LONDON, March 5: Russian President Vladimir Putin knew that Russia’s security service was behind a wave of bombings that killed hundreds and led to the war in Chechnya, exiled mogul Boris Berezovsky claimed Tuesday.

The tycoon has previously accused the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, of responsibility in the bloody 1999 campaign, but this is the first time he has alleged that Putin knew of its role.

At a press conference in London, the former Kremlin loyalist, now a fierce critic of Putin, said it was part of a plot by his supporters to give him the excuse he needed for military intervention in the rebel Caucasus republic.

“At the minimum, the president of Russia knew that the FSB was behind the campaign of explosions in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Ryazan,” he said, referring to the Federal Security Service.

“People at the FSB thought Putin couldn’t get into power through democratic means.”

The bombings killed some 300 people and were officially blamed on Chechen separatists.

They led to a wave of nationalism that swept Putin to the presidency half a year later on a pledge to crush Chechen “terrorists” in a lightning offensive that has since degenerated into protracted guerrilla warfare.

Asked if he thought Putin, who was then prime minister but standing for the presidency, had ordered the bombings, Berezovsky retorted: “I’m not saying so, but he knew definitely that such things were taking place. This is a fact.”

He has in the past said he could not show whether Putin, a former FSB head, was himself actually involved in the plot.

Berezovsky called for “an open and independent” inquiry into the attacks.

Moscow immediately hit back, with Russian prosecutors making fresh accusations that Berezovsky financed an armed incursion of Chechen rebels into the southern Russian republic of Dagestan.

The Interfax news agency reported that the prosecutor general’s office had proof that Berezovsky paid for weapons and the incursion of Chechen guerrillas in summer 1999.

Investigators also suspect the millionaire is linked to the kidnapping and murder in Chechnya that year of Russian general Gennady Shpigun, it added.

Berezovsky denied the claims, saying there was no evidence against him.

Berezovsky was a close ally of former president Boris Yeltsin during his reign at the Kremlin, but fell out with Putin and turned his media empire against him.

The one-time oligarch, currently in self-imposed exile in London, is now the subject of an arrest warrant alleging he embezzled funds from the Aeroflot airline.

His press conference was shown clips from a documentary shot by two French journalists purporting to uncover new evidence linking the explosions to the security services.

The first in September 1999 was a car bomb that destroyed a block of flats in a town in Dagestan, which borders Chechnya.

Later that month, separate explosions destroyed two apartment blocks in south Moscow and another in Volgodonsk.

On September 22, 1999, a device was discovered and defused in the basement of a 12-storey block in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. Officials claimed it was a fake bomb planted there as a security test, and a day later Putin ordered air strikes.

Berezovsky claims the Ryazan incident was the work of the security service, and that its similarity to the other attacks meant they also were likely to have been carried out by the FSB.

He said efforts to uncover the truth had been blocked, including repeated attempts to have an independent inquiry set up.—AFP