Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov (Kovalev S.A.)

From: luda1989 luda1989@yandex.ru
To: kovalev_sa@duma.gov.ru
Sent: January 10, 2003, 7:43 PM

Lev [Semyonovich Levinson], here is the statement made by the head of the GUVD Kulikov on September 21, 1999:

• Immediately after the explosion on Kashirka, the owner of a warehouse on Krasnodarskaya Street contacted the GUVD with a statement that he had rented the premises to a person named Laipanov.
• At this address, the police discovered bags of explosives.

Therefore, it is important to "finish off" the episode with Achimez Gochiyayev's calls (see the recommendations in the report on the topic by Zhenya and me). Otherwise, all our conclusions lose their force. L.

16.01.03

Who committed the 1999 terrorist attacks?

Tuesday, 19. Le Monde. Sophie Shihab.

In August 1999, a thousand Chechen and Dagestani militants led by field commander Shamil Basayev and his Saudi assistant Khattab invaded Dagestan – a small North Caucasian republic bordering Chechnya and also a subject of the Russian Federation. Basayev claimed he wanted to help local Islamists ready for an uprising. The Russian army expelled the invaders, wiping several villages off the face of the earth in the process. But, most importantly, Russia declared that it had become the target of an "attack by international terrorism" – a threat the Kremlin had been talking about for years, although it could not convince the West of it.

In Moscow, Boris Yeltsin took advantage of the situation to change the prime minister for the second time in two months. Viktor Chernomyrdin was replaced by the unknown Vladimir Putin, officially introduced on August 9, 1999, as the president's heir. "This man will lead to the final solution of the Chechen problem," Boris Yeltsin declared while introducing him on television. An unfortunate phrasing that no one, except the Chechens, paid attention to at the time.

Meanwhile, this moment was a turning point in modern Russian history, and the situation would clearly take a more dramatic turn. When on September 24, Vladimir Putin promised to "waste (terrorists) even in the outhouse" and sent bombers to Chechnya, Russia was shaken by a series of terrorist attacks. In less than three weeks (from August 31 to September 17), powerful explosions rocked a shopping center near the Kremlin, a small town in Dagestan, and most importantly – two densely populated apartment buildings in residential areas of Moscow and another building in the southern city of Volgodonsk. More than 300 killed, thousands wounded. The country was gripped by horror, traumatized. Russian authorities immediately pointed the finger at the culprits: the Chechens.

What happened in the summer of 1999?

This episode, fundamental to the new Russian regime and the starting point for the second Chechen war, is surrounded by so many mysteries and contradictions that the question remains open to this day: was this series of terrorist attacks a pre-arranged machination?

Rumors at the time immediately pointed to suspect "number one": Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, BAB, the Kremlin's gray eminence, one of the pioneers of post-Soviet "capitalism," who at that time increasingly looked like one of the main organizers of Russian chaos. His ties to the most radical Chechens, especially Shamil Basayev, were well known. He was suspected of organizing most of the kidnappings of foreigners in the North Caucasus, after which he appeared on television screens as a liberator. In September 1999, one of the members of his circle, a young French entrepreneur, contacted the newspaper Le Monde in Russia. In a telephone conversation, he betrayed his friend: "Boris is announcing new terrorist attacks. He has gone mad. Enough, I don't want to have anything more to do with him. Apparently, he thinks that by creating chaos, he can put his strongman in power. And at the same time grab new pieces of the Russian pie, including the Caspian. That's why he organized the Chechen invasion of Dagestan. Basayev received 30 million dollars and weapons for this."

Articles in the Russian press developed this thesis. About the invasion plans of Shamil Basayev, who already saw himself as the "emir" of an Islamic state in the form of Chechnya and Dagestan, liberated from the Russian yoke. Nevertheless, Russian military units were withdrawn from the Dagestani border just before the militant invasion, and then let them out of Dagestan. The opposition newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets," close to Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, published a series of recordings of telephone conversations between Boris Berezovsky and his Chechen friends from Basayev's circle after the attacks. The latter complained that they had not received all the promised money and said that the bombing of militants in Dagestan "was not provided for in the contracts." Denying everything, Berezovsky called these recordings a "dishonest compilation of conversations overheard at different times."

However, as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper claims, the FSB agent who handed over these materials was later killed.

Even more surprising is that on October 12, BAB's own publication, "Nezavisimaya Gazeta," through the mouth of

Analysis of the 1999 Events

...its editor-in-chief Vitaly Tretyakov, a well-informed person close to Boris Berezovsky, writes: "It is perfectly obvious that the Chechens were lured into Dagestan - they were allowed to get bogged down in this matter in order to obtain a legal pretext for restoring federal authority in the republic and starting the active phase of the fight against the terrorists gathered in Chechnya. Clearly, this was an operation of the Russian special services (not to be confused with the apartment bombings), and one politically sanctioned at the very top."

Subsequent readers of Vitaly Tretyakov see a double "message" in this:
* Yes, there is evidence that Boris Berezovsky was playing a dangerous game with terrorists, but it was in the interests of the oligarchy, which felt threatened, and with the blessing of the "top brass" (the top brass at that time was the crisis team leading Operation "Successor," acting on behalf of Boris Yeltsin, who was in the hospital: it included Boris Berezovsky, head of the presidential administration Alexander Voloshin, the president's daughter Tatyana, and her future husband Valentin Yumashev).
* The second part of the "message": don't even think that these people will ever admit to being involved in organizing terrorist attacks.

A clarification is necessary here, because in the meantime, events occurred in Ryazan. They made the thesis of the guilt of the Kremlin and its secret services more popular than ever.

The Ryazan Incident

On the evening of September 22, a resident of this city in central Russia notices three people carrying some bags from a car into the basement of a house. He raises the alarm, local FSB and police officers arrive and state that the bags contain explosives and are connected to a detonator. The residents of the house are urgently evacuated, and the contents of the bags are analyzed right on the spot: they find hexogen – the explosive substance used for the previous two explosions. The local FSB begins an investigation into the fact of terrorism, everyone welcomes the vigilance of citizens and authorities led by Vladimir Putin.

A day later, a real theater begins: the head of the Russian FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, declares that the incident was an "exercise" that his employees staged to check the country's readiness for terrorist attacks, that the bags actually contained sugar, and the detonator was fake. No one believes this, as these statements followed reports of the arrest of two FSB officers who planted the explosives. Journalists collect testimonies from local officials who stick to their original version: there were indeed explosives in the bags, and neither the local FSB leaders, nor the police, nor even the regional governor were informed of any "exercises." A soldier from a nearby military base claims that he was supposed to guard "sugar bags" in a special place, the contents of which – yellowish granules – were not sweet at all.

Aftermath and Investigation

But Ryazan is forgotten almost immediately. On September 24, Russian leaders led by Vladimir Putin make exceptionally bellicose statements on Chechnya. They announce that the perpetrators of the September terrorist attacks are known, but, unfortunately, they managed to escape to Chechnya. Dozens of names have been published, among which there is not a single Chechen: there are only five Karachays – natives of another North Caucasian republic. Incidentally, our French businessman, connected with Boris Berezovsky, mentioned a backup option in case the invasion of Dagestan proved impossible: to send Chechens to "liberate" Karachay-Cherkessia, where Wahhabis were very active, and where Boris Berezovsky would be elected as a State Duma deputy in the fall.

However, the "sugar bags" were marked with this republic (where, however, there is not a single sugar factory).

At the same time, efforts are being made to hide the results of the investigation into the Moscow bombings. Thus, the mistress of the main suspect, Karachay Achimez Gochiyayev, who rented the apartment where the explosives were stored, was detained, but released that same night "for unknown reasons," as the Kommersant newspaper wrote at the time. Well known to the authorities, Achimez Gochiyayev was twice sentenced to imprisonment and twice released early.

The official version of the terrorist attacks has a discrepancy on a very important point: first, the FSB announces that hexogen was used in all cases. This word becomes so common that the first Russian writer to write a book about it, Alexander Prokhanov, called it "Mr. Hexogen". But very quickly the explosive substance was officially declared a "mixture of ammonium nitrate with aluminum powder." Explanation: hexogen, the production of which is expensive, is manufactured only for military purposes and only by the military. It becomes known from a diplomatic source that the Russian leadership rejected all offers of cooperation with foreign experts.