Just to invoke the most obvious contradiction available at the time, if the bags were full of sugar why did the substance test as hexogen on the scene and why did the FSB rapidly take the bags away to Moscow for further testing if they knew it was sugar? More and more evidence and inconsistencies accumulated, enough to turn a nightmarish conspiracy theory about agents within the Russian government mass-murdering people for political purposes into a case that is very hard to refute on the facts. It was revealed, for example, that some soldiers had earlier stumbled onto sugar bags full of a “strange substance” on a nearby base, which turned out to be hexogen.
A deep investigation and analysis of the case were turned into a devastating book by former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia. The same Litvinenko, who had become a fierce Putin critic, was assassinated in London in 2006 with the rare radioactive substance polonium-210. An independent FSB investigator of the case, Mikhail Trepashkin, was arrested a week before hearings began and jailed for four years. In 2000, the Duma twice rejected calls for a parliamentary investigation of what happened in Ryazan. All evidence and internal documents related to Ryazan were then sealed on the grounds of secrecy for seventy-five years. While I admit to possessing the healthy paranoia developed by most people born in totalitarian states, this all seems like an overreaction over three bags of sugar.
Of course any suggestion that the bombings had been a self-inflicted “false flag” operation to stoke outrage and fear was condemned by the government. The theory didn’t make it into the mainstream inside Russia at the time; it was just too horrible to contemplate. The idea that a government would massacre its own people was too shocking in 2000. But by 2002, 40 percent of Russians believed the security forces were involved in the apartment bombings. By then we had more information about Ryazan and, more importantly, we had much more information about Vladimir Putin. The suspicion that the Putin regime had no allergy to Russian blood was confirmed by revelations about the scope of devastation in Chechnya, and then by the brutal government interventions in the Nord-Ost and Beslan hostage situations in 2002 and 2004.
Similarly, although the huge discrepancies in the official story on Ryazan were reported in the West, nobody wanted to hear the truth. This is a typical pattern of convenient cowardice. If you acknowledge the horrible truth you would have to act, so it’s easier to ignore the facts and pretend it’s “disputed” and say you’re “concerned” about “the allegations.” This charade is particularly important when you feel obliged to pretend the perpetrator is an ally and is operating in good faith. For example, European nations still don’t want to admit Putin has declared war on Ukraine. Even when Russian forces apparently shot down a civilian airliner over occupied Eastern Ukraine, the EU representatives seemed as eager to deny Russian culpability as the Russians. Again, if they admitted the truth, they would have to act, and nobody wants to act.
And so Putin’s popularity continued to rise. By October 1999, he was already polling ahead of opposition hopeful Yevgeny Primakov, one of the most successful of Yeltsin’s many former prime ministers and backed by the Communist Party and the powerful mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. The election was scheduled for June, but Putin wouldn’t have to wait that long to sit in the president’s chair.
The December parliamentary elections came first, however, and at the time they felt like the first time Russians had gone to the polls the way other democracies did: simply to vote for the candidates who best reflected their views. All previous elections had taken place in a crisis atmosphere, especially Yeltsin’s desperate battle for survival in 1996. The newly formed “Unity” bloc, assembled by the government only three months prior and endorsed by Putin, did quite well; well enough to prevent the Communists from controlling the Duma.
I felt optimism based on the relatively normal appearance of the elections. Efficient and expensive political campaigns, famous personalities, and sitting members of the Duma dominated the polls, and the public showed a healthy conservatism by staying with known devils. As I joked at the time, the appearance of aggressive TV ads and mudslinging showed that we Russians were quickly learning to live up to American campaign standards.
My concern was that the West still showed no sign of developing a long-term strategy for Russia. Was it going to treat the Russian people like adults capable of hearing the painful truth, or would Western leaders continue to speak over our heads? Aid and understanding over Chechnya were important, but not at the cost of appeasing anti-democratic practices and epic corruption.
Russia’s terrible problems were not going to disappear overnight. Like most observers inside and out of Russia, I was primarily worried about the usual perils of corruption, inefficiency, and red tape that made it difficult for any government to forge ahead. Despite my hopes that the darker, more ideological challenges had been left behind us, I hinted at my doubts in the Wall Street Journal a few days after the elections. I wrote, “There is no guarantee that nationalism can be mastered and will not rise to overshadow liberal reforms. Mr. Putin’s KGB roots and strong military backing could well turn out to be liabilities that are too heavy to overcome.”
I had each point half right, as it turned out. Putin discarded the liberal reforms first, right out of the gate. He only revived nationalism as a political tool later when it served his purposes to do so. The military was never again the factor in politics it had been for so long, and Putin’s KGB roots were what would define him and the future of Russia.
With the apartment bombings to fan the flames of vengeance, the assault in Chechnya gained force. By December the siege of Grozny had begun and would last for two months. When it was over, Grozny would be described by visiting journalists as looking worse than Berlin in 1945. Not a single building was undamaged, earning Grozny the dubious title of “the most destroyed city on Earth” by the United Nations in 2003.
The human destruction was no better. Refugees were scattered all over the region in abysmal conditions. Russian troops rounded up prisoners indiscriminately. Torture and murder of captives was routine. As described by the incredibly brave Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who visited Chechnya every month during the second war, what happened there was “a clear, obvious, unbelievable worldwide betrayal of humanitarian values. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a little more than a half a century old, has fallen in the second Chechen war.”
She was validated when the European Court of Human Rights began to issue rulings against the Russian government in favor of the families of some of the many thousands of Chechens who had been tortured or disappeared in military custody.
When Politkovskaya wasn’t in Chechnya documenting the personal stories of families torn apart by violence and war crimes by the Russian military, or writing her reports for Novaya Gazeta, she was traveling widely to rally support for international humanitarian intervention that never came. After dodging death in the mountains for years, and being harassed and threatened from every possible direction, Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, Vladimir Putin’s birthday.