Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror (London: Gibson Square, 2007). A transcript of the teleconference of July 25, 2002,
is published in this book (254–284). The original Russian edition of the book was
printed in Latvia and brought into Russia to be distributed by the Prima Information
Agency of ex-dissident Alexander Podrabinek. On December 29, 2003, the 4,376 copies
were confiscated by the Ministry of the Interior and the FSB. The copies were ultimately
destroyed in 2009. The reason given for the confiscation was “dissemination of state
secrets.”
28.
Cf. “Svedeniya Litvinenko o vrzyvakh zhilykh domov v Moskve” (Testimony of Litvinenko
on the explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow), interview with Sergey Kovalyov
by Tatyana Pelipeiko, Ekho Moskvy (July 25, 2002).
29.
“Gennady Seleznev predupredili o vrzyve v Volgodonske za tri dnya do terakta.”
30.
“Russian MP’s Death Sparks Storm,” BBC News (April 18, 2003).
31.
“Russian MP’s Death Sparks Storm.”
32.
Arkadi Vaksberg, Le laboratoire des poisons: De Lénine à Poutine (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 263.
33.
Anastasia Kirilenko, “Putin’s Old Nemesis Speaks Out After Decade of Silence,” RFE/RL (March 5, 2010).
34.
Cf. Grigory Pasko, “Russia’s Disappearing Journalists,” Robert Amsterdam Perspectives on Global Politics and Business (December 14, 2006). After the bomb explosion in the entrance of Tregubova’s apartment,
she was questioned at the Criminal Investigation Office. The officer, Vadim Romanov,
“wondered whether Tregubova happened to be acquainted with former FSB officer Alexander
Litvinenko. She replied that she did not know him, and asked why this would be of
interest to the investigator. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Romanov answered her. ‘After all,
in your book [Tales of a Kremlin Digger], you write the same thing Litvinenko is saying—that Putin is involved in the bombings
of the apartment buildings in Moscow.’” Tregubova has described the events around
the bomb attack in the first chapter, titled Kak vzryvali menya (How they blew me up) of her 2004 book Proshchanie kremlevskogo diggera (Farewell of a Kremlin Digger), (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2004), 10–65.
35.
The Novaya Gazeta wrote: “Within two weeks he turned into a very old man, his skin came off and his
inner organs stopped functioning one by one. Doctors in the special government hospital
speculated that he had been poisoned. Forensic experts said the same in private conversations.
However, everyone signed the official reports confirming his death was natural.” (“Shchekochikhin’s
Case,” Novaya Gazeta (March 25, 2008).)
36.
Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, The Age of Assassins: The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin (London: Gibson Square, 2008), 242.
37.
Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 343.
38.
Natalie Nougayrède, “La démocratie dévoyée,” in Droits humains en Russie: Résister pour l’état de droit, Amnesty International Report (Paris: Editions Autrement Frontières, 2010), 15.
39.
Vaksberg, Le laboratoire des poisons de Lénine à Poutine, 351.
40.
Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, 252.
Chapter 12
The Second Chechen War
Putin’s War
