 The invasion of Dagestan leading to the start of the new Russian-Chechen conflict was regarded by the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as a provocation initiated from Moscow to start war in Chechnya, because Russian forces provided safe passage for Islamic fighters back to Chechnya.There were allegations that Alexander Voloshin of the Yeltsin administration paid money to Basayev to stage this military operation.In early August 1999, the investigative journal Versiya published a report that the head of the Russian presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, had met secretly with Shamil Basayev on July 4, 1999.