Black September
From September 4 to 16, 1999, a series of terrorist attacks targeted apartment buildings in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk. The explosions occurred at night or early in the morning, while residents were sleeping. As a result, 307 people were killed and over 1700 were injured.
The Russian government blamed Chechen separatists. No evidence of their involvement was ever provided, but the terrorist attacks became the formal pretext for the Second Chechen Campaign.
We remember how it was in our cards.
1. BuynakskOn September 4, 1999, in the Dagestani military town of Buynaksk, a GAZ-52 truck packed with explosives was detonated near a five-story building housing the families of service members of the 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade. The explosion completely destroyed two entrances. Sixty-four people, including 23 children, were killed and 146 were injured. Sappers managed to neutralize a second ZIL-130 truck loaded with explosives two hours before the explosion.
2. MoscowOn the night of September 9, an explosion occurred on the first floor of a nine-story building on Guryanova Street in Pechatniki. The blast was so powerful that many thought it was an earthquake: it was equivalent to approximately 350 kg of TNT. The explosives used were a mixture of hexogen, TNT, and saltpeter, stored in a rented warehouse disguised as sugar. The collapse of two building entrances killed 106 people and injured 690.
3. On September 13, an eight-story building on Kashirskoye Highway was blown up in Moscow. The brick building completely collapsed, leaving most of its residents without a chance. 124 people were killed, with only a few surviving. The day was declared a day of national mourning.
4. VolgodonskThe final explosion in the series was the terrorist attack on September 16 in Volgodonsk, Rostov Oblast. Terrorists planted an explosive device in a truck carrying potatoes. The unsuspecting driver was asked to spend the night in the car under the pretext of guarding the cargo, so that after the explosion, he would be considered a suicide bomber. He was saved by the fact that at the end of the night, he decided to go home for tea.
The explosion destroyed the facade of two entrances to building No. 35 on Oktyabrskoye Shosse and damaged 37 neighboring buildings. Nineteen people were killed and thousands were injured.
5. Ryazan Sugar On September 22, 1999, residents of Ryazan noticed people carrying bags from a car with its license plate covered into the basement of their home. Police, responding to the call, found three bags containing a white substance and a detonator. Regional security officials announced they had foiled a terrorist attack. FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev then claimed that the bags were ordinary sugar and that the training exercises were taking place in Ryazan. This episode became the main source of distrust in official reports.
6. According to the official version of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Russian court, the organizers and instigators of the series of explosions were the leaders of the Caucasian underground gang Emir al-Khattab and Abu Umar, the immediate leader of the group of perpetrators was Achemez Gochiyaev, and the key perpetrators were Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Krymshamkhalov (both sentenced to life imprisonment).
7. Many journalists and public figures supported the theory, outlined, in particular, by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky in their book "The FSB Blows Up Russia." They believed that the apartment bombings could have been orchestrated by the security services to boost Vladimir Putin's approval ratings, mobilize society, and justify the Second Chechen War.
8. One of the key investigators into the circumstances of the explosions, journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin, died suddenly at the age of 53. According to his colleague's recollections, within two weeks he "turned into a very old man, his hair falling out in clumps, his skin peeling off, practically all of it, his internal organs failing one after another." Later, researchers in London determined that Shchekochikhin had been poisoned with thallium.
