Blowing up Russia

Yeltsin was moving towards the edge of an abyss. A session of the Security Council, held under his chairmanship on December 17, reviewed a plan for “the implementation of measures to restore constitutional legality, the rule of law and peace in the Chechen Republic.” The Security Council made the Ministry of Defense (Grachyov), the Ministry of the Interior (Viktor Yerin), the FSK (Stepashin), and the Federal Border Service (Nikolaev) responsible for using every possible means to disarm and destroy illegal armed formations in Chechnya and to secure the state and administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. The work was to be coordinated by Grachyov.
This was the day that marked the end of Russia’s liberal-democratic period. President Yeltsin had committed political suicide.

However, in 1994, the system began to falter, as Moscow extorted larger and larger sums of money in exchange for political favors relating to Chechen independence.

The explosion of November 18, 1994, took place on a railroad track crossing the river Yauza in Moscow.