The 1999 russian apartment bombings

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The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. Then-prime minister Vladimir Putin's handling of the crisis boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months. Russian courts ruled that the attacks were orchestrated by Chechen-linked militants, while some scholars, journalists, and politicians have argued that Russian security services likely organized the bombings.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on 4 September and in Moscow on 9 and 13 September. On 13 September, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement in the Duma about receiving a report that another bombing had just happened in the city of Volgodonsk. A bombing did indeed happen in Volgodonsk, but only three days later, 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 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 FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. On 24 September 1999, head of FSB Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar.

The official Russian investigation of the Buynaksk bombing was completed in 2000, while the investigation of Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings was 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 organised 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.

Parliament member Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Russian 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 government 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. Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who defected and blamed the FSB for the bombings, was poisoned and killed in London in 2006. A British inquiry later determined that Litvinenko's murder was "probably" carried out with the approval of Putin and Patrushev.

The 1999 attacks were officially attributed to Chechen terrorists. According to some historians and journalists, the bombings were coordinated by the Russian state security services to bring Putin into the presidency. Others disagree with such theories. Independent investigations have faced obstruction from Russian security services, raising further suspicions about their involvement in the attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_a ... t_bombings

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Yuri Shchekochikhin, 2003

As a journalist and author who wrote about crime and corruption in the former Soviet Union when it was still very difficult to do so, Yuri Shchekochikhin once joined me on a police raid of crack houses in Philadelphia in 1988. He was investigating the 1999 apartment bombings for Novaya Gazeta when he contracted a mysterious illness in July 2003. He died suddenly, a few days before he was supposed to depart for the United States. His medical documents were deemed classified by Russian authorities.

Sergei Yushenkov, 2003

The affable former army colonel was a favorite of parliamentary reporters in the early 1990s, when I was learning the trade for the Moscow Times. Sergei Yushenkov had just registered his Liberal Russia movement as a political party when he was gunned down outside his home in Moscow. Yushenkov was gathering evidence he believed proved that the Putin government was behind one of the apartment bombings in 1999.

Alexander Litvinenko, 2006

"Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea" laced with deadly polonium-210 at a London hotel, as Business Insider wrote a year ago. "A British inquiry found that Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on orders that had 'probably been approved'" by Putin. Russia refused to extradite them, and in 2015 the Russian president granted Lugovoi a medal for "services to the motherland." After leaving the Russian Federal Security Service, Litvinenko became a vocal critic of the agency, which was run by Putin, and later blamed the security service for orchestrating a series of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999 that left hundreds dead. Russia's invasion of Chechnya followed later that year — and with it, the rise to power of Putin. Berezovsky was suspected to be complicit in at least part of the plot to bring Putin to the Kremlin, but he later sought to implicate Putin for Litvinenko's killing. Litvinenko also accused Putin ordering the murder of Politkovskaya.