– The murders made Putin president

When Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as interim prime minister on 9 August 1999, he announced at the same time that he wanted Putin to eventually also take over as the country’s president.

There was just one big problem:

In some polls, both Putin and Yeltsin were down to two percent support, according to the experts TV 2 interviewed for this article.

Yeltsin was extremely unpopular, and Putin became so because he was Yeltsin’s man.

How could Putin win a presidential election with such low popular support?

The answer came quickly.

It was explosive. It was deadly.

Bombed apartment blocks

The residents of a five-storey block of flats in Bujnaksk were sleeping when a car bomb exploded outside on Saturday 4 September 1999. The bomb was so powerful that the building collapsed. 64 people lost their life.

In the following days, two apartment blocks in Moscow were also blown up. Then the same thing happened in a block in Volgodonsk.

“Terrorism has declared war on us, the Russian people,” Yeltsin said on television.

In total, around 300 Russian residents were killed in these four apartment block bombings.

– The murders made Putin president, says Russia expert David Satter (75) to TV 2.

Satter is a former Russia correspondent for the Financial Times and in 2003 published the book “Darkness at Dawn”, which is about exactly what happened in 1999.

He believes that there is ample evidence that the Russian intelligence agency FSB was behind these bombings. And then he doesn’t just think that Putin was head of the FSB for the last year before Yeltsin brought him in as prime minister in August 1999.

Satter tells TV 2 that he received information about the bombings directly from sources in the FSB.

– There was also a real but unsuccessful attempt to blow up a fifth block of flats, explains Satter.

There is a lot to take in here.

First of all, we must talk about how the murder of Russian citizens helped Putin win the presidential election in March 2000.

Become a folk hero

The Russians were dissatisfied with Yeltsin, and not least frightened after all the attacks on apartment blocks where ordinary people lived. Then Vladimir Putin emerged as the young and strong leader.

– Putin’s situation changed completely. He had no political experience and zero charisma, but overnight he was transformed from being a henchman of Yeltsin, whom the Russians hated, to becoming a folk hero, says Satter.

As a new prime minister and former head of the FSB, he spoke on TV about defending “Mother Russia” and punishing those responsible.

The dust had barely settled over the bombed apartment blocks before Putin blamed Chechen rebels.

– Suddenly Putin was everywhere and vowed bloody revenge against those who had carried out the attacks. Cynicism on such a level is difficult to understand, says Satter.

Putin and Yeltsin went to war against Chechnya already the same month – and the Russians responded well to the new and strong leader the country had received.

– Putin became the leader of a “revenge march” against the Chechens. The rapid success of that war greatly boosted his popularity. He went from being nothing to becoming the country’s most popular person, Satter describes.

In an opinion poll four months later, Putin’s support was up to 84 percent.

For Boris Yeltsin, this meant that he got a prime minister who would not investigate him for corruption.

Critics were killed

As with many other Russian “calculations”, it is also difficult in this case to put two lines under the answer and call it a conclusion.

David Satter was not the only one to accuse Putin, Yeltsin and the FSB of being involved in these terrorist acts.

Several prominent Russians did the same.

However, they were either killed (Sergey Yushenkov in 2003, Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko in 2006) or died unexpectedly and under suspicious circumstances (Yuri Shchekochikhin2003).

– We are not talking about some crazy 11 September conspiracy theory here, but about real events with gigantic and potentially catastrophic consequences for Russia and for humanity as a whole, says Professor Vlad Mykhnenko at Oxford University to TV 2.

He is an expert on Russian politics and economics.

Mykhnenko says that he has thought a lot about the apartment block bombs in 1999. Had it not been for the fifth bomb, which did not go off, he might have been willing to believe Vladimir Putin’s version.

“The fifth bomb” is important here.

FSB caught in the act

In the basement of a twelve-story apartment block in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow, undetonated bombs were also found, placed in three sacks of sugar.

The bombs were discovered when the police moved out following reports that two suspicious people were carrying the bags down into the basement of the block. It turned out that these suspicious people were FSB agents.

The explanation from the FSB’s new chief was that the bombs were not real and that they were to be planted to test whether the citizens were vigilant against new acts of terrorism.

However, tests showed that the bomb was real, Novaya Gazeta wrote.

David Satter himself traveled to Rjazan to talk to the residents there. The residents did not believe the FSB, and said that their children were afraid to fall asleep at night.

Demands to investigate the incident in Ryazan were put forward in the State Duma in Moscow three times, but voted down each time – by Putin’s party.

– Someone in Russian intelligence explained to me how strange these events were. I had some sources there. But even without that, it was clear that the Rjazan incident was not a drill. It was a real but unsuccessful attempt to blow up a fifth block of flats, says Satter.

Divided opinions

Oxford professor Vlad Mykhnenko is not as categorical, but he does not disagree either.

– There are many more who have now changed their opinion about the mysterious explosions in 1999, following the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, the explosion of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17not to mention after the invasion of Ukraine now, says Mykhnenko to TV 2.

– The murder of Litvinenko in 2006, on Putin’s orders, only helps the Kremlin critics, he adds.

At the same time, Mykhnenko points out that there are also regime critics in Russia who do not believe that the bombs in 1999 were Putin’s work, but that it was actually Chechens who were behind it.

– Julia Latjinina is a very skilled investigative journalist for whom I have great respect, and she has gone through them all the evidence and is absolutely certain that the terrorist attacks were carried out by Chechens and Islamists, says Mykhnenko.

– She believes that the Ryazan incident was an FSB operation to plant a bomb that they could then “discover”, to show that they “did something”, he elaborates.

At the same time, Mykhnenko adds that one of the best academic experts on Russian intelligence, the British political scientist Mark Galeottiin a podcast says it is beyond reasonable doubt that the 1999 bombs were an inside job.

– When I consider the arguments from both sides of the case, I am more inclined to agree with Galeotti and Satter. Although there is no conclusive proof, all the indications point to Yeltsin and the Kremlin having the main roles in these explosions, concludes Mykhnenko.

In any case, one thing is absolutely certain, the Oxford professor believes:

– There is absolutely no doubt that without the war against Chechnya, Putin’s support of two percent would not have grown enough for him to have won the election six months later.