Last Friday was exactly eight years after the heinous Al Qaeda terror attacks in the United States and I wish to draw your attention to similar terror bombings in Russia two years earlier, in September 1999.
On 31 August a bomb exploded in a shopping centre in Moscow, one person died. On 4 September a much larger incident took place in a block of flats in Buinaksk in the Russian republic of Dagestan and 64 people were killed. Four days later another block of flats was blown up at night in Moscow killing 94 people, and a similar attack killed 118 people four days later, also in Moscow. Finally, 17 people were killed in an identical bomb blast in Volgodonsk in southern Russia on 16 September. Altogether 294 people were killed in these outrageous attacks on innocent Russian civilians and many more wounded. People were panic-stricken and looked to the Kremlin for resolute action and retaliation. This they got - but how?
The new Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had come from the top job in the Russian secret police, FSB, only a month earlier, was quick to put the blame for these terrorist attacks on Chechen separatists. He prepared for a new war on the little mountainous republic of Chechnya in the Northern Caucasus.
It should be remembered that Chechnya had actually won the first war that Russia waged with them in 1996, and through a Peace Treaty in 1997 attained a de facto independence. Chechnya therefore had no reason whatsoever to challenge their mighty neighbour with terrorist or military actions. Also, no Chechen faction assumed responsibility for the bombings of September 1999.
Indeed, subsequent analyses point in a very different direction, namely that the terrorist bombings were orchestrated by the FSB itself in a gruesome and cynical attempt to cement its control on the Russian leadership after president Yeltsin's second term came to an end the following year.
However, events took a wrong turn. On the night of 22 September in the city of Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, Alexey Kartofelnikov discovered a white car outside his 12 storey block of flats. The car later proved to be stolen and over the real number plate was taped a paper number of a local code. Three people carried sacks into the basement and Mr. Kartofelnikov called the local police. With a gas analyser they identified the sacks' contents as hexogen, a highly powerful explosive and the same substance that was found in all the other bomb explosions. Hexogen, or RDX, is a military explosive, only produced in one laboratory in Russia, in the city of Perm. Detonators were correctly wired and the timer had been set for 05.30 the next morning. The local police were called and obviously thought they had made a scoop, alerting the entire community. However, much to their surprise they were instructed by the FSB in Moscow to suppress further investigation.
The rest of the story is an equally pathetic and ill managed attempt to camouflage what really happened. Putin made reference to explosives before the discovery of explosives in the Moscow apartment block had been announced. FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev shocked everybody by saying the whole thing had been an "exercise" - the explosives were "sugar" and the timer was "a simple alarm clock." This information only came 36 hours after the story broke. A local telephone operator that night overheard a trunk call by one of the suspects to Moscow from Ryazan. The instruction was clear: "Split up and each of you make your own way out". When she checked the number dialled she found: FSB headquarters in Moscow. The two of the suspects who were arrested produced - FSB identity cards - but they were soon ordered to be released on instructions from FSB headquarters in Moscow.
An interesting incident also happened in the Duma a week earlier, after the second explosion in Moscow. On 13 September the Russian Duma Speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made this announcement: "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don an apartment building in Volgodonsk was blown up last night." However, he had been handed the wrong paper, because the Volgodonsk bombing actually took place three days later, on 16 September. When it actually happened, Duma representative Vladimir Zhirinonsvky demanded an explanation of this apparent clairvoyance - and had his microphone turned off!
All of this and many other details came to light and was brought to the public's attention on television and through media outlets which were free and independent at the time. It was properly documented by a number of experts with an abundance of information, including my friend Alexander Litvinenko, who was brutally murdered on British soil by Russian agents three years ago.
(I also recommend reading the story in last week's GQ magazine by Scott Anderson, who wrote about an interview with Mikhail Trepashkin on the Moscow bombings. Very strangely the publisher, the US based Condé Nast, decided to censor this revealing article from their Russian versions and have withdrawn the piece from the internet. However, CPF has the whole article in English on our website.)
It is interesting that Stepashin, who himself had been both CEO of FSB and a Prime Minister, publicly announced that a new war on Chechnya was being planned as far back as in 1998. Also, a Swedish journalist, Jan Blomgren, Moscow correspondent of Svenska Dagladet wrote on June 6 of 1999 - four months before the bombings - that: high-ranking members of the Russian government were already discussing the option of framing Chechen terrorists for bombings in Moscow. If an intelligence organization is plotting for its country to wage war on its own citizens, you would expect its boss to be involved. The leader of FSB in spring 1999 was - Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin.
The background for these terrible events is also important. In 1999 Russia was in a bad state, its pride had been hurt over the loss of the first war with the Chechens and the peace treaty they were constrained to sign in 1997. The privatization of Russian industry was out of control and had created a new brigade of wealthy and corrupt Russians; the Oligarchs. The rouble had been devalued and the economy was near collapse. The President himself was clearly marked by a long and solid relationship with vodka. He also had an urge for protection from juridical prosecution for massive economic crimes and corruption - or guaranteed amnesty.
Not only was Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov the most popular politician in the country, he was not a person to accommodate Yeltsin. For these reasons he was sacked in May 1999 and replaced with Sergei Stepashin, with whom Yeltsin had struck a deal. However, over the summer rumour reached Yeltsin that Stepashin had been seeing too much of Primakov and another strong politician, Moscow's mighty mayor Yuri Luzhkov. President Yeltsin and the FSB were worried that such an alliance could out-manoeuvre them completely and lose them all control. Therefore Stepashin was also sacked and replaced with the FSB's own top man, Vladimir Putin, in early August.
Putin declared war on Chechnya immediately after the bombings. The very the day following the incident in Ryazan, on 23 September, the first air strikes took place against the Chechen capital Grozny, followed by a full military invasion of Chechnya.
Yeltsin retired as President on New Year's Eve - making Putin acting President until the next election, which was brought forward from June to March 2000. The FSB's man Putin was totally unknown to the Russian population in August 1999 with only 2 per cent support in the polls. After the military campaign against their own Russian citizens in Chechnya in March 2000, his support rocketed to 53 per cent and he succeeded in winning the Presidency (helped, no doubt, by the wide-spread ballot rigging that was pointed out by Giles Whittel in The Times 11 September 2000).
The conclusion must be that the current Prime Minister and his regime, along with the former leader of FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, are guilty of the murder of their own innocent citizens in order to orchestrate a situation that could propel Putin to power, followed by the mass murder of another hundred thousand Chechen civilians and a countless number of Russian soldiers during the second Chechen campaign. Add to this the suppression of rule of law and frequent murders of journalists and human rights campaigners with consistent impunity, harassment of political opposition and systematic corruption, this can only be seen as a return to a Russian autocratic and lawless state.
Several experts have labelled the current Kremlin leadership: "A true gangster regime."
In September 1999 an evil campaign was embarked upon, ensuring that Russia got the wrong president for the wrong reasons.
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum |
