Information Regarding Ryazan Exercises

There was information from a Kremlin source that the main TV viewer very much disliked the program about the Ryazan "exercises."

That very house in Ryazan on Novosyolov Street.

...the invisible pendulum hanging in the anxious air, not so much a new time. From the podium, the then Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Rushailo was reporting—not so much to journalists as to the public. After the apartment bombings, he had also been appointed head of the anti-terrorist commission. In the presidium, in an order known only to them, sat the cream of the security forces and representatives of other agencies. FSB head Patrushev looked thoughtfully and sternly into the hall from a seat of honor on the stage.

The monotony of the minister's speech was suddenly drowned out by the shushing of numerous correspondents. They fidgeted in the row reserved for the press and, turning their heads to their detached cameramen, hissed: "Film it, film it!".

Rushailo began talking about joint successes with counterintelligence. In Ryazan, a large-scale terrorist attack was successfully prevented. Three bags of explosive material based on hexogen with a timer turned on and a detonator attached were removed from the basement of a multi-story residential building...

...the publicized Ryazan sensation and the prospect of an inevitable scandal between the FSB and the MVD looked very grim.

And verbatim about the terrorist attack in Ryazan, Patrushev then said the following:

• "I think they didn't work quite clearly—these were exercises, there was sugar there, not hexogen."

The time was 13:10, the nearest news broadcast was at 14:00. The pause that arose on the other end of the telephone line left no hope. If the editor-in-chief said "no" now, everything heard would simply have to be forgotten.

But the editor-in-chief told me: "If you recorded everything you're talking about, then we'll put this soundbite on the air at 14:00."

At 14:15, immediately after the news release, news agencies raced to replicate Patrushev's interview, uniformly introducing it with the words: "As the FSB director told our correspondent...". I knew many of these correspondents personally. But relationships did not extend to work. If television reports news not yet known to news agen...

...the boomerang returned to his department on Zhitnaya, and then in a few years the Chekists captured key posts left by police generals without a fight...

People immediately agreed to participate in "Independent Investigation." It was felt that after that night their attitude toward life had changed. Having escaped death, whether in training or for real, they now desperately wanted to know the truth.

The involuntary participants in the exercises wanted to talk in the studio with FSB representatives.

But already a few days later, the residents of the house, which had become a visual aid by someone's unknown choice, were ready for revelations—with any composition of program participants. And here's why. In front of the doors of the Ryazan residents' apartments, under the guise of social workers, energetic types began to appear more and more often, making it clear that in the future, utility and housing improvements would be possible only if those gathered to go to the Ostankino studio refused the trip.

The types informed their FSB bosses that we would bring about sixty people from Ryazan on two buses, who would take part in "Independent Investigation." At Lubyanka, they made a decision: to talk to the people. You can send journalists away... Here, the situation began to develop according to a scenario dangerous for the Chekist department. Roles were assigned to employees and instructions were given: to defend the version of the exercises in the studio to the last, while referring to the necessity and, most importantly, the legality of such an experiment.

And yet they were sure that the program would not happen—they would be afraid of the consequences. The television company was already preparing for defense. Some journalists had already thrown out white flags and, choosing the second button on the remote, after yesterday's "no" began to say a win-win "yes." The editor-in-chief left suddenly.

I learned from my bosses only after the program aired that there was a call from the very pointed top with a request not to conduct "Independent Investigation" on the Ryazan events on the eve of the election of the successor president.

The country's main channel, in its main news program the day before our broadcast, reported on an allegedly planned large-scale provocation conceived by a hostile television company against the emerging government. It was said that for participation in the commissioned show in "Ostankino," certain Ryazan extras were being brought, and before entering the studio, they would be given a fee—$100 each.

Residents of the surviving house and Chekists preferred to sit on different stands. Then...