Moscow Won’t Release Reports on 1999 Apartment Bombings that Brought Putin to Power until 2060, Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 6 --  The Vitaukas News telegram channel reports that “everything connected with the explosions in the apartment blocks in 1999 in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Ryazan will remain classified and thus inaccessible to researchers until 2060, long after Vladimir Putin will have left office and likely this life (t.me/vitauskas_a/13898).

            Those bombings cost the lives of more than 300 Russians but boosted Vladimir Putin’s popularity to the point that he easily won his first election as president of the Russian Federation despite evidence that suggested he and the FSB had been behind this act of state terrorism. Now, whatever problems he may face as president for life, he won’t risk being exposed on this.

            Fr the most comprehensive marshaling of the evidence available now of the complicity of the Kremlin leader in these bombings, see John Dunlop’s The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations Of Russian Terrorist Attacks At The Onset Of Vladimir Putin's Rule (Stuttgart, 2014).