The Economist

09.03.2002. The world this week

Boris Berezovsky, one of Russia's richest men, in exile because of fraud charges, accused Russian special services of the apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1999. He stated that the bombs were a pretext for then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, now the Russian president, to restart a winning election war against rebellious Chechnya.

Photo: Berezovsky against the background of a house skeleton

Le Figaro, Paris

06.03.2002. Berezovsky lays out his evidence against Moscow. Russia: Exile oligarch in London presented a documentary film implicating Putin in the 1999 attacks

Moscow: Karim Talbi.
"You know well that Russian politics and Russian roulette are one and the same," Boris Berezovsky recently told "Figaro". Yesterday, the former grand manipulator of the Yeltsin family, the oligarch who helped get Vladimir Putin elected, presented a documentary film in London, where he found refuge to escape Russian justice. Promised many weeks earlier, this film presented, according to the oligarch, evidence of the involvement of Russian special services in the deadly 1999 attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk.

Under the guise of evidence, this nine-minute film presents primarily a selection of articles from the Russian and French press, as well as statements from an anonymous witness regarding the apartment bombings. Boris Berezovsky, meanwhile, went further than usual, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin knew that the FSB was involved in the 1999 attacks.

Let's recall the facts. On September 9 and 13, 1999, explosions of two residential buildings caused 234 deaths in Moscow. On the 16th, 19 people died in an attack of the same type in Volgodonsk. "At the very least, the President of Russia knew that the FSB was behind the campaign of bombings that occurred in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and Ryazan," Boris Berezovsky stated.

The former oligarch also cited as special evidence an incident detailed in the film that occurred on September 22, 1999, in Ryazan, when FSB agents were involved in planting what their superiors later presented as a "fake bomb" as part of anti-terrorist exercises. According to Berezovsky, this bomb was, on the contrary, quite real and was supposed to explode in the same way as the other shells. Why were the attacks financed by the Russian authorities? To justify a new war in Chechnya and dress candidate Putin in a "presidential savior" outfit. "The special services decided to organize these attacks," Berezovsky recently told "Figaro". "To make emotions soar, to raise Russian public opinion against the Chechens and unleash a war in Chechnya."

Forced to respond to these accusations, the FSB, the former KGB, contented itself with classifying Berezovsky's claims as "complete nonsense." For the official thesis of the Russian authorities remains the involvement of Chechen terrorists. The only problem: the authorities have never succeeded in putting them out of action. On the contrary, two suspects who appeared in court last fall were acquitted. At the end of January, the FSB stated that "all those responsible for the explosions are known and some of them have been arrested," but refused to provide more extensive information.

The Kremlin, which had long been preparing for Boris Berezovsky's speech, could have reacted in two ways: silence or counterattack. By sending a request to the prosecutor's office, it chose the second solution. A few hours before Boris Berezovsky's press conference in London, the Russian prosecutor's office announced that it possessed materials proving that the Russian billionaire financed military...