David A. Satter (born August 1, 1947) is an American journalist and historian who writes about Russia and the Soviet Union. He has authored books and articles about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia. Satter was expelled from Russia by the government in 2013. He is perhaps best known as the first researcher who claimed that Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Federal Security Service were behind the 1999 Russian apartment bombings and is particularly critical of Putin’s rise to the Russian presidency,
From 1976 to 1982, he was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times of London. He then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs of The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His partner is Nadezhda Kutepova, a Russian political refugee in France from 2015, who in 2000 created the NGO “Planet of Hopes” in the former secret nuclear city of Ozersk.The NGO was dedicated to defending the victims of radiation poisoning.1999 Russian apartment bombings
In the 1990s, Satter wrote extensively about post-Soviet Russia. In an article in The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 2, 1997, he wrote: “When the Soviet Union fell… the moral impulse motivating the democratic movement had to become the basis of Russia’s political practices. The tragedy of the present situation is that Russian gangsters are cutting off this development before it has a chance to take root.”
His books
Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union. Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-300-08705-5
Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-300-09892-8
It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past. Yale University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-300-11145-2
The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. Yale University Press, 2016, ISBN 0-300-21142-2
Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union. Columbia University Press, (2020) ISBN 978-3-838-21457-3
A short introduction to the latest book of David Satter, followed by a highly informative and insightful discussion with highly competent panelists. I enjoy very much the compassionate and balanced way of speaking of Mr. Satter, even when dealing with the harrowing reality of the current Russian nightmare of epic proportions.
The Yeltsin-Putin Coup of 1999
This is mostly referred to as the 1999 Russian appartment bombings, but I prefer to call these events by their true name – Instead of trying to proove that this was a coup, I find the authorities have not provided evidence that it was not a coup. When I see the evidence and who benefitted here, it is clear that Yeltsin benefitted from safety for his family and himself from prosecution after he stepped down as the president of Russia. Furthermore the FSB benefitted – along with the chosen leader of the new terrorist state that emerged – V. Putin.
1999 Russian apartment bombings
In his book, Darkness at Dawn, Satter charged that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was responsible for the bombings of Russian apartment buildings in 1999 that claimed nearly 300 lives and provided the justification for a second Chechen War. He argued that this was part of a conspiracy to bring Putin to power as Boris Yeltsin was fading. During testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Satter stated:
With Yeltsin and his family facing possible criminal prosecution… a plan was put into motion to put in place a successor who would guarantee that Yeltsin and his family would be safe from prosecution and the criminal division of property in the country would not be subject to reexamination. For 'Operation Successor' to succeed, however, it was necessary to have a massive provocation. In my view, this provocation was the bombing in September, 1999 of the apartment buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk. In the aftermath of these attacks, which claimed 300 lives, a new war was launched against Chechnya, Putin, the newly appointed prime minister who was put in charge of that war achieved overnight popularity. Yeltsin resigned early. Putin was elected president and his first act was to guarantee Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.
On 14 July 2016, David Satter filed a request to obtain official assessment of who was responsible for the bombings from the State Department, the CIA and the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. He claimed to have received a response from the State Department that all documents were classified by US government because “that information had the potential … to cause serious damage to the relationship with the Russian government”. He further stated that the CIA refused even to acknowledge the existence of any relevant records because doing so would reveal “very specific aspects of the Agency’s intelligence interest, or lack thereof, in the Russian bombings.”
Satter claims that a cable from the US embassy in Moscow on 24 March 2000 states that one of the embassy’s principal informants, a former Russian intelligence officer, said the real story about the Ryazan incident could never be known because it “would destroy the country.” The informant is stated by Satter to have said the FSB had “a specially trained team of men” whose mission was “to carry out this type of urban warfare” and Viktor Cherkesov, the FSB’s first deputy director and an interrogator of Soviet dissidents was “exactly the right person to order and carry out such actions.”
People related to the investigation of the coup
Sergei Yushenkov (killed with a bullet)
Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead near his house in Moscow on 17 April 2003, just hours after finally obtaining the registrations needed for his Liberal Russia party to participate in the December 2003 parliamentary elections in 55 regions. His last known public utterance was “Registration has been completed.”
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin (emprisoned twice)
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin (Russian: Михаил Иванович Трепашкин; born 7 April 1957) is a Russian attorney and former Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 that followed the Dagestan war and were one of the causes of the Second Chechen War. During his investigation, he was arrested by the FSB and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for “revealing state secrets”. His arrest has been criticized by a number of human rights organizations and he has been called a political prisoner.
Alexander Litvinenko (killed with Polonium)
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko[a] (30 August 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organised crime. A prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he advised British intelligence and coined the term “mafia state”.
At a press conference on 17 November 1998, Alexander Litvinenko, Victor Shebalin and other members of FSB claimed to have received an order to kill Boris Berezovsky and Trepashkin. The group members claimed that the order came from an FSB department called URPO, the Division of Operations against Criminal Organizations.
Anna Politkovskaya
Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers’ main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Putin’s Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.
On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention.
Sergei Kovalev (Democrate, principle first, died at age 91)
Kovalyov has been an outspoken critic of authoritarian tendencies in the administrations of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. In 1996, he resigned as head of Yeltsin’s presidential human rights commission, having published an open letter to Yeltsin, where Kovalyov accused the president of giving up democratic principles. In 2002, he organized a public commission to investigate the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings (the Kovalyov Commission), which was effectively paralyzed after one of its members, Sergei Yushenkov, was assassinated, another member, Yuri Shchekochikhin, allegedly poisoned with thallium, and its legal counsel and investigator, Mikhail Trepashkin, arrested.
Died a natural death at 91 in Moscow – obituary.
Documentary films
A documentary film about the fall of the Soviet Union based on Satter’s book Age of Delirium was completed in 2011.
Age of Delirium
Assassination of Russia
Assassination of Russia (film link) (Russian: Покушение на Россию) is a 2002 documentary film that describes the September 1999 Russian apartment bombings as a terrorism act committed by Russian state security services.
The film was created in 2001 by French producers Jean-Charles Deniau and Charles Gazelle. Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko worked as consultants for the film; the film was made on the basis of their book Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within.
Putin’s Long Shadow (investigative documentary Canada 2015)
A joint investigation by the fifth estate and PBS Frontline probes Russian leader Vladimir Putin: allegations of criminal activity and corruption, with a secret personal fortune said to be in the billions. Gillian Findlay reports on the dark side of one of the most powerful men in the world, including the appartment bombings of 1999. (Youtube film copy)
A film screening took place in the USA in July 2013, to raise awareness within the US adminstration.
A transcript of this meeting is available right here.
Disbelief
Satter also appears in the 2004 documentary Disbelief about the Russian apartment bombings made by director Andrei Nekrasov.
Expelled from Russia – 2013
His untiring work to bring the truth forward about how exactly the unknown and modest figure of Putin was brought to power by the appartments bombings of 1999 in Moscow finally got Satter expelled from Russia, on the eve of the olympics in Sochi and just before the invasion of Ukraine – starting with Crimea in 2014. The Euro-Maidan had already started in November 2013. And as you can see – the congressional hearing on the appartment bombings had just happend in July 2013.
A string of people who had tried to bring the truth out about the appartment bombings had already been killed and David Satter seems to remain the last man standing.
His work comes from a place of love for Russia and the whole world. He wants to raise awareness in the West, especially in the USA, and works tirelessly for this. It has been uphill battle, but he has also met many supporters and he has reached me.
The Guardian wrote more about his expellation from Russia.