11:40PM. Grigory Yavlinsky entered the talks with the terrorists.
October 25th
12:58. Grigory Yavlinsky came out of the building without any released hostages. He declined to comment his conversation with the terrorists.
1:35AM. Dr. Roshal was allowed to the terrorists. He gave them medicaments. Some doctors representing the Red Cross entered the building with him.
1:40AM. The terrorists led Russian journalists into the building.
2:40AM. An NTV film crew recorded an interview with the terrorists’ leader. Movsar Basayev said that the action was prepared two months. The fighters have often come to see the Nord-Ost show. Basayev said that he could release all the children by tomorrow morning.
5:30AM. One person was released.
6:30AM. The terrorists released another six hostages.
7:00. NTV showed images taken in the Center on Dubrovka.
7:20AM. Sergey Ignatchenko, deputy director of the FSB’s Center of Special Assignment said: “They force the hostages to make cellphone calls to their relatives and demand that their relatives hold pickets near the House of Culture demanding the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya.”
8.20AM. The terrorists agreed to release the captured foreign citizens in the presence of the States’ ambassadors.
8.30AM. The heating main in the building was broken. The first floors are flooded with water. The terrorists accuse the special services of provocation.
08.45AM. A crowd of the hostages’ relatives appeared near the captured building with posters reading: “Down with the war in Chechnya!”
9.40AM. Ambassadors have gathered near the building. The terrorists do not make any contact. The USA ambassador Alexander Vershbow is among them. They wait a certain time after which they leave.
11.00AM. The terrorists promise to release the children if an anti-military meeting is held on the Red Square before noon. The children were allowed to call their relatives.
12.20. Five Red Cross doctors and Leonid Roshal entered the building.
12.35. The terrorists released 8 children without setting any conditions. The Red Cross doctors led them out.
12.50. Dr. Roshal came out. He said that he managed to give two packages and a package of medicaments.
1:10PM. The FSB Center of Special Assignment says that the terrorists continue to hold 16 children.
1:20PM. The deputy minister of the Interior Vladimir Vasiliev said that the operational headquarters attempted to contact Aslan Maskhadov but they did not succeed.
2:10PM. The official authorities refuted Vasiliev’s claim that they have tried to contact Maskhadov.
2:30PM. The terrorists demanded to put them immediately in contact with the former Ingushetia president Ruslan Aushev.
2:50PM. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya entered the building. Roshal was with her with a package of medicaments.
3:15PM. The terrorists told the Sunday Times journalist Mark Franketti that they consider their mission accomplished and “do not intend to go anywhere, with or without the hostages until there are changes made in Chechnya.”
3:30PM. The relatives of the hostages began a demonstration on the Red Square under the slogan “Down with the war in Chechnya!” Some demonstrators were arrested and taken away by the police.
3:50PM. The FSB director Nikolay Patrushev said that the terrorists will be left alife if they release the hostages. “We are continuing the negotiations and I hope they will bring the release of the hostages.” He made this statement after a meeting with president Putin. The Minister of Interior Boris Grizlov added: “Presently the situation with the hostages is difficult; there are sick people, there are problems with food and water. Some need medical assistance that they don’t get.” There are reasons to believe that it is on that meeting with Putin that the final decision about raiding the building was taken. On the dawn of the following day. A raid that would be disguised as a forced reaction to the execution of the hostages, which actually never happened. And it began…
4:15PM. Some media said that the terrorists made an ultimatum: they will start to shoot the hostages if the Russian governement does not execute their political demands before 6AM on October 26th.
4:30PM. The operational headquarters (I remind that it is headed by the FSB deputy director Pronichev who will later “work” in Beslan with his Nord-Ost “experience”, although not as headquarters chief but hiding behind Ossetia’s FSB general, Andreyev) confirmed that the terrorists threaten to shoot the hostages if their demands are not executed. Let me explain that this is why all the militants with no exception were sent to the other wolrd (without even considering the information that they could have obtained from them on interrogations), so that they could not affirm in court that they did not make any ultimatum on October 25th at 4:15PM. And now how could one find out if there was an ultimatum or no? The contact was made by cellphones.
5:00PM. The journalist Sergey Govorukhin and the assistant editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta Dmitry Belovetzky entered the Center to negotiate with the terrorists.
5:10PM. Anna Politkovskaya came out of the building and said that the terrorists demand juice and water. One little question comes up: why did the terrorists suddently need juice and water? To give them to the hostages before executing them?
5:20PM. Television channels air a Maskhadov’s video. In the video, shot God knows when and why, Maskhadov said that the Chechens switched from guerrilla methods to offensive operations. “On the final stage we will carry out an ever more unique operations, similar to jihad”, Maskhadov says on video. Dubrovka, Nord-Ost or the Theater Center are not mentioned. This video could have been made before the wreck excursions to Budennovsk, Kizlyar or anywhere else. What does “final stage” means? Final stage of what? In fact, it was the “special operation to release the hostages” that has already began. They are preparing the public opinion. On all the channels simultaneously.
6:00PM. Ruslan Aushev arrived to the operational headquarters.
6:15PM. Sergey Govorukhin and Dmitry Beletzky came back without any hostages. The militants said that next time they would shoot the visitors who come uninvited. Apparently the militants suspected these two were spies.
6:55PM. Meeting of president Putin with the leaders of State Duma’s fractions. The president demanded, “to put aside any sorts of political statements and debates. … They are out of place and harmful, especially when it concerns the suffering of hundreds of innocent people. What we need is a sober, objective evaluation of the situation and precise, well-thought actions directed to help these people save their lives.” You should remember this statement because ten hours later the president’s special services will do the exact opposite: they will help the people in the hall on Dubrovka to get rid of their lives, inconsiderately using a little-known gas, practically they will kill them.
7:38PM. Anna Politkovskaya and the deputy Aslambek Aslakhanov entered the building and brought juice and water for the hostages. Two Red Cross doctors were with them.
7:40PM. Ruslan Aushev and the former premier Evgeny Primakov entered the building in order to get in contact with the terrorists.
8:25PM. Evgeny Primakov, Ruslan Aushev, Aslambek Aslakhanov and Anna Politkovskaya led a negotiation with the terrorists and left the building. Primakov did not comment. Aushev said that the terrorists demand to speak with an official representative of Vladimir Putin, however they do not name anybody in particular.
(We see that despite the started disinformation about an ultimatum and the preparing execution of the hostages there is more and more contacts. If there was an ultimatum then why demand to negotiate with a Putin’s representative?)
9:15PM. The signer Alla Pugacheva arrived to the operational headquarters. She brought with her the plan of the Theater Center building where her son-in-law Ruslan Baysarov rents a nightclub. Most probably this was the plan the special services used to let in the gas in the ventilation shafts.
9:55PM. 4 hostages are released from the Center:
3 women and a man, all Azeris. Another confirmation that the terrorists did not make an ultimatum.
10:38PM. The operational headquarters banned life broadcasting from the Center on Dubrovka and the bordering streets. The deputy minister of Interior Vladimir Vasiliev explained, “This practice is illiterate from a professional point of view”. In reality the deputy minister lies; they are preparing to raid the building and it is clear that they do not need television cameras.
10:40PM. The minister of Interior Boris Grizlov and the FBI director Robert Muller agreed to cooperate by keeping constantly in touch. The perfidious Russian Byzantines are cheating the Americans. Grizlov knows that the raid is in seven hours.
10:40PM. At the same time Putin, Luzhkov and Primakov have a meeting. They discussed the situation with the hostages. It is possible to suppose that Primakov expressed his personal impressions.
10:50PM. The operational headquarters say “it does not appear to be possible to get a normal contact with the terrorists”. This is a total lie because there are hundreds of cellphones in the hall and all the terrorists have cellphones.
At 11:40PM a man entered running the Center on Dubrovka. The unidentified man passed through the cordon, ran across the square in front of the building and disappeared in the central hallway.
October 26th
At 12:50 the Center’s security was reinforced. Three military trucks blocked Dubrovskaya Street.
At 1:30AM gunshots were heard in the House of Culture. What did happen there? A former hostage testifies: “On the night before the raid an old man got inside and demanded that his little son be given to him. One of the terrorists, Idris, tried to intercede for the madman. He yelled to Barayev that he knows for sure that the boy is on the balcony. Unfortunately this did not help the man; he was led outside the building. Then I heard gunshots.” The witness Sergey Lobankov, the producer of the Nord-Ost musical: “In three days the militants shot three people. … The first was a young woman who came inside the hall from somewhere in an absolutely abnormal state, I think she was drunk. She came out to their leader and started to defiantly talk to him. He shot her. Then after some time a man appeared in the hall. He said that he was looking for his son and even said his name but the child was in my group and this man is not his father. The Chechens suspected that he could be a spy and shot him in the foyer. The third killed is a young man who went hysterical. He was running in the hall yelling, he wanted to attack a Chechen woman with a bomb, he was shot and he fell. The bullet that was shot at him hit two other hostages.” The witness Elena Shumilova: “Suddently a man in his thirties in the center of the hall got up, threw an empty glass bottle at the Chechen women sitting with a bomb and started to run in their direction on the backs of the seats. The women shot in the air and the Chechen on the stage shot and hit two sitting people: a man in the brow (he died in the hospital) and a woman in the chest. The guy was held down but he was absolutely out of his mind.”
2:00AM. Two hostages were brought out of the building on stretchers. According to preliminary information, one of them was a woman wounded in the stomach and the other is a man hit in the head. So everything corresponds. These two episodes the nights before the raid were not a supposedly planned execution in response to the non-execution of the terrorists’ ultimatum, which did not exist. The hysterical man freaked out and the terrorists freaked out. What concerns the man, supposedly a spy who came for someone else’s child, and then a lot of all sorts of nutcases gathered near the cordon during the three days. Soldiers at the cordon and journalists alike said that. One of the nutcases ran into the building. And he was not stopped. Most probably, he wasn’t stopped on purpose, in order to check the terrorists’ alertness.
5:30AM. Special tactic teams arrived to the building. Intensive shooting was heard and then supposedly several explosions.
5:40AM. The operational headquarters resumed the negotiations with the terrorists “in the form of telephone contacts”. According to the headquarters’ representative Pavel Kudryavtsev “the terrorists did not give a clear answer” about the reasons of the shooting, but said that they have shot two hostages in the past two hours.
The last affirmation is an absolute lie because these shootings are not confirmed by any of the surviving hostages. There was simply none. No shootings after two accidental wounded, a man and a woman, were brought out on stretchers at two o’clock in the morning. Elena Shumova, former hostage testifies: “When the OMON started to investigate the roof (we even heard steps above) we were forced to gather in a bunch, the women with the explosives dispersed between us. … Then we were suddenly brought back to our seats, they said that they are waiting for someone from the government at 11 o’clock. … I woke up at 6:30AM – they were going back and forth. Then I smelled something…” Georgi Vasiliev, one of the authors and producers of the musical: “For me it was obvious that there was going to be a raid by the tone of the media and the politicians. It was possible to follow that because some hostages had radios and rumors were passed from row to row.” Vasiliev did not see any execution of hostages. Irina Filippova, former hostage: “Early in the morning we were sitting in trance when we heard gunshots from the central entrance, the men ran there yelling ‘Allah akbar!’ and the women made a circle around the hall. With the usual gesture we got down from the seats, somebody near me said: ‘I think I smell gas’”. The hostages were sitting in a trance; if the terrorists were executing them after they left the hall it is clear that there would not be any trance, everybody would have waken up in fear and terror. The Chechens were running yelling “Allah akbar!” because imitating the execution of the hostages the special tactics units fired at the Nord-Ost panel hanging above the central entrance of the building. This was the 5:30AM shooting. When the special tactics units arrived to the building. Only the shooting was not inside but on the faзade. The witnesses testify this. Later I will cite testimonies. But now I want to emphasize the sentence of the hostage Shumova: “They said that they are waiting for someone from the government at 11 o’clock”. It can be understood only in one sense: the operational headquarters continued to lie to the terrorists that somebody from the government will arrive at 11 o’clock. When at the same time they were planning to kill everybody. Well, ok, Barayev’s group, they were suicide bombers, terrorists, who will pity them?! But the operational headquarters said that there were still 16 children and about a thousand adults in there!
6:20AM. Two women escaped from the building. Most probably they were hostages. (Personally I do not know who they were. Everybody is already gazed there, how could anybody escape?)
6:24AM. The Alpha and Vimpel units of the FSB Center of Special Assignment started to raid the Theater Center on Dubrovskaya Street. Indistinct explosions were shot, then gunshots.
6:32AM. Additional units arrived to the building.
6:55AM. Ambulances and empty buses arrived to the building.
7:13AM. Special units’ agents bring the hostages out of the building, put them into the ambulances and buses. An ambulance doctor, Nikolay Stepchenkov testifies: “At 6:50AM they gave us the order to go to the theater. … There were already dozens of inanimate bodies on the entrance. Many old people, some already dead. And they died long ago – two-three hours ago: their skin was cold. But more and more people are brought outside. … The victims had the same overdose symptoms like after a drug – a narrow pupil and the absence of breathing. People were making four-five breaths per minute.” Dmitry N., an ambulance doctor: “We were already waiting near the theater. But on the last night it was clear that there would be a raid. I was not on duty but I was raised from bed. Our cars stood waiting on Volgogradsky Street. … Twenty ambulances were called. Exactly at 5:30 they banned any radio communication. No information at all. The managers of the column were hinting that the order is to go to the theater and bring out the corpses. We’ve seen worse…” It is not surprising that Dmitry N. preferred to name only the first letter of his last name. Since he testifies that the authori
ties did not only prepare the raid but also were preparing in cold blood for a huge number of corpses. Ten hours earlier Putin was declaring that he intends to help people save their lives. And was already covering-up: demanded to “leave aside any sorts of political statements and debates”; he also wanted to avoid himself the blame and the condemnation for the dead bodies. We clearly do not need such a president. Hypocrite and cruel to his own citizens. The reader might ask: what was he supposed to do? Negotiate with the fighters who took the hostages. Merchandise. Withdraw a military unit from Chechnya like the hostages were asking, show the withdrawal on television and take the children and women from the Center on Dubrovka. This is how they do it in the whole world, although the governments prefer to officially say that they do not negotiate with terrorists, but in fact they do! They do! And Putin is posing on the account of the lives of your children, posing like some Superman! For his “tough guy” reputation 129 hostages have died. Their skin was cold… The witness Gennady B.: “We weren’t told exactly what substance was used in the Center, but we were using naloxon and not an antidote, which we didn’t have. Judging by the external symptoms the poisoning looked like an opium overdose. Only later we learned that this was fentanyl.”
7:18AM. The official representative of the operational headquarters, general Vasiliev, said that the FSB special tactics unit seized the Theater Center. (Me too, they seized me in Altay; they were 70 people capturing an unarmed man.)
9:23AM. All Moscow’s free ambulances are ordered to gather on Dubrovka.
9:50AM. All the hostages are taken out of the building.
10:35AM. The FSB director Nikolay Patrushev and the Interior Minister Boris Grizlov informed Putin about the successful completion of the operation to release the hostages.
At 9:00AM Russia’s president Vladimir Putin addressed the nation: “Dear compatriots! During these days we have gone through a terrible ordeal. All our thoughts were with the people who fell in the hands of the armed bastards. We hoped that these people will be freed but every one of us realized that we have to be ready for the worse. Today, early in the morning an operation to release the hostages was carried out. We achieved the near impossible, saving hundreds, hundreds of people. We proved that they can’t put Russia on its knees. But now I foremost want to adress the relatives and the loved-ones of the people who died. Forgive us. The memory of the dead must unite us. We were not able to save them all. I thank all Russia’s citizens for their self-control and unity. My special thanks go to those who took part in releasing the people. Foremost, the commandos of the special units who did not hesitate to risk their lives and fought for saving the people. We are also grateful to our friends in the whole world for their moral and practical support in our fight with our common ennemy. This ennemy is strong and dangerous, unhuman and cruel. It is international terrorism. Until it is overcome people in the whole world will not feel safe. But it must be overcome. And will be overcome. Today in the hospital I spoke with one of the victims. He said: ‘I was not afraid – I was certain that the terrorists don’t have a future.’ And this is true. They don’t have a future. But we do.”
Limonov vs. Putin Page 12
