Alexander Litvinenko Read online

  A little later the following colorful account of the events of November 26 was given by Major Valery Ivanov, following his release in a group of seven members of the Russian armed forces on December 8: By unit order of the day, all those who had been recruited were granted compassionate leave due to family circumstances. For the most part, they took officers without any settled domestic arrangements. Half of them had no apartments-you were supposed to be able to refuse, but if you did refuse, when they started handing out apartments you d find yourself left out. On November 10, we arrived in Mozdok in northern Ossetia. In two weeks we made ready fourteen tanks with Chechen crews and twenty-six tanks for Russian servicemen. On November 25, we advanced on Grozny& I personally was in a group of three tanks which took control of the Grozny television center at mid-day on the 26th. There was no resistance from the Interior Ministry forces defending the tower. But three hours later, in the absence of communications with our command, we came under attack by the famous Abkhazian battalion. We were surrounded by tanks and infantry and decided it was pointless to return fire, since the [anti-Dudaev] opposition forces had immediately run off and abandoned us, and two of our three tanks were burnt out. The crews managed to bail out and surrender to the guards of the television center, who handed us over to President Dudaev s personal bodyguard. They treated us well, in the last few days they hardly guarded us at all, but then there was nowhere we could run off to.

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  The impression given by all this was that the armored column had been deliberately introduced into Grozny on November 26, so that it would be destroyed. The column was not capable of disarming Dudaev and his army, or of taking the city and holding it.

  Dudaev s army was at full strength and well-armed. The column could not possibly have been anything more than a moving target.

  Russian Minister of Defense Grachyov hinted that he had not been involved in the irresponsible attempt to take Grozny. From a military point of view, Grachyov declared at a press conference on November 28, 1996, it would be entirely possible to take Grozny in two hours with a single regiment of paratroopers. However, all military conflicts are ultimately settled at the negotiating table by political methods. Introducing tanks into the city without infantry cover was really quite pointless. But why then were they sent in?

  General Gennady Troshev would later tell us about Grachyov s doubts concerning the Chechen campaign: He tried to do something about it. He tried to extract a clear assessment of the situation from Stepashin and his special service, he tried to delay the initial introduction of troops until the spring, he even tried to reach a personal agreement with Dudaev. We know now that such a meeting did take place. They didn t come to any agreement. General Troshev, who at this stage was in control of the second war in Chechnya, could not understand how Grachyov had failed to reach an understanding with Dudaev. The reason, of course, was that Dudaev insisted on a personal meeting with Yeltsin, and Korzhakov refused to set up the meeting unless he was paid.

  The brilliant military operation in which a Russian armored column was burnt out was, indeed, not organized by Grachyov, but by director of the FSK Stepashin and head of the Moscow UFSB Savostyanov, who was responsible for handling questions relating to the overthrow of Dudaev s regime and the introduction of troops into Chechnya. Those who expatiated at great length on the crude miscalculations of the Russian military leaders, who had sent the armored column into the city only for it to be destroyed, failed to understand the subtle political calculations of the provocateurs who organized the war in Chechnya. The people who planned the introduction of troops into Grozny wanted the column to be wiped out in spectacular fashion by the Chechens. It was the only way they could provoke Yeltsin into launching a full-scale war against Dudaev.

  Immediately after the rout of the armored column in Grozny, President Yeltsin made a public appeal to Russian participants in the conflict in the Chechen Republic, and the Kremlin began preparing public opinion for imminent full-scale war. In an interview for the Russian Information Agency Novosti, Arkady Popov, a consultant with the president s analytical center, announced that Russia could take on the role of a compulsory peacemaker in Chechnya, and that all the indications were that the Russian president intended to take decisive action. If the president were to declare a state of emergency in Chechnya, the Russian authorities could employ a form of limited intervention, which would take the form of disarming both sides to the conflict by introducing a limited contingent of Russian troops into Grozny -exactly what had been tried in Afghanistan. So, having provoked a conflict in Chechnya by providing political

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  and military support to the Chechen opposition, the FSK now intended to launch a war against Dudaev under cover of peacemaking operations.

  The Chechen side took Yeltsin s statement to be an ultimatum and a declaration of war. A statement issued by the Chechen government confirmed that this statement, and any attempt to put it into effect, were in contravention of the norms of international law, and gave the government of Chechnya the right to respond by taking adequate measures for the protection of its independence and the territorial integrity of its state. In the opinion of the government of the Chechen Republic, the threat of a Russian declaration of a state of emergency on Chechen territory expressed an undisguised desire to continue military operations and interfere in the internal affairs of another state.

  On November 30, Grozny was subjected to air strikes by the Russian air force. On December 1, the Russian military command refused to allow into Grozny an aircraft carrying a delegation of members of the Russian State Duma. The delegation landed in the Ingushetian capital of Nazran and set out overland to Grozny for a meeting with Dudaev. While they were traveling to the Chechen capital, on December 1, at about 14.00 hours, eight SU-27 planes carried out a second raid on the Chechen capital, encountering dense anti-aircraft fire in the process. The planes specifically shelled the district of the city where Dudaev lived. According to the Chechen side, one plane was shot down by anti-aircraft defense forces.

  On December 2, the chairman of the Duma Defense Committee and head of the delegation that had arrived in Grozny, Sergei Yushenkov, declared that reliance on force in Russian-Chechen relations was doomed to failure. Yushenkov also stated that familiarization with the situation on the ground had convinced him that negotiation was the only possible way to resolve the situation that had arisen, and claimed that the Chechen side had not set any preconditions for negotiations.

  Public opinion was still on the side of the Chechens, but the leadership of the FSB had become absolutely convinced that it could be manipulated by the use of acts of terrorism blamed on the Chechens. On December 5, the FSK informed journalists that foreign mercenaries had surged across the state border into Chechnya and, therefore, activity by the terrorist groups being infiltrated into Russia today cannot be ruled out in other regions of the country as well. This was the first undisguised announcement by the FSK that acts of terrorism with a trail leading back to Chechnya would soon begin in Russia.

  At this point, however, they still spoke of Russia being infiltrated by foreign agents, a ploy drawn, no doubt, from the pages of the old Soviet KGB handbooks.

  On December 6, Dudaev declared in an interview that Russia s policy was creating a rising tide of Islamic sentiment in Chechnya: Playing the Chechen card may bring into play the global interests of foreign Islamic states, who could make it impossible to control the development of events. A third force has now emerged in Chechnya, the Islamists, and the initiative is gradually shifting over to them. Dudaev characterized the mood of the new arrivals in Grozny with the words: We are no longer your soldiers, Mr.

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  President, we are the soldiers of Allah, and summed up: the situation in Chechnya is beginning to get out of control, and this concerns me.

  As though in reply to Dudaev, Russian Minister of Defense Grachyov held a public relations exercise which too
k the external form of a peacemaking gesture, but in reality, provoked a further escalation of the conflict. Grachyov proposed that the Chechen opposition headed by Avturkhanov, which was financed, armed, and staffed by the FSK, should disarm, on condition that Dudaev s supporters would agree to give up their weapons at the same time. In other words, he suggested to Dudaev that the Chechens should disarm unilaterally (since there was no suggestion of the Russian side disarming).

  Naturally this proposal was not accepted by the government of the Chechen Republic. On December 7, Grachyov had a meeting with Dudaev, but the discussions proved fruitless.

  On the same day in Moscow, the Security Council held a session devoted to events in Chechnya, and the State Duma held a closed session, to which the leaders of the government departments responsible for the armed forces and other agencies of law enforcement were invited. However, they failed to show up at the Duma, because they did not wish to answer the parliamentarians questions about who had given the orders to recruit members of the Russian armed forces and bomb Grozny. We now know that the Russian military personnel were recruited by the FSK on Stepashin s instructions, and that the directives to bombard Grozny were issued by the Ministry of Defense.

  On December 8, the Chechen side announced it was in possession of information that Russia was preparing to advance its forces on to Chechen territory and launch an all-out land war against the republic. At a press conference, held at the State Duma in Moscow on December 9, the chairman of the Duma Federal Affairs and Regional Policy Committee and chairman of the Republican Party of Russia, Vladimir Lysenko, announced that in that case, he would table a motion in the Duma for the Russian government to be dismissed. On December 8, the Working Commission on Negotiations for the Settlement of the Conflict in the Chechen Republic managed to broker an agreement between the representatives of President Dudaev and the opposition, under which negotiations were due to start in Vladikavkaz at 15.00 hours on December 12. The Russian federal authorities delegation to the negotiations was to have consisted of twelve members led by the deputy minister for nationalities and regional policy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov. The delegation from Grozny was to have numbered nine members, headed by the Chechen minister of the economy and finance, Taimaz Abubakarov. From the opposition there was to have been a three-man delegation led by Bek Baskhanov, the public prosecutor general of Chechnya. It was provisionally agreed that the main problems to be discussed at the negotiations between Moscow and Grozny were halting the bloodshed and establishing normal relations. Negotiations with the supporters of the Chechen opposition were only supposed to deal with questions of disarmament.

  All this increased the chances of peace being preserved, and left the party of war with very little time until December 12. In effect, the announcement by the Working Commission for the Settlement of the Chechen Conflict determined the date on which

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  military land operations began. If the peace negotiations were due to start on December 12, the war had to be launched on December 11. The Russian leadership acted accordingly: on December 11, land forces crossed the demarcation line into the Chechen Republic, and for the first few days, Russian military reports spoke of the absence of any real resistance or any losses.

  By December 13, Soskovets had already determined his main lines of action, and he informed journalists that the total cost of implementing measures to normalize the situation in Chechnya could amount to about a trillion rubles. (This was the sum that would first have to be allocated from the budget, so that it could be systematically embezzled.) He said that the government s first priority was to get the aid delivered to the population of Chechnya, and special attention would be paid to ensuring that it was not wasted or stolen (we now know for certain that no aid ever reached Chechnya, and all of it was wasted and stolen).

  Soskovets emphasized that members of the Chechen diaspora, living in Moscow and other Russian cities, should not be considered potential terrorists. Note this phrase. So far, nobody had even dreamed of regarding the members of the Chechen diaspora as potential terrorists, and there had not actually been any terrorist attacks. The war with Chechnya was still not even regarded as a war, but something more in the nature of a police operation, and there had not yet been any serious casualties. Yet, for some reason the First Deputy Prime Minister seemed to think it possible that the Chechens might organize acts of terrorism on Russian soil. Soskovets remark that no discriminatory measures would be applied to the general mass of Chechen citizens, and that the federal authorities were not even considering the enforced deportation of Chechens, was clearly a suggestion from the party of war that war should be waged against the entire Chechen people throughout the whole of Russia, including by both discriminatory measures and enforced deportation.

  Lieutenant-General Alexander Lebed, commander of the 14th Russian Army in Pridniestrovie (the region along the Dniestr River in Moldova), fiercely opposed the party of war, because he understood perfectly well what Soskovets was hinting at and the price Russia would have to pay. In a telephone interview from his headquarters in Tiraspol, he declared that the Chechen conflict can only be resolved by diplomatic negotiations. Chechnya is repeating the Afghanistan scenario point for point. We are risking unleashing war with the entire Islamic world. Solitary fighters can go on forever burning our tanks and picking off our soldiers with individual shots. In Chechnya, we have shot ourselves in the foot exactly as we did in Afghanistan, and that is very sad. A well-reinforced and well-stocked Grozny is capable of offering long and stubborn resistance. Lebed reminded everyone that in Soviet times Dudaev had commanded an airborne division of strategic bombers capable of waging war on a continental scale, and that fools were not appointed to such posts.

  Beginning on December 14, Moscow was transferred to a state of semi-military alert, and Muscovites were deliberately frightened with the prospect of inevitable Chechen terrorism. The agencies of the Ministry of the Interior stepped up their protection of the

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  city s vital installations, and FSK personnel worked to improve their security. A large number of state institutions were guarded by police patrols armed with automatic weapons. The Ministry of the Interior announced that this was all a response to the threat of terrorist groups being sent to Moscow from Grozny. The first suspected Chechen terrorists began to be sought out. On the evening of December 13, the Chechen Israil Getiev, a native and resident of Grozny, had been arrested for setting off New Year firecrackers outside the Prague restaurant on New Arbat Street and detained at the station of the Fifth Moscow Police Precinct. At this stage, announcements like this could still raise a smile, but on December 14, it was suddenly announced that after less than three full days of military operations, casualties on both sides are already in the hundreds. It was all getting beyond a laughing matter.

  On December 15, the true scale of the operation being launched was revealed. Advancing on Grozny, alongside subunits of the Ministry of the Interior, were two general army divisions from the North Caucasus Military District and two assault brigades at full strength. Chechen territory was also entered by composite regiments from the Pskov, Vitebsk, and Tula divisions of the airborne assault forces (VDV), with 600 to 800 men in each. In the region of Mozdok, disembarkation had begun of composite regiments from the Ulyanovsk and Kostroma divisions of the VDV. Grozny was being approached along four main lines of advance: one from Ingushetia, two from Mozdok, and one from Dagestan. The Russian forces were preparing to storm the city. On the Chechen side, according to information from the Russian Ministry of the Interior and the FSK, more than 13,000 armed men had been assembled in and around Grozny.

  Yeltsin was moving towards the edge of an abyss. A session of the Security Council, held under his chairmanship on December 17, reviewed a plan for the implementation of measures to restore constitutional legality, the rule of law and peace in the Chechen Republic. The Security Council made the Ministry of Defense (Grachyov), the Ministry
of the Interior (Viktor Yerin), the FSK (Stepashin), and the Federal Border Service (Nikolaev) responsible for using every possible means to disarm and destroy illegal armed formations in Chechnya and to secure the state and administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. The work was to be coordinated by Grachyov. This was the day that marked the end of Russia s liberal-democratic period. President Yeltsin had committed political suicide.

  On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that from 00.00 hours on December 18, units of Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry forces would be obliged to take decisive action, and make use of all means at their disposal to re-establish constitutional legality and the rule of law on the territory of Chechnya. Groups of bandits would be disarmed and, if they offered resistance, destroyed. The Ministry of the Interior statement claimed that the civilian population of Chechnya had been informed of the urgent need to leave Grozny and other centers of population in which rebel groups were located. The Interior Ministry strongly recommended foreign citizens and journalists in the zone of hostilities to leave Grozny and make their way to safe areas. (Despite the warnings from the Russian leadership, most of the foreign journalists remained in