The
Russian apartment bombings were a series of five bombings in
Russia that took place in
Moscow and two other Russian towns during ten days of September 1999. Altogether nearly 300 civilians were killed at night. The bombings, together with the
Dagestan War, led the country into the
Second Chechen War. Chechen
militants were blamed but no Chechen field commander accepted responsibility for the bombings and Chechen president
Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement of his government.
The bombings ceased when a similar bomb was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of
Ryazan on September 23. Later in the evening
Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the Ryzanians and ordered the air bombing of
Grozny, which marked the beginning of the
Second Chechen War.[1] A few hours later, three
FSB agents who had planted the bomb were caught by the local police. This incident was declared to be a training exercise by FSB director
Nikolai Patrushev.
Russian Parliament member
Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the events, but the motions were rejected by the Russian
Duma in March 2000. An independent[2] public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy
Sergei Kovalev was hampered by government refusal to respond to its inquiries, and its chairmen admitted that he has no evidence to support any version of the events.[3][4] Two key members of the Kovalev Commission,
Sergei Yushenkov and
Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in apparent assassinations. The Commission's lawyer
Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested.
A number of people were convicted or accused of involvement in the bombings.
Official suspects
According to official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harbored other suspects:
Stanislav Lyubichev (A
traffic police inspector, Resident of Kislovodsk,
Stavropol Krai,[12] who helped the truck with explosives pass the checkpoint after getting a sack of sugar as a
bribe, sentenced to 4 years in May 2003[15])
Volgodonsk bombing
Timur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai,[16] killed in Georgia in the clash with police during which Krymshakhalov was arrested[9])
Zaur Batchayev (Ethnic Karachai[17] killed in Chechnya in 1999–2000[9])
Adam Dekkushev (Ethnic Karachai,[18] arrested in Georgia, threw a grenade at police during the arrest, extradited to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2004, after a two-month
closed trial held without a
jury[1][14])
Buinaksk bombing
Isa Zainutdinov (Ethnic
Avar[16] and native of
Dagestan,[18] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001[19])
Alisultan Salikhov (Ethnic Avar[16] and native of Dagestan,[18] sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2001[19])
Magomed Salikhov (Ethnic Avar[16] and native of Dagestan,[20] arrested in
Azerbaijan in November 2004, extradited to Russia, found not guilty on the charge of terrorism by the jury on January 24, 2006; found guilty of participating in an illegal armed force and illegal crossing of the national border,;[21] he was retried second time, and on November 13, 2006, found again not guilty, this time on all charges, including the ones he was found guilty of in the first trial.[22] According to
Kommersant Salikhov admitted that he made a delivery of paint for terrorist Ibn al-Khattab, although he did not check if that really was a paint.[23])
Ziyavudin Ziyavudinov (Native of Dagestan,[24] arrested in
Kazakhstan, extradited to Russia, sentenced to 24 years in April 2002[25])
Abdulkadyr Abdulkadyrov (Ethnic Avar[16] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 9 years in March 2001[19])
Magomed Magomedov (Sentenced to 9 years in March 2001[19])
Zainutdin Zainutdinov (Ethnic Avar[16] and native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under
amnesty[19])
Makhach Abdulsamedov (Native of Dagestan, sentenced to 3 years in March 2001 and immediately released under amnesty[19]).
FSB General
German Ugryumov who allegedly supervised the attacks. At the time, he was one of the lead figures in the FSB's counterterrorism section.[30][31]
Maxim Lazovsky, an FSB officer who was also involved in staging of bombings in Moscow in 1994.
FSB officers Vladimir Romanovich and Ramazan Dyshenkov who carried out the apartment bombings in
Moscow according to this version
Three FSB agents (two men and a woman) who conducted the "training exercise" in the city of
Ryazan. Their identities and fate remains unknown although their photos were shown on Russian television.
Aleksey Galkin, a
GRU officer, was captured and tortured by
Chechen separatists in 1999. In a video statement the captors coerced him to make, he said that a team of twelve
GRU operatives conducted bombings in the city of
Buynaksk under general command of Lieutenant General
Nikolai Kostechko.
^"Archived copy". Archived from
the original on 2012-02-16. Retrieved 2012-01-29.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
link) Separatists Tied to '99 Bombings.