A ghostly voice that says little

Russia:Readers looking forward to the voice of Alexander Litvinenko making revelations from beyond the grave will be disappointed by this book. So too will those seeking new and disinterested insights into current and recent events in the Russian Federation.

In fact, the book, published just recently in the UK with the words "Banned in Russia" stamped on the cover, is by no means as new as some would have us believe. It was originally published in 2002 under the title The FSB Blows up Russia, and key chapters were serialised in the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta. It also provided the basis for a documentary called Assassination of Russia, funded and promoted by Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky.

The authors are Yuri Felshtinsky, a US-based historian, and Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy who died in London recently from poisoning by radioactive polonium 210.

They put forward a theory that can be summarised as follows: the bombing of apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere in which up to 300 lost their lives in 1999 was a key factor in launching the second Chechen war. In turn, the second Chechen war was a key factor in the election of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin as president. Therefore the secret services bombed the apartments to take power in Russia and institute a reign of terror.

The case is badly put. Its academic rigour is open to question; no sources are given for most of the assertions made. There are no footnotes. There is no bibliography. There is no index and the reader is frequently confused by the presentation of quotations without quotation marks and in the same type as the ordinary text. One is left with the choice of believing or disbelieving a story that is told with little substantial reference material.

I WAS IN Moscow when the apartment bombings took place and stood at the debris of the block at Kashirskoye Chaussée in which 120 people lost their lives. An eight-storey building had simply vanished into a hole in the ground. Neighbouring blocks were virtually undamaged. It looked like the scene of implosion rather than explosion, an expert job if ever there was one.

Some days later I was in a position to question the then prime minister Putin in person. The Russian authorities, he said, knew the names of those who had committed the terrorist acts. "They were from the Chechen Republic," he said, adding that Russia would make a formal request to the Chechen authorities to hand over the suspects so they could be brought to justice.

What struck me quite forcefully at the time was that the apparently unremarkable response was delivered in a patently angry tone. His voice trembled and his face, normally inscrutable, betrayed his emotion. It was very far from the sort of reaction one would expect from someone involved in the murder of his own citizens in order to gain political power.

That in itself, of course, proves nothing. It merely relates a feeling experienced at the time. It is, however, typical of some of the "evidence" put forward by the authors to support their claims that the Russian secret services committed the atrocities to place Putin in the presidency.

There are of course questions to be answered, not least of which concerns the killing of Litvinenko and the mysterious deaths of three men peripherally linked to the book's original publication. Conspiracy theories abound and, it should be added, Berezovsky, the London-based billionaire with whom Litvinenko was closely associated, has been considered an arch-conspirator.

ONE OF THOSE linked to the book who died mysteriously was a man I knew quite well. Yuri Shchekochikhin was deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta and responsible for publication of the extracts in Russia. He died, possibly of thallium poisoning, in 2003. The authors do not mention that Shchekochikhin's death may have been linked to events unconnected to the book's conspiracy theory. He was, at the time, investigating tax fraud by a company that owned major Russian furniture stores.

In the murky world of espionage and shady Russian business, there can be many reasons for bringing a person's life to an end.

Séamus Martin is a former Moscow correspondent and international editor of The Irish Times

Blowing up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror By Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky Gibson Square, 317pp. £14.99