The Ryazan Exercises Scandal

The topic of the Ryazan exercises and the unconvincing justification of the FSB leadership, which claimed that the sacks placed under the house on Novoselov Street contained sugar, was initiated by 'Novaya Gazeta'.

• In early 2000, our correspondent, having traveled to Ryazan, spoke with an explosives expert who was among the first to arrive at the site of the exercises and determined that the sacks contained hexogen ('Novaya Gazeta' No. 6, 8 for 2000).
• Soon after, our staff managed to find a paratrooper soldier who, on the territory of a military unit near Ryazan, guarded a warehouse with hexogen packed in sacks like sugar (No. 10 for 2000).
• The soldier's testimony was recorded on a voice recorder.

After the publication, a massive scandal erupted.

• The entire guard and the explosives expert were sent to Chechnya.
• A whole campaign was launched on official TV channels. Generals spoke.
• At first, the military denied the existence of the soldier and the warehouse.
• Then they admitted that the soldier and the warehouse were real, but resolutely dismissed the hexogen in the sacks.

This story received an even more interesting continuation after NTV and Nikolai Nikolaev conducted their own independent investigation.

ECHO OF TRUTH

What happened behind the scenes of the programs and how the FSB tried to disrupt the independent investigation

INTERFERENCE ON AIR

Nikolai NIKOLAEV, special for 'Novaya':
'By the middle of the broadcast, the faces of the counterintelligence officers expressed overt love for all humanity'

Late September 1999. Moscow, sleep-deprived, as if pressed into the ground and grown shorter. Nights were awaited with a sense of an impending trial by fear. One question: where? In the attic, in the basement, behind the radiator in the entrance, on the seat of a car parked in the yard?

By morning, this question would already be pounding in the temples with the regularity of a metronome, forcing one to count every second not yet stolen by an invisible, switched-on timer... Another nervous half-slumber is over. Entrance doors slam, houses empty. That's it, they're unlikely to blow it up now.

...The expanded board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the ministerial building on Zhitnaya began with a demonstration of increased security measures. Editorial cars were forbidden to be left nearby.

In the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police officers specially assigned for this purpose watch the work of television journalists. For some reason, a statue of Themis is installed in the lobby of the building. The policemen, apparently, do not really understand what relation this sculpture has to them, and they categorically forbid cameramen to film it. They are guarding justice.

The event, which had been planned the day before for the news, turned out to be a formal, 'parquet' affair. After so many tragedies of the beginning autumn, none of the TV people expected any sensations on this day, September 24. But a chain of coincidences had already wound into a tight spring...

...this corridor, guarded from journalists, to the steps of the canteen is about thirty meters. One could only hope that by stopping near the policeman standing guard here, it would be possible to break through with a request for an interview. The hope was weak. As a rule, generals wishing to flash on the screen are easily extinguished by the gastric juice they secrete.

My frantic cry with a plea to say a few words for NTV still stopped Patrushev and forced him to approach the ambush set for him.

As always, I started with an unnecessary, routine question. But the spring, without my contrivances, leaving sharp edges, snapped and broke. It was necessary to understand why Rushailo was unaware of what Patrushev had just reported.

Against the background of the disastrous consequences, then why pay money to their workers?

A classic case. In '94, they played a prank on Ernest Matskyavichyus, who was then working as a correspondent. He, naive, asked colleagues: does anyone know how to pronounce 'parliament' in Kazakh? He wanted to insert this word into his report. Immediately, obliging correspondents with stone-cold serious faces, without looking up from their computers, gave him the answer: tyrmandyr. This Martian translation, amidst general laughter, was broadcast on TV an hour later. Matskyavichyus later had to explain himself. The bosses tried to look stern but were choking with laughter. And the next morning, in the editorial office of a serious newspaper, there was a meeting, and the newspaper managers held up Matskyavichyus as a correspondent who had deeply studied the topic (he even knows the Kazakh word!) as an example to everyone gathered...

People, many of whom were already preparing for bed, young and old, children with wet heads after bathing, even bedridden invalids, were forced to leave their apartments by genuinely nervous policemen. Already in the morning, a real general, the head of the Ryazan FSB Directorate, announced to the evacuees gathered in a nearby cinema that something had been found in the basement of their miraculously survived house that allowed them all to be called saved and congratulated on their second birthday. Therefore, when a few days later successful exercises in Ryazan were announced, those on whom civic vigilance was allegedly being tested and Chekist efficiency was being practiced did not believe it.

The then-minister Rushailo also treated this with doubt. However, this distrust...