Kartofelnikov, 47, considers himself a sensible man. He tends to give people the benefit of the doubt. But at this point, he has too much doubt.

"Somebody tried to blow us up," he says. "I have no doubt about that. But as for who did it, or why - I don't know what to think."

But he does know what came next. The government, citing the attacks, went to war against Chechnya.

"The government started bombing Chechnya the next day," Kartofelnikov says quietly. "I know Chechens. I served with them in the army. They are good people. How can one suspect them of such a thing? How can one suspect it of anybody?"

Ivan Kirilin, 67, also has his suspicions. "Who should I believe - what the government says or what was in the basement?" he says. "I don't think the Chechens would blow up a residential house. You have to ask - who is responsible for the war? Who needed the war? The government, of course."

Questions of government complicity in the bombing campaign are persistent enough that the Kremlin has taken steps to quash them.

In Ryazan, the government's assertions have made little headway against residents' suspicions. There are too many details that don't fit. And there's the undeniable fact that the bombings led to the war, and the war fed the rise of Vladimir Putin.

"The authorities are trying hard to hush it up and hide everything," Tatyana Borycheva, 45, says. "I don't believe the Chechens were behind it. I think it's a big political game. People are fighting for power, and our lives are not worth a kopek in their game. I think somebody wanted to set up the Chechens to start the war and grab power."

Residents keep reviewing the sequence of events, seeking some kind of answers to their questions.

Kartofelnikov was returning home about 9:10 p.m. when he noticed an ordinary Zhiguli parked next to his building's entrance.

When Kartofelnikov got closer, he realized it had an unusual license plate number - the last two numbers, which indicate the city in which the car is registered, had been pasted over with a hand-drawn piece of paper. The glued-on number was 62, for Ryazan. Underneath, he could see the real number - 77, for Moscow.

At the time, the country was in near-hysteria over the bombing campaign. So Kartofelnikov called the police. A few minutes later, so did Vladimir Vasilyev, a 53-year-old radio engineer, who not only saw the Zhiguli and the pasted-on license numbers but got a look at the people inside before it pulled away. There were two men and a woman, he says. They looked not like Chechens, but like Russians. Still, Vasilyev wasn't taking any chances.

By 9:20 p.m., the police were on their way. The car was gone by the time they arrived. They went straight to the basement and found the sacks of white powder and the timing device. The bomb squad did a quick test and detected explosive vapors.

"Our preliminary tests showed the presence of explosives," Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kabashov, chief of the local police precinct, says. "We weren't told it was a test. As far as we were concerned, the danger was real."

The local branch of the FSB was also in the dark.

It was late the next day, during the evening news, that FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev announced that the bomb scare had been just a drill.

"Of course no investigation is going on now in relation to this case. It was just an exercise," Yury Bludov, the FSB spokesman in Ryazan, says.

Without an investigation to probe further, residents will keep asking themselves the same questions:

-If it really was a test, why did the authorities wait nearly 24 hours to say so?

-Why haven't there been reports of tests in other cities?

And then there are larger questions concerning the overall bombing campaign:

-Why would Chechen terrorists kill defenseless civilians in anonymous apartment buildings instead of choosing public targets like train stations or government buildings?

-Why has there been no credible claim of responsibility? Chechen authorities have denied any involvement by the separatists.

-Why were the remains of the Moscow buildings razed so quickly?

In the days after the Ryazan incident, the local FSB chief came to speak to the apartment building's residents. He apologized but told them that filing a suit for damages would probably lead nowhere.

So the residents asked for, and got, a new entranceway of heavy white brick, with an intercom security system. And they haven't filed a suit or a formal complaint.

"The general opinion is that we'd better not challenge them or they will really blow us up next time," Tatyana Lukichyova, 51, says.

Slow War Progress Hits Troops' Morale

By Anna Dolgov
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


GROZNY, Chechnya -- By a tumbledown wooden shack flanked by elm trees, a scraggy 20-year-old Russian conscript clutches a cigarette between his fingers and stares at the snow around his feet.

A deafening burst of artillery cracks nearby, knocking clumps of snow from the trees and sending them to the ground with a low thud. The soldier, Dima Labazov, doesn't even look up.

"We are tired of this war already," Labazov said, his voice low and expressionless. He said his platoon was promised it would be out of Chechnya by Jan. 26, but all mention of a plane trip home has stopped. "It seems they have written off our regiment.''

The frontline is right here, cutting through a neighborhood thick with trees and badly damaged brick buildings in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Rebel fighters are positioned just a few hundred meters away. The men in Labazov's unit have held the stretch of ground since Sept. 18, at times creeping forward toward the center of the city, then ordered to retreat again - in a series of movements the soldiers cannot explain or understand.

Labazov's unit had 115 men when it was deployed in the Grozny neighborhood of Chernorechye on Sept. 18, but only 58 were left by mid-January. Some were wounded, but most were killed, soldiers said.

Alexander Kvashnev, an Emergency Situations Ministry officer who travels to the war zone nearly daily to deliver aid to Chechen civilians or pick up refugees, said another 115-strong company was stationed in Chernorechye on Dec. 11. When it was redeployed on Jan. 2, only 17 men were left.

"Sometimes you talk with somebody, then come back in a day and ask about the guy - but he's already been killed," Kvashnev said.

Among some Russian soldiers morale is souring as the campaign drags on.

"They set us up every step of the way. Or sell us off," said a soldier who gave his name as Mikhail Kazantsev.

A professional serviceman who has seen much death and violence, he was trading jokes with his comrades during a brief break on a march.

But Kazantsev's eyes darkened when he recalled a recent battle in the Argun Gorge, where his 60-member company ran into an ambush by Chechen fighters. Sixteen soldiers were killed and 27 injured.

"We lost a lot of good comrades," he said.

Army trucks loaded with disfigured bodies of Russian troops roll out of Chechnya into Ingushetia every day. At least a dozen bodies arrive daily - a number several times above the official casualty figures, said soldiers stationed at border checkpoints.

"Some days they carry out 200 bodies, all cut up," said Denis Kulikov, 20, a soldier staffing a border checkpoint. "You look into a truck, there are heads, arms, piled up in a heap. You can't even tell whose arm or whose leg it is."

In the Grozny district of Chernorechye, an air of doom hangs over the frontline positions.

Soldiers shuffle through the snow, their faces displaying no fear, just resignation. Many said they do not believe the Russian command has any plans to bring them back alive.

"They will waste a whole regiment to take Grozny," said a soldier who only gave his first name, Pyotr. "Do they really feel sorry for people?"

Abdullah the Idiot!

ABDULLA! Does it make you feel better and gives you hope when you post some old articles? If it does, good! Without hope one can't live. But dare you to discuss current issues?

Oh yeah, where can I get a free copy of Qoran? Need an online link. If there's no such thing, too bad. That's why Christianity is taking over, they give away free Bibles!

I will be here on and off for four hours so I will discuss the issue with anyone who can do it in intelligent manner. Bring it on!

The Ryazan incident along with absence of any thorough investigation of buildings explosions is not good indeed. Unfortunately, claims either way are quite speculative - there is nothing proving that Chechens or KGB are to blame.

"-Why would Chechen terrorists kill defenseless civilians in anonymous apartment buildings instead of choosing public targets like train stations or government buildings?" Why they would bomb public targets? Just like a naked aggression into Dagestan it's no less stupid and harmful for their cause of independence. Your suggestion that "real" terrorists are killing someone else but not the "defenseless civilians" sounds like a sick joke.

"-Why has there been no credible claim of responsibility?". All terror attacks lately come without any claims of responsibilities. In the current world to claim this is equal to signing their own death warrant. And besides, it's really just an extra work - those who suffered usually know who delivered the goods.

Regarding this war, basically it was Basayev with his Islamic escapades who gave Russia a legal carte blanche do whatever they want.

1. It is easier to bomb an apartment building. Just rent an apartment and plant a good-sized bomb.
2. If FSB (KGB) needed any evidence on Chechens or anyone else, they could produce it with ease. After all I don't believe they lost these skills.

I think Chechens organized the bombings.

Read about how business tarnsactions are done in russia:

Tuesday, January 18, 2000

IN BRIEF: Gas Director Shot Dead


THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


MOSCOW -- The director general of a prominent gas company in Siberia was gunned down at his home in what investigators said was almost certainly a contract killing, officials said Monday.

Artur Fritsler, the 51-year-old director of Tomskgazstroi, was killed with two shots to the head Sunday in the Siberian city of Strezhevoi, the regional Interior Ministry department said.

Fritsler's wife reportedly alerted police to the attack, though it was not immediately clear if she was at home when it occurred. An investigation into the killing was launched, but no suspects were immediately arrested.

Tomskgazstroi recently won a contract to build a gas pipeline in the Tomsk region. It works closely with Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom and oil company Yukos, Itar-Tass said.

Everyone is asleep. Z-z-z-z-z.

read about how russian spend their leisure time:

Tuesday, January 18, 2000

IN BRIEF: Tambovka Blast Kills 3


THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


MOSCOW -- Three people were killed in an explosion outside a house in southern Russia and police think the blast was a bomb, Itar-Tass reported.

The blast took place Friday outside a house in Tambovka, about 130 kilometers north of the Caspian Sea city of Astrakhan, the report said.

According to the report, an illegal scrap-metal business was operated at the house and the Federal Security Service said its initial investigation indicated the blast was a bombing apparently motivated by a business dispute.

Ooo, bosna. Thank you for unrelated article. I hope you feel much better now that in Bosnia such acts don't take place.

igor & co:

BE AWARE: IRAN has the bomb that will kick your ass; not mentioning Pakistan:

CIA: Iran May Now Have Nuclear Bomb

By James Risen and Judith Miller


NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE


WASHINGTON -- In a sharp departure from its previous assessment of Iran's nuclear capacity, the CIA has told senior Clinton administration officials that Iran might now be able to make a nuclear weapon, according to several U.S. officials.

George Tenet, director of central intelligence, began briefings in December about the agency's new assessment, shortly after the document was completed, the officials said. The new evaluation has touched off a sharp debate about Iran's nuclear capacity, and the CIA's ability to monitor it.

CIA officials refused to comment on the new assessment. But the more ominous evaluation of Iran's nuclear capacity, which was described to The New York Times by U.S. officials, is apparently not based on evidence that Iran's indigenous efforts to build a bomb have achieved a breakthrough.

Yeah right! Did not you Bosna know that Russians are building the nuclear power plant in Iran? they also control all the materials. In return, Iran promised to nuke you Bosnians because you are not sufficiently Muslim.