1999 Russian apartment bombings

Russian apartment bombings
Location	Russia (Buynaksk-Moscow-Volgodonsk)
Date	September 4-16, 1999
Target	Low-income apartment buildings
Attack type	Time bombings
Deaths	Nearly 300
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 nearly 300 people and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings were blamed by the Russian government on Chechen separatists and together with the Islamist invasion of Dagestan, a republic within the Russian Federation, that took place in August 1999, lead to the military invasion of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which started on September 30 and escalated the Second Chechen War. The Chechen militants and secessionist authorities, however, have denied their involvement in the bombing campaign as well as the Dagestan War.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on September 4, Moscow on September 9 and 13, and Volgodonsk on September 16. Several other bombs were defused in Moscow on September 13. A similar bomb was found and defused in the Russian city of Ryazan on September 23. The (then) Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryazanians and ordered air attacks on Grozny. The local police caught two Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who planted the bomb in Ryazan shortly afterwards. On September 24 FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise.

An official FSB investigation of the bombings was completed in 2002 and concluded that they were organized by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remains at large, and ordered by Islamist warlords Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who have been killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts. However, many observers, including State Duma deputies Yuri Shchekochikhin, Sergei Kovalev and Sergei Yushenkov, cast doubts on the official version and sought an independent investigation. Some historians and independent journalists, including David Satter, Alexander Litvinenko, Yury Felshtinsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky), as well as the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, claimed that the bombings were a false flag attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, which boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin's popularity, brought the pro-war Unity Party to the State Duma and him to the presidency within a few months.

The bombings

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, at 20:00 local time a powerful explosion took place in a busy Moscow shopping center. One person was killed and 40 others injured. According to FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300g of explosives.

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 carbomb was found and defused in another part of the town. According to a book by Yuri Felshtinsky, a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, the defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms of explosives and was found in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings, and it was discovered by local residents. Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Kolesnikov suspected, that the explosion was linked with the earlier invasion of militants from Chechnya to Dagestan.

The town had been used as a Garrison town for Russian troops sent in to crush the separatist Islamic rebellion.

Moscow, Pechatniki

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

On September 9, 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 hexogen. The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. Yeltsin took personal control of the investigation of the blast.. Vladimir Putin declared September 13 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 at 5:00 a.m. in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 km from the place of the last attack. 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 injured. According to American journalist David Satter, the basement of the destroyed building was checked by police three hours prior to the blast.

Moscow, attempted bombings

On September 13, 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 Borisov Ponds. How these sites were discovered has never officially been announced.

A Karachai businessman Achemez Gochiyaev, who was later declared a key suspect by FSB, called the police and warned about the bombing locations, which helped to prevent a large number of further casualties. Gochiyaev 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. When the first two bombs went off, Gochiyaev says, he realized that he had been framed and called the police to warn about the bombing. FSB later published pictures which showed him together with Khattab to prove that two men had close links.. Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko asked British forensics expert Geoffrey Oxlee to examine the digitized photos. According to Oxlee, "the images were of poor quality and had been exposed to digital processing", but didn't say that they were faked, but that the photographic evidence was "inconclusive".

Vladimir Putin stated, that the people responsible for the bombings in Moscow are hiding on Chechen territory. 27 terrorist suspects had been arrested in Moscow over the period of 9-14 September.

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 centers and nuclear complexes.

Ryazan incident

On the evening of 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 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 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 analyzer. The device detected traces of hexogen, 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. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". 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. 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. 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 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.

The next morning, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise. FSB issued a public apology and said that the explosives were dummies used in the exercise. On March 24 2000, two days before the presidential elections, NTV Russia featured the Ryazan events of fall 1999 on the 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. NTV general manager Igor Malashenko spoke at the JFK School of Government on the day the show aired and said that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin warned him on several occasions. Malashenko's recollection of Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV "crossed the line and that we were outlaws in their eyes." According to Alexander Goldfarb, Malashenko told him that Valentin Yumashev brought a warning from the Kremlin one day before airing the show. The warning in no uncertain terms said that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they would go ahead with the broadcast.

Explosives controversies

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 aluminum powder, niter (saltpeter), sugar, and TNT prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer at a fertilizer factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya. RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm, although it might be also smuggled from suppliers outside of Russia or stolen from munition storage facilities. 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. RDX, is, however, a widely used military and industrial explosive, which has been manufactured by many countries, and Satter's claims regarding restricted access to RDX have been dismissed by a former Russian government official Dzhabrail Gakayev as RDX was, and still is, readily available in Dagestan

Another controversy was related to the type of explosives that were used by FSB agents 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 in fact 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 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.

In March 2000, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported about a 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 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 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 Novaya Gazeta for insulting the honor of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyaev in the regiment, according to their statement. After Russian troops entered Chechnya in October 1999, military officials said they had discovered a laboratory in the town of Urus-Martan, along with a large stockpile of explosive materials and training literature that they said appeared to be connected to several of the apartment building explosions.

Other incidents

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". However the bombing in Volgodonsk took place only three days later, on September 16. When the Volgodonsk bombing happened, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation in Duma, but 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. Former FSB spy and Kremlin-critic 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.

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." On July 22, Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published leaked documents about an operation "Storm in Moscow", which by organizing terrorist acts to cause chaos would bring about a state of emergency, thus saving the Yeltsin regime. 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.

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.

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 of Al-Khattab of having direct links with Al-Qaida. Gochiyayev received $500,000 from Al-Khattab to carry out the attacks.. 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 fertilizer 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 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 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 realized 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.

Two members of Gochiyayev's group that carried out the attacks, Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Crymshamhalov, have been sentenced to life term each 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, while Crymshamhalov on Dec. 7, following a special military operation in the Pankisi Gorge.

In early September, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice called Khakim, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achimez Gochiayev, who registered in Hotel Altai as Laipanov, and Denis Saitakov. The explosive was left in a warehouse in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiayev.) The next day hexogen was delivered in Gazelle vans to three addresses – Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented.

Achemez Gochiyaev, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organizer, 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 convictions

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. All of them turned out to be innocent.

According to the 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, 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 (Russian citizen, Surname indicates an ethnic Tatar, killed in Chechnya in 1999-2000)
• Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (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 (Ethnic Karachai, killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested)
• Zaur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai killed in Chechnya in 1999-2000)
• Adam Dekkushev (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 (Ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001)
• Alisultan Salikhov (Ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001)
• Magomed Salikhov (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 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. 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 (Native of Dagestan, arrested in Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002)
• Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (Ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001)
• Magomed Magomedov (Name indicates a native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001)
• Zainutdin Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty)
• Makhach Abdulsamedov (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. 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.

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. 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. 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, died in hospital after a car accident.

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. He was sentenced by a military closed court to four years imprisonment. 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run accident in Cyprus. According to Trepashkin, his supervisors and 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". Commission chairman Kovalev summarized their findings as follows: "What can I tell? We can prove only one thing: there was no any training exercise in the city of Ryazan. Authorities do not want to answer any questions..."

It has been recognized by many observers that the case is far from being solved. Too many questions remain unanswered. On May 30, 2008, the sisters Tatyana and Alyona Morozov, former residents of the apartment block on Guryanva Street, who lost their mother in the bombing, publicly urged the newly elected Russia President Dmitry Medvedev "to order an independent, open and full investigation of these attacks", as "although these crimes were blamed on Chechen terrorists and used to justify the resumption of a full-scale war against Chechnya later that month, there are numerous indications that Russian security services may have been involved. There is also clear evidence of a cover-up by the authorities."

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. 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 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."

According to the 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. 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 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, Yusuf Krymshamkhalov, and Timur Batchaev. The Chechens believed that apartment buildings were merely temporarily storage places, and that the explosives would be used against federal military targets. Ethnic Karachai Achemez Gochiyaev rented the apartment basements as storage spaces on request from FSB agent Ramazan Dyshenkov. On January 18 2003, Yuri Felshtinsky provided Novaya Gazeta with a video recording and its transcript. 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.

The theory of FSB involvement has been described in several books and documentaries, including Darkness at Dawn by American writer and scholar David Satter. He wrote before publishing the book that, if the theory is confirmed, Putin's government is not legitimate since it came to power due to staged terrorism acts. The BBC Channel 4 programme Dispatches report 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". Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and historian Yuri Felshtinsky published the 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 the 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. In a subsequent book, Lubyanka Criminal Group, Litvinenko and Alexander Goldfarb described the transformation of the FSB into a criminal and terrorist organization.

A documentary film, Assassination of Russia, was made in 2000 by two French producers who had previously worked with NTV on NTV's Sugar of Ryazan program. This film was broadcast by the main TV channels of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russian Deputy Yuri Rybakov brought a hundred 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. 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." 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. Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko have published a book Death of a Dissident. They asserted that the murder of Litvineko 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." Litvinenko' books and the movies Assassination of Russia and Disbelief were sponsored by a controversial self-exiled Russian tycoon and Putin ally-turned-enemy Boris Berezovsky. 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. David Satter heavily relies on research sponsored by Berezovsky in his book.

Russian writer Alexander Prokhanov authored a political thriller Mr. Hexogen which describes the bombings as a "chekist electoral technique". Russian author and businessman Yuli Dubov, author of The Big Slice, wrote a novel The Lesser Evil, based on the bombings. The 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.

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. 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".

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.

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

According to researcher Gordon Bennett, the conspiracy theory that FSB was behind explosions 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 not able to present any evidence for his claims, and also 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 it is occasionally forgotten by Putin's critics, that the decision to send troops to Chechnya was taken by Boris Yeltin - not Vladimir Putin - with the wholehearted support of all power structures.

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 Chechen insurrection in Dagestan, whose objective was to turn it into another unstable Chechnya.

According to professor Peter Reddaway and researcher Dmitri Glinski, the involvement of the Liberation army of Dagestan is the most likely explanation for the attacks.

According to Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Henry E. Hale of Hardvard Univeristy, 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?

A year after the apartment bombings, on 8 August, 2000, another explosion happened in Moscow. Eight people were killed and more than 50 were injured. Chechen separatists were widely blamed for the blast. One of Russia's heavyweight papers, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, argued the blast lifted any suspicion that the now-president Putin had anything to do with the apartment-block bombs in 1999. "The explosion in Pushkin Square has dispelled all speculation in this respect", the paper wrote, adding that one can only imagine what the public's reaction will be after the newest blast.

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". Popular Russian politician and retired army general Alexander Lebed, at the time the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, asked if he thought the government had organized the terrorist attacks, said that he is "almost convinced of it."

Some publications tell that "being prone to conspiracy theories, as Russians certainly are, doesn’t mean that someone is not conspiring against them". The director of the Nixon Center 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". British author and journalist 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".

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."

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?). If Putin's team can not disprove the facts provided by Litvinenko, Putin must shoot himself. Patrushev and all other leadership of Lubyanka Criminal Group must follow his example."

Neutral stance

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)."

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."

In his book Inside Putin's Russia, Andrew Jack, former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, mentions several aspects in favor and against the conspiracy theory.

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 acts by Russian security services to justify emergency rule 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. Another bomb was defused and a warehouse containing several tons of explosives and six timing devices was found in Moscow. 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 air attacks on Grozny.
• September 24 1999: FSB agents who planted the bomb in Ryazan were caught by local police. Nikolai Patrushev declared that the incident was a training exercise.

See also

• Maxim Lazovsky
• Strategy of tension

External links

• 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, Hudson Institute, April 19, 2002
• "Fear of Doing the Boss a Disservice", The 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
• U.S. Grants Alyona Morozova Political Asylum, The Jamestown Foundation, January 19, 2005
• The blasts which shook Russia, BBC News, August 10, 2000
• Timeline: Terrorism in Russia, CNN, February 6, 2004
• The Terror of 9/99: Fact Sheet
• Template:Ru icon "Assassination of Russia" — "Покушение на Россию" 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. The script in English is available on Yuri Felshtinsky's website.
• Template:Ru icon Приговор Крымшамхалову и Деккушеву
• Template:Ru icon The request of the Chairman of the public inquiry committee Kovalyov to the Director of FSB, translation, April 8, 2002
• Template:Ru icon The answer of the Secretary of the Director of FSB to the Kovalyov's request, May 8, 2002
• Template:Ru icon The answer of the General Prosecutor office to the request of the Duma member Kulikov, Spring, 2002
• Template:Ru icon Journalist investigation by Novaya Gazeta
• Template:Ru icon 'Disbelief' by Andrei Nekrasov — documentary about Moscow Apartment Bombings (Google Video)
• Template:Ru icon The Operation "Successor" by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky
• Template:Ru icon Четыре туза
• Template:Ru icon Террористы всегда платили наличными
• Template:Ru icon Взрывы в Москве