Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko Page B

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Concerning the money, Pogosov said it was for Lazovsky, and he was only an intermediary. Pogosov s legal cover for his activities was importing Parliament cigarettes into Russia, which generates quite a good income in itself. Pogosov said that he expected Lazovsky to be freed soon, since he hadn t broken down under questioning, he hadn t given anyone away, and had behaved with dignity. Pogosov sincerely recommended not interfering with the activities of Lazovsky s group and said Tskhai would have serious problems if he tried.

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A few days after Pogosov was released, he had his second and final meeting with the operative who had recruited him. First of all, Pogosov offered money for the return of his note about collaboration. He said that his controllers in the Moscow UFSB were extremely displeased about his note and had told Pogosov to ransom it. His controllers had also made direct threats against Tskhai.

Pogosov s written undertaking was not returned, and the offer of a bribe was not accepted. The following day, the recruitment of agent Grigory was officially reported to the chief. A few days later, the phone rang in the office of the operative who had recruited Pogosov. The caller spoke from the Moscow UFSB, on behalf of their own chief, politely recommending that Pogosov should be left in peace and threatening that if he weren t, there would be an investigation into money that had supposedly been stolen during the search at Pogosov s apartment. The operative never saw Pogosov again and never received any secret information from him. On April 12, 1997, at the age of thirtynine, Tskhai died suddenly from cirrhosis of the liver, although he didn t drink or smoke.

Presumably he was poisoned by the FSB, because he had discovered the identities of the true leaders of Lazovsky s group and realized exactly who had organized the explosions in Moscow. Poisons of a type that could have been used to kill Tskhai were made in a special FSB laboratory, which according to some sources was located at 42 Krasnobogatyrskaya Street in Moscow. The same building is also said to have been used for printing the high-quality counterfeit dollars used by the FSB to pay for contract killings and other counterintelligence operations. The laboratories had been in existence since Soviet times (the dollars were supposed to be printed in case of war).

On April 15, 1997, a funeral service was held for Tskhai at the Cathedral of the Epiphany, and he was buried at the Vagankovskoe Cemetery. After Tskhai s death, the investigation into Lazovsky s group deteriorated into a series of sporadic episodes. At MUR, Lazovsky s case supposedly became the responsibility, by turn, of Pyotr Astafiev, Andrei Potekhin, Igor Travin, V. Budkin, A. Bazanov, G. Boguslavsky, V. Bubnov, and A. Kalinin, and it was also dealt with by the investigator for specially important cases of the Department for the Investigation of Banditry and Murder of the Moscow City Public Prosecutor s Office, Suprunenko, who first interrogated Lazovsky as early as 1996.

When he was released in February 1998, Lazovsky bought himself a luxurious mansion in an elite rural housing estate at Uspenskoe in the Odinovtsovsky district of Podmoskovie (the area round Moscow), which was reached by way of the Rublyovskoe Highway, and then set up a fund for the support of peace in the Caucasus under the title of Unification, in which he took the position of vice-president. Lazovsky continued his collaboration with the secret services. He was kept under observation following his release by Mikhail Fonaryov, an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Moscow district GUVD, but no details are known of his activities during this period.

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Chapter 4

Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (a biographical note) Whereas during the first Chechen war of 1994-1996, the state security forces had simply been attempting to forestall Russia s development towards a liberal-democratic society, the