9-99/Ryazan incident

 "Terror drill"
9-99/Ryazan incident (False flag attack)

The Ryazan bomb detonator
Date	22 September 1999
Location	Ryazan,  Russia
Perpetrators	FSB
Type	•  Time bombings •  “terrorism”
Deaths	293
Injured (non-fatal)	1000
Interest of	Kovalev commission

The Ryazan incident occurred in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September 1999, when a bomb was found and defused in the basement of an apartment building, after having been planted by people driving a car with a Moscow licence plate. The local FSB denied all knowledge, but Moscow declare that it had been a "terror drill" (echoing the behaviour of the French autorities as regards the Samaur Terror Cell 20 years later). This incident was cited by commentators such as Alexander Litvinenko as strong evidence that the 9/99 bombings were a false flag attack. In spite of moves to launch an inquiry, the Russian parliament sealed all evidence about the case. The independent Kovalev Commission was unable to conclude due to the premature deaths of some of its members.

Detection

At 8:30 P.M. on 22 September, 1999, a resident of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan noticed two suspicious men who carried sacks into the basement from a car with a Moscow license plate. He alerted the police, but by the time they arrived the car and the men were gone. The policemen found three 50 kg sacks of white powder in the basement. A detonator and a timing device were attached and armed. The timer was set to 5:30 AM.

Phonecall evidence

Later, the same evening, a telephone service employee in Ryazan tapped into long distance phone conversations and managed to detect a talk in which an out-of-town person suggested to others that they "split up" and "make your own way out". That person's number was traced to a telephone exchange unit serving FSB offices. When arrested, the detainees produced FSB identification cards. They were soon released on orders from Moscow.

Defusing

Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, disconnected the detonator and the timer and tested the three sacks of white substance with a "MO-2" gas analyser. The device detected traces of RDX, the military explosive used in all previous bombings. At 1:30 A.M. on 23 September, the explosive engineers took a bit of substance from the suspicious-looking sacks to a firing ground located some kilometres away from Ryazan for testing. During the substance tests at that area they tried to explode it by means of a detonator, but their efforts failed, the substance was not detonated, and the explosion did not occur.

Failed seige

Police and rescue vehicles converged from different parts of the city, and 30,000 residents were evacuated from the area. 1,200 local police officers armed with automatic weapons set up roadblocks on highways around the city and started patrolling railroad stations and airports to catch whoever had planted the device.

Reporting

At 5 A.M. Radio Rossiya reported about the attempted bombing noting that the bomb was set up to go off at 5:30 A.M. In the morning, "Ryazan resembled a city under siege". Composite sketches of three suspected terrorists, two men and a woman, were posted everywhere in the city and shown on TV. At 8:00 A.M. Russian television reported the attempt to blow out the building in Ryzan and identified the explosive used in the bomb as RDX. Vladimir Rushailo announced later that police prevented a terrorist act. A news block at 4 p.m. reported that the explosives failed to detonate during their testing outside the city

Responses

FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky blame the apartment bombings on the FSB. Berezovsky made a film to support this counter narrative. Litvinenko was poisoned probably by polonium, while Berezovsky was found hanged in UK in March 2013.

FSB

In Moscow on September 23rd the FSB announced that a "terrorist action" in Ryazan had been narrowly averted, and the next day Acting President ordered the Russian Army to invade Chechenya and eliminate the terrorists' bases.

Official denial

On 24 September, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the exercise was carried out as a terror drill to test responses after the earlier blasts, that the white powder was not an explosive, but merely sugar.

Official counter-denial

The Ryazan FSB "reacted with fury" and issued a statement saying:

This announcement came as a surprise to us and appeared at the moment when the ...FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the explosive device and was prepared to detain them.

Sealing of evidence

The evidence from the case, including the bags and detonator, was sealed and further investigation curtailed^[When?] after pro-Putin MPs blocked the efforts of Duma MPs to secure an inquiry.

 

Event

Event	Description
9-99/Ryazan incident	Moscow FSB officers discovered wiring up what looked like a bomb in the basement of a building by night. Local FSB unaware. Claimed to be a terror drill but no documentation was presented. Instead documents were sealed and discussion of it prohibited in the Duma.

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