Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [37]
With the security of The Club ensured by Tatyana’s presence, everyone’s mind turned to the fate of the two detainees, Evstafiev and Lisovsky. It was at that point that Chubais picked up the phone and yelled at Barsukov, the FSB director: “If a single hair falls from their heads, you are finished!” Of course he did not have much to back up his threat, but the sight of Chubais shouting at Barsukov raised everyone’s morale.
As soon as she arrived, Tatyana called her father. She insisted that he be woken. “Papa, you have to watch the news,” she said, “something important is happening.” By then, the NTV announcer Evgeny Kiselev was on his way to the newsroom. Berezovsky called General Lebed and sent someone to bring him to the studio as well.
“This was perhaps the most important newscast in NTV’s history,” Malashenko recalled. “Ironically, the broadcast was aimed at an audience of only one: the president. If not for Tatyana’s wake-up call, everything would have been lost.”
Usually when in Moscow, I went to bed late and kept my TV on. At about 1 a.m. that night, I heard NTV make an announcement of an emergency special report, coming soon. An hour later, somber Evgeny Kiselev appeared on the screen to say that a coup d’état was in progress: two Yeltsin campaign workers had been arrested by the secret services. The coup’s aim was to destabilize the government and declare a state of emergency. Then General Lebed came on the screen and declared in his deep voice that any attempted coup “would be crushed mercilessly.” Fifteen minutes later the report was repeated by ORT.
I could not understand what I was hearing. I picked up my phone and called Boris at The Club. He was at a peak of excitement.
“Just watch,” he said. “The idiots have lost. They did not understand the power of the media.”
The president watched the program, placed one phone call, and went back to bed. Arkady and his companion were set free at 4 a.m.
Later that morning, Chubais received a summons from the president’s office.
“I will demand that he fires Korzhakov and Soskovets,” he said to Boris as he was leaving for the Kremlin.
“Barsukov should go too,” said Boris. “If one of them stays, sooner or later it will start all over again. I will make sure that TV crews wait outside.” By then Boris knew that the best way to guarantee that the volatile president would not change his mind was to immediately put his decision on the air.
At 9 a.m., in a nationally televised address, Yeltsin fired Korzhakov, Barsukov, and Soskovets.
When Sasha Litvinenko came to work the next morning, the Agency brass “looked shell-shocked.”
But a Barsukov assistant called him into his office and said, “Tell Boris that if Korzhakov or Barsukov are arrested, he is dead.”
He dutifully delivered the message.
July 8, 1996: Four days after Yeltsin’s decisive victory in the runoff election, hostilities resume in Chechnya. Each side blames the other for violating the truce.
PART III THE DRUMBEATS OF WAR
CHAPTER 5 THE REBELS
August 6, 1996: Thousands of rebels led by Chechen commander Aslan Maskhadov pour into Grozny, encircling several thousand federal forces. After two weeks of intense fighting, the Russian army abandons the capital. Over the objection of his generals, who want to raze Grozny with a massive bombardment, President Yeltsin authorizes National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed to seek a settlement. On August 31, Lebed and Maskhadov sign the Khasavyurt Accord, granting the rebels de facto control of the republic, promising prompt withdrawal of troops and free elections. The issue of formal independence for Chechnya is deferred until 2001.
Grozny, September 1996
Akhmed Zakayev, the security adviser to the interim Chechen president, settled into his new offices in one of the few buildings still intact in Grozny. He had been through hell over the past two years.
Before the Soviet Union collapsed, Zakayev had been a leading actor in the Grozny Drama Theater, performing Shakespeare and Russian classics, dreaming of a Chechen cultural renaissance that would follow