In blaming the government of Ichkeria for organizing this terrible crime without providing any evidence, Putin claimed that Maskhadov used terrorism to blackmail the Russian president into beginning peace talks. Here we must remember that Maskhadov earlier announced that any kind of discussion with Putin would be useless. Given what has been said, we must conclude:

1. If Putin had proof that Mashkadov was guilty of the recent terrorist act, he would have certainly shared his information with the public. He hasn’t done this; therefore, there is no such proof, and Putin lied.

2. If Maskhadov truly organized this terrorist act, then, given the logic of the event, he would have answered Putin’s demand and taken responsibility for the act. A terrorist act for which no one takes responsibility has no meaning. Only one explanation makes sense: it is a provocation by the special police forces organized so that the government can take advantage of the public’s anger at the terrorist act and use that anger for its own political ends, as we in see with Putin’s speech;

3. Putin and those guilty of the genocide of the Chechen people find it necessary to transfer the blame for their own crimes onto Maskhadov and his circle, accusing him of terrorism.

4. Putin and his circle need the terrorist act on the Moscow metro, the apartment explosions, the Nord-Ost hostage crisis, and other terrorist acts which have taken place in Russia in recent years to justify the “anti-terrorist operation” he is conducting in Chechnya and the destruction of any hope for peaceful measures from either side in the conflict.

5. As long as Putin is Russia’s president, the war in Chechnya will never end, and the number of casualties on both sides will steadily increase. Peace talks with Putin and his circle are not merely useless; they are dangerous.


The people who say that “Russia doesn’t negotiate with terrorists; Russia destroys them” are the very same people who protect those terrorists. They express themselves so courageously, because they’re paid from the pockets of those who set bombs off in metro cars and in apartment buildings built under Khrushev.