In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the 1999 war of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.
The blasts hit Buynaksk on 4 September and Moscow on 9 and 13 September. Another bombing happened in Volgodonsk on 16 September. Chechen militants were blamed for the bombings, but denied responsibility, along with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.
A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin even praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. The next day, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved.
The official investigation of the Buynaksk bombing was completed in 2001, while the investigations of the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings were completed in 2002. In 2000, seven people were convicted of perpetrating the Buynaksk attack. According to the court ruling on the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings, which was announced in 2004, the attacks were organized and led by Achemez Gochiyaev, who remains at large. All bombings, the court ruled, were ordered by Islamist warlords Ibn Al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, who have been killed. Five other suspects have been killed and six have been convicted by Russian courts on terrorism-related charges.
Attempts at an independent investigation faced obstruction from the Russian government. State Duma deputy Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the State Duma in March 2000. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev. The commission was rendered ineffective because of the government's refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, have since died in apparent assassinations. The commission's lawyer and investigator Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and served four years in prison "for revealing state secrets".
Although the bombings were widely blamed on Chechen terrorists, their guilt was never conclusively proven. A number of historians and investigative journalists have instead called the bombings a false flag attack perpetrated by Russian state security services to win public support for a new war in Chechnya and to boost the popularity of Vladimir Putin prior to the upcoming presidential elections. Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who blamed the FSB for the bombings and was a critic of Putin, was assassinated in London in 2006. A British inquiry later determined that Litvinenko's murder was "probably" carried out with the approval of Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev.
Preceding events
Advance warnings about the impending bombings
In July 1999, Russian journalist Aleksandr Zhilin, writing in the Moskovskaya Pravda, warned that there would be terrorist attacks in Moscow organised by the government. Using a leaked Kremlin document as evidence, he added that the motive would be to undermine the opponents of the Russian president Boris Yeltsin. These included Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. However, this warning was ignored.
According to Amy Knight, "even more significant is the fact that a respected and influential Duma deputy, Konstantin Borovoi, was told on September 9, the day of the first Moscow apartment bombing, that there was to be a terrorist attack in the city. His source was an officer of the Russian military intelligence (GRU). Borovoy transmitted this information to FSB officials serving on Yeltsin's Security Council, but he was ignored."
War in Dagestan
On 7 August 1999, an Islamist group, led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, invaded the Russian republic of Dagestan. The war in Dagestan was allegedly planned in advance by the Russian government to justify starting the war in Chechnya. However, the initial plan included only a limited campaign to occupy the northern third of Chechnya up to the Terek River valley. After the apartment bombings, Putin approved a more ambitious campaign to subdue all of Chechnya.
Bombings
Overview
Four apartment bombings took place and at least three attempted bombings were prevented. All bombings had the same "signature", based on the nature and the volume of the destruction. In each case a powerful explosive was used, and the timers were set to go off at night and inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. The explosives were placed to destroy the weakest, most critical elements of the buildings and force them to "collapse like a house of cards". The individuals behind the bombings were able to obtain or manufacture several tons of powerful explosives and deliver them to numerous destinations across Russia.
Manezhnaya Square, Moscow
On 31 August 1999, at 20:00 local time, a bomb exploded in the amusement arcade of the Manezh Square shopping complex of Moscow. At least 29 people were injured. According to the FSB, the explosion had been caused by a bomb of about 300 grams of explosives.
On 2 September 1999, an unknown person called and claimed that the bombing was committed by the militant organization the "Liberation Army of Dagestan".
Buynaksk, Dagestan
On 4 September 1999, at 22:00, a car bomb detonated outside a five-story apartment building in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan, near the border of Chechnya. The building was housing Russian border guard soldiers and their families. Sixty-four people were killed and 133 were injured in the explosion.
On 4 September 1999, another bomb was discovered shortly after the explosion in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan. The defused bomb was in a car containing 2,706 kilograms (5,966 lb) of explosive material. It was discovered by local residents in a parking lot surrounded by an army hospital and residential buildings.
Moscow, Pechatniki
On 9 September 1999, shortly after midnight at 20:00 GMT, a bomb detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in southeast Moscow (19 Guryanova Street). The explosive power was equivalent to 300–400 kilograms (660–880 lb) of TNT. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 106 people inside (with early reports giving 93 dead) and injuring 249 others, and damaging 19 nearby buildings. A total of 108 apartments were destroyed during the bombing. An FSB spokesman announced that traces of RDX and TNT were found on items removed from the site of the explosion. Residents said a few minutes before the blast four men were seen speeding away from the building in a car.
The FSB declared the bombing a terrorist attack the following morning, 10 September 1999. That day, Vladimir Putin was due to fly to Auckland for the 1999 APEC summit; after a brief consultation with Boris Yeltsin, it was decided that the trip go ahead as planned. Yeltsin had originally intended to go himself, but reasoned to Bill Clinton that Putin would almost certainly be president himself by the year 2000, contrary to speculation over Yeltsin's successor. Prior to his flight, Putin telephoned Clinton and claimed he had "every reason to believe" that Chechen extremists were not only behind the attacks but had links to the Al-Qaeda group which had perpetrated the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam the previous year. Putin and Clinton would have their first face-to-face meeting in Auckland the following day, and Putin flew back shortly afterward.
Yeltsin ordered the search of 30,000 residential buildings in Moscow for explosives. He took personal control of the investigation of the blast. Putin declared 13 September a day of mourning for the victims of the attacks.
Moscow, Kashirskoye highway
On 13 September 1999, at 05:00, a large bomb exploded in a basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the place of the last attack. This was the deadliest blast in the chain of bombings (because the apartment was built with brick), with 119 people killed and 200 injured. The eight-story building was flattened, littering the street with debris and throwing some concrete pieces hundreds of meters away.
Moscow, prevented bombings
On 13 September 1999, a local businessman Achemez Gochiyaev called to police and reported about bombs located in apartment blocks on Borisovskiye Prudy and Kapotnya in Moscow. The police found and defused two bombs.
Gochiyaev claimed that he was framed by his old acquaintance, an FSB officer who asked him to rent basements "as storage facilities" at four locations where bombs were later found. After the second explosion on Kashirskoye highway Gochiyaev realized he was set up, called the police and told them about the basements of two other buildings at Borisovskie Prudy and Kapotnya, where the explosives were actually found and explosions averted. In 2002 Felshtinsky and Litvinenko obtained a written testimony from Achemez Gochiyaev as well as a video recording and several photographs about it. The statement by Gochiyaev was also received by Prima News agency.
Announcement of a Volgodonsk bombing in the Russian Duma
On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made an announcement, "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." When the Volgodonsk bombing happened on 16 September, Vladimir Zhirinovsky questioned Seleznyov in the Duma the following day, but Seleznyov turned his microphone off. Later, Seleznyov said it was a misunderstanding, and he actually referred to an explosion organized by criminal gangs which took place in Volgodonsk on 12 September.
According to Philip Short, Seleznyov made an announcement based on a wire service message about an explosion which took place in Volgodonsk on 12 September and killed one person. At the time it was thought that this (smaller and eventually found to be unrelated) explosion was another in the same series as the preceding ones in Moscow and Buynaksk.
Alexander Litvinenko believed that someone had mixed up the order of the blasts, "the usual Kontora mess up". According to Litvinenko, "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around". Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin said that the man who gave Seleznyov the note was indeed an FSB officer.
Volgodonsk, Rostov Oblast
A truck bomb exploded on 16 September 1999, outside a nine-story apartment complex in the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people and injuring 69. The bombing took place at 5:57 am. Surrounding buildings were also damaged. The blast also happened 14 km (9 mi) from a nuclear power plant. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree calling on law enforcement and other agencies to develop plans within three days to protect industry, transportation, communications, food processing centres and nuclear complexes.
Prevented bombings in Ryazan
At 20:30 on 22 September 1999, Alexei Kartofelnikov, a resident of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car. While the license plate indicated that the car was registered in Moscow, a sheet of paper was taped over the last two digits, and the number written on it implied that the car was local.
Kartofelnikov alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three sacks of white powder in the basement, each weighing 50 kg (110 lb). A detonator and a timing device were attached to the sacks. The detonator was reported by a Russian newspaper to be a 12-gauge shotgun shell filled with powder. The timer was set to 5:30 AM. Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and the timer. Reportedly, Tkachenko tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyser, which detected RDX vapors.
Inhabitants of the apartment building were evacuated. According to David Satter, residents of neighboring buildings fled their homes in terror, to the effect that nearly 30,000 residents spent the night on the street. Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city. As many as 1,200 local police officers were put on alert, the railroad stations and the airport were surrounded, and roadblocks were set up on highways leaving the city.
At 01:30 on 23 September 1999, explosive engineers of the Ryazan UFSB took a sample of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located about 1.6 km (1 mi) away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, which was also made from a shotgun shell, but the substance failed to detonate. At 05:00, Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing, noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 05:30. In the morning, Ryazan resembled a city under siege. Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 08:00 Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryazan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX. Vladimir Rushailo announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news report at 16:00 reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city.
At 19:00, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan, and called for the air bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny in response to the terrorism acts. He said:
If the sacks which proved to contain explosive were noticed, that means there is a positive side to it, if only the fact that the public is reacting correctly to the events taking place in our country today. I'd like ... to thank the public. ... No panic, no sympathy for the bandits.
On 23 September Natalia Yukhnova, a telephone service employee in Ryazan, tapped into a suspicious phone call to Moscow and overheard the following instruction: "Leave one at a time, there are patrols everywhere". The called number was traced to a telephone exchange unit serving FSB offices.
When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.
The position of Russian authorities on the Ryazan incident changed significantly over time. Initially, it was declared by the FSB and federal government to be a real threat. However, after the people who planted the bomb were identified, the official version changed to "security training".