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Page 2 of 3 SERGEY BUNTMAN: But what were the demands? Because when hostages are taken in relatively peaceful times in a country like the ‘States’ it is often connected with personal problems and so forth. Perhaps in this case it is easier to negotiate because the government doesn’t have to come to a political decision, that is, it doesn’t have to surrender the country’s political position.
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: It may be easier for the politicians, but it’s not one bit easier for the negotiators that have to talk with a paranoid-schizophrenic.
VALERY BORSHCHOV: And it wasn’t really easy to speak to Basayev. But you know I’d like to correct something here. Our negotiations by human rights advocates were conducted before the assault, and by the way when the assault began it seemed that one person from your side got killed and the whole assault was unsuccessful. But I’d like to say something else: as a result of this we traveled from Budennovsk to Chechnya together with Basayev, and a situation occurred where we could’ve easily taken Basayev. We stopped for the night in one village and they brought us water from cisterns, we got off the buses and the hostages stayed in one group while the gunmen disappeared somewhere, we couldn’t see them, and I was waiting for the people from the special forces to show up and say: “Come here, guys, we’re going to start an operation”. I was certain that it was going to happen because the situation was perfect. But it didn’t happen. Later I decided out of naivety that perhaps they put sleeping drugs in the water, and now I’d go sit down in the bus and fall asleep. But, alas, it didn’t happen.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: I’ll remind you that it was all a long time ago and we didn’t have as much experience as now.
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: Of course. But the fact is that at that point it became clear that Basayev didn’t need them (the hostages). It started to be a matter of, they didn’t take Basayev right then, and he could’ve been taken easily and without losses because there weren’t 3 thousand hostages like in the hospital but a hundred times less. And so the process of negotiations, when we exchanged ourselves for hostages, was independent of the aims of the anti-terrorism headquarters leaders, we had our own goals. Basayev, alas, was left untouched, but we didn’t suffer the losses that we could have, thank God. There could’ve been many more deaths, but at Budennovsk it didn’t happen after our negotiations began.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: Perhaps it’s because the operation wasn’t allowed to finish?
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: In reality I think that Budennovsk is an example of a lack of professionalism and coordination in the command of those responsible for carrying out this operation. I assure you that we could have destroyed a huge number of terrorists all at once, I was told this by a sniper from ‘Alfa’, from ‘Vimpel’, who took part in the operation. There wasn’t a political decision, it wasn’t clearly verbalized….
VALERY BORSHCHOV: But the assault that started at 5 a.m. wasn’t successful, either.
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: The assault started, but sometimes the authorities love to stick pins in their highly professional people, as if under a microscope. The assault was a military operation and the form it was at the beginning was little different from the actions of a mechanized infantry company.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: Shouldn’t the assault have been carried out by professional units?
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: This is why I mention special technological equipment has been thought up in the world, though perhaps it’s not everywhere, at any rate. They clearly divide the authority between people and designate their zone of responsibility and who answers for what. I think that, if they hadn’t stopped the assault groups at a certain moment, they could have carried out their assignment.
VALERY BORSHCHOV: But at what cost? I think that there would’ve been an awful lot of losses among our people.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: It’s hard for us to talk about it because now it’s hard to imagine. It seems to me that we’ve lost sight of what is lost now in the ‘Nord-Ost’ and Beslan stories, where now we have a certain amount of professionalism. Because how awful is the combination of gas and an assault at ‘Nord-Ost’, something similar in Beslan, and in the commission’s report on what happened has ceased to be understandable because nothing makes sense. We have ceased seeing this.
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: By the way, if the gas hadn’t been used at ‘Nord-Ost’… in reality it had no effect on the outcome of the combat part of the operation. The fighting lasted from 5, in the main, to 20 minutes as a whole. It was a brilliant operation. The mistake was in the use of the gas.
VALERY BORSHCHOV: Well then, this can be, it simply proves that…
SERGEY BUNTMAN: What’s this? They decide that the gas is necessary while others are sending special units?
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: It isn’t something learned from worldwide experience. In the rest of the world, whenever they’ve tried to use toxic substances, as in America during the situation with the ‘Branch Davidian’ sect, there were always huge numbers of casualties. This is called an inability to work with information, to manage information.
VALERY BORSHCHOV: But they knew this experience, they had to have.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: Fine, let’s return to the situation. We’re talking now about our successful, relatively successful, unsuccessful, and completely tragic experiences. Helping someone out, as is now happening in Israel, helping to get a person out of captivity. Have we had even a single case of such a thing?
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: There was, and it was a very good one.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: In what cases can this occur?
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: Please, I’ll tell you. I was a member of the president’s commission on prisoners of war and we regularly looked at prisoner exchanges, that is, trading our servicemen or a few servicemen for Chechens who were sitting in prison for serious and very serious crimes.
Sometimes it was one for two, and sometimes even one for three. But, nevertheless, priority was given to rescuing our people, and for a long time this worked. Naturally, when it was a case of some inveterate criminal, well he wouldn’t be on the list, but if it was a case of some so-called “domestic” crime, or even looting, armed robbery, and the like, well yes, such exchanges took place. Many of our members of parliament were from Chechnya, for example, Yura Shchekokhin did a lot and Vyacheslav Izmailov also did a lot of this, and the exchanges were rather successful.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: Anatoly Yermolin, how would you evaluate an exchange where it is possible, what examples can you give of them and their possibilities? After all, diplomats can be hostages, as happened over there.
ANATOLY YERMOLIN: I run into these questions to a lesser extent, but I represent the technical side of it. If it’s being done by the special services, then if it’s being done in the form of a carefully worked out special operation. Human rights advocates, or certain leaders, are often doing it. Here there are, certainly, getting into a dangerous situation for the human rights organizations and I think that your colleagues more than once have experienced the complexity of such a situation.
It’s easy to say that there was very good cooperation among the officers on the prisoner of war commission. There were great specialists, people whom you should take your hat off to. SERGEY BUNTMAN: But if it’s an operation, then it’s an operation. But negotiations, on what level should talks be held, should the leaders of the country do this? Here Olmert is being abused, but he’s doing this, and so is the man he’s delegated. ANATOLY YERMOLIN: Right now in our country it’s simple enough. By the way, it doesn’t follow that we can solve difficult problems by means of simple decisions, but right now in the active legislation only the FSB can do this. SERGEY BUNTMAN: We’re here with Anatoly Yermolin and Valery Borshchov. We’ll continue our program in five minutes. (NEWS BREAK)
SERGEY BUNTMAN: The topic is what price should one pay in order to free hostages, or now as it is in Israel, a hostage. In this case they’re exchanging a draftee, a young boy of 19, he’s 20 now, he’s to be exchanged for 450 prisoners. Oksana writes: “You’ve got some amusing parallels, sirs. Borshchov says they exchanged one for three and evil certainly criminals didn’t end up on the list. Over there they’re exchanging 1 for 500 and the list is of arrant bandits, how does this even compare?” Please, how does this compare? ANATOLY YERMOLIN: I’m afraid that the unfortunate sergeant has nothing to do with anything, neither in the first case when the war began, nor in the second case when they’re ready to exchange him for such a large number of criminals, and I find this personally saddening, because in my own experience a person’s fate often isn’t taken into consideration, it’s only as a political duel. This can be either advantageous or disadvantageous. SERGEY BUNTMAN: Is it good, when it’s advantageous, when public opinion believes it necessary to fight for the life of a single person? That the army doesn’t abandon its own? By the way, judging from the reaction in the Israeli public and press, the Lebanese war… VALERY BORSHCHOV: Was unpopular.
SERGEY BUNTMAN: It’s not a matter of it being unpopular. One of the foundations of society and government is service in the military, service that is understood to be a duty. And because of this one has to do service in the army and has to protect the country, that’s the way it is. But the country doesn’t abandon its people, while here there’s this rift: “Why should we do it?” on the right and left-wings… VALERY BORSHCHOV: My colleague said it correctly: this is purely a political decision. But it seems to me that it’s a sign that in Israel, and this is important because they often refer to what goes on in Israel as far as our harsh position goes, they are changing values, changing priorities. Now here in this case, well, it’s really an uncharacteristic example, this war, this reaction to the war, to the end of the war, and therefore, one for five hundred, this certainly, is a special case. But I’d simply like to say one important fact about this: right now only the FSB can negotiate exchanges. In my opinion this is the great deficiency in the law because remember the first Chechen war? The soldiers’ mothers and simply mothers went looking for their children? ANATOLY YERMOLIN: It’s written in the law that negotiations are not permitted.
VALERY BORSHCHOV: Especially. Remember they went to Chechnya and found their children? And they negotiated and rescued them and returned those sitting in our jails to their relatives, they said: “Now you do something about your gunmen who took our servicemen prisoner.” That is, a civilian organization participated in the process, and it had an effect, in principle, since they gave the mothers their children without any ransom, without any conditions, and this was rather positive.
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