My interlocutor seemed dazed still – hardly surprising under the circumstances – and I urged him to seek medical attention for his bleeding. He shook his head: ‘No, no, no, Vladimir Ivanovich, I will stay with my friend here.’ His was the first display of dignity and courage I witnessed that night, and it would not be the last.
I eventually ordered him to put himself in the care of the medical team who had set up their equipment a little distance away, and watched as he picked his way past the shattered train towards them. Everywhere I looked people wandered around, their eyes still wild and stunned; even the policemen there seemed unable to determine what they should be doing. It was essential that some degree of organisation should be brought to the situation as soon as possible.
At no point in my career had I ever been in a position like this before. What in anyone’s life could prepare them to witness such horror? But I was the most senior figure on the ground, and I knew it was my responsibility to take control. We found a small chamber that had been used by Russian Railways to house electrical equipment and, together with representatives from Russian Railways, the local police and the FSB, I squeezed in to our makeshift incident room. I turned to them and said, ‘I know I am only a railwayman, so perhaps I have no right to give you orders, but you know who I am, you know my history and you all know too that we will be unable to achieve anything here unless we cooperate.’ With that, we got to work.
Our first priorities were to secure the perimeter (there would be no good in trying to save lives if terrorists were able to creep back and wreak more havoc), help the injured, recover those corpses that had not already been lifted from the wreckage, and restore what infrastructure we could so that traffic between the two cities could resume. Some of the dead had been buried so deep in the ground in the blast that it was two or three days before the special equipment necessary to excavate them was available, and, anyway, we were not yet permitted to start this kind of work – we could not risk contaminating the crime scene before investigators from the FSB arrived to take prints and subject the wreckage to a forensic examination. Still, knowing that we were close to so much torn flesh was a terrible, ghoulish feeling.
Over the course of those first few hours, we dragged as many survivors as we could to safety. The next day, those who were capable were interviewed by the Investigative Committee led by Alexander Bastrykin, who had arrived to try to build up an accurate picture of what exactly had happened. As Bastrykin and his men continued their search for clues, I remained in charge of the rescue operation. (I learned the next morning that the Minister of Transport at that time, Igor Levitin, together with Sergey Shoygu, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, approached the President, requesting his permission to leave Moscow and hurry to the scene. ‘And who is now organising the work there?’ the President asked. When he learned it was me he said, ‘Listen, if Yakunin is there, you don’t need to go; he will do everything you can. Talk to him, give him any assistance he needs, but leave him in charge.’)
Nobody slept – how could they when there was so much to do? – and by the next morning we had restored what organisation we could to the shattered stretch of railway line. Workers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations had restored lines of communication, including video communication, which meant that we were able to make a first report on the situation to the President. A little later, just as I sat down for a moment’s rest at a table in a special wagon that we had temporarily converted into a kind of kitchen, I heard a loud explosion – another bomb, left there in a cowardly attempt to injure or kill the rescue workers, had detonated, triggered remotely by a terrorist’s mobile phone. I rushed to the source of the noise, where I found that only Bastrykin had suffered any kind of wound, from gravel thrown into the air by the blast. He would be hospitalised, but his injuries were not serious. My overwhelming feeling was relief; the tragedy would eventually take twenty-eight lives, but his would not be among them.
At times like this, when confronted by evidence of such wickedness, it is easy to feel one’s faith in man’s essential goodness dwindling. But life has its own ways of restoring your optimism. A few days later one of my colleagues pointed out a nearby house that had been damaged by the accident. I was told that it belonged to 78-year-old former railway worker (she had served for forty years) Elena Golubeva, who despite living in poverty had donated blankets, pillows, everything she had, to help the injured. She could ill afford to lose her possessions like this, but she had not thought twice.
When I learned of her sacrifice, I immediately ordered that we should do everything possible to repair the destruction wrought on her yard. We did not confine ourselves to this; after what she had done there was no way she could be allowed to live any longer in a home as shabby as hers had been. Workers from Russian Railways built her a new home, complete with toilet and bath, and even connecting her residence to the electricity network. Unbelievably, it was the first time she had had access to it.
Her actions had not gone unobserved by the President. During the course of our first telephone conversation after my return to Moscow, Mr Putin asked me if I was ready and willing to help this lady. My first reaction was pride that her generosity of spirit had got his attention, and I was proud too to be able to tell him that we had already met his expectations. Not only had we built for her a modern new home, but our management council ensured she received the most prestigious decoration we could bestow upon her.
More information emerged over the weeks following the tragedy. On the one hand, it was satisfying to be able to celebrate the heroism of men like the driver and his assistant, whose quick-thinking and cool nerves as they struggled to control their devastated train ensured that more lives were not lost. On the other, I was disgusted to watch rumours spread that sought to pin the blame for elements of the tragedy on either Russian Railways or the companies that built our equipment. As soon as news of the accident emerged, allegations were made on the Internet that Russian Railways was involved in some kind of conspiracy. They claimed that there had been no terrorist attack; we had just failed in our maintenance. It was suggested that the carriages were defective, or that the seats had not been attached to the floor with sufficient care. There was no truth in either smear, but nevertheless the bad feelings they created still linger; the stains caused by lies are hard to wash away. I did not know it then, but this represented the beginning of a campaign of information warfare against Russian Railways, and me personally, that continues to be waged to this day.
In time we learned that the derailment was in all likelihood the handiwork of fanatics operating on the orders of the separatist Chechen leader Dokka Umarov, an Islamist who had not long before proclaimed himself Emir of the entire North Caucasus region. The Nevsky Express was yet another in the long sequence of atrocities inflicted on the Russian people by terrorists with a range of agendas, dating back to the chaos of the Yeltsin era. Since well before 9/11, we have struggled with this threat, often fighting men who had been armed and funded by the very Western powers who would be sent into panic by the assault on New York’s Twin Towers. Beslan, Nord-Ost, the Domodedovo airport bombing, the repeated bombings of the Moscow Metro, and several others, each marked a devastating page in Russia’s recent history.[20]
20
The Russian people have, generally speaking at least, supported their government’s engagement in Syria because they believe it will make them safer (it is not for them a question, as is sometimes suggested, of Russia flexing its muscles on the world stage once more). The idea of Russian citizens, hardened by experience on Syria’s battlefields, returning to wreak havoc in the cities of their own country, fills them, quite understandably, with fear, and they find it difficult to comprehend why Western nations have left the job of policing this failed state to Putin’s administration.