The list includes the most notable and significant FSB operations in the entire history of its existence. It does not contain cases about the capture of spies and other little-known operations, due to the fact that since the mid-90s to our time, the main direction of the FSB has been the North Caucasus. It is the elimination and capture of key opponents in this region that has a decisive influence on the development of the situation in all directions. The locations are distributed according to the importance of the object of the operation or the situation as a whole.
10. Detention of Magas Ali Musaevich Taziev (formerly known as Akhmed Yevloyev; call sign and nickname - "Magas") - - terrorist, active participant in the separatist movement in the North Caucasus in the 1990s - 2000s, Ingush field commander, since 2007 Years - Commander (Supreme Amir) of the armed formations of the self-proclaimed "Caucasian Emirate". He was the second in the hierarchy of the leadership of the Caucasian Emirate after Doku Umarov. It turned out that since 2007 Ali Taziev under the name Gorbakov lived in one of the private houses in the suburb of the Ingush city of Malgobek. He introduced himself to his neighbors as an immigrant from Chechnya. He behaved quietly and inconspicuously and did not arouse any suspicion. The operation to seize "Magas" began six months before his arrest. Three times he hit the sights of snipers, but the order was to take him alive. On the night of June 9, 2010, the house was surrounded by the FSB special forces. At the time of the arrest, Taziev did not have time to offer resistance (according to Kavkaz Center, due to the fact that he was poisoned), the FSB officers did not suffer losses
9. Elimination of Abu Hafs al-Urdani Abu Hafs al-Urdani is a Jordanian terrorist, commander of a detachment of foreign volunteers in Chechnya, who took part in battles on the side of separatists during the First and Second Russian-Chechen wars. After the death of Abu al-Walid, Abu Hafs replaced him as the emir of foreign fighters and coordinator of financial flows from abroad. He supervised the attack of the militants on the village. Avtury of the Shali district in the summer of 2004, as well as many smaller-scale attacks by militants. Abu Khafs as a military strategist was highly valued by Aslan Maskhadov, who jointly planned operations with him. On November 26, 2006, Abu Khafs and four other militants were blocked in a private house in the city of Khasavyurt (Dagestan). As a result of the storming of the house by special forces of the FSB, all the militants were killed.
8. Elimination of Abu Dzeit Abu Dzeit (known as Little Omar, Abu Omar of Kuwait, Hussein, Moor) is an international terrorist, emissary of the Al-Qaeda organization in the North Caucasus, organizer of terrorist acts in Bosnia and the Caucasus, including in Beslan. According to some reports, he personally met with Osama bin Laden. In 2002, he was invited to Chechnya by one of the emissaries of Al-Qaeda, Abu Haws. Was a demolition instructor in one of the terrorist camps. Then he was sent by the representative of Abu Haws in Georgia, to Ingushetia. In 2004, Mavr became the head of the Al-Qaeda cell in Ingushetia. He died during the operation to eliminate militants on February 16, 2005 in the Nazran region of Ingushetia.
7. Elimination of Abu-Kuteib Abu-Kuteib is a terrorist, one of the close associates of Khattab. He was a member of the "Majlisul Shura of Ichkeria" and was responsible for the propaganda support of the activities of bandit formations, and was also endowed with the exclusive right to post information on the Internet transmitted by groups of Arab mercenaries from Chechnya. It was he who, in March 2000 in Zhani-Vedeno, organized an attack on the convoy, as a result of which 42 riot policemen from Perm were killed. He was one of the organizers of the militants' invasion of Ingushetia. On July 1, 2004, he was blockaded in the town of Malgobek and, after many hours of fighting, blew up the “shahid's belt” on himself.
6. Liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov Aslan Maskhadov is a military and statesman of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI). In the early 1990s, he participated in the creation of the armed forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and led the military actions of the separatists against the federal forces. On March 8, 2005, Maskhadov was killed during a special operation by the FSB in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt (Grozny rural district), where he was hiding in an underground bunker under the house. one of the distant relatives. During the assault, Maskhadov resisted, and the special forces blew up the device, from the shock wave of which the house was half-destroyed.
5. Liquidation of Arbi Barayev Arbi Barayev, a member of the separatist movement in Chechnya in the 1990s, supported the creation of a “Sharia” state in Chechnya. After the end of the first Chechen war, in 1997-1999, he became known as a terrorist and bandit, a murderer and leader of a gang of slave traders and kidnappers, at whose hands more than a hundred people were injured in Chechnya and neighboring regions. special operations of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, which took place from 19 to 24 June in the village of Alkhan-Kala. During the operation, Arbi Barayev and 17 militants from his inner circle were killed, many were taken prisoner, the federal forces lost one person killed during the operation.
4. Liquidation of Dzhokhar Dudaev Dzhokhar Dudayev is a Chechen military and political figure, the leader of the Chechen national liberation movement in the 1990s, the first president of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. In the past - Major General of Aviation, the only Chechen general in the Soviet Army. According to Russian sources, by the beginning of the first Chechen campaign under the command of Dudaev there were about 15 thousand fighters, 42 tanks, 66 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 123 guns, 40 anti-aircraft systems, 260 training aircraft, so the advance of the federal forces was accompanied by serious resistance from Chechen militias and guards. On the evening of April 21, 1996, Russian special services tracked down the signal from Dudayev's satellite phone near the village of Gekhi-Chu, 30 km from Grozny. Two Su-25 attack aircraft with homing missiles were taken into the air. Dzhokhar Dudayev died from a rocket explosion right during a telephone conversation with Russian deputy Konstantin Borov.
3. Liquidation of Khattab Amir ibn al-Khattab is a field commander, a terrorist originally from Saudi Arabia, one of the leaders of the armed formations of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria on the territory of the Russian Federation in 1995-2002. He was an experienced and well-trained terrorist, he owned all types of small arms. Understood in mine-blasting business. Personally led the training of subordinate suicide bombers. He organized foreign funding for the purchase of ammunition and the arrangement of militant training camps on the territory of Chechnya. Khattab was destroyed in an unconventional way: a messenger delivered a message to the Arab containing a horse dose of a potent poison. Khattab opened the envelope and died very quickly after that. His bodyguards could not understand what was really going on.
2. Liquidation of Shamilya Basayev Shamil Basayev is an active participant in hostilities in Chechnya, one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) in 1995-2006. Organized a number of terrorist attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation. He was included in the lists of terrorists of the UN, the US State Department and the European Union. According to official data from the FSB, Basayev and his accomplices were destroyed during the explosion of a KamAZ truck loaded with explosives in the Nazran region of Ingushetia. This explosion was the result of a carefully planned special operation, which became possible thanks to the operational work of the Russian special services carried out abroad. "Operational positions were created abroad, primarily in those countries where weapons were assembled and subsequently delivered to Russia to carry out terrorist attacks," Mr. Patrushev said, adding that Basayev and his accomplices were going to carry out a major terrorist attack in order to exert political pressure on the leadership of Russia during the G8 summit.
1. Taking "Nord-Ost" The terrorist attack on Dubrovka, also referred to as "Nord-Ost" - the terrorist attack on Dubrovka in Moscow, which lasted from October 23 to 26, 2002, during which a group of armed militants led by Movsar Barayev captured and held hostages from the audience of the musical "Nord-Ost." At that moment, several hostages called their acquaintances and said that some kind of gas was arriving at the recreation center, but their speech quickly became incoherent, and then they could not utter anything at all. Gas suppressed the will of all those present in the hall, and most importantly, the terrorists. If even one of them had time to press several tumblers on her belt or connect wires, the bombs would start exploding one after another, and the building could simply collapse. Within seconds after the gas began to operate, snipers killed all female suicide bombers with accurate shots to the head, and then the soldiers in gas masks proceeded to destroy the other bandits who were in the auditorium. One of them was armed with a Kalashnikov machine gun, but did not have time to use it, making only one non-aiming burst. In parallel, some of the special forces who entered the building through the roof dealt with the terrorists in the back rooms of the second floor, using noise and light grenades. At the same time, most of the bandits were already in an unconscious state, since the gas acted primarily on those.
The first big success in decapitating Chechen separatism after the assassination of Dzhokhar Dudayev was the capture of terrorist No. 2 Salman Raduyev, who was arrested by FSB representatives on the territory of Chechnya in March 2000. Raduev became widely known in 1996, after on January 9, under his leadership, militants attacked the Dagestani city of Kizlyar. True, the "laurels of fame" in Kizlyar went to Raduev "by accident." He replaced at the last stage the injured field commander Khunkarpasha Israpilov, who was the head of the operation.
The capture of Raduev was carried out by counterintelligence officers skillfully and in such a super-secrecy regime that the bandit "did not expect anything and was shocked," said FSB director Nikolai Patrushev. According to some reports, Raduev was "tied" at the moment when he left his shelter "out of need." There is a version that Raduev was handed over by an agent who promised him to sell a large batch of weapons on the cheap.
On December 25, 2001, the Supreme Court of Dagestan found Raduev guilty on all charges, except for "organizing illegal armed groups." The demands of the public prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, were fulfilled, and Salman Raduyev was sentenced to life imprisonment. Raduev was serving time in the Solikamsk Penitentiary Penitentiary, in the famous White Swan colony.
In December 2002, Raduev began to complain about his health. On December 6, he developed bruising under his left eye and abdominal pain. A few days later, Raduev felt worse, and on December 10, the doctors of the GUIN decided to place him in a prison hospital in a separate ward. At the hospital, Raduev died on December 14 at 5.30 am. The forensic medical report on the death says the following: "DIC-syndrome, multiple hemorrhages, abdominal hematoma, hemorrhage in the brain and left eye."
Raduev's body was buried at the common Solikamsk cemetery.
In April 2002, it became known about the destruction in Chechnya of the field commander Khattab, who was known as an ideologist and organizer of terrorist activities. It was liquidated as a result of the FSB's "intelligence-combat operation" back in March 2002. The top-secret operation to destroy Khattab was being prepared for almost a year. According to the FSB, Khattab was poisoned by one of his confidants. The death of the terrorist became one of the most serious blows for the militants, since after the liquidation of Khattab, the entire system of financing bandit formations in Chechnya was violated.
In June 2001, in Chechnya, as a result of a special operation, the leader of one of the most efficient units of Chechen fighters, Arbi Barayev, was killed. Together with him, 17 people from his inner circle were destroyed. A large number of militants were taken prisoner. Barayev was identified by his relatives. The special operation was carried out in the area of the native village of Baraev Ermolovka for six days - from June 19 to June 24. In the course of the operation, which was carried out by the regional operational headquarters with the involvement of special forces of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, in particular, the Vityaz group, one Russian serviceman was killed and six were injured. After Barayev was mortally wounded, the militants carried his body into one of the houses and filled up with bricks in the hope that the federal forces would not find him. Nevertheless, with the help of a search dog, Barayev's body was found.
In November 2003, representatives of the FSB officially admitted that one of the leaders of the Chechen fighters, the Arab terrorist Abu al-Walid, had been killed on April 14. According to the intelligence services, on April 13, information appeared about a detachment of militants, which, together with several Arab mercenaries, stopped in the forest between Ishkhoy-Yurt and Alleroy. In this area, a blow was immediately struck from helicopters, and the special forces shot the camp of the bandits from grenade launchers and flamethrowers. On April 17, soldiers combed the area between Ishkhoy-Yurt and Meskets, and about 3-4 kilometers from these villages in the forest they found six killed militants. All were identified - they turned out to be Chechens. A kilometer from those six corpses, a dead Arab was found. With him, in particular, they found a map of the area made from a satellite and a satellite navigator for moving around the area. The body was badly burned. In April, al-Walid's body was not identified. The secret services did not have the terrorist's fingerprints, his relatives did not respond to inquiries from investigators, and the detained militants who met with him could not say with certainty that the body was his. All doubts disappeared only in November.
On February 13, 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev was killed in Qatar, who was declared president of Ichkeria by Chechen separatists after the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev. In the Qatari capital of Doha, Yandarbiev's car was blown up. In this case, two people from his escort were killed. The leader of the separatists himself was seriously injured and after a while died in the hospital. Yandarbiev has lived in Qatar for the past three years and has been on the international wanted list all this time as the organizer of the attack on Dagestan. The Prosecutor General's Office of Russia demanded his extradition from Qatar.
The Qatari special services immediately started talking about the Russian trace in the murder of Yandarbiyev, and already on February 19, three employees of the Russian embassy were arrested on suspicion of committing a terrorist attack. One of them, who is the first secretary of the embassy and has diplomatic status, was released and expelled from the country, while the other two were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Qatari court, while the court concluded that the order to liquidate Yandarbiev was given by the top officials of the Russian leadership. Moscow denied the accusations in every possible way, and Russian diplomats did everything possible to take the unlucky demolitionists home as soon as possible.
They were sentenced to life imprisonment, which under Qatari law means a 25-year prison term, which can later be reduced to 10 years. A month after the trial, an agreement was reached that the convicted Russians would be taken to their homeland, where they would serve their term. The return of the Russian intelligence officers did indeed take place, Anatoly Yablochkov and Vasily Pugachev flew to Russia on a special flight of the State Transport Company "Russia" in December 2004.
In March 2004, it became known about the death of the no less odious leader of the militants - Ruslan Gelayev, who in May 2002 was re-appointed by Aslan Maskhadov as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ichkeria and reinstated in the rank of “brigadier general”. True, he was killed not as a result of a special operation of the special services, but in a banal shootout with border guards. Gelayev was destroyed by a border detachment of only two people in the mountains of Dagestan on the Avaro-Kakheti road leading to Georgia. At the same time, the border guards themselves were killed in the shootout. The corpse of the field commander was found in the snow a hundred meters from the bodies of the border guards. Apparently, this happened on Sunday (February 28, 2004). A day later, Gelayev's body was taken to Makhachkala and identified by previously arrested militants.
Thus, of the major Chechen leaders, only one "odious militant" remains alive - Shamil Basayev.
Alexander Alyabyev
The leader of the IS * terrorist organization, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, could have been destroyed in the vicinity of Raqqa as a result of an air strike by Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft. This was announced on June 16 by the Russian Ministry of Defense. According to representatives of the department, the blow was struck on the night of May 28, after intelligence was able to establish the exact meeting place of the leaders of the terrorists. As emphasized in the Ministry of Defense, at the moment this information is being checked through various channels.
We will remind, Al-Baghdadi first appeared in public in July 2014, when from a mosque in the captured city of IS * Mosul proclaimed the creation of an "Islamic caliphate" in the Middle East. If the information about his elimination is confirmed, it will be a serious blow to the command structure of the terrorists. And for Russia - a serious image victory in the information war against the West, which accuses us of fighting exclusively against the "moderate" Syrian opposition. In addition, the Russian special services will once again prove that they are capable of tracking down any terrorist, wherever he is. Fortunately, over the past two decades, they have accumulated a wealth of experience.
Chief Demoman
In July 2001, the Special Forces Center of the FSB of Russia reported on the elimination of Abu Umar Mohammed al-Sayyaf, one of the closest associates of the notorious Khattab. This militant from Saudi Arabia fought with federal troops from the very beginning of the first Chechen war. He headed a small bandit group that blew up columns of Russian troops with land mines, mined the locations of military units and roadblocks. Later, Abu Umar headed the Kavkaz sabotage and terrorist center, where he taught mine explosives. Among his "pupils" were the militants who set off the bombings of residential buildings in Russian cities in September 1999, as well as the terrorist attacks in Vladikavkaz, Mineralnye Vody, Pyatigorsk and Nevinnomyssk in 2000-2001.They tracked him down for a long time. In July 2001, the headquarters for the counter-terrorist operation received information that Abu Umar was hiding in the mountain village of Maitrup in the Kurchaloevsky district of Chechnya. Subdivisions of the special forces "Rus" of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the combat group of the famous "Alpha" went to his arrest. The exact location of the target was unknown, but by a happy coincidence, the fighters were dropped from helicopters just a few meters from the house where Abu Umar was hiding. He did not have time to run to the mountains, so he hid in the basement. An initial search of his home was unsuccessful, but one of the Alpha officers at the last moment noticed a carefully disguised hatch in the floor. The fighter who opened it was immediately wounded by an automatic burst, but others reacted immediately and threw grenades at the basement. The main demolitionist of the Chechen bandit underground was killed on the spot.
"Black Arab"
His immediate superior, Saudi Arabian Samer Saleh al-Suweil, better known as Khattab, was liquidated nine months later, in March 2001. This seasoned terrorist fought on the side of the Salafi Islamists back in Afghanistan in the 80s. In addition, he trained militants in Tajikistan and participated in the attack on the 12th outpost of the Moscow border detachment on July 13, 1993, during which 25 Russian border guards were killed. In 1995, he moved to Chechnya with 18 associates. He took a direct part in attacks on objects of the federal troops. In 1999, together with Shamil Basayev, Khattab led the militants' campaign to Dagestan. In March 2000, a Saudi terrorist led the withdrawal of a large gang from the encirclement in the Argun Gorge. The culmination of this breakthrough was the famous battle at an altitude of 776 near the village of Ulus-Kert, as a result of which almost the entire company of the Pskov paratroopers of the 76th Guards Airborne Division died heroically.
It took a long time to get close to him at the distance of an aimed shot - the "Black Arab", as his accomplices called him, was too smart and devilishly lucky. Then the special services decided to rely on cunning. The FSB managed to recruit one of the leader's closest assistants, who, in the end, poisoned his "boss". There are several versions of who he is and how he did it. According to one of them, the special services managed to intercept a messenger who was supposed to convey a message to Khattab from Saudi Arabia. The messenger was turned over, and the letter was treated with a potent poison. The "Black Arab" who opened it died almost immediately. According to another version, Khattab was poisoned by his cook, also recruited by the special services. He poisoned the dry rations intended for the commander. There is also a more prosaic version, according to which Khattab simply poisoned himself with expired beef stew.
Emissary
One of the main military and ideological leaders of the Chechen bandit underground, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was liquidated on February 13, 2004 in Doha. He took an active part in the first war, led the defense of the central part of Grozny in January 1995. After the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev a year later, he served as the president and supreme commander of the unrecognized republic until 1997, when Aslan Maskhadov was elected to this position. After that, Yandarbiev joined the radical nationalist wing of the militants headed by Salman Raduyev. In parallel, he performed the duties of an emissary in other countries, where he regularly traveled for financial support for the Chechen bandit underground. He was one of the organizers of the hostage-taking in the capital's theater center on Dubrovka in October 2002.Since 2003, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev has permanently resided in Qatar, where he received refugee status: by that time he was wanted by Interpol, and the UN Security Council officially recognized his links with international terrorism. He was liquidated on February 13, 2004 in Doha when his car was blown up by a land mine installed under the bottom. The Qatari authorities soon arrested two Russians and, after a short trial, found them guilty of organizing a successful assassination attempt and sentenced them to life imprisonment. It was alleged that they were operational officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. This information has not been officially confirmed. However, in 2004, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs succeeded in obtaining the extradition of convicts to their homeland, where they were met with military honors at the Vnukovo airport.
Terrorist president
The next great success of the Russian special services was the liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov on March 8, 2005. In the first war, he directed most of the major offensive, defensive and sabotage actions of terrorists. In August 1996, under the leadership of Maskhadov, the "Jihad" operation was carried out - an attack by militants on Grozny, Argun and Gudermes. And on January 27, 1997, following the election results, he was elected president of the republic, gaining 59.3% of the vote. It was during his presidency that mass crime flourished in Chechnya: kidnapping, slave trade, drug trafficking, oil theft, banditry, counterfeiting, and terrorist attacks in Russia. It was Maskhadov who was the ideologist of the spread of separatist ideas to Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria. In addition, he was the main supporter of the introduction of Sharia rule in Chechnya.
Maskhadov was taken by fighters from the Special Forces Center of the FSB of Russia. According to intelligence it was possible to establish that from the beginning of 2005 he was hiding in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, Grozny district, in a specially fortified bunker under the house of one of his distant relatives. According to official data, it was there that the leader of the militants was developing a plan for a terrorist attack, which in its cruelty was supposed to surpass Beslan. The capture groups managed to secretly get to the house and block the shelter. In the course of a fleeting fire contact with Maskhadov's bodyguards, the special forces managed to break through to the door of the bunker and detonate it with an overhead charge of explosives. The leader died from severe barotrauma. However, according to one version, the wounded Maskhadov was finished off with a pistol by one of his assistants, so that he would not fall into the hands of the security forces.
Chief executioner
The most odious Chechen terrorist, Shamil Basayev, was destroyed by the special services only in 2006. By this time, he had managed to earn himself such a reputation and "track record" that he was rightfully considered the number one enemy of the state. On June 14, 1995, he led a raid of 200 militants on the territory of the Stavropol Territory, where he captured the city of Budennovsk and one and a half thousand civilians. In August 1996 he took an active part in the storming of Grozny. In August 1999, together with Khattab, he invaded Dagestan. He took responsibility for taking hostages at the Dubrovka theater in the fall of 2002. He carried out a series of suicide attacks across the country in 2003. He blew up two passenger planes in Moscow on August 24, 2004, and a week later his militants seized a school in Beslan. And this is not a complete list of terrorist acts in which Basayev participated or was involved in organizing. He has the blood of hundreds, if not thousands, on his hands.Since 1995, reports of the death of Shamil Basayev have appeared with enviable regularity. However, the FSB of Russia officially confirmed the fact of his liquidation only on July 10, when the head of the department, Nikolai Patrushev, reported this to the president of the country. A few hours earlier, the terrorist had been liquidated in the Nazran region of Ingushetia. He accompanied a truck with weapons and ammunition, which, presumably, planned to use to carry out a series of terrorist attacks in the republic. At two o'clock in the morning, his KamAZ was blown up. The details of this operation are still kept secret. According to one of the versions, the militants recruited by the FSB planted the explosives in the car when loading ammunition, according to the other - it was done by the special services themselves while the militants were sleeping. According to Patrushev, the implementation of this plan took a long time and required a lot of preparatory work, including abroad.
* Terrorist organization banned in Russia.
