But this devalued a huge part of their labor and risk, so such an option seems less likely.

For Gochiyayev, premature explosions were especially dangerous: the explosives had not yet been completely removed from the warehouse on Krasnodarskaya, which was rented in his real name.

But the claim that "having learned about the explosions, we fled to Chechnya" does not look like the truth at all. The bombing of the house in Volgodonsk on September 16, by all indications, was investigated by local detectives quite thoroughly. The suspects themselves admit some involvement in this event in a letter. This does not look like a panic flight to Chechnya at all.

The Perovsky Trace?

The accused write about the participation of a "well-known special services agent" Max Lazovsky in organizing the bombings. According to Yuri Felshtinsky, after receiving the written testimony of Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev, he sent them a photograph of Maxim Lazovsky for identification — one of the characters in Felshtinsky and Litvinenko's documentary book "FSB Blows Up Russia". The accused replied that they could not say for sure: other photographs were needed. Unfortunately, no other photographs could be found.

Regardless of where the accused learned Lazovsky's surname (even if only from the book), let's try to answer two questions. How likely is the participation of Lazovsky's people in the events under consideration? And how might Lazovsky be connected to the special services?

Maxim Yuryevich Lazovsky was the head of a group that, based on court decisions, can boldly be called a gang. Its legal cover was the oil trading firm "Lanako". The scale of its trading activity is indicated by the subject of a bloody dispute between "Lanako" and the firm "Viktor" in early 1994: it concerned the sale of an airplane. The firm also provided "security" services, or more precisely, services for extortion and intimidation of debtors: for example, during the provision of such a service to the firm "Rosmyasomoltorg", three guards of a debtor bank were killed. ("Rosmyasomoltorg" became famous several years later when the recent prime minister of Kadyrov's Chechnya, Mikhail Babich, served as deputy head of this firm). The last trial of Lazovsky's people ended in the summer of 2002, and the number of people killed during "Lanako's" activities, both their own and others, mentioned at this trial, exceeded two dozen.

The group was based at house 2 on Perevedenovsky Lane, near the "Baumanskaya" metro station. Since the name "Izmailovskaya criminal group" refers to another group, Lazovsky's people can be called the Perovskaya group — after the leader's place of residence. In criminological literature, it is called the Lazanskaya group — after the "Lazania" restaurant on Pyatnitskaya; since 1997, the building of the former restaurant has belonged to Alfa-Bank.

In addition to commercial activity, both legal and criminal, "Lanako" employees became famous for another occupation: bombings on transport.

Gang members (from left to right): Lazovsky (killed 2000), Polonsky (killed 1994), Shchelenkov (killed 1994), Nataev (killed 1994), Vorobyov (alive)
Railway bridge near "Botanichesky Sad" metro station

There were two bombings involving Lazovsky's people confirmed by courts (in 1997 and 2002): the bombing of a bridge over the Yauza (11/18/1994, the miner died in the explosion) and the bombing of bus No. 33 (12/27/1994, the driver survived, there was no one else on the bus; for this bombing, "Lanako" employee retired colonel Vladimir Vorobyov served three years). As "Lanako" driver Akimov claimed, Vorobyov blew up the bus at the request of "a certain Chechen".

But the only Chechen whose name appears in the press and the court verdict alongside Lazovsky's people is "Lanako" co-founder Atlan Nataev, who in the summer of 1994 was brutally