Helena Merriman

And the footage from the time, it's really harrowing. You see the front of the apartment is peeled off. One journalist at the time described it as looking like a doll's house. You can see all the people's clothes and bathtubs inside. And 94 people are killed in that second bomb. And this time, because it's Moscow, the story breaks out. And who are the leading suspects? After the first two bombs go off, the question everyone's asking is, who did this? And the answer comes pretty quickly. People...

Se on melko varma, että se on Chechenin militantti. Ja se on yleensä siksi, että hyvin viimeisenä on ollut horifikaan maa Ruotsin ja Chechnian välillä. Se menee takaisin 1991, kun soviittinen unioni jäi ylös. Meillä oli erilaisia valtioita, jotka jäivät ilmaiseksi. Ja Chechnia, joka on republika Ruotsin sydäntä, halusi sen myös. Joten he päättävät yhdistelmää.

But Russia has no intention of letting Chechnya go. So they sent in the tanks. There's a very brutal war between 1994 and 1996. Thousands killed. Horrific accounts of human rights abuses on both sides. And it ends with a peace deal, but the Chechens don't win their independence. So there's this real sense of unfinished business on both sides. That's why when the first two bombs explode, a lot of people in Russia immediately blame Chechen militants.

And it's at that point that the panic really sets in. People here are bracing themselves for further attacks. It's as if the whole city was on a war footing. It's partly because almost everyone in Russia lives in these very tall, precarious, prefab apartment blocks. And I think what makes these attacks so horrific is that most of them happen in the middle of the night. So when people are in their beds asleep. And so you have people now sleeping on the streets at night to protect themselves.

Ja se on se päivä kolmannen bombin jälkeen, kun Ruotsin uusi pääministeri, se on heidän viisi ja vain 18 kuukautta, koska eikä niitä tarvitse, puhuu pressiin. Ja hänen nimensä on Vladimir Putin.

A name of course we all know well, but what's interesting about this moment then is that this is the first time most Russians have seen him talk. He's only been in the job a few weeks, he's short, he's got a forgettable face. The only thing people really know about him is that he was recently head of the FSB, which is Russia's internal security service, formerly the KGB. And he gives a speech, a very powerful speech, where he says he's going to go after the rabid animals that did this and wipe them out.

And how does that speech go over with the public? What did you hear from reporters who were there at the time? So reporters at the time say this went down really well. People wanted to hear this strong talk, vengeful talk. They wanted a sense that here was someone taking this seriously. Especially when just a few days later, on the 16th of September, there's a fourth bomb. And this is in a town called Volgodonsk.

Joten tällä hetkellä teillä on nyt neljä asennettavaa asennettavaa asennettavaa asennettavaa asennettavaa asennettavaa.

Joten tämä kaikki tapahtuu Ruzanissa, joka on noin 100 kilometriä etelästä Moskoosta. Tämä on nyt noin viikon ajan myöhemmin. Ja tällä hetkellä kaikki Ruotsissa on ihmisiä, jotka katsovat asuntoja ja katsovat ulkopuolella, koska kaikki ovat yllättäneet, että ehkä heidän asuntonsa tulee seuraava.

Ja noin 9.30 iltapäivässä Aleksei näyttää tämän valkoisen lada-auton. Se on paikallaan hänen asemassaan. Mutta hän näyttää jotain erityistä siitä, että osa lainsäädäntöä on oltu kohdannut paperin kanssa. Hän kutsuu poliisiin, he tulevat, he menevät kohdalle ja he rauhoittavat ja sanovat, että on bomba asemassa.

The whole building is then evacuated. Babies taken from bathtubs. People are racing outside in their pyjamas and their dressing gowns. And the police then send an explosives expert into the basement. And they find three white sacks of powder connected to a detonator and a timer. And they then test the powder and they find it positive for hexagon, which is a military explosive that was used in at least one of the other apartment bombs.

So the residents are racing outside and they end up staying in a local cinema for the night. Someone takes them in, gives them cups of tea to keep them warm. And the next day you have this manhunt, which begins because everyone's desperate to try and catch these bombers. So the city's under siege. You have the local FSB, local police residents all looking for the bombers. You have the roads and trains and airports all blocked.

One of the most extraordinary parts of this story is a call comes into the Ryzän phone exchange. There's a man at a payphone in Ryzän who wants to be connected to a number outside the city. The operator puts the call through and then she listens in. She hears a man saying, the city is locked, we can't get out. The person at the other end says to the man, you've got to split up and leave the city immediately. She's understandably suspicious.

So she writes down the number that they called, the phone number, send it to local police, and they trace it. And you'd expect at this point that it might go to Chechen militants, given the narrative at the time. But instead, it goes to a number belonging to the FSB, Russia's internal security service. This is a bizarre detail.

So at this point, what does the FSB say when that number is traced back to them? This is where the story gets even stranger. So the police then find the car abandoned. They then find two men who look just like people who eyewitnesses saw. But the men then say, we're FSB, and they get out their ID cards to prove it. So none of this is making sense until two days later, there's an announcement given by the government. Russia's interior minister is speaking to the police.

He mentions what happens in Ryazan as a successful example of people finding and stopping what could have been a bomb. So he says, you know, well done, you were vigilant, your vigilance paid off. But then, and again this is another very strange part of the story, there's a 30-minute gap, and half an hour after that speech, the head of the FSB, a man called Nikolai Patrushev,

Hän sanoi jotain, joka täysin vääränäkökulmasta, mitä ulkoministeri sanoi. Hän sanoi, että se ei ollut bomba. Se ei ollut vääränäkökulmasta. Se oli koulutus. Se oli ainoa tehtävä. Ne olivat vain heksagonit. Ne eivät olleet explosiiveja, ne olivat vain saksia.

And we were doing this just to test you. And well done, you passed the test. And he gives the phone operator a color TV for passing this test. And it's so extraordinary that even the local FSB in Ryzän at that point don't appear to believe it. The residents don't believe it. Journalists at the time don't believe it.

Meillä täällä Satolla on yksi sanonta. Kun on parhaimmillaan kotona, on parhaimmillaan elämässä. Sitä varten meillä on talomestarit apunasi. Pihapiirin luottokaverit. Ei tarvitse kotona ihan kaikesta stressata. Muokraa huoleton koti. Sato.fi

When you look back at it now, you think, why wasn't everyone asking these questions all over the world? And this journalist I interviewed, David Satter, who was one of the first Western journalists to ask these questions. He writes an article for the Washington Times. He speaks to some of his sources, who are former members of the intelligence services, who raise a lot of questions, particularly about Ryzan, but also about the bombs and whether Chechen militants really could have been capable of doing it. And he writes this article.