Alexander Litvinenko Read online

  Between nine and ten in the evening on June 11, 1996, there was an explosion in a halfempty carriage in a train at the Tulskaya station of the Serpukhovskaya line of the Moscow subway. Four people were killed and 12 were hospitalized. Exactly one month later, on July 11, a terrorist bomb exploded in a number twelve trolley in Pushkin Square: six people were injured. The following day, July 12, a number 48 trolley on Mir Prospect was destroyed by an explosion: twenty-eight people were injured. Information about the Chechen connection of the terrorist attacks was actively disseminated throughout Moscow (even though no terrorists were caught, and it was never actually determined whether they were Chechens or not). Before even a provisional investigation had been conducted, the mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, declared at the site of the second trolley explosion that he would expel the entire Chechen diaspora from Moscow, even though he had no reason to suspect that the explosions were the work of the diaspora, or even of individual Chechen terrorists.

  However, this second wave of terror failed, like the first, to produce any sharp swing in public opinion. In early August 1996, guerrilla fighters battled their way into Grozny, and in late August, the Khasaviurt Accords were signed by Security Council Secretary A.

  Lebed and the new president of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov. The supporters of war in Chechnya had lost, and terrorist attacks in Moscow came to a halt-until the FSB launched a new operation designed to spark off another Chechen war.

  It is hard to tell just which of the FSB s operatives organized the explosions in Moscow in the summer of 1996. Lazovsky was under arrest. It is clear, however, that the FSB had a choice of many similar structures, and not just in Moscow. On June 26,1996, the newspaper Segodnya published a commentary on the FSB s criminal organization in Petersburg, which consisted primarily of former members of the KGB. Having set up several firms, in addition to what might be called clean business dealings the ex-KGB men also managed the trade in hand-guns, explosives and drugs, dealt in stolen automobiles and imported stolen Mercedes and BMWs into Russia.

  The explosions in Moscow could, however, have been set up by members of Lazovsky s group who were still at large. In fact, there is very good reason for believing this to be the case.

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  In February 1996, MUR agents arrested a certain Vladimir Akimov outside the pawnshop on Moscow s Bolshaya Spasskaya Street for trying to sell a Taurus revolver. Akimov turned out to be Lazovsky s former chauffeur. Under the influence of reports in the media about the new wave of terrorist attacks on public transport in Moscow in June and July 1996, Akimov began providing testimony about an explosion in a bus on December 27, 1994. Today, here in detention center 48/1, and seeing the political situation on the television, Akimov wrote, I consider it my duty to make a statement on the explosion of the bus& In his statement he claimed that on December 27, he and Vorobyov had set out to reconnoiter the VDNKh-Yuzhnaya bus stop in a Zhiguli automobile. They noted possible lines of retreat. On the evening of the same day, Akimov and Vorobyov left the Zhiguli not far from the stop at the end of the bus route and went back to Mir Prospect, where they boarded the number 33 bus, a LiAZ. When there were just a few passengers left in the bus, Akimov s testimony continued, they planted a bomb with forty grams of ammonite under a seat the right rear wheel. When they got out at the last stop, Akimov went to warm up the engine of their car, and Vorobyov used a remote control unit to set the bomb off.

  On the morning of August 28, 1996, retired Lieutenant Colonel Vorobyov had been arrested by Tskhai, as he was on his way to a meeting with an FSB agent and taken to the MUR premises at 38 Petrovka Street, where, if the judgment of the court is to be believed, he told the entire story to the Moscow detectives without attempting to conceal anything, including the fact that he was a free-lance FSB agent. Shortly thereafter, Akimov withdrew his testimony, even though it had been given in writing. Vorobyov then also withdrew his testimony. The Moscow City Court, under presiding Judge Irina Kulichkova, evidently acting under pressure from the FSB, dropped the charges against Akimov of complicity in a terrorist bombing and sentenced him to three years imprisonment for the illegal sale of a revolver. Since the guilty verdict was pronounced in late April 1999, and Akimov had spent three years in custody while under investigation, he left the court a free man.

  Vorobyov was sentenced to five years in the prison camps. The case was held in camera, and not even Vorobyov s relatives were allowed into the courtroom. As his employer, the FSB gave Vorobyov a positive character reference that was included in the case materials. In his final address, Vorobyov declared that the case against him had been fabricated by parties who wished to blacken the name of the FSB and his name as a freelance agent of the special service. Vorobyov described the sentence as an insult to the special agencies. Later, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation reduced Vorobyov s sentence to three years (most of which Vorobyov had already served by that time). In late August 1999, Vorobyov was released, despite the fact that Akimov and the investigators believed that he had been involved in the terrorist attacks of 1996. The FSB had demonstrated yet again that it would not abandon its own agents and would eventually obtain their release.

  Tskhai also learned about the involvement of Lazovsky s group in the summer explosions from one other source, Sergei Pogosov. In the late summer and early fall of 1996, an operational source reported that a certain Sergei Pogosov was living in the

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  center of Moscow on the Novyi Arbat, not far from the bookstore Dom Knigi and the Octyabr cinema in a huge penthouse apartment with a floor area of 100 or 150 square meters. His firm s office was located in the ground-floor apartment of the same block.

  According to information received, Pogosov was directly linked with Lazovsky and his gunmen and financed many of Lazovsky s undertakings. Pogosov s telephones (home number 203-1469, work number 203-1632, and mobile number 960-8856) were tapped and monitored for two weeks on the instructions of the First Section of the Antiterrorist Center (ATTs, the former UBT) of the FSB. From conversations overheard, it became clear that Pogosov was paying Lazovsky s legal fees and was preparing a large sum of money to pay bribes for his release.

  This operational information was relayed to Tskhai, who personally obtained permission from the Public Prosecutor s Office for a search of Pogosov s flat and office as part of the criminal investigation into Lazovsky s case. A few days later, the search was carried out jointly by the Twelfth Section of MUR and the First Section of the ATTs of the FSB of the Russian Federation (Platonov s former subordinates), lasting almost right through the night. Under Pogosov s bed, a sack was found containing 700 thousand dollars. No one tried to count the rubles, which were lying everywhere, even in the kitchen in empty jars. Cocaine was also found in the apartment (Pogosov s girlfriend was a drug addict).

  The search at Pogosov s office on the ground floor turned up several mobile phones, one of which was registered to Lazovsky. Pogosov and his girlfriend were taken to the police station, but that very day a member of the Moscow UFSB drove round to the station and collected them. The police did not confiscate the money. The tax police said that it had nothing to do with them and didn t even bother to turn up. No criminal case was brought in connection with the discovery of cocaine. Apparently nobody was interested in Pogosov or his money.

  Knowing the way things were done in the Russian agencies of coercion, Pogosov expected that the people who had come to search his apartment would just take him away and kill him, so he attempted to save himself by giving a written undertaking to cooperate (under the pseudonym of Grigory). Pogosov told one of the operatives about Lazovsky s connections in the Moscow UFSB and the kind of activity in which he was involved.

  Pogosov had heard from Max that his brigade was not a group of bandits, but more like a secret military unit, that Lazovsky handled tasks of state importance, and there were people like him in every country. Pogosov said Lazovsky was a state assassin who eliminated people according to
instructions, and organized acts of sabotage and terrorism.

  Lazovsky himself only carried out instructions, and he got those from the top.

  Concerning the money, Pogosov said it was for Lazovsky, and he was only an intermediary. Pogosov s legal cover for his activities was importing Parliament cigarettes into Russia, which generates quite a good income in itself. Pogosov said that he expected Lazovsky to be freed soon, since he hadn t broken down under questioning, he hadn t given anyone away, and had behaved with dignity. Pogosov sincerely recommended not interfering with the activities of Lazovsky s group and said Tskhai would have serious problems if he tried.

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  A few days after Pogosov was released, he had his second and final meeting with the operative who had recruited him. First of all, Pogosov offered money for the return of his note about collaboration. He said that his controllers in the Moscow UFSB were extremely displeased about his note and had told Pogosov to ransom it. His controllers had also made direct threats against Tskhai.

  Pogosov s written undertaking was not returned, and the offer of a bribe was not accepted. The following day, the recruitment of agent Grigory was officially reported to the chief. A few days later, the phone rang in the office of the operative who had recruited Pogosov. The caller spoke from the Moscow UFSB, on behalf of their own chief, politely recommending that Pogosov should be left in peace and threatening that if he weren t, there would be an investigation into money that had supposedly been stolen during the search at Pogosov s apartment. The operative never saw Pogosov again and never received any secret information from him. On April 12, 1997, at the age of thirtynine, Tskhai died suddenly from cirrhosis of the liver, although he didn t drink or smoke.

  Presumably he was poisoned by the FSB, because he had discovered the identities of the true leaders of Lazovsky s group and realized exactly who had organized the explosions in Moscow. Poisons of a type that could have been used to kill Tskhai were made in a special FSB laboratory, which according to some sources was located at 42 Krasnobogatyrskaya Street in Moscow. The same building is also said to have been used for printing the high-quality counterfeit dollars used by the FSB to pay for contract killings and other counterintelligence operations. The laboratories had been in existence since Soviet times (the dollars were supposed to be printed in case of war).

  On April 15, 1997, a funeral service was held for Tskhai at the Cathedral of the Epiphany, and he was buried at the Vagankovskoe Cemetery. After Tskhai s death, the investigation into Lazovsky s group deteriorated into a series of sporadic episodes. At MUR, Lazovsky s case supposedly became the responsibility, by turn, of Pyotr Astafiev, Andrei Potekhin, Igor Travin, V. Budkin, A. Bazanov, G. Boguslavsky, V. Bubnov, and A. Kalinin, and it was also dealt with by the investigator for specially important cases of the Department for the Investigation of Banditry and Murder of the Moscow City Public Prosecutor s Office, Suprunenko, who first interrogated Lazovsky as early as 1996.

  When he was released in February 1998, Lazovsky bought himself a luxurious mansion in an elite rural housing estate at Uspenskoe in the Odinovtsovsky district of Podmoskovie (the area round Moscow), which was reached by way of the Rublyovskoe Highway, and then set up a fund for the support of peace in the Caucasus under the title of Unification, in which he took the position of vice-president. Lazovsky continued his collaboration with the secret services. He was kept under observation following his release by Mikhail Fonaryov, an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Moscow district GUVD, but no details are known of his activities during this period.

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  Chapter 4

  Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (a biographical note) Whereas during the first Chechen war of 1994-1996, the state security forces had simply been attempting to forestall Russia s development towards a liberal-democratic society, the political goals of the second Chechen war were far more serious: to provoke Russia into war with Chechnya, and to exploit the ensuing commotion to seize power in Russia at the forthcoming presidential elections in 2000. The honor of provoking a war with Chechnya fell to the new director of the FSB, Colonel-General Patrushev.

  Patrushev was born in Leningrad on July 11, 1951. In 1974, he graduated from the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute and was assigned to the institute s design office, where he worked as an engineer. Just one year later, in 1975, he was invited to join the KGB, completed the one-year course at the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR, specializing in law, and joined the KGB s Leningrad branch. There, he served as junior operations officer, head of the city agency, deputy head of the regional agency, and head of the service for combating smuggling and corruption of the KGB Department for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region. By 1990 he had risen to the rank of colonel. Until 1991, he was a member of the Communist Party.

  In 1990 Patrushev was transferred to Karelia, where he initially served as head of the local counterintelligence department. In 1992, he became the Karelia s Minister of Security. In 1994, when the Leningrader Stepashin became director of the FSK, he called Patrushev to Moscow to serve as head of one of the key divisions in the Lubyanka, the Internal Security Department (USB) of the FSK of the Russian Federation. The USB of the FSK was counterintelligence within counterintelligence, the section which gathered compromising information on the FSK s own personnel. The head of the FSB had always been the FSK/FSB director s most trusted ally, reporting to him directly.

  By moving Patrushev to Moscow, Stepashin saved him from the consequences of a serious scandal. In Karelia, Patrushev had gotten into difficulties over the theft and smuggling of precious Karelian birch timber, and the Public Prosecutor s Office of Petrozavodsk had initiated criminal proceedings against him, although he had initially only been a witness in the case. In the course of the investigation, facts had emerged which virtually proved his guilt as an accomplice. It was at this moment that Stepashin transferred Patrushev to a very high position in Moscow, well beyond the reach of the Public Prosecutor s Office of Karelia. Fortunately for Patrushev, the head of the UFSB for the Republic of Karelia, Vasily Ankudinov, who could have told us a great deal about Patrushev and Karelian birch, died at the age of 56 on May 21, 2001.

  In June 1995, Mikhail Barsukov replaced Stepashin as head of the FSK. In the summer of 1996, Nikolai Kovalyov replaced Barsukov. Neither Barsukov nor Kovalyov regarded Patrushev as their own man and did nothing to promote him. Then Vladimir Putin, who

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  knew Patrushev from Leningrad, became the head of the president s Central Control Department (GKU) and invited his old acquaintance to become his first deputy.

  Patrushev moved over to Putin s team.

  Patrushev s subsequent rapid professional ascent is linked with Putin s own rise. When Putin became first deputy head of the Kremlin Administration in May 1998, he promoted Patrushev to the vacant position of head of the president s GKU. In October the same year, Patrushev returned to the Lubyanka, initially as Putin s deputy, a post to which he was appointed by Yeltsin in a decree of July 25, 1998, and later as First Deputy Director of the FSB.

  On March 29, 1999, Yeltsin appointed Putin secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, while leaving him in position as director of the FSB, and on August 9 the same year, Yeltsin appointed Putin Prime Minister of Russia. In summing up the first few months of his administration, Novaya Gazeta wrote: Long, long ago in a highly democratic country an elderly president entrusted the post of chancellor and Prime Minister to a young and energetic successor. Then the Reichstag went up in flames&

  Historians have not yet given us an answer to the question of who set fire to it, but history has shown us who benefited. In Russia, however, an elderly Guarantor [of the Constitution] entrusted the post of prime minister to a successor who had yet to be democratically elected. Then apartment blocks were blown up, and a new war began in Chechnya, and this war was glorified by arch-liars.

  These events which shook
the entire country were also linked with the ascendancy of one other man: on the day Putin became Prime Minister of Russia, Patrushev was given the directorship of the FSB. People with inside knowledge claim that Putin had no choice but to promote Patrushev, because Patrushev was in possession of compromising material about him. On August 17, 1999, Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev was appointed director of the Federal Security Service of Russia. And then it began&