Blowing Up Russia (15 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
The same action committed by an individual occupying an official state post of the Russian Federation& with the use of force or threat of its use; with the use of a weapon or special means; resulting in grave consequences& shall be punishable by a term of imprisonment of from three to ten years and deprivation of the right to hold specified posts or engage in specified forms of activity for a period of up to three years.
Article 207. Deliberate provision of false information concerning an act of terrorism.
The deliberate provision of false information concerning a planned explosion, act of arson, or other actions which constitute a threat to the lives of individuals and a danger of substantial damage to property& shall be punishable by a fine& or by imprisonment for a term of up to three years.
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And finally, article 213. Hooliganism, a gross violation of public order clearly expressive of disrespect for society& shall be punishable& by imprisonment for a term of up to two years.
An officer occupying an official state post, FSB director Patrushev, issued orders for the use of special means (sacks with unidentified contents and a shotgun cartridge) for the forcible exclusion of residents from a building in Ryazan for the entire night. This absolutely illegal action, which has no basis in any military or civil charters or statutes, and certainly not in any laws, entailed grave consequences in the form of damage to health and severe psychological stress suffered by individuals, specifically the serious cold contracted by one child whose mother was ordered by the police to take him outside straight from his bath without any chance to dress him properly, as well as heart attacks and hypertensive crises suffered by several of the residents.
At least two medical experts provided opinions concerning the psychological consequences of the exercise for the people who were driven out of their homes. In the opinion of Nikolai Kyrov, head of administration of the psychotherapeutical support service of the Moscow Public Health Committee, the residents of the building in Ryazan were subjected to serious psychological trauma: It is comparable with what people would have suffered during a genuine terrorist attack. And people who have survived an explosion are changed forever; they ve been taken right up to the boundary between life and death. The mind never lets go of such significant moments. At least some time in the middle of the experiment, the inhabitants of the house should have been informed that it was not a real emergency, but only an exercise. Yury Boiko, Moscow s senior psychotherapist, drew an even gloomier picture: The result of uncertainty and fear will be a sharp increase in the consumption of nicotine, alcohol, and simply food. Part of the public is already turning for help to non-professionals: people s interest in all sorts of sects, magicians, and fortune-tellers is on the increase. (The penalty on this charge is from three to ten years, with exclusion from holding office for three years.) Although supposedly aware that an exercise was being conducted in Ryazan, Patrushev failed to inform the public and the inhabitants of the building in Ryazan for one and a half days, which is tantamount to deliberately providing false information concerning an act of terrorism. (We can settle for the fine on this charge -and then, under the terms of article 213, add two years for flagrant disrespect for society.) Let us also note that, under the terms of part IV of the Statute on the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation of July 6, 1998, the director of the FSB of Russia bears personal responsibility for the achievement of the objectives set for the FSB of Russia and the agencies of the Federal Security Service. Perhaps the General Public Prosecutor of Russia will take up the case? He has already rejected the instigation of criminal proceedings for terrorism.
An exercise could not legally have been conducted using a stolen car. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the theft of an automobile is a crime, and a person who has committed such a crime bears criminal responsibility. Under the terms of
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75
the law on the FSB, the service s operatives have no right to commit a crime, even when in pursuit of military objectives. Only the FSB s own vehicles are used in operational exercises involving agents (including operational passenger automobiles, of which the FSB has two full parking lots for its central administration alone). If one of these cars is stopped by the GAI, for instance, for speeding on the Moscow-Ryazan highway, or detained by the Ryazan police because paper has been pasted over the Moscow license plate, obscuring it in a suspicious manner, the car can immediately be identified as one that is specially registered. Any policeman will recognize this as indicating that the car is one of the operational vehicles belonging to the agencies of law enforcement or the secret services.
Exercises would have been conducted using operational vehicles. However, the FSB could not use operational vehicles to commit an act of terrorism. The car might be noticed (as it was) and identified (as it was). It would look really bad if terrorists blew up a building in Ryazan using a car registered to the FSB transport fleet, but if terrorists blew up the building using a stolen car that would only be normal and natural. On the other hand, if FSB operatives driving in a stolen car by day (not by night) were stopped for a routine check or for speeding, they would simply present their official identity cards or cover documents and after that, no policeman would bother to check the documents for the car, so he would never know it was wanted by the police.
FSB agents on operational duty often carry a MUR identity card, printed in the special FSB laboratory as a cover document. On the occasion of his arrest, Khinshtein, a Moscow Komsomolets journalist, famed for his remarkable and far from accidental knowledge concerning cases residing in the safes of the secret services, presented MUR identity card No. 03726 of a certain Alexander Yevgenievich Matveiev, a captain in the criminal investigation department, issued by the Moscow GUVD. In addition Khinshtein was carrying a special pass forbidding the police to search his car. When the police asked him where the documents came from, he replied honestly that they belonged to him and were his cover documents.
If official identity cards of that kind were found on someone like Khinshtein, one can imagine what an array of cover documents was carried by the FSB operatives setting out to blow up the building in Ryazan. And if the car s documents were checked, and it was discovered to be stolen, they could always say they d just found it and were returning it to its owner.
The car in which the terrorists arrived was the only clue left after the attempt to blow up the apartment building, the beginning of the only trail that might lead back to the perpetrators. The car is the weakest link in the planning and implementation of any act of terrorism. It was only possible to blow up the building in Ryazan if a stolen car was used.
In conclusion, we would like to quote the opinion expressed by former Public Prosecutor General of Russia, Yu.I. Skuratov in an interview with the Russian-language Paris newspaper Russkaya Mysl for October 29, 1999: I was very much disturbed and alarmed by what happened in Ryazan. In this case, it certainly is possible to construct a scenario
75
76
with the secret services themselves involved in planning an explosion in Ryazan, and making very clumsy excuses when they were caught out. I am amazed that the public prosecutor s office never did get to the bottom of the business. That s its job.
So we are left with no indication that an exercise was being carried out in Ryazan, except the oral statements of FSB chief Patrushev, his subordinate Zdanovich, who is bound in the line of duty to support everything Patrushev says, and several other FSB officers. All the facts, however, indicate that a terrorist attack was, indeed, thwarted in Ryazan. Those who commissioned, planned, carried out, and abetted this crime have yet to be tried and convicted. But since we know the suspects names, positions, work and home addresses, and even their telephone numbers, arresting them should not be too difficult.
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Chapter 6
The FSB resorts to mass terror: Buinaksk, Moscow, Volgodonsk The perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk were never found, and we can only guess at who was behind the attacks by analogy with the events in Ryazan. In these three towns, the Ryazan-style exercises were carried through to their intended conclusion, and the lives of several hundred people were abruptly cut short or totally ruined.
In August 1999, all the members of Lazovsky s group were at large in society, including even Vorobyov. At that time, yet another military operation was just approaching its conclusion in Dagestan, into which the Chechen separatists had made an incursion. A lot has been said and written since that time about this Chechen encroachment into Dagestan territory. It has been claimed that the invasion was planned in the Kremlin and deliberately provoked by the Russian secret services. The Russian media were full of articles about a conspiratorial meeting in France, between Shamil Basaev and the head of the president s office, Alexander Voloshin, organized by the Russian intelligence agent, A. Surikov, in France. We are not in possession of enough facts to draw absolutely definite conclusions. Let us begin with Surikov s interview.
On 24 August 1999 the newspaper Versiya-a part of the holding company Sovershenno sekretno that was headed by Borovik, who died in a plane crash together with the Chechen businessman Bazhaev on 9 March 2000-published an interview with Colonel Surikov of the GRU, a person close to Evgeny Primakov on the one hand and to Yuri Maslyukov on the other. During the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, Surikov served under Abkhazian Defense Minister Sultan Sosnaliev. In the course of the war he became acquainted with Basaev. From then on, he was considered an expert on the Caucausus. In the editorial note that preceded the inteview, Versiya reporter that it was Surikov who had organized the secret meeting with the head of the president s office, Voloshin.
Neither Surikov nor Voloshin denied this statement. Surikov reported that:
Shamil Basaev and Khattab created fortified areas in Dagestan on a scale not even suspected by the press. They dug trenches, erected fortifications, established arms and ammunition supply lines from Chechnya. They also established communication and transportation networks between each other and Chechnya. The fortified areas are surrounded by mine fields. My professional opinion is that using artillery and aviation alone, as the federal troops have been doing in the mountains of Dagestan, is not enough.
So far the federation s actions have been ineffective and have not caused damage to the enemy s forces or fortifications. In order to liquidate the fortified areas, a ground offensive with air support is necessary&
The federal formations being organized in Dagestan are made up of odd scraps.
Policemen from the Urals, OMON agents from Murmansk, various components from the
77 Chapter 6
78
Defense Ministry, large numbers of conscripts. According to my sources, conscripts constitute one third-contrary to the generals assurances that conscripts aren t sent to Dagestan. It is pointless to talk about stream-lining such a diverse crowd for active duty. There are as many as thirty generals in the region at the moment, although a single well-coordinated regiment would be sufficient to liquidate the Chechen fighters. And with coordinated activity and unified command in place, a single colonel could be in charge of the entire operation. At the moment, all of these generals are simply making a huge mess of the chain of command since they belond to different departments.
Therefore, in the current situation a military operation would cause great casualties among our soldiers and policemen. I would predict that 300-400 of our men would die in an attack, and we already have approximately 250 dead and wounded. Despite the generals assertions to the contrary, the Chechen fighters have suffered minimal losses- about 40 people. They might lose about as many in an assault..In general, reports about losses on the Chechen side-thousands killed in one day-remind me of reports from the Chechen War of 1995-1997.
Our generals evidently fail to take into account the fact that Shamil Basaev is an experienced guerrilla fighter who became an expert in sabotage long before the war in Chechnya. He went through a complete training course in one of the Russian intelligence agencies. This was during the peak of the Georgian-Abkhazian war. At that time, Moscow took a cowardly stance, and instead of acting in defense of Abkhazia, where a genocide was taking place, the only thing that the Russian forces did was to offer unofficial assistance to the volunteer detachments that went off to war. Pavel Sergeevich Grachev, who was Minister of Defense at the time, pretended not to know about this. And one fourth of these volunteers, who came to fight in Abkhazia, were Chechens. And their leader was Shamil Basaev.
Basaev is now making significant tactical improvements to the military actions in Dagestan. He s holding down a fortified area in Botlikha, but this is merely a diversionary maneuver. He s starting to establish a guerrilla movement. Along with sabotage, this is the most effective means to conduct a war in a forested mountainous region. Now his tactics consist in short attacks on columns of federal forces, organizing ambushes, mining roads, shelling strategic targets with RPGs&
The Kremlin knew that Dagestan was about to be invaded by the Wahhabists. They could not not have known it. They were warned about it by the secret services. Even Versiya wrote about it. So why did they blow it? Because there are people in the Kremlin who seriously believe that individuals such as Basaev can be paid to do anything that Moscow tells them&
On the whole, the Russian secret services also slept through Basaev s invasion of Dagestan. Because our secret services are now at that stage of decay when it becomes hard to deal with direct obligations on account of business commitments. They re only capable of bulldozing reporters like Pasko, and even then unsuccessfully. The situation in the Caucauses can still be salvaged. But there s no one to salvage it.
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79
What is remarkable is not that Surikov gave Versiya an interview, but that his interview was given three weeks after Versiya s publication of the original materials about the meeting between Voloshin and Basaev. Had Surikov thought that Versiya s earlier article did not correspond to reality, he would have either refused to grant Versiya an interview or else made use of the opportunity to refute it.
Article 207. Deliberate provision of false information concerning an act of terrorism.
The deliberate provision of false information concerning a planned explosion, act of arson, or other actions which constitute a threat to the lives of individuals and a danger of substantial damage to property& shall be punishable by a fine& or by imprisonment for a term of up to three years.
73
74
And finally, article 213. Hooliganism, a gross violation of public order clearly expressive of disrespect for society& shall be punishable& by imprisonment for a term of up to two years.
An officer occupying an official state post, FSB director Patrushev, issued orders for the use of special means (sacks with unidentified contents and a shotgun cartridge) for the forcible exclusion of residents from a building in Ryazan for the entire night. This absolutely illegal action, which has no basis in any military or civil charters or statutes, and certainly not in any laws, entailed grave consequences in the form of damage to health and severe psychological stress suffered by individuals, specifically the serious cold contracted by one child whose mother was ordered by the police to take him outside straight from his bath without any chance to dress him properly, as well as heart attacks and hypertensive crises suffered by several of the residents.
At least two medical experts provided opinions concerning the psychological consequences of the exercise for the people who were driven out of their homes. In the opinion of Nikolai Kyrov, head of administration of the psychotherapeutical support service of the Moscow Public Health Committee, the residents of the building in Ryazan were subjected to serious psychological trauma: It is comparable with what people would have suffered during a genuine terrorist attack. And people who have survived an explosion are changed forever; they ve been taken right up to the boundary between life and death. The mind never lets go of such significant moments. At least some time in the middle of the experiment, the inhabitants of the house should have been informed that it was not a real emergency, but only an exercise. Yury Boiko, Moscow s senior psychotherapist, drew an even gloomier picture: The result of uncertainty and fear will be a sharp increase in the consumption of nicotine, alcohol, and simply food. Part of the public is already turning for help to non-professionals: people s interest in all sorts of sects, magicians, and fortune-tellers is on the increase. (The penalty on this charge is from three to ten years, with exclusion from holding office for three years.) Although supposedly aware that an exercise was being conducted in Ryazan, Patrushev failed to inform the public and the inhabitants of the building in Ryazan for one and a half days, which is tantamount to deliberately providing false information concerning an act of terrorism. (We can settle for the fine on this charge -and then, under the terms of article 213, add two years for flagrant disrespect for society.) Let us also note that, under the terms of part IV of the Statute on the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation of July 6, 1998, the director of the FSB of Russia bears personal responsibility for the achievement of the objectives set for the FSB of Russia and the agencies of the Federal Security Service. Perhaps the General Public Prosecutor of Russia will take up the case? He has already rejected the instigation of criminal proceedings for terrorism.
An exercise could not legally have been conducted using a stolen car. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the theft of an automobile is a crime, and a person who has committed such a crime bears criminal responsibility. Under the terms of
74
75
the law on the FSB, the service s operatives have no right to commit a crime, even when in pursuit of military objectives. Only the FSB s own vehicles are used in operational exercises involving agents (including operational passenger automobiles, of which the FSB has two full parking lots for its central administration alone). If one of these cars is stopped by the GAI, for instance, for speeding on the Moscow-Ryazan highway, or detained by the Ryazan police because paper has been pasted over the Moscow license plate, obscuring it in a suspicious manner, the car can immediately be identified as one that is specially registered. Any policeman will recognize this as indicating that the car is one of the operational vehicles belonging to the agencies of law enforcement or the secret services.
Exercises would have been conducted using operational vehicles. However, the FSB could not use operational vehicles to commit an act of terrorism. The car might be noticed (as it was) and identified (as it was). It would look really bad if terrorists blew up a building in Ryazan using a car registered to the FSB transport fleet, but if terrorists blew up the building using a stolen car that would only be normal and natural. On the other hand, if FSB operatives driving in a stolen car by day (not by night) were stopped for a routine check or for speeding, they would simply present their official identity cards or cover documents and after that, no policeman would bother to check the documents for the car, so he would never know it was wanted by the police.
FSB agents on operational duty often carry a MUR identity card, printed in the special FSB laboratory as a cover document. On the occasion of his arrest, Khinshtein, a Moscow Komsomolets journalist, famed for his remarkable and far from accidental knowledge concerning cases residing in the safes of the secret services, presented MUR identity card No. 03726 of a certain Alexander Yevgenievich Matveiev, a captain in the criminal investigation department, issued by the Moscow GUVD. In addition Khinshtein was carrying a special pass forbidding the police to search his car. When the police asked him where the documents came from, he replied honestly that they belonged to him and were his cover documents.
If official identity cards of that kind were found on someone like Khinshtein, one can imagine what an array of cover documents was carried by the FSB operatives setting out to blow up the building in Ryazan. And if the car s documents were checked, and it was discovered to be stolen, they could always say they d just found it and were returning it to its owner.
The car in which the terrorists arrived was the only clue left after the attempt to blow up the apartment building, the beginning of the only trail that might lead back to the perpetrators. The car is the weakest link in the planning and implementation of any act of terrorism. It was only possible to blow up the building in Ryazan if a stolen car was used.
In conclusion, we would like to quote the opinion expressed by former Public Prosecutor General of Russia, Yu.I. Skuratov in an interview with the Russian-language Paris newspaper Russkaya Mysl for October 29, 1999: I was very much disturbed and alarmed by what happened in Ryazan. In this case, it certainly is possible to construct a scenario
75
76
with the secret services themselves involved in planning an explosion in Ryazan, and making very clumsy excuses when they were caught out. I am amazed that the public prosecutor s office never did get to the bottom of the business. That s its job.
So we are left with no indication that an exercise was being carried out in Ryazan, except the oral statements of FSB chief Patrushev, his subordinate Zdanovich, who is bound in the line of duty to support everything Patrushev says, and several other FSB officers. All the facts, however, indicate that a terrorist attack was, indeed, thwarted in Ryazan. Those who commissioned, planned, carried out, and abetted this crime have yet to be tried and convicted. But since we know the suspects names, positions, work and home addresses, and even their telephone numbers, arresting them should not be too difficult.
76
77
Chapter 6
The FSB resorts to mass terror: Buinaksk, Moscow, Volgodonsk The perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk were never found, and we can only guess at who was behind the attacks by analogy with the events in Ryazan. In these three towns, the Ryazan-style exercises were carried through to their intended conclusion, and the lives of several hundred people were abruptly cut short or totally ruined.
In August 1999, all the members of Lazovsky s group were at large in society, including even Vorobyov. At that time, yet another military operation was just approaching its conclusion in Dagestan, into which the Chechen separatists had made an incursion. A lot has been said and written since that time about this Chechen encroachment into Dagestan territory. It has been claimed that the invasion was planned in the Kremlin and deliberately provoked by the Russian secret services. The Russian media were full of articles about a conspiratorial meeting in France, between Shamil Basaev and the head of the president s office, Alexander Voloshin, organized by the Russian intelligence agent, A. Surikov, in France. We are not in possession of enough facts to draw absolutely definite conclusions. Let us begin with Surikov s interview.
On 24 August 1999 the newspaper Versiya-a part of the holding company Sovershenno sekretno that was headed by Borovik, who died in a plane crash together with the Chechen businessman Bazhaev on 9 March 2000-published an interview with Colonel Surikov of the GRU, a person close to Evgeny Primakov on the one hand and to Yuri Maslyukov on the other. During the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, Surikov served under Abkhazian Defense Minister Sultan Sosnaliev. In the course of the war he became acquainted with Basaev. From then on, he was considered an expert on the Caucausus. In the editorial note that preceded the inteview, Versiya reporter that it was Surikov who had organized the secret meeting with the head of the president s office, Voloshin.
Neither Surikov nor Voloshin denied this statement. Surikov reported that:
Shamil Basaev and Khattab created fortified areas in Dagestan on a scale not even suspected by the press. They dug trenches, erected fortifications, established arms and ammunition supply lines from Chechnya. They also established communication and transportation networks between each other and Chechnya. The fortified areas are surrounded by mine fields. My professional opinion is that using artillery and aviation alone, as the federal troops have been doing in the mountains of Dagestan, is not enough.
So far the federation s actions have been ineffective and have not caused damage to the enemy s forces or fortifications. In order to liquidate the fortified areas, a ground offensive with air support is necessary&
The federal formations being organized in Dagestan are made up of odd scraps.
Policemen from the Urals, OMON agents from Murmansk, various components from the
77 Chapter 6
78
Defense Ministry, large numbers of conscripts. According to my sources, conscripts constitute one third-contrary to the generals assurances that conscripts aren t sent to Dagestan. It is pointless to talk about stream-lining such a diverse crowd for active duty. There are as many as thirty generals in the region at the moment, although a single well-coordinated regiment would be sufficient to liquidate the Chechen fighters. And with coordinated activity and unified command in place, a single colonel could be in charge of the entire operation. At the moment, all of these generals are simply making a huge mess of the chain of command since they belond to different departments.
Therefore, in the current situation a military operation would cause great casualties among our soldiers and policemen. I would predict that 300-400 of our men would die in an attack, and we already have approximately 250 dead and wounded. Despite the generals assertions to the contrary, the Chechen fighters have suffered minimal losses- about 40 people. They might lose about as many in an assault..In general, reports about losses on the Chechen side-thousands killed in one day-remind me of reports from the Chechen War of 1995-1997.
Our generals evidently fail to take into account the fact that Shamil Basaev is an experienced guerrilla fighter who became an expert in sabotage long before the war in Chechnya. He went through a complete training course in one of the Russian intelligence agencies. This was during the peak of the Georgian-Abkhazian war. At that time, Moscow took a cowardly stance, and instead of acting in defense of Abkhazia, where a genocide was taking place, the only thing that the Russian forces did was to offer unofficial assistance to the volunteer detachments that went off to war. Pavel Sergeevich Grachev, who was Minister of Defense at the time, pretended not to know about this. And one fourth of these volunteers, who came to fight in Abkhazia, were Chechens. And their leader was Shamil Basaev.
Basaev is now making significant tactical improvements to the military actions in Dagestan. He s holding down a fortified area in Botlikha, but this is merely a diversionary maneuver. He s starting to establish a guerrilla movement. Along with sabotage, this is the most effective means to conduct a war in a forested mountainous region. Now his tactics consist in short attacks on columns of federal forces, organizing ambushes, mining roads, shelling strategic targets with RPGs&
The Kremlin knew that Dagestan was about to be invaded by the Wahhabists. They could not not have known it. They were warned about it by the secret services. Even Versiya wrote about it. So why did they blow it? Because there are people in the Kremlin who seriously believe that individuals such as Basaev can be paid to do anything that Moscow tells them&
On the whole, the Russian secret services also slept through Basaev s invasion of Dagestan. Because our secret services are now at that stage of decay when it becomes hard to deal with direct obligations on account of business commitments. They re only capable of bulldozing reporters like Pasko, and even then unsuccessfully. The situation in the Caucauses can still be salvaged. But there s no one to salvage it.
78
79
What is remarkable is not that Surikov gave Versiya an interview, but that his interview was given three weeks after Versiya s publication of the original materials about the meeting between Voloshin and Basaev. Had Surikov thought that Versiya s earlier article did not correspond to reality, he would have either refused to grant Versiya an interview or else made use of the opportunity to refute it.
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