MOSCOW — Muslim separatists are responsible for three bombings that killed 243 people, Russian prosecutors said Wednesday, incidents that reignited the war in Chechnya and propelled Vladimir V. Putin into the president's office.
Critics saw the announcement of the end of the investigation of the 1999 bombings as designed to curb speculation that the attacks were orchestrated by Russian officials seeking to create a pretext for action against Chechnya.
The two bombings in Moscow and one in Volgodonsk were organized by two Arabs, later killed by Russian forces, who were leaders of separatist guerrillas in Chechnya, the Russian prosecutor general's office said. It also named seven other accused, of whom two are in custody, two are fugitives and three are dead.
These bombings and another apartment blast that year in the Dagestan region, quickly blamed on Chechen rebels, became one of the justifications for sending Russian troops back into Chechnya -- a move that launched the second war there in a decade. That show of toughness helped Putin, who was prime minister at the time, win election as president.
Self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky and other critics allege that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor to the Soviet-era KGB, may have been involved in the bombings in pursuit of political goals. That idea has been vehemently denounced by Russian authorities, but suspicions remain widespread.
Just two weeks ago, Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal lawmaker and outspoken critic of Putin, was shot to death outside his Moscow apartment in what allies called a political assassination. Some observers speculated that the killing was connected to his role in an unofficial investigation into the apartment bombings.
Critics saw Wednesday's announcement as an effort to declare all questions about the 1999 bombings resolved before attention focuses on December parliamentary elections and March presidential balloting.
"I have no doubts that this investigation has been conducted to suit the interests of the Kremlin rather than to find out the truth," said Pavel Voshchanov, a onetime spokesman for former President Boris Yeltsin. "I am sure the investigation is being wrapped up today to suit the political agenda of the Kremlin and to make the public at large forget about this dark episode in recent Russian political history."
