Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [69]
Zakayev was particularly indignant about the hostage industry. The Russian practice of paying ransoms only encouraged renegade warlords and provided them with substantial funds, while the Chechen government was strapped. He claimed that the Russians paid $7 million just for Valentin Vlasov, the Yeltsin envoy who had been captured in May 1998 and was released in November. The Russian secret services had their own network for dealing with the kidnappers. Lt. Col. Daud Korigov, the interior minister of the neighboring region of Ingushetia, was Russia’s principal intermediary. The overall coordinator of the transactions was Russian Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo.
“It was impossible for us to crack these chains,” complained Zakayev. “There was a real division of labor there: one criminal gang would specialize in taking hostages, another in keeping them, the third would negotiate with the Russians. They were reselling people down these chains like cattle.”
Zakayev complained that there was a high-level conspiracy of silence about ransoms being paid: “The British endorsed it, and the French, too, when their citizens were involved, everybody knew about that. But publicly they denied it.”
Initially, the Chechen government quietly pleaded with the Russians to stop. Then Maskhadov went public and accused the Russian government of abetting kidnappers. He even accused the Russian secret services of being in collusion with the hostage-takers. But the industry continued.
Boris, for his part, explained that when he was deputy secretary of the NSC, the policy was to engage the radicals—at Maskhadov’s own urging. At one point in 1997, Boris personally delivered $2 million of government money to Basayev, who was then the Chechen deputy prime minister in charge of reconstruction. It was all in cash—there were no banks left in Chechnya.
“Later, when I left the NSC, Deputy Minister Rushailo asked me to continue working with him on hostages, because I had a reputation as someone whom the Chechens could trust. I have no regrets about it, we saved at least fifty people, who otherwise would have been killed; most of them were simple soldiers. And believe me, all of this was strictly official, with the full knowledge and consent of the Kremlin.”
Boris refused to confirm that he paid for the release of the two Britons, Jon James and Camilla Carr, in September 1998. He only said, “Sir Andrew Wood, the British ambassador, asked me to help. I checked with Boris Nikolaevich [Yeltsin], and he said, ‘Do whatever is necessary to get them out.’ So I did.”
Boris and Zakayev agreed on one thing: the initial contacts among the FSB, hostage-taking warlords, and Wahhabi radicals later developed into stronger relationships. In the end, the Russian secret services began running some of the renegade Chechen groups. When the FSB wanted to provoke the second Chechen War, it knew where to turn. Exactly how to do it, however, would require a masterstroke by the FSB director turned prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s ascent from Lubyanka to the White House could be properly traced to the birthday party of Lena Berezovskaya on February 22, 1999. Initially the celebration was intended as a small private event for family and the closest friends. But Putin arrived uninvited, surprising not only Lena and Boris, but much of the Russian political set.
Boris’s war with Primus was in full swing, and pundits were taking bets that this time the oligarch might not prevail. Lena and Boris decided against a big party for the first time in years so as not to put people on the spot: for elite Muscovites, Boris was a dangerous liaison.
Two days earlier, they had attended the world premiere of The Barber of Siberia, the first Russian Hollywood-style blockbuster, in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. The building was crammed with five thousand of those elite. When Boris and Lena entered the hall, an empty space formed