Alexander Litvinenko
BLOWING UP RUSSIA
Acts of terror, abductions,
and contract killings organized by
the Federal Security
Service of the Russian Federation
Second Edition
Revised and Enlarged
Foreword to the Second Edition
Foreword to the First Edition
Chapter 1.
The secret services foment war in
Chechnya
Chapter 2.
The security services run riot
Chapter 3.
Moscow detectives take on the FSB
Chapter 4.
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (a
biographical note)
Chapter 5.
The FSB fiasco in Ryazan
Chapter 6.
The FSB resorts to mass terror: Buinaksk,
Moscow, Volgodonsk
Chapter 7.
The FSB against the people
Chapter 8.
The FSB sets up free-lance special operations
groups
Chapter 9.
The FSB organizes contract killings
Chapter 10.
The secret services and abductions
Chapter 11.
The FSB: reform or dissolution?
The FSB in power (in place of a
conclusion)
Epilogue
Appendices
Appendix 1: Transcript of the Meeting of
the State Duma Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation,
September 13, 1999
Appendix 2: Transcript of the Plenary
Meeting of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, September 17, 1999
Appendix 3: Statement of the President of
the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, February 11, 2002
Appendix 4: First expert analysis of
Achemez Gochiyaev’s photographs
Appendix 5: Second expert analysis of
Achemez Gochiyaev’s photographs
Appendix 6: Expert assessment of incident
in Ryazan on September 22, 1999
Appendix 7: Expert assessment of
suspected improvised explosive device
Appendix 8: Expert assessment of
explosive device found in Ryazan apartment house
Appendix 9: Testimony of Senior
Lieutenant Alexei Galkin
Appendix
10: Abu Movsaev’s talk with a group of foreign journalists about the testimony
of Senior Lieutenant A. Galkin
Appendix 11: Transcript of Radio Liberty Discussion of Blowing Up Russia
Appendix 12: A. Litvinenko, Y. Felshtinsky. Letter to S. Kovalyov about A.
Gochiyaev’s statement
Appendix 13: Written statement by A.
Gochiyaev, April 24, 2002
Appendix
14: Transcript of the hearings of the Public Commission for the investigation
of the apartment-house bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk and the training
exercise Ryazan in September 1999. TV-bridge Moscow-London, June 25, 2002
Appendix
15: An open letter to the Public Commission by Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev
Appendix 17: Yuri Felshtinsky interview
with Novaya
Gazeta
Appendix
18: Print-out of interview with A. Gochiyaev, August 20, 2002
Appendix 19: A. Litvinenko, Y. Felshtinsky. Questions for A. Gochiyaev
Appendix 20: Statement by Nikita Chekulin
Appendix
21: N. Chekulin. The Terrorist
Attacks of 1999: What Explosives Were Used?
Appendix 22: Y. Felshtinsky. The Hexogene Trail
Foreword to the Second
Edition
On 27 August
2001, several chapters from Blowing Up
Russia were published in a special edition of Noyava Gazeta. Since then, two and a half years have passed. Our
book has been published in Russian and English, and it has served as the basis
for a documentary film, Assassination of
Russia (which has been shown in Russian, French, German, and English in
many countries, including the United States, Australia, Western and Eastern
Europe, and the states of the FSU). To our great disappointment, the film and
the book have both been banned in Russia. Knowledgeable readers could find the
text on the internet, but the print version remained inaccessible to the Russian
audience. An indicative episode from the recent past—the confiscation of a
shipment of copies of Blowing Up Russia
from Latvia on the Volokolamskoye Highway on 29 December 2003—has brought an
end to the life of the first edition. The need for a second edition has become
all the more acute.
However, we felt that we had no right to deny
readers the opportunity to read the original text. The second edition consists
of this text (with minor emendations and additions) and appendices: the most
important and interesting documents that have been collected by us since the
publication of the first edition of the book, as well as the most significant
articles and interviews pertaining to the events of September 1999.
Our hope is that
the second edition will not meet the fate of the first edition. We assure our
readers that we understand what kind of time we are living in and that, if
necessary, we are prepared to publish a third, fourth, fifth... edition.
Alexander Litvinenko
Foreword to the First
Edition
We did not reject our past. We said honestly: “The history
of the Lubyanka in the twentieth century is our history...”
N. P. Patrushev, Director of the FSB
From an interview in Komsomolskaya
Pravda on 20 December 2000, on the Day of the Cheka
The pedigree of the Federal Security Service of
the Russian Federation (FSB RF) scarcely requires any comment. From the very
earliest years of Soviet power, the punitive agencies established by the
Communist Party were alien to the qualities of pity and mercy. The actions of
individuals working in these departments have never been governed by the values
and principles of common humanity. Beginning with the revolution of 1917, the
political police of Soviet Russia (later the USSR) functioned faultlessly as a
mechanism for the annihilation of millions of people; in fact, these structures
have never taken any other business in hand, since the government has never set
any other political or practical agenda for them, even during its most liberal
periods. No other civilized country has ever possessed anything to compare with
the state security agencies of the USSR. Never, except in the case of Nazi
Germany’s Gestapo, has any other political police ever possessed its own
operational and investigative divisions or detention centers, such as the FSB’s
prison for detainees at Lefortovo.
The events of
August 1991, when a rising tide of public anger literally swept away the
communist system, demonstrated very clearly that the liberalization of Russia’s
political structures must inevitably result in the weakening, perhaps even the
prohibition, of the Committee of State Security (KGB). The panic which reigned
among the leaders of the coercive agencies of the state during that period
found expression in numerous, often incomprehensible, instances of old special
service agencies being disbanded and new ones set up. As early as May 6, 1991,
the Russian Republic Committee of State Security was set up with V.V. Ivanenko
as its chairman in parallel to the All-Union KGB under the terms of a protocol
signed by Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, and chairman of the USSR KGB, V.A.
Kriuchkov. On November 26, the KGB of Russia was transformed into the Federal
Security Agency (AFB). Only one week later, on December 3, the president of the
USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed a decree “On the reorganization of the agencies
of state security.” Under the terms of this law, a new Interdepartmental
Security Service (MSB) of the USSR was set up on the basis of the old KGB,
which was abolished.
At the same
time, the old KGB, like some multi-headed hydra, split into four new
structures. The First (Central) Department (which dealt with external
intelligence) was separated out as the new Central Intelligence Service, later
renamed the External Intelligence Service (SVR). The KGB’s Eighth and Sixteenth
Departments (for governmental communications, coding, and electronic
reconnaissance) were transformed into the Committee for Governmental
Communications (the future Federal Agency for Governmental Communications and
Information, or FAPSI). The border guard service became the Federal Border
Service (FPS). The old KGB Ninth Department became the Bodyguard Department of
the Office of the President of the RSFSR. The old Fifteenth Department became the
Governmental Security and Bodyguard Service of the RSFSR. These last two
structures later became the President’s Security Service (SBP) and the Federal
Bodyguard Service (FSO). One other super-secret special service was also
separated out from the old Fifteenth Department of the KGB: the President’s
Central Department for Special Programs (GUSP).
On January 24, 1992, Yeltsin signed a decree
authorizing the creation of a new Ministry of Security (MB) on the basis of the
AFB and MSB. A Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs appeared at the same
time, but only existed for a short while before being dissolved. In December
1993, the MB was, in turn, renamed the Federal Counterintelligence Service
(FSK), and on April 3, 1995, Yeltsin signed the decree “On the formation of a
Federal Security Service in the Russian Federation,” by which the FSK was
transformed into the FSB
This long
sequence of restructuring and renaming was intended to shield the
organizational structure of the state security agencies, albeit in
decentralized form, against attack by the democrats, and along with the
structure to preserve the personnel, the archives, and the secret agents.
A largely important role in saving the KGB from
destruction was played by Yevgeny Savostianov (in Moscow) and Sergei Stepashin
(in Leningrad), both of whom had the reputation of being democrats, appointed
in order to reform and control the KGB. In fact, however, both Savostianov and
Stepashin were first infiltrated into the democratic movement by the state security
agencies, and only later appointed to management positions in the new secret
services, in order to prevent the destruction of the KGB by the democrats.
Although, as the years went by, very many full-time and free-lance officers of
the KGB-MB-FSK-FSB left to go into business or politics, Savostianov and
Stepashin did succeed in preserving the overall structure. Furthermore, the KGB
had formerly been under the political control of the Communist Party, which
served to some extent as a brake on the activities of the special agencies,
since no significant operations were possible without the sanction of the
Politburo. After 1991, however, the MB-FSK-FSB began operating on Russian
territory absolutely independently and totally unchecked, apart from the control
exercised by the FSB over its own operatives. This all-pervading predatory
structure was now unrestrained by either ideology or law.
Following the
period of evident confusion, resulting from the events of August 1991, and the
mistaken expectation that operatives of the former KGB would be subjected to
the same ostracism as the Communist Party, the secret services realized that
this new era, free of communist ideology and party control, offered them
certain advantages. The former KGB was able to exploit its vast personnel
resources (both official and unofficial) to position its operatives in
virtually every sphere of activity throughout the vast state of Russia.
Somehow, former
prominent KGB men began turning up at the very highest echelons of power, frequently
unnoticed by the uninitiated: the first of them were secret agents, but later,
they were former or serving officers. Standing at Yeltsin’s back, from the very
first days of the events of August 1991, was KGB man Alexander Vasilievich
Korzhakov, former bodyguard to the chairman of the KGB and general secretary of
the Communist Party, Yury Andropov. The security service of the MIKOM Group was
headed by retired GRU colonel Bogomazov, and the vice-president of the
Financial and Industrial Group was N.
Nikolaev, a KGB man of twenty years’ standing, who had once worked under
Korzhakov.
Filipp
Denisovich Bobkov, four-star general and first deputy chairman of the KGB of
the USSR, who in Soviet times had been the long-serving head of the so-called
“fifth line” of the KGB (political investigation), found employment with
business tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky. The “fifth line” numbered among its greatest
successes the expulsion from the country of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn and
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky, as well as the arrest and detainment in
camps for many years of those who thought and said what they believed was right
and not what the party ordered them to think and say. Standing at the back of
Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and a prominent leader of
the reform movement in Russia, was KGB man Vladimir Putin. In Sobchak’s own
words, this meant that “the KGB controls St. Petersburg.”
How this all
came about has been described in detail by the head of the Italian Institute of
International politics and Economics, Marco Giaconi, who teaches in Zurich.
“The attempts made by the KGB to establish control over the financial
activities of various companies always follow the same pattern. The first stage
begins when gangsters attempt to collect protection money or usurp rights which
are not their own. After that, special agency operatives arrive at the company
to offer their help in resolving its problems. From that moment on, the firm
loses its independence forever. Initially, a company snared in the KGB’s nets
has difficulty obtaining credit or may even suffer major financial setbacks.
Subsequently, it may be granted licenses for trading in such distinctive
sectors as aluminum, zinc, foodstuffs, cellulose, and timber. These provide a powerful
stimulus for the firm’s development. This is the stage at which it is
infiltrated by former KGB operatives and also becomes a new source of revenue
for the KGB.”
However, the
years from 1991 to 1996 demonstrated that despite being plundered rapaciously
by the coercive state structures (who acted both openly, and through organized
criminal groups under the total control of the secret services), Russian
business had managed, in a short period, to develop into an independent
political force which was by no means always under the full control of the FSB.
Following Yeltsin’s destruction in 1993 of the pro-communist parliament, which
sought to halt liberal reform in Russia, the leaders of the former KGB, who had
gone on to head Yeltsin’s MB and FSK, decided to destabilize and compromise
Yeltsin’s regime and his reforms by deliberately exacerbating the criminal
situation in Russia and fomenting national conflicts, first and foremost in the
North Caucasus, the weakest link in the multinational Russian state.
At the same
time, an energetic campaign was launched in the mass media to promote the
message that impoverishment of the general public and an increase in criminal
and nationalist activity were the results of political democratization, and the
only way to avoid such excesses was for Russia to reject democratic reforms and
Western models, and follow its own Russian path of development, which should be
based on public order and general prosperity. What this propaganda really
promoted was a dictatorship similar to the standard Nazi model. Of all the
dictators, great and small, enlightened and bloodthirsty, the one chosen as a
model was the most personable and least obvious, the Chilean general, Augusto
Pinochet. For some reason, it was believed that if a dictatorship did emerge in
Russia, it would be no worse than Pinochet’s Chile. Historical experience,
however, demonstrates that Russia always chooses the worst of all possible
options.
Until 1996, the
state security services fought against the democratic reformers, since they saw
the most serious threat in a democratic ideology, which demanded the immediate
implementation of radical, pro-Western economic, and political reforms, based on
the principles of a free-market economy, and the political and economic integration
of Russia into the community of civilized nations. Following Yeltsin’s victory
in the 1996 presidential election, when Russian big business showed its
political muscle for the first time by refusing to permit the cancellation of
the democratic elections and the introduction of a state of emergency (the
demands being made by the pro-dictatorship faction in the persons of Korzhakov,
FSO head M.I. Barsukov, and their like) and, most importantly, was able to
ensure the victory of its own candidate, the state security services redefined
the major target of their offensive as the Russian business elite. Yeltsin’s
victory at the polls in 1996 was followed by the appearance, at first glance
inexplicable, of propaganda campaigns dedicated to blackening the reputations
of Russia’s leading businessmen. Heading up the vanguard in these campaigns
were some familiar faces from the agencies of coercion.
Russian language
acquired a new term, “oligarch,” although it was quite obvious that even the
very richest man in Russia was no oligarch in the literal meaning of the word,
since he lacked the basic component of oligarchy, power. Real power remained,
as before, in the hands of the secret services.
Gradually, with
the help of journalists, who were operatives or agents of the FSB and SBP, and
an entire army of unscrupulous writers eager for easy, sensational material,
the small number of “oligarchs” in Russian business came to be declared
thieves, swindlers, and even murderers. Meanwhile, the really serious
criminals, who had acquired genuine oligarchic power and pocketed billions in
money that had never been listed in any accounts, were sitting behind their
managers’ desks at the Russian state’s agencies of coercion: the FSB, the SBP,
the FSO, the SVR, the Central Intelligence Department (GRU), the General Public
Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of defense (MO), the Ministry of the Interior
(MVD), the customs service, the tax police, and so on.
It was these
people who were the true oligarchs, the gray cardinals and shadowy managers of
Russian business and the country’s political life. They possessed real power,
unlimited and uncontrolled. Behind the secure protection of their identity
cards from the agencies of coercion, they were genuinely untouchable. They
abused their official positions on a regular daily basis, taking bribes and
stealing, building up their ill-gotten capital, and involving their
subordinates in criminal activity.
This book attempts to demonstrate that modern
Russia’s most fundamental problems do not result from the radical reforms of
the liberal period of Yeltsin’s terms as president, but from the open or
clandestine resistance offered to these reforms by the Russian secret services.
It was they who unleashed the first and second Chechen wars, in order to divert
Russia away from the path of democracy and towards dictatorship, militarism,
and chauvinism. It was they who organized a series of vicious terrorist attacks
in Moscow and other Russian cities as part of their operations intended to
create the conditions for the first and second Chechen wars.
The explosions
of September 1999, in particular the terrorist attack which was thwarted in
Ryazan on September 23, are the central theme of this book. These explosions
provide the clearest thread for following the tactics and strategy of the
Russian agencies of state security, whose ultimate aim is absolute power. This
book is about the tragedy that has befallen all of us, about missed
opportunities, about lost lives. This book is for those who, recognizing what
has happened, will not be afraid to influence the future.
After the
publication of excerpts from the book in Novaya
Gazeta on 27 August 2001, as well as after the publication of the American
edition of the book in January of this year in New York, we were repeatedly
asked about our sources. We would like to assure our readers that the book
contains no fabricated facts and unfounded assertions. We concluded, however,
that given the current situation in Russia—with many government officials whom
we suspect to have been involved in the organization, execution, or sanctioning
of the terrorist atrocities of September 1999 active in the leadership of the
country—it would be premature to publish the names of our sources. At the same
time, in the very first interviews given by us after 27 August 2001, we
indicated that these sources would be immediately released to any Russian or
international commission formed to investigate the terrorist atrocities of
September 1999. Our position remains unchanged to this day: all of the
materials used in the writing of this book will be given to those who undertake
impartially to discover what happened.
Yuri Georgievich
Felshtinsky was born in Moscow in 1956. In 1974, he began studying history at
the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. In 1978, he immigrated to the USA and
continued his study of history, first at Brandeis University and later at
Rutgers, where he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History). In
1993, he successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the Institute of Russian
History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and became the first citizen of a
foreign state to be awarded a doctoral degree in Russia. He has compiled and
edited several dozen volumes of archival documents and is the author of the
following books: The Bolsheviks and the
Left SRS (Paris, 1985); Towards a
History of Our Isolation (London, 1988; Moscow 1991); The Failure of World Revolution (London, 199I; Moscow 1992); Big Bosses (Moscow 1999).
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was born in
Voronezh in 1962. After graduating from school in 1980, he was drafted into the
army and over the next twenty years, he rose through the ranks from private to
lieutenant colonel. Beginning in 1988, he served in the counterintelligence
agencies of the Soviet KGB, and from 1991, in the Central Staff of the
MB-FSK-FSB of Russia, specializing in counter-terrorist activities and the
struggle against organized crime. For operations conducted with MUR (Moscow
criminal investigation department), he was awarded the title of “MUR veteran.”
He saw active military service in many of the so-called “hot spots” of the
former USSR and Russia, and in 1997, he was transferred to the most secret
department of the Russian KGB, the Department for the Analysis of Criminal
Organizations, as senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh
Section. He is a Candidate Master of Sport in the modern pentathlon. In
November 1998, at a press conference in Moscow, he publicly criticized the
leadership of the FSB and disclosed a number of illegal orders, which he had
been given. In March 1999, he was arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned
in the FSB prison at Lefortovo in Moscow. He was acquitted in November 1999,
but no sooner had the acquittal been read out in court than he was arrested
again by the FSB on another trumped-up criminal charge. In 2000, the criminal
proceedings against him were dismissed for the second time, and Litvinenko was
released after providing written assurances that he would not leave the
country. A third criminal case was then instigated against him. After threats
were made against his family by the FSB and the investigating officers, he was
obliged to leave Russia illegally, which led to yet another, fourth criminal
charge being brought against him. At the present time, he lives with his family
in Great Britain, where he was granted political asylum in May 2001.
The reader may
find the genre of this work somewhat surprising, something between an
analytical memoir and a historical monograph. The abundance of names and facts
and the laconic style of presentation will come as a disappointment to anyone
hoping for an easy-reading detective story. As conceived by the authors, this
book should be distinguished from superficial journalism and belletristic
memoirs by its intrinsic faithfulness to historical fact. It is a book about a
tragedy which has overtaken us all, about wasted opportunities, lost lives, and
a country that is dying. It is a book for those who are capable of recognizing
the reality of the past and are not afraid to influence the future.
Chapter 1
The FSB foments war in
Chechnya
No one but a total madman could have wished to
drag Russia into any kind of war, let alone a war in the North Caucasus. As if
Afghanistan had never happened. As if it weren’t clear in advance what course
such a war would follow, or just what would be the outcome and the consequences
of a war declared within the confines of a multinational state against a proud,
vengeful, and warlike people. How could Russia possibly have become embroiled
in one of its most shameful wars during the very period of its development
which was most democratic in form and most liberal in spirit? This war required
the mobilization of resources and increased budgets for agencies of coercion,
government departments, and ministries. It enhanced the importance and
increased the influence of men in uniform and sidelined or rendered irrelevant
the efforts made by supporters of peace, democracy and liberal values to
maintain the impetus of pro-Western economic reforms. This war resulted in the
isolation of the Russian state from the community of civilized nations, since
the rest of the world did not support it and could not understand it. A
previously popular, well-loved president, therefore, sacrificed the support of
both his own public and the international community. Once he had fallen into
the trap, he was left with no option but to resign before the end of his term,
and hand over power to the FSB in return for a guarantee of immunity for
himself and his family. We know who it was that benefited from all of this—the
people to whom Yeltsin handed over power. We know how the result was
achieved—by means of the war in Chechnya. All that remains to be discovered is
who set the process in motion.
Chechnya had
become the weakest link in Russia’s multinational mosaic, but the KGB raised no
objections when Djokhar Dudaev came to power there, because they regarded him
as one of their own. General Dudaev, a member of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU) since 1968, might as well have been transferred from
Estonia to his hometown of Grozny,
especially so that in 1990 he could retire, stand for election in opposition to
the local communists, become president of the Chechen Republic, and in November
1991, proclaim the independence of Chechnya, thereby seeming to demonstrate to
the Russian political elite the inevitability of Russia breaking apart under
Yeltsin’s liberal regime. It was probably no accident that another Chechen who
was close to Yeltsin, Ruslan Khazbulatov, would also be responsible for
inflicting fatal damage on his regime. Khazbulatov, a former Communist Youth
Organization Central Committee functionary and a Communist Party member since
1966, had become chairman of the parliament of the Russian Federation in
September 1991.
The history of escalation in the complex and
confused relations between Russia and Chechnya is a theme for a different book.
In any case, by 1994, the political leadership of Russia was already aware that
it could not afford to grant Chechnya independence like Belarus and Ukraine. To
grant Chechnya sovereign status could pose a genuine threat of the
disintegration of Russia. But could they afford to start a civil war in the northern
Caucasus? The “party of war,” based on the military and law enforcement
ministries, believed that they could afford it, if only the public could be
prepared for it, and it should be easy enough to influence public opinion, if
the Chechens were seen to resort to terrorist tactics in their struggle for
independence. All that was needed was to arrange terrorist attacks in Moscow
and leave a trail leading back to Chechnya.
Knowing that Russian troops and the forces of
the anti-Dudaev opposition might begin their storm of Grozny at any day, on
November 18, 1994, the FSK made its first recorded attempt to stir up
anti-Chechen feeling by committing an act of terrorism and laying the blame on
Chechen separatists: if the chauvinist sentiments of Muscovites could be
inflamed, it would be easy to continue the repression of the independence
movement in Chechnya.
It should be
noted that on November 18 and in later instances, the supposed “Chechen
terrorists” set off their explosions at the most inopportune times, and then
never actually claimed responsibility (rendering the terrorist attack itself
meaningless). In any case, in November 1994, public opinion in Russia and
around the world was on the side of the Chechen people, so why would the
Chechens have committed an act of terrorism in Moscow? It would have made far
more sense to attempt to sabotage the stationing of Russian troops on Chechen
territory. Russian supporters of war with Chechnya were, however, only too
willing to see the hand of Chechnya in any terrorist attack, and their response
on every occasion was to strike a rapid and quite disproportionately massive
blow against Chechen sovereignty. The impression was naturally created that the
Russian military and law enforcement agencies, while quite unprepared for the
terrorist attacks, were incredibly well-prepared to launch counter-measures.
The explosion of
November 18, 1994, took place on a railroad track crossing the river Yauza in
Moscow. According to experts, it was caused by two powerful charges of about
1.5 kilograms of TNT. About twenty meters of the railroad bed were ripped up,
and the bridge almost collapsed. It was quite clear, however, that the
explosion had occurred prematurely, before the next train was due to cross the
bridge. The shattered fragments of the bomber’s body were discovered at a
distance of about a hundred meters from the site of the explosion. He was
Captain Andrei Shchelenkov, an employee of the oil company Lanako, and he had
been blown up by his own bomb as he was planting it on the bridge.
It was only
thanks to this blunder by the operative carrying out the bombing that the
immediate organizers of the terrorist attack became known. The boss of Lanako,
who had given his firm a name beginning with the first two letters of his own
last name, was thirty-five-year-old Maxim Lazovsky, a highly valued agent of
the Moscow and Moscow Region Department of the FSB, who was known in criminal
circles by the nicknames of “Max” and “Cripple.” At the risk of anticipating
events, we can also point out the significant fact that every single one of
Lanako’s employees was a full-time or free-lance agent of the Russian
counterespionage agencies.
On the day of
the explosion on the river Yauza, November 18, 1994, an anonymous phone call to
the police claimed that a truck full of explosives was standing outside the
Lanako offices. As a result, the FSB department actually did discover a ZIL-131
truck close to the firm’s offices containing three MON-50 mines, fifty charges
for grenade launchers, fourteen RGD-5 grenades,
ten F-1 grenades, and four packs of plastic explosive, with a total weight of
six kilograms. The FSB claimed, however, that it had been unable to determine
who owned the truck, even though a Lanako identity card was found on
Shchelenkov’s remains, and the explosive used in the Yauza bombing was of the
same kind as that on the truck.
War in Chechnya offered a very easy way to
finish off Yeltsin politically, a fact understood only too well by those who
provoked the war and organized terrorist attacks in Russia. There was, in
addition, a primitive financial aspect to relations between the Russian
leadership and the president of the Chechen Republic: the Russians were
continuously extorting money from Dudaev. It began in 1992, when bribes were accepted
from the Chechens in payment for the Soviet armaments left behind in Chechnya
that year. The bribes for these weapons were extorted by head of the SBP
Korzhakov, head of the FSO Barsukov, and First Deputy Prime Minister of the
Russian Federation Oleg Soskovets. Of course, the Ministry of Defense was in on
the deal. Some years later the naive citizens of Russia began to wonder how all
those weapons the Chechens were using to kill Russian soldiers could have been
left behind in Chechnya. The answer was nothing if not mundane: they were paid
for by Dudaev in multi-million dollar bribes to Korzhakov, Barsukov, and
Soskovets.
After 1992, the Moscow bureaucrats continued
their successful bribe-based collaboration with Dudaev, and the Chechen
leadership continued sending money to Moscow on a regular basis, because there
was no other way Dudaev could resolve a single political question. However, in
1994, the system began to falter, as Moscow extorted larger and larger sums of
money in exchange for political favors relating to Chechen independence. Dudaev
started refusing to pay. The financial conflict gradually developed into a
political standoff, and then a contest of strength between the Russian and
Chechen leaderships. The threat of war hung heavily in the air. Dudaev
requested a personal meeting with Yeltsin, perhaps even intending to tell him
what had been going on. But the threesome, who controlled access to Yeltsin,
demanded a bribe of several million dollars for organizing a meeting between
the two presidents. Dudaev refused to pay and demanded that the meeting with
Yeltsin take place without any money changing hands in advance. Furthermore,
for the first time, he threatened the people who had been helping him strictly
for payment with the disclosure of documents in his possession, which contained
compromising information about the functionaries’ self-serving dealings with
the Chechens. Dudaev believed that possession of these documents was his
insurance against arrest. He could not be arrested; he could only be killed,
since he was an eyewitness to crimes committed by members of Yeltsin’s
entourage. Dudaev had miscalculated. His blackmail failed, and the meeting he
wanted never took place. The president of Chechnya was now a dangerous witness
who had to be removed. So a cruel and senseless war was deliberately provoked.
Let us trace the sequence of events.
On November 22, 1994, the State Defense
Committee of the Chechen Republic, which Dudaev had founded by decree the
previous day, accused Russia of launching a war against Chechnya. As far as the
journalists could see, there was no war, but Dudaev knew that the “party of
war” had already made its decision to commence military action. The Chechen
State Defense Committee which, in addition to Dudaev, included the leaders of
the military and other agencies of coercion, as well as a number of key
governmental departments and ministries, held an emergency session in response
to “the threat of military incursion” into Chechnya. A statement by the State
Defense Committee which was distributed in Grozny, claimed that “Russian
regular units are occupying the Nadterechny district, part of the territory of
the Chechen Republic,” adding that in the days immediately ahead, it was
planned “to occupy the territory of the Naursk and Shelkovsk districts. For
this purpose, use is being made of regular units of the North Caucasus Military
District, special subunits of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, and army
aircraft from the North Caucasus Military District. According to information
received by the State Defense Council, special subunits of the Russian FSK are
also taking part in the operation.”
The Central
Armed Forces HQ of Chechnya confirmed that military units were being
concentrated on the border with Chechnya’s Naursk district, in the village of
Veselaia, in the Stavropol Region: there were heavy tanks, artillery and as
many as six battalions of infantry. It later became known that the backbone of
the forces, drawn up for the storming of Grozny, consisted of a column of
Russian armored vehicles assembled on the initiative of the FSK, which paid for
it and also hired soldiers and officers on contract, including members of the
elite armed forces from the armored Taman and Kantemirov divisions.
On November 23, nine Russian army helicopters,
presumably MI-8s, from the North Caucasus Military District, launched a rocket
attack on the town of Shali, located approximately forty kilometers from
Grozny, in an attempt to destroy the armored vehicles of a tank regiment located
there, and were met with anti-aircraft artillery fire. There were wounded on
the Chechen side, which announced that it had a video recording showing
helicopters bearing Russian identification markings.
On November 25, seven Russian helicopters from a
military base in the Stavropol Region fired several rocket salvoes at the
airport in Grozny and at nearby apartment buildings, damaging the landing strip
and the civilian aircraft standing on it. Six people were killed and about
twenty-five were injured. In response to this raid, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Chechnya forwarded a statement to the authorities of the Stavropol
Region pointing out, among other things, that the region’s leaders “bear
responsibility for such acts, and in the case of appropriate measures being
taken by the Chechen side,” all complaints “should be directed to Moscow.”
On November 26, the forces of the “Provisional
Council of Chechnya” (the Chechen opposition), supported by Russian helicopters
and armored vehicles, attacked Grozny from all four sides. More than 1,200 men,
fifty tanks, eighty armored personnel carriers, and six SU-27 planes from the
opposition took part in the operation. An announcement, made by the Moscow
center of the puppet “Provisional Council of Chechnya,” claimed that “the
demoralized forces of Dudaev’s supporters are offering virtually no resistance,
and everything will probably be over by the morning.”
In fact, the
operation was a total failure. The attackers lost about 500 men and more than
twenty tanks, and another twenty tanks were captured by Dudaev’s forces. About
200 members of the armed forces were taken prisoner. On November 28, a column
of prisoners was marched through the streets of Grozny “to mark the victory
over the forces of opposition.” At the same time, the Chechen leadership
disclosed a list of fourteen captured soldiers and officers who were members of
the Russian armed forces. The prisoners confessed in front of television
cameras that most of them served in military units 43162 and 01451 based
outside Moscow. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation replied that
the individuals concerned were not serving members of the Russian armed forces.
In response to an inquiry concerning prisoners Captain Andrei Kriukov and
Senior Lieutenant Yevgeny Zhukov, the Ministry of Defense stated that these
officers had indeed been serving in army unit 01451, but they had not reported
to the unit since October 20,1994, and an order for their discharge from the
armed forces was being drawn up. In other words, the Russian Ministry of
Defense declared the captured soldiers to be deserters. The following day,
Yevgeny Zhukov’s father refuted the ministry’s statement. In an interview with
the Russian Information Agency Novosti, he said that his son had left his unit
on November 9, telling his parents that he had been assigned for ten days to
Nizhny Tagil. The next time Yevgeny’s
parents had seen him was in a group of captured Russian soldiers in Grozny on
the weekly television news program Itogi on November 27. When he was asked how
their son came to be in Chechnya, Unit Commander Zhukov refused to answer.
A little later
the following colorful account of the events of November 26 was given by Major
Valery Ivanov, following his release in a group of seven members of the Russian
armed forces on December 8:
“By unit order of the day, all those who had
been recruited were granted compassionate leave due to family circumstances.
For the most part, they took officers without any settled domestic
arrangements. Half of them had no apartments—you were supposed to be able to
refuse, but if you did refuse, when they started handing out apartments you’d
find yourself left out. On November 10, we arrived in Mozdok in northern
Ossetia. In two weeks we made ready fourteen tanks with Chechen crews and
twenty-six tanks for Russian servicemen. On November 25, we advanced on
Grozny... I personally was in a group of three tanks which took control of the
Grozny television center at mid-day on the 26th. There was no resistance from the
Interior Ministry forces defending the tower. But three hours later, in the
absence of communications with our command, we came under attack by the famous
Abkhazian battalion. We were surrounded by tanks and infantry and decided it
was pointless to return fire, since the [anti-Dudaev] opposition forces had
immediately run off and abandoned us, and two of our three tanks were burnt
out. The crews managed to bail out and surrender to the guards of the
television center, who handed us over to President Dudaev’s personal bodyguard.
They treated us well, in the last few days they hardly guarded us at all, but
then there was nowhere we could run off to.”
The impression
given by all this was that the armored column had been deliberately introduced
into Grozny on November 26, so that it would be destroyed. The column was not
capable of disarming Dudaev and his army, or of taking the city and holding it.
Dudaev’s army was at full strength and well-armed. The column could not
possibly have been anything more than a moving target.
Russian Minister of Defense Grachyov hinted that
he had not been involved in the irresponsible attempt to take Grozny. From a
military point of view, Grachyov declared at a press conference on November 28,
1996, it would be entirely possible to take Grozny “in two hours with a single
regiment of paratroopers. However, all military conflicts are ultimately
settled at the negotiating table by political methods. Introducing tanks into
the city without infantry cover was really quite pointless.” But why then were
they sent in?
General Gennady Troshev would later tell us
about Grachyov’s doubts concerning the Chechen campaign: “He tried to do
something about it. He tried to extract a clear assessment of the situation
from Stepashin and his special service, he tried to delay the initial
introduction of troops until the spring, he even tried to reach a personal
agreement with Dudaev. We know now that such a meeting did take place. They
didn’t come to any agreement.” General Troshev, who at this stage was in
control of the second war in Chechnya, could not understand how Grachyov had
failed to reach an understanding with Dudaev. The reason, of course, was that
Dudaev insisted on a personal meeting with Yeltsin, and Korzhakov refused to
set up the meeting unless he was paid.
The brilliant military operation in which a
Russian armored column was burnt out was, indeed, not organized by Grachyov,
but by director of the FSK Stepashin and head of the Moscow UFSB Savostyanov,
who was responsible for handling questions relating to the overthrow of
Dudaev’s regime and the introduction of troops into Chechnya. Those who
expatiated at great length on the crude miscalculations of the Russian military
leaders, who had sent the armored column into the city only for it to be
destroyed, failed to understand the subtle political calculations of the
provocateurs who organized the war in Chechnya. The people who planned the
introduction of troops into Grozny wanted the column to be wiped out in
spectacular fashion by the Chechens. It was the only way they could provoke
Yeltsin into launching a full-scale war against Dudaev.
Immediately
after the rout of the armored column in Grozny, President Yeltsin made a public
appeal to Russian participants in the conflict in the Chechen Republic, and the
Kremlin began preparing public opinion for imminent full-scale war. In an
interview for the Russian Information Agency Novosti, Arkady Popov, a consultant with the president’s analytical center,
announced that Russia could take on the role of a “compulsory peacemaker” in
Chechnya, and that all the indications were that the Russian president intended
to take decisive action. If the president were to declare a state of emergency
in Chechnya, the Russian authorities could employ “a form of limited
intervention, which would take the form of disarming both sides to the conflict
by introducing a limited contingent of Russian troops into Grozny”—exactly what
had been tried in Afghanistan. So, having provoked a conflict in Chechnya by providing
political and military support to the Chechen opposition, the FSK now intended
to launch a war against Dudaev under cover of peacemaking operations.
The Chechen side took Yeltsin’s statement to be
an “ultimatum” and a “declaration of war.” A statement issued by the Chechen
government confirmed that this statement, and any attempt to put it into
effect, were “in contravention of the norms of international law,” and gave the
government of Chechnya “the right to respond by taking adequate measures for
the protection of its independence and the territorial integrity of its state.”
In the opinion of the government of the Chechen Republic, the threat of a
Russian declaration of a state of emergency on Chechen territory expressed “an
undisguised desire to continue military operations and interfere in the
internal affairs of another state.”
On November 30, Grozny was subjected to air
strikes by the Russian air force. On December 1, the Russian military command
refused to allow into Grozny an aircraft carrying a delegation of members of
the Russian State Duma. The delegation landed in the Ingushetian capital of
Nazran and set out overland to Grozny for a meeting with Dudaev. While they
were traveling to the Chechen capital, on December 1, at about 14.00 hours, eight
SU-27 planes carried out a second raid on the Chechen capital, encountering
dense anti-aircraft fire in the process. The planes specifically shelled the
district of the city where Dudaev lived. According to the Chechen side, one
plane was shot down by anti-aircraft defense forces.
On December 2, the chairman of the Duma Defense
Committee and head of the delegation that had arrived in Grozny, Sergei
Yushenkov, declared that reliance on force in Russian-Chechen relations was
doomed to failure. Yushenkov also stated that familiarization with the
situation on the ground had convinced him that negotiation was the only
possible way to resolve the situation that had arisen, and claimed that the
Chechen side had not set any preconditions for negotiations.
Public opinion was still on the side of the
Chechens, but the leadership of the FSB had become absolutely convinced that it
could be manipulated by the use of acts of terrorism blamed on the Chechens. On
December 5, the FSK informed journalists that foreign mercenaries had surged
across the state border into Chechnya and, therefore, “activity by the
terrorist groups being infiltrated into Russia today cannot be ruled out in
other regions of the country as well.” This was the first undisguised
announcement by the FSK that acts of terrorism with “a trail leading back to
Chechnya” would soon begin in Russia. At this point, however, they still spoke
of Russia being infiltrated by foreign agents, a ploy drawn, no doubt, from the
pages of the old Soviet KGB handbooks.
On December 6,
Dudaev declared in an interview that Russia’s policy was creating a rising tide
of Islamic sentiment in Chechnya: “Playing the ‘Chechen card’ may bring into
play the global interests of foreign Islamic states, who could make it
impossible to control the development of events. A third force has now emerged
in Chechnya, the Islamists, and the initiative is gradually shifting over to
them.” Dudaev characterized the mood of the new arrivals in Grozny with the
words: “We are no longer your soldiers, Mr. President, we are the soldiers of
Allah,” and summed up: “the situation in Chechnya is beginning to get out of
control, and this concerns me.”
As though in reply to Dudaev, Russian Minister
of Defense Grachyov held a public relations exercise which took the external
form of a peacemaking gesture, but in reality, provoked a further escalation of
the conflict. Grachyov proposed that the Chechen opposition headed by
Avturkhanov, which was financed, armed, and staffed by the FSK, should disarm,
on condition that Dudaev’s supporters would agree to give up their weapons at
the same time. In other words, he suggested to Dudaev that the Chechens should
disarm unilaterally (since there was no suggestion of the Russian side
disarming). Naturally this proposal was not accepted by the government of the
Chechen Republic. On December 7, Grachyov had a meeting with Dudaev, but the
discussions proved fruitless.
On the same day in Moscow, the Security Council
held a session devoted to events in Chechnya, and the State Duma held a closed
session, to which the leaders of the government departments responsible for the
armed forces and other agencies of law enforcement were invited. However, they
failed to show up at the Duma, because they did not wish to answer the parliamentarians’
questions about who had given the orders to recruit members of the Russian
armed forces and bomb Grozny. We now know that the Russian military personnel
were recruited by the FSK on Stepashin’s instructions, and that the directives
to bombard Grozny were issued by the Ministry of Defense.
On December 8, the Chechen side announced it was
in possession of information that Russia was preparing to advance its forces on
to Chechen territory and launch an all-out land war against the republic. At a
press conference, held at the State Duma in Moscow on December 9, the chairman
of the Duma Federal Affairs and Regional Policy Committee and chairman of the
Republican Party of Russia, Vladimir Lysenko, announced that in that case, he
would table a motion in the Duma for the Russian government to be dismissed. On
December 8, the Working Commission on Negotiations for the Settlement of the
Conflict in the Chechen Republic managed to broker an agreement between the
representatives of President Dudaev and the opposition, under which
negotiations were due to start in Vladikavkaz at 15.00 hours on December 12.
The Russian federal authorities’ delegation to the negotiations was to have
consisted of twelve members led by the deputy minister for nationalities and
regional policy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov. The delegation from Grozny was to have
numbered nine members, headed by the Chechen minister of the economy and
finance, Taimaz Abubakarov. From the opposition there was to have been a
three-man delegation led by Bek Baskhanov, the public prosecutor general of
Chechnya. It was provisionally agreed that the main problems to be discussed at
the negotiations between Moscow and Grozny were halting the bloodshed and
establishing normal relations. Negotiations with the supporters of the Chechen
opposition were only supposed to deal with questions of disarmament.
All this increased the chances of peace being
preserved, and left the “party of war” with very little time until December 12.
In effect, the announcement by the Working Commission for the Settlement of the
Chechen Conflict determined the date on which military land operations began.
If the peace negotiations were due to start on December 12, the war had to be
launched on December 11. The Russian leadership acted accordingly: on December
11, land forces crossed the demarcation line into the Chechen Republic, and for
the first few days, Russian military reports spoke of the absence of any real
resistance or any losses.
By December 13,
Soskovets had already determined his main lines of action, and he informed
journalists that the total cost of implementing measures to normalize the
situation in Chechnya could amount to about a trillion rubles. (This was the
sum that would first have to be allocated from the budget, so that it could be
systematically embezzled.) He said that the government’s first priority was to
get the aid delivered to the population of Chechnya, and special attention
would be paid to ensuring that it was not wasted or stolen (we now know for
certain that no aid ever reached Chechnya, and all of it was wasted and
stolen).
Soskovets emphasized that members of the Chechen
diaspora, living in Moscow and other Russian cities, should not be considered
potential terrorists. Note this phrase. So far, nobody had even dreamed of
regarding the members of the Chechen diaspora as potential terrorists, and
there had not actually been any terrorist attacks. The war with Chechnya was
still not even regarded as a war, but something more in the nature of a police
operation, and there had not yet been any serious casualties. Yet, for some
reason the First Deputy Prime Minister seemed to think it possible that the
Chechens might organize acts of terrorism on Russian soil. Soskovets’ remark
that no discriminatory measures would be applied to the general mass of Chechen
citizens, and that the federal authorities were not even considering the
enforced deportation of Chechens, was clearly a suggestion from the “party of
war” that war should be waged against the entire Chechen people throughout the
whole of Russia, including by both discriminatory measures and enforced
deportation.
Lieutenant-General Alexander Lebed, commander of
the 14th Russian Army in Pridniestrovie (the region along the Dniestr River in
Moldova), fiercely opposed the “party of war,” because he understood perfectly
well what Soskovets was hinting at and the price Russia would have to pay. In a
telephone interview from his headquarters in Tiraspol, he declared that “the
Chechen conflict can only be resolved by diplomatic negotiations. Chechnya is
repeating the Afghanistan scenario point for point. We are risking unleashing
war with the entire Islamic world. Solitary fighters can go on forever burning
our tanks and picking off our soldiers with individual shots. In Chechnya, we
have shot ourselves in the foot exactly as we did in Afghanistan, and that is
very sad. A well-reinforced and well-stocked Grozny is capable of offering long
and stubborn resistance.” Lebed reminded everyone that in Soviet times Dudaev
had commanded an airborne division of strategic bombers capable of waging war
on a continental scale, and that “fools were not appointed” to such posts.
Beginning on
December 14, Moscow was transferred to a state of semi-military alert, and
Muscovites were deliberately frightened with the prospect of inevitable Chechen
terrorism. The agencies of the Ministry of the Interior stepped up their
protection of the city’s vital installations, and FSK personnel worked to
improve their security. A large number of state institutions were guarded by
police patrols armed with automatic weapons. The Ministry of the Interior
announced that this was all a response to the threat of terrorist groups being
sent to Moscow from Grozny. The first suspected Chechen terrorists began to be
sought out. On the evening of December 13, the Chechen Israil Getiev, a native
and resident of Grozny, had been arrested for setting off New Year firecrackers
outside the Prague restaurant on New Arbat
Street and detained at the station of the Fifth Moscow Police Precinct. At
this stage, announcements like this could still raise a smile, but on December
14, it was suddenly announced that after less than three full days of military
operations, “casualties on both sides are already in the hundreds.” It was all
getting beyond a laughing matter.
On December 15, the true scale of the operation
being launched was revealed. Advancing on Grozny, alongside subunits of the
Ministry of the Interior, were two general army divisions from the North
Caucasus Military District and two assault brigades at full strength. Chechen
territory was also entered by composite regiments from the Pskov, Vitebsk, and
Tula divisions of the airborne assault forces (VDV), with 600 to 800 men in
each. In the region of Mozdok, disembarkation had begun of composite regiments
from the Ulyanovsk and Kostroma divisions of the VDV. Grozny was being
approached along four main lines of advance: one from Ingushetia, two from
Mozdok, and one from Dagestan. The Russian forces were preparing to storm the
city. On the Chechen side, according to information from the Russian Ministry
of the Interior and the FSK, more than 13,000 armed men had been assembled in
and around Grozny.
Yeltsin was
moving towards the edge of an abyss. A session of the Security Council, held
under his chairmanship on December 17, reviewed a plan for “the implementation
of measures to restore constitutional legality, the rule of law and peace in
the Chechen Republic.” The Security Council made the Ministry of Defense
(Grachyov), the Ministry of the Interior (Viktor Yerin), the FSK (Stepashin),
and the Federal Border Service (Nikolaev) responsible for using every possible
means to disarm and destroy illegal armed formations in Chechnya and to secure
the state and administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. The work was to
be coordinated by Grachyov. This was the day that marked the end of Russia’s
liberal-democratic period. President Yeltsin had committed political suicide.
On December 17,
the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that from 00.00 hours on
December 18, units of Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry forces would be
obliged to take decisive action, and make use of all means at their disposal to
re-establish constitutional legality and the rule of law on the territory of
Chechnya. Groups of bandits would be disarmed and, if they offered resistance,
destroyed. The Ministry of the Interior statement claimed that the civilian
population of Chechnya had been informed of the urgent need to leave Grozny and
other centers of population in which rebel groups were located. The Interior
Ministry strongly recommended foreign citizens and journalists in the zone of
hostilities to leave Grozny and make their way to safe areas. (Despite the
warnings from the Russian leadership, most of the foreign journalists remained
in Grozny, and at The French Courtyard Hotel where they stayed, rooms were in
as short supply as ever.)
On the same day, Soskovets announced to the
world that President Dudaev had been summoned to Mozdok to meet a Russian
government delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Yegorov and FSK
director Stepashin. Soskovets stated that if Dudaev did not come to Mozdok, the
Russian forces would take action in accordance with the regulations for the
elimination of illegal armed formations, and he also announced that expenditure
on the operations over the preceding week amounted to sixty billion rubles by
the Ministry of the Interior and 200 billion rubles by the Ministry of Defense.
Four hours before the deadline expired, at eight
in the evening on December 17, Dudaev made his final attempt to avert war and
wired the Russian leadership that he would agree “to start negotiations at the
appropriate level without any preconditions and to lead the governmental delegation
of the Chechen Republic in person.” In other words, Dudaev was again demanding
a personal meeting with Yeltsin, but since Dudaev persisted in his refusal to
pay any money for such a meeting to be arranged, his cable went unanswered.
At nine in the
morning on December 18, the Russian forces blockading Grozny began storming the
city. Front-line air units and army helicopters delivered “precision blows
against Dudaev’s command post at Khankala near Grozny, the bridges over the
Terek River to the north and also against maneuverable groups of armored
vehicles.” An announcement from the Temporary Information Center of the Russian
High Command stated that following the destruction of the armored vehicles, the
plan was for the forces blockading Grozny to advance and proceed with the
disarmament of illegal armed groups on the territory of Chechnya. President
Yeltsin’s plenipotentiary representative in Chechnya announced that Dudaev now
had no choice but to surrender.
On December 18, Soskovets, having been appointed
to yet another post as head of the Russian government’s operational
headquarters for the coordination of action taken by agencies of the executive
authorities, informed the press that in Grozny “they are studying the
possibility” of carrying out terrorist attacks aimed at military and civilian
targets in Central Russia and the Urals, and also of hijacking a civilian
passenger plane. The First Deputy Prime Minister’s astonishingly detailed
information was, in fact, an indication that terrorist acts could be expected
within a few days.
On December 22,
the press office of the Government of the Russian Federation announced that
Chechens were blowing themselves up in order to throw the blame for the
explosions on to the Russian army. The statement issued read as follows:
“Today at 10 in the morning a meeting was held
under the chairmanship of first deputy chairman of the government Oleg
Soskovets which was attended by members of the government, members of the
Security Council, and representatives of the President’s Office. The meeting
discussed the situation which has arisen in the Chechen Republic and the
measures being taken by the president and the government to restore
constitutional legality and provide economic assistance to the population of
areas which have been liberated from the armed formations of the Dudaev regime.
Reports made by those present at the meeting indicate that last night
operations to disarm the armed bandit formations continued, and bombing raids
were carried out against their strongholds. The city of Grozny was not
subjected to bombardment. However, the guerrillas made attempts to imitate the
bombardment of housing districts. At about one in the morning, an office
building and an apartment block were blown up. The residents, both Chechen and
Russian, were not given any warning of the planned attack. The imitation of
bombardment was undertaken in order to demonstrate the thesis of ‘a war being
waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people.’ This thesis was
proclaimed yesterday in Dudaev’s ‘appeal to the international community.’”
In other words,
the Russian government’s press office attempted to blame the Chechens for the
destruction by Russian forces of an office building and apartment block
containing civilians.
Initiated by
Soskovets, this announcement couched in Stalinist prose was made public one day
before the explosion between the stations of Kozhukhovo and Kanatchikovo on the Moscow circular railroad (there
were no casualties and no terrorists were found).
December 23 is
the date which can be regarded as the beginning of the FSB’s terrorist campaign
against Russia. From then on, terrorist attacks became a commonplace
occurrence.
Chapter 2
The secret services run
riot
It is worth noting the way in which the press
office of the Russian government described the terrorist attack carried out on
December 23: “Information has been received concerning the dispatch to Moscow
[from Chechnya] of three experienced guerrilla fighters, including one woman,
who have instructions to assume the leadership of groups of terrorists sent
here previously. A group of foreigners who were seeking contact with guerrillas
from Grozny has been detained, and a number of radio-controlled explosive
devices they were carrying have been confiscated, together with twenty
kilograms of TNT and sixteen radio-controlled anti-personnel and anti-tank
mines. On the night of December 23, the rails were blown up on one section of
the Moscow circular railroad. Another bomb was rendered harmless. Measures are
being taken to identify sabotage groups active in Moscow and the Moscow
Region.”
No investigation of any acts of terrorism was
carried out. The picture was clear enough anyway: first the Chechens sent
“sabotage groups” to Moscow and the Moscow Region; then they sent three
experienced guerrilla leaders to help them; and finally, a “group of
foreigners” was brought in to help them from abroad with TNT and bombs
(apparently they were carrying the bombs on their persons as they entered the
country). The result of all these complicated preparations was a terrorist
attack on one section of the Moscow circular railroad, which indicated that the
groups of saboteurs already sent to Moscow and the Moscow Region had not yet
been neutralized (one could assume that the terrorist attacks would continue).
Everything in
the press office statement was absolutely untrue, except for the announcement
that there had been an explosion on a section of the Moscow circular railroad
on December 23. The modus operandi suggests that this attack was also carried
out by Lazovsky’s people. In any case, it is impossible to regard as mere
coincidence the fact that only four days later yet another terrorist attack was
carried out in Moscow. At nine in the evening on December 27, 1994, Vladimir
Vorobyov, a free-lance FSB agent and employee of Lazovksy’s company Lanako, who
came from a long line of military men (in 1920, his grandfather had been in
charge of the Arsenal arms plant in Tula), and had a Candidate degree (i.e.
Ph.D.) in Technical Sciences and was employed at the Zhukovsky Academy (on the
development of a new anti-missile defense system), planted a remote-controlled
bomb in a bus at a bus stop on Route 33 between the All-Union Economic
Exhibition (VDNKh) and the Yuzhnaya subway station. There were no passengers on
board the bus when the bomb exploded, and the only casualty was the driver,
Dmitry Trapezov, who suffered severe bruising and concussion. Trolley buses
standing close by were lacerated by shrapnel.
Vorobyov’s boss, Lazovsky, worked not only for
the FSK, but also for the SVR, where his controller was the experienced
officer, Pyotr Yevgenievich Suslov, who was born in 1951. Lazovsky was one of
his secret agents. Suslov officially quit the intelligence service and went into
business in 1995, after which he made repeated journeys to war-torn Grozny,
Baghdad, Teheran, the Arab Emirates, and other countries in the Middle East. In
fact, Suslov was organizing extra-legal reprisals. In order to carry out
missions involving acts of coercion and killings, he hired qualified former
operatives from special units, in particular from the special missions unit of
the First (Central) Department (PGU) of the KGB of the USSR, known as Vympel,
who possessed advanced sniper’s skills. Vympel’s officers were involved both as
instructors and front line operatives, and a special Vympel Fund was even
established to finance this work. The chairman of the fund was a criminal
“boss” well known in Russia, Sergei Petrovich Kublitsky (his underworld nickname
was Vorkuta). Suslov was the vice-chairman. At the same time, Suslov was also
chairman of the board of directors of the “Law and Order Center” regional
social fund (Moscow, Voronkovskaya Street, 21).
Suslov
maintained extensive contacts in the state’s departments of law enforcement and
agencies of coercion, including the leadership of the FSB. Operational data
obtained through the Central Office of the Interior for the Moscow Region
indicates, in particular, that Suslov maintained close contact with
Major-General Yevgeny Grigorievich Khokholkov, head of the Long-Term Programs
Office (UPP) established in summer 1996, which provided the basis for the
establishment in 1997 of the FSB’s Office for the Analysis and Suppression of
the Activity of Criminal Organizations (URPDPO), more commonly known as the
Office for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations (URPO). Alexei Kimovich
Antropov, a graduate of the intelligence school of the External Intelligence
Service, was a sector head in the Third Section of the URPO, specializing in
the struggle against internal terrorism. Both Lazovsky and Suslov were on good
terms with Antropov.
It is worthwhile
examining in greater detail this secret department of the FSB with its long,
incomprehensible title that is impossible to remember and was frequently
changed to prevent the public penetrating its veil of secrecy. The Office for
the Analysis of Criminal Groups was established in order to identify and then
neutralize (liquidate) sources of information representing a threat to state
security. In other words, to carry out extra-judiciary killings, acts of
provocation and terrorism, and abductions. One of Khokholkov’s deputies was
major-general N. Stepanov and another was the former minister of state security
for the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, A.K. Makarychev. The UPP possessed its
own external surveillance section; its own security consultant, Colonel
Vladimir Simaev; its own technical measures section, and two private detective
and bodyguard agencies called Stealth and Cosmic Alternative. The latter
specialized in bugging pagers and mobile phones and other technical operational
measures, while Stealth had a legendary reputation.
A private bodyguard and detective agency which
changed its name periodically, just like the UPP, Stealth was registered as a
business in 1989, at the very dawn of perestroika by a resident of Moscow
called Ivanov, who was an agent of the Fifth Department of the KGB of the USSR
(which subsequently became Department Z). Ivanov was used in the struggle
against internal terrorism, and his line of contact was with a member of
Colonel V.V. Lutsenko’s department, which had provided operational support for
the establishment and activities of Stealth. With the assistance of Lutsenko,
who used the private bodyguard firm to resolve personal rather than operational
matters (the free provision of various types of protection, or “roofs,” for
commercial organizations), during the period from 1989 to 1992, Stealth
developed extensive contacts in the criminal underworld and the sphere of law
enforcement, becoming one of the most well-known security agencies in Russia.
Following his discharge from the special
agencies in 1992, Lutsenko took control of the detective and bodyguard firm,
which he re-registered with himself as one of the partners. Lutsenko’s solid
connections in various departments of the former KGB, in combination with the
exodus from the Russian security services of large numbers of experienced
operatives who also maintained their own well-tested contacts and networks of
agents, meant that Lutsenko was able to hire highly qualified professionals to
work in Stealth.
From his old
area of operations (the struggle against terrorism) Lutsenko had retained
reliable contacts with representatives of the former Ninth Department of the
KGB (protection of high-level national leaders). This made it possible for him
to contact Korzhakov, Barsukov and their entourages and offer them the services
of Stealth, under his management, to assist the SBP and FSK in the less
traditional forms of struggle against organized criminal activity.
His suggestion
met with approval, and a general plan of action was rapidly developed with
input from Korzhakov’s first deputy, General G.G. Ragozin. The program
envisaged the use of criminal and extremist organizations, individual
criminals, and retrained military personnel from the special missions
department of the GRU of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior,
and the FSB to undermine and break up criminal groupings and physically
eliminate underworld “bosses” and leaders of criminal organizations.
In practice, everything turned out according to that eternal Russian principle: “we wanted to do better, but things turned out the same as always.” Stealth provided a “roof” for a range of commercial organizations and carried out various kinds of operations to put pressure on criminal and commercial competitors