Alexander Litvinenko

by Blowing Up Russia (lit)

  The arguments in support of this interpretation are as follows.

  It is very important to note that the leaders of the Ryazan Region were not aware of the explosion planned for Ryazan (or the exercises, as the events are referred to diplomatically by all the officials involved in them and by employees of the agencies of coercion). The governor of the region, V.N. Liubimov, announced this in an interview broadcast live on September 24, when he said: Not even I knew about this exercise.

  Mamatov, the mayor of Ryazan, was frankly annoyed: They ve used us as guinea pigs.

  Tested Ryazan for lice. I m not against exercises. I served in the army myself, and I took part in them, but I never saw anything like this.

  The FSB department for the Ryazan Region was also not informed about the exercises.

  Bludov stated that the FSB was not informed in advance that exercises were being conducted in the city. The head of the Ryazan UFSB, Major-General A.V. Sergeiev at first stated in an interview with the local television company Oka that he knew nothing about any exercises being held. It was only later, in response to a question from journalists about whether he had in his possession any official document confirming that exercises were held in Ryazan, that he answered through his press secretary that he accepted as proof of the exercises the television interview given by FSB director Patrushev. One of the women living in house 14/16, Marina Severina, recalled how, afterwards, the local FSB went round the apartments apologizing: Several people from the FSB came to see us, led by a colonel. They apologized. They said that they hadn t known anything, either. This is one case in which we can believe the members of the FSB and accept their sincerity.

  The Ryazan UFSB realized that the people of Ryazan had been set up and that the Public Prosecutor s Office of Russia and the public might accuse the Ryazan UFSB of planning the explosion. Shaken by the treachery of their Moscow colleagues, the Ryazan UFSB decided to provide themselves with an alibi and announced to the world that the Ryazan operation had been planned in Moscow. There could be no other explanation for the statement from the Ryazan Region UFSB, which appeared shortly after Patrushev s interview about exercises in Ryazan. We give the text of the statement in full.

  It has become known that the planting on 22.09.99 of a dummy explosive device was part of an ongoing interregional exercise. This announcement came as a surprise to us and appeared at a moment when the department of the FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the explosive device and was preparing

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  to detain them. This had been made possible due to the vigilance and assistance of many of the residents of the city of Ryazan, collaboration with the agencies of the Ministry of the Interior and the professionalism of our own staff. We thank everyone who assisted us in this work. We will continue in future to do everything possible to ensure the safety of the people of Ryazan.

  This unique document provides us with answers to the most important of our questions.

  Firstly, the Ryazan UFSB had nothing to do with the operation to blow up the building in Ryazan. Secondly, at least two terrorists were discovered in Ryazan. Thirdly, the terrorists lived in Ryazan, if only temporarily, and evidently a network of at least two secret safe apartments were uncovered. Fourthly, just at the moment when arrangements were in hand to arrest the terrorists, the order came from Moscow not to arrest them, because the terrorist attack in Ryazan was only an FSB exercise.

  In order to remove any doubts that the UFSB statement was both deliberate and accurate, the leadership of the Ryazan UFSB repeated it almost word-for-word in an interview. On May 21, 2000, just five days before the presidential election, when the failed explosion in Ryazan had been put back on the public agenda for political reasons by the parties competing for power, the head of the investigative section of the UFSB for the Ryazan Region, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Maximov, stated as follows: We can only feel sympathy for these people and offer our apologies. We also find the situation difficult. We took all the events of that night seriously, regarding the situation as genuinely dangerous. The announcement about exercises held by the FSB of the Russian Federation came as a complete surprise to us and appeared at a moment when the department of the FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the dummy (as it subsequently emerged) device and was preparing to detain them. This had been made possible due to the vigilance and assistance of the inhabitants of Ryazan, collaboration with the agencies of the ministry of the interior, and the professionalism of our own staff.

  It was thus, twice confirmed in documentary form that the terrorists who had mined the building in Ryazan were employees of the FSB, that at the time of the operation they were living in Ryazan, and that the places where they lived had been identified by employees of the UFSB for the Ryazan Region. This being so, we can catch Patrushev out in an obvious lie. On September 25, in an interview with one of the television companies, he stated that those people who should in principle have been found immediately were among the residents who left the building, in which an explosive device was supposedly planted. They took part in the process of producing their own sketches, and held conversations with employees of the agencies of law enforcement.

  The real facts were quite different. The terrorists scattered to different safe apartments.

  No sooner had the leadership of the Ryazan UFSB reported in the line of duty by phone to Patrushev in Moscow, that the arrest of the terrorists was imminent than Patrushev gave the order not to arrest the terrorists and announced that the foiled terrorist attack in Ryazan was only an exercise. One can imagine the expression on the face of the

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  Ryazan UFSB officer concerned: most likely Major-General Sergeiev was reporting to Patrushev in person when he was ordered to let the terrorists go.

  Immediately after he put down the phone, Patrushev gave his first interview in those days to the NTV television company: The incident in Ryazan was not a bombing, nor was it a foiled bombing. It was an exercise. It was sugar; there was no explosive substance there.

  Such exercises do not only take place in Ryazan. But to the honor of the agencies of law enforcement and the public in Ryazan, they responded promptly. I believe that exercises must be made as close as possible to what happens in real life, because otherwise we won t learn anything and won t be able to respond to anything anywhere. A day later, Patrushev added that the exercise in Ryazan was prompted by information about terrorist attacks planned to take place in Russia. In Chechnya several groups of terrorists had already been prepared and were due to be advanced into Russian territory and carry out a series of terrorist attacks& It was this information which led us to conclude that we needed to carry out training exercises, and not like the ones we d had before, and to make them hard and strict& Our personnel must be prepared; we must identify the shortcomings in the organization of our work and make corrections to its organization.

  The Moscow Komsomolets newspaper managed to joke about it: On September 24, 1999, the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, made the sensational announcement that the attempted bombing in Ryazan was nothing of the sort. It was an exercise& The same day, Minister of the Interior Vladimir Rushailo congratulated his men on saving the building in Ryazan from certain destruction.

  But in Ryazan, of course, no one was laughing. Obviously, even though Patrushev had forbidden it, the Ryazan UFSB went ahead and arrested the terrorists, considerably roughing them up in the process. Who was arrested where, how many there were of them, and what else the Ryazan UFSB officers found in those flats we shall probably never know. When they were arrested, the terrorists presented their cover documents and were detained, until the arrival from Moscow of an officer of the central administration with documents which permitted him to take the FSB operatives, who had been tracked down so rapidly, back to Moscow with him.

  Beyond this point our investigation runs up against the old familiar top secret cla
ssification. The criminal proceedings instigated by the UFSB for the Ryazan Region in connection with the discovery of an explosive substance under article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (terrorism) was classified, and the case materials are not available to the public. The names of the terrorists (FSB operatives) have been concealed.

  We don t even know if they were interrogated and what they said under interrogation.

  Patrushev certainly had something to hide. There s nothing I can do, guys. The analysis shows explosive materials, I m obliged to initiate criminal proceedings -such was the stubborn reply made by the local FSB investigator to his Moscow colleagues, when they tried putting pressure on him. So then, people from the FSB s central administration were sent down and simply confiscated the results of the analysis.

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  On September 29, 1999, the newspapers Cheliabinsky Rabochy and Krasnoyarsky Rabochy, and on October 1, the Volzhskaya Kommuna of Samara carried identical articles; We have learned from well-informed sources in the MVD of Russia that none of the MVD operatives and their colleagues in the UFSB of Ryazan believes in any training involving the planting of explosive in the town& In the opinion of highly placed employees of the MVD of Russia, the apartment building in Ryazan actually was mined by persons unknown using genuine explosives and the same detonators as in Moscow& This theory is indirectly confirmed by the fact that the criminal proceedings under the article on terrorism have still not been closed. Furthermore, the results of the original analysis of the contents of the sacks, carried out at the first stage by local MVD experts, were confiscated by FSB personnel who arrived from Moscow, and immediately declared secret. Policemen who have been in contact with their colleagues in criminalistics, who carried out the first investigation of the sacks, continue to claim that they really did contain hexogene, and there is no possibility of any error.

  Trying to put pressure on the investigation and declaring a criminal case classified were illegal acts. According to article 7 of the law of the Russian Federation, On state secrecy, adopted on July 21, 1993, information& concerning emergencies and catastrophes which threaten the safety and health of members of the public and their consequences;& concerning instances of the violation of human and civil rights and freedoms;& concerning instances of the violation of legality by the agencies of state power and their officials& shall not be declared a matter of state secrecy and classified as secret. The same law goes on to state: officials who have made a decision to classify as secret the information listed, or to include it for this purpose in media which contain information that constitutes a matter of state secrecy, shall be subject to criminal, administrative, or disciplinary sanction, in accordance with the material and moral harm inflicted upon society, the state, and the public. Members of the public shall be entitled to appeal such decisions to a court of law.

  Unfortunately, it looks as though those responsible for classifying a criminal case will not be held to account under the progressive and democratic law of 1993. As one of the residents of the ill-fated (or fortunate) building in Ryazan put it, they have pulled the wool down hard over our eyes.

  Certainly, in March 2000 (just before the presidential election), the voters were shown one of the three terrorists (a member of the FSB special center ), who said that all three members of the group had left Moscow for Ryazan on the evening of September 22, that they had found a basement which happened by chance not to be locked; they had bought sacks of sugar at the market and a cartridge at the Kolchuga gun shop, from which they had constructed mock-ups of an explosive device on the spot, and the whole business was concentrated together to implement the measure concerned& It was not sabotage, but an exercise. We didn t even really try to hide.

  On March 22 (with four days left to the election), The Association of Veterans of the Alpha Group came to the defense of the story about FSB exercises in Ryazan, in the person of lieutenant-general of the reserve and former commander of the Vympel

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  division of the FSB of Russia, Dmitry Gerasimov, and retired Major-General Gennady Zaitsev, the former commander of the Alpha group and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

  Gerasimov declared that live detonating devices were not used in the exercises in Ryazan, and what was used instead was a cartridge containing round shot, which was meant to produce a shock effect. Since the impression produced by the detonating device really was shocking, from that point of view the exercise had been a success.

  In Zaitsev s opinion, the story that live detonating devices had been involved in the exercise came about because the instruments used by the UFSB for the Ryazan Region were faulty. He announced that members of Vympel had also been involved in the exercise in Ryazan, and that a special group had left for Ryazan in a private car on the eve of the events concerned, and had actually deliberately drawn attention to itself. A cartridge containing round shot was bought in the Kolchuga shop; The ill-fated sugar, which some later called hexogene, was bought by the special group at the local bazaar.

  And, therefore, it could not possibly have been explosive. The experts simply ignored basic rules and used dirty instruments on which there were traces of explosives from previous analyses. The experts concerned have already been punished for their negligence. Criminal proceedings have been initiated in connection with this instance.

  The naiveté of the interview given by the member of the special center and the simplemindedness of the statements made by Gerasimov and Zaitsev are genuinely astounding.

  First and foremost, it could well be true that three Vympel officers did set out for Ryazan in a private car on the evening of September 22, that they did buy three sacks of sugar and a cartridge from the Kolchuga shop. But exactly how did they try to attract attention to themselves? After all, it was sugar they were sold at the market, not hexogene. What was there to attract attention? A single shotgun cartridge bought in a shop?

  Patrushev evidently also believed that in a country where sensational murders take place every day and houses with hundreds of inhabitants are blown up, suspicion should be aroused by people buying sugar at the market and a shotgun cartridge in a shop.

  Everything that the supposed terrorists planted was bought in Ryazan, the sacks of sugar and the cartridges, which they bought without anyone asking them whether they had any right to do so. A minor point, of course, but now we have a mystery: just how many cartridges did the FSB operatives buy, one or several? (The purchases could have been an operation to cover for the real terrorists, who planted quite different sacks containing explosives in the basement of the building in Ryazan, sacks that had nothing to do with the Vympel group. In that case, the Vympel operatives themselves might not have known the purpose of the task they had been assigned of buying one cartridge and three bags of sugar.) Finally, Zaitsev deliberately misled his readers by claiming that criminal proceedings had been initiated against Senior Lieutenant Yury Tkachenko, the explosives technician at the engineering and technical section, for conducting the analysis incorrectly, when they had actually been initiated against the terrorists who had turned out to be FSB operatives. On September 30, Tkachenko and another Ryazan police explosives specialist, Pyotr Zhitnikov, had, in fact, been awarded a bonus for their courage in disarming the

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  explosive device. Incidentally, Nadezhda Yukhanova, the telephone operator who intercepted the terrorists telephone conversation with Moscow, was also paid a bonus for her assistance in capturing them.

  The only thing that can be said in Zaitsev s defense is that a technical expert does bear criminal responsibility for the quality and objectivity of the results of his analysis, and if Tkachenko had carried out a flawed analysis and issued an incorrect result, then criminal proceedings would, indeed, have been taken against him. But as we know, this was not done, precisely because the result provided by the analysis was accurate: the sacks contained an explosive substance.

  The testimony of the member
of the special center and Zaitsev also suffers from serious inconsistencies of time-scale. The terrorists were spotted near the building in Ryazan only shortly after 9 p.m. On a weekday, they could not possibly have covered the 180 kilometers from Moscow to Ryazan in less than three hours, and then they still had to select a building in an unfamiliar town, buy the sacks of sugar, buy the cartridge at the Kolchuga shop, and put together the mock-up. On a weekday, the market in Ryazan closes at 6 p.m. at the latest. The Kolchuga shop closes at 7 p.m. So just when and how was the sugar bought? When was the cartridge bought? When did the terrorists leave Moscow? How long did the journey take? When did they arrive in Ryazan?