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Wall Street Journal
December 17, 2001
Berezovsky, His Influence on the Wane, Alleges Putin's
Involvement in Bombings
By GUY CHAZAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MOSCOW -- In the latest stage of his one-man crusade to stir opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky has blamed the country's intelligence services for a string of explosions two years ago that killed more than 300 people and were the prelude to Russia's invasion of Chechnya.
In an interview, Mr. Berezovsky said security services carried out the explosions to "consolidate society around Putin's candidacy" in the run-up to presidential elections. The blasts set the stage for a resumption of Russia's military campaign in Chechnya, and "the Chechen war ensured Putin's victory," he said. Both Mr. Putin's press service and the FSB domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the allegations.
Observers say this latest salvo in Mr. Berezovsky's increasingly quixotic campaign against the Kremlin reveals the desperation of a man who once was one of the most powerful players in Russian politics but has seen his influence wane under Mr. Putin.
Mr. Berezovsky said he doesn't know whether Mr. Putin personally ordered the blasts, which tore through apartment blocks in Moscow and the two southern towns of Buinaksk and Volgodonsk in September 1999. The Kremlin blamed them on Chechen terrorists, though no one has been prosecuted for the attacks.
The businessman said he has no proof to back up his claims, but is prepared to defend them in court.
Mr. Berezovsky isn't the first to tie Russian intelligence to the blasts. Russian newspapers speculated on a connection in late September 1999, when Russian police said they had foiled an attempted terrorist bombing after finding three suspicious sacks of powder in an apartment block in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. The FSB later said it had placed the sacks there as part of a training exercise.
"What happened in Ryazan was the exact model for what happened in Moscow and Volgodonsk, a model which they did not succeed in carrying out," Mr. Berezovsky said in a statement broadcast on Russian television Friday.
Before their highly public rift last year, the Putin-Berezovsky relationship had defined Russian politics. The tycoon helped engineer Mr. Putin's rise to power by providing fawning coverage of his presidential campaign on ORT, the television network he once controlled, and forming a party, Unity, which served as Mr. Putin's springboard into national politics.
But last year Mr. Berezovsky went into opposition, accusing the president of authoritarian tendencies. He moved abroad, launched an opposition movement and began funding human-rights organizations critical of Mr. Putin. This month he published an open letter urging Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and other Yeltsin-era officials to voluntarily step down and join him in opposition to the Kremlin.
But so far, the self-styled "oligarch" has failed to land a punch on Mr. Putin, whose popularity rating remains above 70% and whose enthusiastic support for the U.S.-led antiterror coalition has burnished his image abroad.
Meanwhile, Mr. Berezovsky has had little success recasting himself as a dissident and defender of democracy. For many Russians, he is still closely identified with the corruption and cronyism of the Yeltsin era, when a small coterie of influential businessmen won control of some of Russia's prize assets through privatization auctions that some observers have argued were rigged.
Mr. Berezovsky, who now lives in London, is wanted by the Russian authorities in connection with an alleged scheme to siphon off millions of dollars from the national airline Aeroflot. The tycoon says the investigation is politically motivated.
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