Blowing Up Russia (21 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
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security councils in the Russian regions. Chairman of the Council of the Federation Yegor Stroev remarked that the senators intended to offer a political assessment of events and put forward concrete economic and social measures in the conflict zone, including measures in support of the civilian population and the army. The speaker of the house remarked that the explosion in Volgodonsk strengthened the senators mood on the need for more decisive and hard-line action for the struggle against terrorism.
Stroev did not accuse the Chechens of the terrorist attacks, but he quite obviously drew a connection between the conflict zone in Dagestan and the struggle against terrorism.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin delivered a report to the extraordinary session of the Council of the Federation. As measures of defense against terrorism he proposed establishing a safety cordon along the entire Russian-Chechen border and also intensifying the aerial and artillery bombardment of Chechen territory. In this way, Putin declared the Chechen Republic responsible for the terrorist attacks and called for military action to be taken against Chechnya.
At the conclusion of the session, Putin declared that the members of the Council of the Federation had supported action of the most hard-line character by the government for resolving the situation in the northern Caucasus, including the proposal to introduce a quarantine around Chechnya. Answering questions from journalists, Putin emphasized that preemptive strikes have been delivered and will be delivered against bandit bases in Chechnya, but that the possibility of introducing Russian forces into the territory of the Chechen Republic had not been discussed.
Putin emphasized that the bandits must be exterminated, no other action is possible here. By bandits Putin meant the Chechen army, not terrorists. In other words, the government had settled for a single account of the bombings, the Chechen version, and was willing to use the bombings as an excuse for war.
The leaders of the various regions of the North Caucasus understood that Russia was setting up a new war against the Chechen Republic. On September 20 at a meeting in Magas in Ingushetia the president of Ingushetia, A. Dzasokhov, and the president of northern Ossetia, R. Aushev, supported A. Maskhadov s suggestion that talks were needed between Maskhadov and Yeltsin. Dzasokhov and Aushev also intended to arrange a meeting between the president of Chechnya and Russian Prime Minister Putin in Nalchik or Pyatigorsk no later than the end of September 1999. All of the leaders from the North Caucasus were supposed to attend the meeting.
Clearly, political negotiations might have prevented the war and cast light on the terrorist attacks that had taken place in Russia. For this very reason the FSB did everything in its power to prevent the meeting of leaders from the North Caucasus regions taking place.
Before the end of September it was intended to blow up residential buildings in Ryazan, Tula, Pskov, and Samara. As always happens when a large terrorist attack involving groups of terrorists is being planned, there was a leak of information. According to the information we received, it was Ryazan which had been singled out by the terrorists for the next bombing, because of the Ryazan VDV training college, said the mayor of
105
106
Ryazan, Mamatov. This next bombing would be the failed attempt to blow up the house on Novosyolov Street on September 22.
On September 23, Zdanovich announced that the FSB had identified all the participants in the terrorist attacks in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk. There is not a single ethnic Chechen among them. Not a single one. Following which, of course the FSB general apologized to the Chechen people and the Chechen diaspora in Russia?.. No, nothing of the sort! Instead, with the stubbornness of a classroom dunce, Zdanovich set himself to discover a Chechen connection. To give him his due, he managed to find one. He thought it possible that after carrying out the bombings the terrorists, who had after all been planning their attacks since mid-August, might have had escape routes.
They could possibly have taken refuge in the CIS countries, but it was most probable that they had withdrawn to Chechnya. In short, the Chechens were being bombed because in Zdanovich s opinion the terrorists (among whom there were no ethnic Chechens) had probably retreated to Chechnya. But then why didn t they bomb the countries of the CIS? We have definite sources of information inside Chechnya, and we know what is going on there, Zdanovich emphasized. From 1991 to 1994, the FSK conducted hardly any operational work at all in this republic, but later we did certain work. We know about those people who develop terrorist operations, make the financial input, recruit the mercenaries, and prepare the explosives. Nowadays in our country it s easy to obtain information on how to produce an explosive device, and apart from that there are many people who have fought in the hot spots who have the necessary knowledge and skills.
Many of them have fought in Karabakh, Tadjikistan, and Chechnya. This does not mean that anyone is accusing the population of Chechnya or Aslan Maskhadov. We accuse specific criminals, terrorists who are located in Chechnya. That s where the name the Chechen connection came from, concluded Zdanovich, without actually naming a single specific ciminal.
To use the probable withdrawal of the terrorists to Chechnya as an excuse for launching a war against the Chechen people, while acknowledging that the bombings were not carried out by Chechens, is the height of cynicism. If Putin s government considered it possible to start the second Chechen war because of such a probability, we must conclude that the bombings were no more than an excuse, and the war was an operation planned long in advance at General Staff HQ. Stepashin threw some light on this question in January 2000, when he announced that the political decision to invade Chechnya was taken as early as March 1999, that the intervention had been planned for August-September and that it would have happened even if there had been no explosions in Moscow. I was preparing for active intervention, Stepashin said. We were planning to be north of Terek in August-September. Putin, who at that time was director of the FSB, was in possession of this information.
The testimony of former head of the FSK and former Prime Minister Stepashin does not match the testimony of former head of the FSB and former Prime Minister Putin:
106
107
Last summer we launched a campaign, not against the independence of Chechnya, but against the aggressive impulses which have begun to manifest themselves on its territory.
We are not attacking. We are defending ourselves. And we have pushed them out of Dagestan& And when we gave them a good hiding they blew up houses in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk.
Question: Did you take the decision to continue the operation in Chechnya before the houses were bombed or after?
Answer: After.
Question: Do you know that according to one account the houses were deliberately blown up in order to justify the start of military operations in Chechnya? That is, it was supposedly done by the Russian secret services?
Answer: What? We blew up our own houses? You know& Rubbish! It s raving nonsense! There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such a crime against their own people. The very suggestion is immoral and essentially it s nothing more than an instance of the war of information against Russia.
At some stage, when the archives of the Ministry of Defense are opened up, we shall see these military documents: maps, plans, directives, orders of the day for air strikes, and the deployment of land forces. They will have dates on them. We shall discover for certain just how spontaneous was the Russian government s decision to start land operations in Chechnya, and whether the General Staff had finished planning the military operations before the first September bombing. We shall ask ourselves why bombings took place before the election campaign and before the incursion into Chechnya (when they were not in the Chechens interests), and ceased following Putin s election as president and the beginning of all-out war against the Chechen Republic (the very time when the Chechens ought to have taken revenge against their invaders). We shall only receive the final and complete answers to these questions and many more after power has changed hands in Russia.
107
108
Chapter 7
The FSB against the people So far the terrorists had not been identified, or rather they had been identified as not being Chechens. The failed bombing attempt in Ryazan prompted the public to think that the FSB might be behind the bombings. For the party of war this was just one more indication that a full-scale war in Chechnya ha to be started as soon as possible. The date of September 24 was no coincidence, for if the bombing in Ryazan had succeeded, Putin and the heads of all the military and law enforcement ministries were scheduled to make hard-line speeches in response.
On September 24, like a chorus in some well-planned stage performance, Russian politicians began demanding war. Patrushev announced that the terrorists who blew up the apartment houses in Moscow were in Chechnya. We know this is a lie. Patrushev did not identify his sources, since he had none. Patrushev did not offer any proof. His press secretary Zdanovich had spoken only of the possible or probable withdrawal of the terrorists to Chechnya (or to the countries of the CIS). But Patrushev needed to start a war, and so he claimed that Chechnya had been transformed into a hotbed of terrorism.
Rushailo claimed that organized crime inside and outside Russia had used the Chechen bridgehead to unleash a wide-reaching campaign of subversion against Russia& The agencies of law enforcement and the armed forces have adequate potential to defend the interests of Russia in the northern Caucasus& The federal forces are prepared to mount armed operations. In other words, the MVD was preparing to wage war against Chechnya as part of the effort to combat organized crime, including criminal groups. As though the fight against crime was going perfectly well on all the rest of Russia s territory!
The situation in the northern Caucasus and the possible consequences for Russia were outlined by the chairman of the SF s security and defense committee, Alexander Ryabov, in an interview he gave to the newspaper Segodnia. In his opinion the world was undergoing a new geopolitical division under the cover of Muslim slogans. For Russia s enemies, the most important thing was to create a weak zone in Russia s soft underbelly. This theory is reminiscent of the conspiracy of the Elders of Zion, except that this time the elders are Muslim, not Jewish. A new geopolitical division of the world is serious business. It will take a serious war to sort it out.
The newspaper Vek published an interview with the vice-president of a collegium of military experts, Alexander Vladimirov, who expressed the belief that the best solution right now would be a small victorious war in Chechnya. In his opinion the safety cordon around Chechnya proposed by Putin was a good idea, but it should be only the first step, since a cordon for its own sake is a pointless exercise. (Vladmirov s opinion must certainly have been noted, since they actually started with the second step, full-scale war.)
108 Chapter 7
109
The final, decisive word in support of war was spoken by Prime Minister Putin in Astan: The Russian state does not intend to keep things on hold& The recent unprovoked attacks which have taken place against territories contiguous with Chechnya, the barbarous acts which have resulted in casualties among the peaceful population have set the terrorists not only outside the law but outside the framework of human society and modern civilization. Air strikes were taking place exclusively against the guerrillas bases, and this will continue wherever the terrorists may be located& We shall pursue the terrorists everywhere. And if, pardon my language, we catch up with them in the toilet, then we ll squelch them in the johns.
The mood of the public in those days can best be characterized by the fact that after his inspired phrase about squelching them in the johns Putin s ratings actually improved.
The propaganda campaign mounted by the supporters of war had produced the desired result. According to an opinion poll conducted by the All-Russian Central Public Opinion Institute (VTsIOM) almost fifty percent of Russians were convinced that the explosions in Russian cities had been carried out by Basaev s guerrillas and another thirty-three percent blamed the Vahhabites and their leader Khattab. Eighty-eight percent of the people questioned were afraid of falling victim to a terrorist attack. Sixty-four percent were in agreement that all Chechens should be deported, and the same proportion were in favor of the mass bombing of Chechnya.
The bombings of the houses had broken down the resistance of public opinion. A small victorious war now seemed like the only natural response in the fight against terrorism.
The stupefied country was not yet aware that the terrorists were not Chechens, and the war would be neither small nor victorious.
Note the absolutely glaring lack of logic here. The Chechen leadership denies it was involved in the terrorist attacks. Zdanovich confirms that there are no Chechens among the culprits, but states that the terrorists have probably gone into hiding in Chechnya.
This probably is enough to fit the terrorists up with a Chechen trail, which in turn provides a pretext for starting to bomb Chechnya. Aslan Maskhadov declares that he is willing to hold negotiations. But he is not heard. It is important for the FSB to drag Russia into a war as quickly as possible, so that the presidential election can be held against the background of a major armed conflict, and so that after the new president comes to power, he can inherit the war together with all the political consequences which it implies, i.e. the president s dependence on the structures of coercion. Only through war can the FSB finally seize power in the country. It is a simple little matter of a conspiracy with the goal of allowing the former KGB to seize power under the banner of the fight against Chechen terrorism. On October 4, the coup ended in victory for the conspirators.
That was the day when Russian forces crossed the border of Chechnya. Most of the population of Russia supported the decision taken by former director of the FSB and now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin; director of the FSB, Patrushev; and FSB general and head of the SB, Sergei Ivanov.
105
security councils in the Russian regions. Chairman of the Council of the Federation Yegor Stroev remarked that the senators intended to offer a political assessment of events and put forward concrete economic and social measures in the conflict zone, including measures in support of the civilian population and the army. The speaker of the house remarked that the explosion in Volgodonsk strengthened the senators mood on the need for more decisive and hard-line action for the struggle against terrorism.
Stroev did not accuse the Chechens of the terrorist attacks, but he quite obviously drew a connection between the conflict zone in Dagestan and the struggle against terrorism.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin delivered a report to the extraordinary session of the Council of the Federation. As measures of defense against terrorism he proposed establishing a safety cordon along the entire Russian-Chechen border and also intensifying the aerial and artillery bombardment of Chechen territory. In this way, Putin declared the Chechen Republic responsible for the terrorist attacks and called for military action to be taken against Chechnya.
At the conclusion of the session, Putin declared that the members of the Council of the Federation had supported action of the most hard-line character by the government for resolving the situation in the northern Caucasus, including the proposal to introduce a quarantine around Chechnya. Answering questions from journalists, Putin emphasized that preemptive strikes have been delivered and will be delivered against bandit bases in Chechnya, but that the possibility of introducing Russian forces into the territory of the Chechen Republic had not been discussed.
Putin emphasized that the bandits must be exterminated, no other action is possible here. By bandits Putin meant the Chechen army, not terrorists. In other words, the government had settled for a single account of the bombings, the Chechen version, and was willing to use the bombings as an excuse for war.
The leaders of the various regions of the North Caucasus understood that Russia was setting up a new war against the Chechen Republic. On September 20 at a meeting in Magas in Ingushetia the president of Ingushetia, A. Dzasokhov, and the president of northern Ossetia, R. Aushev, supported A. Maskhadov s suggestion that talks were needed between Maskhadov and Yeltsin. Dzasokhov and Aushev also intended to arrange a meeting between the president of Chechnya and Russian Prime Minister Putin in Nalchik or Pyatigorsk no later than the end of September 1999. All of the leaders from the North Caucasus were supposed to attend the meeting.
Clearly, political negotiations might have prevented the war and cast light on the terrorist attacks that had taken place in Russia. For this very reason the FSB did everything in its power to prevent the meeting of leaders from the North Caucasus regions taking place.
Before the end of September it was intended to blow up residential buildings in Ryazan, Tula, Pskov, and Samara. As always happens when a large terrorist attack involving groups of terrorists is being planned, there was a leak of information. According to the information we received, it was Ryazan which had been singled out by the terrorists for the next bombing, because of the Ryazan VDV training college, said the mayor of
105
106
Ryazan, Mamatov. This next bombing would be the failed attempt to blow up the house on Novosyolov Street on September 22.
On September 23, Zdanovich announced that the FSB had identified all the participants in the terrorist attacks in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk. There is not a single ethnic Chechen among them. Not a single one. Following which, of course the FSB general apologized to the Chechen people and the Chechen diaspora in Russia?.. No, nothing of the sort! Instead, with the stubbornness of a classroom dunce, Zdanovich set himself to discover a Chechen connection. To give him his due, he managed to find one. He thought it possible that after carrying out the bombings the terrorists, who had after all been planning their attacks since mid-August, might have had escape routes.
They could possibly have taken refuge in the CIS countries, but it was most probable that they had withdrawn to Chechnya. In short, the Chechens were being bombed because in Zdanovich s opinion the terrorists (among whom there were no ethnic Chechens) had probably retreated to Chechnya. But then why didn t they bomb the countries of the CIS? We have definite sources of information inside Chechnya, and we know what is going on there, Zdanovich emphasized. From 1991 to 1994, the FSK conducted hardly any operational work at all in this republic, but later we did certain work. We know about those people who develop terrorist operations, make the financial input, recruit the mercenaries, and prepare the explosives. Nowadays in our country it s easy to obtain information on how to produce an explosive device, and apart from that there are many people who have fought in the hot spots who have the necessary knowledge and skills.
Many of them have fought in Karabakh, Tadjikistan, and Chechnya. This does not mean that anyone is accusing the population of Chechnya or Aslan Maskhadov. We accuse specific criminals, terrorists who are located in Chechnya. That s where the name the Chechen connection came from, concluded Zdanovich, without actually naming a single specific ciminal.
To use the probable withdrawal of the terrorists to Chechnya as an excuse for launching a war against the Chechen people, while acknowledging that the bombings were not carried out by Chechens, is the height of cynicism. If Putin s government considered it possible to start the second Chechen war because of such a probability, we must conclude that the bombings were no more than an excuse, and the war was an operation planned long in advance at General Staff HQ. Stepashin threw some light on this question in January 2000, when he announced that the political decision to invade Chechnya was taken as early as March 1999, that the intervention had been planned for August-September and that it would have happened even if there had been no explosions in Moscow. I was preparing for active intervention, Stepashin said. We were planning to be north of Terek in August-September. Putin, who at that time was director of the FSB, was in possession of this information.
The testimony of former head of the FSK and former Prime Minister Stepashin does not match the testimony of former head of the FSB and former Prime Minister Putin:
106
107
Last summer we launched a campaign, not against the independence of Chechnya, but against the aggressive impulses which have begun to manifest themselves on its territory.
We are not attacking. We are defending ourselves. And we have pushed them out of Dagestan& And when we gave them a good hiding they blew up houses in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk.
Question: Did you take the decision to continue the operation in Chechnya before the houses were bombed or after?
Answer: After.
Question: Do you know that according to one account the houses were deliberately blown up in order to justify the start of military operations in Chechnya? That is, it was supposedly done by the Russian secret services?
Answer: What? We blew up our own houses? You know& Rubbish! It s raving nonsense! There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such a crime against their own people. The very suggestion is immoral and essentially it s nothing more than an instance of the war of information against Russia.
At some stage, when the archives of the Ministry of Defense are opened up, we shall see these military documents: maps, plans, directives, orders of the day for air strikes, and the deployment of land forces. They will have dates on them. We shall discover for certain just how spontaneous was the Russian government s decision to start land operations in Chechnya, and whether the General Staff had finished planning the military operations before the first September bombing. We shall ask ourselves why bombings took place before the election campaign and before the incursion into Chechnya (when they were not in the Chechens interests), and ceased following Putin s election as president and the beginning of all-out war against the Chechen Republic (the very time when the Chechens ought to have taken revenge against their invaders). We shall only receive the final and complete answers to these questions and many more after power has changed hands in Russia.
107
108
Chapter 7
The FSB against the people So far the terrorists had not been identified, or rather they had been identified as not being Chechens. The failed bombing attempt in Ryazan prompted the public to think that the FSB might be behind the bombings. For the party of war this was just one more indication that a full-scale war in Chechnya ha to be started as soon as possible. The date of September 24 was no coincidence, for if the bombing in Ryazan had succeeded, Putin and the heads of all the military and law enforcement ministries were scheduled to make hard-line speeches in response.
On September 24, like a chorus in some well-planned stage performance, Russian politicians began demanding war. Patrushev announced that the terrorists who blew up the apartment houses in Moscow were in Chechnya. We know this is a lie. Patrushev did not identify his sources, since he had none. Patrushev did not offer any proof. His press secretary Zdanovich had spoken only of the possible or probable withdrawal of the terrorists to Chechnya (or to the countries of the CIS). But Patrushev needed to start a war, and so he claimed that Chechnya had been transformed into a hotbed of terrorism.
Rushailo claimed that organized crime inside and outside Russia had used the Chechen bridgehead to unleash a wide-reaching campaign of subversion against Russia& The agencies of law enforcement and the armed forces have adequate potential to defend the interests of Russia in the northern Caucasus& The federal forces are prepared to mount armed operations. In other words, the MVD was preparing to wage war against Chechnya as part of the effort to combat organized crime, including criminal groups. As though the fight against crime was going perfectly well on all the rest of Russia s territory!
The situation in the northern Caucasus and the possible consequences for Russia were outlined by the chairman of the SF s security and defense committee, Alexander Ryabov, in an interview he gave to the newspaper Segodnia. In his opinion the world was undergoing a new geopolitical division under the cover of Muslim slogans. For Russia s enemies, the most important thing was to create a weak zone in Russia s soft underbelly. This theory is reminiscent of the conspiracy of the Elders of Zion, except that this time the elders are Muslim, not Jewish. A new geopolitical division of the world is serious business. It will take a serious war to sort it out.
The newspaper Vek published an interview with the vice-president of a collegium of military experts, Alexander Vladimirov, who expressed the belief that the best solution right now would be a small victorious war in Chechnya. In his opinion the safety cordon around Chechnya proposed by Putin was a good idea, but it should be only the first step, since a cordon for its own sake is a pointless exercise. (Vladmirov s opinion must certainly have been noted, since they actually started with the second step, full-scale war.)
108 Chapter 7
109
The final, decisive word in support of war was spoken by Prime Minister Putin in Astan: The Russian state does not intend to keep things on hold& The recent unprovoked attacks which have taken place against territories contiguous with Chechnya, the barbarous acts which have resulted in casualties among the peaceful population have set the terrorists not only outside the law but outside the framework of human society and modern civilization. Air strikes were taking place exclusively against the guerrillas bases, and this will continue wherever the terrorists may be located& We shall pursue the terrorists everywhere. And if, pardon my language, we catch up with them in the toilet, then we ll squelch them in the johns.
The mood of the public in those days can best be characterized by the fact that after his inspired phrase about squelching them in the johns Putin s ratings actually improved.
The propaganda campaign mounted by the supporters of war had produced the desired result. According to an opinion poll conducted by the All-Russian Central Public Opinion Institute (VTsIOM) almost fifty percent of Russians were convinced that the explosions in Russian cities had been carried out by Basaev s guerrillas and another thirty-three percent blamed the Vahhabites and their leader Khattab. Eighty-eight percent of the people questioned were afraid of falling victim to a terrorist attack. Sixty-four percent were in agreement that all Chechens should be deported, and the same proportion were in favor of the mass bombing of Chechnya.
The bombings of the houses had broken down the resistance of public opinion. A small victorious war now seemed like the only natural response in the fight against terrorism.
The stupefied country was not yet aware that the terrorists were not Chechens, and the war would be neither small nor victorious.
Note the absolutely glaring lack of logic here. The Chechen leadership denies it was involved in the terrorist attacks. Zdanovich confirms that there are no Chechens among the culprits, but states that the terrorists have probably gone into hiding in Chechnya.
This probably is enough to fit the terrorists up with a Chechen trail, which in turn provides a pretext for starting to bomb Chechnya. Aslan Maskhadov declares that he is willing to hold negotiations. But he is not heard. It is important for the FSB to drag Russia into a war as quickly as possible, so that the presidential election can be held against the background of a major armed conflict, and so that after the new president comes to power, he can inherit the war together with all the political consequences which it implies, i.e. the president s dependence on the structures of coercion. Only through war can the FSB finally seize power in the country. It is a simple little matter of a conspiracy with the goal of allowing the former KGB to seize power under the banner of the fight against Chechen terrorism. On October 4, the coup ended in victory for the conspirators.
That was the day when Russian forces crossed the border of Chechnya. Most of the population of Russia supported the decision taken by former director of the FSB and now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin; director of the FSB, Patrushev; and FSB general and head of the SB, Sergei Ivanov.
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