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 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 rebels from the North Caucasus region and together with the Dagestan War, that took place in August 1999, lead to the military invasion of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The militants as well as the secessionist Chechen authorities denied their involvement in the bombing campaign.

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. On the next day FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise and the bomb was declared a fake. Contrary to this, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was real.

An official FSB of the bombings was completed in 2002. According to the investigation, and the court ruling that followed, the bombings were organized by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remains at large, and ordered by Arab Mujahids Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who have been killed. Six other suspects have been convicted by Russian courts. The militants as well as the secessionist Chechen authorities denied their involvement in the bombing campaign. The only group to claim responsibility for the bombings was Liberation Army of Dagestan.

State Duma deputies Sergei Kovalev, Yuri Shchekochikhin and Sergei Yushenkov, cast doubts on the official version and sought an independent investigation. Anti-Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky (and his close associates Yury Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko), David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Anna Politkovskaya, as well as the secessionist Chechen authorities and former popular Russian politician Alexander Lebed, claimed that the 1999 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.

Gordon Bennett, Robert Bruce Ware, Paul J. Murphy, Henry Plater-Zyberk, Simon Saradzhyan, Nabi Abdullaev and Richard Sakwa criticized the conspiracy theories, pointing out problems such as the lack of evidence.

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 . 27 terrorist suspects had been arrested in Moscow over the period of 9-14 September but later released

Moscow mall

On August 31, 1999, 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 car bomb was found and defused in another part of the town. 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.

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 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 in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 km from the place of the last attack. 118 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 yards away.

Moscow, attempted bombings

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 Borisov Ponds. That was a Karachai businessman Achemez Gochiyaev, who 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.

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 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. 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 RDX. 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. According to the head of FSB Nikolai Patrushev, the exercise was carried out to test responses after the earlier blasts. FSB issued a public apology about the incident.

Previous threats and claims about responsibility for the blasts

A Finnish journalist who in mid-August 1999, before the bombings, travelled 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, Russian military launched an aerial bombing of the villages.

After first bombings, Moscow mayor Luzhkov asserted 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 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 called 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 September 9, 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."

During 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 September 15. 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 September 15, 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 organization. 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 skepticism over the claims. Sergei Bogdanov of the FSB press service in Moscow said that the words of a previously unknown individual representing a semimythical organization should not be considered as reliable. Bogdanov insisted that the organization had nothing to do with the bombing. On September 15, 1999 a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".

Vyacheslav Izmailov, a Caucasus expert for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, at that time said that he had been received a note from an informant that 10 attacks were planned in Moscow, St. Petersburg and in the Rostov area, where Volgodonsk is situated. According to Izmailov the informant indicated, that the explosions had been organized by two leaders of the Islamic insurgency in Dagestan, Shamil Basayev and Ibn Al-Khattab. But he said the attacks were being carried out by Slavic mercenaries as well as Chechens, making it difficult to identify the terrorists.

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 of Al-Khattab of having direct links with Al-Qaida,, though Khattab himself has always dennied 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 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.

Moscow

Al-Khattab paid Gochiyayev $500,000 to carry out the attacks at Guryanova Street, Kashirskoye Skosse and Borsovskiye 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 Achimez Gochiayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosive was left in a warehouse in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiayev.) The next day explosives were delivered in "ZIL-5301" vans to three addresses – Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiayev supervised the placement of the explosives 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 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.

Buinaksk

The 4 September 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.

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 the for the job, but Dekkushev never got a single kopeck. According to Dekkushev, it wasn't the FSB that ordered the bombing, as Berezovsky later claimed, but the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Sentences

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. Crymshamhalov was apprehended and extradicted to Moscow. In 2000, six bombers involved in the Buynaksk attack were arrested in Azerbaidjan and convicted of the bombing. 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).

Support for the theory of Islamist involvement

According to Paul J. Murphy, a former US counterterrorism official, the evidence that Al-Khattab was responsible for the apartment building bombings in Moscow is clear. Murphy also asserts, that 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, have described the involvement of the Liberation Army of Dagestan as the most likely explanation for the bombings.

According to Dr. Robert Bruce Ware, an associate professor of Southern Illinois University, the simplest, clearest explanation for the apartment block blasts is that they were perpetrated by Wahhabis from Dagestan and perhaps elsewhere in the region, 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 their cities'."

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 chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries.

Mr Kovalev said in 2002 that the theory of the FSB involvement published in the book of Litvinenko and Felshtinsky seemed to be doubtful.

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 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". Romanovich subsequently died in a hit and run accident in Cyprus. According to Mr 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".

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 public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed earlier on March 20, 2000. 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. Goldfarb wrote that the warning in no uncertain terms said that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they would go ahead with the broadcast.(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007, p. 198)

Grigory Yavlinsky said that Artyom Borovik investigated the Moscow apartment bombings and prepared a series of publications about them. Mr Borovik received numerous death threats and died in an airplane 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 involvement

According to a theory that was put forward by anti-Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Yuriy Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, American writer David Satter, political scientist Vladimir Pribylovsky, Russian Duma lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov, film maker Andrei Nekrasov, investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, the bombings were a successful coup d'état organized by the FSB to bring future Russian president Vladimir Putin to power. 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,

"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."

Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky wrote that the September 4 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 Dyshekov 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 Krymshakhalov, 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 the FSB agent Ramazan Dyshekov.

Prevented bombings

According to Oksana Yablokova of The Moscow Times, authorities said they defused explosives on Borisovskiye Prudy street in Moscow September 14, 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.

Claims attributed to a fugitive suspect

In 2002 Prima News agency published a letter whose author claimed to be Achemez Gochiyaev, the suspect of the official investigation. The author of the letter claimed he called the police and warned about the bombing locations. He wrote that he was framed by his old acquaintance who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found.

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 a man who claimed to be the fugitive suspect Achemez Gochiyayev. According to the statement, Mr Gochiyaev was an unknowing participant in a plot organized by an undercover FSB agent, his former acquaintance Ramazan Dyshekov. In 2005 Novaya Gazeta published another letter attributed to Mr Gochiyaev.

Books and films

David Satter, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, authored a book Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State(Satter 2003) that scrutinized the paradoxes surrounding the bombings.

In 2002 former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and historian Yuri Felshtinsky published a book FSB vzryvaet Rossiyu (FSB is blowing up Russia). It was later translated into English under the title Blowing up Russia: Terror from within.(Felshtinsky & Litvinenko 2007) The book alleged that the bombings and other terrorist acts have been committed by Russian security services to justify the Second Chechen War and to bring Vladimir Putin to power. On December 29, 2003, Russian authorities confiscated over 4000 copies of the book en route to Moscow.. In a subsequent book, Lubyanka Criminal Group(Litvinenko 2002), 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 on NTV's Sugar of Ryazan program.(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007, pp. 249–250) 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. Tens of thousands of pirate copies were sold in Russia in 2002. Sergei Yushenkov presented the film at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2002, decrying lack of civilian control over the Russian armed forces including the secret services. A staffer in Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "We just cannot go out and say that the president of Russia is a mass murderer. But it is important that we know it."(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007, p. 259)

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 published a book Death of a Dissident.(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007) They asserted that the murder of Mr. Litvinenko was "the most compelling proof" of the FSB involvement theory. According to the book, the murder of Litvinenko "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."(Goldfarb & Litvinenko 2007, p. 259)

The films Assassination of Russia and Disbelief were sponsored by a controversial self-exiled Russian tycoon and Putin ally-turned-enemy Boris Berezovsky. Since 2001 co-author of the book Death of a Dissident Alexander Goldfarb is an executive director of International Foundation for Civil Liberties established by Mr. Berezovsky.

According to a posting by Kirill Pankratov in the Johnson's Russia List, the allegations put forward by David Satter and J Putley are "kept afloat" mostly by people "close to Berezovsky and his money".

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".

Criticism of the conspiracy theory

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, 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.

Scholars

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 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 circumstanstial.

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 Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs 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."

Other

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.

Security and policy analysts Simon Saradzhyan and Nabi Abdullaev also point out, that Litvinenko and Felshtinsky have not provided any direct evidence to back up their claims about FSB involvement in the bombings.

Support for the conspiracy theory

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

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.

Yuri Tkachenko, the police explosives expert who defused the Ryazan bomb, insisted that it was in fact RDX, in reply to an FSB report the chemical test was inaccurate due to contamination of the apparatus. Mr 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. Mr 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 RDX. 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.

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

Answering a parliamentary request, 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.

In 2002 deputy of Russian Parliament Aleksandr Kulikov requested the General Prosecutor's Office on the results of investigation of criminal cases incited by facts of explosions of blocks of apartments in Moscow, Volgodonsk and discovering of explosive devices in Ryazan; answer of Russian Deputy Prosecutor Vasiliy Kolmogorov was then published in Russian media. According to it, express analysis of the discovered substance made by detectors "Exprei" и "М-02" showed controversial results. To remove the controversy, three 3 kg samples were taken from the sacks in question and blown up at the testing area; in all cases no explosion followed. During the additional investigation ordered by the General Prosecutor's Office, an explosives examination was made which showed that "the sacks contained sucrose — disaccharide based on glucopyranose and fructofuranose. No traces of tertiary explosives (TNT, RDX, HMX, PETN, nitroglycerin, tetryl, picric acid) were found in the examined substance. Investigation of clocks, elements of power supply, shell, bulb and wires showed that although these items constituted a single electronic block, it wasn't capable of giving voltage when alarm of the timer was triggered and isn't a blasting device". It was also noted that "mission in Ryazan was not properly planned and done, in particular the question of limits of carrying out this action was not properly specified, no provision was made for information sharing with representatives of local bodies or bodies of law and order about the training character of the implant in case it was discovered."

Bibliography

• Goldfarb, Alexander; Litvinenko, Marina (2007), Death of a Dissident, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781416551652
• Felshtinsky, Yuri; Litvinenko, Alexander (2007), Blowing up Russia: Terror from within (2nd ed.), Gibson Square Books, ISBN 9781903933954 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
• Satter, David (2003), Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-09892-8
• Pribylovsky, Vladimir; Felshtinsky, Yuri (2008), The Age of Assassins. The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin, London: Gibson Square Books, ISBN 9781906142155
• Litvinenko, Alexander (2002), LPG: Lubianskaia Prestupnaia Gruppirovka: Ofitser FSB Daet Pokazaniia (in Russian), Grani, p. 255, ISBN 9780972387804
• Evangelista, Matthew (2002), The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union?, Brookings Institution Press, ISBN 9780815724995
• Jack, Andrew (2005), Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195189094
• Sakwa, Richard (2008), Putin, Russia's choice (2nd ed.), Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-40765-6