← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
The Rise of Putin and the 1999 Apartment Bombs
00:34:31
How a series of apartment bombings that ripped through Russian cities would reshape Russia’s future.
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- [00:00]
Dan Snow
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.
- [00:33]
Hayden
AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service. We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real world complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order. And we also see it when FIN goes up against competitors. It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard, and if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all. Check it out for yourself at Finn AI. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [01:10]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [01:15]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before.
- [01:23]
Stephen
That's right.
- [01:24]
Helena Merriman
Hey.
- [01:24]
Stephen
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw RE to every single chapter.
- [01:28]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [01:35]
Stephen
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big wireless Way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [02:05]
Helena Merriman
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com 4 huge bombs tear
- [02:16]
Dan Snow
through apartment buildings Across Russia, hundreds of people are killed in their sleep. It's September 1999. Just weeks after a little known 46 year old became Prime Minister of Russia. A man called Vladimir Putin. The country was plunged into panic. Families fled their home. Neighbors patrolled the streets. An entire nation was gripped by fear. The government blamed Chechen militants. Many journalists accepted the story. But then the whispers began. People started to question Russia's security services, the Federal Security Service, the fsb, successor to the kgb, who really planted those bombs? Reporters and politicians who tried to dig deeper, including one Alexander Litvinenko, started to mysteriously die in surprising numbers. And to this day, what truly happened remains contested. What is clear is the impact it all had. Out of that chaos, Putin emerged as a strongman figure. He promised order, security and revenge against those who perpetrated these crimes. The bombings didn't just terrify Russia, they transformed its leadership. They set the stage for Putin's rise to absolute power. This extraordinary chain of events has explored a new BBC studios podcast called the History Bureau, hosted by the award winning journalist, Helena Merriman. She joins me today to unpack the shocking twists of this story. This is Dan Snow's history hit. Helena, it's a big job today. I need you to explain what on earth is going on in Russia. And as many people said, Winston Churchill, for example, it's quite hard to know, isn't it?
- [04:11]
Helena Merriman
It is. And to sum up. But I will try my best.
- [04:13]
Dan Snow
Well, is it best? Should we do, should we start, should we go chronologically? Where do we start this story?
- [04:18]
Helena Merriman
I think we need to start in 1999.
- [04:19]
Dan Snow
Oh, I thought we were gonna say Peter the Great. Okay, good. We'll start with 1997.
- [04:22]
Helena Merriman
We're fast forwarding now.
- [04:23]
Dan Snow
Okay, you're fast forward all that bit.
- [04:24]
Helena Merriman
Yeah.
- [04:25]
Dan Snow
What happens in 99? Why is that important?
- [04:26]
Helena Merriman
I think let's set the scene. So what we're about to do is tell the story of the Russian apartment bombs, which is one of these stories. Probably like you, Dan, I'd heard whispers about it for a long time as a journalist that something about these four bombs didn't quite add up. So you have four bombs, they blow up four apartments, hundreds die, and then this very, very strange set of murky events that happen in the weeks after that lead to all these strange conspiracy theories right at the time that one of the most powerful men in the world today, Vladimir Putin, first takes power. So this is really the story of the origin of Putin's Russia. So it all starts in 99. So it's eight years after the fall of the Soviet Union, you have this new country, Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin. And at first, he was hugely popular. People loved him. He was flamboyant, he was charismatic. But he gradually gets older, iller, drunker, and people realize they needed a successor for him. You know, there was corruption sweeping through the country. So by 1999, people in Russia want someone new, and Yeltsin knows that too. But he has no obvious successor. There's four prime ministers in just 18 months, and that sets the scene for them. What happens in September 1999? It first happens in a town called Bunatsk, very remote town, thousands of kilometers from Russia. Russians are in their apartment, they're bedding down for the night. They've been watching a football match. And suddenly a truck outside one of these apartments explodes, and the apartment sinks to the ground. 64 people killed. But interestingly, that bomb doesn't really make the news because it happens near the border with Chechnya, where there's been fighting in the past. So the country moves on. Few days later, there's a second bomb. And what you can see with these bombs is they explode in such a way that the fronts are ripped off these apartments. So you look at them, it's almost like a doll's house. And you could see really sort of the detritus of human life that had been lived in their children's toys, clothes, meals laid out, tables and chairs.
- [06:23]
Dan Snow
It reminds me of the V2 bombs during the Second World War in London. Just shocking.
- [06:29]
Helena Merriman
Exactly that. So the second one goes off at 5 in the morning, and this one makes the news. Why? Because it's in Moscow, the heart of Russia. So now the story breaks out, but then a few days later, there's a third bomb, exactly the same. Five in the morning this time, over 100 people killed also in Moscow. And by now, the panic really sets in. People start sleeping outside on the streets. They're so afraid. Because what you have to remember is that in Russia, almost everyone lives in these tall, prefab apartment blocks that sort of stretch meters into the sky. They're very precarious. And everyone is thinking, maybe it will be us next. And seemingly at random, it seems very random, apart from the fact that they go off in the morning. And it's after that third bomb that Russia's latest prime minister gives his first address to the public. And that's Vladimir Putin.
- [07:20]
Dan Snow
Right. Who. Sort of not a very famous figure at this point.
- [07:23]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. No one really knows much about him. All people know about him is that he was once head of the fsb, Russia's internal security service. He was very unremarkable looking, short, rather weedy, unforgettable. People in Russia had this term for him, Syria Miska, the gray mouse, because he was just so unremarkable. But he gets up and he gives this speech, this interview to the press where he talks about going after the rabid animals that did this. He says he's going to hunt them down in their bases. And people seem to love it because it's so different to what they had from Yeltsin, who was much more measured. Here is this man offering revenge and retribution and people love that.
- [08:02]
Dan Snow
And you. It's difficult, the trauma in that sighting. I mean, it's a sort of almost like a 911 style. It's a shocking event this domestic.
- [08:10]
Helena Merriman
Yeah, I mean these were the. Among the biggest, the largest scale terrorist attacks in the world up until this point. And at this point, they're not even over. So a few days after Putin's speech, the fourth bomb explodes again. Five in the morning in a town called Volgodonsk. You know, women, men, children, babies killed. And the question everyone's asking is, who is doing this? And the answer was pretty instant. Everyone said, well, it must be militants from Chechnya.
- [08:39]
Dan Snow
Right.
- [08:39]
Helena Merriman
Because very recently Russia had been fighting this horrific war with Chechnya.
- [08:43]
Dan Snow
Chechnya wannabe breakaway republic within the former Soviet Union. Now within Russia.
- [08:49]
Helena Merriman
Exactly right.
- [08:50]
Dan Snow
Down in the south.
- [08:51]
Helena Merriman
Down in the south wanted to break free partly because a very different culture to the rest of Russia, but also decades of very brutal treatment at the hands of Russian leaders. They asserted their independence. Russia had no intention of letting it go. They sent in the tanks. This very brutal war that ends with a peace deal, but crucially, not with independence for the Chechens. So there's this sense of unfinished business on both sides. So when these bombs go off, that's why everyone immediately thinks, oh, it has to be Chechen militant.
- [09:19]
Dan Snow
And so I think you're about to tell me that there's a deeper story here.
- [09:24]
Helena Merriman
Yes, exactly that, Dan. So it's at this time that one of the strangest parts of this story happens, which is in a town called Roseanne. And this is just a few days after that fourth bomb. And by this point, all over the country there are these patrols that have formed. People are looking, you know, up and down the streets looking for anything suspicious. And at 9:30 in the evening, there's a man called Alexei Kartofelnikov. He's looking out of his window. And. And he sees this white larder car parked. And what makes him suspicious is that part of his license plates has been obscured. So he calls the police. The police come, they search the building, and inside the basement, they find three white sacks of powder attached to a detonator and a timer. And the bomb squad looks at the material that was in these three white sacks. It's white, it's grainy. And they test it on their machines, and they say it tests positive for hexagon, which is a military grade explosive that was found in at least one of the other apartment bombs. So it seems to fit the pattern of what's been going on up until now. So you think, right, it's a bomb, and they race out. They then evacuate the whole building, and it's an absolute panic. They're pulling people out of their bathtubs, old men and women out of the building, and they're all racing downstairs. They sleep in the cinema for the night, and the next morning they all wake up, and Alexei, they say, is a hero. You know, he saved the city from this fifth bomb. But here's where it gets very strange. They then begin a manhunt. They lock the city down. They shut the roads, they shut the local airport, the train stations. They get pictures from Alexei, and they put them up in shop windows. And there's a telephone operator sitting at the phone exchange. And a phone call comes in from someone inside Rouzan saying, we've got to get out. And so she listens in and she thinks, okay, this might well be one of the bombers. So she writes down the phone number where they're trying to get connected to, and she hears a man on the other end saying, you know, you've got to get out. You've got to split up. She passes that number on to the police, and you would expect, given they've just blamed Chechen militants for these bombs, that that number would go to a militant in Chechnya. But it doesn't. Goes to a number belonging to the fsb, Russia's internal security service, until recently
- [11:33]
Dan Snow
run by Vladimir Putin.
- [11:34]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. So people start thinking, hang on, this is really, really strange. This doesn't make sense. Even stranger, when they then find two men who look just like the bombers. Local police arrest them, and the two men say, we're not bombers, we're fsb. And they take out their ID cards to prove it. So at this point, things go quiet. And then two days later, Russia's interior minister is giving a speech to various police, and he talks about what happened in Razan. And he says this was a shining example of people stopping would be bombers. And then there's a half an hour gap during which something very odd happens, because half an hour later, the head of the fsb, then a man called Nikolai Patrushev, who succeeded Putin, comes out, journalist spots him, runs over, asks him about Razan, and he says something that completely contradicts what the Interior Minister says. He says, oh, no, there wasn't a bomb. This was just a training exercise run by the FSB to see if you were paying attention, and you were. And they say, actually, this wasn't hexagon, it was sugar. But our testing equipment must have been contaminated from when we used it in Chechnya. And no one believes it.
- [12:38]
Dan Snow
Russian journalists, who at this point are living in a reasonably free media environment, start asking questions, presumably.
- [12:43]
Helena Merriman
Yeah, they start asking questions, and there's one particular Russian journalist who manages to track down two soldiers who are guarding a warehouse near Ruzan. So just before this, this fifth unexploded bomb, and he interviews them, it turns out that they had been guarding a warehouse and they thought that inside it was sort of full of weapons. And at one point they said they'd got bored. They'd gone into the building and they'd found sacks of white powder and they'd assumed that it was sugar. So they'd made a cup of tea, they'd put in a couple of spoonfuls of what they thought was sugar, tasted it and spat it out, and they said it sort of burnt their insides. And so this Russian investigative journalist concluded that perhaps here they were guarding sacks of hexagon that were potentially used in this. In this device, in this bomb that had been put in this building. Again, it's hard to say we weren't able to speak to those soldiers directly, but this is an example of Russian journalists who aren't letting this story go. But those questions are rather sidelined, because right at that point, Putin sends fighter jets to bomb Chechnya and the second Chechen war begins. And that's the shining interesting thing that everyone wants to cover. Not the fifth unexploded bomb that doesn't go off.
- [13:57]
Dan Snow
You're listening to Dan Snow's history. We're going to be back after this break. This episode is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. Spring break isn't what it used to be. And honestly, that's a good thing. These days. It's less about chaos and crowds and more about taking a real breather, a chance to explore somewhere new, revisit somewhere familiar, or just slow down for a few days without over planning it to death. That's why I like Best Western for spring travel. It's easy and perfect for the kind of getaway that actually leaves you refreshed. Whether it's a road trip or a quiet city stay, it just works. And right now, they're making it even better. This spring stay three nights and you'll get a $50 Best Western gift card. No fuss, no pressure, just a well earned break that feels worth it. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligence finance platform that helps business and accounting firms scale with proven results. In history and in finance, proof is everything. Smart leaders don't bet on promises. They rely on what's proven to stand the test of time. That's why so many have turned to Bill to manage, move and maximize their money. Bill has already securely processed over a trillion dollars in real transactions. They're not just moving money, they're simplifying financial operations for nearly half a million customers. And over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to get it right. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.comproven to get started and grab a 250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.comproven terms conditions apply. See Offer page for details.
- [15:49]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy fanfellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [15:57]
Stephen
And I'm Steven, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [16:01]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [16:09]
Stephen
That's right. Hey, hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [16:14]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [16:21]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month of Course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [16:51]
Helena Merriman
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com.
- [17:02]
Dan Snow
The country's traumatized. It's scared.
- [17:05]
Helena Merriman
Exactly.
- [17:05]
Dan Snow
It's desperate.
- [17:06]
Helena Merriman
Yeah.
- [17:06]
Dan Snow
Angry.
- [17:07]
Helena Merriman
Yeah.
- [17:08]
Dan Snow
And so someone can present themselves as a strong man, a protector.
- [17:10]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. And this is where it gets very interesting, because just two months later, it's 31st of December 1999. Remember the millennium bug. If people are young enough to remember that, old enough to remember that everyone was scared that planes were going to fall out of the sky and banks would collapse. And so it's the 31st of December, and Boris Yeltsin is sitting in the Kremlin and suddenly he pops up on television over lunchtime and he makes this very emotional speech where he announces he's going to stand down, no longer be president. He was meant to stand down in June, but he's standing down early. And waiting in the wings is that short, rather wiry, forgettable man, Vladimir Putin, who is now prime minister. And there's very moving footage of them from that day. And you see Yeltsin, he's sort of trussed up in this fur coat, looking very old and bloated. And there's Putin looking very energetic suddenly. And they shake hands and Yeltsin says, take care of Russia. And he gets into a car and Yeltsin disappears into the snow.
- [18:03]
Dan Snow
And that was the handover.
- [18:04]
Helena Merriman
It's the handover. I mean, at that point, Putin's acting president, but look, he's in charge of a war. He's got the nuclear briefcase, he's acting president, but now with a huge mandate behind him.
- [18:12]
Dan Snow
I'm very struck that Putin looks very different to the image that he would later try and cultivate himself. He looks rather sort of geeky, like a little bureaucrat. Rather smartly dressed.
- [18:20]
Helena Merriman
Exactly that. And I think that's how people saw him still at that point, a little bureaucrat, this former FSB guy that no one really knew much about. Again, when you contrast him to Yeltsin, who was very big and imposing and had this real innate charisma. Putin didn't have that back then.
- [18:35]
Dan Snow
He looks managerial, doesn't he? Yeltsin looks disorganized. You can imagine corruption, his health is failing. He symbolizes a different kind of Russia. Putin looks rather modern.
- [18:45]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. There was a modern sense to him. He was a man who understood the power of the media, who understood the power of image. He had people around him who were desperately trying to shape his image because they were very aware. There were all sorts of polls done in Russia where they would ask people about the kind of president they wanted, and people would talk about characters from spy films who were sort of very good looking and suave and sort of action heroes. And so they very, very overtly try to get Putin to follow that model.
- [19:16]
Dan Snow
And did the FSB shambles with that last bomb? Were people joining the dots like you are now?
- [19:21]
Helena Merriman
One way to answer that is with the numbers. So you look at his approval ratings in the summer, 2%, which again, we
- [19:27]
Dan Snow
can trust because they were roughly quite objective at the time.
- [19:30]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. At this period. Exactly. That 2% of the country thought he would make a good president.
- [19:34]
Dan Snow
Wow.
- [19:34]
Helena Merriman
So he was a no hoper.
- [19:35]
Dan Snow
Yeah.
- [19:36]
Helena Merriman
And then after the apartment bombs, this war in Chechnya, him suddenly being all over the news, they rocket in just two months to over 40%. Okay, so better, but still not foolproof. So he then has to run a presidential campaign. But at the time that he's running his presidential campaign, there is one TV network called ntv. So it's an independent TV news network. They're loosely modeled on BBC and cnn. And they were a real thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin. So they had this amazing puppet show called Cookley, which was a bit like Britain's Spitting Image. And every week the star puppet was this baby that was made to look like Putin, and Putin hated it. And the ratings for this program were huge. I mean, half the country would tune in and watch it. And they had the idea to create a TV show where they would ask the residents of that building in Rozan with the unexploded bomb to come on. And on the other side, they'd ask the fsb, and you think the FSB would say no? I mean, and now this would be unthinkable. But they say yes. And I've watched the show and it's extraordinary. It's sort of like, you know, those 90s tabloid daytime TV shows like Jerry Springer, where instead of, you know, did you sleep with my boyfriend? They're basically saying, did you try to bomb our apartment? And the residents, they are, they are so emotional and angry and they're shouting at the fsb. They're saying, how dare you try and make us believe that this was all just a training exercise. You dragged us from our beds in the middle of the night, it was hugely traumatic. And person after person gets up to shout at them. And the fsb, they say, well, this was all part of a grand operation called Whirlwind Anti Terror. And at the end, one of them holds up this brown paper bag that's been sort of sellotaped together with masking tape and says, all the evidence is in here, but we're never going to show you.
- [21:25]
Dan Snow
What a moment.
- [21:26]
Helena Merriman
And this was three days before the presidential election. Okay, so this TV show, you know, here is a TV show, primetime TV show, asking whether the FSB had bombed their own people and, you know, Vladimir Putin too. It's a question that no one dares ask on the show, but that's the implication. The show goes out, there's a phone call from the government to them to say, this will never be forgotten. And indeed it isn't, because a few days later, FSB commandos storm ntv. They arrest the owner, he's thrown in prison, the network closes a few years afterwards, and three days later, Russians go to the polls and Putin wins in the first round.
- [21:59]
Dan Snow
I guess that's the moment. No return, presumably.
- [22:01]
Helena Merriman
Yeah, it's the moment of. Well, it's an interesting question that I think there are people now who still say, actually that first year he was really still consolidating himself. He didn't have full control of the media. He did close ntv. We see the beginnings of the Putin that we know now very much in those early months, controlling the narrative, controlling the story. But what does happen is that he does manage to control that narrative and he does manage to present Russia as the victim of militants from outside. And who is the savior? Who can protect them? Vladimir Putin.
- [22:36]
Dan Snow
It's very interesting. Why, how our modern societies have got this bug, which is mass media, plus sort of the charismatic image of a strong man, plus creating some kind of panic does seem across various societies, since the invention of the wireless and TV and now the Internet, it seems to be a very potent combination. It's happened again and again from place to place. It's. It's a playbook.
- [23:03]
Helena Merriman
Absolutely. And I think Putin's one of the masters of it. And what's interesting is that he develops it so quickly, so very early on. When that new war with Chechnya begins, he attaches himself to it. He's putting on military uniforms, he's getting onto fighter jets, he's on the front line giving these heart thumping speeches to soldiers there. And people love that. He's no longer the FSB guy in a suit. And over Time. He. That's, that's the image that he cultivates, that we, that we see today.
- [23:34]
Dan Snow
And the bombing stop mysteriously. So he's succeeded. He's. He's. He stopped the terrorists blowing up apartment buildings.
- [23:40]
Helena Merriman
But what does happen is that in Western journalists and in the Western world, you know, Western leaders are lining up to make friends with him because they can all see how things are changing. And I think.
- [23:48]
Dan Snow
And he presented as reasonably saying that. I mean, people were writing op EDS in the Guardian saying we can do. He's not a drunk, crazy old drunk, drunk guy like Yeltsin. He's a rather snappy dresser and he's sort of modernist. And he said nice things about Western democracy.
- [24:00]
Helena Merriman
Initially, yes, there was this great hope that here is Russia on this straight line to becoming a democracy like the rest of the West. Tony Blair is one of the first Western leaders to phone him. Putin then goes to meet George W. Bush in the White House. And there's that very famous moment where an American journalist asks George W. Bush, can you trust Putin? And Bush says, I looked into his eye.
- [24:22]
Dan Snow
I know, yeah, we.
- [24:23]
Helena Merriman
And I saw a man that I could, you know, that we could. That I could trust a man deeply committed to his country. So everyone drank the Kool Aid with him because they wanted to believe that things would be different. But in Russia, it was very different. A lot of journalists were asking very unsettling questions, even after what happened with NTV. And then there's this moment in 2002 when people within parliament wanted to set up an official parliamentary inquiry to investigate the bombs because there were so many unanswered questions. There's a vote, a few people vote against it. So in the end, they can't have an independent parliamentary one. But then there's an independent commission. So it's a group of journalists, parliamentarians,
- [25:01]
Dan Snow
some lawyers just do it themselves.
- [25:03]
Helena Merriman
Yeah. 10 of them. They start investigating, they find out all sorts of interesting things. But within a few months, one of them is coming home one night. We don't know the details of what happened, but his body is found, bullet through his head. So he's shot. Very soon after beginning his work on the commission. Just a few months later, another man involved in the commission, he starts feeling unwell. He's taken to hospital. His skin peels off. Doctors say, oh, it was probably an allergic reaction, but a lot of people think he was dodgy prawn.
- [25:32]
Dan Snow
Well, yeah, John Le Carre would call that a Moscow center hit.
- [25:36]
Helena Merriman
Yeah, and there were quite a few of those in relation to this story,
- [25:38]
Dan Snow
really, that's just extraordinary. People will be familiar with the extraordinary images of Putin shirtless on horses and hunting and doing that kind of thing. And so this starts at that point, he's presenting, well, the strong man. I've got trouble on this podcast talking about Strongman, but it's a piece of political theory, isn't it? We describe these people as one of them. Often they're very weak, but we describe them as trying to present as a strong man. Yeah, and that's. So he's. So he's doing that on the. On the sort of PR side, he's doing that, but he's also. There's a dark side which he's enforcing with violence that. Shoring up that totalitarian grab in violence.
- [26:16]
Helena Merriman
Exactly. And you know, one of the interesting stories that is connected to this is the story of Alexander Litvinenko, who is a man that a lot of people know because he was poisoned on the streets of London. He died very slowly in the glare of the media spotlight. But what I hadn't realized, and what people may not know, was that he'd spent the last few years of his life investigating one particular story, and that was the apartment bombs. Okay, so Litvinenko, he'd been part of the FSB in the 90s, part of this special unit to deal with crime. He'd seen a ton of corruption and he wanted to do. He was a believer in the ideals of the FSB. So he goes to see then head of the FSB, Vladimir Putin. 10 minute meeting with him, and he tells them all about the corruption. Thinking rather naively at that point, or idealistically that Putin might want to do something about. Became very clear to him that Putin wasn't interested. He leaves the meeting, but Litvinenko doesn't go quietly. And just a few days later, he organizes that famous press conference where he and four other FSB officers talk publicly about the extent of corruption. But here's the thing, they all wear masks. Litvinenko doesn't. He shows his face. A few days later, he's arrested, put in prison. He comes out, arrested again, and he realizes he will never be safe in Russia. So he manages to escape to Britain, where he is paid to investigate the bombs. And he uncovers all sorts of details. I think probably the most stark of which is a transcript from the Russian Duma from the time of the bombs, where the speaker of Parliament, he's just organized a minute silence to commemorate everyone who's died. And he's then handed a note. This is all Happening in real time. He's handed a piece of paper, and the piece of paper says, there has just been another bomb. And. And the speaker says this bomb blew up a building in Volgodonsk. But the thing is, he's got the name wrong. It's in Moscow, but no one pays attention because, you know, it's just an innocent mistake. But three days later, where's the building blown up? Volgodonsk. So, you know, to mistake the name of a city is one thing, but for that to be the name of the city where the building would be blown up three days later, is that coincidence?
- [28:19]
Dan Snow
That is extraordinary.
- [28:21]
Helena Merriman
So he uncovers a whole ream of sort of truckload of details like this, writes them up, puts them in this book, which he calls the FSB Blows Up Russia. So, pretty obvious what he thinks. But the book doesn't get much coverage, partly because people in the west just think the idea is so impossible to believe, you know, that the FSB would blow up their own people to help get Putin into power. Few Russian newspapers print a few chapters. That's about it. Then, a few years later, Litvinenko feels ill one day. Doctors think it's his tummy bug. He ends up in hospital. Every day, he's getting sicker and sicker. People probably remember that very famous photograph of him lying in the hospital bed with a green gown, tangle of wires over his chest. He's bald by that point. All his hair's fallen out, and they discovered it was polonium poisoning. He dies. And the British government then carry out an inquiry into his death, and they conclude that he was killed by Russian agents, by agents acting on behalf of the Russian state, and that the kill order probably came from Vladimir Putin himself, which, you know, a claim Putin and the FSB have always denied. We can't prove he was killed because of his work on the apartment bombings, but I think that was a crucial part of it for sure.
- [29:34]
Dan Snow
Who does? The Russian state, presumably. They have to find someone to blame for these bombs, put the story to rest, as it were.
- [29:41]
Helena Merriman
Very good question. And you would think that the people they would try would be Chechens, given that they had started a second war. Yeah, they blamed them, yeah, but they're not. They eventually. They have a list of suspects from various parts of the caucuses, none of them Chechen. They eventually find two men. They say they're the only two of this list who aren't dead or in hiding. They bring them to Russia for a trial in October 2003. It's a closed doors trial, it goes for two months, and at the end of it, these two men are found guilty of murder and trafficking of explosives and a string of other charges, sentenced to life in prison, and the files are then locked away and sealed for 75 years.
- [30:20]
Dan Snow
Are Russians just simply now being denied the opportunity? Is that just the oxygen is just not getting to this story? Or is it being circulated in whispers? Or are they being bombarded with so much like propaganda they actually believe, they believe the government line? What do you think really is going on in Russia in this first decade of the 21st century? Do they. Are they mouth to mouth? Are they sharing the, they think, the reality of this story?
- [30:41]
Helena Merriman
I think as the decades have gone on, it's got much harder because you look at where we are. You know, back in 1999, as you were saying before, there was still a degree of free media, so people could openly ask these questions. But now you look at Russia, you have Facebook banned, Instagram banned, newsrooms have been shut down. But here's something that's really interesting. When a couple of years ago, there was something that happened. There was a terror, a terrorist attack, and a lot of questions afterwards about what really happened. And one of the most searched words on the Russian Internet was Ruzan sugar. So this was a throwback directly to this particular story.
- [31:16]
Dan Snow
It lives on.
- [31:17]
Helena Merriman
It lives on, and I think it will always live on because until these questions are answered around what really happened in Ryazan? Was this really a training exercise? Would the government really carry out a training exercise in the middle of the worst terror attacks in their history? Volgodonsk? And I'm asking these as open questions. We the frustrating thing, having been looking at this story for the past year, is that there is a real lack of forensic evidence. Unlike 9 11, the World Trade center, where that site was kept intact for many months so people could comb through it. In Russia, after these buildings were bombed, the remains were cleared away in just days. So there's very little to go on. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence. And with that circumstantial evidence, you can build a case that goes in either direction. I mean, there are a lot of people who still think it was Chechen militants. You know, they had the motive. In 1999, the Kremlin's grip on Chechnya was slipping. So this was quite a good moment for them to reassert themselves. And this was part of a. Arguably part of a pattern of behavior. You know, just look at what happened afterwards with the theater siege in Moscow or Beslan, because we should say the
- [32:22]
Dan Snow
theater siege in Beslan we think was actually carried out by Chechen.
- [32:25]
Helena Merriman
Yeah, exactly.
- [32:26]
Dan Snow
So there were acts of terror being
- [32:27]
Helena Merriman
carried out by Chechens, bombs in the Moscow Metro that they absolutely claimed responsibility for. So there were undoubtedly a lot of militants in Chechnya who wanted to kill Russians, ordinary Russians in Russia. That's undeniable. But there was also, as we've seen, there was also motive for the fsb, and again, a lot of unexplainable events that people still can't explain even now.
- [32:54]
Dan Snow
I've been one of those people over the years who said, if in doubt, historians always. If it's cock up or conspiracy, historians always go with cock up because conspiracy is very difficult. People are. This sounds reasonably incompetent as well. But people are so incompetent. Institutions leak, stories get out, especially with the free press. Maybe that's the difference here. Is it weird pursuing a conspiracy which. Which you believe. Well, which could well be true?
- [33:18]
Helena Merriman
I think I came to this story really quite skeptical about this story. I think I'm naturally, again, skeptical about conspiracy theories. I'm a much more of a believer of the cook up theory. But I think as I've looked through this story, it could be that both things are true. I mean, I should say we haven't found hard evidence that can prove things either way. But there's another train of thought. There's another theory that perhaps the answer could be both. We often do an either or in journalism, don't we? We look for neat stories. You know, this was either the Chechens or it was the fsb. But there's a world in which it was a very chaotic mixture of the two. It could be that the first bomb was carried out by Chechen militants, and perhaps the FSB saw where things were going and thought to make mileage from that. You know, the fsb. What is again not in doubt is that the FSB has been riddled with corruption. So maybe this wasn't a plan orchestrated from the top, but the work of a few corrupt officers further down. Some people think Boris Berezovsky was involved, one of the first and most wealthy oligarchs who then got tangled up in this story. So there's no shortage of theories. What's not in doubt is that the bombs did help pave the way for Putin to become president. Of course, that doesn't mean just because he benefited from them doesn't mean that he was behind them, that he was involved in a grand conspiracy. And a lot of people who think the FSB were involved don't necessarily think Putin was too. Others say, well, of course he was. He was the head of. Head of the fsb. And Putin is someone who always wanted to know what. What was happening in every corner of the organizations that he ran, of the FSB that he ran. So, again, you have different versions on different sides. And ultimately, we still don't have any hard evidence, but people are still looking. This is a. That is still raising a lot of questions that people are still intrigued by. And I think journalists, both within Russia and outside, are still asking these tough questions.
- [35:06]
Dan Snow
You are far too young to have been there on the ground yourself at the time. When you've talked to foreign correspondents, journalists that were there in the country, have they. What have they come to be? They changed their views.
- [35:15]
Helena Merriman
With hindsight, it was really moving, actually, interviewing people who were there at the time. And they were very honest and I would say vulnerable, really, about what they thought were mistakes they made or leads they didn't follow up on. And I'm very conscious that it's very easy for me as a journalist right here now to pick apart and look at the leads that they didn't follow up or the questions that weren't asked. But, you know, here they were. The country was changing under their feet. And as journalists, we are trained to report on what is visible and what is interesting and what is new. So we go where there's a new war happening, there's a speech, or so you can see why when the new Churchill war begins, that's where the focus of journalism is. It's much harder to spend. To convince your editor to spend time looking at a bomb that doesn't go off. I feel a huge sense of gratitude to people who have spoken to us for this story. You know, making it was difficult because a lot of the people that we wanted to speak to didn't want to speak on the record or are dead or are dead. You know, there's a big kill list that's developed behind this story, and we're very aware of that. And we made the decision not to interview anyone who is still a journalist inside Russia now for their safety. But even speaking to Russians outside of the country was difficult. People that would, I think, perhaps have talked to us about other subjects. A lot of them said they wouldn't talk to us about this one. This seems a particularly touchy subject, especially for Putin. So I'm very aware of the number of very, very brave, in particular, Russian journalists. Who've risked their lives to report on this story. Some of them have died, some of them who are now carrying on even now. And I think even for the journalists who were there at the time, not necessarily Russian, but those who are now looking back with question marks over what they did, I think this, this story is really a broader one about the pressures of journalism and perhaps our desire for neat narratives. And beyond the journalists, I think in our desire for the west, you know, for Western leaders to see Putin in a certain light, I think that desire clouded their judgment. You know, it's stepping back more broadly when you think about Putin and what we've seen since in Ukraine, Crimea. It's taken the world a long time to realize what kind of man he is.
- [37:42]
Dan Snow
You're a journalist. I come from a family full of journalists. Journalists are important. Right? I mean, we've learned in the last, if we didn't already know it, they are clearly as important to functioning democracy as any as any formal branch of government.
- [37:55]
Helena Merriman
Exactly that. And I think, you know, one of the dangers of the time that we're in now is that our. We've seen the effect of social media on journalism, on how it pushes people to more extreme positions and how it makes that daily job of often that sort of grunt reporting of asking those questions that don't automatically look like they will lead somewhere. And I think it's getting harder and harder to do that. But thank God there are still places in newspapers and broadcasters who are still doing that.
- [38:22]
Dan Snow
Thank God for you. Well done. Good work.
- [38:24]
Helena Merriman
Thank you, Dan.
- [38:24]
Dan Snow
Lot to think about there, folks. Lot to think about. Please make sure you go and check out the history Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs, wherever you get your podcasts. It is a. A brilliant piece of journalism. And I should say, though, folks, it is audio only. See you next time. In 1095, the Pope absolutely freaked out. He issued a call to arms, which set Europe on a collision course in the Holy Land. In our miniseries, running throughout April, we chart the epic sweep of the Crusades, from the astonishing capture of Jerusalem to the bitter failures of later expeditions. We'll hear about the mysterious religious orders, the Knights Templar and the Nizari Ismailis. And we'll relive the climactic siege of Acre, the epic battle that finally ended the Crusader presence in the Holy Land. All these episodes coming in April. So follow Dan Snow's history here or smash that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube and you won't miss a single one.
- [39:48]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [39:56]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen Bookish, Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [40:00]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [40:09]
Stephen
That's right. Hey. Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [40:14]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [40:21]
Stephen
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:29]
Hayden
Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What?
- [40:33]
Dan Snow
I won floor seats.
- [40:35]
Hayden
You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wait. Chris. Yes. I finally did it. What are you gonna wear? Men's Wearhouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion, and I need to look like a celebrity. Don't wanna stick out. Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud, and a tailor at every
- [40:51]
Dan Snow
store for the perfect fit.
- [40:52]
Hayden
Congrats. You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Wearhouse. Love the way you look.
- [41:00]
Dan Snow
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.