Explosive attacks on residential buildings in Russia

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Clean-up work in Moscow on September 14, 1999 at the Kaschirskoje-Chaussee attack site

The bombings on residential buildings in Russia were a series of bombings in Russia in 1999 , in which 367 people were killed and over 1,000 were injured. The terrorist attacks prompted Russia to start the Second Chechnya War , in Putin's words “to fight 2000 terrorists”. According to official Russian investigation results, the perpetrators were Chechen separatists . This was questioned inside and outside Russia, as there were indications that the Russian secret service FSB was involved . The attempt to conduct an independent parliamentary inquiry was blocked by the Russian government and was unsuccessful. During the war in Chechnya, the former FSB director Vladimir Putin was able to consolidate his position at the top as the new Russian president.

August 31, 1999 - Moscow

The first bomb explosion in the Russian capital on August 31, 1999 did not yet affect a residential building. It happened in a shopping mall "Okhotny Ryad" (Russian: Охотный ряд ) on Manege Square , killing one person and injuring 40 others.

September 4, 1999 - Buinaksk

On September 4, 1999 at 9:45 p.m., a car bomb (2,700 kg; GAZ-52 truck ; aluminum powder with ammonium nitrate ) exploded in the city of Buinaksk (Republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus) in front of a six-story apartment building (3 Levanewski Strasse; Russian: улица Леваневского ), which was inhabited by Russian military personnel and their families. Two entrances to the house and their apartments were destroyed, killing 64 people, including 23 children, and injuring 164.

A bomb in a second truck ( ZIL-130 ) in front of a hospital was defused by the police. Papers in the name of Issa Sainutdinow (Russian: Иса Зайнутдинов ) were found in the car.

The official Russian side blamed separatists from Chechnya for the attack, who had invaded Dagestan on August 2, 1999 under the leadership of Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab ( Dagestan War ) and proclaimed the independent " Islamic Republic of Dagestan". About 1400 mainly Chechen fighters were involved in the fighting. There were hundreds of fatalities among the fighters and civilians.

September 8, 1999 - Moscow

Memorial chapel in Pechatniki at the site of the explosion

On September 8, 1999 at 11:58 p.m. on the ground floor of the nine-storey apartment building on Guryanov Street 19, Russian: улица Гурьянова in southeast Moscow ( Pechatniki district, Russian: район Печатники ), a 300-400 kg charge of explosives exploded . The building was very badly damaged (108 apartments destroyed), 94 people died in the house and 150 people were injured. A caller to a Russian news agency said the explosion was in response to the Russian bombing of villages in Chechnya and Dagestan during the Dagestan War.

September 13, 1999 - Moscow

September 13, 1999 was a day of mourning for the victims of the bombing; That day, at 5 a.m., an explosive charge exploded in an apartment on the Kashira expressway ( Каширское шоссе 6/3; 8 floors) in the south of Moscow. The eight-story building was totally destroyed. The explosion hurled some concrete parts of the house hundreds of meters and covered the whole street with rubble. 118 people died and 200 were injured.

At that time, the Russian Prime Minister Putin declared war on the "illegal combat units" in Chechnya. Although, in the opinion of critics, there was no real evidence of Chechen perpetrators, the Russian military was preparing to invade Chechnya again and overthrow the Chechen government.

September 16, 1999 - Volgodonsk

Russia's resolve to intervene in Chechnya was reinforced by another car bomb explosion on September 16, 1999. This explosion took place in front of a nine-story apartment building in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk (Don Region), killing 17 people.

Russia responded by using its air forces against positions of Chechen insurgents, oil refineries and other buildings in Chechnya. By the end of September it was clear that these were not individual attacks, but that a war had broken out in Chechnya - the second war in Chechnya . Then in October 1999 Russian troops marched into Chechnya.

September 22, 1999 - Incident in Ryazan

On the evening of September 22, 1999, a resident of a residential building in Ryazan saw two men dragging heavy sacks from their car into the basement. The local police ( militia ) were called and thousands of residents of the surrounding apartments were evacuated and roads were blocked. According to the demolition master Yuri Tkashenko, gas samples in the cellar indicated hexogen , the same explosive that was used in the Moscow attacks. The Observer reported that it had evidence that the bomb actually contained explosives and a detonator, and brought in a photograph to show the detonator set at 5:30 a.m. Tkaschenko told the Observer: “It was a real bomb. She was armed. "

Prime Minister Putin praised the police and the attentive population on September 24th, and up to that point no one doubted a terrorist attack. Only then did the Central Russian Secret Service ( FSB ) declare that this incident had been an "exercise", much to the displeasure of the local FSB department. The result of the first explosives analysis was revoked because it had been inaccurate due to the contamination of the analysis apparatus from previous tests - which the explosives master rejected. The sacks of the "exercise" allegedly containing sugar had been tested on an artillery training area and were not explosive. a. the author Edward Lucas asked why sugar had to be tested and why the FSB was using a stolen car. The public inquiry committee was unable to provide a final result on this event, as various authorities in the Russian Federation provided conflicting information. The attorney general completed the investigation into the Ryazan incident in April 2000.

Official investigation

According to the results of the official investigation, the bombings on the homes of Ibn al-Khattab and Abu Umar, an Arab fighter who fought in Chechnya, were planned and organized. Both were later killed. The planning was carried out in al-Chattab's guerrilla camps “Caucasus” in Shatoi ( Шато́й ) and “Taliban” in Avtury (also: Aleroy, Алерой ) in Chechnya. On May 4, 2000, a Russian special command killed 19 people in an ambush attack on a Chechen rebel force near the village of Avtury.

The official Russian investigation revealed that the bombing operation on the homes was led by Achemets Gotschiyajew (a Turkic Karachay ). The explosives were prepared in Urus-Martan (Chechnya; Russian: Уру́с-Марта́н ) in a fertilizer factory. To do this, hexogen , TNT , aluminum powder and saltpeter were mixed with sugar . From there he was shipped to a food warehouse in Kislovodsk run by Yusuf Krymshakhalov - an uncle of one of the alleged terrorists. Another conspirator (Ruslan Magayayev) rented a KAMAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After the planning was completed, the participants were divided into different groups to take the explosives to different cities. Most of the participants were not ethnic Chechens.

According to the official Russian version, the terrorist attacks were carried out to divert the attention of the Russian armed forces from Dagestan, where at the time fighting was taking place between Russian armed forces and 1,400 invading separatist fighters from Chechnya (led by Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab).

The following people delivered the explosives, stored them or gave refuge to other suspects:

  • Moscow Bombings - September 8th and 13th, 1999.
    • Achemez Gotschijajew (not arrested, wanted by the FSB)
    • Denis Saitakov (killed in Chechnya)
    • Chakim Abayev (killed by FSB special forces in May 2004 - in Ingushetia )
    • Rawil Akhmyarov (killed in Chechnya)
    • Yusuf Krymshakhalov ( arrested in Georgia and extradited to Russia , sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004)
  • Volgodonsk bombing - September 16, 1999.
    • Timur Batschayew (killed in a clash with police in Georgia , during which Krymshakhalov was arrested - see above)
    • Zaur Batschajew (killed in Chechnya)
    • Adam Dekkuschew (arrested in Georgia - when arrested he threw a hand grenade at the police officers, extradited to Russia , sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004)
  • Buinaksk bombing - September 4, 1999.
    • Isa Sainutdinow (sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001)
    • Alisultan Salichow (sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001)
    • Magomed Salikhov was arrested in Azerbaijan in November 2004 and extradited to Russia ; he was acquitted of the terrorism charge on January 24, 2006; however, he was convicted of participating in an illegal armed group and illegally crossing borders. The Supreme Court ordered the trial to be retried for procedural errors. However, he was acquitted again on November 13, 2006 - this time on all charges.
    • Sijawutdin Sijawutdinow (arrested in Kazakhstan and extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years imprisonment in April 2002)
    • Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (sentenced to 9 years imprisonment in March 2001)
    • Magomed Magomedov (sentenced to 9 years imprisonment in March 2001)
    • Zainutdin Zainutdinow (sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in March 2001 and immediately pardoned and released)
    • Machach Abdulsamedow (sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in March 2001 and immediately pardoned and released)

A certain "Gotschijajew" wrote to Russian newspapers that he was involved as an ignorant participant in a conspiracy of the Russian secret agent Ramasan Dyshekov from the FSB. Former FSB officer Litvinenko , who was later poisoned while in exile in London, said he met Gotschiyayev in his hiding place and received an affidavit that Gotschiyayev had in good faith rented the scene for a friend (an FSB agent).

Attempts at non-governmental investigations

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The Russian Duma has rejected two requests for a parliamentary commission to investigate the incident in Ryazan. 

An independent commission of inquiry (four Duma deputies), chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev , to investigate the explosions proved to be ineffective because the government refused to provide information in response to inquiries.  

Two leading members of this investigative committee ( Sergei Yuschenkow and Yuri Shchekochichin ), both Duma members, have since died - apparently in assassinations (April 2003 and July 2003). They argued that the FSB was involved in the attacks.   

According to official reports, Yuri Shchekochichin died of Lyell's syndrome , but it is believed that he was killed by radioactive polonium-210 . In the later murder attack on Alexander Litvinenko , therefore, initially speculated on the same killing method. Yuri Shchekochichin was a journalist at Novaya Gazeta , where he also conducted an interview with Anna Politkovskaya . She was also murdered.

The lawyer for the independent commission of inquiry, Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin (Russian: Михаил Иванович Трепашкин), was arrested in October 2003 for illegal possession of weapons and was imprisoned in the Nizhny Tagil penal colony until November 2007 to serve a four-year sentence.

Another member of the investigative commission, Otto Latsis, was brutally beaten in November 2003.

Further findings

In April 2002, during a visit to Washington, Duma deputy Sergei Yuschenkow referred to the mysterious remark made by Duma spokesman Gennady Seleznev (Russian: Геннадий Николаевич Селезнёв ), from which it emerged that Selesnyov had already three days in advance of the explosion on September 13th, on September 13th September knew.

The incident in Ryazan on September 22, 1999 fueled initial speculation in the Western press that the bombings in Moscow may have been organized by the Russian domestic secret service FSB. Among Western experts, the theory that the FSB was involved in the bombings is supported by David Satter, former correspondent for the Financial Times in Moscow. He advocates this theory in his book Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale University Press). According to research by the two French journalists Jean-Charles Deniau and Charles Gazelle, the FSB carried out the explosions to justify the continuation of the Chechen war , which in turn helped Putin defeat the communists in the March 26, 2000 presidential election . On September 24, the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, said that the explosive charge in the basement of the apartment building was a dummy containing only sugar and that the FSB had carried out a test. The FSB claimed that the gas analyzer used had malfunctioned. However, the explosives expert who defused the bomb (Yuri Tkachenko) continued to insist that it was a real bomb. He said the explosive device had a timer, power supply and detonator, all of which were military equipment and apparently prepared by professionals. The gas analyzer unambiguously tested the vapors from the bags as hexogen. According to Tkachenko, there was no question that the gas analyzer had not malfunctioned as it was regularly serviced. The policeman who was the first to arrive at the scene and discover the bomb also insisted that the incident was not an exercise and that the substance in the bomb was not based on sugar.

Putin, who was director of the FSB from July 25, 1998 to August 1999, was nicknamed "Mr. Hexogen" in Russia 

A documentary film by Russian director Andrei Nekrasov (Russian: Андрей Львович Некрасов ) about the bombings was awarded at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival . The film chronologically shows the story of Tatiana and Aljona Morosowa, two Russian-American sisters who lost their mother in the bomb attack and who are now trying to find the culprit.

Fates of those involved

The former secret agent and later private investigator Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested for a gun offense and sentenced by a military court shortly before he was able to publicize his results in the public trial. According to one of his lawyers, Trepashkin and two other witnesses recognized FSB agent Vladimir Romanovich in a phantom drawing of the man who rented the cellar in one of the bombed houses. Romanovich was killed in a car accident in Cyprus a few months after the bombing.

Yuri Petrovich Shchekochichin died as a critic of the Chechen war under mysterious circumstances after a trip to Ryazan.

Sergei Nikolayevich Yuschenkow , head of the investigative committee, was shot dead in 2003.

Alexander Litvinenko , a former Russian FSB agent who lived in exile in London, also alleged in his book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within ; Russian ФСБ взрывает Россию (Russian edition) that the FSB was behind the bombings. He died in London on November 23, 2006, three and a half weeks after he was administered the highly radioactive substance polonium 210 in an attack .

In 2002, the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky supported the documentary The FSB blows up Russia. (Subtitle: An attack on Russia? ) Through 25% funding. The film accuses the Russian secret services of organizing the explosions in Volgodonsk and Moscow. There are some doubts about Berezovsky's independence in this case as he allegedly had extensive business ties with Chechen rebels. Nevertheless, 40% of the Russians thought the FSB could be involved in the attacks. Berezovsky died in 2013 after several previous assassinations under unexplained circumstances. The German forensic scientist Professor Bernd Brinkmann , who testified on behalf of daughter Elizaveta Berezovskaya before the investigative court in Berkshire, questioned the "death by hanging" version. Photos and autopsy reports led him to conclude that Berezovsky had been strangled. Because the strangulation marking ran horizontally around the neck and neck and was not compatible with a suspension, in the event of a suicide by hanging it would have had to rise steeply towards the neck. And Berezovsky’s deep red face is something he’s never seen before in a suicide by hanging.

Speculation about Putin's involvement

Observers who question the official Russian version and believe that the FSB is likely to be involved, usually assume that Vladimir Putin is also involved. The above-mentioned Duma MP Kovalyov said:

“I cannot prove that these attacks in Moscow were organized by the Kremlin. But I think these attacks were very useful to the power. They caused general outrage. The decision of the then head of government and future president to start a new war was greeted with enthusiasm. All of this had laid a powerful foundation for Vladimir Putin. Who is putin Before September 1999, not even a politician, let alone a person on the street, could respond. Nobody knew anything about him. But then his rating skyrocketed. The attacks on the residential buildings played an extremely important role. "

In addition, the attacks in no way corresponded to the pattern of the Chechen hostage-taking, which always had a specific goal.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patrick E. Tyler: 6 Convicted in Russia Bombing That Killed 68 . In: The New York Times . March 20, 2001, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 29, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Marcel Baumann: Absolutely bad? - The logic of killing and the moral legitimacy of terrorism , page 185, ISBN 978-3-531-17333-7
  3. ↑ Палачей Буйнакска взяли в Баку. Segodnya.ru, September 22, 2000 (Russian).
  4. ↑ Observer alleges involvement of Russian intelligence in bomb attacks in Moscow , WSWS, March 21, 2000.
  5. ^ A b Edward Lucas: The Kremlin's Cold War: How the Putin System Threatened Russia and the West. 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-50095-8 .
  6. ^ Sabine Rennefanz , Katja Tichomirowa: Cold War on the Thames. Berliner Zeitung , November 21, 2006.
  7. ↑ Присяжные оправдали обвиняемого в организации взрыва дома в Буйнакске. Lenta.Ru, January 24, 2006 (Russian).
  8. ↑ Присяжные повторно оправдали обвиняемого во взрыве дома в Буйнакске. Lenta.Ru, November 13, 2006 (Russian).
  9. ↑ Fritjof Meyer: Explosive sugar for Putin's re-election. Der Spiegel , January 16, 2004.
  10. ↑ www.eng.terror99.ru/publications/049.htm (in English) ( Memento of March 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ www.eng.terror99.ru/publications/042.htm (in English) ( Memento from March 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ www.eng.terror99.ru/publications/107.htm (in English) ( Memento of March 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ www.eng.terror99.ru/publications/087.htm (in English) ( Memento of March 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/krono.exe?6200 (in English) ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ www.eng.terror99.ru/publications/118.htm (in English) ( Memento from April 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ В Москве жестоко избит Отто Лацис. NEWSru.com , November 11, 2003 (Russian)
  17. ↑ http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Bswords%5D=8fd5893941d69d0be3f378576261ae3e&tx_ttnews%5Bany_of_the_words%5D=yushenkov&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=28112&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=aefec89c6eef0c5080363698cbe47dd0#.VTVZuiHtlHw (in English)
  18. ↑ Johnson's Russia List ( Memento of March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) January 26, 2006 (English).
  19. ^ John Sweeney: Take care Tony, that man has blood on his hands. The Guardian , March 12, 2000 (English).
  20. ↑ a b David Satter: The Shadow of Ryazan. National Review , April 30, 2002.
  21. ↑ Alexandr Nemets, Thomas Torda: Gospodin Geksogen (Mr. Hexogen). ( Memento of March 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) newsmax.com, July 19, 2002 (English).
  22. ↑ Alexandr Nemets, Thomas Torda: Mr. Hexogen (continued). ( Memento of March 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) newsmax.com, July 23, 2002 (English).
  23. ↑ Disbelief. IMDb , 2004 (English).
  24. ^ Disbelief - 1999 Russia Bombings. Google Video.
  25. ↑ Kim Murphy: Russian Ex-Agent's Sentencing Called Political - Investigator was about to release a report on 1999 bombings when he was arrested. Los Angeles Times May 20, 2004
  26. ↑ War Critic Is mourned Jamestown Foundation, July 10, of 2003.
  27. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/coroner-unable-to-establish-cause-of-russian-businessmans-death.html
  28. ↑ GREAT BRITAIN: Putin opponents murdered? In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 2014 ( online - March 31, 2014 ).
  29. ↑ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2590778/Boris-Berezovskys-daughter-says-feared-poisoned.html
  30. ↑ https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-high-profile-deaths-on-british-soil-with-alleged-links-to-the-kremlin
  31. ↑ Karla Engelhard: Top Secret! Secret services - The FSB. WDR 5, October 26, 2008.

Web links