The Rise of Putin and the 1999 Apartment Bombs

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. This was it, history.com/subscrib. For huge bombs, Tether apartment buildings across Russia, hundreds of people are killed in their sleep at 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, neighbours patrolled the streets, and an entire nation was gripped by fear. The government blamed Chechen militants. Many journalists accepted the story, but then the whispers began. People started a question rushes 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 Litvin Yanko, 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 strong man

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 Maryman.

She joins me today to unpack the shocking twist of this story. This is Downsnow's History It. I don't know it's a big job today, I need you to explain what on earth is going on in Russia.

“As many people said, Winston Churchill for example, it's quite hard to know, isn't it?”

It is, and to sum up, but I will try my best. Is it best? Should we go chronologically, where do we start this story? I think we need to start in 1999. I think it's a piece of the great.

Okay, good. We're fast-forwarding. Okay, you're fast-forwarding. Yeah. Why happens in 1999?

Why is that? 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 down, I'd heard whispers about it for a long time as a journalist that's something about these four bombs didn't quite add up.

“So you have four bombs, they've got 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 it first he was hugely popular people.

Love him, he was flamboyant, he was charismatic, but he gradually gets older, iller, drunker, and people realize they need a successor for him, you know, there was corruption sweeping through the country. So '99, by '99 people in Russia want someone new, and Yeltsin knows that too, but he has no obvious successor, you know, there's four prime ministers in just 18 months, and

that sets the scene for them what happens in September, '99, it first happens in a town called Boonak, very remote town, thousands of kilometers from Russia. Russians are in their apartment, they're bedding down for the night, they've been watching 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 happened in a 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 front's are ripped off these apartments, so you look at them, it's almost like a doll's house, and you could see we'd sort of the detritus of human life that have been lived in their children's toys, clothes, meals, laid out tables, and chairs, and the V2 bombs during the Second World War in London, just just shocking.

Exactly that, so the second one goes off at five in the morning, and this one makes the news why, because it's in Moscow, the faster the 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

you have to remember is that in Russia almost everyone lives in these tall, pre-farb apartment blocks that sort of stretch, meters into the sky, they're very precarious, and everyone is thinking maybe it will be us next. I'm assuming it random? It seems very random, apart from the fact that they're golf in the morning, and it

started that third bomb that Russia's latest Prime Minister gives his first address to the

public, and that's Vladimir Putin.

“Right, who sort of not a very famous figure at this point?”

Exactly, no one really knows much about him, he's all people know about him as 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 and 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

rabbit 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.

And you, it's difficult, the trauma of that sighting, I mean it's sort of almost like

an 9/11 style, it's a shocking event, this domestic event. But 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 speech, the fourth bomb explodes, again, five in the morning in a town called Volga Donnsk, you know, women, men, children, babies, killed, and the question everyone's

asking is who is doing this, and the answer was pretty interesting, everyone said what it must be militants from Chechnya, because very recently, Russia have been fighting this horrific war with Chechnya. Chechnya, want to be breakaway, Republic, within the former Soviet Union now, within Russia, right down the South.

Yes, down the South, wanted to break free partly because it was 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 Chechnya. 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 Chechnya militants.”

And so I think you're about to tell me that there's a deep story here. Yes, exactly that down, so it's at this time that one of the strangest parts of the story happens, which is in the town called Razam, and this is just a few days after that fourth bomb. And by this point, all over the country, there are these patrols that are formed, people

are looking up and down the streets, looking for anything suspicious. And at 9.30 in the evening, there's a man called Alexey Kartifarnikov, he's looking out of his window, and he sees this white Lada car parked and what makes some suspicious is that part of his license plate has been obscured. So he calls the police, 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 bath tubs, 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 Alexey, they say is a hero.

You know, he's saved a city from this fifth bomb, but here's where he gets very strange. They then begin a man hunt, they lock the city down, they shut the road, they shut the local airport, they train stations, they get pictures from Alexey, and they put them up in the in shop windows, and there's a telephone operator sitting at the phone exchange, and a phone call comes in from someone's side resound 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 and saying, "You need to get out, you've got to split up."”

She passes that number onto the police, and you would expect, given they've just blamed in Chetra militants for these bombs, that that number would go to a militant and Chetra here, but it doesn't go to a number belonging to the FSB, Russia's internal security service. So people start thinking, "Hey, 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

he says this was a shining example of people stopping, stopping, you know, 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 Petrusher, who succeeded, Putin comes out, journalist spots him runs over, asks him about Mozamb, 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 for when we used it in Chechnya, and no one believes it." Russian journalists, at this point, are living in a reasonably free media environment, start

asking questions, presumably.

Yeah, they saw asking questions, and there's one particular Russian journalist, who manages to track down two soldiers who were guarding a warehouse near his end, so just before 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 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 spattered out, and they said it was sort of a burnt there inside. And so this Russian investigative journalist concluded that perhaps here they were guarding sacks of hexagon that were potentially used in this device, in this bomb that were being

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 sideline, because it right at that point put in sense fighter

jets to bomb Chechnya, and the second Chechnya more begins, and that's the shiny, interesting

thing that everyone wants to cover, not the fifth unexploded bomb that doesn't go off. You're listed down to those history here, we need to be back after this bring. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere, and did the Vikings ever reach America?

I'm Don Wildman, and on American history it, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years, to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership.

The country's traumatized, it's scared, it's desperate, angry, and so someone can present themselves a strong man, a protector. Exactly, and this is where it gets very interesting, because just two months later, it's 31st

“of December 1999, during the Millennium Bargain, if you remember that old enough to remember”

that, everyone was scared that players were going to fall out of the sky, and banks were collapsed, and so it's the 31st of December, and Boris Yeltson is sitting in the crumbling, 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 wierry, forgettable man, Vladimir Putin, who is now Prime Minister, and there's very moving footage of them from that day, and you see Yeltson, he's sort of trust-up in this fur coat, looking very old and bloated, and there's Putin, looking very energetic suddenly, and they shake hands, and Yeltson says take care of Russia, and he gets into a car, and Yeltson disappears into the snow, and that was the hand over.

It's the hand, 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. I'm very struck, 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.

“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 Yeltson, who was very big and imposing and had this real innate charisma, Putin didn't have that back then, and- He looked managerial, doesn't he? Yeltson looks disorganized, he can imagine corruption, his health is failing, he symbolizes a different kind of Russia, Putin looks rather modern.

Exactly, there wasn't modern sense to him, you know, he was a man who was understood the power of the media, who understood the power of image. You know, he had people around him who were desperately trying to shape his image, because they were very aware, they were all sort of pulsed and Russia, whether it would ask people about the kind of president they wanted,

swarvan sort of action heroes, and said they very, very, um,

“overtly try to get Putin to follow that model. And did the FSB shambles with that last bump?”

Were people joining the dots like you are now? One way to talk to that is with the numbers. So you look at his approval ratings in the summer, 2%, which, again, we contrast, because they were roughly quite objective at the time. Exactly. Exactly, this period exactly that. 2% of the country thought he would make a good president. Wow. So he was in no hyper. Yeah. And then after the apartment bombs, this war in Chechnya,

him suddenly being all over the news, they rock it in just two months to over 40%. So better, but still not full proofs. He then has to run a presidential campaign. But at the time that he's running his presidential campaign, there was 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 spreading image.

“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 Rizan 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, in 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, there's 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 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 shouting at them. And the FSB, they say, "Well, this is all part of a grand operation called World Wind Anti-Terra." And at the end, one of them holds up this brown paper bag that's been sort of cellar tape together with masking tape and says, "All the evidence is in here,

but we're never going to show you."

What a moment. And this was three days before the presidential election. 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 command us storm MTV. 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. I guess that's the moment, no return, presumably. Yeah. It's the moment, 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 MTV. He was, you know, we see the beginnings of the Putin that we know now, very much in those early months, you know, controlling the narrative, controlling the story. And, 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's the savior who can protect them? Vladimir Putin. It's very interesting why, how are modern societies have got this, 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. Now, that means it seems to be a very potent combination. It's happened again and again in from place to place. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a playbook. Absolutely. And I think Putin's one of the masters. And what's interesting is that he develops it so quickly. So, so very, very early on,

when that new war with Chechnya begins, he attaches it himself to it. He's putting on military uniforms. He's getting on to fighter jets. He's on the front line, giving these heart-thumping speeches to soldiers there. And, and people love that. He's, 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. And the bombing stop, mysteriously. So he succeeded. He's, he's, he stopped the terrorist blowing up heart and bellings.

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 he presented as reasonably sane. I mean, people were writing opits in the garden saying, we can't, you know, he's not a drunk, crazy old drunk guy like Yeltsin. He's a, certainly. Wait for them snappy dressers and he's sort of modernist and he said nice things

about Western democracy. Yes, yes. There was this great hope that here is Russia on this straight line

liquid Western leaders to phone. He goes to 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, you know, can you trust Putin? And Bush says, I looked into his eye and I saw a man that I could, you know, that we could, that I could trust. Yeah. And man deeply committed to his country. So everyone drank the call aid with him because they wanted to believe that things would be different. But in Russia, it was very different. Journal, a lot of journalists were asking,

very unsettling questions, even after what happened with MTV. 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 parliamentary one. But then there's an independent commission.

So it's a group of journalists, parliamentarians, some lines. Just do it themselves. 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. But it threw 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. Doctor say, oh, it was probably an allergic reaction.

But a lot of people think he was poisoned. Yeah. Yeah. Journal of Carried Call that a Moscow Center hit. Yeah. And there were quite a few of those in relation to this story. Really. That's just extraordinary. People will be familiar with the extraordinary images of Putin, which shirtless on horses and hunting and doing that kind of thing. And so this starts at that point. He's presenting work. The old, the, the, the, the strong man. I've got trouble on this podcast,

“so we're talking about strong man. But it's a, it's a, a piece of political theory, isn't it?”

We've described these people as one of, I mean, often, they're very weak. But we described them as, trying to present as a strong man. Yeah. And that's so he's, so he's doing on, on the, on the, sort of PR studies doing that, but he's also, there's a dark side, which he's enforcing with violence, that being a bit reassuring up that totalitarian grab of ones. Exactly. And, you know, one of the interesting stories that, that is connected to this is the story of Alexander Lippinianko,

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 bonds. Okay. So Lippinianko, 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, ten minute meeting with him, and he tells them all about the corruption, thinking rather naively at that point or ideologically that Putin might want to do something about it. And he came very clear to him that Putin wasn't interested. He leaves the meeting, but Lippinianko doesn't go quietly, and just a few days later, he organizes that famous press conference where he and for other

“FSB officers talk publicly about the center corruption. But here's the thing, they all wear masks,”

Lippinianko 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 managed to

escape to Britain where he is paid to investigate the bombs. And he uncovered all sorts of details. I think probably the most stark of which is a transcript from the Russian teamer, from the time of the bombs, where the Speaker of Parliament, he's just organised a minute silence to commemorate everyone who's died, and he's then handed a note, so 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 the

Speaker says this bomb blew up a building in Vorgodansk, 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? Vorgodansk. So you know, to mistake the name of the 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? That is extraordinary.

So he uncovered a whole sort of truckload of details like this, writes them up. Put 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 proven into power. A few Russian newspapers print a few chapters. That's about it. And a few years later,

Lipplenyenko 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, a tangle of wires over his chest. He's bald by that point, all his hair is falling out. And they discovered it was

And they conclude that he was killed by Russian agents, by agents acting on behalf of the Russian state. And at 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.”

Who does the Russian states, presumably they have to find someone to blame for these, and put the story to rest as a very good question. And you would think that the people they would try would be checked and given that they had started a second war, but they're not. They eventually, they have a list of suspects from various parts of the courses, none of them checked. And they eventually find two men, they say that they 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 that goes for two months. And at the end of it, these two men have found guilty of murder and trafficking of explosives and the string of other charges, sentence to life in prison. And the files are then locked away and sealed for 75 years. A Russians just simply now being denied the opit. Is that just the oxygen is not getting to this

“story or is it being circulated in whispers? Or are they being bombarded with so much hard propaganda?”

They actually believe they believe the government line. What do you think really is going on in Russian this first decade, the 21st century? Do they, I think, mouth to mouth. They're sharing the reality of this story. 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 open the arseous 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 terrorist attack. And a lot of questions afterwards about what really happened. And one of the most searched words on the Russian internet was Rizan Sugar. So this is a throwback directly to

this particular story. Livs on. It lives on. And I think it will always live on because until these

questions are answered around what really happened in Rizan was this really a training exercise. What a government really carried out a training exercise in the middle of the worst terror attacks in their history, Volga Donsk. And I'm asking these as open questions. You know, 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 in touch

for many months, that 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. And I mean, there are a lot of people who still think it was "chetch and militants." You know, they had the motive. In 1999, the Kremlin's group on

"Chetch" knew it 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 theatre siege in Moscow or Bestland. Because we should say the theatre siege in Bestland, we think was actually carried out by Chetch. Yeah. Exactly. The were acts of terribly carried up by Chetch. Bombs in the Moscow Metro that they absolutely claimed responsibility for.

So there were undoubtedly a lot of militants in Chetch near, 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. I've been one of those people over the years. It's been, 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. All institutions leak, stories get out, especially with the free press. Maybe that's the difference here.

“Is it weird pursuing a conspiracy, which could well be true? 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 cock-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 to improve things either way. But there's another, 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. This was either the Chetchen's 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 boom was carried out by Chetchen militants. Perhaps the FSB saw where things were going and thought to make mileage from that. The FSB, what is, again, not in doubt, is that the FSB has been riddled with corruption. So maybe this wasn't a plan or

Boris Borisovsky was involved on 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. He wasn'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 the FSB in Putin as someone

who always wanted to know what was happening in every corner of the organisations that he

rounded 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 story 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. You are far too young to have been there on the ground yourself at the time. When you've talked to foreign corresponders, journalists that were there in the country, have they, what have they come together? They changed their views to the 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

lead 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 a part and look at the leaves 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 church and 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 were 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 our dead or our 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 he's been speaking

“to Russians outside of the country was difficult. People that would, I think perhaps have talked”

what 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 who died, some of them who have, 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 and with question marks over what they did, I think 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 and a certain light. I think that desire clouded their judgment. 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. You're a journalist. I can't profoundly full of journalists. Journalists are important, right? I mean, we've learned in the law. If we didn't already know it, they are clearly as important to functioning democracy as any, as any formal

“branching government. Exactly that. And I think, you know, one of the dangers at the time that we're”

in now is that 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 grant reporting, of asking, you know, those questions that don't automatically look like they will need somewhere, and that's getting, I think it's getting harder and harder to do that. But thank God there are still places and newspapers and broadcasters who are still doing that. Thank God for you. Well done. Good

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