Alexander Litvinenko Read online

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  Grozny, and at The French Courtyard Hotel where they stayed, rooms were in as short supply as ever.) On the same day, Soskovets announced to the world that President Dudaev had been summoned to Mozdok to meet a Russian government delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Yegorov and FSK director Stepashin. Soskovets stated that if Dudaev did not come to Mozdok, the Russian forces would take action in accordance with the regulations for the elimination of illegal armed formations, and he also announced that expenditure on the operations over the preceding week amounted to sixty billion rubles by the Ministry of the Interior and 200 billion rubles by the Ministry of Defense.

  Four hours before the deadline expired, at eight in the evening on December 17, Dudaev made his final attempt to avert war and wired the Russian leadership that he would agree to start negotiations at the appropriate level without any preconditions and to lead the governmental delegation of the Chechen Republic in person. In other words, Dudaev was again demanding a personal meeting with Yeltsin, but since Dudaev persisted in his refusal to pay any money for such a meeting to be arranged, his cable went unanswered.

  At nine in the morning on December 18, the Russian forces blockading Grozny began storming the city. Front-line air units and army helicopters delivered precision blows against Dudaev s command post at Khankala near Grozny, the bridges over the Terek River to the north and also against maneuverable groups of armored vehicles. An announcement from the Temporary Information Center of the Russian High Command stated that following the destruction of the armored vehicles, the plan was for the forces blockading Grozny to advance and proceed with the disarmament of illegal armed groups on the territory of Chechnya. President Yeltsin s plenipotentiary representative in Chechnya announced that Dudaev now had no choice but to surrender.

  On December 18, Soskovets, having been appointed to yet another post as head of the Russian government s operational headquarters for the coordination of action taken by agencies of the executive authorities, informed the press that in Grozny they are studying the possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks aimed at military and civilian targets in Central Russia and the Urals, and also of hijacking a civilian passenger plane.

  The First Deputy Prime Minister s astonishingly detailed information was, in fact, an indication that terrorist acts could be expected within a few days.

  On December 22, the press office of the Government of the Russian Federation announced that Chechens were blowing themselves up in order to throw the blame for the explosions on to the Russian army. The statement issued read as follows: Today at 10 in the morning a meeting was held under the chairmanship of first deputy chairman of the government Oleg Soskovets which was attended by members of the government, members of the Security Council, and representatives of the President s Office. The meeting discussed the situation which has arisen in the Chechen Republic and the measures being taken by the president and the government to restore constitutional legality and provide economic assistance to the population of areas which

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  have been liberated from the armed formations of the Dudaev regime. Reports made by those present at the meeting indicate that last night operations to disarm the armed bandit formations continued, and bombing raids were carried out against their strongholds. The city of Grozny was not subjected to bombardment. However, the guerrillas made attempts to imitate the bombardment of housing districts. At about one in the morning, an office building and an apartment block were blown up. The residents, both Chechen and Russian, were not given any warning of the planned attack. The imitation of bombardment was undertaken in order to demonstrate the thesis of a war being waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people. This thesis was proclaimed yesterday in Dudaev s appeal to the international community.

  In other words, the Russian government s press office attempted to blame the Chechens for the destruction by Russian forces of an office building and apartment block containing civilians.

  Initiated by Soskovets, this announcement couched in Stalinist prose was made public one day before the explosion between the stations of Kozhukhovo and Kanatchikovo on the Moscow circular railroad (there were no casualties and no terrorists were found).

  December 23 is the date which can be regarded as the beginning of the FSB s terrorist campaign against Russia. From then on, terrorist attacks became a commonplace occurrence.

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  Chapter 2

  The secret services run riot It is worth noting the way in which the press office of the Russian government described the terrorist attack carried out on December 23: Information has been received concerning the dispatch to Moscow [from Chechnya] of three experienced guerrilla fighters, including one woman, who have instructions to assume the leadership of groups of terrorists sent here previously. A group of foreigners who were seeking contact with guerrillas from Grozny has been detained, and a number of radio-controlled explosive devices they were carrying have been confiscated, together with twenty kilograms of TNT and sixteen radio-controlled anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. On the night of December 23, the rails were blown up on one section of the Moscow circular railroad.

  Another bomb was rendered harmless. Measures are being taken to identify sabotage groups active in Moscow and the Moscow Region.

  No investigation of any acts of terrorism was carried out. The picture was clear enough anyway: first the Chechens sent sabotage groups to Moscow and the Moscow Region; then they sent three experienced guerrilla leaders to help them; and finally, a group of foreigners was brought in to help them from abroad with TNT and bombs (apparently they were carrying the bombs on their persons as they entered the country). The result of all these complicated preparations was a terrorist attack on one section of the Moscow circular railroad, which indicated that the groups of saboteurs already sent to Moscow and the Moscow Region had not yet been neutralized (one could assume that the terrorist attacks would continue).

  Everything in the press office statement was absolutely untrue, except for the announcement that there had been an explosion on a section of the Moscow circular railroad on December 23. The modus operandi suggests that this attack was also carried out by Lazovsky s people. In any case, it is impossible to regard as mere coincidence the fact that only four days later yet another terrorist attack was carried out in Moscow. At nine in the evening on December 27, 1994, Vladimir Vorobyov, a free-lance FSB agent and employee of Lazovksy s company Lanako, who came from a long line of military men (in 1920, his grandfather had been in charge of the Arsenal arms plant in Tula), and had a Candidate degree (i.e. Ph.D.) in Technical Sciences and was employed at the Zhukovsky Academy (on the development of a new anti-missile defense system), planted a remote-controlled bomb in a bus at a bus stop on Route 33 between the All-Union Economic Exhibition (VDNKh) and the Yuzhnaya subway station. There were no passengers on board the bus when the bomb exploded, and the only casualty was the driver, Dmitry Trapezov, who suffered severe bruising and concussion. Trolley buses standing close by were lacerated by shrapnel.

  Vorobyov s boss, Lazovsky, worked not only for the FSK, but also for the SVR, where his controller was the experienced officer, Pyotr Yevgenievich Suslov, who was born in

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  1951. Lazovsky was one of his secret agents. Suslov officially quit the intelligence service and went into business in 1995, after which he made repeated journeys to wartorn Grozny, Baghdad, Teheran, the Arab Emirates, and other countries in the Middle East. In fact, Suslov was organizing extra-legal reprisals. In order to carry out missions involving acts of coercion and killings, he hired qualified former operatives from special units, in particular from the special missions unit of the First (Central) Department (PGU) of the KGB of the USSR, known as Vympel, who possessed advanced sniper s skills.

  Vympel s officers were involved both as instructors and front line operatives, and a special Vympel Fund was even e
stablished to finance this work. The chairman of the fund was a criminal boss well known in Russia, Sergei Petrovich Kublitsky (his underworld nickname was Vorkuta). Suslov was the vice-chairman. At the same time, Suslov was also chairman of the board of directors of the Law and Order Center regional social fund (Moscow, Voronkovskaya Street, 21).

  Suslov maintained extensive contacts in the state s departments of law enforcement and agencies of coercion, including the leadership of the FSB. Operational data obtained through the Central Office of the Interior for the Moscow Region indicates, in particular, that Suslov maintained close contact with Major-General Yevgeny Grigorievich Khokholkov, head of the Long-Term Programs Office (UPP) established in summer 1996, which provided the basis for the establishment in 1997 of the FSB s Office for the Analysis and Suppression of the Activity of Criminal Organizations (URPDPO), more commonly known as the Office for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations (URPO).

  Alexei Kimovich Antropov, a graduate of the intelligence school of the External Intelligence Service, was a sector head in the Third Section of the URPO, specializing in the struggle against internal terrorism. Both Lazovsky and Suslov were on good terms with Antropov.

  It is worthwhile examining in greater detail this secret department of the FSB with its long, incomprehensible title that is impossible to remember and was frequently changed to prevent the public penetrating its veil of secrecy. The Office for the Analysis of Criminal Groups was established in order to identify and then neutralize (liquidate) sources of information representing a threat to state security. In other words, to carry out extra-judiciary killings, acts of provocation and terrorism, and abductions. One of Khokholkov s deputies was major-general N. Stepanov and another was the former minister of state security for the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, A.K. Makarychev. The UPP possessed its own external surveillance section; its own security consultant, Colonel Vladimir Simaev; its own technical measures section, and two private detective and bodyguard agencies called Stealth and Cosmic Alternative. The latter specialized in bugging pagers and mobile phones and other technical operational measures, while Stealth had a legendary reputation.

  A private bodyguard and detective agency which changed its name periodically, just like the UPP, Stealth was registered as a business in 1989, at the very dawn of perestroika by a resident of Moscow called Ivanov, who was an agent of the Fifth Department of the KGB of the USSR (which subsequently became Department Z). Ivanov was used in the struggle against internal terrorism, and his line of contact was with a member of Colonel

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  V.V. Lutsenko s department, which had provided operational support for the establishment and activities of Stealth. With the assistance of Lutsenko, who used the private bodyguard firm to resolve personal rather than operational matters (the free provision of various types of protection, or roofs, for commercial organizations), during the period from 1989 to 1992, Stealth developed extensive contacts in the criminal underworld and the sphere of law enforcement, becoming one of the most well-known security agencies in Russia.

  Following his discharge from the special agencies in 1992, Lutsenko took control of the detective and bodyguard firm, which he re-registered with himself as one of the partners.

  Lutsenko s solid connections in various departments of the former KGB, in combination with the exodus from the Russian security services of large numbers of experienced operatives who also maintained their own well-tested contacts and networks of agents, meant that Lutsenko was able to hire highly qualified professionals to work in Stealth.

  From his old area of operations (the struggle against terrorism) Lutsenko had retained reliable contacts with representatives of the former Ninth Department of the KGB (protection of high-level national leaders). This made it possible for him to contact Korzhakov, Barsukov and their entourages and offer them the services of Stealth, under his management, to assist the SBP and FSK in the less traditional forms of struggle against organized criminal activity.

  His suggestion met with approval, and a general plan of action was rapidly developed with input from Korzhakov s first deputy, General G.G. Ragozin. The program envisaged the use of criminal and extremist organizations, individual criminals, and retrained military personnel from the special missions department of the GRU of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, and the FSB to undermine and break up criminal groupings and physically eliminate underworld bosses and leaders of criminal organizations.

  In practice, everything turned out according to that eternal Russian principle: we wanted to do better, but things turned out the same as always. Stealth provided a roof for a range of commercial organizations and carried out various kinds of operations to put pressure on criminal and commercial competitors, up to and including contract killings.

  In support of this activity, Korzhakov, Barsukov, and Trofimov arranged for any possible criminal investigations of the bodyguard firm by the agencies of law enforcement and the security forces (the FSB, Ministry of the Interior, the tax police, the Public Prosecutor s Office) to be neutralized. The heads of all of these state departments were informed of the contents of the initial program for which Stealth had been set up, and an understanding was reached that their agencies would not investigate Stealth s activities.

  Stealth used the Izmailovo organized criminal group as its strike force, but gradually the financial influence of the group and the infiltration of its personnel transformed Stealth into the Izmailovo group s roof, or cover, and Lutsenko became its puppet leader.

  Other private security companies, such as Kmeti and Cobalt, also found themselves in the same situation. All of them were exploited to implement the existing program for

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  combating organized crime by non-traditional means. They became implicated in a series of well-known contract killings of criminal leaders, businessmen, and bankers. The operatives who carried out these murders were hired killers from free-lance special agency groups. As a rule, all of the operations were planned and carried out in a highly professional manner, with the subsequent elimination, if necessary, of the hired killers themselves and the individuals who provided their cover. There was no prospect of investigations into this kind of crime ever producing a trial. Any criminals involved in the crimes, who happened to be detained, simply didn t live long enough to get to the court.

  In time, Stealth developed into an efficient bodyguard and detection organization, equipped with a wide range of technology, including special items and weapons (some of them illegal), with a payroll of up to 600 individuals. Approximately seventy percent of its personnel consisted of former members of the FSB and SBP, and about thirty percent were former members of the police force. Stealth was transferred to the UPP when it was set up in 1996, although it did maintain a certain degree of autonomy.

  The main principle on which the UPP operated was problem-solving : if there s a problem, then a solution must be found. Clues to the existence of this operating principle can be found in Pavel Sukhoplatov s memoirs, published in Moscow in 1996, which happen to be the favorite reference text of the UPP s leaders. The murder of the president of Chechnya, Djokhar Dudaev, provides a good example of the problem-solving approach to the achievement of a combat goal. The people who organized this killing were also involved in setting up the UPP.

  In a certain sense Dudaev s murder was a contract killing, but in this case, the contract was put out by the leadership of the state. The oral, but nonetheless official, order to eliminate Dudaev was given by Russian President Yeltsin. The prehistory to this decision is vague and mysterious. Some time after May 20, 1995, informal negotiations began between the Russian and Chechen sides on a cessation of military operations and the signing of a peace agreement. On the Chechen side, the negotiations were organized by the former General Public Prosecutor of Chechnya, Usman Imaev, and on the Russian side by the well-known businessman, Arkady Volsky. The Russians tried to persuade the Chechens to capitulate. On
behalf of the Russian leadership, Volsky offered Dudaev the chance to leave Chechnya for any other country on his own terms (as Yeltsin put it: anywhere he wants, and the farther from Russia the better ).

  The meeting with Dudaev was far from pleasant for Volsky. Dudaev felt he had been insulted, and he was in a fury. Volsky was probably only saved from immediate measures of reprisal by his parliamentary status. Imaev was not spared Dudaev s wrath either; soon afterwards he was accused of collaborating with the Russian secret services. Having been withdrawn from the negotiation process and demoted, Imaev returned to his native village of Kulary, where he turned pious and began preaching the norms of Muslim Shariah law. The Russian authorities made no attempt to prevent Imaev from travelling to Istanbul and Cracow, where the Chechens felt secure enough to engage in open antiRussian propaganda. Dudaev expressed concern about Imaev s journey. Imaev returned