Vladimir Putin - the dark rise to power

Putin. - Dark rise to power ... He told an American journalist about the involvement of the FSB in the bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and Buinaksk. The scandalous material was removed from the Russian edition of the publication.
Here is translation of an article GQ, given blogger kushniruk:.
Ten years ago, Russia was shaken by a series of mysterious explosions of point that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. They were followed by a wave of fear and terror, which made the then little -known Vladimir Putin's most powerful man in the country.

But there were questions about the nature of these explosions - disturbing evidence showing that the organizers could work for the government. In subsequent years, the people who question the official version of events, one by one died or ceased. Except for one. Scott Anderson found it.

The first building was the barracks exploded in Buinaksk, in which resided the Russian soldiers and their families. It was an unremarkable five-story building on the edge, and when a truck packed with explosives blew up late at night, September 4, 1999, floors, piled on each other for as long as there have not turned into a pile of burning debris. Under them were buried body 64 people - men, women and children.

Before dawn on 13 September last year I left the hotel in the center of Moscow and went to working-class district on the southern outskirts of the city.

It has been 12 years since I've been in the Russian capital. Everywhere ponastroili new glass and steel buildings, construction cranes were everywhere, and even at 4 o'clock in the morning noisy casinos around Pushkin Square and Tverskaya work at all was filled with SUVs and BMW. Vivid impression of the trip - the enormous changes that Russia, whose economy has been ...

But this morning I went to a place in the ... At 5:03 am September 13, 1999, exactly nine years before my visit, 6/ 3 to Kashirskoe highway was blown up by a bomb that was hidden in the basement. 121 tenant of this building died in his sleep. The explosion, which occurred nine days after the explosion in Buinaksk, was the third of the four bombings of apartment buildings in Russia in September, which killed 300 people and from which the country was plunged into panic. This was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the world before September 11. Blaming terrorists from Chechnya, the new Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered an offensive with the use of scorched-earth tactics against the breakaway republic. Due to the success of this operation previously unknown Putin became a national hero and quickly seized full power in the Russian country. This control and continues to be his.
by the way. Not so long ago was filmed on the events of that time, I advise to look. Distrust - a film about the apartment bombings in Moscow.

Where was the house of 6/3 to Kashirskoe highway, now - a neat flower beds. They are surrounded by a stone monument on which are carved the names of the dead and is an Orthodox cross. On the ninth anniversary of the explosion came three or four local journalists, followed by watching a couple of policemen standing near the car, but no one was to do nothing. Shortly after five o'clock a group of two dozen people - mostly young, probably relatives of the victims, came to put the candles and put a red carnation on the monument, but then quickly left. In addition to them, this morning there were only two elderly men who had witnessed the explosion and who spoke for the television cameras, as it was awful, what a shock it was.

I saw one old man was deeply moved when he stood before the monument, he repeatedly wiped his tears. Several times he turned away and walked away purposefully, as if trying to escape, but did not work. Every time he stayed in the trees at the edge of the park and the inevitable return to the monument. Finally, I started a conversation with him.

... - ... I rushed over and... ... ... nothing. They dragged the boy and his dog. And all. All the rest have died ...

But as it turned out, the old man had a personal connection with the tragedy. His daughter, son, and grandson lived in the house 6/3 to Kashirskoe highway, and they all died in the morning. Bringing me to the monument, he showed them the names on the stone, frantically wiping tears. Then he whispered angrily: ... These were people. fishing season. Everybody knows this. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everybody knows ...

In the mystery of the soul and the power of modern Russia, which has not yet been resolved.

It is strange how few people beyond the borders of Russia want to know the answer to this question. It is likely that several law enforcement agencies conducted an investigation of the explosion, but none of them have published the results of. Among American legislators who have shown little interest in the case. In 2003, John McCain announced to Congress that ... But other than that, nor the U.S. government nor the U.S. media showed no desire to go into this business.

This apparent lack of interest now extends to Russia. Immediately after the bombings, many in Russia has publicly questioned the government 's version of events. These voices were silent, one by one. In the past few years, many of those journalists who investigate these incidents, were killed or died under suspicious circumstances - as well as two members of Parliament who participated in the commission of inquiry. In the meantime, it seems that almost all of whose version differs from the official version, and now refuse to talk, or disavowed previous statements, or dead.

During my stay in Russia last September, I tried to talk to many - journalists, lawyers, researchers working on human rights - who participated in the search for answers. Many have flatly refused to talk to me. Others reluctantly agreed, but only a limited transfer of certain inconsistencies in the presentation of the case, and if I insisted, they admitted only that it is ... Even the old man in the Krasnoyarsk park emphasizes cramped atmosphere surrounding this topic. Although he readily agreed to the second meeting, during which he wanted to introduce me to other families of the victims, who did not trust the government version of events, he changed his mind.

... ...

I wanted to know what he meant when he said ... No doubt, some of his reticence is understandable, remembering the fate of men, for which confirmation of the plot of the explosions was a personal mission: Alexander Litvinenko. From his London links a former KGB agent led to the inexorable press campaign against Putin's regime, accusing him of every crime and corruption - but the most important thing is that it was Putin who organized the bombing of houses.

In November 2006 the world watched, his eyes, how Litvinenko received a lethal dose of radioactive polonium, apparently, during a meeting with two agents of the Russian secret services in the London hotel bar. Before Litvinenko died of poisoning - which took 23 excruciating days - he signed a statement in which he explicitly accuses Putin of crime.

But Litvinenko was not working on the case of the explosion of houses alone. A few years before he was killed, Litvinenko asked another ex- KGB agent to help him find the answers to the questions of the former criminal police detective by the name of Mikhail Trepashkin. These men were quite complicated joint past - in the 90s, one was sent away with the other, but in the end it Trepashkin, working in Russia, has found many of the most disturbing facts of the case.

Trepashkin also angered the authorities. In 2003 he was sent to prison in the wretched of the Ural Mountains for four years. But by the time I arrived in Moscow last year, he has released. Through an intermediary, I learned that Trepashkin had two small daughters and a wife who really wanted to, he was not engaged in politics. Combining these factors with the fact that his colleague was killed recently, and he himself thrown into prison, I expected that my attempts to talk to him will be as unsuccessful as my conversations with other opposition leaders.

... ...

September 9, five days after the explosion in Buinaksk, criminals blew up a house on Guryanov Street in Moscow, in a modest south- west of the city. Instead, a truck bomb device was hidden on the bottom floor of the house, but the result was the same - an explosion destroyed all eight floors and killed 94 people sleeping.

And it started from the street Guryanova general anxiety. Within hours, several Russian officials began to hint strongly that the Chechen terrorists responsible for this, and the country have resulted in a heightened state of alert. At the burden of thousands of police questioning - and in hundreds of cases, arrested - everyone, like the Chechens, the residents of apartment buildings across Russia organized to patrol. Calls for vengeance were heard in all political circles.

At the request of Trepashkin our first meeting took place in a crowded cafe in central Moscow. First came one of his assistants, and then, twenty minutes later, arrived Trepashkin - accompanied by his psevdotelohranitelya, muscular young man, cut a hedgehog, with a straight gaze.

Trepashkin, albeit low, dense complex - evidence that the lifetime was engaged in various martial arts - and still is very prominent in their 51. But the feature that most attracts attention, it is infinitely amused expression on his face. It published an instant friendship and disposal, although I could not imagine that someone who was sitting across from him during the interrogation, when he worked in the KGB, would have certainly taken aback.

A few minutes later we were chatting about everyday things - about the unusually cold weather in Moscow at that time, the changes that I've noticed since my last visit - and I felt that I was Trepashkin assessed when deciding how much to say.

Then he started telling me about his career in the KGB. He spent most of his career as a detective in the criminal police of smuggling antiquities. It was in those days, absolutely loyal to the Soviet regime - and especially the KGB. Trepashkin was so devoted to the Soviet Union, that he even supported a group that tried to prevent the coming to power of Boris Yeltsin and preserve the Soviet system.

... - ...

And this disaster has come. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was plunged into economic and social chaos. One particularly destructive aspect of this chaos is connected with the huge number of Russian officers of the KGB, who unexpectedly came into the private sector. Some have started to work on their own or joined thus mafiyam with whom they had fought. Still others have signed contracts as ...

Trepashkin was watching all this with quite an intimate distance. Left in the FSB (the Russian successor to the KGB - a comment. ed. log) the investigator found that distinguish between criminal acts of the government policy is becoming increasingly difficult.

... Mafia worked with terrorist groups, but then the trail suddenly led to a business group, or even the public ministry. And then it is not clear - it is still a criminal case or a black operation, which has the official sanction? .

In the summer of 1995, Mikhail Trepashkin began working on a project that will change his life forever and bring him into conflict with senior commanders of the FSB, one of whom, according to Trepashkin, try to kill him. This incident, like many others revealed the rot that occurred after the collapse of the Union concerned the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya.

By December 1995 the war had lasted a year Chechen rebels, fighting for the independence of Chechnya from Russia came to draw humiliating for Russia. The success of the Chechens was that since the Soviet Union, the Chechen mafia controlled most of the Russian underworld, so when Russian society was criminal, it played into the hands of Chechen separatists. For delivery of modern weapons the insurgents had to do was to bribe a Russian colonel, who had stores of such weapons, and money provided to the Chechen mafia, which operated across the country.

How high is reached this handy conspiracy? . Capture the night was the culmination of a complex operational task that Trepashkin helped lead and that was to catch a certain group of bank extortion related to the Chechen leader Salman Raduyev. The success was enormous: more than twenty were caught extortionists, including two officers of the FSB and the Russian general.

But inside the bank FSBshniki found something else. To prevent the possibility of an ambush, bandits put listening bugs throughout the building and connect them to the car standing outside the. The system was not particularly advanced, but created a question: where did this band could have such equipment?.

... It was a very weighty accusation, since access to such equipment was severely limited. This meant that senior colonels were in direct collusion with the gang, which also sponsored the war against Russia. By the standards of any state, it was no longer corruption, and betrayal.

But as soon as Trepashkin began an investigation, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Nikolai Patrushev, removed him from the case. In addition, no charges have been filed against the captured Russian colonels and nearly all captured in the bank men were sent away. Instead, Patrushev made ​​the case against Trepashkin. It lasted nearly two years, during which Trepashkin reached the boiling point. In May 1997 he wrote an open letter to President Yeltsin, in which he described in detail his role in the investigation and accused the majority of the heads of the FSB in cooperation with the Mafia, and even recruiting the bandits in the rank of the FSB.

... That was a mistake on my part ... As it turned out, Boris Yeltsin, he was very corrupt, and only the letter warned of the imminent problem FSBshnikov. A month later, Trepashkin voluntarily left work, unable to withstand pressure from peers and superiors. But that does not mean that he was going to quietly disappear. That same summer, he sued the head of the FSB, as well as complaints that reached even to the Director. Then Trepashkin still believed that the honor of the ... However, his insistence only further convinced the heads of the FSB, it is time to solve his problem once and for all. One of the first to whom they are addressed, was Alexander Litvinenko.

At first glance, Litvinenko seemed suitable for this job. Returning to Moscow after the counter-terrorist operative work hard Chechen front, he was transferred to a new and highly secret department of the FSB, entitled ... Litvinenko did not know that this was a group of mercenaries. In his book ... This is your new object. Go on, take it and read it with him ...

After reading his work, he learned about the Litvinenko investigation Soldi Bank, as well as his lawsuit against the head of the FSB. He could not understand what he had to do with Trepashkin.

... - ... We need to shut up, the director ordered ...

Soon, Litvinenko claimed that his list grew and included Boris Berezovsky - the Kremlin oligarchs and influential character, someone who wanted to destroy the mighty now. Litvinenko was pulling the time and come up with excuses not to perform the task.

According to Trepashkin, during this period, he had committed at least two assassination: the failed ambush on a lonely highway in Moscow and another sniper, who could not find a good sight from the roof. In other cases, he says, his friends warned, still working in the ...

In November 1998, alleged in the order of the FSB Trepashkin and Berezovsky was disclosed to the public, when Litvinenko and four members of his group held a press conference in Moscow, and was told about the murders that they were ordered to perform. Also present and Mikhail Trepashkin.

And that, apparently, the case was closed. Litvinenko, a leader of the dissident colonels, were sacked, but not punished. A Trepashkin, much to the surprise, won his lawsuit against the Federal Security Service, was married a second time and got a job in the tax police. He decided to quietly serve his term and then retire.

However, in September 1999 bombing of houses shake the entire Russian political society. These explosions also cause Trepashkin and Litvinenko back into their dark world, this time with a common purpose.

In the middle of the mass hysteria that engulfed Moscow after an explosion on Guryanov Street, early in the morning September 13, 1999 the authorities were alerted to suspicious activity in a residential house on the outskirts of the city. Not finding anything strange, security has been home inspection 6/3 at the Kashira Highway about 2:00 am and left. At 5:03 am devyatnadtsatietazhnoe building was destroyed by a powerful bomb that killed 121 people.

Three days later, the apartment building in Volgodonsk, a town in southern Russia, was blown up, this time from a truck bomb, killing 19 people.

In Moscow cafe was uncharacteristically sullen Trepashkin. For a minute he stared into the distance.

... - ... The country is concerned, members of the vigilance committees of unknown delay on the street, everywhere there are roadblocks. So - how these terrorists roam so freely that they have time to make and enforce such sophisticated attacks? .

Another aspect in which Trepashkin doubt, was a matter of motivation.

...

From one perspective, it is perhaps understandable. Aversion to the Chechens - a very deep into the Russian society, and became even stronger during the war for secession of Chechnya of the nineties. Unspeakable atrocities committed both sides during this conflict and the Chechen rebels did not dare to fight in Russia itself or attack on civilians. But the war ended in 1997 that Boris Yeltsin signed a treaty shall recognize the autonomy of Chechnya.

... - ...

But something else bothered the former criminal investigator: the composition of the new Russian government.

In early August 1999 - just weeks before the first explosion in Buinaksk - President Boris Yeltsin appointed his third in a row the Prime Minister for less than three months. It was a small man with no sense of humor, almost unknown to the Russian public - whose name was Vladimir Putin.

He was so unknown, because, for a few years earlier, Putin had another average officer KGB / FSB who worked quietly. In 1996, Putin was given a place in the Office of Presidential Affairs - a key control in the apparatus of patronage Yeltsin, who gave Putin the levers by which he could have or do not provide services to insiders in the Kremlin. As you can see, he had a good time: over the next three years, Putin was promoted to deputy head of presidential administration, then to the director of the FSB, and now to the Prime Minister.

But, while Putin was still little known to the public in September 1999, Mikhail Trepashkin was already familiar with it. When the scandal was made ​​public URPO, Putin was director of the FSB, Alexander Litvinenko himself fired because he initiated it, ...

And equally alarmed Trepashkin 's who chose Putin's successor as director of the FSB - Nikolai Patrushev. In his role as head of their own safety FSB Patrushev himself freed from the obligation of the investigator Trepashkin case Soldi Bank, and he was one of those government officials who most passionately argued about the Chechen connection with the bombings of apartment houses.

...

But then something very strange happened. It happened in a quiet provincial town of Ryazan, which is located 200 kilometers south- east of Moscow.

In an atmosphere of heightened vigilance, which swept the country, several residents of the house 14/16 on the street Novoselov Ryazan noticed that the evening of September 22 drove home to their white ... They are very frightened when they saw two men who carried several large bags from the trunk of a car and brought them into the basement before it went with all speed. Residents called the police.

In the basement obrnaruzhili three white bags of 50 kilos, bound to the detonator and the explosive timer. While police quickly evacuated all of the house, rang the local FSB expert in explosives, he found that the bags contained RDX - an explosive, strong enough to demolish the whole house. Meanwhile, put up roadblocks on all roads from Ryazan, and a large-scale hunt for ...

By the next day in Ryazan event became known all over Russia. Prime Minister Putin congratulated the residents of vigilance, while Interior Minister praised recent improvements in the security forces, ...

Perhaps all that would end only in the evening two of the suspects arrested. To the surprise of the local authorities, both presented the certificate of the FSB. After a while, got a call from the headquarters of the FSB in Moscow and was told that these two were released.

The next morning, the FSB director Patrushev went on television to announce the brand new version of the events in Ryazan.

The case in the house 14/16 on the street Novoselov, he explained, was an unsuccessful terrorist attack, but rather a ... He further said that the bags in the basement were not explosives, namely, sugar, regular home.

The contradictions in the FSB were numerous.

But while these issues have already expired. Even while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke in the evening on September 23, praising residents for vigilance in Ryazan, Russian warplanes began to strike on Grozny, the Chechen capital. A few days later, Russian armored battalions entered Chechnya, and the second Chechen war began.

After this, events began to move very quickly. December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin shocked the country when he announced his retirement from the post, and the decision shall take effect immediately. So, Vladimir Putin became acting president until new elections were held as. And instead take place sometime in the summer, as first planned, the elections are now held in ten weeks. Putin's rivals have little time to prepare.

According to a survey of citizens' preferences in the presidential elections, held in August 1999, Putin has received less than two percent of the support. By March 2000, on a wave of popularity for his strategy of total war in Chechnya, he entered the post with a 53 percent voter support. Board of Vladimir Putin began, and now Russia will never be the same as it was before.

During our next meeting Trepashkin I was invited to his own apartment. It surprised me a bit - I was told that for security reasons Trepashkin visitors rarely home - but, in my opinion, he believed that his enemies did know where he lives.

It was quite a nice place, except that the Spartan kind, on the ground floor flats, surrounded by other high-rise towers in northern Moscow. Trepashkin took me around the apartment, and I noticed that the only place with a hint of a mess was a small room filled with papers - almost a closet - in which he had made a study. One of his daughters were at home, she brought us tea.

With a little bit shy smile, Trepashkin told me that he had one more reason why he rarely arranged business meetings at home - his wife. ... The smile gone from his face. ... You know, they having broken here ... It is very influenced by my wife, she is now constantly afraid that it might happen again, ...

The first of these raids was in January 2002. Late at night a group of FSB operatives raided and put up a search, turning the apartment upside down. Trepashkin says that if they did not find anything, but instead planted enough ...