Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [86]
“Go ahead.”
“Maskhadov is losing control, unfortunately. It is all our doing; we did not keep a single promise we made to him. It may or may not be true that he would sell out to the Americans, but that’s water under the bridge now. Basayev and Udugov are powerful, but they are thugs. If they have their way, they will continue making trouble throughout the North Caucasus. We cannot afford to let them run loose, and we cannot ignore them. Our best policy is to pressure them back into a coalition government with Maskhadov. Then they would neutralize each other.”
“I will not negotiate with bandits,” said Putin.
“Then help Maskhadov.”
“You said yourself, he has lost control.”
“Than you have to talk to Basayev and Udugov.”
“We are going in circles.”
“Volodya, don’t start a war. This war cannot be won. You will be stuck there forever.”
Putin was silent for a moment.
“Boris, I’ve heard you out. We have not made a decision yet. I promise you, we will take into account what you said. And can you do me a favor?”
“Yes?”
“Stop your contacts with the Chechens. No more phone calls, no messages, no small favors. You cannot imagine what my people are telling me about you. If I believed 1 percent of it, we would not be talking here. But it is becoming a problem for me.”
“Okay,” Boris said. “I promise.”
Moscow: On September 9, 1999, a predawn explosion levels an apartment block on Guryanova Street, killing ninety-four and wounding 249. Four days later another bomb destroys an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway, killing 119. No one claims responsibility. Chechen extremists are suspected. Prime Minister Putin, using street slang in a nationally televised address, promises to “waste the terrorists in their shithouse.” In a last-ditch effort to prevent war, Maskhadov seeks contact with Yeltsin. Russian troops mass on the Chechen border.
The apartment bombings shattered any hope of avoiding a new war. Boris was stunned, as were most observers. The attacks did not make any sense. Basayev and Udugov were bad, but not mad. They wanted power, and eventually they wanted to deal with the Kremlin. If they had ordered the bombings, they were committing suicide.
Putin, of course, stood to benefit from the blasts politically, but it was unthinkable that he would authorize such a thing. That left only two possibilities: rogue elements in the secret services or a foreign interest trying to lure Russia into a war.
On September 10 the whites of Boris’s eyes turned yellow, and he was hospitalized with a case of hepatitis. He also faced a new attack: the tabloid Moscovsky Komsomolets published a “transcript” of a telephone conversation between him and Udugov, partly true and partly a fabrication, which implied that they had been conspiring to stir up trouble in Dagestan. Putin had warned Boris about ugly rumors, but this one was poisonous. Goose’s media immediately picked it up and went so far as to insinuate that the bombings in Moscow were part of a Kremlin election conspiracy, and that Boris was the evil genius behind it all.
After the second explosion in Moscow, Boris decided to hold a press conference to set the record straight. On September 16, as his car pulled up at the Interfax news agency on Mayakovsky Square and camera crews scrambled to get a picture of him, his face and the whites of his eyes were still yellow from hepatitis, a perfect look for a conspiring villain.
In front of the cameras, he began by accusing Luzhkov and Gusinsky of fabricating the transcript and exploiting the bombing tragedy for political ends. He went on to accuse the FSB of “aggravating the situation in Dagestan” by playing games with the Wahhabi. They “could not have been unaware” that the Wahhabi had been building up in Dagestan for two and a half years.
He reminded the public of his own record as a peace negotiator and called for immediate talks with any Chechens who were ready to negotiate, including the terrorists. “I am not afraid of accusations to be poured on me after this statement.