A Russian Diary (10 page)

The signatories then submit a list of questions to the candidates, which they have previously addressed to Putin without any response. Regarding the blowing up of the apartment buildings:

1. Why did the authorities obstruct the investigation of events in Ryazan when FSB agents were caught red-handed preparing to blow up an apartment building?
   

2. How did the speaker of the state Duma come to issue a statement about the blowing up of the apartment building in Volgodonsk three days before it occurred?
   

3. Why was there no investigation of the discovery of the high explosive, hexogen, in sacks labeled
   SUGAR
   at the army base in Ryazan in the autumn of 1999?
   

4. Why under pressure from the FSB, was the investigation closed into the transfer of hexogen from army storage facilities to fictitious firms through the Roskonversvzryvtsentr Research Institute?
   

5. Why was the lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin arrested after establishing the identity of the FSB agent who rented the premises for placing the bomb in the apartment building on Gurianov Street?
   

Regarding the Dubrovka siege [the taking hostage of the audience of the musical
Nord-Ost]:

1. Why was the decision made to begin a gas attack at the very moment when a real opportunity had arisen to negotiate the release of the hostages?
   

2. Does the fact that the authorities decided to use a slow-acting gas, which would have given time for explosive devices to be detonated, indicate that they already knew the terrorists had no real explosives on them?
   

3. Why were all the terrorists, including those who had been incapacitated, killed when they could have been arrested and required to give evidence to an inquiry?
   

4. Why did the authorities conceal the fact that K. Terkibaev, who, after his name became known, died in a car crash, was an FSB agent who took part in the seizure of the theater?
   

5. Why, when the assault was planned, was no attempt made to organize on-site medical assistance for the hostages, a neglect that resulted in the deaths of 130 people?
   

The only replies were from Irina Khakamada and Ivan Rybkin. She has supported the
Nord-Ost
victims from the very beginning. Altogether, Khakamada is beginning to seem the most normal of the candidates.

Everything she has said so far has been worth listening to. She has been saying that under Putin the country cannot progress. Irina Khakamada:

I have not studied the explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk, so I shall reply only to the questions about the events at Dubrovka.

The decision to mount the assault was made on the third day of the siege. I was inside the building on the first day and am replying on the basis of what happened then. My impression is that on the first day it would have been possible to free the hostages through negotiation. I believe the purpose of the assault was a show of strength, and that saving people's lives was not a high priority.

It remains a riddle to me how it was possible to kill every one of the terrorists, who were situated in different parts of the building and auditorium; and why, after the gas attack, all the terrorists died, while some of the people next to them died and others survived. I suspect they were disposed of because as living witnesses they might have testified in open court that the hostages could have been released. I emphasize that this is a suspicion, because there should be a presumption of innocence.

We in the Union of Right Forces organized an investigation of our own, and came to the conclusion that no thought was given to trying to rescue the hostages. Everything was unplanned and the result was a shambles. The military side was deemed the most important aspect of the operation, and nobody was even appointed to take care of the civilians.

I can add on my own account that after the Dubrovka tragedy Mr. Putin misled the whole world. Replying to a question from a journalist from The Washington Post, he said, “These people did not die as a result of the gas, because the gas was harmless. It was harmless, and we can say that in the course of the operation not a single hostage was harmed [by the gas].”

While President Putin and his cohorts were quaking with fear in the Kremlin, not for the lives of their citizens, but of losing power, a number of people were brave enough to try to save the hostages by voluntarily going in to the terrorists in order to attempt to free at least the children. I thank God that I, the mother of two children, had the courage and resolution to go in and negotiate with the terrorists.

In the past I have not made public much of what I saw in the Dubrovka theater complex or, in particular, how the president and members of his administration reacted to my effort to save lives. I mistakenly thought that President Putin would ultimately help to establish the truth, and would apologize for his order to employ a deadly gas. Putin, however, remains silent and gives no answers to people who have lost those dearest to them. The president has made his choice and decided to conceal the truth. I also have made my choice and will tell the truth. As a result of my negotiations with the terrorists in the theater on October 23, 2002, and what happened subsequently, I came to the conclusion that the terrorists had not the least intention of blowing up the theater complex, and that the authorities had not the least interest in trying to save all the hostages.

The main events occurred after I returned from negotiating with the terrorists. Alexander Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration, threatened me and ordered me not to interfere further.

Thinking over what occurred, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that this terrorist act helped to reinforce anti-Chechen hysteria, to prolong the war in Chechnya, and to maintain the president's high approval rating. I am convinced that Putin's actions in covering up the truth are a crime against the state. I undertake that, when I become president, the citizens of Russia will learn the truth about the blowing up of the apartment buildings, the tragedy at the theater complex, and many other crimes committed by the authorities. Recently, many of my friends have tried to dissuade me from entering the presidential election. In public they state that I am almost betraying the interests of the democrats, who are calling for a boycott of the elections, but in private they warn that I will simply be killed if I tell the truth. I am not afraid of this terrorist regime. I appeal to everybody else not to be intimidated by them. Our children must grow up free people.

Ivan Rybkin also replied:

Both the blowing up of the apartment buildings and the events at Dubrovka are a consequence of the “antiterrorist operation” and, more precisely of the second Chechen war being waged in the North Caucasus. President Putin rode into the Kremlin on the crest of this wave, promising to restore order. He has proved incapable of doing so. People are dying in terrorist outrages everywhere. The war continues without respite, for which Putin and his immediate entourage are guilty. To this day there is much that is completely unclear and inexplicable about all these tragedies.

Concerning the blowing up of the apartment buildings:

I believe a crime was committed by the security agencies. Even if we accept the claim that [the FSB agents discovered planting explosives] in Ryazan were engaged in “exercises,” all the official rules and instructions were ignored.

How did Seleznyov, the speaker of the Duma, know? This is not just odd, it is appalling. Having made this announcement, he should face criminal investigation and reveal where he got his information, so that we can see clearly who really ordered and who really carried out this atrocity…

The approaches and training that the security forces are receiving in the course of the Chechen war are being extrapolated to the whole of Russia. They are totally brazen and believe that the end result is all that matters. This is extremely dangerous.

On Dubrovka:

All the behavior of the state authorities points to the fact that when it became clear there was a real possibility of freeing the hostages, they decided to mount an assault. Everyone in Moscow and all over Russia is talking about the fact that the assault was ordered to conceal the real facts about what happened there.

Was the government in the know? I find it particularly unpleasant to answer this question, because during the events in Budyonnovsk, at a very secret meeting, the security forces contradicted everything the government has maintained. I was told that this gas and other chemical means could not be used in a bus with hostages because the terrorists would have time to detonate their explosives. As they were losing consciousness they might also start firing at random. As it was used this time, the government clearly knew there would be no explosions.

The terrorists were shot while unconscious because they would have had a great many interesting things to tell an independent inquiry. The whole of Russia is asking why unconscious people were shot; identified, approached, and shot in the head.

The authorities failed to keep [the FSB agent] Terkibaev out of public view, and that is why he was killed. I know how angry people were, because they knew Terkibaev had authorization from the presidential administration. He himself boasted about the fact that he had managed to redirect [the terrorist leader Movsar] Baraev's attack from the Duma to Dubrovka.

The lack of assistance to those who suffered during the assault was barbaric, and is wholly on the conscience of those responsible for the final phase. There is an attempt to divert popular anger over the lack of timely medical aid onto the mayor of Moscow, but it is not the mayor who is responsible for fighting terrorism; that is the job of the FSB.

The cascade of medals and stars onto the chests and epaulets of security forces who ought to have been punished for letting Baraev's unit through in the first place confers honor neither on those decorated nor on the individual who decorated them. Again, we need an independent inquiry.

I am not one of those who believe that the time will come when the archives are opened and we discover the truth. That day will never come. We need an investigation now, so that such an atrocity is never repeated, so that there is never a repetition of this appalling mistreatment of our citizens.

Meanwhile, as a result of defections, the United Russia Party has gained a sufficient majority in the Duma to change the Constitution. Gennadii Raikov applied to join them today, taking the number of Putin's supporters in the Parliament to 301.

Apathy is ever more palpable; people are certain that nothing good can be expected. The presidential election is discussed on television, but otherwise nobody says a word about it. They already know how it will end. There is no debate, no excitement.

In Moscow the best-known Russian human rights campaigners this evening celebrated the Old [Russian Orthodox] New Year in their own way. They gathered at the Andrey Sakharov Museum and Social Center to try to form either a broad democratic front or a democratic club (as Vladimir Ryzhkov is suggesting), and to do it outside the traditional democratic institutions of the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko.

The most businesslike proposals were made by Yevgeny Yasin: “If we want a really broad union, we need a very limited program. We need very few demands, in order to get as many people as possible to join. Our one aim should be to defend the gains of Russian democracy, to confront the authoritarian police state regime.”

Toward the end of a heated discussion that lasted many hours, tidings from prison were brought to the Sakharov Center. Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer, arrived direct from Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where she had had a meeting with her client Mikhail Khodorkovsky She conveyed Khodorkovsky's good wishes to all the champions of human rights and the news that “the only ideal that enthuses him today is the ideal of defending human rights. If he gets out of prison he is determined to devote himself exclusively to working for the betterment of society.”

They have managed to bring an oligarch to civic consciousness. The activists clapped like children at a Christmas party.

January 14

Moscow's Basmanny court, as much in the Kremlin's pocket as ever, continues to refine the art of selective justice, where what counts is not the law, but the individual it is being applied to. If that person is an enemy of Putin, the Basmanny judges are pedantic; if he is a favorite, they do not get vexed over legal niceties, or even require him to attend the hearing.

Today Judge Stanislav Voznesensky was considering a claim from Nadezhda Bushmanova of Ryazan Province, the mother of Alexander Slesarenko, a soldier killed in the second Chechen war. Alexander was fighting in the Armavir special operations unit of the Interior Ministry.

In September 1999, at the very beginning of the second Chechen war, this unit was included in a special operations group under the command of Viktor Kazantsev, at that time commander of the North Caucasus military district. Kazantsev committed an error and Alexander, among many others, was killed. Here is what happened:

Everything began on September 5, officially the first day of the war, when Putin issued a decree to begin an “antiterrorist operation.” There was fighting in villages in Dagestan. At around 1700 hours the fighters occupied the Dagestan village of Novolakskoye on the border with Chechnya, and a unit of the Lipetsk militia special operations unit found itself holed up in the militia station. It needed rescuing. On the night of September 5 the 120 men of Special Operations Unit 15 were called into action. Among them was Alexander Slesarenko. On September 6 the unit was at the Mozdok army base in North Ossetia. On September 7 they were deployed to the Dagestan village of Batashyurt, and on September 8 to Novolakskoye. At this point the Armavir men came under the command of Kazantsev. He had been placed in overall charge of the operation to clear the Novolakskoye and Hasavyurt regions of Dagestan, and all categories of troops were under his command.