Investigation of the Episode at Borisovskie Prudy

An investigation of the episode at Borisovskie Prudy could answer the question: did Achimez Gochiyayev himself really call the city's emergency services and warn about the bombs planted here and on Krasnodarskaya? Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to make a definitive conclusion.

Resident Testimony

Almost all the residents of the house we interviewed (four out of five) confidently asserted that they were evacuated on the 13th, the day of the second explosion, in the first half of the day (the range was from noon to 2:00 PM).

• Police officers rang apartment doorbells.
• A car with loudspeakers stood opposite the house.
• Neighboring houses were also evacuated.
• Traffic on the street was blocked several hundred meters from house 16.

According to neighbors, one of the residents reported the bomb to the police by phone: she saw bags of sugar being brought into the premises and found it strange that they were not picked up for several days.

Official Inquiry and Responses

The Chairman of the Public Commission for the investigation of house bombings (hereinafter the Commission), Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov, sent a deputy inquiry to the services mentioned in the terrorist's penitent letter: the police, the "ambulance" service, and the rescue service.

The inquiry contained a request to answer: were warnings received about explosives planted at Borisovskie Prudy and in Kapotnya (this is how the terrorist named these places)?

• A substantive response was sent only by the city's civil defense and emergency situations service.
• As the rescuers write, they received a report about explosives planted at Borisovskie Prudy from the "ambulance" service on September 13 at 2:08 PM.

This does not contradict the witnesses' testimony about the time of discovery. In principle, it also does not contradict Achimez Gochiyayev's words that he called "immediately" as soon as he learned about the second explosion, although even the earliest moment—before noon—is, of course, not "immediately."

Analysis of Reporting Channels

It can be assumed that a vigilant woman had the strange idea to report the bags not to the police, but to doctors: perhaps she did this while calling a doctor to her home or undergoing some procedure. However:

• Achimez Gochiyayev could not have known about this (in any case, we were unable to find a single publication that could have suggested this to him).
• We consider the probability that he simply guessed the channel through which the warning about the bomb was received to be quite small.
• Of course, in his confession, he listed three emergency services, but "ambulance" looks quite unusual in this list.

The rescuers deny that there was a simultaneous warning about Kapotnya. Furthermore, the Commission, as far as we know, was unable to contact them further and clarify the inquiry. After all, Krasnodarskaya Street is, strictly speaking, not Kapotnya, although it is close to it. It is more like Lyublino.

Warehouse Discovery and Inspection Data

The discovery of the warehouse on Krasnodarskaya purely by chance just a day after the start of mass checks is very unlikely.

• The warehouse was found, according to a police report, on September 14 (although its contents were removed for some reason on September 16; it can be assumed that an ambush for terrorists was held here).
• Already on September 15, the Main Internal Affairs Directorate (GUVD) published its request for drivers of light trucks who carried cargo from house 70 on Krasnodarskaya in the first days of September to respond.
• On the same day, it was announced that a "Mercedes" trailer that brought explosives from the Stavropol Krai was found at the 51st kilometer of the Moscow Ring Road.

Inspection Statistics

On September 14, the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate reported:

• 7,908 premises on the first floors of buildings, basements, and semi-basements were inspected in 24 hours.
• Ten days later, the final figure was reported: a total of over 110,000 attics and about 115,000 basements were inspected.

Thus, the probability of finding both remaining warehouses in the first 24 hours is about three percent. This probability will not increase much even if we assume that in the first 24 hours only premises in the South-Eastern District were inspected, but this is not the case.

This is also Krasnodarskaya, 70

The address "Krasnodarskaya, 70" itself then covered a huge territory on three sides of the intersection near the "Moskva" shopping center. On this territory—and a large warehouse building...