Paul Goble
Vienna, September 9 – Ten years after the deadly 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk sparked the second post-Soviet Chechen war and propelled Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency, most commentators either accept Putin’s claim that the Chechens were responsible or alternatively are convinced that Putin himself was to blame.
Given Moscow’s failure to provide convincing evidence for its claims and the inevitable suspiciousness of many about events that worked so clearly to Putin’s benefit, this debate is likely to continue because in the words of one Russian commentator, “doubts [about these cases] have no statute of limitations”(www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/099/17.html).
But on this anniversary of those bloody events, perhaps the most thoughtful discussion of who in fact was responsible for these murderous attacks is offered by Sergey Kovalev, the longtime rights activist who heads the Public ...
The tragic events of September 1999 in Buynavsk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, linked with open terror and civilian victims marked the beginning of a new phase for our country, living under permanent terrorist threat. Up till then Russia had not experienced terrorist acts on such a scale.
The September terrorist acts were virtually the grounds for the beginning of the Second Chechen War. The course of events linked with this created the conditions for an enforcement body oligarchy to effectively come to power in Russia, and for the curtailing of many civil and political liberties and a move away from the democratic foundations of the constitutional system.
Violence in Chechnya, as human rights defenders warned, is as a result spreading throughout the entire Caucuses region and causing the radicalization and religious self-identification of armed opposition to the federal and local authorities.
“Managed” ...
