Russian to the Core
The hostage debacle over, Vladimir Putin talks tough but still defers too much to the security forces. Is he blinded by his pride?
November 11, 2002
By: Romesh Ratnesar and Paul Quinn-Judge

As they watched the horror at a Moscow theater unfold live on television last month, some Russians must have wondered what exactly their President, Vladimir Putin, was doing. During the three days that Chechen rebels held more than 800 people hostage in the Theater Center on Dubrovka, the Kremlin released only a few, silent images of Putin, in his office talking with aides--prompting one exasperated news presenter to bring on a lip-reader to try to work out what Putin was saying. The President's website reported that he was "immediately" informed of the hostage situation at 11:10 p.m. on Oct. 23, though the terrorists had seized the theater two hours earlier. In Putin's address to the nation after Russia's Spetsnaz commando forces mounted the rescue operation, the Russian leader issued one terse statement of regret: "We could not save everyone. Forgive us." Yet even as he sought to remain coolly remote to the public, in private Putin exulted. Aides say that after the standoff ended the President invited the commandos to the Kremlin for a closed-door celebration.

But for Putin, as much as for those who coordinated the operation using a sedative gas that killed 117 hostages, the taste of triumph is quickly dissipating. Putin's approval ratings soared to 85% in the immediate aftermath of the standoff, as grieving Russians cheered the President's vow to hunt down terrorists "wherever they may be located." But Putin's government was also forced last week to confront questions about the Kremlin's Soviet-style stonewalling on the nature of the gas and the failure of the Russian authorities to prepare doctors for treating the poisoned. After four days of silence, Russian Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko acknowledged that the gas was based on derivatives of fentanyl, a common medical anesthetic, but he insisted it was not known to be fatal.

Putin's role in the decision to use the gas is still a mystery. When asked by TIME where Putin worked during the hostage crisis, a top aide said merely that "the President was constantly in Moscow." Government officials say Vladimir Pronichev, deputy chief of Russia's intelligence agency and head of the emergency staff charged with handling the crisis, gave the orders to the Spetsnaz to pump gas through the theater vents and seize the hall. During the standoff, Putin, according to members of the emergency staff, stayed in touch with Pronichev through a senior aide on Chechen affairs, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, and was given the broad outline of the rescue plans. But government sources say it is unlikely the security chiefs received Putin's approval to use gas on the theater. They didn't need it. "If the commanders had said, 'We are going to use "special means,"'" says an official close to Putin, referring to the use of gas, "he would have said O.K. He thinks like these people. He trusts them completely."

But outside the Kremlin, the second-guessing came fast. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow told reporters on Oct. 29 that "perhaps with a little more information, at least a few more of the hostages may have survived." A Moscow doctor says the government has refused to admit that dozens of hospitalized victims remain unconscious and that most are unlikely to recover without significant brain damage.

A case can be made that Putin had little choice but to use overwhelming force against terrorists who had wired the theater with explosives and threatened to bring the house down. But the ruthless rescue mission and the government's haphazard handling of the crisis were in many respects the product of Putin's personality and leadership style and reveal some of the chronic weaknesses of his presidency. While known as a control freak, Putin still lacks confidence in his authority over the Russian bureaucracy; he delegates operational decision making to top aides, especially on security issues. Though by nature a pragmatic politician with little ideological drive, Putin is obsessed with defending the power and prestige of the Russian state--a fixation that is now likely to drag Russia deeper into a costly war against Chechen separatists. "Putin has emerged as a victor, but he is also trapped," says Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. "He needs to go on having victories [but] a debacle instead of a victory next time may totally wipe him out as a leader."

Putin's reluctance to take on the security apparatus has delayed reforms in that sector and encouraged its bureaucracy to cover up mistakes, like the disastrous effort to rescue the Kursk submarine in 2000. Though many fewer people died at the Moscow theater than in the U.S. on Sept. 11, a Bush Administration official contends that for sheer incompetence "this was a worse intelligence failure than the one we experienced on 9/11. The plot leaders in Moscow were already known. The Russians claim these people came all the way from Chechnya. How could the security services not have been watching them?" He adds, "Heads should roll."

Don't count on it. Those who know Putin say the former KGB man shrinks from taking on the country's entrenched political interests. Putin last year long hesitated to fire a well-connected Cabinet minister accused of corruption. "What if he says no?" a close aide to the President said, explaining his hesitation. Rather than fix things, Putin has preferred to intimidate media outlets in an effort to quash negative coverage of the government. The Kremlin threatened last week to shut down NTV, a television network that occasionally shows flashes of independence despite being owned by the state-controlled natural-gas monopoly. The Kremlin's anger was sparked by two NTV journalists whose coverage had deviated from the official line. In the Russian heartland, most viewers already receive nothing but pro-government broadcasts. Says analyst Ryabov: "In the provinces they only have the victorious images on their TV screens to watch, and they rally to embrace the idea of a strong country emerging from the ashes once again."

Putin is already using that resurgent nationalism to build support for a new offensive in Chechnya. He rose to power in 1999 on the strength of a pledge to "rub out" the Chechen terrorists. "He has strong feelings about Chechnya," says a senior State Department official. "We just say the word, and he hits the roof." The Bush Administration says it supports a political solution to the conflict, but Washington hasn't pushed Putin to compromise--in part because he equates the Russian struggle against Chechen rebels with the Administration's war against al-Qaeda.

But Putin's war is going nowhere. Russian soldiers in Chechnya have killed more than 13,000 Chechen rebels since 1999, but the brutality of the army's tactics has spawned new, more fanatical fighters faster than it has eliminated the old ones. Before the hostage siege, 57% of the public supported talks with the rebels; last week that number had slipped, but not by much, to 44%. Even without a broad mandate, Putin is likely to exploit the terrorist threat to renew the military campaign and crush the Chechen leaders he loathes. In Copenhagen last week, Danish authorities acting at Russia's behest arrested Akhmed Zakayev, the relatively moderate representative of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Zakayev has signaled a willingness to rein in Chechen extremists in exchange for a peace deal. But by associating even moderates like Zakayev with terrorists, Putin hopes to muzzle talk of any Russian accommodation with the rebels.

Stunned more by the audacity of the terrorists than by the government's bumbling, many Russians found themselves responding last week to Putin's hard-line rhetoric in much the same way that Americans rallied behind Bush's. And yet the terrorists' success in staging their assault in the center of Moscow also showed how ill equipped Putin's government is to deal with the Chechen rebellion.

For now, says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Strategic Studies Center, based in Moscow, Putin "has acquired the image of a strong and resolute leader--but only for a limited period of time." Russians are still waiting for Putin to prove he can deliver more than tough talk. --With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow and Massimo Calabresi/Washington

The Gas They Used: Was It Legal?

After days of playing coy, Russia acknowledged what the world suspected anyway--that the gas used in the Moscow theater standoff was fentanyl, a synthetic narcotic developed more than 50 years ago. Doubts persisted, however, with scientists suggesting that there were undisclosed ingredients in the killing mist. The skepticism grew when Russian Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko huffily--if vaguely--declared that a "compound based on fentanyl derivatives was used."

Despite Moscow's snit at the global second-guessing, the world--or at least the 147 nations that ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention--has a right to ask. Enacted in 1997, the accord outlaws lethal battlefield chemicals like nerve gases while permitting such comparatively benign substances as tear gas for domestic law enforcement. A third category--longer-acting incapacitating agents like fentanyl--are banned on the battlefield but may be O.K. to use domestically, provided that they're administered with precision, knocking out targets without killing them. But "precision" is a hard thing to achieve in a crisis, as the Moscow deaths illustrate.

This has led some to demand that incapacitating agents be specifically regulated in the treaty. For now, the three classes of substances remain unchanged. Examples of each:

Lethal and Illegal

MUSTARD GAS --Used most notoriously during World War I, mustard gas is a blistering agent that damages skin, eyes, lungs and other tissue on contact. Lethal in high doses, it is now banned, though supplies remain in many arsenals.

VX --A nasty gas with an unassuming name, VX is absorbed by the skin and kills by disrupting nerve transmissions. Symptoms begin with eye pain and labored breathing and progress to twitching and convulsions. Death occurs within 15 minutes.

SARIN --The nerve agent used in the 1995 subway gassing in Japan, sarin is an inhaled toxin that causes muscles to clench and leads to convulsions. Antidotes may work if administered promptly.

Legal, Nonlethal

TEAR GAS, PEPPER SPRAY --These powerful irritants affect mostly the eyes and skin. They can lead to disabling nausea and headaches. Once exposure ends, victims normally recover.

MACE --Basically a high-octane tear gas. In addition to affecting throat, skin and eyes, it irritates bronchial tubes and lungs. Overexposure can lead to vomiting, abdominal pain and cramps.

ADAMSITE --First produced during World War I, adamsite is dispersed not as a gas but as an aerosol. Causes severe vomiting, coughing, sneezing and acute pain and tightness in the chest. Like all other agents permitted by the chemical-weapons treaty, it does not cause permanent harm.

The Gray Area

KNOCKOUT AGENTS --The class of opiates that includes fentanyl works by inhibiting the central nervous system. Loss of consciousness can be preceded by nausea and disorientation. Fatal overdosing remains a risk.

CALMATIVE AGENTS --Derivatives of common drugs, including Valium and Prozac, are under study as possible calming agents. Researchers at Penn State are looking into blending calmative agents and pepper spray for riot control.

AGENT BZ --Also known as Buzz, it works by disrupting brain-cell signaling, leading to disorientation and hallucinations. Buzz was weaponized by the U.S. during the cold war, but stockpiles were destroyed because the drug is so unpredictable.

Chechnya: The War Without End

The conflict over Chechnya dates back 185 years. Between the two recent wars--which have taken the lives of 38,000 combatants, by Moscow's count, plus an estimated 200,000 civilians--the two sides reached a short peace. That is a distant prospect now.

Q. What are the roots of the conflict?

A. In 1817 Russia's Czarist army began efforts to conquer Chechnya, finally succeeding in 1859. During World War II, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin accused Chechens of collaborating with the Nazis and deported the entire population to Central Asia. Chechens began returning in the late 1950s to find that Russians had seized control of most of the province. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechnya declared independence in 1991, prompting two campaigns by Moscow to crush the separatist movement, one from 1994 to 1996, the other starting in 1999.

Q. How are Chechens different from Russians?

A. Chechens have a distinct language, culture and ethnic identity. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims.

Q. What is Islam's role in the conflict?

A. Chechnya's 1992 constitution defined a secular state, but Chechen nationalism has taken on an Islamic flavor. In 1999, Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected President of Chechnya two years earlier, declared that Shari'a, or Islamic law, would be phased in over three years. Those plans were waylaid by the Russian invasion later that year and the Kremlin's installation of a puppet regime in Grozny.

Q. Are Chechen fighters tied to al-Qaeda?

A. Arab volunteers from Europe and the Middle East joined the war against Russia after 1999, funded in part by al-Qaeda. Money was channeled through Khattab, a Saudi-born commander in Chechnya killed earlier this year who, according to U.S. intelligence, was an agent of Osama bin Laden. Lately officials in Georgia have disrupted al-Qaeda cells there that recruited volunteers for Chechnya. Arab volunteers, however, remain a small minority among Chechen guerrillas.

Q. Does diplomacy stand a chance?

A. Though Chechens seek a separate state, they would probably accept autonomy within the Russian Federation. A 1996 peace accord left them de facto independent, but the 1999 invasion ended that. Though Moscow has had brief contacts with the guerrillas since then, it now rules out a political solution with the current generation of rebels.