". Replying to the question about his attitude towards the "Declaration of Independence of Dagestan" approved by the Islamic Shura of Dagestan Maskhavod claimed that it's a purely internal affair of Russia and Dagestan that Chechnya had no relation to. He failed to explain participation of citizens of the Chechen Republic Shamil Basayev, his brother Shirvani, Khattab, Khunker Israpilov and other Chechen field commanders in military actions in Dagestan.
• August 12, — deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia I. Zubov stated that a letter with a proposal to perform a joint operation with Federal troops against Islamists in Dagestan was sent to the President of CRI Maskhadov. Zubov also proposed Maskhadov to "solve the problem of liquidating bases, places for stogare and resort of unlawful militant formations, that the Chechen leadership refused to have anything to do with."
• August 14, — former president of CRI Yandarbiyev, a head of the union "Caucasian Confederation" and of the Organization of Islamic Unity of Caucasus claimed that "events that are currently developed in Dagestan may become the major and decisive stage on the way to liberate the Caucasus". He called Muslims of Caucasus to support the "jihad of Dagestan", claiming that "there will be no mercy for those who will not acknowledge their mistakes and won't take an active position on the side of Muslims".
• August 16, — speaking on a rally in Grozny Aslan Maskhadov blamed Russia's leadership of destabilising situation in Dagestan. According to him, the conflict in Dagestan is developed according to the "plot of Moscow", which is looking for a pretext for military (enforced) pressure against Chechnya. Maskhadov declared a state of military emergency in Chechnya for a term of 30 days, and announced partial mobilisation of reservists and participants of the First Chechen War.
• August 16–24, — denizens of several settlements in Naursky and Shelkovskoy Districts of Chechnya performed rallies with a claim addressed to the leadership of Ichkeria to "disentangle itself from activities of extremists and to use force to expel them from the Chechen land".
• August 18, — a meeting of field commanders and participants of the First Chechen war took place in Grozny, with participation of Maskhadov, Yandarbiyev, Basayav and other figures in Ichkeria. Basayev addressed the assemblage with an appeal to support the "war for faith" in Dagestan. The majority of field commanders while abstaining from taking part in military actions in Botlikhskiy District, yet provided aid with ammunition, medication and transportation.
• August 24, — pressurised by Russia's troops, squads of Chechen militants are forced to retreat to Chechnya.
• August 25, — bases of militants in Chechnya were bombed by Russian aviation. The command of Federal forces claims that it "reserves the right to bomb bases of militants at the land of any region in the North Caucasus including Chechnya".
• August 29, — Federal forces started the operation against Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi (Bujnakskiy District of Dagastan), which were controlled by Wahhabis who claimed Sharia government there yet in August 1998. A. Maskhadov with his decree called off M. Udugov's membership in the Security Council of CRI because in his opinion Udugov "turned out to be a partisan of the mass scale ideological diversion against the Chechen Government" and "put brotherly relationships with Dagestan at risk of a break" with his support of the invasion to Dagestan.
• August 31, — explosion in Moscow in a shopping centre Okhotny Ryad.

To be completed...

See also

• Explanation attempts for the Russian apartment bombings
• List of people allegedly involved in Russian apartment bombings
• List of deaths related to Russian apartment bombings

Bibliography

• Khlebnikov, Paul (2000), Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia, Harcourt, p. 400, ISBN 978-0-15-100621-2
• Goldfarb, Alexander; Litvinenko, Marina (2007), Death of a Dissident, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4165-5165-2
• Felshtinsky, Yuri; Litvinenko, Alexander (2007), Blowing up Russia: Terror from within, Translated from Russian by Geoffrey Andrews and Co. (2nd ed.), Gibson Square Books, ISBN 978-1-903933-95-4
• Satter, David (2003), Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-09892-8
• Felshtinsky, Yuri; Pribylovsky, Vladimir (20 April 2008), The Age of Assassins. The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin, London: Gibson Square Books, ISBN 978-1-906142-07-0, retrieved 23 May 2010
• Litvinenko, Alexander (2002), LPG: Lubianskaia Prestupnaia Gruppirovka: Ofitser FSB Daet Pokazaniia (in Russian), Grani, p. 255, ISBN 978-0-9723878-0-4
• Evangelista, Matthew (2002), The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union?, Brookings Institution Press, ISBN 978-0-8157-2499-5
• Jack, Andrew (2005), Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-518909-4
• Sakwa, Richard (2005), Checnya: From Past to Future, Anthem Press, ISBN 978-1-84331-164-5
• Sakwa, Richard (2008), Putin, Russia's choice (2nd ed.), Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-40765-6
• Reddaway, Peter (2001), The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy, United States Institute of Peace Press, ISBN 1-929223-06-4 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Dunlop, John (2012), The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin's Rule, Stuttgart: Ibidem, ISBN 978-3-8382-0388-1