Thread by @AliAdair22

⁉️How did Vladimir Putin come into power in Russia?

💣It was after this happened: 293 people died, 1,000+ people were killed in a series of apartment building bombings: September 4, 1999 in Buynaksk; Sept 9 & 13 in Moscow and Sept 16 in Volgodonsk.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_a…

💣David Satter reported that the Russian Duma speaker and close Putin associate Gennady Seleznev announced the last bombing in Volgodonsk three days before it happened, September 13, 1999.

nationalreview.com/2016/08/vladim…

💥This was also mentioned in the Russia Report, released by Senator Ben Cardin in January 2018.

foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/…

💥Many journalists strongly believe that this was a plot by Vladimir Putin. Some are dead. Luckily, David Satter is still alive. He believes that Putin's popularity soared after the bombings because Putin became Russia's "savior."

businessinsider.com/how-the-1999-r…

ℹ️In August of 1999, Boris Yeltsin was Putin's mentor and he only had a 2% popularity rating. Yeltsin was accused of widespread corruption. He created a constitutional crisis in 1993 when he ordered the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet parliament.

⁉️Who would take Yeltsin’s word on the choice for next president?

🦸‍♂️Enter Putin.

Yeltsin named Putin the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in August 1999. And put Putin in charge of the "terror" crisis. He previously headed the FSB & was Secretary of the Security Council.

😱Russians were understandably terrified after 4 bombings.

🇷🇺The Russians starting bombing & troops crossed over the Chechnya border, w/in a week. This started the 2nd Chechen War. Chechnya had been semi-independent after the fall of the Soviet Union.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ch…

📉So with Yeltsin's 2% approval rating, who would take his word on the choice for next president?

🦸‍♂️Putin, the "savior" of the Russian people from the bombings & lots of propaganda solved that problem. Yeltsin resigned December 31, 1999.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yel…

▶️Boris Yeltsin resigned amongst all the corruption on December 31, 1999.

▶️Putin was named "acting president."

▶️Putin gave Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.

washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…

💣Russian oligarch Boris A. Berezovsky said that the Kremlin faked “terror attacks.”

⚰️He's dead.

nytimes.com/2002/02/01/wor…

🕵️‍♂️Parliament member Yuri Shchekochikhin filed two motions to investigate the events, but they were both rejected by the Russian Duma in March 2000.

⚰️He's dead.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_a…

🕵️‍♂️According to journalist David Satter, these bombings “changed everything” in Russia. Satter claimed that Putin and the FSB may have been involved. The bombings were blamed on the Chechen militants.

nationalreview.com/2017/02/russia…

🕵️‍♂️Satter claimed that the bombings were the “keystone” of a plot to confuse Russian public opinion, create terror, distract, redirect anger away from the Yeltsin corruption and Chechen militants, and trick the Russians into electing a successor to Yeltsin.

🙌It worked. There are varying reports of Putin's popularity, but here Forbes account: his popularity increased from 31% in August 1999—when 37% of Russians did not even know who he was & he was at the bottom of the polls—to 84% less than a year later.

forbes.com/sites/paulrode…

💣A 5th bomb was discovered on Setpember 22, 1999 in the basement of a building in Ryazan. Satter said it had the same “signature” as the four other bombs. The bomb was defused and three people were arrested: not Chechens, but agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

🕵️‍♂️The FSB agents were released on orders from Moscow. The FSB claimed that the bomb was part of a “training exercise.” No one Satter interviewed believed that story.

wikivisually.com/wiki/Russian_a…

💣The fifth bombing attempt took place about a mile from Ryazan.

🕵️‍♂️There were sketches of the three suspects/FSB agents and they were caught right away after being shown on Russian TV.

💣Putin called for the bombing of Grozny in retaliation.

👈Or was it a distraction?

🗞️Journalist David Satter:

💥“If it was not a training exercise but an attempted terrorist act, then the overwhelming probability is that all four of the successful bombings were also carried out by the FSB.”

🕵️‍♂️Remember Putin had been head of the FSB until March 1999.

Satter alleged that Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Pribylovsky & Boris Kagarlitsky, the bombings were a successful coup d'état coordinated by the Russian state security services to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya &to bring Putin to power.

🔗Connecting broken thread:

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🔗Thread broken by mistake. Link to 2nd part:

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