This Is How Putin Really Came To Power: A Story Of Terrorism And Nationalism
RIA Novosti / RIA
Vladimir Putin rose to power amid what many believe was a state-sponsored act of terror in order to ensure his rule.
Vladimir Putin was a little known political figure as the presidency of Boris Yeltsin drew to a close in 1999, but a series of apartment bombings in Moscow would soon provide Putin an opportunity to rise to power — and maintain that power for decades.
In all, four bombings claimed 300 lives and left hundreds more injured. The incidents were conveniently laid at the feet of Chechen rebels, and Vladimir Putin swept in to become the leader who would bring justice and restore peace to a rightfully frightened Russian people.
But questions arose immediately surrounding the nature of the bombings, the official narrative pushed by Russian authorities, and their motives for selling what seemed a certain lie to their countrymen.
At the center was Vladimir Putin.
From The New York Review of Books:
In 2000 Sergei Kovalev, then the widely respected head of the Russian organization Memorial, observed in these pages that the apartment bombings in Russia in September 1999, which killed three hundred people and wounded hundreds of others, “were a crucial moment in the unfolding of our current history. After the first shock passed, it turned out that we were living in an entirely different country….”
The bombings, it will be recalled, were blamed on Chechen rebels and used as a pretext for Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin to launch a bloody second war against Chechnya, a republic in the Russian Federation. They also were crucial events in promoting Vladimir Putin’s takeover of the Russian presidency as Yeltsin’s anointed successor in 2000 and in ensuring his dominance over the Russian political scene ever since.
John Dunlop noted in his book, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999, that the Moscow bombings for Russia were as the 9/11 terror attacks for Americans:
They aroused a fear of terrorism—along with a desire for revenge against the Chechens—that Russians had not known since Stalin used the supposed terrorist threat as a pretext to launch his bloody purges of the 1930s. Yet unlike in the American case, Russian authorities have stonewalled all efforts to investigate who was behind these acts of terror and why they happened. In the words of Russian journalist Yuliya Kalinina: “The Americans several months after 11 September 2001 already knew everything—who the terrorists were and where they come from…. We in general know nothing.”
The events of 1999 were put into motion by an administration facing crisis: Yeltsin was in poor health and suffering from alcoholism, increasingly unable to discharge his presidential duties.
He and his closest allies (his Family) — daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin adviser Valentin Yumashev, who later married Tatyana, the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and Aleksandr Voloshin, head of the presidential administration — were desperate for a way to preserve the party’s power, facing staunch opposition in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The Family’s solution to its dilemma, according to Dunlop, was a plan to destabilize Russia and possibly cancel or postpone the elections after declaring a state of emergency. In June 1999, two Western journalists, Jan Blomgren of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and Giulietto Chiesa, the respected, longtime Moscow correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, reported that there was going to be an act of “state terrorism” in Russia. The goal would be to instill fear and panic in the population.
Enter Vladimir Putin, chosen as Yeltsin’s successor and raised to acting prime minister.
As head of the FSB—the successor of the KGB—before he became prime minster, he had demonstrated his loyalty to Yeltsin by managing to get Russian Prosecutor-General Yury Skuratov, who was pursuing the Mabetex corruption scandal, removed from office. Putin’s FSB had also started a campaign against the rich wife of Yury Luzhkov, Elena Baturina, by investigating one of her companies for money-laundering.
But Putin was unknown to the Russian public. If elections were to take place—and this apparently had yet to be decided upon—his chances were by no means certain. In order for the Family’s “operation successor” to succeed, something would have to occur to boost Putin’s public image and demonstrate his capacity for strong leadership. The invasion of Dagestan by Chechen rebels failed to have the desired effect of arousing widespread anti-Chechen sentiment. As Dunlop’s sources said, more violence was needed to justify a war against Chechnya, which would unite people around the new prime minister.
Before the first apartments fell victim to bombing, a curious incident ought have tipped off the public that something was awry: about 100 miles away from Moscow, in the city of Ryazan, residents of an apartment complex reported suspicious activity in the basement of their building.
A professional bomb squad arrived and discovered that the sacks contained not only sugar but also explosives, including hexogen, and that a detonator was attached. After the sacks were examined and removed, they were sent by the local FSB to Moscow.
The entire apartment building was evacuated. Local authorities found the car used by the three who had planted the explosives, a white Zhiguli, in a nearby parking lot. To their astonishment the license plates were traced to the FSB. And when they apprehended two of the suspects, it turned out that they were FSB employees, who were soon released on orders from Moscow.
Soon, the FSB would announce that the incident was merely a training exercise, involved no explosives and at no time were residents in any real danger.
But then the real bombings began, and soon the country was gripped with fear.
Putin and the FSB offered a convenient enemy in the Chechen rebels, stoking Russian nationalism and fear among in one fell swoop.
What, then, was the role of Putin, who was prime minister at the time, and also secretary of the Security Council? In his “self-portrait,” First Person, published in 2000, Putin denied categorically that the FSB was involved: “What?! Blowing up our own apartment buildings? You know, that is really…utter nonsense! It’s totally insane. No one in the Russian special services would be capable of such a crime against his own people.” But of course the FSB, as Dunlop demonstrates, was indeed capable of committing this terrible act. And it is inconceivable that it would have been done without the sanction of Putin.
Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs Midnight Diaries that after Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, “Putin turned to me and requested absolute power…to coordinate all power structures.” This of course would have included the FSB.
And the results were as expected:
Putin had just been named acting president by Yeltsin, with his victory in the upcoming March presidential contest assured.
The rest is history — Putin rules Russia to this day. And much like the supporters of his American counterpart, Russians are content to continue voting for a man they believe capable of such terrible acts as approving the bombing of his own people.
Sergei Kovalev observed in late 2007, most Russians are indifferent: “I have met people who were convinced that the accusations were true, and yet they voted for Putin with equal conviction. Their logic is simple: genuine rulers wield the kind of power that can do anything, including commit crimes.” As more than twelve years of investigation, and now Dunlop’s book, have shown, Putin’s guilt seems clear, but it makes no difference. |
