Failure to assault hospital in Budyonnovsk led to signing agreement with Basaev

Today is 20 years since signing an agreement with Chechen fighters, who captured the hospital in the city of Budyonnovsk, which then led to release of hostages. By the date, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" has presented the original of the agreement, kept in the archives of the centre.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on June 14 Budyonnovsk announced a citywide minute of silence in memory of 129 casualties of the 1995 terror act.

Negotiations for the release of hostages with Shamil Basaev began in the morning of June 18, 1995, Sergey Kovalyov, a State Duma MP and the Chairman of the Commission for Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, who received such powers from the then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Within two hours, he managed to persuade Basaev to give up his demand of immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from southern regions of Chechnya, and agree on the basic provisions of the agreement on release of hostages.

The signing of the agreement was preceded by an assault undertaken by special units of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) at dawn on June 17, which failed; and then Kovalyov managed to get the authority to negotiate from Chernomyrdin.

In the opinion of journalist Valery Yakov, thanks to Chernomyrdin, more than 2000 people survived.

Tatiana Vorozheikina, a political analyst, declared in 2010 that the rescue of hostages in Budyonnovsk was the highest achievement in Chernomyrdin's political career.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.