#13 - JRL 8057
Moscow Times
February 10, 2004
Blast Stirs Up Conspiracies
By Pavel Felgenhauer
Moscow police and FSB operatives are still investigating last Friday's blast in the metro that killed 39 people and injured more than 100. It seems there is still no clear answer as to whether it was a terrorist attack or an accident.
Terrorist bombs usually include nails, bolts etc. to kill as many people as possible, but no traces of prepared shrapnel have been found in the ripped-up subway car or in the bodies of the dead and wounded. The intent to inflict maximum damage has not been established. The attack cannot be unquestionably declared a terrorist outrage -- it may still conceivably be an accident.
Muscovites regularly carry dangerous items on the metro. Once, in the late 1970s, I went into the metro with a 20-liter container filled with liquid nitrogen gas at -196 degrees Celsius and frozen radioactive biological specimens. I wanted to take it from Kazansky Station to my institute and could not get a car. The container was a cone of shining metal that looked like a ballistic missile warhead. A policeman did not like the way it looked or my explanation, and turned me away. I covered it with my coat, re-entered the metro and made the journey.
Someone could have been carrying explosives in the metro, stolen from army stockpiles or from an industrial plant (together with detonators), to sell to someone on the black market. In the rush-hour crowd, someone could have accidentally pushed and activated the detonator.
We may never know for sure whether it was an accident or not, just as we do not know for sure who planned the explosions of apartment blocks in 1999 in Moscow and other cities. The authorities blamed Chechen separatists and used the outrages as a prime motive for going to war. Since then, independent investigators have questioned this official narrative; and a number of people have been charged in connection with the bombings, but none of the accused have been ethnic Chechens.
The day after the metro blast, when the facts had not yet been established and nothing was known about who did it and why, President Vladimir Putin accused the Chechen rebels and their leader, Aslan Maskhadov, of being behind it. Maskhadov's foreign envoy, Akhmed Zakayev, denied the rebels were involved. In today's Russia, it's virtually impossible to imagine that any FSB investigator would have the nerve to say that Maskhadov was not guilty, when Putin publicly says that he is.
Talking to journalists, Putin announced: "Once more we hear calls from abroad to hold talks with Maskhadov. This would not be the first time we have encountered a synchronization of crimes committed in Russia and calls to hold talks with terrorists. The fact that we are called to hold talks with Maskhadov after crimes are committed is in itself indirect proof of Maskhadov's connection with bandits and terrorists. As a matter of fact, we do not need this indirect evidence. We know for sure that Maskhadov and his bandits are linked to this terror."
In his statement, Putin cited as a "call to hold talks with Maskhadov," a letter signed by 145 members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg that envisages a withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the creation of a temporary UN administration to bring peace to the region. Apparently, Putin assumed that the fact the publication of the EU letter coincided with the metro explosion is in itself evidence (albeit indirect) that Maskhadov was behind the blast. Putin has also announced that "certain elements in the Russian Federation" also "synchronize" their sinister activities with Chechen terrorist attacks. but "Russia does not conduct negotiations with terrorists -- it destroys them."
Taken at face value, Putin's statement exposes an amazingly complicated and widespread conspiracy. It is reminiscent of things uttered at different times by Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic or Josef Stalin.
This may be a glimpse of Putin's true mind-set as formed by the reports of his spooks, diplomats and prosecutors. In this world, the Kremlin is besieged by unscrupulous Westerners who aspire to grab our oil and other natural wealth and synchronize their antics with deadly Chechen terrorist attacks, as well as with "certain elements in the Russian Federation."
If that's Putin's true outlook on the world, no one should be surprised that in several days' time our military will be holding an exercise that simulates a nuclear war with the West as part of Russia's "war on terrorism."
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.