Blowing Up Russia (43 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
Let me remind you that Lazovsky was killed on April 28, 2000, at the entrance to the Uspensky Cathedral, in his township, soon after the General Prosecutor s Office had issued a warrant for his arrest. A. Litvinenko and I describe this episode in greater detail in our book, The FSB Blows Up Russia. There s another account according to which the man they killed was Lazovsky s double, and Lazovsky is still alive. I ve been told this by at least three officers of the FSB.
With Ugriumov, there was information immediately after his death that his death was not an accident, that he didn t die of a heart attack, that there was a messenger, who brought him a package, and maybe also an offer to commit suicide.
This information was published for the first time (at least, that s where I first saw it) on Korzhakov s Stringer website. In other words, this information seems to have come from a serious source.
Do you really consider Korzhakov a serious source?
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I think that Korzhakov definitely has connections to people with information. I can give one example. Already in 1999, a person who was a guest at Korzhakov s birthday party told me that a decision had been made to squeeze Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Dorenko, and Kiselev out of Russia. As you can see, that information turned out to be accurate. Only Kiselev was left unsqueezed. People have a habit of talking. I have a habit of listening.
But you re a serious person, a serious researcher. You really think that methods from movies like Schizophrenia are still being used, when a person can be given an order, through a messenger, to commit suicide? You seriously believe that any general from the FSB is still capable of carrying out such an order?
No, I don t know the answer to that question. But I know for certain that Ugriumov didn t die of natural causes.
This is your personal assumption?
Well, of course it s an assumption. But it s an assumption about which I m personally convinced. The fact that Lazovsky had a connection to the September 1999 bombings is also an assumption. But this is also an assumption about which I m convinced. And not just because Lazovsky was the vice president of a foundation whose president was the well-known GRU agent Suslov.
There are no such accidents, either. We have just one solitary living witness left - Patrushev.
But in your opinion, how well-informed, competent, and even, let s put it this way, personally literate, are the fighters Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev? Do they have information about Patrushev s activity? Or, for instance, is it possible to suppose that they know that Patrushev gave someone an order? Do they have access to the top floors of the Lubyanka?
No, of course not. On that level, their competence must be equal to zero. However, from a purely formal point of view, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev are suspects in crimes committed in Russia in September 1999. They are considered suspects by Russian law enforcement. And if these suspects name only three names and one of them is Patrushev, I think that we must take such statements very seriously and to determine why and on what grounds they consider Patrushev in particular to be the instigator and organizer of the bombings that took place in Russia in 1999.
In addition, it never happens in history that one group of people organizes a coup and another group comes to power. It s obvious that those who take the risk of being executed for the coup are the ones who come to power in the event of its successful outcome. This is exactly the case with Patrushev. These are people who took a serious risk, because, as Galkin told you, there are no accidents.
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It cannot be an accident that Patrushev was appointed Director of the FSB a few days before the beginning of the series of bombings; it cannot be an accident that, prior to this, the FSB was headed by Putin. These are people who took a serious risk for the sake of a major political operation, for the sake of an enormous reward called Russia. Just between ourselves, the 300 dead people in this operation should not sound like a serious number to them, considering that significantly greater numbers of people who are just as innocent are dying in the Chechen war. Even the way in which the hostage situation in the Dubrovka theater was handled makes it clear that the human factor is not central for people like Patrushev and Putin.
If we re talking about Dubrovka, then I think that the aim of that operation was no so much to free the hostages as to destroy the terrorists. But my question is different.
Krymshamkhalov s and Batchayev s testimony contradicts the theory that the whole thing was some kind of FSB plot. Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev themselves admit that they transported the explosives. But then they only talk about dead people. What does this mean? And why did they give this testimony, why did they send this declaration to the Commission?
I don t agree that Krymshamkhalov s and Batchayev s testimony contradicts the theory that the bombings were carried out by the FSB. On the contrary, precisely this testimony proves that the operation was planned very seriously, that the necessity of setting up terrorists to be arrested was taken into account. These decoys were supposed to be people like Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, capable of telling the public nothing except that they admit to being guilty. Let s imagine what would have happened if this whole lowest rung had been arrested by Russian law enforcement. They would have said that they were delivering the explosives on orders from Khattab and Basaev. And the whole case would have been closed.
Why Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev have given their testimony today, have sent this declaration, is sooner a question for them than for me. But I have no difficulty explaining the logic of their crime, the logic of their actions. This logic is very simple. They were relatively young. (Batchayev was 21, Krymshamkhalov 32. I have all these facts from their answers to my questionnaires.) These were young people. They believe - let s suppose they re right - that it was they who transported the explosives. In other words, they think that what they transported from point A to point B were explosives. Frankly speaking, it s entirely possible that this was not the case. And that everything that these young people did was precisely a cover-up operation on the part of the FSB.
It would all seem to fit. Except that the buildings that were blown up were the buildings where they d delivered the explosives! In other words, there s no escaping their personal responsibility.
Yes, but these were not the buildings that they were told were supposed to get blown up, not the federal targets. This is the main puzzle here. As I understand it, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev were hired by certain people, who presented themselves as Chechen separatists, and who said that they had orders from Khattab, Basaev, or
241
242
maybe the president of Chechnya, to blow up federal targets on Russian territory. And these young people, who were not especially educated, not especially experienced, as I understand it, these people agreed to take part in this operation.
And these inexperienced people know about the participation of Patrushev? It doesn t fit, Yura.
No, no. The only thing these young people knew at the time was that this was not an operation organized by Chechen separatists. Their job, as they understood it, was to transport the explosives from point A to point B in Moscow and in Volgodonsk.
In other words, they knew that these were explosives?
They claim that they knew. But the bombings happened not when they were told they would happen, and not where they were told they would happen&
But still, let me repeat, at the locations where the explosives were delivered.
I would say, yes - at those locations where the explosives were delivered. But, in their view, the bombings occurred prematurely. I asked them this question: Were you troubled by the fact the bombings everywhere occurred prematurely? They said no.
You gave them these questions in writing?
Yes, of course. And the only thing they knew was that the buildings that got blown up were not federal buildings, but buildings with peaceful civilians. And this is what tipped them off them that something was wrong, and that they had to run. The only place they could run in that situation was Chechnya, which is what they did. And they arrived in Chechnya as people who claimed that they had participated in the September 1999 terrorist attacks in Moscow and in Volgodonsk.
The Chechens had a very big problem with this information. They didn t know what to do with people who showed up in Chechnya claiming that they d carried out a terrorist attack in Moscow on Khattab s orders. Everyone thought that they were impostors who were lying and attempting to gain some kind of political capital.
Here a simple question comes up: Who were these Chechens, in point of fact, that didn t know what to do with them? Where did you get the idea that such Chechens exist?
Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev are not Chechens by nationality. You have to understand that Chechnya is a small country or more like a large village, where everybody knows everybody. As soon as people appeared in Chechnya claiming that they d carried out terrorist attacks on orders from Khattab and Basaev, they very quickly wound up at Khattab s, who told them that there d been no instructions to carry out any terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk, and that no one from the Chechen leadership, the military leadership included, had given any such instructions. They were
242
243
told this by Khattab. I want to emphasize that the Chechen leadership, from the very first days, denied any involvement in the bombings in Moscow, in Volgodonsk, and in Buinaksk.
In that case, who were the Chechens who found Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev in Moscow and invited them to participate in what was in their opinion a just cause?
First of all, no one said they were Chechens. These were people who presented themselves as Chechen separatists. We don t know who these people were or who they were working for in reality. We can suppose, if we accept the theory that the 1999 terrorist attacks in Russia were planned by the FSB and the GRU, that these people were from the FSB and the GRU.
These are shaky assumptions. Why did they need to go to such lengths? And why, then, did the FSB and the GRU let Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev go? Why did they allow them, as Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev claim, to make phone calls, to call some kind of emergency service, and to say that there were explosives in other places? It s nonsense.
Let s examine the evidence. They didn t let Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev go. They ran away. They re still being pursued, like Dekkushev, who was arrested in Georgia and extradited to Moscow. So it is clear that they were intending to arrest them immediately after the bombings, but since the bombings took place prematurely and not where they were supposed to, not in federal targets, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev, and others realized that they d been set up, decided not to wait for an explanation, and took off.
An analogous thing happened with Gochiyaev, except that Gochiyaev had offered his storage space for storing sugar and didn t know that Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev had stored hexogene there. It was precisely Gochiyaev who called the emergency services. He didn t know about the explosives, but after the first explosion he realized that his bags of sugar were exploding. Precisely Gochiyaev called emergency and, by reporting the address of the storage space on Borisovskie Prudy, prevented further bombings in Moscow.
Then why do they give the names of Lazovsky, Patrushev, Ugriumov?
That s the most interesting part&
According to your logic, there are certain unspecified individuals who, in the name of Chechen separatists, asked Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev for aid in the struggle.
Then, when the bomb went off too soon, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev didn t like the look of it. And they ran off to Chechnya, where Khattab announced to them that he hadn t given any such orders.
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But in that case, where do they come up with the names of Patrushev, Ugriumov, and Lazovsky, who was simply a bandit and indeed an FSB agent? Because according to their own logic, they didn t know anyone!
From the moment they arrived in Chechnya and announced that they had been recruited by people presenting themselves as separatist sympathizers, it became clear to the Chechen leadership that the events in Moscow, in Volgodonsk and Buinaksk, were a deliberate provocation by the Russian security services, directed against Chechens. From this moment, the Chechen leadership itself begins investigating the 1999 bombings. In other words, various Chechen leaders - they have no single leadership there now, obviously - start gathering information, each one trying to find out for himself who was behind the 1999 terrorist attacks. Because they know it wasn t them. This explains the attempt to obtain this information from Galkin; this explains similar attempts to obtain the same information from any security agent captured by the Chechens.
The number of people captured by the Chechens in the last 2-3 years is quite large. And each of them supplied some information that had, among other things, a direct or indirect connection to the events of 1999.
But in that case, Krymshamkhalov s and Gochiyaev s testimony is not the testimony of witnesses who were actually acquainted, for example, at least with Lazovsky, but the testimony of people to whom it was only later explained where their orders may have been coming from.
In principle, that is correct& But I stress this: about Lazovsky-Abdulgafur, the Russian, they claim that they knew him personally and that he was the leader of the whole group of terrorists. They also knew another terrorist leader: Lieutenant Colonel Abubakar (AbuBakar) - Tatar, 32 years old, short, with glasses. But I m far from thinking that Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, without a legal, military, or any kind of education, were capable of conducting their own independent investigation, even in the event that they had a direct connection to these events.
But a simple question comes up: Are they so naive that they didn t even ask for the names of the people who presented themselves as Chechen separatists? They didn t know them and they didn t ask for any references? What, do you just walk up to someone who looks Chechen and say, Old man, how would you like to blow a building or a federal target in the name of our common cause? - I must say that their answers to all my questions and all my questionnaires contain the same phrase, repeated over and over again: We will answer all questions in greater detail when we meet. All the information that I m being given now is so highly regulated by the people giving it to me that we can only guess about what they really know and could tell us. Because they say the same thing about absolutely everything: we know everything, but we ll give the details when we meet; we know all the names, but we ll provide them when we meet.
With Ugriumov, there was information immediately after his death that his death was not an accident, that he didn t die of a heart attack, that there was a messenger, who brought him a package, and maybe also an offer to commit suicide.
This information was published for the first time (at least, that s where I first saw it) on Korzhakov s Stringer website. In other words, this information seems to have come from a serious source.
Do you really consider Korzhakov a serious source?
239
240
I think that Korzhakov definitely has connections to people with information. I can give one example. Already in 1999, a person who was a guest at Korzhakov s birthday party told me that a decision had been made to squeeze Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Dorenko, and Kiselev out of Russia. As you can see, that information turned out to be accurate. Only Kiselev was left unsqueezed. People have a habit of talking. I have a habit of listening.
But you re a serious person, a serious researcher. You really think that methods from movies like Schizophrenia are still being used, when a person can be given an order, through a messenger, to commit suicide? You seriously believe that any general from the FSB is still capable of carrying out such an order?
No, I don t know the answer to that question. But I know for certain that Ugriumov didn t die of natural causes.
This is your personal assumption?
Well, of course it s an assumption. But it s an assumption about which I m personally convinced. The fact that Lazovsky had a connection to the September 1999 bombings is also an assumption. But this is also an assumption about which I m convinced. And not just because Lazovsky was the vice president of a foundation whose president was the well-known GRU agent Suslov.
There are no such accidents, either. We have just one solitary living witness left - Patrushev.
But in your opinion, how well-informed, competent, and even, let s put it this way, personally literate, are the fighters Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev? Do they have information about Patrushev s activity? Or, for instance, is it possible to suppose that they know that Patrushev gave someone an order? Do they have access to the top floors of the Lubyanka?
No, of course not. On that level, their competence must be equal to zero. However, from a purely formal point of view, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev are suspects in crimes committed in Russia in September 1999. They are considered suspects by Russian law enforcement. And if these suspects name only three names and one of them is Patrushev, I think that we must take such statements very seriously and to determine why and on what grounds they consider Patrushev in particular to be the instigator and organizer of the bombings that took place in Russia in 1999.
In addition, it never happens in history that one group of people organizes a coup and another group comes to power. It s obvious that those who take the risk of being executed for the coup are the ones who come to power in the event of its successful outcome. This is exactly the case with Patrushev. These are people who took a serious risk, because, as Galkin told you, there are no accidents.
240
241
It cannot be an accident that Patrushev was appointed Director of the FSB a few days before the beginning of the series of bombings; it cannot be an accident that, prior to this, the FSB was headed by Putin. These are people who took a serious risk for the sake of a major political operation, for the sake of an enormous reward called Russia. Just between ourselves, the 300 dead people in this operation should not sound like a serious number to them, considering that significantly greater numbers of people who are just as innocent are dying in the Chechen war. Even the way in which the hostage situation in the Dubrovka theater was handled makes it clear that the human factor is not central for people like Patrushev and Putin.
If we re talking about Dubrovka, then I think that the aim of that operation was no so much to free the hostages as to destroy the terrorists. But my question is different.
Krymshamkhalov s and Batchayev s testimony contradicts the theory that the whole thing was some kind of FSB plot. Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev themselves admit that they transported the explosives. But then they only talk about dead people. What does this mean? And why did they give this testimony, why did they send this declaration to the Commission?
I don t agree that Krymshamkhalov s and Batchayev s testimony contradicts the theory that the bombings were carried out by the FSB. On the contrary, precisely this testimony proves that the operation was planned very seriously, that the necessity of setting up terrorists to be arrested was taken into account. These decoys were supposed to be people like Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, capable of telling the public nothing except that they admit to being guilty. Let s imagine what would have happened if this whole lowest rung had been arrested by Russian law enforcement. They would have said that they were delivering the explosives on orders from Khattab and Basaev. And the whole case would have been closed.
Why Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev have given their testimony today, have sent this declaration, is sooner a question for them than for me. But I have no difficulty explaining the logic of their crime, the logic of their actions. This logic is very simple. They were relatively young. (Batchayev was 21, Krymshamkhalov 32. I have all these facts from their answers to my questionnaires.) These were young people. They believe - let s suppose they re right - that it was they who transported the explosives. In other words, they think that what they transported from point A to point B were explosives. Frankly speaking, it s entirely possible that this was not the case. And that everything that these young people did was precisely a cover-up operation on the part of the FSB.
It would all seem to fit. Except that the buildings that were blown up were the buildings where they d delivered the explosives! In other words, there s no escaping their personal responsibility.
Yes, but these were not the buildings that they were told were supposed to get blown up, not the federal targets. This is the main puzzle here. As I understand it, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev were hired by certain people, who presented themselves as Chechen separatists, and who said that they had orders from Khattab, Basaev, or
241
242
maybe the president of Chechnya, to blow up federal targets on Russian territory. And these young people, who were not especially educated, not especially experienced, as I understand it, these people agreed to take part in this operation.
And these inexperienced people know about the participation of Patrushev? It doesn t fit, Yura.
No, no. The only thing these young people knew at the time was that this was not an operation organized by Chechen separatists. Their job, as they understood it, was to transport the explosives from point A to point B in Moscow and in Volgodonsk.
In other words, they knew that these were explosives?
They claim that they knew. But the bombings happened not when they were told they would happen, and not where they were told they would happen&
But still, let me repeat, at the locations where the explosives were delivered.
I would say, yes - at those locations where the explosives were delivered. But, in their view, the bombings occurred prematurely. I asked them this question: Were you troubled by the fact the bombings everywhere occurred prematurely? They said no.
You gave them these questions in writing?
Yes, of course. And the only thing they knew was that the buildings that got blown up were not federal buildings, but buildings with peaceful civilians. And this is what tipped them off them that something was wrong, and that they had to run. The only place they could run in that situation was Chechnya, which is what they did. And they arrived in Chechnya as people who claimed that they had participated in the September 1999 terrorist attacks in Moscow and in Volgodonsk.
The Chechens had a very big problem with this information. They didn t know what to do with people who showed up in Chechnya claiming that they d carried out a terrorist attack in Moscow on Khattab s orders. Everyone thought that they were impostors who were lying and attempting to gain some kind of political capital.
Here a simple question comes up: Who were these Chechens, in point of fact, that didn t know what to do with them? Where did you get the idea that such Chechens exist?
Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev are not Chechens by nationality. You have to understand that Chechnya is a small country or more like a large village, where everybody knows everybody. As soon as people appeared in Chechnya claiming that they d carried out terrorist attacks on orders from Khattab and Basaev, they very quickly wound up at Khattab s, who told them that there d been no instructions to carry out any terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk, and that no one from the Chechen leadership, the military leadership included, had given any such instructions. They were
242
243
told this by Khattab. I want to emphasize that the Chechen leadership, from the very first days, denied any involvement in the bombings in Moscow, in Volgodonsk, and in Buinaksk.
In that case, who were the Chechens who found Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev in Moscow and invited them to participate in what was in their opinion a just cause?
First of all, no one said they were Chechens. These were people who presented themselves as Chechen separatists. We don t know who these people were or who they were working for in reality. We can suppose, if we accept the theory that the 1999 terrorist attacks in Russia were planned by the FSB and the GRU, that these people were from the FSB and the GRU.
These are shaky assumptions. Why did they need to go to such lengths? And why, then, did the FSB and the GRU let Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev go? Why did they allow them, as Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev claim, to make phone calls, to call some kind of emergency service, and to say that there were explosives in other places? It s nonsense.
Let s examine the evidence. They didn t let Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev go. They ran away. They re still being pursued, like Dekkushev, who was arrested in Georgia and extradited to Moscow. So it is clear that they were intending to arrest them immediately after the bombings, but since the bombings took place prematurely and not where they were supposed to, not in federal targets, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev, and others realized that they d been set up, decided not to wait for an explanation, and took off.
An analogous thing happened with Gochiyaev, except that Gochiyaev had offered his storage space for storing sugar and didn t know that Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev had stored hexogene there. It was precisely Gochiyaev who called the emergency services. He didn t know about the explosives, but after the first explosion he realized that his bags of sugar were exploding. Precisely Gochiyaev called emergency and, by reporting the address of the storage space on Borisovskie Prudy, prevented further bombings in Moscow.
Then why do they give the names of Lazovsky, Patrushev, Ugriumov?
That s the most interesting part&
According to your logic, there are certain unspecified individuals who, in the name of Chechen separatists, asked Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev for aid in the struggle.
Then, when the bomb went off too soon, Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev didn t like the look of it. And they ran off to Chechnya, where Khattab announced to them that he hadn t given any such orders.
243
244
But in that case, where do they come up with the names of Patrushev, Ugriumov, and Lazovsky, who was simply a bandit and indeed an FSB agent? Because according to their own logic, they didn t know anyone!
From the moment they arrived in Chechnya and announced that they had been recruited by people presenting themselves as separatist sympathizers, it became clear to the Chechen leadership that the events in Moscow, in Volgodonsk and Buinaksk, were a deliberate provocation by the Russian security services, directed against Chechens. From this moment, the Chechen leadership itself begins investigating the 1999 bombings. In other words, various Chechen leaders - they have no single leadership there now, obviously - start gathering information, each one trying to find out for himself who was behind the 1999 terrorist attacks. Because they know it wasn t them. This explains the attempt to obtain this information from Galkin; this explains similar attempts to obtain the same information from any security agent captured by the Chechens.
The number of people captured by the Chechens in the last 2-3 years is quite large. And each of them supplied some information that had, among other things, a direct or indirect connection to the events of 1999.
But in that case, Krymshamkhalov s and Gochiyaev s testimony is not the testimony of witnesses who were actually acquainted, for example, at least with Lazovsky, but the testimony of people to whom it was only later explained where their orders may have been coming from.
In principle, that is correct& But I stress this: about Lazovsky-Abdulgafur, the Russian, they claim that they knew him personally and that he was the leader of the whole group of terrorists. They also knew another terrorist leader: Lieutenant Colonel Abubakar (AbuBakar) - Tatar, 32 years old, short, with glasses. But I m far from thinking that Krymshamkhalov and Batchayev, without a legal, military, or any kind of education, were capable of conducting their own independent investigation, even in the event that they had a direct connection to these events.
But a simple question comes up: Are they so naive that they didn t even ask for the names of the people who presented themselves as Chechen separatists? They didn t know them and they didn t ask for any references? What, do you just walk up to someone who looks Chechen and say, Old man, how would you like to blow a building or a federal target in the name of our common cause? - I must say that their answers to all my questions and all my questionnaires contain the same phrase, repeated over and over again: We will answer all questions in greater detail when we meet. All the information that I m being given now is so highly regulated by the people giving it to me that we can only guess about what they really know and could tell us. Because they say the same thing about absolutely everything: we know everything, but we ll give the details when we meet; we know all the names, but we ll provide them when we meet.
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