September 29th 1999 – the federal troops crossed the border with Chechnya and started the military operations (actually continued them but on Chechnya’s territory) against the Chechen militants. The troops rapidly cross the steppes to Terek River. Grozny is ahead.
October 22nd 1999 – Several explosions take place in Grozny, which according to the Chechen side result in the deaths of 137 people and the wounds of 250 other. These were our people working, wreckers.
December 1999 – February 2000 - Grozny is taken after a difficult operation.
February 7th 2000 - the defense minister Igor Sergeev declared that the liberation of Grozny is over. The minister said that about 450 militants were liquidated in the last day.
February 21st 2000 – a violent explosion in the evening on the south border of Dagestan’s capital city Makhachkala with the goal of killing the head of Makhachkala’s border patrol, the general-major Sergey Bondarev. The general-major was not harmed.
March 13th 2000 – capture in Chechnya of the field commander Salman Raduyev by the federal troops, after which he was put in Lefortovo prison in Moscow.
April 21st – Gennady Troshev is appointed commander of the united group of federal troops on the North Caucasus.
May 1st 2000 – unsuccessful attempt on Chechnya’s mufti Akhmad Kadirov.
May 18th – Viktor Kazantzev is appointed by the president as representative of the president in the North Caucasus federal district. (Soon it was renamed South federal district).
May 30th – the deputy government representative in Chechnya Sergey Zverev and the mayor’s assistant Nurseda Khabuseeva died in a terrorist act. Grozny’s mayor Supyan Mochkhayev was wounded in the head.
May 31st 2000 – An explosion took place in Volgograd next to a control post. Two soldiers were killed and fifteen heavily wounded.
June 12th 2000 – the mufti Akhmad Kadirov is appointed head of administration of the Chechen republic.
June 14th – Akhmad Kadirov makes a declaration, in which he summons the militants “to stop their resistance, put down their weapons and return to peaceful life”.
August 8th 2000 – an explosion in Moscow in an underground crossing under Pushkin Square. 13 people died (seven died on the spot and six other in the hospital), 118 people including six children were wounded.
October 12th – a large terrorist act in Grozny near the building of Oktyabrsky police department. In the moment when a car with Prosecutor General’s employees was entering the building a car stuffed with explosives was blown up. 10 people died, 16 wounded.
February 5th 2001 – An explosion took place in Moscow on Belorusskaya-Koltzevaya subway station. 15 people were injured mainly with burns and concussions.
June 24th 2001 – the field commander Arbi Barayev was killed.
September 24th – Adam Umarov, head of an armed group part of a unit headed by the field commander Ruslan Gelayev, was arrested in Chechnya.
November 1st 2001 – One of the most famous spiritual leaders of Muslims Magomet Dolkayev was killed in Chechnya.
December 5th 2001 – Salman Raduyev was found guilty by Dagestan’s Supreme court in all charges: attack on Kizlyar, illegal capturing of people, capturing Penzen’s OMON agents, stealing weapons, organizing illegal armed groups.
January 17th 2002 – last night the field commander nicknamed “Uzbek” was destroyed in Chechnya. He was the “third person” around the Arab military fighting in Chechnya – Khattab.
May 9th 2002 – terrorist act in Kaspiisk. The explosive device detonated on the side of a road when a festive column was passing. Forty-five people died, over 170 were wounded.
August 19th 2002 – the field commander Mussana was killed in Chechnya.
October 10th – the building of Zavodsk’s police department was bombed. Twenty-five people died.
October 19 – an explosive device hidden in a car detonated near a MacDonald’s on Pokrishkin Street. Eight people were wounded; one of the injured later died in the hospital.
October 23rd 2002 – a unit of Chechen terrorists headed by Basayev captured the Theater Center on Dubrovka in Moscow where about a thousand viewers and actors of the Nord-Ost musical were present at the time. The principal demand of the terrorists was the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya’s territory. On October 26th all the militants and a part of the hostages, 129 people, were destroyed in the course of a special operation to liberate the hostages (nerve gas was put in through the ventilation shafts).
December 28th 2002 – the House of government of Chechnya was blown up. 70 people died and about 200 were wounded.
March 23rd 2003 – a referendum in Chechnya about the support of a new Chechen constitution and laws about the elections of the republic’s president and parliament. The election committee obtained incredible results. 95,97% of the referendum participants voted for the Constitution project. 95,4% of the electors voted for the law about the elections of Chechnya’s president and 96,05% supported the law about the parliamentary elections.
May 12th 2003 – a car stuffed with explosives detonated near the buildings of the district administration and the FSB in the Chechen town of Znamenskoe. 60 people died, over 200 were wounded.
June 5th 2003 – a terrorist act on Moscow’s airfield in Tushino where a rock-festival was taking place. 16 people died, 57 were wounded.
August 1st 2003 – the building of Mozdox hospital in North Ossetia was blown up. 50 people died, over 60 were wounded.
December 5th 2003 – the Kislovodsk-Essentuki train was blown up in Stavropol region. 44 people died and 156 were wounded.
December 9th 2003 – two female suicide bombers detonated an explosive device near the National Hotel in Moscow. 6 people died.
February 6th 2004 – an explosion in a train in the span between Avtozavodskaya and Paveletzkaya stations. 40 people died, over 10 were wounded.
May 9th 2004 – Chechnya’s president Akhmad Kadirov was blown up during a festive concert in the Dynamo stadium in Grozny.
June 21st 2004 – Chechen wreckers attempted a large-scale attack on Ingushetia. Police and prison buildings were attacked as well as the headquarters of Nazransk’s border patrol; attacks were made on Karabulak, Sleptzovskaya and Orjonikidzevskaya villages. About twenty administrative buildings and military objects were attacked. 88 people died, most of them police and FSB officers, 117 people were wounded.
August 26th 2004 – crash of two Tu-134 and Tu-154 planes going to Volgograd and Sochi. 89 people were victims of the crashes.
August 29th 2004 - presidential elections in Chechnya. The ministry of Interior Alu Alkhanov won. Over 73% of the republic’s citizens participating in the elections voted for him. Some candidates were removed from the elections under various pretexts or were convinced not to participate.
August 31st 2004 – explosion in Moscow near Rizhskaya station. 10 people died, 51 were wounded.
September 1st 2004 – capture of hostages in School Number 1 of Beslan in North Ossetia. According to Beslan’s teachers’ committee there were over 1200 hostages. According to the official data of the Prosecutor General 331 hostages died in Beslan including 172 children.
March 8th 2005 – the second president of the Ichkeria republic Aslan Maskhadov was killed in the Tolstoy-Yurt town.
According to the official news counting from 1999, 36 terrorist acts in Russia took the lives of 1 397 people and 1 750 were wounded.
So according to the shyest estimates the stubborn desire of V. V. Putin and his group to keep the Chechens in the RF cost about 32 thousand lives. Again imagine these hecatombs of dead bodies laid out on Ichkeria’s long suffering land, no, on Moscow’s sidewalks. Blue, yellow, torn apart…
THE KILLING
(NORD-OST VICTIMS)
On October 23rd 2002 I was in Saratov’s central prison, in the 3rd section for those charged with heavy crimes: this evening, as usual, I was brought late from court. My cellmates left me food; I was heating my supper on the oven when the TV program wa
s interrupted with a special announcement. It was (9:05PM. The announcer said that terrorists have captured the Theater Center on Dubrovka in Moscow, which was presenting the Nord-Ost musical. Around one thousand people together with the viewers, the actors and the employees found themselves hostages.
A group of about 50 terrorists arrived to the building on small buses. They were armed with guns, hand grenades and explosive devices. There were about ten women among them calling themselves widows of those dead for Ichkeria’s freedom. The armed people declared themselves fighters of the 29th division; as it later turned out the unit was headed by the field commander Movsar Barayev, nephew of the famous Chechen militant Arbi Barayev, killed in the summer of 2001.
In the second act, when a plane was supposed to appear on stage (the climax) armed Chechens wearing black overalls and camouflage, most of them in masks came out on the scene. Actually they have not only appeared on the scene but from all the doors. Let us follow the chronology of the events.
October 23rd
At about 10PM a police cordon is set around the building.
10:26PM President Putin was informed about the capture.
At 11PM the plan “Storm” was put in action; according to it all police and FSB officers must arrive to their sections. The security of the buildings where power bodies are located as well as vitally important objects of the city’s infrastructure is reinforced. The mayor Luzhkov arrived to the building as well as highly ranked officials from the police, the FSB, the Prosecutor General and the Ministry of emergency situations. Operational headquarters were organized. They were headed by the deputy director of the FSB, Vladimir Pronichev. SOBR, OMON, Sofrin’s brigade, FSB sections Alfa and Vimpel and other special units were called to Dubrovka.
By midnight the traffic on the neighboring streets is completely stopped. The police cordoned off the journalists and the crowds of idlers. The operational headquarters attempt to contact the terrorists. By midnight without setting any condition the terrorists have released some dozens of hostages, among whom children, women, Muslims and some foreign citizens, in particular Georgians. Ten people escaped through the windows of secondary rooms.
At midnight the Caucasus-Center agency published information saying that the taking of hostages was done by a unit of suicide bombers under the leadership of Movsar Barayev. The Chechens have only one request – “stop the war and begin the immediate withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops from Chechnya.” “The Chechen mujahideen have come to Moscow in order to die and not to survive,” the agency cited commander Barayev. Besides the agency affirmed that the militants have shot the FSB officer Olga Romanova, 26 years old who tried to get into the building. (Later it turned out that the woman was blind drunk.)
October 24th
At 12:44 an midnight the terrorists released a hostage so that he could tell their demands to the operational headquarters. They were the same: stop the war in Chechnya. If a raid is attempted they will blow up the building.
1:32AM several gunshots are heard near the Center on Dubrovka.
At 1:36AM Patrushev informed Putin that sections of the FSB Center of Special Assignment as well as the special section of the police and the Defense ministry were ready for action. Evacuators remove all the cars parked on Dubrovskaya Street. They are preparing to raid.
At 2:00AM October 24th the State Duma deputy from Chechnya Aslanbek Aslakhanov had a telephone conversation with Movsar Barayev. The negotiations did not yield results, but the sides agreed to reestablish the contact at 4:00.
At 3:00AM the terrorists liberate another 17 hostages without setting any conditions. In an official statement the FSB said that it does not intend to raid the building.
3:10AM. It became known that there are 64 foreigners among the hostages (4 from the USA, 7 from Germany, 3 from the UK, 23 from Ukraine, etc.)
3:35AM. The terrorists voluntarily released 15 children from the building. They were released in small groups.
4:00AM. A short telephone contact between Aslakhanov and Barayev. Barayev repeats: “Let the troops out. We are suicide bombers; we came here to die.” The deputy Aslakhanov is not given plenary powers. The contact ends. An hour later Aslakhanov contacts Barayev again. The conversation is even shorter. Without result.
4:04AM. President Putin canceled his trip to Germany and Portugal.
6:05AM. There is some shooting in the building.
7:40AM. The terrorists started to write down the names of the hostages.
08:00AM. The Health Ministry says that there is no dead or wounded among the hostages.
09:00AM. An explosion detonated in the building. A small one. The origin of the explosion is not found.
09:16AM. Information appeared that the RF government proposed the terrorists to go to some other country.
09:20AM. One of the terrorists contacted News.ru. He refuted the information that the militants asked a huge sum of money from the authorities in exchange for the hostages. “I want to remind you: we don’t need money; we need freedom. Because some of your channels said we asked for money. We don’t ask; if we need it, we’ll take it.”
09: 25AM. Another ten trucks with military men of the domestic troops arrive to the Center on Dubrovka.
09:30AM. The terrorists promise to release all the captured foreigners at noon.
10:20AM. ORT and REN-TV journalists are allowed inside the cordoned zone.
10:30AM. The terrorists demand the arrival of representatives from the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders for talks.
11:00AM. The commander in chief of the domestic troops said that the terrorists have not made any contact for almost eight hours.
11:49AM. The terrorists released a boy who had an asthma attack.
11:50AM. Preparations are made in the Sklifosovsky Institute to receive a large quantity of “sick” people, in other words there was an order to prepare to receive the wounded from Dubrovka, which directly indicates that the decision to raid has already been made.
12: 05. FBI agents arrive to the building. They join the group of diplomats.
12:10. The terrorists refuse to release the foreign hostages because the ambassadors of the countries whose citizens were hostages did not arrive by noon.
12:15. The State Duma prepares a statement in relation to the capture.
12:20. The terrorists said that they are ready to speak only with the Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
1:00PM. A terrorist representative who called himself Abu Said contacted the operational headquarters and confirmed their political demands, declaring that there are 50 fighters of the Ichkeria army in the mined building – 25 men and 25 women.
1:25PM. In its statement the State Duma says: “saving the lives and health of the hostages is an obvious priority. All the efforts of the RF State authorities, society and the media must be directed to insure this goal.”
1:30PM. Red Cross representatives led out an old UK citizen from the building.
1:40PM. The State Duma deputy and singer Josef Kobzon and the Sunday Times journalist accompanying him led the Pavlov Posad resident Lyubov Kornilova and her three children out of the Center.
3:00PM. The hostages write an address to president V. Putin demanding to begin the fastest withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. One of the hostages, president of the association of children’s cardiologists Maria Shkolnikova said this by telephone. The hostages also hope that they will be able to address Putin live on broadcast.
3:10PM. Doctors Without Borders assumed the negotiators’ mission.
3:35PM. The State Duma deputies Irina Khakamada and Josef Kabzon entered the Center.
4:05PM. The deputies Khakamada and Kobzon left the building without released hostages. They were negotiating with a terrorist who called himself Abu Bakar and he said that if Chechnya’s head of administration, Akhmad Kadirov, arrives, they would release 50 hostages. They will not release anyone else. Irina Khakamada said that the terrorists are not crazy and are ready to led doctors to
the hostages but only if they have foreign passports. And that they have proposals to regulate the situation in Chechnya.
4:45PM. The psychologists started to fear that the hostages are hit by the “Stokholm syndrome”. When contacting the media by their cellphones many of them affirm that the terrorists should and must be understood and that their demands must be fulfilled.
5:00PM. The terrorists said that from now on they would negotiate only with the official authorities.
5:50PM. A child who needed an urgent hospitalization was brought out of the building on a stretcher. Inside the building there are two Jordanian doctors and Leonid Roshal, head of Children’s Trauma Department of the Pediatric Scientific Center Institute.
6:30PM. Film crews of the NTV and REN-TV television companies went to the building.
6:38PM. Two hostages, Elena Zinovieva and Svetlana Kononova escaped from the bathroom’s window. After this the terrorists stopped to let the hostages to the bathroom and started to use the orchestra pit instead of the bathroom.
6:52PM. The terrorists expelled the doctors out of the building and refused to take food and water for the hostages.
7:30PM. The hostages summon again Russia’s government to withdraw “at least some military subunit from Chechnya. … It is a question of minutes of waiting.” The hostages also earnestly request to avoid any violent actions and not to begin the raid of the building.
8:16PM. The terrorists released Maria Shkolnikova, president of the Russian association of children’s cardiologists.
8:30PM. Two Red Cross employees entered the building and gave medicaments.
8:30PM. The official statement of the government: if the hostages are released the terrorists will be able to leave the RF territory unhindered.
9:50PM. The terrorists refused again to take food and water for the hostages.
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