Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Explosives or Sugar? The Deadly Art of Distraction in Putin’s Russia - with Helena Merriman

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

In 1999, a series of bombs explode in Russian apartments, killing hundreds and spreading panic. No one knows who is behind it. But when one device is spotted before it detonates, troubling questions emerge. Was it really a bomb? Why is the country's security service changing its story? And why are the people who probe too closely turning up dead? Tim Harford is joined by Helena Merriman, host of new BBC podcast The History Bureau - Putin and the Apartment Bombs, which charts the mysterious events surrounding the rise of Vladimir Putin, and asks why the real story sometimes gets missed.  For a full list of show notes, see timharford.com.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Pushkin. It's half past nine at night on the 22nd of September 1999. And middle-aged dad, Alexei, is heading home after a long day at work. He lives in the city of Razan, not too far from Moscow, and like all Russians, he's on high alert.

Bombs have been detonated at night in four residential apartment blocks across the country this month, killing some 300 people. Everyone is terrified. Volunteers take on night watch shifts, and some people choose to sleep on the streets. rather than risk being killed in their beds. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks,

but Chechen militants are blamed. Chechnya is a republic down in the south of Russia, much closer to Iran and Turkey than to Moscow. There's a violent struggle for independence there, and acts of terrorism. Six days on from the last explosion, Alexei spots a white larder car, parked outside his apartment block in Rizan.

Why are the last two digits of the number plate obscured, he wanders? As Alexei watches, a man bursts out of the apartment block basement and into the car which speeds away. Alexei calls the police. In the basement, they find three sacks of white powder and a ticking timer set for dawn. The white powder appears to be hexagon, a military-grade explosive used in at least one of the previous bombings.

Terrified people stream onto the street as the building is evacuated. The device is safely detonated, and the residents, shocked and frightened, but glad to be alive, returned to their homes. The city has been saved, and Alexei is a hero. The new Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, is quick to praise the vigilance of the Rizan residents, and the following day, September the 23rd, he orders an airstrike on the Chechen capital Grodhny. The second Chechen war has begun, and Putin sees his popularity sore.

But 48 hours on, officials declared that the Rezan bomb wasn't a 10th,000. terror attack, but an anti-terror training exercise, carried out by Russia's security service, the FSB. And that white powder in the sacks, not hexagon after all, but sugar. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Today, Vladimir Putin is regarded as one of the most powerful and ruthless leaders in the world. But back in 1999, he was largely unknown. The fifth prime minister in 18 months, he wasn't expected to last long. But his response to the attacks on residential homes changed all that and soothed a nation paralyzed by panic. To this day, no one can agree on who planted the explosives or why. Was something missed

back in September 1999 and what happens when we reassess events, 25 years on. Putin and the apartment bombs is the subject of a new BBC podcast, The History Bureau, from BBC Studios. And I am delighted to say the presenter of the History Bureau, Helena Merriman, is here to tell us all about it. Helena. Hi, Tim. Welcome to Cautionary Tales. Good to have you here. Vladimir Putin, he has essentially been the Russian leader for a quarter of a century. More than that. it is hard to remember him not being in charge, but at the beginning of your story, he wasn't. So take us back to the situation in Russia in the late 1990s. So this is eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

You had this new leader, Boris Yeltsin, who at first had been incredibly popular. He was charismatic, he was flamboyant, and he'd promised to drag Russia into the 21st century, to embrace capitalism and to free prices overnight. And that's what he did. But he went too far, too fast. He called it shock therapy, and that's exactly what it was. Inflation soared to over 2,000 percent, which meant that effectively people's savings were wiped.

And when you look at footage and pictures from back then, you have these incredible images of old people sitting in the streets, selling everything they had, even the fur coats that they were wearing. The ruble collapsed dollars were the only thing that was worth anything. And so at the same time as you have this huge disappointment in Yeltsin, you also had this extraordinary rise in corruption. And that came along really with this new breed of business tycoons, the oligarchs,

who were incredibly wealthy. They'd brought up former state-owned companies and knocked down prices. And as they got richer, they'd moved into politics. And they were funneling money to Yeltsin to keep him in power. But by the late 90s, there was this realization that Yeltsin was now old, drunk. When he was seen in public, he was slurring his words. Everyone knew he had to go. And the other thing that is going on at the time is the war in Chechnya.

Again, it goes back to 1991. The seeds were planted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. and you have different states breaking free. And Chechnya, which is a republic in the south of Russia, they wanted that too. It was partly about identity, that had a very different culture to the rest of Russia. But it was also about decades of very brutal treatment

by successive Russian leaders. So they declare their independence, but Russia has no intention of letting Chechnya go. So it sends in the tanks, and you have this very brutal war, which takes place between 1990, in 1996, thousands are killed, horrific accounts of human rights abuses on both sides. And it ends with a peace deal.

But Chechens don't win their independence. So there's a sense of unfinished business on both sides. And with this is the backdrop. We have September 1999 and these bombs. And this is a terrifying time to be an ordinary Russian. And that's really down to the quite horrifying detail. of exactly how these bombs play out. So the very first one is on September the 4th,

in a very remote town called Boinaksk, which is thousands of miles from Moscow. It's nine in the evening. People have been watching a football match on TV. A truck bomb explodes. 64 people are killed. And it makes the news, but it's not a huge story because this city is quite near the border

with Chechnya. There's been fighting in the past. So there's a few headlines. The country then moves on. it's really the second bomb that gets people so scared because this bomb goes off in Moscow. And this is the early hours of the morning. The footage is horrifying. It's the front of the apartment has been pulled off.

It's almost like looking at a picture of a doll's house. You can see how lives would have been lived in the apartment before this bomb exploded. 94 people are killed. And because it's Moscow, the story really breaks out. And that's not the last one. Exactly. So there's a third bomb. This is the 13th of September, five in the morning, over 100 people killed in that third bomb.

And this is when the panic really sets in. These bombs are going off in the middle of the night when people are asleep and when the apartments are at their fullest. And then it's only a few days later after that that on the 16th of September, this is in a town called Volga Donsk, the fourth bomb explodes. So just to summarize, over a period of just 16 days, four apartment buildings are blown up, killing around 300 people. The one question on everyone's lips is who will be next? Yeah. And, well, it seems that Rizan will be next. So tell us what happened to the residence of this apartment block on the 22nd of September. As you set out in your introduction, you have this guy Alexi,

who sees this white car very suspiciously parked with this piece of paper covering part of the license plate. You have the police who rush in, find what appears to be a bomb, three sacks full of white powder. and they evacuate the apartment building incredibly quickly. I mean, babies are pulled out of bathtubs with just towels around them. People race out of this apartment in their dressing gown and pajamas. They spend the whole night in this local cinema. They're terrified.

And what happens the next day is you then have a manhunt for the people who did it. They block off the roads. They stop trains. The airport is shut down. And there's this extraordinary moment where, a phone call comes into the Rizan phone exchange. So there's a man at a pay phone in Rizan who wants to be connected to a number outside the city.

So the operator, a female operator, is sitting there. And she connects the call, and then she does something she's not meant to do. She listens in. And she hears this man in the middle of a city, in the middle of a manhunt, saying we can't get out, the city's being shut down, help us, what should we do? And she hears a voice on the other end saying, you've got to split up, you have to get out. So unsurprisingly, she thinks, this is pretty suspicious.

She writes the number down. She passes the number along to local police. Given that everyone is assuming that the bombs are the work of Chechen militants, you'd assume that this phone number would go to a number in Chechnya. Yeah. But it doesn't. It goes to the number belonging to the FSB, Russia's Internal Security Service. This is incredible.

So the police now have this leave. which is a very weird lead, maybe it's the FSB, that's a very strange tip-off to get. Then they find the car abandoned. Exactly. Yeah, so then what? They managed to track down two men who look just like the drawings of the would-be bombers. They arrest them.

And then here's where things get even we're even weirder. The men say, we're not bombers, we're FSB. And they take out their ID cards to prove it. Yeah. So this is very odd. quite suspicious. What is the official reaction? The official reaction is nothing for two days. For two days there's silence. Then on the 24th of September, Russia's Interior Minister is giving a speech to police officers,

civil servants, about this wave of bomb attacks. And he's listing all the recent successes in the fight against terrorism. And then he gets to Rizan. And he says he's very proud of what people in Rizan did. And he doesn't mention the phone call or the memory. with the FSB ID cards. And then 30 minutes after he makes that announcement, talking about how people in Razan stopped this terrorist attack, the head of the FSB, a man called Nikolai Patrushchev, he appears in the lobby of the same building,

and a journalist sees him, asks him a question about Razan. So Patrachev says there was no bomb. The white powder in the sacks wasn't hexagon, but it was sugar. This was just a training exercise, a training exercise that the people in Razan passed with flying colours. and a few days later, the telephone operator is even given a colour television as a prize. Well, that's all very wonderful. What do the people of Rizan think about that? Well, unsurprisingly, they don't believe a word of it.

Even the local FSB are completely confused because they tested the powder and they found that it was hexagon. But a few days later, something happened and they changed their story and they say, oh, we got it wrong. The powder in the sacks wasn't hexagon. It was sugar. Our testing equipment must have been contaminated in Chechnya. Well, I'm not totally surprised that they didn't buy this, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seems to. He orders military strikes against Chechnya. Is that going to be enough to stop people asking questions

about the strange goings on in Rizan? We will find out after the break. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the honest talk. podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different

stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. We're back and I'm talking to Helena Merriman. She is the host of Putin and the apartment bombs. So, Helena, despite Chechnya denying responsibility for the apartment block attacks, and despite the Rizan suspects turning out to be the FSB, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seeks revenge against Chechnya.

So what happened and how did it work out for his popularity? So the day after this thwarted bomb in Rizan, Putin sends jet planes to bomb Grozny, the capital. And at the time, Putin was not well known by. the Russian public. So back in August, his popularity ratings, his approval ratings for the presidency were just 2%. You know, he was short. He had quite a forgettable face. There was this phrase in Russian Syria Miska, which means grey mouse that people used to describe him because he was just thought to be so uncharismatic. The only thing people knew about him is that he'd once been head of the FSB, Russia's Internal Security Service, and that was it. So it's not so much

that he's hated more that nobody even really knows who he is. He's just underestimated and overlooked. Exactly that. And as the fifth prime minister in 18 months, people think, well, we barely need to get to know him because he probably won't last. But instead, around this time, Putin undergoes this extraordinary transformation from this former FSB guy in a suit to a man who's suddenly wearing military uniform, jumping on planes, giving these hearts thumping speeches to soldiers on the front line. And his popularity soles. So it goes from 2% back in the summer to just a few months later after the bombs in this New Orr in Chechnya, his rating is already over 40%. And he's got this really punchy style suddenly. He calls the bomber's rabid animals. And it says even if they hide in

the toilets, we'll catch them there. It's a very different style from this grey mouse in a grey suit. It's the language of the gutter and people love it. And he sees the reaction and he sees that people love it. And he takes his cues from that and really leans into this image at the vengeful military guy. And there is now a war on in Chechnya. Of course, that is going to absorb a lot of attention. Is anybody still asking questions about the apartment bombs? Western journalists are focused on two stories now, which is the rise of Putin and this new war. But journalists in Russia are asking these rather uncomfortable questions. And one of the first networks to really, get at this story is a TV network called NTV. So this is a network that had been founded a few

years earlier. It was broadly modelled on the BBC and CNN. And it was one of the first to make Western-style documentaries and discussion programmes. For example, one of their shows was a satirical puppet show called Cookley, which was a bit like Britain's spitting image or a sort of puppet version of Saturday Night Live in America. And the ratings were huge. I mean, almost half the country, half of Russia would tune in to watch it. So in ratings terms, I mean, this was the equivalent of the American Super Bowl. And actually, it had been around for a few years in Yeltsin, he didn't really mind it, but Putin hated it. And that's probably because every week, the star puppet of the show was a puppet based on Vladimir Putin, which depicted him as a baby,

often a very ugly baby. And Putin put a huge amount of pressure on that TV show to get rid of the Putin puppet. But they didn't, and they kept going with it. And the theme was that this baby had all of its needs taken care of by the oligarchs. Exactly, that the oligarchs were essentially manipulating him and orchestrating everything around him. Journalists and NTV start digging into the apartment bombing story, asking these awkward questions.

They don't let it go. And they decide, in March, just a few weeks before the presidential election, of which Vladimir Putin is. is now a candidate. They decide to invite the FSB into their studios to take part in a live chat show where they would invite residents from Rizan to face off the FSB. So just to be clear, Putin was prime minister and now he's running for president, which is a more powerful position. Exactly, because on the 31st of December 99, Boris Yeltsin makes this shock announcement where he resigns early.

Yeah. And Vladimir Putin is making. acting president. He's already become incredibly powerful. He's standing in the election and yeah, you get this crazy sounding show. Exactly. And this crazy sounding show is just three days before the presidential election. This is incredible. I mean, it sounds like Jerry Springer only with the CIA involved. I mean, it's extraordinary. You've got the FSB and you've got the residents and so how does that go down? When you watch it, it really took me back to being a teenager and watching those kind of tabloid daytime TV, Jerry Springer,

shows where you'd have someone saying, you know, did you sleep with my boyfriend? But here the question is, did you try and bomb my apartment? So on one side of the studio, you have these ordinary men and women, these people that were in that apartment building in Rosan. And then the other side, you have these FSB men in suits. And it's extraordinary hour of TV where resident after resident stands up and they're shouting at the FSB. They're saying, how on earth can you expect us to believe? that this was just a training exercise when you were dragging us out of our buildings in the middle of the night.

No one believes it. And the FSB sit there and they say, well, this was a training exercise. And there's this extraordinary moment where one of them holds up this brown cardboard bag that's been sort of cellar taped together. He holds it up to the camera and he says, all the evidence is in here,

but we're never going to tell you what it is. Yeah, I'm sure that went down very well. And there was another moment where someone stands up and says, I'm a resident. I think the FSB are absolutely right. And you see everyone else looking at him saying, we don't recognise this guy. We'd never seen him before. So he's probably been put there by someone else. Yeah.

The ratings were huge. And you have to wonder what the FSB were thinking. Yeah. By going on the show and you see the expression on their faces afterwards. I mean, they look completely shell-shocked. Yeah. It is unimaginable that this could have. happen in Russia now. So how did we get from that degree of press freedom to the current repression?

What did Putin do? How quickly did he respond to clamp down on this kind of thing? I mean, it's a great question because I think in so many ways, this particular moment is where we first see just how much Putin is going to make the clampdown of the press a feature of the country he will create. Does not want this to happen again. No, so just a few days after that show, there's a call from a government minister who says to NTV, the show will never be forgotten. A few weeks later, FSB commandos break into NTV headquarters. They throw the owner of NTV in prison,

and it's then taken over by a state-owned company. And then just three days after the show, Putin's elected president. The rest of the world welcome him into the diplomatic fold. Absolutely, because the rest of the world, it seems like a very neat story here, which is that first you had Boris Yeltsin, who seemed to be moving Russia into the Western orbit, And here you had Vladimir Putin, and I think many Western leaders thought it would be a continuation of the same.

So Tony Blair phones him to congratulate him. The following year, Putin goes to meet George W. Bush at the White House. And there's this very famous exchange where an American journalist asks George W. Bush if Putin can be trusted. And Bush comes up with that very famous reply. I look the man in the eye. I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.

So it seems the conversation in the West, at least, has long since moved on from the apartment bombs. But people are still asking questions in Russia. Absolutely. In Russia, and also Russians who come to Britain are still asking questions. And one of those is a man called Boris Beresovsky. So tell me about him. So he was one of the very first. first Russian oligarchs. He was incredibly charismatic. He was confident. He was astonishingly wealthy. But he had something that really gave him the edge. So he didn't just have money, but he had

influence because he was a main shareholder in Channel 1, which was Russia's most watched TV channel. And he uses that back in 1999 to help Putin become president. So he, Beresowski thinks of himself as a Russian kingmaker. Yeah. But it's so often happens with the kingmakers, their kings eventually turn against them. And that's what happens with Putin, who when he arrives in power, feels very threatened by the oligarchs who helped get him there. He turns against Borisovsky. He maneuvers Channel 1 out of his hands.

They're locked into this bitter feud. And Berosovsky escapes to London and he starts his life there in exile. And one of the very first things he does is to fund an investigation into the apartment bombs. He gives this press conference and he also gives an interview. interview to Newsnight, to the BBC, where he accuses not only the FSB of being involved in the apartment bombs, but says that Vladimir Putin knew about them too. How seriously do people take this former billionaire oligarch? Not seriously at all. Because he is a man who has every reason to make these claims against Putin.

He's Putin's arch enemy. And so, because Beresovsky is so closely tied to these allegations that perhaps the FSB, were involved in the bombs, it almost discredits the theory from day one because he's seen as tainted. No one believes him. Well, he may be tainted, but he is not going to give this up. Boris Beresowski asks people to investigate on his behalf. And one of those people is shortly to meet a very unpleasant end. We will find out more after the break. Median women are looking for more.

More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world. to have them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to Then Add Supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart.

We are back and I am talking to Helena Merriman, the presenter of Putin and the apartment bombs, which is the first series of a new BBC podcast, The History Bureau. So, Helena, tell me about Alexander Litvinenko. This is a name that people, particularly listeners in Britain, know because he was poisoned on the streets of London and he died very slowly in the glare of the media spotlight. But what I think most people won't know

is that he'd spent the last few years of his life investigating the Abundian, apartment bomb story. So he'd been in the FSB since the 90s. He was part of this special unit which investigated crime in Russia. And one of his first jobs had been to monitor Boris Beresovsky, this incredibly important oligarch. He'd been asked to kill him. He refused. Litvinenko told Boris Beresovsky and the two men became friends. And Litvinenko, he's a real believer at this point in the ideals of the FSB. And when he discovers that it's riddled with corruption, he He goes to see Vladimir Putin to tell him about it. And Putin is the head of the FSB at the time.

Exactly. And he has this 10-minute meeting during which Lipvinenko realizes he's made a huge mistake. He realizes Putin isn't interested in hearing about the corruption of the FSB. He leaves the meeting, this huge target on his back. But he doesn't go quietly. He then stages this press conference in November 98 with four other FSB officers. They are wearing masks to protect their identity. entity, Alexander Litvinenko isn't. He's made a choice to be seen. He's then arrested after that

press conference, put in prison for eight months. He comes out. He's put in prison again. And he realizes at this point that he can no longer live in Russia. So he escapes to Britain in November 2000. And at that point, Boris Berezovsky pays him to investigate the apartment bombing stories. So Litvinenko starts interviewing victims whose relatives died. He's tracking down government. He's tracking down government suspect. He's combing through parliamentary reports and really digging into this story. Yeah. I mean, what would he learn from a parliamentary report? So this goes back to September the 13th, 1999, the time of the bombs. He finds a transcript from the Duma, the Russian parliament. And it describes this moment where the Speaker of the Parliament has taken to the

floor and he's announcing a minute's silence for the victims of the bombings. He's then handed a note and he reads it aloud to the Parliament. He says it's reported that an apartment has just been bombed in a town called Volga Donsk. This is the day of the third bomb. But the speaker's got the name of the city wrong because actually the city that's just been bombed is Moscow. And at that point people think,

okay, perhaps this is just an innocent mistake so no one says anything. But then three days later, an apartment building is bombed in VolgaDansk. Right. I mean, that's a heck of a coincidence. It's a heck of a coincidence. The presumption is somebody knew that Volgaardons was going to be targeted.

Either that or it's just a wild coincidence to mistake the name of a city where a bomb explodes for the name of a city in a country as vast as Russia where the bomb would explode three days later. Yeah. I mean, I can think of a number of explanations, but most of them are sinister. Yeah. And someone does spot this. So a few days later, a member of parliament takes to the floor to ask a question about it. But what Lipvinenko discovers in this transcript is that just as this person starts asking a question, his microphone was cut off. And that's it. No one brings it up again. So Livvinenko is making progress. What does he do with it? So he writes up the results of his investigation into a book, which he calls the FSB blows up Russia. So you can imagine what his conclusion is.

It's a fairly straightforward title. Yep. And the book comes out. This is in 2001. There's a few chapters published in Russian newspapers, but in the West, barely anything. And then a few years later, this horrific episode, which, I mean, Livienko was on the front page of every newspaper in the UK.

It's an unforgettable image of this man. He looks like he's been going through chemotherapy. He has no hair. So what happened? It's 2006, five years after his book comes out. And he falls ill. At first, it's suspected. that perhaps it's a tummy bug.

He goes to hospital, and there he rapidly disintegrates. His hair falls out, his organs fail. It takes two weeks before police say that he was probably poisoned, and in the end it takes them sending off tests to nuclear testing site to reveal that it was polonium, which is a highly radioactive material. And you're right, there's the famous photo of him sitting in that hospital bed with his hair out, his sort of tangle of wires covering his chest. and a few days later he dies

and it's only once the British government carries out an inquiry into his death which is not until 2016 that they conclude that he was poisoned by agents acting on behalf of the Russian state and that the kill order probably came from Vladimir Putin himself which we should say the Kremlin denies.

By then, by 2016, Berzovsky's dead as well. He's found dead in his home in Berkshire with a scarf around his neck And at first his death is described as suicide by hanging, which a year later the coroner says, it's impossible to say whether it was suicide or murder. Does anybody else mysteriously perish after looking into the apartment bombings?

It's quite a pile up of bodies, Lipeningo and Beresowski in Britain. But you also have these very strange, mysterious deaths in Russia too. So there's an independent commission. So there's a group of parliamentarians and journalists, a few lawyers. And just a few years after they begin their work, one of them is shot outside his apartment. The other one falls ill. This story is going to sound familiar. He ends up in hospital, his hair falls out, his organs fail.

Doctors say, oh, it was probably an allergic reaction, but a lot of journalists at the time say it was probably poisoning. We have heard a lot that sounds odd. Did we have any hard evidence? Do we have any proof that the FSB bombed these apartments? There's a real lack of forensic evidence in this story. And one of the reasons for that is that a few days after each of those buildings was blown up, the remains were demolished. So what you're left with is a lot of circumstantial evidence, which we've been looking through.

Where that takes you, it depends on who you are. For the Russian government, they've always said, look, it's obvious the answer is the Chechen militants. They had the motive to do it. And they also say, look, it's part of their pattern of behavior. In the years following the bombs, there were numerous other attacks by Chechen militants from the Moscow theater seed to Bessland. And that is true. That is true. And then others say, well, come on, how do you explain the very strange events of Rizan?

How do you explain VolgaDansk? Look at how professional those bombs were. How could Chechen militants have got hands on as much hexagon that they would have needed to have bombed those apartments? Others say perhaps it was a strange combination of the two. Perhaps it was not a grand plot orchestrated from the upper levels of the FSB, but perhaps corrupt officers further down the chain working with Chechen militants. Others even say perhaps Boris Berezovsky was involved. The FSB, they've always denied any involvement in the apartment bombs.

Vladimir Putin himself, he has responded to allegations about the bombs directly in his authorised biography that came out in 2000. And he said there, quote, no one in the Russian special services would be capable of such a crime against his own people. We, on Cautioning Tales, always try to learn lessons from the mistakes of the past. So what are the lessons you draw from this whole rather grim story? First, it's important to say we still don't know who bonds those apartment buildings. And so the official explanation could well be correct. But what we do know is that a lot of journalists at the time didn't investigate the inconsistencies and the government story.

I think there's two reasons for that. Firstly, it was because the alternative explanation at the time that the FSB was involved in bombing their own people, it just felt too impossible to believe. So I think one lesson from this story is that in the chaos of events, we have to keep a healthy curiosity in the unbelievable explanations. But I think it's also about the pressure of journalism. As news journalists, we're trained to chase what's new, what's dramatic, and what's visible, what you can actually see. And so, you know, in the context of this story, it's understandable that journalists focused on this new war in Chechnya. It's harder to justify spending hours examining counterfactuals or unresolved questions. And so I think it's that uncomfortable thought that perhaps as journalists, we don't always.

miss things because of censorship or fear, but because the story isn't shiny enough. You spoke to many of your colleagues at the BBC about their experiences reporting on Russia. Looking back at what we, the evidence that we've now assembled, how are they feeling about the whole thing? These were people who were making minute-by-minute decisions in an incredibly chaotic, confusing moment. And it's so easy to sit here with hindsight and point. point out mistakes that were made or threads that weren't pulled or questions that weren't asked. And I think they were very humble in saying they wish they had asked more questions about Rizan. And one of the journalists I spoke to was BBC veteran correspondent Andrew Harding.

I think we were distracted by the war, which started very quickly. I think it's quite painful to confront that we should have covered it more. And we didn't. You know, it makes you think. And it's a good reminder of how easy it is to fall into patterns in reporting. Even when one thinks one's being correct and cautious, there's the sort of consensus thinking, the kind of group think, some missed opportunities. Probably in every story, if you were to take a journalist back and I would include myself in this too in the reporting that I've done, there will always be things. things that we've missed. And one of the things that has changed about this story is that

Vladimir Putin's reputation has changed. I think it's safe to say that Putin is now in the Western world held in rather low regard by many people. That was not actually true in 1999, 2000. He was viewed with quite a lot of hope. And so the idea that he knew about these bombings just seemed very hard to believe. Exactly that. It was this almost comforting narrative that here was this new leader of Russia, one of the most important positions globally, who seemed to be moving the country in line with what so many Western leaders wanted. And I think the apartment bombing story fit the narrative that here was this leader cracking down on militants at a time when other leaders in the world were also

cracking down on militants who are blowing things up. And so I think exactly your point that we often want the smaller stories to make sense with what the bigger narratives at the time might be. And wishful thinking is a very powerful thing. I think people really wanted to believe that the Soviet Union wasn't coming back. Exactly right. I mean, one of the people I interviewed for the series was BBC journalist Jeremy Vine. Look at where I'd come from as someone born in 1960, For the whole of my childhood of my teenage years, I was lying in bed in Chim in Surrey thinking I had Russian nuclear missiles pointed at my head and they could go off any time. And then along comes Gorbachev and he seems wonderful. And then he's sort of deposed and in comes Yeltsin, who while constantly drunk, is also benign.

And so forgive us my generation for thinking we're on a flight path into Russia becoming normal. The way that he looked at this story and so many other journalists looked at this story was that, well, Putin must be telling the truth because of that desire to see him as someone who was changing Russia for the better. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about distraction and attention. You kind of alluded to it a moment ago. In our episode of Cautionary Tales about the master forger Eric Hebbin, we talked about

the Russian propaganda strategy. So Hebbin was this, a kind of bizarre character who forged a lot of artwork, but also would make up stories about having forged artwork that he hadn't forged and that was actually perfectly genuine. And so it was like, I've got no idea what's true and what's not. But he was doing it at tremendous volume and it was always attention grabbing. And we made the parallel between Hebern and the Russian propaganda strategy. So back in the day, propaganda was you would try to come up with a convincing story that was backed up by the evidence, even if it wasn't actually true and you would kind of stick to the story and maybe you could get,

people to believe your story. The Russians turned that on its head. They said, we don't need a consistent story and we don't need anything to be particularly believable. We just want lots and lots and lots of different things, different contradictory views, so that people are just lost in the blizzard of claim and counterclaim and can't focus on anything for long enough to really examine it. And when somebody like Beresovti pops up with some crazy sounding story, it's like, well, we hear crazy sounding stories every day, so whatever, we're not interested. So to what extent is this whole story,

a story about not being able to focus on something important for long enough to really ask the right questions and being distracted by the next shiny thing? I think not only is this story about that, but I think the last two decades of Putin's rule in Russia is about that. I mean, I think one of the reasons that this story was such an interesting one to tell now is that when you look at how the Kremlin handled the apartment bombs, It became a template, really, for how they managed so many other situations in Russia, too,

whether that was plane crashes or bombings or submarine disasters. The pattern was the same. They moved very fast to control these narratives. They would flood the media with different versions of events that they can send journalists spinning to cover them. And then they close the investigations before any awkward questions can really take hold. And so I think that so much about this story is also about how power was. works in Russia. Yeah.

Even now. And maybe not just in Russia anymore. I feel that we have managed to independently reinvent the firehose of falsehood in the Western world, not necessarily coming from the top, but just the inability in a fragmented media world to concentrate on anything for any particular period of time. And so you've got, no, was the latest Epstein releases, a distraction from Greenland? Was Greenland the distraction from Venezuela? Was Venezuela a distraction from Venezuela?

Epstein was all of it a distraction from the collapse in the gold price or from how Malania's documentaries doing or everything's a distraction from everything else. Exactly. And I think that's a problem that not only journalists, but everyone is trying to deal with now. What's the real story? What's the distraction? Where should we spend our time? And I think that question is going to be increasingly important, but increasingly hard to answer. Helena Merriman, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. is the presenter of Putin and the apartment bombs,

which is the first series in the History Bureau, which is a BBC Studios podcast, available to listen on BBC Sounds in the UK, and on BBC.com globally, and obviously, wherever you get your podcasts. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.

The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio and Dan Jackson. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.

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