1:20PM. The deputy minister of the Interior Vladimir Vasiliev said that the operational headquarters attempted to contact Aslan Maskhadov but they did not succeed.
2:10PM. The official authorities refuted Vasiliev’s claim that they have tried to contact Maskhadov.
2:30PM. The terrorists demanded to put them immediately in contact with the former Ingushetia president Ruslan Aushev.
2:50PM. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya entered the building. Roshal was with her with a package of medicaments.
3:15PM. The terrorists told the Sunday Times journalist Mark Franketti that they consider their mission accomplished and “do not intend to go anywhere, with or without the hostages until there are changes made in Chechnya.”
3:30PM. The relatives of the hostages began a demonstration on the Red Square under the slogan “Down with the war in Chechnya!” Some demonstrators were arrested and taken away by the police.
3:50PM. The FSB director Nikolay Patrushev said that the terrorists will be left alife if they release the hostages. “We are continuing the negotiations and I hope they will bring the release of the hostages.” He made this statement after a meeting with president Putin. The Minister of Interior Boris Grizlov added: “Presently the situation with the hostages is difficult; there are sick people, there are problems with food and water. Some need medical assistance that they don’t get.” There are reasons to believe that it is on that meeting with Putin that the final decision about raiding the building was taken. On the dawn of the following day. A raid that would be disguised as a forced reaction to the execution of the hostages, which actually never happened. And it began…
4:15PM. Some media said that the terrorists made an ultimatum: they will start to shoot the hostages if the Russian governement does not execute their political demands before 6AM on October 26th.
4:30PM. The operational headquarters (I remind that it is headed by the FSB deputy director Pronichev who will later “work” in Beslan with his Nord-Ost “experience”, although not as headquarters chief but hiding behind Ossetia’s FSB general, Andreyev) confirmed that the terrorists threaten to shoot the hostages if their demands are not executed. Let me explain that this is why all the militants with no exception were sent to the other wolrd (without even considering the information that they could have obtained from them on interrogations), so that they could not affirm in court that they did not make any ultimatum on October 25th at 4:15PM. And now how could one find out if there was an ultimatum or no? The contact was made by cellphones.
5:00PM. The journalist Sergey Govorukhin and the assistant editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta Dmitry Belovetzky entered the Center to negotiate with the terrorists.
5:10PM. Anna Politkovskaya came out of the building and said that the terrorists demand juice and water. One little question comes up: why did the terrorists suddently need juice and water? To give them to the hostages before executing them?
5:20PM. Television channels air a Maskhadov’s video. In the video, shot God knows when and why, Maskhadov said that the Chechens switched from guerrilla methods to offensive operations. “On the final stage we will carry out an ever more unique operations, similar to jihad”, Maskhadov says on video. Dubrovka, Nord-Ost or the Theater Center are not mentioned. This video could have been made before the wreck excursions to Budennovsk, Kizlyar or anywhere else. What does “final stage” means? Final stage of what? In fact, it was the “special operation to release the hostages” that has already began. They are preparing the public opinion. On all the channels simultaneously.
6:00PM. Ruslan Aushev arrived to the operational headquarters.
6:15PM. Sergey Govorukhin and Dmitry Beletzky came back without any hostages. The militants said that next time they would shoot the visitors who come uninvited. Apparently the militants suspected these two were spies.
6:55PM. Meeting of president Putin with the leaders of State Duma’s fractions. The president demanded, “to put aside any sorts of political statements and debates. /…/ They are out of place and harmful, especially when it concerns the suffering of hundreds of innocent people. What we need is a sober, objective evaluation of the situation and precise, well-thought actions directed to help these people save their lives.” You should remember this statement because ten hours later the president’s special services will do the exact opposite: they will help the people in the hall on Dubrovka to get rid of their lives, inconsiderately using a little-known gas, practically they will kill them.
7:38PM. Anna Politkovskaya and the deputy Aslambek Aslakhanov entered the building and brought juice and water for the hostages. Two Red Cross doctors were with them.
7:40PM. Ruslan Aushev and the former premier Evgeny Primakov entered the building in order to get in contact with the terrorists.
8:25PM. Evgeny Primakov, Ruslan Aushev, Aslambek Aslakhanov and Anna Politkovskaya led a negotiation with the terrorists and left the building. Primakov did not comment. Aushev said that the terrorists demand to speak with an official representative of Vladimir Putin, however they do not name anybody in particular.
(We see that despite the started disinformation about an ultimatum and the preparing execution of the hostages there is more and more contacts. If there was an ultimatum then why demand to negotiate with a Putin’s representative?)
9:15PM. The signer Alla Pugacheva arrived to the operational headquarters. She brought with her the plan of the Theater Center building where her son-in-law Ruslan Baysarov rents a nightclub. Most probably this was the plan the special services used to let in the gas in the ventilation shafts.
9:55PM. 4 hostages are released from the Center: 3 women and a man, all Azeris. Another confirmation that the terrorists did not make an ultimatum.
10:38PM. The operational headquarters banned life broadcasting from the Center on Dubrovka and the bordering streets. The deputy minister of Interior Vladimir Vasiliev explained, “This practice is illiterate from a professional point of view”. In reality the deputy minister lies; they are preparing to raid the building and it is clear that they do not need television cameras.
10:40PM. The minister of Interior Boris Grizlov and the FBI director Robert Muller agreed to cooperate by keeping constantly in touch. The perfidious Russian Byzantines are cheating the Americans. Grizlov knows that the raid is in seven hours.
10:40PM. At the same time Putin, Luzhkov and Primakov have a meeting. They discussed the situation with the hostages. It is possible to suppose that Primakov expressed his personal impressions.
10:50PM. The operational headquarters say “it does not appear to be possible to get a normal contact with the terrorists”. This is a total lie because there are hundreds of cellphones in the hall and all the terrorists have cellphones.
At 11:40PM a man entered running the Center on Dubrovka. The unidentified man passed through the cordon, ran across the square in front of the building and disappeared in the central hallway.
October 26th
At 12:50 the Center’s security was reinforced. Three military trucks blocked Dubrovskaya Street.
At 1:30AM gunshots were heard in the House of Culture. What did happen there? A former hostage testifies: “On the night before the raid an old man got inside and demanded that his little son be given to him. One of the terrorists, Idris, tried to intercede for the madman. He yelled to Barayev that he knows for sure that the boy is on the balcony. Unfortunately this did not help the man; he was led outside the building. Then I heard gunshots.” The witness Sergey Lobankov, the producer of the Nord-Ost musicaclass="underline" “In three days the militants shot three people. /…/ The first was a young woman who came inside the hall from somewhere in an absolutely abnormal state, I think she was drunk. She came out to their leader and started to defiantly talk to him. He shot her. Then after some time a man appeared in the hall. He said that he was looking for his son and even said his name but the child was in my group and this man is not his father. The Chechens suspected that he could be a spy and shot him in the foyer. The third killed is a young man who went hysterical. He was running in the hall yelling, he wanted to attack a Chechen woman with a bomb, he was shot and he fell. The bullet that was shot at him hit two other hostages.” The witness Elena Shumilova: “Suddently a man in his thirties in the center of the hall got up, threw an empty glass bottle at the Chechen women sitting with a bomb and started to run in their direction on the backs of the seats. The women shot in the air and the Chechen on the stage shot and hit two sitting people: a man in the brow (he died in the hospital) and a woman in the chest. The guy was held down but he was absolutely out of his mind.”