Breedlove tells Congress US must rebuild forces in Europe to confront newly aggressive Russia

Almost all the "scholars" and "analysts" cited by Wiki on the apartment bombings do not pin the blame on the Russian government

From the Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2008:

Dear President Medvedev
By TATYANA MOROZOV and ALYONA MOROZOV

"In three coordinated bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, 292 people were murdered, including our mother Lyubov Morozova. We are writing this open letter to call on you, Dmitry Anatolyevich, to order an independent, open and full investigation of these attacks."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121209647875130625.html
_______________________________________________________

Russian Terror Victims Ask for Truth

In 1999, a series of apartment bombings shook Russia and propelled the country headlong into the Second Chechen War. Nearly nine years after the attacks, which claimed 292 lives, many Russians remain unconvinced by the official version of events, which holds that Chechen separatists were responsible.

Two sisters, who lost their mother in the attack, have written an open letter to President Dmitri Medvedev, urging him to mount a fully open, independent investigation. The sisters, Tatyana and Alyona Morozov, currently reside in Missouri. Their appeal (below) was published in the Wall Street Journal newspaper on May 30th.

-

Dear President Medvedev

In three coordinated bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, 292 people were murdered, including our mother Lyubov Morozova. We are writing this open letter to call on you, Dmitry Anatolyevich, to order an independent, open and full investigation of these attacks.

Although these crimes were blamed on Chechen terrorists and used to justify the resumption of a full-scale war against Chechnya later that month, there are numerous indications that Russian security services may have been involved. There is also clear evidence of a cover-up by the authorities. We do not consider this case solved.

Let us remind you of some of the facts:

* On September 23, 1999, police arrested three Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had planted a detonator and RDX - the same explosive used in the earlier bombings - in the basement of a residential building in the city of Ryazan. The FSB explained the agent's activities as a "training exercise," claiming the sacks of explosives actually contained only sugar. The investigation was dropped and all evidence classified "top secret."

* At about the same time, a Russian soldier discovered RDX in sacks labeled as "sugar" at his army base near Ryazan. The incident was never investigated and the evidence classified.

* On September 13, 1999, the Speaker of the Duma, Gennady Seleznev, announced that an apartment house in Volgodonsk had been blown up - three days before the attack actually occurred.

* Mark Blumenfeld, the property manager of our house on Guryanova Street in Moscow that was blown up, told our lawyer and several journalists that FSB agents had "talked him into" changing his testimony. The agents showed him a photo of Achemez Gochiyayev, a Chechen he had never seen before, and under pressure he "identified" him as the man who had rented storage space in the basement.

* The composite sketch based on Mr. Blumenfeld's initial description of what the real suspect looked like disappeared from the police file and was replaced with the photograph of Mr. Gochiyaev. Meanwhile, our attorney Mikhail Trepashkin, himself a former KGB agent, told reporters that he had recognized FSB agent Vladimir Romanovich from the police sketch. Romanovich was subsequently killed in Cyprus in a hit and run incident that was never solved.

* In November 2003, on the eve of the trial of two Chechens later convicted for transporting the explosives used in the Moscow bombings, Mr. Trepashkin was arrested after a gun had been planted in his car. This prevented him from submitting Mr. Blumenfeld's statement to court that the FSB agents had pressured him to give false evidence. The trial of the two Chechens was not convincing to us or the world as it was held behind closed doors and human rights groups noted numerous violations of due process. Mr. Blumenfeld's statement and the replacement of the police sketch with the photo of Mr. Gochiyayev was never reviewed by a Russian court.

* Four people investigating the FSB's possible involvement in the bombings were assassinated. Duma Deputy Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead in Moscow in April 2003 and his colleague Yuri Schekochihin died of apparent poisoning three months later. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in October 2006 in her Moscow apartment block and a month later, former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko died of poisoning in London.

Many Russians have come to the conclusion that the bombings may have been the work of Russian security services. As for our family, our initial trust in the official version of a "Chechen trail" is long gone. We have come to believe that our mother and neighbors were sacrificed for a political end: To justify the war in Chechnya and help Vladimir Putin become president the following year. Only an objective investigation could make us change this view.

Mr. President, we are writing this open letter because we would like to believe that your ascent to the presidency will end this dark period in Russian history. You were not involved.

We realize that you owe the previous regime a debt of loyalty and gratitude. But the powers of the state were entrusted to you not to protect possible murderers. You are now in control of Russia and your position imposes a higher responsibility. Before history, the people and the memory of innocent victims, you have an obligation to find and tell the truth about these crimes.

Related articles:

* A Record Harvest of Spies

* An Open Letter to the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia

* Opposition Activist Revealed as FSB Agent

* Beslan Rights Group Charged With Extremism

* Russian Immigration Agency Knew Nothing About Morar's Deportation

* Investigative Journalist Barred From Returning to Moscow

* Kasparov on His FSB Interrogation

Source: Russian Terror Victims Ask for Truth:
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/05/31/russian-terror-victims-ask-for-truth/

From AP via FoxNews.com...

Last Living Beslan School Attacker Sentenced to Life in Prison
May 28, 2006

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - AP
A southern Russian court on Friday sentenced the sole surviving Beslan school attacker to life in prison, capping a yearlong trial that survivors and victims' relatives say has left the most essential questions about the tragedy unanswered.

They demand to know just who bore the most responsibility: Nur-Pashi Kulayev and his 31 fellow militants, or the officials whose negligence or even alleged complicity allowed them to seize hundreds of children and parents on the first day of school in September 2004.

Countrywatch: Russia

"I did not go to court to become convinced of Kulayev's guilt, but to reconstruct all the circumstances of the terrorist attack and find the truth," said Aneta Gadiyeva, whose daughter was killed. "But I did not learn anything new and did not get any answers." ..."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197093,00.html

From 2014

Yushchenko, hero of Ukraine's Orange Revolution warns Europe that Putin won't stop at Crimea

by Matthew Schofield - McClatchy Foreign Staff
March 27, 2014

Many Ukrainians believe you need look no further than the face of Viktor Yushchenko to understand Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Once smooth and ruggedly handsome, it still bears the scars from an assassination attempt when someone slipped dioxin into Yushchenko's food. ..."

Read more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24765781.html#storylink=cpy
______________________________________________

Why continue to post this nonsense about the Yuschenko case?

No evidence has ever been produced that the Russian government had any involvement with this incident; in fact it appears the opposite is the case.

“In September 2009, Larysa Cherednichenko, former head of the department for supervision over investigations into criminal cases of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, said high-ranking officials from the presidential secretariat and family members of Yushchenko falsified evidence in his poisoning case, with dioxin being added to Yushchenko’s blood samples. Cherednichenko claims she was warned that she would be dismissed from her office immediately after she wrote her report on August 26, 2009 and said she was offered two positions, which she refused, and contested her dismissal in court.[29]

Also in September 2009, a special commission, created by the Verkhovna Rada, came to a conclusion that the Yushchenko dioxin poisoning was falsified to strengthen his positions during 2004 presidential elections. The commission demanded to bring to justice those guilty in fabrication of blood tests.[30] To date, no one has been identified. There were allegations US intelligence services injected blood samples taken from Yushchenko with dioxin to feign poisoning.[citation needed] These allegations were dismissed by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko

Also:

ÂHowever, a new team of investigators assigned to the case after Yushchenko lost power to his long-term rival Viktor Yanukovych, alleged that the Yushchenko dioxin poisoning could have been falsified to strengthen his positions during 2004 presidential elections.

Investigators demanded that the ex-president give new blood tests, as traces of dioxin remain in blood forever.

Yushchenko, whose health has improved significantly since 2004, has refused to cooperate and said last year he wanted to “close that chapter” in his life.”

http://sputniknews.com/world/20120405/172637154.html

In other words, Yuschenko refuses to give blood samples that could at least determine whether he was poisoned by dioxin at all In any court in the world failure of a party to produce evidence within his control justifies an inference that the evidence, if produced, would be unfavorable to that party.

But here is the capper: In 2008, while Yuschenko was still President, US Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, reported:

“President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday accused the godfather of one of his children and member of his own political party of involvement in his near-fatal poisoning, a stunning twist to one of post-Soviet Ukraine’s most notorious scandals.

Yushchenko did not provide evidence for his claim that David Zhvania participated in giving him a massive dose of dioxin that sickened him and left his face badly scarred.
. . .
This summer, Zhvania angered Yushchenko by claiming that the president suffered only from food poisoning and accusing his staff of inventing a politically motivated attack to boost his popularity during the closely fought presidential campaign.

Asked Thursday at a news conference whether he thought Zhvania took part in the poisoning, Yushchenko answered: “I think yes, to put it mildly.”

Zhvania countered that Yushchenko’s poisoning has yet to be proved.

He dismissed Yushchenko’s statement as “absolutely ill-considered and irresponsible” and said it shows his disregard for the rule of law.

“Such actions of V. Yushchenko don’t disgrace him personally as much as they humiliate Ukraine in front of the international community,” Zhvania said in a statement.

Despite a nearly four-year investigation, prosecutors have failed to identify a single suspect in the mysterious poisoning. Yushchenko has consistently said he knew who was responsible for the poisoning, but declined to name them while an investigation continued.

http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2008/07/ukraine_president_blames_forme.html

In other words, Yuschenko close political and personal ally says Yuschenko was not dioxin poisoned and Yuschenko then accuses that man himself [not the Russians] of being behind the poisoning!

Beyond that, you don’t tell us that Yuschenko awarded the title Hero of Ukraine to the Nazis collaborator mass murderer Stepan Bandera and has praised his barbarous Ukrainian Insurgent Army, ally of Hitler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko

Also, per the same article:

Also in September 2005, former president Leonid Kravchuk accused exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky of financing Yushchenko’s presidential election campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he said were controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yushchenko’s official backers. Berezovsky confirmed that he met Yushchenko’s representatives in London before the election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he refused to confirm or deny that the money was used in Yushchenko’s campaign. Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.

He was such a pathetic president he got barely 5% of the vote in running for re-election.

As to the apartment building bombings, from the wiki article cited above:

According to researcher Gordon Bennett, the conspiracy theory that the FSB was behind the bombings was kept alive by the Russian oligarch and Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky. Bennett points out that neither Berezovsky nor his team (which includes Alexander Litvinenko) provided any evidence to support their claims. In the BBC World Hard Talk interview on 8 May 2002, Berezovsky was also unable to present any evidence for his claims, and he did not suggest he was in possession of such evidence which he would be ready to present in a court.[24] Bennett also points out that Putin’s critics often forget that the decision to send troops to Chechnya was taken by Boris Yeltsin â€” not Vladimir Putin â€” with the wholehearted support of all power structures.

Mike Bowker, from the University of East Anglia, has said that the inference that the bombings were carried out by the Russian authorities is uncorroborated by evidence. According to Bowker, the theory also ignores the history of Chechen terrorism and public threats by various Chechen rebels following their defeat in Dagestan â€“ which included Khattab telling a Czech and a German newspaper, a few days before the bombings in Moscow, that “Russian women and children will pay for the crimes of Russian generals.” and that “this will not happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow”[165][166]

Vlad Sobell has pointed out that the proponents of the theory that the second invasion of Chechnya was a plot by Putin to get elected regularly ignore the key fact that Putin’s attack on Chechnya in 1999 was preceded by a Chechen insurrection in Dagestan, whose objective was to turn it into another unstable Chechnya.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings

"Read more: http://sputniknews.com"

Sputnik (news agency)

Sputnik is an international multimedia news service launched on November 10, 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency wholly owned and operated by the Russian government, which was created by a Decree of the President of Russia on December 9, 2013.[2]

Sputnik replaces the RIA Novosti news agency on an international stage (which remains active in Russia)[3] and Voice of Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_%28news_agency%29

Screw the Eurotrash. They’re killing themselves and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

L

Czech Defense Minister: "Russia is Orchestrating Muslim Invasion of Europe"

Posted By: TRT NEWS October 31, 2015

Prague, Czech Republic - Russia is orchestrating, coordinating, and funding the ongoing invasion of European countries by Muslim, military-age males, the Czech Defense Minister shared with IDNES.cz on October 10th, 2015.

According to Martin Stropnicky, the Defense Minister for the Czech Republic, he was informed by the Hungarian Defense Minister Istvan Simicsko that Russia was financing the busing of military-age Islamic males across the borders of the Balkan nations.

-snip-

Speculation has been rife for some time now that Russian forces have been plotting a ground invasion to retake the former satellite states of the Soviet Union, and eventually capturing the European capitals.

The overwhelming of these nations' borders, social services, and law enforcement mechanisms would destabilize and weaken the internal security controls when Russian military units would make their move.

"The Russian Federation does not desire a unified and cohesive European Union," Stropnicky said in the interview. "I do not envision the current invasion ceasing anytime soon."

As the Russian Federation has modernized its military forces and transformed its military theory to a hybrid combination of special forces, infantry, and airpower, it has made impressive advances in its latest generation tank and fighter jet, both of which purportedly claim to be superior to American counterparts. ..."

http://www.therussianthreat.com/czech-defense-minister-russia-is-orchestrating-muslim-invasion-of-europe/

So what if Sputnik is government run? It basically is reporting facts mainly stemming from a news conference held in Kiev by Ukrainian authorities. If Sputnik were lying, the Western MSM would come down on it like a ton of bricks. The MSM will not report facts where they contradict the USG narrative so there is often no alternative source but Russian or non-Western news agencies.

Do you claim Wiki and The Cleveland Plain Dealer are also Russian government-supported?

The Czechs, God bless them, make excellent weapons. All they need to do is learn how to use them and find the will to do so

I will pray that they do both.

If they want our help they can both ask and pay for it.

L

Well that’s the problem, isn’t it? Czechs, Poles and the Baltics have very little money as their economies were destroyed by 50 years of communist slavery. Germans have money, but they also hold the weird idea that if Russians were to roll into Europe again they’d stop their murder machine at the German border.

The European countries have vastly greater manpower and economic power than Russia. Given that they have the capabilities to pull their own weight, then perhaps they SHOULD.

Why should the US be Europe’s bitch? Essentially they are able to fund their socialist programs because we cover half of their defense.