We are familiar with the idea of journalism as the first draft of history – but what about the second draft? In September 1999, more than 300 people were killed when bombs exploded in four apartment blocks across Russia. The aftermath helped transform the Russian prime minister, then a relatively unknown figure “who had the approval of a lizard”, into a national hero and a shoe-in for the presidency when Boris Yeltsin resigned months later. “It’s part of the origin story of Vladimir Putin,” as one of the foreign correspondents on the ground at the time put it. The narrative of the Russian government was that Chechen terrorists were to blame. But then a fifth bomb was discovered before it detonated. And when journalists started to unravel the thread, it appeared to lead back not to Chechen militants, but to the FSB.
If that sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy theory to you, you’re not alone. This is one of the most contested stories in modern Russian history. And it’s the subject of The History Bureau, a new series hosted by Helena Merriman that re-examines events 25 years later to see if the picture has become any clearer. Her guests are the reporters who first covered it – for both Russian and overseas audiences. Who were their sources? What did they uncover? Has their perspective of what happened changed in the intervening quarter-century?
“These things, you don’t realise they’re important until maybe 20 years later,” admits the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, who had a front-row seat to some of the drama. What seemed too outlandish to print in 1999 might be viewed very differently today, in a world that has seen a Russian dissident poisoned with a radioactive substance in a London sushi restaurant and Russian agents risk the population of Salisbury with a toxic nerve agent. This is a story about sabotage and sugar, puppets and propaganda, and the invention of the man who has ruled Russia ever since. But more than that, it’s a story about hindsight: whether it clouds our judgement or brings things into focus.
The History Bureau: Putin and the Apartment Bombs
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[Further reading: Why the Shipping Forecast endures]
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This article appears in the 14 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Battle for power
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