Secret at the Heart of Putin's Rise to Power

Julius Strauss reports from Ryazan

13 March 2004

By rights Tatyana, a 39-year-old housewife with chestnut brown hair who lives in the Russian city of Ryazan, shouldn't be alive today. Along with the other 250-odd residents of the red-brick housing block at 14/16 Novoselyov Street, she should have died with her husband and son on September 23, 1999.

At 5.30 that morning three sacks of the high explosive hexogen that had been hidden in the basement of their building were set to blow up. The explosion would have brought the entire poorly-built block crashing down.

"Of course we're lucky to be here," said Tatyana as she stood in the hallway of her building this week. "They had decided to blow up the building and we would all have died. Even today I shiver when I think about it."

More than 240 other Russians were less fortunate. They died that autumn in a wave of terror attacks that destroyed three blocks of flats, two in the capital Moscow and one in the regional town of Volgodonsk.

The Russian authorities were swift to lay the blame at the door of Chechen separatists. But four and a half years on almost no supporting evidence has emerged. Two men from the Caucasus were convicted of involvement earlier this year after a closed trial, but it was widely denounced as a charade.

Instead a growing body of proof has surfaced that links the bombings, and the Ryazan incident in particular, to the FSB, the revamped KGB.

Independent investigators, including several MPs, who have sought to look into the case have been intimidated, arrested or beaten. At least two have died: one was gunned down, the other killed by a mysterious case of food poisoning.

Analysts and investigators say that Mr Putin, who was FSB chief until August of that year and subsequently prime minister, must, at the very least, have known the truth and be presiding over a huge cover-up.

He may even have been involved in a cynical plot to launch his political career.

Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment, said: "He would have known not just what happened but who the suspects were. But the truth will not damage him - because it won't be told until after he is gone."

The 1999 bombing campaign proved to be Mr Putin's political making. With ordinary Russians terrified and paranoid, he positioned himself as a strongman who would crush the Chechen rebels and restore order to the ailing country.

Riding a wave of nationalist fervour, in eight months he went from being a virtual political unknown to winning the presidency by an easy margin, beating veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov in the first round.

In Novosyelov Street on September 22, 1999, the first sign that something was amiss at No 14/16 was when residents noticed a white Lada parked outside with a man sitting in the back. The car's number plates had a small piece of paper with the number 62, the code for Ryazan, stuck over the original.

Another resident noticed a blonde woman standing nervously by the front door. Then a third man emerged from the cellar and all three drove away together. The piece of paper had fallen off the car revealing the code for Moscow, 77.

The residents called the emergency number for the police. At first it was busy. Then they were reluctant to come. But when they finally arrived, the first one to go down into the cellar came running out in shock. "There's a bomb," he shouted.

The policeman evacuated the building in a panic. According to one account, residents pulled babies from bathtubs, and hurriedly gathered documents. The old and inform were left behind in the rush.

Police and security agents surrounded the area. Yuri Tkachenko, head of the local bomb squad, entered the basement and disconnected the timer and detonator. When he tested the three sacks with a portable gas analyzer they proved positive for hexogen, the explosive used in the other attacks that autumn.

On the basis of descriptions given by residents, the authorities began to search for the suspects. The railway station and airport were cordoned off and roadblocks set up at the entrance to the city.

Armed police wearing flak jackets patrolled the streets and identikits of the three suspects were pinned to trees and lampposts. To general approval, Prime Minister Putin announced that Russian planes had begun strafing the Chechen capital Grozny.

That evening the bombers made a mistake. Using a public telephone one of them called a number in Moscow for instructions, saying that it was impossible to leave the city undetected. An operator traced the call. The number called belonged to the FSB.

Shortly afterwards the two men were arrested. Each produced documents showing they also worked for the FSB. A little later an order came down from Moscow ordering the local police release them.

The next day Nikolai Patrushev, head of the FSB, announced to general disbelief on television that the entire thing had been a training drill to raise public awareness. The white substance was not hexogen, he said, but sugar. The two residents who called the police and the telephone operator were each given a colour television to reward them for their vigilance.

For a while the controversy refused to die down. Calls for a full investigation intensified when a Pavel Voloshin, a Russian journalist, found a soldier in a nearby army camp who had been responsible for guarding a consignment of hexogen. Liberal members of the Duma called for an enquiry in March 2000.

But although a vote received 197-137 in favour, it failed to reach the 226 required. The ruling party, loyal to President Putin, voted against it.

Boris Berezovsky, the exiled tycoon and a bitter enemy of Mr Putin, sponsored a film and a book about the incident but both were confiscated by Russian authorities when they were brought into the country.

A human rights activist, Veniamin Ioffe, who tried to show the film in St Petersburg was beaten and later died.

In 2002, determined not to be cowed, several liberals, including the MPs Ivan Rybakin and Sergei Yushenkov, set up a citizen's commission to investigate the bombings.

On 17 April last year, Mr Yushenkov was shot dead outside his home by an assassin.

Then in July, Yuri Shchekochikhin, another MP and commission member, who had traveled to Ryazan to investigate the bombings died mysteriously after alleged food poisoning. His family is convinced he was poisoned.

The commission's troubles did not stop there.

Their lawyer, Mihail Trepashkin, was arrested last year by traffic police shortly before he was due to appear in court.

He was charged with possession of illegal firearms and divulging state secrets. He says the gun and bullets were planted on him.

Then Otto Latsis, another commission member, was beaten unconscious in the lift of his building.

In heavily-manipulated parliamentary elections last December, Mr Rybakin lost his seat in the State Duma. He has now all but given up on the investigation, though he remains adamant that the finger of blame points at the regime.

He said: "It's simply not possible to explain the evidence any other way. The men behind this were definitely FSB employees. Whether they got their orders from the very top, or were a criminal grouping inside the organisation, is impossible to say."

"Since they are guarding this so carefully I am afraid there is something really horrible there. As for Putin, its possible he didn't know at the time. But he certainly knows the truth now, better than anyone."

Today the building at 14/16 Novoselyov Street is as unremarkable as any other shoddily-built housing block in Russia. Nothing marks it as the site of one of modern Russia's dirtiest secrets. The entrance to the cellar has been blocked by a rusty blue metal door. A bare bulb hangs in the entrance.

Some of its windows are broken and outside there is an empty bottle lying in the dirty snow, two discarded sheets of plywood and a rusted child's slide with the imprint of muddy foot marks on it.

Tatyana, who was too scared to give her family name, said: "After all this time we still don't know who is guilty. We probably never will. Life is hard here and after a while we stopped asking. I'm sorry to say it - but that's the Russian way."