3 Armenians were convicted & executed after a secret trial. Later emerged at least one of them had a cast-iron alibi. Sakharov & others thought the bombings were a provocation to discredit the emerging Human Rights movement.

In an election speech in Kazan, Tatarstan, Following this statements various Republics, notably Chechnya, follow his advice

On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR passed a Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, calling for a national referendum on the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union.

Dzhokhar Dudayev wins 1st elections a month later

Leaders of Russian, Ukrainian & Belarus soviet republics declare the USSR finished, behind Gen Sec Gorbachev's back

December 25, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union – or, as he put it, "I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the USSR."

Bloody conflict between the President and the Russian legislature results in greatly increased powers for the Presidency

Captain Andrey Shchelenkov. employee of Maz Lazovsky's firm

Colonel Vladimir Vorobyev, associate of Max Lazovsky

Sentenced for minor weapons offences, released after 2 years

Was investigating Max Lazovsky gang that had carried out earlier bombings. From Blowing Up Russia: "On April 12 1997 at the age of 39 Tskhai died suddenly from cirrhosis of the liver, although he didn’t drink or smoke. Presumably he was poisoned by the FSB because he had discovered the identities of the true leaders of Lazovsky’s group and realized exactly who had organized the explosions in Moscow. "

Murder initially blamed on wife but 3 burned corpses found near Rokhlin's home. FSB General Trofimov and Litvinenko agreed with many of Rokhlin's colleagues that his killing was orchestrated by the FSB and the assassins were subsequently killed. Apparently motivation for Litvinenko & team to whistle blow in 98 when given order to undertake killings - ie they realised if they started down the road of extra-legal killings they would likely become victims themselves.

In the first Chechen War, Yeltsin was impeached for using the Army inside Russia, against the constitution. "Federal Law No. 130-FZ of July 25, 1998 on the Struggle against Terrorism" removed that constraint

The Ryazan training exercise was supposedly a Vympel training operation https://www.spisok-putina.org/en/personas/tikhonov/

Worst terrorist bombing in Russia since Perestroika

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/03/jamesmeek

Russian Prosecutor General Skuratov issues arrest warrant for Berezovsky on Aeroflot corruption charges. Aeroflot linked to SVR, headed by Primakov

Jan Blomgren of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and Giulietto Chiesa of La Stampa write that there will be acts of “state terrorism” occuring in coming months in Russia

Aleksandr Zhilin writing in Moskovskaya pravda claimed there would terror attacks in Moscow aiming to undermine Yeltsin opponent and Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Warnings were passed to Moscow Deputy Mayor Yastrzhembskii. Source identified as Sergei Zverev, deputy head of Presidential Administration.

Putin won 232 votes of the 450 seat Duma, needing 226 to win. Without the 18 votes from the liberal Yabloko party he would have lost.

Journalist Alexander Khinshtein wrote in Moskovy Komsomolets "this means to paralyse all work for at least two months. Is this wrecking? Is it treason?"

Moscow shopping centre bombing kills 1, injures 30-40, "Okhotny Ryad" shopping mall on Manezhnaya Square

Novaya Gazeta receives phone call for Major Izmaylov, Army / Chechnya expert for NV who helped with prisoner exchanges, from Alexander Kapanadze, Russian NCO captured in Chechnya. Kapanadze warns of 10 planned bombings

Konstantin Borovoy, member of Duma, warned by GRU that bombings were to take place in Moscow. Passed information to FSB Moscow but ignored.

Mairbeck Vatchageav (In Chechen government at the time) says most of of the insurgents were Dagestani, not Chechen.

Quoting sources *inside* the FSB they say that current or ex special services agent conducting the bombing on Guryanov as evidence by huge quantities of explosives and professional execution.

Moscow, Kashirskoye Highway apartment bombing, kills 119 people

Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov announces, "I have just received a report. An apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." At this moment Seleznyov was employing Alexander Dugin as "geopolitics advisor".

Someone claiming to be Gochiyayev told Litvinenko that he warned the police.

https://lenta.ru/news/1999/09/14/explosive/

TV interview Auckland: "you can't call them people. If they are beasts they are rabid"

Postulated that it was former members of the Russian special services.

Moskovskij Komsomolets claimed it received warning of a bombing and warned police on the 15th. On the 17th, following this lead, the police found sacks of Hexogen in a basement on Butyrskii Val, northern Moscow. Thus saving 800 lives. John Dunlop says no follow-up to this story. Suggests a gov fake to impress public that police was doing something.

Ryazan. Kartofelnikov reports sacks being carried to basement. Police arrive & evacuate buildings

She went to find relatives of Denis Saitakov, a Chechen accused by police of involvement in the bombings. She found herself arrested and threatened in Kazan (Tartarstan capital)

Telephone operator Nadezhda Yukhanova in Ryazan reports overhearing conversation between bombers, number traced to FSB. Callers traced, arrested, produces FSB ID, released.

Interior minister Rushailo had just announce triumph by police in preventing bombing - he was surprised & angry by Patrushev announcemtn. FSB Ryazan furious.

The Chechen conflict entered a new phase on 1 October 1999, when Russia's new Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared the authority of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and his parliament illegitimate

Galkin subsequently gave an interview where he stated the FSB was behind the bombings. Possible that this was coerced but journalists present thought not. Novaya Gazeta subsequently published his statements. Galkin later retracted claiming torture. Later a film was made "Countdown" or "Личный номер" which fictionalised his story - Abromovich funded it, seen as propoganda cover up.

Duma elections. New, pro-Putin party Unity, backed by Berezovsky, wins 23% with B's ORT TV support. Berezovsky elected as Duma deputy

Allegedly heart attack, but his wife ordered independent autopsy which didn't find signs of heart attack. Reports that his bodyguards were treated for poisoning. Sobchak knew much about Putin's time in St Petersburg.

He was preparing a TV show 1999 bombings & Putin's childhood. Was flying on private jet to Kyiv with Chechen oil industry executive Ziya Bazhayev. Very high profile, respected journalist, son of start Soviet journalist.

Was his help significant in reconciling Russian public to KGB guy?

Novaya Gazeta journalist Pavel Voloshin publishes story of a soldier, Alexei Pinyaev, that took some powder from a sack marked "Sugar", added it to tea, tasted dreadful, reported it, his unit assessed as Hexogen. Voloshin subseqently retracted.

Publication delayed

Motion passes 197 to 137 but requires 226 for approval. In hindsight, extraordinary that 40% of Duma deputies wanted an investigation

Maxim Lazovsky, FSB officer accused by Litvinenko of orchestrating 1999 bombing, is shot. Also linked to 1994 Moscow bombings

In a surprisingly informal deal, the charges against Gusinsky were lifted after he signed an agreement with Mikhail Lesin, Minister of Media, on 20 July. After leaving the country, Gusinsky claimed he was pressured to sign the agreement by the prospect of the criminal investigation. Media-Most refused to comply with the agreement. Tax authorities brought a suit against Media-Most aiming to wind it up.

Identified by Mikhail Trepashkin from the original photofit of the guy who rented the basement for a bombing. Ex FSB & gangster. Apparently died. - But Cyprus death certificate shows 30/04/1998 - Appears in Panama Papers: https://panama.data2www.com/o/115735

Chechens blamed, case remains unsolved.

PR disaster for Putin, convinces him that independent TV is a really bad idea

Newspaper Obshchaya Gazeta published a letter signed by residents of the Ryazan block condemning the NTV program and praising the FSB. NTV journalists travelled to Ryazan and asked the signatories about the letter - they denied signing it. Novaya Gazeta compared the incident to the Soviet practice of publishing fake "letters from working paper" to support the regime.

Tajik journalist working for RFE/RL, was reporting on human rights in Chechnya. Murdered with an axe in Moscow

He'd been covering Chechen war and was planning to research Vera Putina story.

On 14 April 2001, Gazprom took over NTV by force and brought in its own management team. Its director-general Yevgeniy Kiselyov was replaced by Boris Jordan. Many leading journalists, including Yevgeniy Kiselyov, Svetlana Sorokina, Viktor Shenderovich, Vladimir A. Kara-Murza, Dmitry Dibrov, left the company. Leonid Parfyonov and Tatyana Mitkova remained. Kiselyov's Itogi program was closed down, replaced by Parfyonov's Namedni.

Krymshamkhalov wrote to Novaya Gazeta that Ugryumov arranged the bombings. Grigory Pasko, ex-Navy human rights & environmental journalist, wrote that Ugryumov had probably been murdered, a version corroborated by anonymous FSB whistle-blowers. A widely circulated but unverified comment on a blog states that Ruslan Saidov quoted Ugryumov as saying: "We had to blow up buildings to get him into the Kremlin. How much blood will it take to remove him?" This is the profile page for Saidov: http://www.pravo.mgimo.ru/?q=node/11181

Slovenia Summit At the closing press conference, in response to a question about whether he could trust Putin, Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul." Bush's top security aide Condoleezza Rice later wrote that Bush's phrasing had been a serious mistake. "We were never able to escape the perception that the president had naïvely trusted Putin and then been betrayed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia_Summit_2001

Leader of opposition to Taliban in Afghanistan

FSB Ryazan Press Conference On the eve of the professional holiday, the head of the department, Major General Oleg Mikhailovich Dukanov, told reporters about the results of the work of the FSB Directorate for the Ryazan Region for the year. Serviceman A.N. Pinyaev, who allegedly told the "truth" to a Novaya Gazeta journalist, said that the 137th Airborne Regiment had no warehouses of hexogen at its disposal. In December 1999, he was admitted to the hospital and was never seen again at the training ground. https://web.archive.org/web/20110131045636/http://rv.ryazan.ru/old/cgi-bin/main-n%3D1244%26m%3D8.htm

Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov opens public commission into the bombings with Sergei Yushenkov, Yury Shchekochikhin, Otto Lacis and Mikail Trepashkin

Screening Assassination of Russia, Litvinenko film about the bombings, attended by Sergei Yuschenkov

Claim made at a press conference run by Berezovsky. Nikita Chekulin had been director of Moscow office that handled explosives. He left his job, and Russia, and got into Berezovsky's circle. Later volte-face to blame Berezovsky for Litvinenko's murder & the bombings.

Khattab died of poisoning after a Dagestani messenger hired by the Russian FSB gave him a poisoned letter.

VTsIOM published the results of a public opinion poll: more than half were in favor of showing the film "Blowing up Russia" on television; 6 percent answered that they were sure that the FSB was involved, 37 percent said they did not rule it out, 38 percent did not admit the involvement of the authorities, and 16 percent were convinced that Chechens blew up the houses. About 40 percent of those surveyed agreed with the need for an independent investigation.

Lebed, a popular ex-army General, had previously stated he was almost convinced that the apartment bombings were an FSB provocation.

In response to a request from Duma Deputy Alexander Kulikov the Prosecutor General issues a report whitewashing the FSB's version of events in Ryazan. Dunlop p208

The author claims to have access to inside document for the FSB "training operation" in Ryazan. Describes a light-hearted breezy operation by some good chaps. Explains away awkward questions such as why was a stolen car used - "It was Petr's car!"

Framework for banning books etc used to convict Navalny 2021 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-anti-extremism-law-blunt-instrument-navalnu-jehovahs-witnesses/31230149.html

Chechens take theatre audience hostage. Siege ensues. Everyone gassed. Chechens shot, but some disappeared. Lots of civilians dead. Suspect FSB involvement to shift international opinion against Chechnya

Putin's plan to cast Chechens as terrorists pays off

Kovalev took over as chair

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/28895

Unlike 1999 bombings, where nobody claimed responsibility.

The day before the trial of the Chechen accused where he could have introduced evidence regarding the mis-identification of the person who rented the basement - Gochiayev vs Vladimir Romanovich

Trepashkin cannot submit evidence about Gochiyaev / Romanovich because he's been arrested

Blamed on Chechens trying to destabilise situation before Duma elections

Accused of being part of the gang that arranged the bombings. Only evidence produced related to them driving lorries which allegedly carried explosives.

https://www.rferl.org/a/1143106.html

..citing complaints about the film from the Russian delegation:

Had been undertaking extensive interviews with Chechen gangster/warlords. Authorities accused Chechens who where acquitted at closed trial. Case remains unsolved.

Former St Petersburg business associate of Putin. Died after drinking tea at FSB headquarters.

Primarily released as Личный номер

He claimed FSB connected to killing of Rokhlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Trofimov

Nikita Chekulin was head of the Moscow MVD building, part of Lubyanka complex, that Novaya Gazeta jounalist Pavel Voloshin identified as the source of the Hexogen. He defected to London in 2001, took Berezovsky's largesse, friends with Litvinenko, then returned to Moscow and betrayed Berezovsky. Significant part of the process of smearning Berezovsky.

Interview given on Berezovsky's birthday. He says Alex Goldfarb, Berezovsky's associate, told him what to say. Also reveals that he had been secretly recording Berezovsky's conversations. "Moskovsky Komsomolets http://www.compromat.ru/page_18083.htm

Federal Law No. 35-FZ of March 6, 2006 Adopted by the State Duma on February 26, 2006 Approved by the Council of the Federation on March 1, 2006 "On Counteraction to Terrorism" This Federal Law shall establish the fundamental principles of counteraction to terrorism, the legal and organizational basics of preventing terrorism and struggling against it, of reducing to a minimum and (or) liquidating the consequences of manifestations thereof, as well as the legal and organizational basics of using the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in struggling against terrorism. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6188658.stm

And Gorbachev 10%

https://www.svoboda.org/a/1885663.html -Litvinenko was due to meet with Igor Ponomarev, Russia's representative to the International Maritime Organization. But he died suddenly of a heart attack on October 30, 2006. "Yes, Igor Ponomarev died, and he was probably killed. He died while at the London Opera. He said that he was thirsty, drank three bottles of water in a row, and then suddenly died. English doctors say that such thirst is a typical symptom of radioactive poisoning. It was impossible to perform an autopsy, since the Russian embassy immediately took Ponomarev's body, it was urgently delivered to Russia and cremated."

Russia retaliates with cyber attacks, road & rail blockages

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/16/russia.politics

Initially 14 items. 5,000+ by 2022

6th anniversary of the storming of the Dubrovka theatre.

Dates confused by air war, south ossetian forces

Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests The Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests (Russian: ) was a commission in the Russian Federation that was set up by a decree issued by president Dmitry Medvedev on 15 May 2009,[1] officially to "defend Russia against falsifiers of history and those who would deny Soviet contribution to the victory in World War II".[2] The commission was headed by Medvedev's Chief of staff Sergey Naryshkin. The decree establishing the commission was invalidated on 14 February 2012,[3] and the commission thus ceased to exist. The commission has been described as a further regress toward Soviet and Stalinist practices, glorifying the Soviet Union and its crimes.[4]

Reviews case of the 199 bombings. Raises various questions especially about the person that rented the basement on Guryanov - the government accused Gochiyaev but Trepashkin recognised Romanovich - what happened to Romanovich?

Apparent Romanovich's family complained & demanded a retraction of the claim that he might have been involved. But the story was originally Trepashkin's, told in 2003. Why did the family wait for 6 years to complain? Also apparently, "new" evidence showed that Romanovich died in Cyprus earlier, in 1998.

Mikhail Kodanev, who was convicted in 2004 for organizing the murder of State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov, stated that the real masterminds behind the crime were businessman Boris Berezovsky

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/30/the-kremlin-is-trying-to-whitewash-russias-stalinist-past-a67096 Indeed, the very raison d’etre of the RMHS, established by presidential decree in 2012, is “to consolidate the forces of the state and society in … countering attempts at distortion, ensure the popularization of the achievements of military-historical science, raising the prestige of military service and patriotic education.”

Admits "diplomacy a factor"

Dozhd ran a poll on its website and on live TV asking viewers if Leningrad should have been surrendered to the invading Nazi army in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives during the siege of Leningrad. Presenters cited Viktor Astafyev and compared it with the 1812 capture of vacant Moscow. Within 30 minutes, Dozhd removed the poll and apologized for incorrect wording. On 29 January, the largest Russian TV providers disconnected the channel. Dozhd was forced to move to a private apartment in October 2014. In November 2013, two months before the controversy, Dozhd broadcast a report by anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny investigating high-ranking officials including Vyacheslav Volodin. The channel's owner, Natalya Sindeyeva, suggested that the program caused the campaign against the channel.

In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War. Wikipedia Dates: Feb 20, 2014 – Mar 26, 2014

The law introduced Article 354.1 to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, making it a criminal offence "to deny facts recognised by the international military tribunal that judged and punished the major war criminals of the European Axis countries [this refers to the Nuremberg trials], to approve of the crimes this tribunal judged, and to spread intentionally false information about the Soviet Union’s activities during World War II" as well as "the spreading of information on military and memorial commemorative dates related to Russia’s defence that is clearly disrespectful of society, and to publicly desecrate symbols of Russia’s military glory".

It is alleged that Lesin was killed before he could talk to US prosecutors about Russian propaganda efforts.

https://www.rferl.org/a/mironenko-state-archive-chief-removed-from-post-panfilov-legend/27619460.html

https://pen.org/advocacy-case/yury-dmitriev/

In Salisbury

Initially convicted in 2004 for driving trucks with explosives for the Volgodonsk bombing.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-memorial-international-supreme-court-closed/31629548.html