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In ‘Novaya Gazeta’, September 12th, 2005
What took place behind the scenes of the broadcast of ‘Ryazan Sugar’, and how the FSB tried to disrupt the ‘Independent Investigation’ show
 ‘Novaya Gazeta’ first uncovered the Ryazan exercises and the FSB’s unconvincing excuse that the bags they had planted under an apartment building on Novoselov Street were merely sugar. In early 2000, our correspondent went to Ryazan and spoke with the explosives expert. He was one of the first to arrive at the scene, and found that the bags contained RDX (see ‘Novaya Gazeta’ editions #6 & #8, 2000). Soon our staff member managed to find a paratrooper in a Ryazan military unit, who was assigned to protect an RDX warehouse where the explosives were actually packed in bags like sugar (see ‘Novaya Gazeta’ #10, 2000). The soldier’s testimony was recorded on a Dictaphone.
A huge scandal erupted after this was published. The explosives expert and the entire warehouse guard detachment were sent to Chechnya, while official government television channels launched a campaign. Generals gave speeches. At first, the military men denied that there ever was such a soldier or such a warehouse. Then they acknowledged that the soldier and the warehouse were real, but denied decisively that RDX was stored in sacks there.
The story received an even more interesting continuation after NTV and Nikolai Nikolayev conducted their independent investigation.
It was the end of September 1999. Moscow was sleepy, as if pressed into the ground and moving ever lower. We waited for night with a sense of impending torment and fear. There was but one question: where? In the attic? The basement? Behind the radiator in the hallway? On the seat of a parked car out back?
By morning this question is beating against our temples with the monotony of a metronome, ticking off every second with an invisible, but not yet purloined timer. Another nervous, sleepless night is behind us. The front door slams and the apartment building empties. That is it. Now there is unlikely to be an explosion.
The expanded meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at its building on Zhitnaya Street begins with heightened security measures. Cars from the editorial office are not permitted to park out front.
Special police officers are assigned to observe the work of television journalists in the ministry. For some reason there is a statue of Themis (ed: ‘Blind Justice’) in the lobby. The policemen, apparently, do not really understand how this sculpture relates to them, and prohibit the cameramen from filming her. They guard justice.
The event, scheduled the day before in order to make the news, goes according to protocol. After the many tragedies starting in the autumn, none of the television crews expect anything sensational today, September 24th, 1999. A succession of coincidences has already been compressed into an over wound mainspring, and all that is needed to begin the new era is one swing of the invisible pendulum that hangs in the tension-filled air.
Reporting from the rostrum, not so much for his colleagues as for the many reporters, was the Interior Minister back then, Vladimir Rushailo. After the apartment bombings, he was also appointed head of the Antiterrorism Commission. Seating at the podium is according to some procedure that only they seem to understand: there is every color of uniform of security officers and representatives of other agencies. FSB chief Patrushev thoughtfully and rigorously looks down on the room from his place of honor on the stage.
Hissing suddenly drowns out the monotony of the minister’s speech. In the row provided for the press, numerous reporters fidget about in their seats and turn their heads toward their distant cameramen: “Film this!”
Rushailo was talking about joint counterintelligence successes. In Ryazan they managed to prevent a large-scale terrorist attack. Three bags of explosives based on RDX, complete with an activated timer and detonator, were removed from the basement of a multistory apartment house.
During the break, by tradition, all journalists go and drink coffee. The Interior Ministry has its own bakery and relatively inexpensive sandwiches.
Lack of sleep and unsatisfied hunger are an annoying combination. Because of my barely audible request, my cameraman defiantly collects his tripod, making it clear to the other journalists that we would not be going to the buffet, but straight to our Ostankino studio without waiting for the rest of the meeting.
At the Interior Ministry there is a corridor that leads to the officers’ mess. Invited there are those members of the presidium who are accustomed to normal fare. It is thirty meters from the entrance of this corridor, which is off limits to journalists, to the dining room. My only hope, is that the policeman standing his post here will allow my meek request for an interview from the person I had chosen for my reporting. It is a weak hope: as a rule, the desire of generals to appear on screen is easily extinguished by the flow of gastric juices.
My shouted prayer for Patrushev to say a few words for NTV stops him and compels him to enter the trap I have set.
As always, I begin with easy questions, but, without any of my fancy tricks, the mainspring breaks loose, leaving sharp edges exposed. I need to find out why Rushailo was not aware of what Patrushev is now saying.
Against the backdrop of the recent disastrous weeks, and the recently publicized Ryazan sensation, the prospect of an imminent scandal between the FSB and Interior Ministry does indeed look very gloomy.
Concerning the terrorist act in Ryazan, Patrushev said the following, word for word:
“I think that they didn’t work this out clearly. These were exercises. There was sugar, not RDX in there.”
The time was 1:10 pm, and the next news broadcast was at 2:00 pm. The pause on the other end of the phone line did not give me much hope. If the editor in chief said ‘no’, then everything that was heard would simply have to be forgotten.
But the editor said: “If you recorded everything you’re taking about, then we’ll expect a simulcast at 2.”
At 2:15 pm, right after the news release, the other news agencies raced to replicate my interview with Patrushev, prefacing it, however, with the words: “according to our correspondent, the FSB director…” I knew many of these reporters personally, but such was our professional relationship. If a television station broadcasts hitherto unreported news from other news agencies, then why should they pay their own reporters?
Here is a classic case: in 1994 they played a joke on Ernest Matskevichus, who back then was still a reporter. Naively, he asked colleagues: does anyone know how they say ‘parliament’ in the Kazakh language? He wanted to insert the word into his report. Immediately obsequious correspondents with grave, stony faces, not looking up from their computer screens, gave him the answer: ‘tyrmandyr’ (ed: a neologism). In an hour, under widespread laughter, this extraterrestrial translation rang out on TV. Matskevichus later had to do some explaining. The bosses tried to menacingly stare him down, but they were also choked with laughter. In the morning, however, the editorial offices of a major newspaper held a staff meeting, and deeply explored the topic of Matskevichus as a correspondent (he even knows Kazakh words!), and so the executives held him up as an example for all present to emulate.
The people (in the Ryazan apartment building), many of whom were already preparing for bed, young and old, children with wet heads after their bathes, even bedridden persons with disabilities, everyone was forced to leave their apartment building by genuinely anxious policemen. Already that morning a real general, the chief of the Ryazan FSB, announced to the evacuees, housed at the time in a nearby movie theater, that what had been found in the basement of their miraculously preserved apartment building was something that allowed him to congratulate the rescued on the occasion of their second birthday. When a few days later it was announced that everything in Ryazan was really a successful training exercise, these people, whom the spies were supposedly testing on their level of civil alertness, did not believe a word of it.
Then-Interior Minister Rushailo also treated it with doubt. This distrust, however, boomeranged right back into his office on Zhitnaya Street, and in a matter of a few years, without a fight, the secret police captured key positions vacated by the police generals.
People immediately agreed to participate in the television show ‘Independent Investigation’. One could sense that, after the night they experienced, their attitude towards life had drastically changed. Whether it had been a training exercise, or they had really cheated death, they desperately wanted to know the truth.
The unwilling participants in the exercise wanted to speak with representatives of the FSB in the studio. After a few days, however, residents of the apartment building, which for unknown reasons had been chosen for the exercise, were prepared for revelations from any of the program’s participants, and here is why: very vigorous ‘types’, under the guise of social workers, began increasingly to show up at their doors to let it be understand that future municipal improvements would only be possible if they abandoned their planned trip to the Ostankino studios.
These ‘types’ informed their FSB superiors that we would be bringing two busloads from Ryazan with about sixty people to participate on ‘Independent Investigation’. The situation had begun to develop into a dangerous scenario for the spy department, so it was decided at the Lubyanka that it was time to talk with the people: this will get rid of the journalists. Officers were assigned their roles and given instructions. Once at the studio, they would maintain their version about exercises, referring to the need, and, most importantly, the legality of such an experiment.
They were still confident that the television show would be afraid of the consequences. The television company was already preparing its defense, but some journalists were already raising white flags, clicking the second button on the remote control, changing yesterday’s ‘no’, into a win-win ‘yes’. Suddenly the editor in chief was retired.
There was a call from the sharpest tip of the uppermost level of the government, with a request that ‘Independent Investigation’ not bring up the events in Ryazan on the eve of the election of the presidential successor. I learned this from my superiors just after the program was aired.
On the day before our broadcast, the main channel of the country’s main news agency reports on our impending, large-scale, provocation, conceived by a hostile broadcaster against a newly emerging government. It is reported that certain extras from Ryazan are being brought in to participate in a custom-made show at the Ostankino, for which they will receive a fee of $100 each.
Residents of the miraculously spared apartment house, and security officers, choose to sit on different bleachers. The then-chiefs of the Ryazan FSB and public relations center, and the then-deputy chief of the investigation department at the Lubyanka, open document folders on their laps and emit professional composure.
Neither the Ryazan residents, nor the invited experts, understand the spies’ logic. You say that Rushailo personally signed the order for the exercises? Well, if that is the case, than how could he have forgotten it so sincerely that he gave the impression of someone completely out of the loop? Why was it, that when police explosives experts arrived after the tenant noticed the offloading of these suspicious bags, they immediately found that the canvas bags were not full of sugar, but a deadly mixture based on RDX?
At one point it seems that something is happening, something frightening that the television crews are used to, but is most clearly perceived by the studio audience. The program’s anchorman has now become an extra. Some people do the asking of the ‘why’, while others, with a sense of accomplishment, do the answering of the ‘because’.
The questions the evacuees ask were not simply prepared beforehand — they are the products of tormented nights, sleepless from a fear that has settled into their homes. Such questions cannot be bought for $100. The answers, however, commit the sin of bureaucratic venality. They reek of the same cynicism that prison camp commanders allow themselves when protected by a pleasing ring of guard towers.
“It seems that the local explosives experts, who were the first to do an analysis, used equipment that was in Chechnya. Thus, the device was contaminated with various and sundry explosives and erroneously indicated their presence. As far as the statement by a vigilant witness, drawing attention to the yellowish granules in the bags, well, that just goes to show you the low quality of the sugar purchased for training purposes at the Ryazan marketplace. No, you are not mistaken – that night the FSB really did open a criminal case in accordance with the statute of the terrorism law. Why, no, not against themselves. Comrade, do not distort things. It was done to convince the public that an attack was NOT being prepared. Who was in charge of the exercise, names and titles? We will explain: these are the same officers who put the bags in the basement of the house. Such people are always on duty, so, alas, no matter how much we would like to, we cannot say anything more. Yes, an express-analysis was performed. We can confirm this. A sample was tested on the tongue and it was a little bitter, so all three bags were taken to Moscow for examination. Yes, that is the kind of sugar you have there in Ryazan. What is all this talk about human rights? These were legitimate exercises. During our basic operational search training, we are told that not only can we conduct such exercises, but that we should. Here, we have a bag with us. Can everyone see it? In this waxed paper shroud is the main evidence proving that no one was preparing a terrorist attack, which, as you say, we want to cover up. No, no, the package is sealed, these are investigative materials and we cannot open it up and show you it. No, we are not nervous, and you can stop with the insinuations. No, we will not comment on what that traitor Oleg Kalugin said today during a teleconference from the U.S. For us he is the enemy. Your experts are not versed in spy work. You need to talk with experts, and you do not have any here. We know that you had a bit of a scare, of course, please excuse us, but we are trying to do this for the people’s sake. Why do you not understand this, what kind of people are you?”
By the middle of the program, the faces of the counterintelligence officers express undisguised love for all of truth-seeking mankind, but already the studio audience seems to show support for the Lubyanka scriptwriters’ plan to change the course of show.
In the top row of the bleachers where the Ryazan residents sit, a small man of about forty raises his hand. He says in a rather simple fashion that he is a resident of the apartment house, and he is ready to tell the essentials of what happened on the way to Moscow. Supposedly the program staff that accompanied the bus riders instructed him and all the rest on what to say to discredit the FSB.
A pause hangs in the air, which I intentionally do not fill. I did not ride the bus with them.
I switch on my tiny earpiece. The director is prompting the anchorman, giving him a way out of the situation: “Maybe it’s time to change the subject?” A barely perceptible shake of the head toward the camera: no, it is not time, let us see who was coaching whom.
Usually the first birds of the morning start like this: first one sings timidly, as if testing its strength, but soon the discordance of the birds merges into a single noise, marking the beginning of the day. “Wait a minute, I don’t remember you.” “Don’t talk like that, there was no such thing.” “I’ve never seen him before, either.” “Buddy, what apartment are you from?” “He’s not one of us!” “He’s an FSB plant!” “Take your man back!” “Make him sit over there!”
Later, the little man who complained about the coaching, trying to prove that he was really from Ryazan, tries to sit in one of the buses that take program participants home. With kicks to the butt and rabbit punches, the crook was tossed out into the dirty Moscow snow.
Near the end of the program, an as yet little-known attorney appeals to the Ryazan residents, calling on them right there in the studio to sign statements for a lawsuit and further litigation against the FSB.
This is too much. That night, my long dream of not shutting off the camera after the show comes in handy. Sometimes the most interesting things take place outside of the framework of the formal conversations, as studio guests discuss their involvement in what has just taken place.
Cities, if they could use the same mood that the FSB men had at the end of the ‘Independent Investigation’ show, could defeat a superior enemy force. The signoff barely fades away, as those who strive for the good of the people ignominiously rush towards the exit, avoiding in every way possible their no longer required explanation to those they diligently guard. Walking through the center of the studio, carrying their folders and the bulky package of unopened material evidence, the Lubyanka representatives accidentally stumble into the attorney, who is still collecting signatures, as well as the anchorman, who has still not had taken his leave. Instead of exchanging farewells, they say to one and then the other: “Just you wait until the interrogation!” and “But you, we’ll send you to jail!”
It was clear that the exercises were finished for sure.
What happened afterwards? I do not know what it was that frightened off that now very fashionable lawyer, but he abandoned the Ryazan people. These people, whose measure of fear has already gone beyond conventional understanding, take strong offense at a counsel who shows off in front of the entire nation but never fulfills his promises.
They never interrogate me, or lock me up. They understand that the broadcasters, at least back then, do not suffer from cowardice, and will stand by their journalist.
They start one Sunday afternoon to film the windows of my apartment. I do not know on what damning scenes, of my family and me, the cameraman wishes to spy. I learn about the filming by accident: a neighbor from across the street calls up. He is surprised that a cameraman using such professional equipment is hiding under a garage to do the filming.
Soon we are staring at each other point-blank. I look at the operator from the window, and he looks at my optically magnified face in his viewfinder.
At my request, my neighbor goes over and gives my regards to the cameraman.
Next it gets funny. The cameraman crawls out from his hiding spot, stands up, and shuffles over to a bus stop where a trolleybus is arriving. He boards with his camera and tripod. The lover of amateur home video gets out at the next stop, and jumps into a car in which are sitting some other people.
Later there are a lot of these vehicles. They park at night with their marker lights on, either under my window, or in front of the garage. Sometimes my wife and I leave, pretending to go for a walk, no less pointedly looking at the people sitting in the car with the expression of a dormant quarry. They try to pretend that they do not notice us. We understand the rules of the game, and with the slowness of illiterate immigrants we write in our notebooks the numbers and letters of their gleaming, freshly painted license plates.
Sometimes, usually after midnight, we draw the curtains aside, stripping the windows of a large room, and, in hopes that we do not go unnoticed, organize dances.
Three weeks later activists from the house across the street come over. They are sick of suspicious vehicles parking here 24–7. They say that at a tenant meeting they analyzed the situation and have come to a simple conclusion: only I can save myself. At the same time, however, they promise that if anything happens to me, my caring neighbors will certainly report their observations wherever necessary. Perhaps, observing everything going on from their side, they really want something to happen.
By that time I have information from a Kremlin source that the Chief Television Viewer really does not like our broadcast about the Ryazan ‘training exercise’. I already know that this has been unequivocally made clear to my superiors, but this does not prevent them, almost without hesitation, from nominating ‘Ryazan Sugar’ for a Television and Film Industry award. At the time there is so much going on with NTV that it is too late to get scared, but our television academy people are practical, and so the award in the category of ‘journalistic investigation’ is given to a popular science program about Ebola fever.
The blatant spying stops, just about a month before the death of the old NTV. Perhaps they realize that I hold no prospects for them. I never come crawling, begging for forgiveness, and asking: what can I do to atone for this? (Later, while working at ‘First Channel’, they offer to have me do so.) I do not go insane with delusions of persecution. The only thing that they can do, is take away my journalistic work, and my program. Saltykov-Shchedrin calls it ‘the sealing of reason’.
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