The New Nobility of the KGB (18 page)
Read The New Nobility of the KGB Online
Authors: Andrei Soldatov
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Political Science, #General, #International Relations, #Security (National & International), #Intelligence & Espionage, #World, #Russian & Former Soviet Union, #Social Science, #Social Classes
The attackers made hundreds of calls to different countries, which led to rumors that they were being controlled from outside. Barayev said he was subordinate to the famous Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, and a week after the storming, Shamil Basayev took responsibility for planning the attack.
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The Chechens’ strategy at Dubrovka was similar to Basayev’s approach in a notorious terrorist attack in 1995 on a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk.
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First, Chechens intimidated authorities with threats to kill hostages while appealing to public opinion. The Chechens allowed a few people to visit the theater during the siege. Some were journalists, including Mark Franchetti of the
Sunday Times
of London, an NTV crew, and Anna Politkovskaya of
Novaya Gazeta
; the others were famous Russian doctor Leonid Roshal, politician Irina Khakamada, and popular singer Joseph Kobzon.
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First, Chechens intimidated authorities with threats to kill hostages while appealing to public opinion. The Chechens allowed a few people to visit the theater during the siege. Some were journalists, including Mark Franchetti of the
Sunday Times
of London, an NTV crew, and Anna Politkovskaya of
Novaya Gazeta
; the others were famous Russian doctor Leonid Roshal, politician Irina Khakamada, and popular singer Joseph Kobzon.
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The terrorists chose Marina Shkolnikova, a physician who happened to be at the performance, to make statements on their behalf. She left the theater repeatedly with lists of demands before returning to the building. The terrorists soon adopted the practice of releasing a few hostages with every visitor. By the end of the second day of the crisis, more than 150 people had been freed, mostly children, women, and foreigners.
In 1995 in Budennovsk, having taken hostages in the hospital, Basayev immediately killed some men to show that he was serious in his claims and didn’t intend to stop. Basayev’s fighters were also able to sustain the storming, which turned into a fierce battle with special forces. Basayev eventually took the hostages and fled with them. But Movsar Barayev’s group was unable to sustain its initial impetus. It could not turn the theater into a fortress, as Shamil Basayev had done with the Budennovsk hospital, when his two hundred fighters placed hostages as human shields in every window.
Within hours of the start of the siege, most of the building was occupied by special forces. For Movsar Barayev, the only real option was to convince the Kremlin that the terrorists were ready to destroy the theater and die alongside the hostages. To frighten the authorities and demonstrate their will, Barayev posed for the television cameras accompanied by women dressed as female suicide bombers, wearing suicide belts and black veils.
The Chechens’ number one demand was to end the war in the republic within a week. They hoped to repeat the success of Basayev, who had taken some 1,500 hostages in Buddenovsk and leveraged the attack to negotiate with the Russian leaders by telephone in Moscow. By the end of that crisis, Basayev had succeeded in garnering a promise from Moscow to cease its military presence in Chechen territory. Russia’s leadership, however, was criticized for its handling of the incident, in which more than one hundred hostages died—a number at the hands of Russian special forces—and more than four hundred were wounded. In Chechnya, Basayev was credited with having brought the first Chechen war to a close.
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In Moscow, Budennovsk was viewed by the authorities as an enormous defeat.
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In Moscow, Budennovsk was viewed by the authorities as an enormous defeat.
As they gathered at the theater on the first day of the Nord-Ost attack, Russian authorities realized that they must avoid anything like the events at Budennovsk seven years earlier. Putin appointed Vladimir Pronichev, deputy director of the FSB, and Vladimir Vasiliev, deputy minister of the Interior Ministry, to lead the operation at the theater. They were given a free hand by the Kremlin to plan an assault on the theater, and to negotiate if necessary.
The Russian troops assembled in the area included hundreds of soldiers from the Interior Ministry, who were used to establish a security perimeter around the theater building. Dozens of FSB officers meanwhile set about interrogating all people everyone found in the area, in case there might be terrorist informers. A screening checkpoint was established in a nearby school.
The only forces to come face-to-face with the terrorists were officers from the FSB special purpose center, headed by General Alexander Tikhonov. The special purpose center comprised three departments: antiterrorist Group Alpha (or A department), which is the Russian equivalent of the elite U.S. Delta Force; Group Vympel (V department), a second antiterrorist unit; and the service of special operations, a small elite FSB team formed to pursue criminals in dangerous situations.
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Only departments A and V had the training for an operation to free hostages.
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Only departments A and V had the training for an operation to free hostages.
Traditionally, servicemen at departments A and V held the rank of officers of the FSB. These were powerful organizations far different from regular military units. Department A had four sections; Department V had five. In times of crisis, the sections become assault groups, with more than thirty fighters each. At the time of the Dubrovka siege, two sections were on permanent deployment in Chechnya, with one section left in reserve. The special purpose center deployed all the remaining sections to the operation—three from Department A and three from Department V. The commander of one Department V group was Colonel Sergei Shavrin.
Tall, reserved, and soft-spoken, with a mustache and angular face, Shavrin, then 37 years old, was no typical FSB man. He had come to the special purpose center in the 1980s from the border guards. Although considered to be part of the old KGB, the border guards always kept their distance from the Lubyanka, being more soldiers than operatives. Shavrin was a decorated officer and a deputy commander of the section at the Vympel.
During the Cold War, Vympel members had been trained to operate abroad, received education in foreign languages, and traveled widely, including in Latin America and Europe. At home their training included penetrating the most heavily guarded strategic points (such as nuclear stations) to find breaches in security. In most cases they succeeded. As a rule, they despised their colleagues in other KGB departments responsible for internal security.
The Vympel had suffered after the Cold War. During Yeltsin’s violent clashes with hard-liners in Parliament in October 1993, Vympel officers had refused orders to storm the Russian White House, then the location of Parliament. As a result of such insubordination, the Vympel was handed over to the Interior Ministry for two years: Only fifty officers out of a few hundred, however, were actually transferred; the rest simply left. In 1995 the remnants of the unit were returned to the FSB.
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Shavrin did not leave the Vympel and was sent to Chechnya. By the time of the Dubrovka crisis, Shavrin had made fourteen trips to hot spots and had received the Hero of Russia medal in 1996 after he led his troops safely out of a siege during the storming of Grozny.
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Shavrin did not leave the Vympel and was sent to Chechnya. By the time of the Dubrovka crisis, Shavrin had made fourteen trips to hot spots and had received the Hero of Russia medal in 1996 after he led his troops safely out of a siege during the storming of Grozny.
But in the cold, slushy rain outside the Dubrovka, Shavrin was uncertain he would be able to save his troops. “Everybody feared that the terrorists would let us into the theater and then someone on the outside would blow the place up with a remote,” Shavrin told Soldatov. “That would have been the end. We were waiting for it. We even said goodbye to one another. But it turned out differently.”
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The special troops had orders to kill all the terrorists. Shavrin recalled, “The order was signed prior to the beginning of the storming.
d
Knowing that the building is mined, that the explosives would be enough to raze the building to the ground, and that the mining system setup had duplicating systems so that one surviving terrorist could set it all in motion, trying to catch someone alive could lead to tragic events. Somebody would have time to ignite an explosive, and in that case we would rescue nobody,” Shavrin recalled.
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Knowing that the building is mined, that the explosives would be enough to raze the building to the ground, and that the mining system setup had duplicating systems so that one surviving terrorist could set it all in motion, trying to catch someone alive could lead to tragic events. Somebody would have time to ignite an explosive, and in that case we would rescue nobody,” Shavrin recalled.
On Friday night, October 25, at about 11:00 P.M., the authors entered the school building next to the theater, where the relatives of the hostages were waiting.
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A list displayed on one of the walls enabled us to establish the exact number of hostages that had been reported missing by relatives. At the time it was 698, though that figure eventually rose to 920. At about 2:00 A.M. on the morning of the 26th, a friend got a call from one of the hostages, a journalist from
Moskovskaya Pravda.
She relayed that the terrorists had announced their plan to start shooting captives at six in the morning.
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A list displayed on one of the walls enabled us to establish the exact number of hostages that had been reported missing by relatives. At the time it was 698, though that figure eventually rose to 920. At about 2:00 A.M. on the morning of the 26th, a friend got a call from one of the hostages, a journalist from
Moskovskaya Pravda.
She relayed that the terrorists had announced their plan to start shooting captives at six in the morning.
In an effort to move closer to the theater, the authors with two colleagues gained entrance to a neighboring apartment building. Fifteen minutes later we were welcomed into one of the apartments of the building situated to the right of the main entrance of the theater, on the corner of Melnikova and First Dubrovskaya Streets. From the windows of the upper floors we had an excellent view of the theater and the square in front of it. We had a pair of binoculars and two cameras. We didn’t notice any particular changes in the distribution of the armored vehicles and troops as compared to the previous night, when the terrorists had insisted that the special forces be kept away from the area. Right in front of the theater entrance were two minivans, a red one and a white one, in which the terrorists had arrived. The only difference was that the van headlights had finally gone out. The terrorists had left the minivans with their engines on, which meant that they could have been mined. An attempt by two Internal Ministry troopers on the second night of the crisis to switch off the engines led to tragic consequences: One was wounded by a terrorist who fired at them from a theater window.
The following is based on notes taken by Soldatov and Borogan at the time:
3-4 A.M. A silence pervades the illuminated square.5:00 A.M. Suddenly the theater’s entrance lights go out, which is a bad sign: The previous day, the Chechen terrorists stated that if these lights were turned off, they would regard it as the beginning of an attempt to storm the building, and they would start shooting the hostages.5:35 A.M. A grenade explosion is heard, followed by the sound of shattered glass. The storming of the theater has begun. Bursts of gunfire come from the factory facade opposite the side entrances of the theater, about 200 meters away, followed by machine-gun fire.6:05 A.M. The radio says that the operations staff claims to have received a call from a hostage. He says the terrorists have run out of patience and are beginning to execute hostages. According to the official version, all the shooting comes from the terrorists. By now it is obvious to us that this is the beginning of a storming on the initiative of the Russian forces. For a while everything is still; we can see the internal troops being repositioned. Temporarily, the theater is silent. A blue Jeep with its lights off and engine running comes up to the main entrance, and four fully armed soldiers appear on a bridge to the left of the building. Their uniforms indicate that they belong to Vitiaz, the special troops of the Internal Troops (the armed forces subordinated to the Interior Ministry).6:35 A.M. A group of six to eight soldiers from the Internal Troops runs across the square to the main entrance, kicks it in, and fires at the glass.Meanwhile, vehicles and ambulances have been filling the square. A minute later they are joined by the armored carrier that had been waiting on the corner of the First Dubrovskaya and Melnikova Streets. It stops about 120 meters away from the theater entrance. Two shots are audible from within the building. The shots are answered by heavy machine-gun fire from the armored carrier.The FSB special purpose center troop appear to be accompanying two women out of the building when all of a sudden the building is lit up and the sound of gunfire fills the air. About ten soldiers are hiding in the grass to the right of the building, with another group to the left of the theater.We hear two explosions inside the building, accompanied by a white light. These must have been grenades. After that the groups located around the car park all run across the square to the main entrance.6:40 A.M. Three explosions follow one after another inside the building, accompanied by a red light, followed by bursts of gunfire.6:45 A.M. A small group of soldiers carrying a powerful torch sets out across the hall of the ground floor in the direction of the wing of the building where there is a library.6:47 A.M. At three points inside soldiers begin to break out the theater’s windows and cut the poster with the enormous letters “Nord-Ost,” which covered the glass walls of the entrance hall of the first floor.6:50 A.M. Someone is dragged out of the building. A few seconds later we can see two soldiers carrying a young man dressed in a gray sweater. We can’t understand whether the man is a disguised terrorist, a hostage, or a journalist.7:00 A.M. The doors of the main entrance are thrust wide open. Three Defender Jeeps are being driven up to the building. Empty buses are moving along Melnikov Street right below our windows. In front of the main entrance there are now dozens of people. Shouts of “Come on!” can be heard from all around. A woman hostage can be seen almost creeping out of the building. Someone else can hardly walk. A body is carried out, followed by another one.7:03 A.M. Shooting can be heard. At the same time a group of people is being accompanied out of the building. A girl is being carried out, then a few bodies.7:06 A.M. Bodies are still being carried out. Now rescue forces in white helmets join special forces troopers in the rescue. The bodies are being placed in a line right in front of the main entrance of the theater. There are more than twenty of them. Judging by their clothes and the way they are being carried mostly across the rescuers’ shoulders, most appear to be women or even young girls. Thank God, we think, because finally after all these dead, they’ve managed to find someone alive. A few ambulances packed with the wounded leave the square.Four buses stop to the right of the building; we can clearly see them from our vantage point. In the meantime, to the left of the main entrance the rescuers continue placing bodies; there are dozens, and the number of corpses increases rapidly. A few minutes later they occupy the whole area; all the steps on the left are covered with multicolour sweaters worn by the hostages. Just three days before these women dressed up in order to look good at the theater. There isn’t enough room, and the corpses are now placed one over another. We wonder if there is any hope left that among those bodies there could still be someone alive. It doesn’t look possible.The first bus with freed hostages on board leaves from the entrance area. But the hostages looked strange, as though they are asleep or unconscious. A few minutes later some rags are carried out of the building (possibly table-cloths or curtains) and thrown over the inert passengers on another bus.At the main entrance the row of corpses is growing longer. Another bus leaves.Meanwhile, television is reporting that a member of the operations staff has announced the end of the storming: The hostages are free, and the terrorists have been killed. Not a single mention is made of any victims. At the time of this announcement, two more bodies are carried outside the building.7:43-7:50 A.M. Another two buses with the bodies of hostages, with the same strange look on their faces, are leaving.7:50 A.M. A screen is placed in front of the theater entrance, blocking the view.8:00 A.M. Vasiliev, co-chief of the operations staff, claims that thirty-six terrorists have been killed, Movsar Barayev among them. He also says that the operations staff was forced to storm the building after several hostages attempted to escape on their own.Moments after Vasiliev’s announcement, one of our colleagues shouts in alarm,“Look! They’re putting dead bodies on the buses—they are falling down from their seats!”And he passes us binoculars. At the same moment an NTV journalist reports that he can see buses passing by and that the hostages’ faces are “livid.”8:45 A.M. To the right of the car park we see black body bags being loaded onto a bus. A bus comes up, and the corpses are put on board.11:00 A.M. The dead are still being carried out of the Dubrovka Theater. Even when we leave the apartment, some corpses still remain on the steps of the main entrance.
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