Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko

Luzhkov, declared at the site of the second trolley explosion that he would expel the entire Chechen diaspora from Moscow, even though he had no reason to suspect that the explosions were the work of the diaspora, or even of individual Chechen terrorists.

However, this second wave of terror failed, like the first, to produce any sharp swing in public opinion. In early August 1996, guerrilla fighters battled their way into Grozny, and in late August, the Khasaviurt Accords were signed by Security Council Secretary A.

Lebed and the new president of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov. The supporters of war in Chechnya had lost, and terrorist attacks in Moscow came to a halt-until the FSB launched a new operation designed to spark off another Chechen war.

It is hard to tell just which of the FSB s operatives organized the explosions in Moscow in the summer of 1996. Lazovsky was under arrest. It is clear, however, that the FSB had a choice of many similar structures, and not just in Moscow. On June 26,1996, the newspaper Segodnya published a commentary on the FSB s criminal organization in Petersburg, which consisted primarily of former members of the KGB. Having set up several firms, in addition to what might be called clean business dealings the ex-KGB men also managed the trade in hand-guns, explosives and drugs, dealt in stolen automobiles and imported stolen Mercedes and BMWs into Russia.

The explosions in Moscow could, however, have been set up by members of Lazovsky s group who were still at large. In fact, there is very good reason for believing this to be the case.

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In February 1996, MUR agents arrested a certain Vladimir Akimov outside the pawnshop on Moscow s Bolshaya Spasskaya Street for trying to sell a Taurus revolver. Akimov turned out to be Lazovsky s former chauffeur. Under the influence of reports in the media about the new wave of terrorist attacks on public transport in Moscow in June and July 1996, Akimov began providing testimony about an explosion in a bus on December 27, 1994. Today, here in detention center 48/1, and seeing the political situation on the television, Akimov wrote, I consider it my duty to make a statement on the explosion of the bus& In his statement he claimed that on December 27, he and Vorobyov had set out to reconnoiter the VDNKh-Yuzhnaya bus stop in a Zhiguli automobile. They noted possible lines of retreat. On the evening of the same day, Akimov and Vorobyov left the Zhiguli not far from the stop at the end of the bus route and went back to Mir Prospect, where they boarded the number 33 bus, a LiAZ. When there were just a few passengers left in the bus, Akimov s testimony continued, they planted a bomb with forty grams of ammonite under a seat the right rear wheel. When they got out at the last stop, Akimov went to warm up the engine of their car, and Vorobyov used a remote control unit to set the bomb off.

On the morning of August 28, 1996, retired Lieutenant Colonel Vorobyov had been arrested by Tskhai, as he was on his way to a meeting with an FSB agent and taken to the MUR premises at 38 Petrovka Street, where, if the judgment of the court is to be believed, he told the entire story to the Moscow detectives without attempting to conceal anything, including the fact that he was a free-lance FSB agent. Shortly thereafter, Akimov withdrew his testimony, even though it had been given in writing. Vorobyov then also withdrew his testimony. The Moscow City Court, under presiding Judge Irina Kulichkova, evidently acting under pressure from the FSB, dropped the charges against Akimov of complicity in a terrorist bombing and sentenced him to three years imprisonment for the illegal sale of a revolver. Since the guilty verdict was pronounced in late April 1999, and Akimov had spent three years in custody while under investigation, he left the court a free man.

Vorobyov was sentenced to five years in the prison camps. The case was held in camera, and not even Vorobyov s relatives were