Blowing Up Russia (24 page)
Authors: Alexander Litvinenko
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Political Science, #General, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Terrorism, #World, #Russian & Former Soviet Union, #Social Science, #Violence in Society, #True Crime, #Espionage, #Murder
Several unidentified FSB employees expressed their opinions on the failed bombing in Ryazan in an interview with journalists from Novaya Gazeta: If the bombing in Ryazan really was planned by the secret services, then a highly clandestine group (five to six people) must have been put together for it, including fanatical officers of two categories.
The first, the frontline operatives, would have had to be eliminated immediately. And of course, the bosses wouldn t have given them any instructions directly. In addition there is also a certain unlikely but in our conditions entirely possible account of the events in Ryazan. The decay within the secret services led to the formation within, say, the FSB of a group of patriotic officers which got out of control. (The present degree of coordination of action within this structure makes such a supposition possible.) Let us assume the group was sufficiently clandestine and autonomous, that it carried out specific secret tasks, but in addition to its main activities, it became involved in work of its own.
For instance, certain similar autonomous groups may operate as elusive criminal groups in their free time. But out of certain political considerations, these wanted to blow up a house in order to improve the nation s fighting spirit, etc. Even if the leadership of the FSB does discover the unsanctioned activities of such a breakaway group, it will never acknowledge the fact of its existence. Of course, the schismatic will be declared wanted men, and in the end they ll be liquidated, but without any unnecessary fuss. This secret, if it existed, would have been kept with special zeal. And they would have reacted to attempts to expose it just like they re acting now.
Even so, the theory of a conspiracy within the FSB cannot account for the obvious patronage from the very top of the FSB and the state. It is not right to assume that the FSB would have failed to spot such a major conspiracy within. To reach the rank of FSB general means going through hell and high water and developing an intuition so subtle that you can spot any conspiracy among subordinates from a mile away. Apart from that, internal informing is established on a very wide scale within the FSB. A group of five or six men cannot possibly conspire to commit a terrorist act, and carrying out bombings in four cities requires far more than that number.
State Duma deputy Vladimir Volkov also believed that the September bombings were the work of the secret services: This is the second time in a row that presidential elections have apparently by accident coincided with a change for the worse in Chechnya. This time the Chechnya campaign was preceded by terrorist attacks in Moscow, Buinaksk, Volgodonsk, Rostov& But for some reason the bombing of a residential building in
119
120
Ryazan failed and is now being described as an exercise. As a military man, I know that no exercise is ever carried out using genuine explosive devices, that the local police and FSB must have known about any exercise. Unfortunately, what happened in Ryazan was something else, and the press is already openly saying that all the Chechen terrorist attacks in Russian cities were committed by the secret services, who were preparing a small war to suit Putin. The search for an answer to these suspicions has not yet begun, but it is already clear even today that instead of a white charger, Putin has been handed a steed stained red with the spilled blood of the people.
In their own distinctive celebration of the anniversary of the bombings in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, on August 8, 2000, two FSB employees, named in their cover documents as Major Ismailov and Captain Fyodorov carried out a terrorist attack on the pedestrian subway at Pushkin Square in Moscow. Thirteen people were killed, and more than a hundred received injuries of varying degrees of severity. Not far from the site of the explosion, specialists from the Moscow UFSB discovered another two explosive devices and fired on them from a water cannon.
The explosion on Pushkin Square was a shot in the heart. The still-unidentified evildoers were very careful in choosing their location, wrote Vitaly Portnikov in the Kiev newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli on August 12. In order to understand what Pushkin Square means to a resident of the Russian capital, one must be a Muscovite. Because Red Square, Alexandrovsky Garden, the underground complex in Okhotny Ryad, Old Arbat-all of these are places for site-seeing. But when Muscovites make plans to meet, they meet in Pushkin Square& The old movie theater Rossiya, updated into the Pushkinsky and the ultra-modern Kodak-Kinomir, a hang-out spot for young people, the first MacDonald s in the USSR as well as the Oriental snack bar Yolki-Palki, cafes and the office of Mobile Telesystems, Lenkom and Doronina s MKhAT, boutiques in the Akter gallery and the favorite restaurant of the political elite, Pushkin, serving ethnic Russian food-it was in this restaurant that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov talked to Press Minister Mikhail Lesin about the fate of his television channel, TV-Tsentr&
Pushkin Square is not simply the center of the city, the square or the metro stop. It is a whole environment& To blow up an environment is more important for a terrirost than to plant a bomb inside a residential building. Because the building can turn out to be your neighbor s, but the environment is always yours.
Yury Luzhkov was quick to attempt to pin this bombing on the Chechens as well: This is Chechnya, no doubt about it. This time, weary of the constant accusations, the Chechens decided to call the mayor to order. The head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, expressed his indignation that the Chechens were once again being accused of a bombing without any proof. Kadyrov s representative to the Russian government, the former minister of foreign affairs in the government of Djokhar Dudaev, Shamil Beno, threatened that Chechens would demonstrate in Moscow, and chairman of the State Council of Chechnya, Malik Saidulaev, promised an impressive reward for information about the real organizers of the bombing. Aslan Maskhadov also disassociated himself from the terrorist attack and offered Russians his condolences.
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121
On August 12, 2000, a group of twelve members of Andrei Alexandrovich Morev s special group, having just arrived at 38 Petrovka Street for a briefing before another operation, had witnessed a conversation between Ismailov and Fyodorov about a job on Pushkin Square. The terrorist attack took place just three days later, and Morev recognized two FSB officers from the sketches.
Years will go by, maybe even decades. Russia will change, of course. It will have a different political elite, a different political leadership. If we re still alive, our children will ask us: why didn t you say anything? When they were bombing you in Moscow, Volgodonsk. Buinaksk, Ryazan, why didn t you say anything? Why did you behave like guinea pigs in a laboratory?
We did say something. We screamed and yelled, we wrote& The inhabitants of house number 14/16 on Novosyolov Street tried to take the FSB to court. A letter sent to the General Public Prosecutor of Russia said: We have been used for a monstrous experiment, in which two hundred and forty entirely innocent people were cast in the role of extras. All of us suffered not only severe psychological trauma, but also irreversible damage to our health. The people of Ryazan were supported by the Ryazan regional authorities, but despite that, the case never got beyond empty words, and the collective application to the prosecutor s office was mislaid.
On March 18, Sergei Ivanenko and Yury Shchekochikhin, both Duma deputies belonging to the Yabloko faction, drafted the text of a Duma resolution for a parliamentary question to the acting General Public Prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, entitled On the discovery in the city of Ryazan on September 22, 1999, of an explosive substance and the circumstances of its investigation. Ivanenko and Shchekochikhin proposed that the deputies of the State Duma should be given answers to the following questions: What stage has been reached in the criminal case of the discovery of an explosive substance in Ryazan on September 22, 1999? Has an analysis been carried out of the substance that was discovered? Who gave the order to hold an exercise and when, what were the aims and objectives of the exercise? What equipment and substances-explosives or imitations thereof-were used in the course of the exercise? Check material published in Novaya Gazeta (No.10, 2000), about hexogene packed in sugar sacks being stored at the weapons and munitions depot of a VDV training unit.
The draft question also mentioned the fact that during the first two days after the incident, the FSB changed its official position. According to its first account, issued on September 22, 1999, a terrorist attack had been foiled. According to the second, exercises designed to check the readiness of the agencies of law enforcement had been taking place in Ryazan. A number of the facts adduced cast doubt on the official version of the events that took place in Ryazan the text of the question stated. Information related to the exercise was restricted. The materials of the criminal case initiated by the UFSB of the Ryazan Region in connection with the discovery of explosive substance were inaccessible. The individuals who planted the imitation explosive substance had not been named, nor had the persons who issued the order to hold the exercise. The statement by the leadership of the FSB that the substance found in Ryazan consisted of granulated
121
122
sugar does not stand up to examination. In particular, the instrument used to analyze the substance that was found indicated the presence of hexogene and was in perfect working order, and the detonator of the explosive device was not an imitation.
Unfortunately, a majority of the members of the Duma voted not to put the question.
Those who opposed the putting of the question included Unity, the pro-governmental party, the People s Deputies group, part of the Regions of Russia faction, and part of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia. Those who voted for the question were Yabloko, The Union of Rightist Forces, the Communists, and the Agrarian and Industrialist Group.
As a result, Shchekochikhin and Ivanenko s parliamentary supporters gathered only 103 votes (against the 226 they required). For some reason, the Russian parliament was not interested in the truth about the September bombings.
The second attempt to table a question, undertaken on March 31, brought Shchekochikhin and Ivanenko closer to their goal, but also ended in failure. Voting took place at a plenary session of the Duma, and despite the support of the Communists, the Agrarians and Industrialists and Yabloko, as well as part of the faction Our Fatherland is All Russia, and the SPS, the draft question only gathered 197 votes against 137, with one abstention. Not a single deputy from the Unity faction voted in favor.
On March 16, 2000, Zdanovich stated in one of his interviews that according to information in the possession of the FSB, the journalist Nikolai Nikolaev, who presented the Independent Investigation series on the NTV television channel, was intending to broadcast an investigation into the exercise in Ryazan from the NTV studio within the next few days, before the presidential elections. The program was scheduled for March 24. It is hardly surprising that only a few days later the news that had been anticipated for many months finally arrived. On March 21, the Federal News Agency (FNA) announced the results of the analysis of the samples of sugar found in Ryazan on September 22, 1999. The FNA s information came from the Ryazan Region, from Major-General Sergeiev, the head of the local UFSB, who said the analysis had determined that the sacks which had been discovered contained sugar without any traces of absolutely any kind of explosive substances. Following the investigations carried out of the samples of sugar, no traces of TNT, hexogene, nitroglycerine, or other explosive substances were discovered, said the report from the experts. In addition, according to Sergeiev, the analysis had confirmed that the explosive device found together with the sacks of sugar was only a mock-up. The conclusion was: Consequently we may conclude that this device was not a bomb, since it lacked both a charge of explosive material and the means of detonation.
It gradually became clear that the FSB was attempting to close the criminal case before Nikolaev s TV program and the presidential elections. Following Patrushev s statement about exercises, the criminal case, initiated by the head of the investigative department of the UFSB RF for the Ryazan Region Lieutenant Colonel Maximov, had been halted.
However, on December 2, i.e. more than two months later, the General Public Prosecutor s Office decided that the case had been halted prematurely and set aside the decision taken by the Ryazan UFSB on September 27, thereby reinstating the
122
123
investigation and making it clear that something was not quite right with the FSB s story about exercises. The completion of the investigation, however, was not entrusted to an independent investigator, but to one of the interested parties, in fact to the FSB, the very organization accused of planning the terrorist act. At least the case had not been closed.
The Ryazan UFSB made repeated requests to the FSB laboratory in Moscow for the full text of the report on the analysis of the substance in the sugar sacks and the mechanical device found with them. On March 15, 2000, the UFSB finally received from Moscow the long-awaited reply of which its leaders had such great hopes: It was established that the substance in all the samples was saccharose, the basis of sugar produced from sugar beet and sugar cane. The chemical composition and appearance of the substance investigated correspond to those of sugar as used for food. No explosive substances were discovered in the samples presented. The triggering device could not have been used as a means of detonation, since it lacked a charge of explosive material. Consequently, there was no real threat to the inhabitants [of the building]. This meant, of course, that there were no indications of terrorism.
In my view, we have been given sufficiently weighty reasons to halt the investigation in view of the instructional nature of the events which took place on September 22, 1999, in the house on Novosyolov Street, was the opinion expressed on March 21, 2000, by Maximov, the investigator who had initiated the criminal case.
Now the results of the analysis performed by Tkachenko had to be disavowed. This honorable task was discharged by Maximov on March 21: The analysis was carried out by the head of the engineering and technical section, Yury Vasilievich Tkachenko. As was subsequently discovered, following a twenty-four period of duty his hands bore traces of plastic explosive, the composition of which includes hexogene. It should be noted that this kind of background pollution in the form of micro-particles can persist on the skin for long periods, up to three months. The analytical procedure to be carried could only have been pure if performed in disposable gloves. Unfortunately, these do not form part of the work kit of an explosives specialist and no funds are available to provide them. We have come to the conclusion that this was the only reason that the diagnosis made by the police officers was the presence of an explosive substance.
The first, the frontline operatives, would have had to be eliminated immediately. And of course, the bosses wouldn t have given them any instructions directly. In addition there is also a certain unlikely but in our conditions entirely possible account of the events in Ryazan. The decay within the secret services led to the formation within, say, the FSB of a group of patriotic officers which got out of control. (The present degree of coordination of action within this structure makes such a supposition possible.) Let us assume the group was sufficiently clandestine and autonomous, that it carried out specific secret tasks, but in addition to its main activities, it became involved in work of its own.
For instance, certain similar autonomous groups may operate as elusive criminal groups in their free time. But out of certain political considerations, these wanted to blow up a house in order to improve the nation s fighting spirit, etc. Even if the leadership of the FSB does discover the unsanctioned activities of such a breakaway group, it will never acknowledge the fact of its existence. Of course, the schismatic will be declared wanted men, and in the end they ll be liquidated, but without any unnecessary fuss. This secret, if it existed, would have been kept with special zeal. And they would have reacted to attempts to expose it just like they re acting now.
Even so, the theory of a conspiracy within the FSB cannot account for the obvious patronage from the very top of the FSB and the state. It is not right to assume that the FSB would have failed to spot such a major conspiracy within. To reach the rank of FSB general means going through hell and high water and developing an intuition so subtle that you can spot any conspiracy among subordinates from a mile away. Apart from that, internal informing is established on a very wide scale within the FSB. A group of five or six men cannot possibly conspire to commit a terrorist act, and carrying out bombings in four cities requires far more than that number.
State Duma deputy Vladimir Volkov also believed that the September bombings were the work of the secret services: This is the second time in a row that presidential elections have apparently by accident coincided with a change for the worse in Chechnya. This time the Chechnya campaign was preceded by terrorist attacks in Moscow, Buinaksk, Volgodonsk, Rostov& But for some reason the bombing of a residential building in
119
120
Ryazan failed and is now being described as an exercise. As a military man, I know that no exercise is ever carried out using genuine explosive devices, that the local police and FSB must have known about any exercise. Unfortunately, what happened in Ryazan was something else, and the press is already openly saying that all the Chechen terrorist attacks in Russian cities were committed by the secret services, who were preparing a small war to suit Putin. The search for an answer to these suspicions has not yet begun, but it is already clear even today that instead of a white charger, Putin has been handed a steed stained red with the spilled blood of the people.
In their own distinctive celebration of the anniversary of the bombings in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, on August 8, 2000, two FSB employees, named in their cover documents as Major Ismailov and Captain Fyodorov carried out a terrorist attack on the pedestrian subway at Pushkin Square in Moscow. Thirteen people were killed, and more than a hundred received injuries of varying degrees of severity. Not far from the site of the explosion, specialists from the Moscow UFSB discovered another two explosive devices and fired on them from a water cannon.
The explosion on Pushkin Square was a shot in the heart. The still-unidentified evildoers were very careful in choosing their location, wrote Vitaly Portnikov in the Kiev newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli on August 12. In order to understand what Pushkin Square means to a resident of the Russian capital, one must be a Muscovite. Because Red Square, Alexandrovsky Garden, the underground complex in Okhotny Ryad, Old Arbat-all of these are places for site-seeing. But when Muscovites make plans to meet, they meet in Pushkin Square& The old movie theater Rossiya, updated into the Pushkinsky and the ultra-modern Kodak-Kinomir, a hang-out spot for young people, the first MacDonald s in the USSR as well as the Oriental snack bar Yolki-Palki, cafes and the office of Mobile Telesystems, Lenkom and Doronina s MKhAT, boutiques in the Akter gallery and the favorite restaurant of the political elite, Pushkin, serving ethnic Russian food-it was in this restaurant that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov talked to Press Minister Mikhail Lesin about the fate of his television channel, TV-Tsentr&
Pushkin Square is not simply the center of the city, the square or the metro stop. It is a whole environment& To blow up an environment is more important for a terrirost than to plant a bomb inside a residential building. Because the building can turn out to be your neighbor s, but the environment is always yours.
Yury Luzhkov was quick to attempt to pin this bombing on the Chechens as well: This is Chechnya, no doubt about it. This time, weary of the constant accusations, the Chechens decided to call the mayor to order. The head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, expressed his indignation that the Chechens were once again being accused of a bombing without any proof. Kadyrov s representative to the Russian government, the former minister of foreign affairs in the government of Djokhar Dudaev, Shamil Beno, threatened that Chechens would demonstrate in Moscow, and chairman of the State Council of Chechnya, Malik Saidulaev, promised an impressive reward for information about the real organizers of the bombing. Aslan Maskhadov also disassociated himself from the terrorist attack and offered Russians his condolences.
120
121
On August 12, 2000, a group of twelve members of Andrei Alexandrovich Morev s special group, having just arrived at 38 Petrovka Street for a briefing before another operation, had witnessed a conversation between Ismailov and Fyodorov about a job on Pushkin Square. The terrorist attack took place just three days later, and Morev recognized two FSB officers from the sketches.
Years will go by, maybe even decades. Russia will change, of course. It will have a different political elite, a different political leadership. If we re still alive, our children will ask us: why didn t you say anything? When they were bombing you in Moscow, Volgodonsk. Buinaksk, Ryazan, why didn t you say anything? Why did you behave like guinea pigs in a laboratory?
We did say something. We screamed and yelled, we wrote& The inhabitants of house number 14/16 on Novosyolov Street tried to take the FSB to court. A letter sent to the General Public Prosecutor of Russia said: We have been used for a monstrous experiment, in which two hundred and forty entirely innocent people were cast in the role of extras. All of us suffered not only severe psychological trauma, but also irreversible damage to our health. The people of Ryazan were supported by the Ryazan regional authorities, but despite that, the case never got beyond empty words, and the collective application to the prosecutor s office was mislaid.
On March 18, Sergei Ivanenko and Yury Shchekochikhin, both Duma deputies belonging to the Yabloko faction, drafted the text of a Duma resolution for a parliamentary question to the acting General Public Prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, entitled On the discovery in the city of Ryazan on September 22, 1999, of an explosive substance and the circumstances of its investigation. Ivanenko and Shchekochikhin proposed that the deputies of the State Duma should be given answers to the following questions: What stage has been reached in the criminal case of the discovery of an explosive substance in Ryazan on September 22, 1999? Has an analysis been carried out of the substance that was discovered? Who gave the order to hold an exercise and when, what were the aims and objectives of the exercise? What equipment and substances-explosives or imitations thereof-were used in the course of the exercise? Check material published in Novaya Gazeta (No.10, 2000), about hexogene packed in sugar sacks being stored at the weapons and munitions depot of a VDV training unit.
The draft question also mentioned the fact that during the first two days after the incident, the FSB changed its official position. According to its first account, issued on September 22, 1999, a terrorist attack had been foiled. According to the second, exercises designed to check the readiness of the agencies of law enforcement had been taking place in Ryazan. A number of the facts adduced cast doubt on the official version of the events that took place in Ryazan the text of the question stated. Information related to the exercise was restricted. The materials of the criminal case initiated by the UFSB of the Ryazan Region in connection with the discovery of explosive substance were inaccessible. The individuals who planted the imitation explosive substance had not been named, nor had the persons who issued the order to hold the exercise. The statement by the leadership of the FSB that the substance found in Ryazan consisted of granulated
121
122
sugar does not stand up to examination. In particular, the instrument used to analyze the substance that was found indicated the presence of hexogene and was in perfect working order, and the detonator of the explosive device was not an imitation.
Unfortunately, a majority of the members of the Duma voted not to put the question.
Those who opposed the putting of the question included Unity, the pro-governmental party, the People s Deputies group, part of the Regions of Russia faction, and part of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia. Those who voted for the question were Yabloko, The Union of Rightist Forces, the Communists, and the Agrarian and Industrialist Group.
As a result, Shchekochikhin and Ivanenko s parliamentary supporters gathered only 103 votes (against the 226 they required). For some reason, the Russian parliament was not interested in the truth about the September bombings.
The second attempt to table a question, undertaken on March 31, brought Shchekochikhin and Ivanenko closer to their goal, but also ended in failure. Voting took place at a plenary session of the Duma, and despite the support of the Communists, the Agrarians and Industrialists and Yabloko, as well as part of the faction Our Fatherland is All Russia, and the SPS, the draft question only gathered 197 votes against 137, with one abstention. Not a single deputy from the Unity faction voted in favor.
On March 16, 2000, Zdanovich stated in one of his interviews that according to information in the possession of the FSB, the journalist Nikolai Nikolaev, who presented the Independent Investigation series on the NTV television channel, was intending to broadcast an investigation into the exercise in Ryazan from the NTV studio within the next few days, before the presidential elections. The program was scheduled for March 24. It is hardly surprising that only a few days later the news that had been anticipated for many months finally arrived. On March 21, the Federal News Agency (FNA) announced the results of the analysis of the samples of sugar found in Ryazan on September 22, 1999. The FNA s information came from the Ryazan Region, from Major-General Sergeiev, the head of the local UFSB, who said the analysis had determined that the sacks which had been discovered contained sugar without any traces of absolutely any kind of explosive substances. Following the investigations carried out of the samples of sugar, no traces of TNT, hexogene, nitroglycerine, or other explosive substances were discovered, said the report from the experts. In addition, according to Sergeiev, the analysis had confirmed that the explosive device found together with the sacks of sugar was only a mock-up. The conclusion was: Consequently we may conclude that this device was not a bomb, since it lacked both a charge of explosive material and the means of detonation.
It gradually became clear that the FSB was attempting to close the criminal case before Nikolaev s TV program and the presidential elections. Following Patrushev s statement about exercises, the criminal case, initiated by the head of the investigative department of the UFSB RF for the Ryazan Region Lieutenant Colonel Maximov, had been halted.
However, on December 2, i.e. more than two months later, the General Public Prosecutor s Office decided that the case had been halted prematurely and set aside the decision taken by the Ryazan UFSB on September 27, thereby reinstating the
122
123
investigation and making it clear that something was not quite right with the FSB s story about exercises. The completion of the investigation, however, was not entrusted to an independent investigator, but to one of the interested parties, in fact to the FSB, the very organization accused of planning the terrorist act. At least the case had not been closed.
The Ryazan UFSB made repeated requests to the FSB laboratory in Moscow for the full text of the report on the analysis of the substance in the sugar sacks and the mechanical device found with them. On March 15, 2000, the UFSB finally received from Moscow the long-awaited reply of which its leaders had such great hopes: It was established that the substance in all the samples was saccharose, the basis of sugar produced from sugar beet and sugar cane. The chemical composition and appearance of the substance investigated correspond to those of sugar as used for food. No explosive substances were discovered in the samples presented. The triggering device could not have been used as a means of detonation, since it lacked a charge of explosive material. Consequently, there was no real threat to the inhabitants [of the building]. This meant, of course, that there were no indications of terrorism.
In my view, we have been given sufficiently weighty reasons to halt the investigation in view of the instructional nature of the events which took place on September 22, 1999, in the house on Novosyolov Street, was the opinion expressed on March 21, 2000, by Maximov, the investigator who had initiated the criminal case.
Now the results of the analysis performed by Tkachenko had to be disavowed. This honorable task was discharged by Maximov on March 21: The analysis was carried out by the head of the engineering and technical section, Yury Vasilievich Tkachenko. As was subsequently discovered, following a twenty-four period of duty his hands bore traces of plastic explosive, the composition of which includes hexogene. It should be noted that this kind of background pollution in the form of micro-particles can persist on the skin for long periods, up to three months. The analytical procedure to be carried could only have been pure if performed in disposable gloves. Unfortunately, these do not form part of the work kit of an explosives specialist and no funds are available to provide them. We have come to the conclusion that this was the only reason that the diagnosis made by the police officers was the presence of an explosive substance.
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