Johnson's Russia List
#6118
6 March 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Kommersant: BORIS BEREZOVSKY STAGES "AN ASSAULT ON RUSSIA."
Premiere of the long-awaited documentary in London.
2. Novaya Gazeta: THE IMITATOR. Political analyst Lilia Shevtsova on the
state of Russian politics.
3. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
4. the eXile: Matt Taibbi, BAD BREAKS. The Kids of p.s. 666, Two Years
Later.
5. TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE with Boris Berezovsky in London on
1999 bombings.
*******
#1
Kommersant
March 6, 2002
BORIS BEREZOVSKY STAGES "AN ASSAULT ON RUSSIA"
Premiere of the long-awaited documentary in London
Author: Natalia Gevorkyan, Vladimir Kara-Murza
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
IN LONDON YESTERDAY, BORIS BEREZOVSKY HELD HIS LONG-AWAITED NEWS
CONFERENCE. JOURNALISTS WERE SHOWN A CLIP FROM THE "ASSAULT ON RUSSIA"
DOUCMENTARY. ACCORDING TO BEREZOVSKY, THE INFORMATION IN THE
DOCUMENTARY IS ENOUGH TO LET PUTIN BE VIEWED AS AN ILLEGITIMATE
PRESIDENT.
In London yesterday, very close to Downing Street, Boris
Berezovsky held his long-awaited news conference: "Putin's Russia. Is
this state terror?" Journalists were shown a clip from the "Assault on
Russia" doucmentary. Anyone who expected Berezovsky to produce a
document signed by President Putin confirming that the FSB had
something to do with the apartment block explosions was disappointed.
However, according to Berezovsky, the information in the documentary
is enough to let Putin be viewed as an illegitimate president.
By the time Berezovsky arrived, the room was packed: there were
around twenty TV cameras (only two Russian TV channels were
represented: NTV and the shut-down TV-6).
The news conference was attended by Radio Liberty correspondent
Andrei Babitsky, former NTV general manager Igor Malashenko, writer
and historian Yury Felshtinsky, and former FSB Lieutenant Colonel
Alexander Litvinenko, who was granted political asylum in Britain a
year ago (Felshtiinsky and Litvinenko are co-authors of a book
entitled "The FSB Blows Up Russia", recently published in the United
States).
Berezovsky was accompanied by other participants in the news
conference: Duma deputies Sergei Yushenkov and Yuly Rybakov; former
acting director of the Roskonversvzrytsentr Research Institute Nikita
Chekulin; a former tenant of the aparment block on Guryanova Street,
whose mother was killed in September 1999; independent British
explosives expert Alan Hutchen; and the makers of the documentary -
French journaluists Jean-Charles Deniau and Charles Gazelle of the
Transparences Productions company.
An official representative of Russia - Shamil Yunusov, second
secretary at the Russian embassy in London - was also present.
The opening address of Berezovsky, who was introduced as co-
chairman of the Liberal Russia movement, was not lengthy: he declared
that independent investigations into the apartment block explosions in
September 1999, as well as a forestalled explosion in Ryazan,
convinced him that the FSB was to blame for these crimes. "This is not
just my opinion, this is the conclusion," stressed Boris Berezovsky.
The audience responded to the documentary clip with silence -
three-quarters of those present knew nothing about the attempted
explosion of an apartment block in Ryazan (according to the theory
presented in the documentary), nor about the unsuccessful FSB exercise
(according to the official explanation).
This documentary is not likely to be a sensation for Russians.
Its indisputable advantage lies in the following: the makers have
gathered together all the evidence and details connected with the
"Ryazan case", arranged them in chronological order, and presented
contradictory "evidence" from senior state officials, including
Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time.
The main idea of the documentary is simple: if it is true that in
Ryazan the FSb participated in an attempted apartment block explosion,
it leads to assumptions that the Russian secret services are to blame
for the other explosions, including those in Moscow. And if the
apartment blocks were blown up by the FSB, then "Putin's ascent to
power should be viewed in a different light."
The documentary might be successful in the west. And it will not
be shown in Russia; Berezovsky sees this as indirect proof that the
FSB and Putin himself were indeed connected with that dramatic story.
The real surprise came not from the screen, but from the left
corner of the stage, where Nikita Chekulin, former acting director of
the Roskonversvzryvtsentr Research Institute, was sitting. He said
that in 2000 he was recruited by the FSB and had "documentary evidence
of secret theft of explosives", including TNT and hexogen, from
military warehouses, with the participation of senior state officials
and the FSB. Moreover, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev banned
investigations into this case.
Duma deputy Rybakov asked the journalists to pay special
attention to the words of Mr. Chekulin: "And where is this hexogen
now? Should we expect more explosions?"
Sergei Yushenkov, having lost faith in the Russian parliament,
which he describes as "cowardly and helpless", is now counting on the
European parliament; he will ask it to launch a special investigation
into this case. When directly asked by a western journalist whether
the name of President Putin would be mentioned in such an
international investigation, Berezovsky answered: "Of course."
Meanwhile, Berezovsky himself is being mentioned in more criminal
cases every day. And it does not disturb him. In response to
yesterday's allegations from the Prosecutor General's Office - that he
had been involved in starting the conflict in Dagestan in 1999 -
Berezovsky said, "I would support an investigation into the FSB's
involvement in the conflict in Dagestan. An investigation of the role
of Russian security services, which in fact initiated that conflict. I
have my own opinion on this matter."
(Translated by Daria Brunova)
*******
#2
Novaya Gazeta
No. 15
March 4-6, 2002
THE IMITATOR
Political analyst Lilia Shevtsova on the state of Russian politics
Author: Elena Afanasieva
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
EVENTS AND TRENDS IN RUSSIA ARE CONTRADICTORY. THERE ARE THE
JUDICIARY REFORMS, MORE TRANSPARENCY, MOVES TOWARD ENDING
CONSCRIPTION. ON THE OTHER HAND, THERE ARE SOME FAIRLY DISTURBING
EVENTS: THE CLOSURE OF THE TV-6 NETWORK, THE CASE AGAINST GRIGORY
PASKO, AND THE RESUMPTION OF CLASHES BETWEEN KREMLIN CLANS.
An interview with Lilia Shevtsova, political analyst at the
Moscow Carnegie Center.
Question: Do you regard what's currently going on in Russia as
stagnation?
Lilia Shevtsova: I wouldn't use this particular term. We are now
witnessing events of a diametrically opposed nature. On the one hand,
the Kremlin has finally realized the inevitability of an all-volunteer
army. The judiciary reforms, reducing the role played by prosecutors,
are certainly a breakthrough beyond the Soviet traditions of criminal
law. Natural monopolies, which have long been untouchable, are
gradually becoming more controllable and financially transparent. On
the other hand, we are seeing some fairly disturbing events: such as
the closure of the TV-6 network, the FSB-instigated case against
Grigory Pasko, and the resumption of clashes between Kremlin clans.
Question: How, then, would you define this ambivalent situation?
Shevtsova: I would call it the semiauthoritarian syndrome. It
falls short of pure authoritarianism so far - President Putin is
obviously unwilling to go too far at this point - both because he
knows the state is too exhausted to quickly restore the Soviet regime
and because he realizes all the shortcomings of such actions - and Mr.
Putin is a very rational person. I would like to stress that this
impossibility of restoring at the very first call the old state
violence policies is Russia's greatest achievement of the past decade.
Even security structures understand the necessity of seeking
alternative approaches to governing the state. Alas, this development
is not so much the nation's achievement as it is the sign of weakness
on the part of the state government, which cannot return to its
customary mode and, therefore, is forced to engage into a dialog with
the population.
Question: Which bears a very superfluous resemblance to a
dialog...
Shevtsova: The acting state system itself is based on imitation -
imitation of a parliament, federation, multiparty system,
opposition... Even imitation of force. The state government produces
nothing but surrogates, the reason being that it has neither the wish
nor the ability to make a final decision over what game, exactly, we
are playing here: liberal democracy or something absolutely different.
If we fail to answer this question we will eventually live to see
imitation of presidency in Russia.
Question: Do you mean that presidency is still not imitated in
Russia?
Shevtsova: Consider the fact that the president's popularity
rating is still as high as 70% after two years at the helm. When
speaking in terms of survivability, we can say the situation in Russia
is fairly normal. The number of Russians believing their life will
somewhat improve (or at least won't worsen) is steadily growing. Many
people have reacquired hope for their own apartment, car, and house in
the country - the decades-long Soviet stereotype of prosperity. Mr.
Putin proved to be an ideal president of the era of modest
expectations and vague apprehensions. But whether the "survival
ideology" will be able to help Russia break into the hi-tech world is
a good question. Russia can remain in this state for another five
years or so. But the world around us has already changed - new
technologies and existential challenges have emerged, and we're still
thinking according to templates dating back to the 1970s. If we fail
to radically change the obsolete system of state administration,
Russia will never catch up with the leading world powers.
Question: So you don't allow for any other possible scenario?
Shevtsova: I believe Mr. Putin realizes the dilemma he is facing:
to preserve stability or to dare a breakthrough. The former implies
carrying on with cautious measures to ensure both the free market
economy and the "state hierarchy" with the president at the top.
However, the paradox of such a policy lies with the fact that it will
eventuate in retention of shade (hence semicriminal) capitalism.
A breakthrough would mean factual debureaucratization of the
state government, liberation of businesses from administrative
supervision, and restriction of the executive branch's role in our
life. Such a move certainly requires courage, precise calculation, and
deep insight. Any mistake is fraught with drastic consequences, with
Mr. Putin repeating the fate of Mikhail Gorbachev. But there is no
other choice - if we leave the situation unchanged we are in for
Yeltsinism, even though newly wrapped.
Question: What actions do you think Mr. Putin will take with
regard to this situation?
Shevtsova: Until last fall I perceived the president as a person
lacking initiative, who was either chronically late to respond to
developments or preferred not to respond at all. However, after last
September my (and many others') opinion of Mr. Putin changed. The
president dared a breakthrough in Russia's relations with the rest of
the world. He made a strategic choice in favor of the West. He also
caught Western leaders by surprise after the September 11 terrorist
attacks, when he unconditionally supported the anti-terrorist
coalition, and when he called NATO Secretary General Robertson and
stated directly that relations between Russia and the Alliance
couldn't have been worse and that something had to be done to improve
them.
Question: Did the West view these moves as breaking the
stereotypes?
Shevtsova: It did. And President Putin goes on breaking these
stereotypes by not overreacting to the US withdrawing from the ABM
Treaty, or to America's military presence in Central Asia, or to
Washington's plans for Iraq. The nation demands that the president
show some strength, but I believe he feels that any door-slamming
would only result in another humiliation for Russia. What happened in
September, exactly, was that Russia consciously and voluntarily
undertook the role of another great power's junior partner - an
unprecedented case in world history. Thus, President Putin ended an
entire era in the history of the Russian Empire's development.
Question: And spurred innumerable questions from Russia and the
West?
Shevtsova: Indeed, the Kremlin so far has no team to compile the
as-yet-intuitive new doctrine into a clearcut strategy, nor a basis on
which Mr. Putin's breakthrough in foreign policy would rest. On the
other hand, the West proved just as unprepared for directly admitting
Russia to the range of its interests. These factors keep President
Putin's position balanced.
The president failed to avail of the opportunities Russia had in
September through October 2000, when the US did need Russia's
assistance. The Taliban movement was too quick to surrender, and now
Washington has developed the illusory idea that it does not need
Russia.
Question: Does this fact make Mr. Putin have his doubts?
Shevtsova: The ambivalence of the situation is obvious. I believe
Mr. Putin tends to retain stability, for there is currently simply no
basis for structural reforms. Medium-sized businesses are only
starting to develop, and small businesses are too weak. So Mr. Putin
is left to either stake it all and engage into the fight with no
support or wait for a new generation to grow up.
The old generation of Russians is now being replaced by young
people who have never feared the state and have already gotten used to
many non-Siviet things such as open borders, the Internet, and
emancipation sometimes bordering on anarchy. How will these people get
along with authoritarian syndromes? The "unsuppressed generation" will
pose the main challenge to Mr. Putin and his successors - or will
become their new resource. So far, however, the West remains the main
resource able to support the breakthrough ideology.
Question: Of late, the majority of political analysts have been
paying close attention to the ongoing clashes between the remnants of
Boris Yeltsin's Close Circle and the so-called St. Petersburg group
(Mr. Putin's old friends and colleagues whom he is placing to key
executive positions). What can this squabble result in for society?
Shevtsova: The government's impotence revives the traditional
Soviet style of administration - through campaigning for something or
other. Given the current system of government in Russia, power-
struggles are inevitable, since they compensate for the absence of
restraints. Clan clashes are becoming a key factor in President
Putin's survival. Who is fighting whom is absolutely immaterial. What
counts here is that these power-struggles make political Darwinism a
major category in our lives.
Question: How do you assess Mr. Putin's potential, amid all this
Darwinism?
Shevtsova: He has so far been careful to steer clear of the main
threat - the threat of becoming a hostage to any of the warring clans.
To all appearances, the president has a well-developed self-
preservation instinct. And also the feeling of himself having been
chosen for a great mission. Without this feeling, his pro-Western
maneuver would have been impossible.
The question is whether Mr. Putin will manage to stay within the
framework of this maneuver, and also whether this pro-West course in
foreign policy will get along well with his adherence to liberalism in
domestic policy.
(Translated by Andrei Bystrov)
*******
#3
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman
Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and
Policy at Boston University
Headlines,
Tuesday, March 06, 2002,
- Swiss prosecutors have closed the case against Pavel Borodin; they will
"fine the persons involved in the case."
- Russian veterinarians have placed a temporary ban on imports of pork,
beef, and poultry from China, accusing the country of failing to observe
bilateral agreements on delivery controls.
- Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Gordeev announced that, as of March
10th, Russia will no longer accept American poultry imports. He noted that
the ban is unrelated to the US decision to raise the tariffs on Russian
steel.
- State Duma Deputy Mikhail Zadornov suggested that increased US tariffs on
Russian steel will cost Russia about $1.5 billion.
- State Duma deputies discussed the security of Russia's southern borders
and the situation in Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia as it relates to
the anticipated arrival of US troops.
- Representatives of the Georgian Defense Ministry announced that some
American military advisors will be stationed at the former Russian military
base in Vaziani.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russian athletes who have
returned from the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. They discussed
victories, losses, the doping scandals, and unfair judging.
- President Putin also met with Savings Bank Chairman Andrei Kazmin and
State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev.
- Pavel Barkovsky, the deputy head of the special affairs department of the
Russian Federation's General Prosecutors office, announced that Boris
Berezovsky might be entered onto the International Police wanted list.
- Power organ officers in the Leningrad oblast and in St. Petersburg are
conducting a large-scale operation to find a soldier who deserted the
Leningrad military district division early this morning. This is the second
time that 19-year-old Roman Eskevich ran away from his station.
- Opposition deputies from the Ukrainian parliament have resubmitted a
request for an investigation against Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma to
the General Prosecutor's office. The deputies accuse Kuchma of numerous
financial machinations and of plotting the assassinations of his former
colleagues Yevgeny Shcherban and Vadim Getman.
- Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has began his two-day trip to the
Kaliningrad oblast. Today he met with representatives of local industrial
enterprises. After the meeting, he told journalists that the local
authorities should make more use of the oblast's economic potential,
including its proximity to Europe.
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is continuing his trip through the
Leningrad Military District. Today he visited Pskov's 76th Paratroopers
division.
- President Putin chaired a meeting of the Council on Culture and the Arts;
he emphasized the difficulty of educating children now that the old Soviet
ideology has been abandoned but a new one has not been developed.
- The trial of six Chechen fighters accused of murder, terrorism, banditry,
and robbery has been opened in Pyatigorsk.
- The Russian-Belarusian Union Parliamentary Assembly Session has began in
Moscow. Deputies will discuss the Union budgets from the previous and
current year. This year's budget, totaling over 3 billion Rubles, will be
used to finance 35 of the Union's economic and scientific-technical
programs.
*******
#4
the eXile
www.exile.ru
BAD BREAKS
The Kids of p.s. 666, Two Years Later
By Matt Taibbi (taibbi@exile.ru
8:15 a.m., two Fridays ago. The temperature is -5 and I'm standing in a
rapidly-growing line outside of Matrosskaya Tishina, one of Moscow's three
main remand prisons. This is a daily ritual at the jail. Friends and family
members of inmates show up to deliver packages and to buy cigarettes and
other necessities for their loved ones from the prison commissary.
Like any other bureaucracy in this country, the system couldn't be
organized any worse. The window opens at nine, but everyone shows up two
hours early to get a spot in line. Though this is one of the biggest
prisons in the city, there's no place to wait indoors, so everyone is stuck
out in the cold.
"Even the juvenile prison at Rechnoi Vokzal has an indoor waiting room,"
complains Sergei, one of the kids I've come with. We're here to buy
supplies for Konstantin Pankratov, who's inside awaiting charges for
assault, kidnapping and car theft. Kostya's one of four kids I profiled two
years ago for a story about a Russian high school, the amazingly-named
public school #666, in the Varshaskaya region.
Last time I saw Kostya, he was looking like an alto in the Mormon
children's choir, and was in the middle of being voted most likely to
succeed by his class. But he's been in jail for almost a year now, and on
March 19, he goes to trial on charges that could land him up to ten years.
Kostya was one of the first kids I met at p.s. 666. I'd made a deal with
the school to spend a week in classes with the 10th grade, the equivalent
to our junior class. They'd shoved me into a physics classroom early on a
Monday morning, way in the back of the room, where I'd be less of a
distraction. The teacher, a matronly old woman named Svetlana Babkina, was
having trouble controlling a group of unruly kids at the front. There was
so much noise, she couldn't even start to review the first equation from
the previous night's homework assignment. About ten minutes into the class,
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Kostya? clean
cut, in a freshly-laundered sweatshirt, notebook, textbook and pencil laid
out neatly on his desk. He appeared to be the only person in the room who'd
done his homework. There wasn't a hair on his face; he had just turned
sixteen.
"You take karate?" he asked me.
I said no. The usual conversation about karate belts unfolded; we
determined that he was a green belt. It was a conversation so straight out
of an American junior high that I felt transported. Kostya was young for
his class. His parents had clearly made an effort to keep his head on
straight and keep him out of the trouble that was all around the school. He
didn't drink and was barely interested in girls. Most of his energy was put
into his after-school karate classes and his remarkable regimen of personal
hygiene; his books, his hair, his person, his homework, everything about
him was kept in meticulous order.
While the other kids had no idea what they were going to do after they
graduated, Kostya had a plan confidently worked out: he was going to enter
automotive engineering school, a particular one he'd already settled on,
and train for a pro karate career.
That was two years ago, in November, 1999. Things went wrong pretty fast
after that for Kostya. Engineering school didn't work out. His family
didn't have the money to send him to school, and his grades weren't quite
good enough to get him into a school for free.
This is a pretty common theme at Russian high schools; only the very best
students can get into a decent state school, and even the very best
students have a tough time getting the state to pay. Kids complain that the
sons and daughters of gangsters flood the rolls at MGU, while the
straight-A students from little schools like 666 are left with invitations
to study refrigeration or marine transport at third rate institutes in the
sticks. In any case, Kostya didn't make it, and as his high school career
wound to a close, he found himself hanging around the neighborhood at
Varshavka, with nothing to do.
The summer after school ended, he started hanging around with a new set of
friends, and he started to drink. His other friends recall seeing him
lazing around neighborhood doorways, drinking vodka in the middle of the
afternoon.
His appearance changed. By the end of his senior year, he'd ditched the
clean-cut jock look and gone over to the Russian street-hood aesthetic:
shaved head, walking cap, tight white t-shirt.
One night in the fall of 2001 he and four of his friends were drinking on
the street in the neighborhood. When they ran out of vodka, two of them
went out to buy more. They got their bottle and on the way back they
noticed a drunk asleep in his car, with the keys in the ignition. They
opened the car, beat up the drunk, tossed him in the back seat and drove
the car off to meet the others. When they got there, everybody, including
Kostya, hopped in the car. They drove it off to a secluded area, took out
the drunk, and beat the hell out of him.
The drunk turned out to be an off-duty detective. All five kids were picked
up the next day, and Kostya's been in jail ever since, awaiting trial.
A few months before his arrest, Kostya met his first girlfriend. It
happened over the summer. His friend Kira, one of the old gang from 666,
had predicted one day in July that he would meet his first true love within
three days. Two days later a quiet Caucasian girl named Carina came up to
him in a club called Portal and handed him a telephone number. Though he'd
never been very slick with girls, he called her up, and soon afterward they
were talking about moving in together and getting married.
Carina was with Sergei, Kira and me at Matrosskaya Tishina. Everyone else
was complaining about the cold? Sergei and I turned red, while Kira spent a
whole hour jumping up and down? but Carina didn't complain and quietly went
about the business of trying to secure a place in line. When the cold got
too intense, the four of us ducked into the podyezd of an apartment
building across the street. About twenty other people had had the same idea
and the stairwell of the building was packed with prison visitors. From
time to time a resident would open a door and scream at all of us to get
the hell out.
On one of our trips outside, Carina turned to me and mentioned that
although Kostya's trial had been put off five times over the course of the
last fifteen months or so, she was "pretty sure" that he was really going
to go to court on March 19.
"His lawyer thinks he has a good chance of getting out," she said, smiling.
We went back inside. A middle-aged woman in a fake fur coat came out of her
apartment on the second floor and snapped at us as she made her way down
the stairs.
"Aren't you all gorgeous," she hissed. "The cream of society."
The story I ended up doing two years ago was about four ordinary kids from
p.s. 666, all friends and all very close. Aside from Kostya there was Sasha
Bolovnyev, the undisputed leader of the group and something of a big man on
campus type, who was a year older and planning on entering a naval academy
in St. Petersburg. Sasha at the time was dating Kira on and off; she was a
strong-willed and easily flustered girl who was plainly head over heels in
love with Sasha and alternately embarrassed by and proud of her reputation
as the best fistfighter, male or female, in the school. The fourth member
of the group was Kira's best friend, Ella Soroka, a bashful redhead whose
typical role was as a confidante for the more extroverted Kira, and who
kept to herself about the problems she was having at home with her mother
and her alcoholic stepfather.
They were all good kids, very accessible and likeable, and what was most
heartening about spending time with them was that despite the dreadful
condition of the school, and the war-zone-like atmosphere in their
Varshavka neighborhood, they all still managed to be kids, wrapped up in
kid problems. They gossiped about who liked who and told funny stories
about the love lives of their teachers (indeed, one of the 666 teachers
ended up marrying the principal's secretary, just like they predicted).
Kostya was completely focused on sports, while Sasha spent most of every
day breezily making the rounds in the school, pruning his wisecracking
cool-guy rep. 666 was like a little oasis, a little island of normalcy
where the kids did not even know to be as screwed up as the self-conscious
Americans of the Columbine generation.
You read a lot of stories lately about how things are getting better in
Russia, and various ivory-tower publications like the Wall Street Journal
and the New York Times have trotted out neat little bundles of
macroeconomic statistics in the last year showing how sunny the outlook is
now under the Putin regime. And maybe the bottom line looks better for a
few oil companies now, and maybe there have been some improvements in the
area of corporate governance... and there's no denying that the capital is
absolutely goddamn full of sushi restaurants. But if you want to ask the
basic question of how easy it is to grow up in this country... well, just
look at these kids, look at what they went through the last two years.
A few days before this issue went to print, Ella vanished.
Ella's problems started a few months after graduation. For some reason that
has never been adequately explained, not even to Kira, she was forced to
leave home. Even two years ago she told stories about how her alcoholic
stepfather had tried to molest her, how her mother was constantly running
her down, how she was reminded over and over again how in the way she was.
The mythology of Ella's family is that Ella's mother had gotten pregnant
and been given an ultimatum by the father, that he would marry her if she
had an abortion, but would leave her if she kept the baby. Ella's mother
decided to keep the baby, and true to his word, the father left. "She tells
me all the time how I spoiled her chance for true love," Ella told me about
a year ago. "She doesn't want me in the house. When I ran away, she
wouldn't even take my phone calls. I tried to make up with her, but she
just didn't want me around."
When she called me a year ago, Ella had already been living for three
months in a room in the vicious Marino district. She was working night
shifts as a salesgirl at the only kiosk in her neighborhood that sold vodka
round the clock. Her boss, an exacting Georgian, would leave her alone
overnight with an elderly drunken security guard who would keep her awake
all night by reading off entries from encyclopedias and trivia books. "I
called him the professor," she said. "Every night I had a new lesson."
On one of her first nights on the job, she turned her head for a moment
when a group of kids came in the store, and had the register drawer stolen
on her watch. She spent the next month working off the debt to the
Georgian. Early one morning after a night on the job she called me one
night in a panic. A group of guys who'd hit on her in the store waited for
her shift to end and tried to push her into their car when she left work.
She ran away and hid in the bushes for an hour before sneaking back into
her doorway.
She ended up quitting that job and for a while lived out of a bag, crashing
at friends' houses for a few days at a time before moving again. On several
occasions she slept on the street, once spending two days on a bench at the
Manezhnaya ploschad. At some point last year she got a job as a stripper at
the Bega night club (an eXile advertiser at the time), but she lost that
job and before long was back at Marino, waiting tables at a Georgian
chicken grille restaurant. She borrowed money from friends (me included)
and got another, better room across the street from her job.
That was last summer. Around that time she started seeing her first serious
boyfriend, a Chechnya vet named Lyosha who bragged that he'd killed 20
people in his tour and was now working as a cook (also at a restaurant that
advertises in the eXile, one which I'll leave unnamed), shooting heroin,
and squatting in an apartment with five other junkies. He convinced her to
move out of her room and move in with him, but it proved too much for her
to take, so she seized upon the opportunity afforded by a certain
gynecological disorder to check herself into a hospital in her old
neighborhood, where she was still registered.
"I was sleeping on the floor in that apartment," she said. "The place was
disgusting... as soon as Lyosha would leave, the other guys would be all
over me. I had to get out of there. Plus Lyosha was beating me, it was a
bad situation."
I visited her in the hospital that week. She was sharing a cramped, hot
room with eight other girls, all in their early teens, who'd either just
had babies or had abortions. The girls were all rationing cigarettes and
taking turns smoking on a balcony at the end of the wing. She was begging
the doctors to keep her in longer, but they wouldn't budge from their
release date. As the day approached, she was feverishly working the phone
in the hall, trying to arrange a place to live. Her plan was to leave
before Lyosha came to pick her up. She ended up sacking out on a couch at
one of my friends' houses for a night, then on the next day got herself
another room in Marino with more borrowed money.
She went back to her old job waiting tables, got involved with some guy
named Maxim, who beat her, got pregnant, and then was turned out of a
hospital for an abortion when it was discovered that she was already later
than three months.
That was two months ago. She wasn't in touch with Kira or me or anyone from
666 back then.
Then, two weeks ago, she called me up in a panic and insisted on meeting.
She came to visit me and was frankly pregnant, her belly the size of a
basketball. She also had a black eye: Maxim had beaten her up when she came
to ask for help. Out of money, she'd been turned out of her waitressing
job, no longer being presentable on the floor, and was about to be kicked
out of her room for failure to keep up with her rent. Despite all this, she
was smiling and positive when she visited, nearly manic but not quite. She
had a plan: get a new place, then get a partial-birth abortion at a private
clinic she'd heard about from a friend, then go back to waitressing, start
all over. But she needed money for the abortion.
What could I do? I told her I'd help her out.
I asked about her old friends from 666, and suggested we try to get
together. She called up Kira and we arranged to go to Varshavka to see her
the next day. We met at the Metro station the next night, and the three of
us went back to Kira's place to have tea. Kira's parents, who'd put Ella up
at various stages of her sojourn the last year or so, looked with concern
at her belly and tried to seem supportive about the grand plan. They
expressed this by not paying her too much attention, not bringing the
matter up, making small talk and not looking her way too much as she sat at
the end of the table, devouring a plate full of apples and oranges? she was
already hungry all the time.
Ella's personality had changed. In high school she spoke so little it was
striking. It wasn't even an introverted silence, but more like a stunned
silence; in her pictures from that time she has the wobbly, wide-eyed look
of a newborn animal. When she did speak, she was completely artless, even
silly: Sasha's jokes made her blush.
Since she left home she'd adopted the habit of talking constantly, telling
story after story, each one more detailed than the last. After one week
working at the all-night store she shocked me by calling and breathlessly
recounting literally every single detail, skillfully playing up the theme
of this amazing neighborhood that was drunk round the clock; she described
it all with fascination, like a person looking at the ocean floor from a
glass-bottomed boat.
Six months later the note of fascination was gone, or maybe better to say
it was still there, only it was delivered self-consciously now, as though
she knew it was expected of her and she was including it to preserve the
effect. Finally she dropped the pretence and became a glib commentator,
deftly ripping off lewd jokes in the middle of the narrative. I heard a lot
of stories about the various put-downs she'd delivered to customers at the
restaurant who'd hit on her.
In this last phase the humor was mostly gone and the narrative never
strayed far from her problems or the favor she was going to ask you. In bad
neighborhoods in the States they talk about "playas", people who play you,
with the ultimate playa being the playa playa, the guy who plays the playa.
If you've ever listened to junkies or drug dealers talk, you know what I'm
talking about? endless streams of stories, unending torrents of bullshit,
never straying from the same self-pitying theme... the amazing unlucky
breaks, the unforeseeable ways they were cheated, etc., etc. When she
showed up again two weeks ago, Ella was almost 100% playa. She talked and
talked, but she only had one point, one story to tell, and if you couldn't
quite believe what she was saying, you still wanted to help her.
Ella played us. Some other friends of hers and I gave her money to get a
new place; she got a room at Okhotniy Ryad. Then I made a deal to give her
money for her abortion. She scheduled it for last Wednesday, and showed up
at my house last Tuesday.
Lyosha was with her when she came.
He was your standard creep, shaved head, tall, the rail-thin build of a
junkie, little smirk on his face, croaking out a smug "normalno" through
his cigarette smoke when I asked him how he was doing. I thought it was
strange at the time, but I didn't say anything... I gave her the money and
we made arrangements to meet the next day? I was going to go with her to
the clinic.
Lyosha was supposed to pick me up outside the Aeroport Metro station at
eight-thirty the next morning. Like an asshole, I waited there for
forty-five minutes. He never showed. I went to every abortion clinic in the
neighborhood looking for her. All three places I checked (one place on
Chernokhovskaya street advertises massage and manicure? only directory
assistance knew it was an abortion clinic) showed me the door within about
ten seconds, obviously thinking I was some estranged father, looking to
beat his girl in her post-op bed. I called Kira and told her the story.
"Wait a minute," she said. "Lyosha was with her on Tuesday?"
"Yeah," I said.
She was amazed. The mere fact that she was in touch with Lyosha was the
kind of thing that Ella would never have been able to conceal from Kira in
the past. She was completely surprised.
Days later we found out that Ella had robbed her new apartment mates the
night before, probably with Lyosha. The police are looking for her. She
never went to get the abortion. The whole thing looks like a scheme to
wrestle about 300 bucks from her last friends and then go run away
somewhere. If everybody's best guess is right, she's living with Lyosha and
his five junkie friends in some dive somewhere, and that's where she'll
have the baby three months from now. God knows what will happen to the
baby. Kira's mother is afraid she'll have it and just leave it somewhere...
"She's left herself without any choices at all."
Kira has an old address for Lyosha. As the paper goes to bed, we're making
plans to go by his place, with as many guys as we can find. An apartment
full of junkies is a dicey thing, after all.
Sasha Bolovnyev didn't want to meet me. He was offended by some of the
things I wrote in the article two years ago. In fact, when the article
first came out, Ella told me that Sasha had said that if he ever saw me
again, he was going to break my arms.
It appears that there was some confusion about the translation. In that
article I'd revealed some pretty sordid secrets of Ella's and Kira's, but
Sasha had come off looking like a Slavic Fonzie... In two scenes I
described, I had him grabbing the ass of the school receptionist and
instantly hitting on the 28 year-old photographer I brought to the school.
I described his plans to enter the naval academy in Petersburg, and maybe a
little dramatically played up the theme of his uncertainty about the
future... It was hard to imagine his being mortally offended by a mawkish
prose style, particularly since he was getting it in translation, but
whatever it was, he was clearly pretty upset.
Nonetheless, I had Kira call him, and we met last Monday night, the day
before Ella came by for her money.
The short version of Sasha's story is that Petersburg didn't work out (he
was quiet about why), he came back in the middle of his first year, got
married, had a baby (Alexander Alexandrovich), and took a job repairing
watches in a storefront in the Western end of the city. "Not even repairing
watches," he laughed. "I just put in new batteries."
Sasha looks good and seems very healthy. He has a pretty wife, Olga, and
seems to enjoy being a father. Nonetheless, times aren't exactly easy. He
lives in a kommunalka with Olga, her parents, her grandmother, her sister
and her sister's husband, along with the landlady. The watch job doesn't
make a whole lot of money. Not being anxious to offend him again, I can't
elaborate on some of the other details. Suffice to say that Sasha's the
same old Sasha: his wife even told me that one of the girls at the store he
works for offered him $150 to sleep with her.
Sasha shrugged as he listened to her tell the story. "I would have done
it," he said, laughing, "but her tits were too small."
He's got a few family problems. He's quarrelling with his parents, who are
mad at him because a decision he made regarding his propiska that's going
to cost them a room in their new apartment. This is the kind of absurdly
brutal bureaucratic situation that wrecks lives in this country.
The deal is this: Sasha's parents live in an apartment building that's
going to be torn down. The state is obligated to give them a new apartment.
They would have been due a three-room apartment, except for one thing:
since Sasha and Olga had a baby, they're considered their own family unit,
not part of the same family. Now, instead of the extra room for Sasha, his
parents are only going to get a two-room apartment. Because of this issue,
the parents are no longer speaking to him, and won't even visit the baby.
Sasha didn't shake my hand when we met, but he forgave me pretty quickly,
on the condition that I let him come by and trash my office at some point.
If the next issue doesn't come out on time, that will probably be why.
Out of the four, Kira seems to be in the best situation.
I think I underestimated Kira. Two years ago, I thought she was headed for
trouble. For one thing, she was constantly getting in fights. Not that this
was necessarily a problem: she never lost any of them. The last time I'd
seen her, she was flattening a kid named Slava outside the "Stimul"
nightclub at Proletarskaya. She threw a right hand that night that was not
a lot worse than the right Lennox Lewis threw last fall to knock Hasim "The
Rock" Rakhman through the ropes in Las Vegas. She had an extremely short
fuse and in her love life seemed to take things very hard. Of the four of
them, she was the last one I expected to land on her feet.
But this city favors the pugnacious. Kira's aggressive, domineering
character has served her well. She got into the New Russian University in
the Baumanskaya region, and was named a study group leader by her teachers.
She's majoring in English now, in a pre-law program, but plans to switch in
a few years to prepare for a career in tourism. "What's the point of law?"
she says, and it's true, there aren't many real jobs in the profession.
Tourism, however, is another story... She talks about a career in business
and even for a person like me, completely lacking in commercial
sensibility, it's hard not to recognize a natural managerial talent. She
could easily end up as one of those success stories you see in Western news
articles about Russia, travelling, holding down a paying job, having some
extra money to spend on herself.
"The most important thing in this life is a hard-headed character," she
says. "I have that. I think I'm going to be fine no matter what I do."
Kira had some very bad luck in her love life last year, a story that cannot
be elaborated upon here, but even there, she seems to get her way. Her
looks, her posture, her dress have all improved, and being a woman clearly
agrees with her, whereas Ella looked better as a girl. Just last week, she
said, a "fan" appeared at school.
"He's been after me for a week," she said. "Finally, I let him drive me
home. When we got there, he said to me, ?Haven't I at least earned a kiss
on the cheek?' So I said, ?Sure,' and just went like this." She closed her
eyes and turned her head to the side, offering her left cheek. She laughed.
"That took him off-guard. He was expecting me to kiss him on the cheek."
Kostya's trial on the 19th was going to be a reunion. It was going to be
the first time since high school that all four were in the same room. Not
that it would have meant anything in particular, but it might have been
nice; Kostya acquitted or let off with time served, all four hugging in the
courtroom. Once Kostya's best friend, Sasha had only recently decided to
go. "He called me the other night," Sasha said last week. "He said, ?Do you
recognize me?' And I was like, ?Of course I recognize you.'" Even with the
tough-guy act, it was obvious that Sasha was happy to hear from Kostya,
with whom he'd lost touch since he graduated ahead of him two years ago.
"I'll go," he said. "I'll be there."
Kira's been in touch with Kostya throughout. She's been the one arranging
for his phone cards, sharing with Carina the role of his liaison to the
outside world. She is urging all of Kostya's friends to show up at the
trial, and particularly pressured Sasha to be there. But now this thing
with Ella has happened, and the trial is on the back burner. No one else is
looking for Ella, so it's up to Kira to try to find her.
There's something about getting older, almost like a biological change in
your relationship with the world. When you're fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
no matter what the situation, you're still growing and you're bigger than
life. Then one day you wake up and life is bigger than you. When that day
comes in this country, you'd better be ready. You can fall a long way.
I'll publish the verdict of Kostya's trial in the next issue. If there's
anyone with any advice on what we can do with Ella when we find her, who
knows of something like a women's shelter, for instance, please write to me
at taibbi@exile.ru.
*******
#5
From: Jennifer Morgan (JMorgan@bell-pottinger.co.uk)
Sent: 3/6/02 3:58 AM
Subject: TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE [with Boris Berezovsky]
TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
AT THE RUSI
IN LONDON
ON TUESDAY, 5 MARCH 2002
CHAIRMAN
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I welcome you to the Defence Studies Institute
to this press conference which we hope will last about an hour, not much
more. You have been invited here by Liberal Russia. My name is Richard
Tracey, I am the independent chairman of this press conference, the
subject matter of it is nothing to do with me but I am here to try to
pull together the various strands that make up the story. And you can
see from these very graphic pictures around you that the main story
revolves around several explosions, very serious explosions, that
happened in Moscow and in other parts of Russia, but primarily in
Moscow, in September 1999 and of course there were sadly 200 people
roughly who were killed and many others who were injured in these
explosions.
Now this press conference will take the form first of all of
presentations from various people here and then you will see a part of
an independent documentary film which has been made about these events.
I will introduce those around me on the platform and you will be hearing
from them at various stages in the press conference. First of all from
Liberal Russia we have on my right and far right here, Boris Berezovsky,
who is co-Chairman of Liberal Russia, and on my far left Sergei
Yushenkov who is another co-Chairman and is the leader of Liberal
Russia. The third member of Liberal Russia is in the centre of the
table over on the right, Yuli Rubakov, a member of the state Duma and
the chairman of the sub-committee for human rights. I also have
alongside me on my left here Tatyana Morozova, whose mother was sadly
killed in this horrific explosion in front of us here, this picture
which you see and it also involved her sister who was injured in that
explosion. On my right here and then on the end of the table on the far
right, Charles Gazelle, who is an independent French film producer, and
his colleague, Jean Charles Deniau on the table on the far right, he is
the Director and writer of the documentary, part of which you will be
seeing, called Assassination of Russia. We also have on the table on
the far right Mr Nikita Checulin, former Acting Director of the Russian
Conversion Explosives Centre who will have a very important statement to
make to you. Just finally in the introductions, can I point out in the
front row here, we have the co-authors of the book Blowing Up Russia,
Yuri Felshtinsky, who is a professional author, and Alexander
Litvinenko, who is a former member of the FSB. We also have in the
front row here, and these will certainly be available to answer
questions from you, Igor Malishenko, the former Chairman of NTV, an
independent station which was closed after it broadcast the film related
to the events that we will be speaking about this afternoon. And
finally we also have a very senior UK explosives expert, Alan Hatcher,
who is the Principal of the International School for Search and
Explosives Engineers, and you will understand later what he might say to
you will be extremely relevant.
Well that is the end of the introductions, Ladies and Gentlemen. Can I
now introduce Boris Berezovsky, who will set the context of this press
conference.
MR BORIS BEREZOVSKY
Thank you very much. Ladies and Gentlemen, I will give a very short
statement before the demonstration of a very short piece of film which
gives just the line of what happened in Russia in autumn 1999. I just
want to mention that the terroristic attack in September 1999 did not
have any equivalent precedent in the history of Russia at all.
Nevertheless, still now after two and a half years after that, no-one in
Russia, I may say that the people who organised that are in jail or we
really know who exactly did that. From the very beginning Russian
officials presented just one version of that, the version that Chechen
terrorists organised this attack, and after two and a half years not one
Chechen is in jail or under investigation.
I started to investigate myself this story around one year ago and today
I may give my conclusion. I am sure that it was organised by Fais
Asbert (phon) and it is not just my speculation about that, it is
conclusion, clear conclusion, and today you will be able to put
questions to people who have the same vision on this problem. And I ask
you to come here with just one target, to push Russian officials to
investigate this story and to give clear answers of who organised that.
CHAIRMAN
Now Ladies and Gentlemen, I mentioned the independent documentary film
which has been made about these events by Charles Gazelle and by Jean
Charles Deniau. Can I now ask Charles Gazelle to give you some details
about the documentary film?
CHARLES GAZELLE
Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon. May I start off by saying I am
very sorry to be speaking French to you today, I would have preferred to
speak English but French is my mother tongue and I feel that I would be
more specific, more accurate, in French.
I run an independent film company in Paris which has been in existence
for twelve years and we have made a number of films which have dealt
with the ex-Soviet Union and with Russia and that is why when there was
this attempted bombing in Ryazan, our attention was drawn to this and
this is why as well 18 months ago we decided to look into the motives
and try and carry out an investigation on this terrorist act.
You are going to see an extract, or rather an edited version of 52
minutes of an original film, it was an inquiry, an investigation carried
out into the bombing in Moscow and I would like to take this opportunity
of introducing the Director of this film who is over here and his name
is Jean Charles Deniau, and he carried out the investigation on the
spot. You are going to see 10 minutes of what was originally 52 minutes
which was shown on television, and later on it goes without saying that
both Jean Charles and myself will be only too willing to answer any
questions you may have.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you. And now Ladies and Gentlemen, the showing of the 10 minute
extract from the film made by Charles Gazelle and Jean Charles Deniau.
(Film Shown)
CHAIRMAN
The Assassination of Russia, Ladies and Gentlemen, copies of that
extract you have just seen by Charles Gazelle and Jean Charles Deniau
are available, broadcast quality, and as you are leaving if you ask for
one they are available.
Our next speaker is Mr Nikita Checulin, former Acting Director of the
Russian Conversion Explosives Centre.
MR CHECULIN
Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Nikita Checulin, I am
the former Acting Director of the Russian Conversion Agency Explosives
Centre. In the year 2000 I was recruited by FSB as an under cover agent
of Department T, which is dealing with anti-terrorist activities. I
have documentary evidence of a secret scheme to withdraw explosives,
including hexogene, from military bases. High level officials from the
Russian government have suppressed investigation of these facts. Tons of
explosives, with false markings, were transferred to various
organisations in Russian regions using the Institute's Power of Attorney
and false markings. I also have evidence that senior officials knew of
this illegal activity and that FSB Director, Nikolai Patrushev,
suppressed the criminal investigations into the activities of the
institute.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you Mr Checulin. Tatyana Morozova's mother, as I said earlier,
perished in this appalling explosion in front her and her sister was
also involved.
TATYANA MOROZOVA
Hello to everyone and Good Afternoon. My mother died on the night of 9
September 1999. She was killed by an explosion which destroyed our
apartment building, my home. My mother's body was never found and it
took a year of waiting and DNA analysis to find remainings of her. Two
years passed by, nothing was really happening, no-one was found to
blame, no-one has been brought to justice for these crimes. The state
investigation has revealed nothing whatsoever. Records are closed and
classified, so I ask why has there been a cover-up and why is every call
for independent investigation blocked. We have appealed to the Duma to
establish an independent parliamentary commission to conduct a full
scale investigation of the bombing of September and there was no
response. I think we have a right to know what has happened on this
night.
Later my sister and I, we filed a case against FSB, the Russian
Federation, requesting to continue conducting an investigation. I
demand to know, on behalf of all Russian citizens, of the memory of my
mum, my friends, my neighbours, who is guilty of murder and I have still
hope to find justice. That is all.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you Tatyana. Our final contribution to the presentation, Ladies
and Gentlemen, is Sergei Yushenkov, a member of the Duma and leader of
Liberal Russia.
SERGEI YUSHENKOV
Today is the anniversary of the death of Stalin and there is a movement
in Russia against the restoration of Stalinism and the civil movement
for the creation of civilian committees to that effect. Presently in
Russia there is no control over the activity of special services and
such attempts have been suppressed. In March 2000 the parliament has
refused to send a special request to the Prime Minister to look into the
events of Moscow and Volgodonsk.
In February of this year I raised a question in the state Duma in order
to send a special request to the Prosecutor General. However, only 161
people voted in favour of my motion. I must say that 7 people voted
against it. However, we need a majority of 226 in order for the motion
to pass. 170 people were too scared to vote either for or against the
motion. I have been a Deputy of the Russian Parliament for the last 12
years and I have never witnessed our parliament being so cowardly and so
impotent.
The movement of Liberal Russia has taken a decision to apply to appeal
to the European Parliament in order to conduct a hearing about the
events that happened in Moscow and Volgodonsk, as a result of which
civilian houses have been blown up.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you Mr Yushenkov. Now then Ladies and Gentlemen, that is the end
of the formal presentation of the press conference and it is your
opportunity to ask questions. Can I ask you when you ask your question
to give your name and the name of the publication or station that you
represent.
QUESTION (Bloomberg, Guy Falconbridge)
My first question to Boris Abramovich. Are you specifically implicating
President Putin for these explosions considering that he was as Russian
President, he is actually responsible for answers for the FSB as well?
And the second question about actual evidence, we have a lot of
circumstantial evidence that has been shown today but no concrete
evidence. I am based in Moscow, there is nothing amazingly new today I
see amongst the evidence, I just wondered if you could elucidate a bit.
BORIS ABRAMOVICH
No, what I am saying here is not that the President of Russia, President
Putin, has given an order to blow up houses in Moscow, Volgodonsk and
Gruzansk. What I am saying is that he definitively knew that such
things were taking place and during his statement on 23 September, after
the Ryazan incident, the attempted explosion in Ryazan, he said that he
was going to bring the right people to account. He was trying to cover
up for Mr Patrushev when he was making a statement on this programme on
Russian Television, that leads me to conclude that either he could have
prevented a terrorist attack and didn't do it, or alternatively he was
passive.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
What Mr Checulin has announced today and the events that happened in
Ryazan are in my opinion a carbon copy of what happened in Moscow. All
the explosions that took place lie in one logical and factual
construction and therefore are firm proof of the same sequence of
events.
QUESTION (Intel Research)
No-one has been brought to trial apparently, but two years ago Vladimir
Kondaritiev, a Major in the FSB and an explosives expert, wrote to the
federal investigative agency admitting that he was one of the members of
Department K20 and participated in the bombing of Korianov Street.
Whatever became of him?
YURI FELSHTINSKY
... internet and KGB actually announced that the person never exists and
the department never exists. We do have reason to believe that
Department K20 exists but there is no additional information about the
person, we do not know whether he is alive, we do not know where he is.
CHAIRMAN
That was Mr Yuri Felshtinsky who was one of the co-authors of Blowing Up
Russia.
QUESTION (Steven Dalyell, BBC)
We have in this country quite a long experience of terrorist explosions,
many of them are small and in fact having been on the receiving end of
one of them, it doesn't need to be very big, if the building shakes and
your windows get blown in it is terrifying. Now one of the things which
hasn't been brought out, and I would be very grateful for the opinion of
the explosives experts, it strikes me that particularly these two Moscow
bombs, not only were they carried out by a huge amount of explosives,
but it seems that the people who did it knew exactly what they were
doing. This is not just someone dropping a bomb off somewhere and
running, this is someone putting a bomb in the exact spot where the
building is going to come down like a pack of cards. So I would be
grateful if those who are experts and know far more about this subject
than I do could actually confirm that this is the case, that to do this
you have got to be a professional, you have got to be a professional in
demolition.
CHAIRMAN
Mr Alan Hatcher is the explosives expert and the Principal for the
International School for Search and Explosives Engineers.
MR ALAN HATCHER
I have sat with a team of explosives experts over the last two days
analysing it and you are right, the positioning of the explosives were
absolutely key. If the particular device that you can see had initiated
then it would have brought the building down, without hesitation. And
having been involved, as you have, with IADs all over the world, that
was placed, it is not the usual terrorist activity though.
QUESTION (Jeremy Vine)
Mr Berezovsky, do you concede that you will be seen to have a political
motive here which is in saying all this to unseat the man who shut down
your TV station?
MR BEREZOVSKY
Anyone is able to think about my motivation everything you want, you
understand, and a lot of people really present directly this version.
You see I don't want to discuss about this point, I just present
evidence which from my point of view are very important for Russia, are
very important for the international community to understand what
happened in Russia, and there that story is my reason for doing so and I
don't want to discuss about that here. I just tried to present real
evidence and we really ask specialists in England, in France, to give
conclusion concerning what happened in Ryazan using the information
which was given by FSB, I mean pictures, and those people gave this
conclusion and they said there was no doubt that this natural detonator,
not fake like FSB state gave statement, and it is not sugar, it is
hexogene, and I think those two components should demonstrate that it
was not exercises, this is important.
QUESTION (Richard Beeston, Times)
I would like to ask Mr Berezovsky regarding the motivation for these
attacks, are you suggesting therefore that the FSB purposefully killed
hundreds of Russian civilians in order to given then Prime Minister
Putin the pretext to launch a new war on Chechnya which they calculated
he may or may not win and that would give him a majority in the future
elections? It sounds like quite a convoluted way to go about winning an
election when he might just have asked you to give him some favourable
television coverage or do it the old-fashioned way. Is that really what
this was all about?
MR BEREZOVSKY
That is exactly what I think. I believe that people from FSB thought
that Putin would not be able to come to power using the lawful
democratic means. Moreover, I would like to say that back in 1996 FSB
have attempted exactly the same thing, three months prior to the
election which was due to take place in June, and Yeltsin and Zuganov
were running for election head to head, three laws were due to be signed
by Yeltsin on 17 March 1996 under pressure from Korzakov, Bersakov and
Suskavetz, one of which would have delayed the elections for two years
and the other one was the dissolution of parliament and the third one
was banning the activities of the communist party. Had that happened
obviously there would have been no chance, he would have become an
illegal President.
QUESTION (Nikita Signikov, London Courier, Russian Newspaper)
Mr Berezovsky, do you think that the international criminal
investigators and experts had enough evidence to come to their
conclusions, and if your answer is positive, what will follow on?
MR BEREZOVSKY
As I said earlier, there were four independent experts both from Britain
and from France who came to identical conclusions saying that the Ryazan
incident wasn't a trial, it was a real attempt to blow up a civilian
building, it was real hexogene and it was a real detonator, contrary to
FSB's statement. These facts lead to the conclusion that FSB were
preparing an explosion and in any civilian country where law is
respected an event like the explosion in Moscow, or attempted explosion
in Ryazan would lead to a public outcry. Look at what happened in the
USA during the Oklahoma bombing and whether it was a larger scale or
lower scale explosion doesn't really matter, the result is still the
same. And the facts that we have in our possession are much more
convincing, they are stronger facts than those that the US government
were basing their decision upon when they decided to intervene in the
Afghan situation. The facts that we are basing our statement on are
properly documented and properly signed by the right experts and as I
said earlier, they are the proof.
QUESTION (Glen Howard)
I am the Executive Director of the American Committee for Peace in
Chechnya and I am very much concerned about what this film indicates.
It says that the pretext for this war were these bombings, as everyone
knows there is an ongoing war going on in Chechnya and 400,000 Chechens
have been displaced by the war. The real tragedy is the Chechen
people. Mr Berezovsky or Mr Yushenkov, will you address the question,
does this indicate also that there might be some type of negotiated
settlement in the war, what are the prospects for the people of
Chechnya, they were the ones that were blamed for these bombings.
MR YUSHENKOV
I would sincerely like to hope so, I would sincerely like to give a
positive answer to your question. We are currently conducting an
undeclared war in Chechnya and according to Russian legislation this is
a criminal activity because according to Russian laws there are only
three incidents when the Russian military can conduct military
activities, the first instance is when war has been declared, the second
one is when an emergency situation has been declared and the third one
an emergency military situation. None of them has been announced and I
do sincerely hope that the European Parliament will pay close attention
to it.
QUESTION (Komorstandt)
How do you envisage the repercussions of your statement in Russia and
what are your chances of this press conference being broadcast in Russia
given the fact that there is no independent media left? And what
consequences will there be both for you and for President Putin given
the fact that there will be Presidential elections in two years time, or
maybe slightly sooner?
MR YUSHENKOV
When this film was being created we were planning to show it on TV6
which was at the time an independent TV channel, that was what we were
hoping to achieve. However, the real proof of whether the authorities
had a hand in these events will be in their showing or non-showing of
this film. We will offer this documentary for broadcasting and we hope
that the French producers and the French owners will not charge too high
a fee for demonstrating it in Russia. However, in any event, should it
not be broadcast in Russia that will be evidence that the authorities
are scared to broadcast the real facts and real truths and should it be
broadcast it will allow millions of people to draw their own conclusions
about who stood behind those atrocities.
QUESTION (David Hoffman, Washington Post)
Boris Abramovic, as far as I remember, after these blasts in September
1999 and through into the year 2000 you were a supporter of Mr Putin. As
far as I recall you helped him become Russian President. Can you tell
us what was going through your mind in those months when you were
supporting Mr Putin, did you ever raise this issue with him at the time
when he was coming to power?
MR ABRAMOVIC
First and foremost, until recently I did not raise this issue because I
never even imagined that the special services of Russia could take part
in such a crime. I started to draw parallels between the events of 1996
and 1999 and a lot of things actually had a lot in common. I believe
both then and in 1999 the special services did not believe that the
Presidents, ie President Yeltsin and President Putin, had a real chance
of being democratically elected, hence my conclusions.
QUESTION (Comersant, Russian Newspaper)
What you were saying, Mr Berezovsky, was that the special services and
the General Prosecutor are accusing you of being directly involved in
the second war in Chechnya, they are accusing you of financing the
activities of the guerrillas in Daghestan, they are accusing you of
taking part in the abduction of General Shtigin and today it has been
announced that you are officially on the wanted list. Could you please
comment on that?
MR BEREZOVSKY
It is not the first instance when both the FSB and the Prosecutor
General's office are trying to create an impression that they are trying
to pursue me through Interpol. However, the first statement similar to
what you mentioned earlier was made over a year ago but to date only one
order for my arrest has been issued, and that is an order for me to be
arrested in Russia. Both FSB and other services know exactly where I am
and moreover they claim to know what I have for breakfast every morning,
so they know my whereabouts. Moreover, I would lend my support to FSB
and should they really want to investigate the history of the Daghestan
conflict, the question that I would gladly answer would be the real
reasons behind the war in Chechnya and the role that the Russian Special
Services played in initiating the Chechen conflict.
QUESTION (Will Burgess, Associated Press Television)
May I ask a question to Berezovsky and Yushenkov. Can you just confirm
that you are wanting an inquiry or an investigation, but from an
international body, into these bombings and would you like to see Putin
named or involved in those inquiries or trial of some sort?
MR BEREZOVSKY
The answer to your question is a definitive yes. The purpose of today's
press conference is to urge the world community to pay particular
attention to the events that took place in Moscow in September 1999. We
plan to appeal to all international organisations which are able to
apply certain measures to help an investigation in Russia take place and
President Putin's name will most definitely be mentioned in these
actions. In my opinion, the least we can say is that he knew, he was
aware about FSB's participation in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Resanovantz
and his name will be definitely linked to our inquiries. I believe that
in our formal appeal where all the documentary evidence and proof are
listed, which will be made available not only to the Russian community
but to the world community as a whole, Mr Putin's name should be
mentioned.
MR RUBAKOV
Undoubtedly we will do our utmost to make sure that the world community
plays their role in investigating this tragedy. I would like to draw
your attention to the following fact, that according to the statement
that Mr Checulin has made earlier, and based on the material evidence
that we have in our possession, we need to bear in mind that not only
past explosions have taken place but that tons and tons of explosives
are missing and that we may be facing another horrific series of similar
explosions in the future. A question has been raised earlier about
these explosions being the original impetus for starting a war in
Chechnya and leading to the death of a lot of Chechens. Yes indeed it
may sound sacrilegious, but the original death of hundreds of people
under the rubble of civilian houses led to the start of a war where it
became a detonator so to speak of a war where thousands of people
perished. My experience leads me to conclude that these explosions can
lead and can be traced back to special services of the Russian
Federation. My experience of dealing with the KGB, both back in the
'70s when I was a dissident and my experience of being part of the
peacekeeping forces during the first Chechen war, leads me to believe
that had these explosions been a result of the Chechen atrocities we
would have seen acts of hari kiri, acts of self-destruction by Chechen
volunteers.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you very much indeed for all your contributions. Can I, Ladies
and Gentlemen, thank all of our speakers here who have participated in
this press conference. Can I apologise to those of you who haven't been
able to ask public questions, but our speakers will be available if you
want to ask them personal questions. And can I remind you that tape
copies of the film that you saw are available and they are broadcast
quality.
*******
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