This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Pushkin.

It's half past nine at night on the 22nd of September 1999, and middle-aged dad, Alexei, is heading

home after a long day at work. He lives in the city of Rizan, not too far from Moscow, and like all

Russians, he's on high alert. Bombs have been detonated at night in four residential apartment blocks

across the country this month, killing some 300 people. Everyone is terrified. Volunteers take on night

watch shifts and some people choose to sleep on the streets rather than risk being killed in their beds.

No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, but Chechen militants are blamed.

Chechnya is a republic down in the south of Russia, much closer to Iran and Turkey than to Moscow. There's a violent

struggle for independence there, and acts of terrorism. Six days on from the last explosion,

Alexei spots a white lauder car parked outside his apartment block in Rizan.

Why are the last two digits of the number plate obscured, he wanders?

As Alexei watches, a man bursts out of the apartment block basement and into the car which speeds away.

Alexei calls the police. In the basement, they find three sacks of white powder and a ticking timer

set for dawn. The white powder appears to be hexagon,

a military-grade explosive used in at least one of the previous bombings.

Terrified people stream onto the street as the building is evacuated.

The device is safely detonated, and the residents, shocked and frightened, but glad to be alive, returned to their homes.

The city has been saved, and Alexei is a hero.

The new Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, is quick to praise the vigilance of the Rizan residents, and the following day, September the 23rd, he orders an airstrike on the Chechen

capital Grozny.

...