title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In March 2000, the newspaper "Ryazanskiye Vedomosti" published an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Maximov, the head of the investigative section of the Ryazan UFSB. Maximov said that the Ryazan bomb squad was equipped with explosive vapour detector "М-02", but bomb-disposal experts didn't like it and used analytical kit "Exprei", which was more accurate. Also in March 2000, the head of the Ryazan UFSB General Sergeyev appeared on TV show "Independent Investigation" commenting on the device used to detect the RDX. According to Sergeyev, it was packed in a briefcase and acted like a litmus test from school. The substance to be investigated was wiped by a collection paper, which was subsequently sprayed from an aerosol can. A change of the paper color indicated the presence of explosives. Sergeyev explained the false positive result by prior contamination of the lid of the briefcase, on which Tkachenko poured some sugar from the sacks to perform the test.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: At a press conference on the occasion of the Security Agency Worker's Day in December 2001, Tkachenko said that a gas analyser has not been used and the detonator was a shotgun shell that couldn't detonate any known explosives.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In February 2003, "Kommersant" journalist has studied the criminal investigation file on the Ryazan incident, obtained by Russian State Duma member Sergei Kovalev. According to the proceedings, a bomb disposal expert who arrived to the scene has twice performed a test which didn't show the presence of explosive particles. The head of the bomb squad Tkachenko, who arrived soon after that, made a test himself and found the RDX. The investigator who questioned Yuri Tkachenko concluded that the detection of RDX was made possible by contamination of Yuri Tkachenko's hands, since the latter worked with explosives containing RDX on the day before the incident without wearing sterile gloves. Another detail concerned the type of a device used to detect the explosives. The report submitted by the Ryazan UFSB claimed that gas analyser "M-02" was used. However, during Tkachenko's questioning it was revealed that he had used the device "Exprel" for the analysis. The investigation has resolved the contradiction in the following way. The bomb squad in Ryazan is equipped with the gas analyser "М-02", but the latter has certain limitations. The device has a high degree of imprecision, and the analysis takes a long time. So, the bomb squad used the device "Exprel", which is more robust, accurate and easy to use. But since they were not supposed to possess that device, the bomb squad has submitted the paperwork which showed that the gas analyser "M-02" had been used.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In March 2000, "Novaya Gazeta" journalist Pavel Voloshin reported the account of Private Alexei P. (later identified as Pinyaev) of the 137th Regiment. Pinyaev guarded a storehouse with weapons and ammunition near the city of Ryazan. Together with a friend, he entered the storehouse to see the weapons. The friends were surprised to see that the storehouse contained sacks with the word "sugar" on them. Pinyaev and his friend were discouraged, but didn't want to leave the storehouse empty-handed. The two paratroopers cut a hole in one of the bags and put some sugar in a plastic bag. They made tea with the sugar, but the taste of the tea was terrible. They became frightened because the substance might turn out to be saltpeter, and brought the plastic bag to a platoon commander. He consulted a sapper, who identified the substance as hexogen.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, after the newspaper report FSB officers descended on Pinyayev’s unit, accused them of divulging a state secret and told them, "You guys can't even imagine what serious business you’ve got yourselves tangled up in." The regiment later sued publishers of "Novaya Gazeta" for insulting the honour of the Russian Army, since there was no Private Alexei Pinyayev in the regiment, according to their statement.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: A report aired by "ORT" in March 2000 and created by journalist Leonid Grozin and operator Dmitry Vishnevoy has accused "Novaya Gazeta" of lying. According to Grozin and Vishnevoy, there is no storehouse at the test range of the 137th Regiment. Alexei Pinyaev has admitted meeting with Pavel Voloshin, but claimed that he was merely asked to confirm a pre-conceived story.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: At an FSB press conference in 2001, Private Pinyayev stated that there was no hexogen in the 137th Airborne Regiment and that he was hospitalised in December 1999 and no longer visited the test range.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: After the bombing at Guryanova Street on September 9, the Moscow FSB reported that items removed from the scene showed traces of TNT and RDX (or "hexogen").


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Later FSB declared that the explosive used in the bombings was a mixture of aluminium powder, ammonium nitrate, TNT and sugar prepared by the perpetrators in a concrete mixer at a fertiliser factory in Urus-Martan, Chechnya. Also, each bomb contained some plastic explosive used as an explosive booster.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: RDX is produced in only one factory in Russia, in the city of Perm. According to David Satter, the FSB changed the story about the type of explosive, since it was difficult to explain how huge amounts of RDX disappeared from the closely guarded Perm facility. According to Lieutenant General of the FSB Ivan Mironov, the precise composition of the explosive mixture was hard to determine, because no visible traces remain after the aluminium powder is consumed in a blast.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 7 August 1999, an Islamist group, led by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, invaded the Russian republic of Dagestan.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to historian René De La Pedraja, the war in Chechnya was planned in advance by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, soon after kidnapping of Gennady Shpigun. The ministry developed a plan for a limited military campaign to occupy the northern third of Chechnya up to the Terek River valley. Putin strongly supported the initial plan to occupy only the northern third of Chechnya. The invasion of militants in Dagestan accelerated the schedule for such a campaign. However, after the apartment bombings, "the usually cool and cautious Putin was swept away in the popular outrage" and decided to approve a much more ambitious campaign to subdue all of Chechnya. The Russian Army was not ready to pursue the extended campaign, which resulted in a prolonged conflict.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In July 1999, Russian journalist Aleksandr Zhilin, writing in the "Moskovskaya Pravda", warned that there would be terrorist attacks in Moscow organised by the government. Using a leaked Kremlin document as evidence, he added that the motive would be to undermine the opponents of the Russian President Boris Yeltsin. These included Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. However, this warning was ignored.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Amy Knight, "even more significant is the fact that a respected and influential Duma deputy, Konstantin Borovoi, was told on September 9, the day of the first Moscow apartment bombing, that there was to be a terrorist attack in the city. His source was an officer of the Russian military intelligence (GRU). Borovoy transmitted this information to FSB officials serving on Yeltsin's Security Council, but he was ignored."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made an announcement, "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." When the Volgodonsk bombing happened on 16 September, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded the following day an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznyov turned his microphone off. Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in the Russian Duma: "Remember, Gennadiy Nikolaevich, how you told us that an apartment block has been blown up in Volgodonsk, three days prior to the blast? How should we interpret this? The State Duma knows that the apartment block was destroyed on Monday, and it has indeed been blown up on Thursday [same week]..."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Alexander Litvinenko believed that someone had mixed up the order of the blasts, "the usual "Kontora" mess up". According to Litvinenko, "Moscow-2 was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on 16th, but they got it to the speaker the other way around". Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin confirmed that the man who gave Seleznyov the note was indeed an FSB officer.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Later Seleznyov told a Russian newspaper that he actually referred to an explosion organized by criminal gangs, which took place in Volgodonsk and claimed no fatalities.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In an August 2017 interview with Yuri Dud, Vladimir Zhirinovsky was asked about the incident in State Duma and claimed there was a misunderstanding.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The Russian Duma rejected two motions for a parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. In the Duma a pro-Kremlin party Unity, voted to seal all materials related to the Ryazan incident for the next 75 years and forbade an investigation into what happened.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 9 September, an anonymous person, speaking with a Caucasian accent, phoned the Interfax news agency, saying that the blasts in Moscow and Buynaksk were "our response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 13 September 1999, Novaya Gazeta published a report by retired army major Vyacheslav Izmailov, which said that the editorial board of Novaya gazeta had received information about the planned terrorist attacks from its sources in Chechnya. In a follow-up article published on 20 September 1999, Izmailov revealed that Novaya Gazeta had received the information on 8 September, twelve hours before the bombing on Guryanova street in Moscow, and immediately relayed it to the Chief Directorate Combating Organized Crime (GUBOP) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article has also identified the source as Alexander Kapanadze, a non-commissioned officer in the Russian Army who was taken captive by Chechens in 1995. According to Izmailov, as many as 10 terrorist attacks have been planned. In a documentary by Alexey Pivovarov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov commented that Kapanadze has disappeared soon after he had met with GUBOP; none of his whereabouts are known.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 15 September, an unidentified man, again speaking with a Caucasian accent, called the ITAR-TASS news agency, claiming to represent a group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan. He said that the explosions in Buynaksk and Moscow were carried out by his organisation. According to him, the attacks were a retaliation to the deaths of Muslim women and children during Russian air raids in Dagestan. "We will answer death with death," the caller said. Russian officials from both the Interior Ministry and FSB, at the time, expressed scepticism over the claims and said there is no such organization. On 15 September 1999, a Dagestani official also denied the existence of a "Dagestan Liberation Army".


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In an interview published in Lidove Noviny on September 9, Shamil Basayev denied responsibility for the bombings and said that it had been the work of Dagestanis. According to Basayev, the bombings were a retribution for the military operation of the Russian Army against "three small villages" in Dagestan. In subsequent interviews, Basayev said he didn't know who perpetrated the bombings.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In a 12 September interview with Associated Press, Ibn al-Khattab said that "From now on they will get our bombs everywhere! Let Russia await our explosions blasting through their cities! I swear we will do it!" However, in a subsequent interview on 14 September to the Interfax agency in Grozny, Khattab denied responsibility for the bombings.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Chechen Foreign Ministry issued an official statement on 14 September condemning Moscow blasts, and affirming that "Ichkeria stands firmly against terrorism in any manifestation".


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In 2000, investigation of the Buynaksk attack was complete and seven people were convicted of the bombing.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Russia's pre-trial investigation of the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings was finished in 2002. According to the Russian State Prosecutor office, all apartment bombings were executed under command of ethnic Karachay Achemez Gochiyayev and planned by Ibn al-Khattab and Abu Omar al-Saif, Arab militants fighting in Chechnya on the side of Chechen insurgents. Al-Khattab and al-Saif were killed during the Second Chechen War. According to investigators, the explosives were prepared at a fertiliser factory in Urus-Martan Chechnya, by "mixing aluminium powder, nitre and sugar in a concrete mixer", or by also putting there RDX and TNT. From there they were sent to a food storage facility in Kislovodsk, which was managed by an uncle of one of the terrorists, Yusuf Krymshakhalov. Another conspirator, Ruslan Magayayev, leased a KamAZ truck in which the sacks were stored for two months. After everything was planned, the participants were organised into several groups which then transported the explosives to different cities.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to investigators, the explosion in Moscow mall on 31 August was committed by another man, Magomed-Zagir Garzhikaev on the orders from Shamil Basayev, according to the FSB.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Court hearings on the Moscow and Volgodonsk attacks were held behind closed doors, and were completed in 2004. The process has produced 90 volumes of proceedings, 5 of which were classified.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to the court ruling, Al-Khattab paid Gochiyayev $500,000 to carry out the attacks at Guryanova Street, Kashirskoye Highway, and Borisovskiye Prudy, and then helped to hide Gochiyayev and his accomplices in Chechnya. In early September 1999, Magayayev, Krymshamkhalov, Batchayev and Dekkushev reloaded the cargo into a Mercedes-Benz 2236 trailer and delivered it to Moscow. En route, they were protected from possible complications by an accomplice, Khakim Abayev, who accompanied the trailer in another car. In Moscow they were met by Achemez Gochiyayev, who registered in Hotel Altai under the fake name "Laipanov", and Denis Saitakov. The explosives were left in a warehouse in Ulitsa Krasnodonskaya, which was leased by pseudo-Laipanov (Gochiyayev). The next day, the explosives were delivered in "" vans to three addresses—Ulitsa Guryanova, Kashirskoye Shosse and Ulitsa Borisovskiye Prudy, where pseudo-Laipanov leased cellars. Gochiyayev supervised the placement of the bombs in the rented cellars. Next followed the explosions at the former two addresses. The explosion at 16 Borisovskiye Prudy was prevented.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to the court, 4 September Buinaksk bombing was ordered by Al-Khattab. Reportedly, since the perpetrators have managed to explode only one truck bomb instead of the two, Khattab called it a "botched job" and paid $300,000 for it, which was a part of the sum he originally promised. One of the suspects confessed having loaded the trucks with sacks in Buynaksk, but claimed he did not know what they were intended for.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The explosion in the mall on Manezhnaya Square was the subject of a separate court process held in Moscow in 2009. The court accused Khalid Khuguyev () and Magumadzir Gadzhikayev () of organisation and execution of the 1999 explosions in the Manezhnaya Square mall and in hotel Intourist and sentenced them to 25 years and 15 years of imprisonment, correspondingly.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: and have both been sentenced to life terms in a special regime colony. Both defendants have pleaded guilty only to some of the charges. For instance, Dekkushev acknowledged that he knew the explosives he transported were to be used for an act of terror. Dekkushev also confirmed Gochiyaev's role in the attacks. Dekkushev was extradited to Russia on 14 April 2002 to stand trial. Krymshakhalov was apprehended and extradicted to Moscow. Achemez Gochiyaev, the head of the group that carried out the attacks and allegedly the main organiser, remains a fugitive, and is under an international search warrant.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In a statement released in January 2004, the FSB said, "until we arrest Gochiyayev, the case [of the apartment block bombings of 1999] will not be closed." In an interview with Dmitry Gordon published on May 18, 2020, former GRU officer Igor Strelkov said that during the initial stage of the Second Chechen war, he was a part of a group which attempted to capture Achemez Gochiyaev.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In September 1999, hundreds of Chechen nationals (out of the more than 100,000 permanently living in Moscow) were briefly detained and interrogated in Moscow, as a wave of anti-Chechen sentiments swept the city. However, no Chechens were tried for the Buinaksk, Moscow or Volgodonsk attacks. Rather, it were Dagestani Wahhabis in the case of the Buinaksk bombing, and Karachay Wahhabis in the case of Moscow and Volgodonsk attacks.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to the official investigation, the following people either delivered explosives, stored them, or harboured other suspects:


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: An independent public commission to investigate the bombings was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov. The commission started its work in February 2002. On 5 March Sergei Yushenkov and Duma member Yuli Rybakov flew to London where they met Alexander Litvinenko and Mikhail Trepashkin. After this meeting, Trepashkin began working with the commission.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: However, the public commission was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have died in apparent assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003, respectively. Another member of the commission, Otto Lacis, was assaulted in November 2003 and two years later, on 3 November 2005, he died in a hospital after a car accident.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The commission asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to investigate the case. Trepashkin said he found that the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. Trepashkin also investigated a letter attributed to Achemez Gochiyayev and found that the alleged assistant of Gochiyayev who arranged the delivery of sacks might have been Kapstroi-2000 vice president Alexander Karmishin, a resident of Vyazma.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Trepashkin was unable to bring the alleged evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003 (on charges of illegal arms possession) and imprisoned in Nizhny Tagil, just a few days before he was to make his findings public. He was sentenced by a Moscow military closed court to four years imprisonment on a charge of revealing state secrets. Amnesty International issued a statement that "there are serious grounds to believe that Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested and convicted under falsified criminal charges which may be politically motivated, in order to prevent him continuing his investigative and legal work related to the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities".


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In a letter to Olga Konskaya, Trepashkin wrote that some time before the bombings, Moscow's Regional Directorate against Organized Crimes (RUOP GUVD) arrested several people for selling the explosive RDX. Following that, Nikolai Patrushev's Directorate of FSB officers came to the GUVD headquarters, captured evidence and ordered the investigators fired. Trepashkin wrote that he learned about the story at a meeting with several RUOP officers in the year 2000. They claimed that their colleagues could present eyewitness accounts in a court. They offered a video tape with evidence against the RDX dealers. Mr Trepashkin did not publicise the meeting fearing for lives of the witnesses and their families.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Trepashkin, his supervisors and the people from the FSB promised not to arrest him if he left the Kovalev commission and started working together with the FSB "against Alexander Litvinenko".


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 24 March 2000, two days before the presidential elections, NTV Russia featured the Ryazan events of Fall 1999 in the talk show "Independent Investigation". The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB public relations director Alexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed few days earlier. On 26 March, Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk. Seven months later, NTV general manager said at the JFK School of Government that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin warned him on several occasions. Malashenko's recollection of Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV "crossed the line" and that the NTV managers were "outlaws" in the eyes of the Kremlin. According to Alexander Goldfarb, Mr. Malashenko told him that Valentin Yumashev brought a warning from the Kremlin, one day before airing the show, promising in no uncertain terms that the NTV managers "should consider themselves finished" if they went ahead with the broadcast.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Artyom Borovik was among the people who investigated the bombings. He received numerous death threats and died in a suspicious plane crash in March 2000 that was regarded by Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky as a probable assassination.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former security service member Alexander Litvinenko, who investigated the bombings, were killed in 2006.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Surviving victims of the Guryanova street bombing asked President Dmitry Medvedev to resume the official investigation in 2008, but it was not resumed.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In a 2017 discussion at the RFE/RL Sergei Kovalyov said: "I think that the Chechen trace was skilfully fabricated. No one from the people who organized the bombings was found, and no one actually was looking for them". He then was asked by Vladimir Kara-Murza if he believes that several key members of his commission, and even Boris Berezovskiy and Boris Nemtsov who "knew quite a few things about the bombings" were killed to prevent the independent investigation. Kovalev responded: "I cannot state with full confidence that the explosions were organized by the authorities. Although it's clear that the explosions were useful for them, useful for future President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, because he had just promised to "waste in the outhouse" (as he said) everyone who had any relation to terrorism. It was politically beneficial for him to scare people with terrorism. That is not proven. But what can be stated with full confidence is this: the investigation of both the Moscow explosions and the so-called "exercises" in Ryazan is trumped up. There can be various possibilities. It seems to me, that Ryazan should have been the next explosion, but I cannot prove that."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to David Satter, Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Pribylovsky and Boris Kagarlitsky, the bombings were a successful false flag operation coordinated by the Russian state security services to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya and to bring Putin to power. Some of them described the bombings as typical "active measures" practised by the KGB in the past. The war in Chechnya boosted Prime Minister and former FSB Director Vladimir Putin's popularity, and brought the pro-war Unity Party to the State Duma and Putin to the presidency within a few months.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: With Yeltsin and his family facing possible criminal prosecution, however, a plan was put into motion to put in place a successor who would guarantee that Yeltsin and his family would be safe from prosecution and the criminal division of property in the country would not be subject to reexamination. For "Operation Successor" to succeed, however, it was necessary to have a massive provocation. In my view, this provocation was the bombing in September 1999 of the apartment building bombings in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. In the aftermath of these attacks, which claimed 300 lives, a new war was launched against Chechnya. Putin, the newly appointed prime minister who was put in charge of that war, achieved overnight popularity. Yeltsin resigned early. Putin was elected president and his first act was to guarantee Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The view about the bombings being organized and perpetrated by Russian state security services was originally put forward by journalist David Satter and historians Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, in co-authorship with Alexander Litvinenko. It was later supported by a number of historians. Amy Knight, a historian of the KGB, wrote that it was "abundantly clear" that the FSB was responsible for carrying out the attacks and that Vladimir Putin's "guilt seems clear," since it was inconceivable that the FSB would have done so without the sanction of Putin, the agency's former director and by then Prime Minister of Russia. In her book "Putin's Kleptocracy", historian Karen Dawisha summarized evidence related to the bombings and concluded that "to blow up your own innocent and sleeping people in your capital city is an action almost unthinkable. Yet the evidence that the FSB was at least involved in planting a bomb in Ryazan is incontrovertible." According to Timothy Snyder, "it seemed possible" that the perpetrators of the apartment bombings were FSB officers. David Satter considered the bombings as a political provocation by the Russian secret services that was similar to the burning of the Reichstag.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: This view has been also supported by investigative journalists. In 2008, British journalist Edward Lucas concluded in his book "The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West" that "The weight of evidence so far supports the grimmest interpretation: that the attacks were a ruthlessly planned stunt to create a climate of panic and fear in which Putin would quickly become the country's indisputable leader, as indeed he did." In the September 2009 issue of "GQ", veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson wrote about on Putin's role in the Russian apartment bombings, based in part on his interviews with Mikhail Trepashkin The journal owner, Condé Nast, then took extreme measures to prevent an article by Anderson from appearing in the Russian media, both physically and in translation.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Former Russian State Security Council chief Alexandr Lebed in his 29 September 1999 interview with "Le Figaro" said he was almost convinced that the government organised the terrorist acts. Andrei Illarionov, a former key economic adviser to the Russian president, said that FSB involvement "is not a theory, it is a fact. There is no other element that could have organized the bombings except for the FSB." Later Lebed's public relations staff claimed that he was quoted out of the context.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer noted that "The FSB accused Khattab and Gochiyaev, but oddly they did not point the finger at Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov's regime, which is what the war was launched against."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: A number of US politicians commented that they consider credible the allegations about Russian state security services as the actual organizers of the bombings. In 2003, U.S. senator John McCain said that "It was during Mr. Putin's tenure as Prime Minister in 1999 that he launched the Second Chechen War following the Moscow apartment bombings. There remain credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks. Mr. Putin ascended to the presidency in 2000 by pointing a finger at the Chechens for committing these crimes, launching a new military campaign in Chechnya, and riding a frenzy of public anger into office."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 11 January 2017, senator Marco Rubio raised the issue of the 1999 bombings during the confirmation hearings for Rex Tillerson. According to senator Rubio, "there's [an] incredible body of reporting, open source and other, that this was all—all those bombings were part of a black flag operation on the part of the FSB." On 10 January 2018, senator Ben Cardin of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report entitled "Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security". According to the report, "no credible evidence has been presented by the Russian authorities linking Chechen terrorists, or anyone else, to the Moscow bombings."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Satter, all four bombings that occurred had a similar "signature" which indicated that the explosives had been carefully prepared, a mark of skilled specialists. There is also no explanation as to how the terrorists were able to obtain tons of hexogen explosive and transport it to various locations in Russia; hexogen is produced in one plant in Perm Oblast for which the central FSB is responsible for the security. The culprits would also have needed to organise nine explosions (the four that occurred and the five attempted bombings reported by the authorities) in different cities in a two-week period. Satter's estimate for the time required for target plan development, site visits, explosives preparation, renting space at the sites and transporting explosives to the sites was four to four and a half months.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In a speech to the Oxford Union on 12th March 2022, former MI6 officer Christopher Steele voiced support for the idea that the bombings were likely a false flag operation conducted by Russian security services in order to justify the war in Chechnya.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The theory of Russian government involvement has been supported in a number of books and movies on the subject.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: David Satter, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, authored two books "Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State" and "The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin" (published by Yale University Press in 2003 and 2016) where he scrutinized the events and came to the conclusion that the bombings were organized by Russian state security services.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In 2002, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and historian Yuri Felshtinsky published a book "". According to authors the bombings and other terrorist acts have been committed by Russian security services to justify the Second Chechen War and to bring Vladimir Putin to power.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In another book, "Lubyanka Criminal Group", Litvinenko and Alexander Goldfarb described the transformation of the FSB into a criminal and terrorist organization, including conducting the bombings. Former GRU analyst and historian Viktor Suvorov said that the book describes "a leading criminal group that provides "protection" for all other organized crime in the country and which continues the criminal war against their own people", like their predecessors NKVD and KGB. He added: "The book proves: Lubyanka [the KGB headquarters] was taken over by enemies of the people. ... If Putin's team can not disprove the facts provided by Litvinenko, Putin must shoot himself. Patrushev and all other leadership of "Lubyanka Criminal Group" must follow his example."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko published a book "Death of a Dissident". They asserted that the murder of Mr. Litvinenko was "the most compelling proof" of the FSB involvement theory. According to the book, the murder of Litvinenko "gave credence to all his previous theories, delivering justice for the tenants of the bombed apartment blocks, the Moscow theater-goers, Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya, and the half-exterminated nation of Chechnya, exposing their killers for the whole world to see."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: A PBS "Frontline" documentary on Vladimir Putin also mentioned the theory and FSB involvement, citing the quick removal of rubble and bodies from the bombing scenes before any investigation could take place, the discovery of the Ryazan bomb, the deaths of several people who had attempted to investigate the bombings, as well as the defused Ryazan bomb being made of Russian military explosives and detonators.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: A documentary film Assassination of Russia was made in 2000 by two French producers who had previously worked on NTV's "Sugar of Ryazan" program.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: A documentary "Nedoverie" ("Disbelief") about the bombing controversy made by Russian director Andrei Nekrasov was premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the story of Tatyana and Alyona Morozova, the two Russian-American sisters, who had lost their mother in the attack, and decided to find out who did it. His next film on the subject was "". The film doesn't intend to investigate the Litvinenko murder, rather than that, its goal is to put the case into a wider context of the events unfolding in post-Soviet Russia.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Yuli Dubov, author of "The Big Slice", wrote a novel "The Lesser Evil", based on the bombings. The main characters of the story are "Platon" (Boris Berezovsky) and "Larry" (Badri Patarkatsishvili). They struggle against an evil KGB officer, "Old man" (apparently inspired by the legendary Philipp Bobkov), who brings another KGB officer, "Fedor Fedorovich" (Vladimir Putin) to power by staging a series of apartment bombings.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: In March 2000, Putin dismissed the allegations of FSB involvement in the bombings as "delirious nonsense." "There are no people in the Russian secret services who would be capable of such crime against their own people. The very allegation is immoral," he said. An FSB spokesman said that "Litvinenko's evidence cannot be taken seriously by those who are investigating the bombings". According to Strobe Talbott who was a United States Deputy Secretary of State during the events, "there was no evidence to support" the "conspiracy theory, although Russian public opinion did indeed solidify behind Putin in his determination to carry out a swift, decisive counteroffensive."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, "From the start, it seemed that the Kremlin was determined to suppress all discussion ... When Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian human rights activist, tried to import copies of Litvinenko's and Felshtinsky's "Blowing up Russia" in 2003, they were confiscated by the FSB. Trepashkin himself, acting as a lawyer for two relatives of the victims of the blast, was unable to obtain information he requested and was entitled to see by law". However, Soldatov believed that the obstruction might reflect "'paranoia' rather than guilt on the part of the authorities". Consequently, Soldatov argued, that paranoia has produced the very conspiracy theories that the Russian Government intended to eradicate. In their book "The New Nobility", Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan believe that the Ryazan incident had actually been a training exercise. According to the authors, such exercises are typical for Vympel, a unit of the FSB whose mission is to verify the efficacy of counterterrorism measures at sites such as nuclear plants. In authors' opinion, the book "Blowing Up Russia" by Felshtinsky and Litvinenko contained no new evidence against the FSB, and claims by Trepashkin were highly dubious. Soldatov and Borogan noted that the main point of allegations against the FSB was that Achemez Gochiyaev was an innocent businessman, who was made a scapegoat by the FSB and falsely accused of perpetrating the bombings. However, according to Soldatov and Borogan, Gochiyaev was a leader of a local Islamist group since the mid-1990s, and Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov were members of the same group called "Muslim Society No. 3". According to Russian state security services, the group was founded in 1995, counted more than 500 members by 2001, and was responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in the 2000s. Soldatov and Borogan have also noted a partial admission of guilt by Dekkushev and Krymshamkhalov during a trial in 2003.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: According to Robert Bruce Ware, the simplest explanation for the apartment block blasts is that they were perpetrated by Islamist extremists from North Caucasus who sought retribution for the attacks of the Federal forces against the Islamist enclave in the central Dagestan, known as the Islamic Djamaat. Ware points out that that would explain the timing of the attacks, and why there were no attacks after the date on which the insurgents were driven from Dagestan. It would also explain why no Chechen claimed responsibility. Also it would explain Basayev's reference to responsibility of Dagestanis and it would be consistent with the initial vow of Khattab to set off the bombs blasting through Russian cities. Ware also criticizes an argument that David Satter and Rajan Menon use to support the view of Russian security services responsibility for the bombings—that the apartment block explosions involved hexogen, which is a highly controlled substance in Russia and is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. According to Ware, that's not the case, as sizable amounts of hexogen (as well as other weaponry) were readily available in Dagestan. As a proof, Ware cites the police reports of the program for voluntary surrender of arms in Dagestan which ran for a couple of months in 2003 and revealed large quantities of hexogen and ammonite.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Max Abrahms, a researcher who is critical of the efficacy of terrorism in general, argued that the bombings were detrimental for the self-determination of Chechnya. He noted that the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria has achieved a de facto independence from Russia after the Khasavyurt Accord, with two thirds of Russian citizens favoring the separation of the breakaway republic. However, the public opinion in Russia has changed dramatically after the bombings. Most Russians started "baying for blood" and strongly supporting the war with Chechnya that became inevitable and led to the loss of the independence as a result of the bombings. According to Abrahms, this supports his theory that attacks by terrorist organizations have been always counterproductive for the perpetrators and therefore gave rise to conspiracy theories about alternative perpetrators who actually benefited from the events.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Political scientist Ronald R. Pope in his review of David Satter's book "Darkness at Dawn" cited Kirill Pankratov's criticism, published as a contribution to Johnson's Russia List. Regarding the apartment bombings, Pankratov argued that the Russian authorities did not need an additional justification to wage a war against Chechnya, in view of high-profile kidnappings and the invasion of Dagestan. One of his other arguments was that the theory of FSB responsibility for the bombings implied that it had been able to keep the lid on the operation much more effectively than the FSB had been able to execute it.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Political scientist Brian Taylor believes that there's too little evidence to decide which version of the events is correct, as the available evidence is fragmentary and controversial. Taylor identifies several reasons to doubt the conspiracy version. First, while the bombings did propel Putin to power, by itself it's not the evidence that this was the goal of the attacks. Second, there was a casus belli even without the bombings—namely, the invasion of Dagestan and multiple kidnappings in the region in the preceding years. Third, if the goal of the bombings was to justify a new war, one or two bombings in Moscow would be more than adequate. Any subsequent bombings would be potentially dangerous, because they would increase the risk to expose the conspiracy. Fourth, he believes that a plot involving multiple players and a large number of FSB operatives could not be kept secret. According to Taylor, it's plausible that FSB "simulated" an attack in Ryazan in order to claim credit for "uncovering" it; however the plot was foiled by vigilant local denizens and law enforcement personnel. The "training exercise" justification was improvised after the plot failed.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Yuri Luzhkov, a mayor of Moscow at the time of the bombings, believed that the bombings in Moscow were facilitated by the new piece of legislation that established Freedom of movement within the country—which was restricted prior to 1993. According to Luzhkov, the law made it possible for Chechen terrorists to bring weapons to Moscow and store them there, as well as purchase auto vehicles and provide housing for tens of bandits who had arrived in Moscow. According to Luzhkov, "for three months, after having arrived in Moscow, a terrorist could live wherever he wanted and stay with anyone, without notifying the police", which allowed the criminals to prepare the bombings.


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: On 14 July 2016, David Satter filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the State Department, the CIA and the FBI, inquiring about documents pertaining to the apartment bombings, the Ryazan incident and persons who tried to investigate the bombings and were killed. The agencies acknowledged receipt of the requests, but Satter received no other response within the statutory time limit. On 29 August 2016, Satter filed suit against the Department of Justice and other agencies involved. However, CIA refused even to acknowledge the existence of any relevant records because doing so would reveal "very specific aspects of the Agency's intelligence interest, or lack thereof, in the Russian bombings."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: The State Department responded with a redacted copy of a cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow. According to the cable, on 24 March 2000, a former member of Russian intelligence services told a U.S. diplomat that the real story about the Ryazan incident could never be known because it "would destroy the country." The informant said the FSB had "a specially trained team of men" whose mission was "to carry out this type of urban warfare". The informant has also said that Viktor Cherkesov, the FSB's first deputy director and an interrogator of Soviet dissidents was "exactly the right person to order and carry out such actions."


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: David Satter made a renewed FOIA request, and on 22 March 2017, State Department responded that documents concerning the U.S. assessment of the bombings would remain secret. A draft Vaughn index, a document used by agencies to justify withholdings in FOIA cases, said that the release of that information had "the potential to inject friction into or cause serious damage" to relationships with the Russian Government that were "vital to U.S. national security".


title: Russian apartment bombings

text: Multiple survivors of the bombings have developed disabilities, many of them were diagnosed with a posttraumatic stress disorder. In 2006 Irina Khalai, a survivor of the Volgodonsk bombing, has founded an NGO "Volga-Don", which promotes legislation for the legal recognition of victims of terrorist attacks.


title: WWE Raw

text: WWE Raw, also known as Monday Night Raw or simply Raw, is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that currently airs live every Monday at 8 p.m. ET on the USA Network in the United States. The show features characters from the Raw brand, to which WWE employees are assigned to work and perform. The show debuted on January 11, 1993 and is currently considered to be one of two flagship shows, along with "Friday Night SmackDown".


title: WWE Raw

text: In September 2000, "Raw" moved from the USA Network to TNN, which rebranded to Spike TV in August 2003. On October 3, 2005, "Raw" returned to the USA Network, where it remains today. The WWE Network has ceased operations in the United States as of April 5, 2021, with all content being moved to Peacock TV, which currently has most "Raw" episodes, excluding content that was censored or removed by Peacock TV's standards and practices department. Recent episodes are still available for on-demand viewing 30 days after the original air date.


title: WWE Raw

text: Since its first episode, "Raw" has been broadcast live from 208 different arenas, 171 cities and towns, and ten different nations: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Afghanistan in 2005, Iraq in 2006 and 2007, South Africa, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Mexico.


title: WWE Raw

text: Beginning as WWF's "Monday Night Raw," the program first aired on January 11, 1993 on the USA Network as a replacement for "Prime Time Wrestling", which aired on the network for eight years. The original "Raw" was sixty minutes in length and broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. The "Raw" formula was considerably different from the taped weekend shows that aired at the time such as "Superstars" and "Wrestling Challenge". Instead of matches taped weeks in advance with studio voice overs and taped discussion, "Raw" was a show shot and aired to a live audience, with angles playing out as they happened.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" originated from the Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center, a small New York City theater, and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved to be a successful improvement. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF. From Spring 1993 up until Spring 1997, "Raw" would tape several week's worth of episodes after a live episode had aired. The WWF taped several weeks worth of "Raw" from the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, New York in April 1993, and again in June and October. The first episode produced outside of New York was taped in Bushkill, Pennsylvania in November 1993 and "Raw" left the Manhattan Center permanently as the show would be taken on the road throughout the United States and had in smaller venues.


title: WWE Raw

text: On September 4, 1995, the WWF's chief competitor World Championship Wrestling began airing its new wrestling show, "Monday Nitro", live each week on TNT, which marked the start of the Monday Night Wars. "Raw" and "Nitro" went head-to-head for the first time on September 11, 1995. At the start of the ratings war in 1995 through to mid-1996, "Raw" and "Nitro" exchanged victories over each other in a closely contested rivalry. Beginning in mid-1996, however, due to the nWo angle, "Nitro" started a ratings win-streak that lasted for 84 consecutive weeks, ending on April 13, 1998. On February 3, 1997, "Raw" went to a two-hour format, to compete with the extra hour on "Nitro" (which had been expanded to two hours in the summer of 1996), and by March 10, it was renamed to "Raw Is War". It was also during the time "Raw" would be aired live more often. After WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new "WWF Attitude" brand. The April 13, 1998 episode of "Raw Is War", which was headlined by a match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996.


title: WWE Raw

text: On January 4, 1999, Mick Foley, who had wrestled for WCW during the early 1990s as Cactus Jack, won the WWF Championship as Mankind on "Raw Is War". On orders from Eric Bischoff, "Nitro" announcer Tony Schiavone gave away this previously taped result on a live "Nitro" and then sarcastically added, "That's gonna put some butts in the seats", consequently resulting in over 600,000 viewers switching channels to "Raw Is War" to see the underdog capture the WWF Championship. This was also the night that "Nitro" aired a WCW World Heavyweight Championship match in which Kevin Nash laid down for Hollywood Hogan after Hogan poked him in the chest.


title: WWE Raw

text: On June 28, 2000, Viacom won the landmark deal with the WWF to move all of its WWF programs stemming from the lawsuit action against WWF from USA Network. The new television contract and the subsequent purchase of competitor WCW led to many changes in WWF's programming content. "Raw Is War" premiered on TNN on September 25, 2000.


title: WWE Raw

text: WCW's sharp decline in revenue and ratings led to AOL Time Warner selling selected assets such as the WCW name, tapes, and contracts to the WWF in March 2001 for $3 million. The final episode of Nitro, which aired on March 26, 2001, began with Vince McMahon making a short statement about his recent purchase of WCW and ended with a simulcast with "Raw" on TNN and "Nitro" on TNT including an appearance by Vince's son Shane. The younger McMahon interrupted his father's gloating over the WCW purchase to explain that Shane was the one who actually owned WCW, setting up what became the WWF's "Invasion" storyline. Following the purchase of WCW and the September 11 attacks, the program was retitled as "Raw" on October 1, 2001, permanently retiring the "Raw Is War" moniker in prelude to the upcoming United States invasion of Afghanistan.


title: WWE Raw

text: In March 2002, as a result of the overabundance of talent left over from the Invasion storyline, WWF instituted a process known as the "brand extension", under which "Raw" and "SmackDown!" would be treated as two distinct divisions, each with their own rosters and championships. Shortly thereafter, the WWF was legally required to change the name of the company to World Wrestling Entertainment.


title: WWE Raw

text: On March 10, 2005, Viacom and WWE decided not to go on with the agreement with Spike TV, effectively ending "Raw" and other WWE programs' tenure on the network when their deal expired in September 2005. On April 4, 2005, WWE announced a three-year deal with NBCUniversal to bring "Raw" back to its former home, the USA Network, with two yearly specials on NBC and a Spanish "Raw" on Telemundo. On the same week as "Raw"s return to the USA Network, Spike TV scheduled Ultimate Fighting Championship's live "Ultimate Fight Night" in "Raw"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s old timeslot in an attempt to go head-to-head with "Raw".


title: WWE Raw

text: Since the move to USA Network, "Raw" has been pre-empted during the U.S. Open, which aired on USA, resulting the program to be moved to SciFi, a sister channel to USA, for three years. Since 2016, the two-hour version of that week's "Raw" has aired on Syfy. In February 2022, Raw temporarily moved to Syfy for two episodes due to USA's coverage (as part of NBC Sports) of the 2022 Winter Olympics.


title: WWE Raw

text: On the August 29, 2011 episode of "Raw", it was announced that performers from "Raw" and "SmackDown" were no longer exclusive to their respective brand, thus effectively dissolving the brand extension. On July 23, 2012, "Raw" aired its 1,000th episode, which also began its permanent three-hour format. On January 14, 2013, "Raw" celebrated its 20th year on the air. On May 25, 2016, WWE reintroduced the brand split, and a new set with red ring ropes, a brand new stage, used at SummerSlam. Furthermore, the broadcast table was moved to the entrance ramp similar to how it was in 2002–2005. On January 22, 2018, WWE celebrated the 25th anniversary of Raw with a simulcast show at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the home of the first Monday Night Raw, the Manhattan Center. On the February 19 episode of "Raw", six days before Elimination Chamber, seven participants of the men's Elimination Chamber match, Braun Strowman, Elias, Finn Bálor, John Cena, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and The Miz, were involved in a Gauntlet match that began with Reigns and Rollins. Strowman won the Gauntlet match by pinning The Miz in what was the longest match in WWE history, lasting nearly two hours.


title: WWE Raw

text: From March 12, 2020 to August 18, 2020, WWE announced that all of its live programs was aired from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida without an audience until further notice beginning with the following day's episode of "SmackDown" due to the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in the suspension of many professional sports leagues. On the May 25 episode of "Raw," NXT trainees were added into live crowds at the Performance Center. In August, all programming was moved to the new, state-of-the-art WWE ThunderDome inside of the Amway Center in Orlando. On May 21 WWE announced that they will return in front of live fans with a 25 city tour, therefore the July 12 edition of Raw would be the final WWE ThunderDome show.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw"s original set featured red, white, and blue ring-ropes, a blue ring-apron, blue steps, and a small stage made of neon tubes. Since March 10, 1997, broadcasts of "Raw" were split into two hours and given hourly names for television ratings purposes, with the first hour being referred to as "Raw Is War" and the second as "War Zone" in television listings, and by the show's on-screen graphics beginning with the June 9, 1997 episode. War Zone opened with simply the Raw intro repeated, punctuated with the War Zone logo, until the November 24, 1997 broadcast when it finally debuted its own distinct opening video, albeit simply a remixed Raw opening video. In 1995, the entrance way was changed to feature "Raw" in giant letters.


title: WWE Raw

text: In 1997, WWF changed to red ring-ropes for "Raw" as well as "Raw Is War" being written along the ring due to their rivalry with WCW. They also updated the stage to feature a 70 foot tall large screen video wall known as the "TitanTron", which consisted a projection screen with several metal stage trusses and a video projector. The set also initially featured curtains on each side with truss beams and lighting later bearing the "WWF Attitude" banner on the sides. By 1999, the WWF added the "WWF.com: 'Download This!'" logo on the bottom of the TitanTron and added two vertical sides on the stage.


title: WWE Raw

text: With "Raw" moving to TNN from USA beginning with the September 25, 2000 episode, the TNN network logo was added on top of the TitanTron on the December 11, 2000 episode. The Chyron graphics were added to the bottom from the July 2, 2001 episode.


title: WWE Raw

text: Beginning October 1, 2001, in direct response to the September 11 attacks, the first hour was referred to as "Raw" instead of "Raw Is War" and the second hour changed from the "War Zone" to the "Raw Zone" by the show's on-screen graphics; however, announcers would generally refer to the entire two-hour block as "Raw" on-air. "Raw" updated to a new, industrial-inspired, parallelogram-shaped TitanTron in 2002. When the "War" ended, they began advertising their website on the ring aprons instead. They occasionally used black ropes. Like the previous set, the TNN logo was relocated to the bottom side of the TitanTron which was then replaced by the Spike TV logo on August 11, 2003 upon network relaunch. During the July 25, 2005 broadcast of "Raw" in Cleveland, Ohio, a special stage design was built for the John Cena-Chris Jericho Battle of the Bands concert.


title: WWE Raw

text: The 2002 set was designed by Production Designer Jason Robinson and it is larger than the previous TitanTron with the dimensions of 55 foot wide by 25 foot tall weighing about 4,000 lbs. and requires 3 18,000 watt projector screens to power the TitanTron.


title: WWE Raw

text: On October 3, 2005, as "Raw" returned to USA Network, the 2002 set was retained but the beams and lighting on the sides were modified. The Spike TV logo was removed from the bottom side of the TitanTron. No changes to the "Raw" set beyond October 9, 2006 when it unveiled the new logo and opening intro featuring "...To Be Loved" by Papa Roach as its theme song and scenes from New York City, the birthplace of "Raw", with the ending of the intro shows the rooftop of Madison Square Garden. However, the logo and intro was retained until November 9, 2009 even with the changeover to high-definition broadcast on January 21, 2008, replacing the previous set which the "Minitron" was destroyed by Triple H when Vince McMahon's face was shown.


title: WWE Raw

text: From November 16, 2009 to July 23, 2012, the theme song for the "Raw" brand was "Burn It to the Ground" by Nickelback. Prior to this, the theme song for "Raw" was "...To Be Loved" by Papa Roach, which had been used since October 9, 2006 and "Across The Nation" by The Union Underground which was used from April 1, 2002 to October 2, 2006. The rap outro of "Thorn In Your Eye" featuring Scott Ian of Anthrax was the theme song from March 31, 1997 to March 25, 2002.


title: WWE Raw

text: On May 17, 2012, WWE and USA Network announced that "Raw" would switch to a permanent three-hour format beginning with the 1,000th episode on July 23, 2012. Since then, all three hours of the broadcast have been known solely as "Raw", though they are still considered three separate programs for Nielsen ratings purposes (as indicated by the on-screen copyright notice shown near the end of each hour). In 2008, "Raw" went HD debuting a new stage. In 2010, WWE retired the red ropes for "Raw" after thirteen years for an all white scheme, and in 2012 became standard for all WWE programming. In 2012, "Raw" updated their HD set.


title: WWE Raw

text: Starting in mid 2014, this set would also be featured in pay-per-views. From late September through the end of October 2012, the middle rope at all WWE programming was changed to pink due to WWE's alliance with the Susan G. Komen organization for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This was repeated in 2013, from late September to early November, and it was repeated in 2014 from 29 September. WWE is one of many organizations who provide financial contributions as well as getting customers and employees to support the cause.


title: WWE Raw

text: On August 18, 2014, "Raw" switched to a full 16:9 letterbox widescreen presentation, with a down-scaled version of the native HD feed on a 4:3 SD feed. In conjunction with this, "Raw" updated its graphics package, with the new WWE logo (first used with the WWE Network's launch in February) now on the lower-right corner of the screen, right next to the word, "Live". Also, the new WWE logo is seen on the ring's turnbuckle covers. The USA Network logo has also been moved to the lower-left hand corner of the screen. Also, "Raw"s theme song ("The Night") was modified. On re-runs on the WWE Network and on delayed broadcasts for most international markets, "Raw" is edited without the word "LIVE" and the hashtag.


title: WWE Raw

text: On March 23, 2015, WWE added a small LED board to the left side of the ring on "Raw". This LED board was also used at WrestleMania 31. The LED board since is now on an on/off basis, featuring in some weeks and not others. On the 1,000th episode of "Raw", "The Night" by Kromestatik debuted as the theme for "Raw" while "Energy" by Shinedown served as the secondary theme-song until August 18, 2014, when it was replaced with "Denial" by We Are Harlot.


title: WWE Raw

text: On the September 14, 2015 season premiere of "Raw", the middle rope was colored gold. Throughout the month of October 2015, the program partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month, with various stage elements being made pink. On the November 16, 2015, episode of "Raw", WWE had a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in Paris, France, on November 13, 2015. Another moment of silence was held months later in June for the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting.


title: WWE Raw

text: On July 25, 2016, the ropes returned to red, the announce table moved back to the top of the stage for the first time since 2005, and a new HD set and graphics were debuted. The new set was almost identical to the set used for SummerSlam 2012 and 2013. It received some negativity after the newly dubbed "New Era" was using an older set. The set was revamped just four weeks later with a more elaborate and distinctive design. The new set featured the absence of a traditional TitanTron which had been custom since 1997. In its place was a curved LED banner with several rows of rectangle LED lights behind it. The new set also introduced LED floor panels on the entrance ramp along with LED ring posts. On the January 29, 2018 episode of Raw, new graphics and an updated logo were introduced, which lasted until September 23, 2019.


title: WWE Raw

text: On September 30, 2019 for its season premiere (and coinciding with the premiere of "SmackDown" on Fox later that week), "Raw" introduced a new set (including the reinstatement of pyrotechnics, which had been dropped in 2017 due to budget issues), updated logo (cropped with a chevron to make it resemble the corner of a ring), and new theme music ("Legendary" by Skillet). It was also revealed that both shows will now be staffed by separate writing teams.


title: WWE Raw

text: In September 2021, the ropes would turn white from red permanently which would also apply the same to SmackDown. Meaning all WWE programming except NXT UK use white ropes once again just like December 2012 – July 2016.


title: WWE Raw

text: On November 22, 2021, an updated version of the 2019 logo was introduced, alongside new graphics, and theme song.


title: WWE Raw

text: In February 2022, "Raw" and "NXT" temporarily moved to Syfy in the United States, due to USA Network broadcasting coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics.


title: WWE Raw

text: According to Eric Bischoff on the episode of "WWE Confidential", the show utilizes 13 cameras at the cost of $85,000.


title: WWE Raw

text: The name for "Raw" was disputed in June 2009 when Muscle Flex Inc., a Los Angeles-based fitness company, had taken legal action against the WWE after a court ruled that some of WWE's trademarks related to "Raw" were similar enough to the "In the Raw" trademark that they caused confusion among Canadians. On June 18, 2008, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office then issued a final decision that found certain wares listed in the trademark application from WWE (No. 1,153,018) were confusingly similar and thus lacked distinctiveness from the Muscle Flex trademark, which Muscle Flex is in the process of acquiring. The WWE appealed the CIPO's ruling to the Federal Court of Canada, but failed to file the required documents by the deadline.


title: WWE Raw

text: In August 2009, the court ruled in favor of Muscle Flex, Inc. that it was successful in defending its "In the Raw" trademark against the WWE. In a press release date issued on July 20, 2009, Muscle Flex Inc. disclosed that it was in possession of WWE "Raw"-labeled items that it believes directly infringe on its "In the Raw" trademark such as various CDs, VHS tapes, and a number of apparel items. According to the WWE's most recent reported financial quarter in 2009, combined sales of WWE's consumer products and digital media business segments produced $40 million in global revenues. In previous quarters, these numbers were even higher.


title: WWE Raw

text: Similarly, in June 2017, the WWE issued a legal order to Raw Motors, an automobile repair company in Colwick, UK, over a logo that it claims infringes on one of its logos for "Raw" that was used from 2006 to 2012.


title: WWE Raw

text: Throughout its broadcast history, the show has aired episodes that have different themes. Some of them are yearly events such as the Slammy Awards. Others include tributes to various professional wrestlers who have recently died or retired from actively performing, as well as episodes commemorating various show milestones or anniversaries such as Raw 1000, which celebrated the 1000th broadcast.


title: WWE Raw

text: The show features various on-air personalities including the wrestlers themselves (both males and females), ring announcers, commentators, on-screen authority figures and musicians. "Raw" also has had various recurring on-air segments hosted by members of the roster.


title: WWE Raw

text: In the United States, the show airs live every Monday at 8PM ET on the USA Network. Occasionally, "Raw" is aired on same-day tape delay when WWE is on an overseas tour. "Raw" is also shown live on BT Sport in the United Kingdom and Ireland, in a deal which began January 2020. "Raw" airs live in India at 5.30 am on Tuesdays on Sony Ten 1. Since October 6, 2014, "Raw" has been airing live throughout Latin America on Fox Sports. The show also airs live on Supersport in South Africa on Tuesdays at 02:00 am CAT. "Raw" had aired in Australia on Fox8 since 2003, usually on a 27-hour tape delay, but has started airing live as of February 4, 2014. Syfy in the United States started airing a 2-hour replay of "Raw" on May 20, 2016. On June 26, 2018, WWE and USA Network announced a five-year contract extension for "Raw". The new agreement for the live, weekly three-hour block commenced in October 2019. Clips from some WWE shows have also been shown on Fox Sports.com.


title: WWE Raw

text: On September 24, 2012, Hulu signed a multi-year deal with WWE to stream all of the company's TV shows and some of its web series which includes "Raw". Episodes of "Raw" are available for viewing the following day as a condensed 90-minute version is available, not the full version as shown the previous night on the USA Network.


title: WWE Raw

text: As of December 9, 2016, all episodes of "Raw" are available on demand on the WWE Network. Recent episodes are available for on-demand viewing 30 days after their original air date.


title: WWE Raw

text: After WrestleMania 32 in 2016, WWE began with airing the newest episodes of Raw and SmackDown on YouTube for countries that do not air WWE programming on traditional TV for free in less than 24 hours after the original broadcast (The links are blocked in countries where the shows are traditionally available). The 90-minute Hulu version gets put on YouTube for international audiences.


title: WWE Raw

text: From 1995 to 2006, "Raw" was shown on The Sports Network (TSN) until it moved to rival sports broadcaster The Score (now renamed Sportsnet 360) after it was announced that TSN would be carrying "Monday Night Football" for the 2006 season. This meant that Canadian viewers would have to watch via tape-delay, as The Score did not broadcast "Raw" live at that time. Around that time, The Score aired "Countdown to Raw" until May 2013 when "Raw" is shown live to match the United States airtime. It was also shown on CKVR-TV in Barrie and CKMI-TV in Quebec until 2009.


title: WWE Raw

text: During its run on TSN, which aired live, Raw occasionally had been censored live for extremely violent scenes, or when female wrestlers or characters were assaulted by male wrestlers (particularly one segment that featured the 3-Minute Warning assaulting Kitana Baker). These actions are supposed to be in order to meet Canadian broadcast standards, with repeat broadcasts often more heavily edited. This move had disappointed many wrestling fans over the years, and is unusual since the violence of wrestling scenes are not significantly different from other television programs aired on regular Canadian networks.


title: WWE Raw

text: Due to Rogers holding the rights to the National Hockey League broadcasts, "Raw" also airs on its OLN channel. All archived broadcasts of "Raw" are available on the WWE Network. Rogers Media secured the rights to Canadian WWE programming until 2024.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" airs live in the MENA region on Shahid streaming platform Tuesday mornings, and later on the same day, a one-hour version airs on MBC Action at 8 PM Egypt Standard Time. It also airs on FM1 in Iran and on and in Israel. "Raw" further began airing on D-Smart in Turkey.


title: WWE Raw

text: In Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, "Raw" airs live on DAZN and with German commentary on ProSieben MAXX every Wednesday at 10pm. In Belgium, "Raw" airs on ABXplore (in French) and on Play6.


title: WWE Raw

text: In Czech Republic, "Raw" airs on Nova Sport. In France, "Raw" airs on AB1 and L’Équipe every Saturday.


title: WWE Raw

text: In Portugal, "Raw" airs live on Sport TV with Portuguese commentary. In Romania, "Raw" airs on Telekom Sport.


title: WWE Raw

text: In Russia, "Raw" airs on with Russian commentary. In Serbia, "Raw" was airs on Prva Srpska Televizija., like it was airs on OBN in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on RTL 2 in Croatia.


title: WWE Raw

text: In United Kingdom and Ireland, "Raw" airs live on BT Sport, with a one-hour version airing on Channel 5 every Sunday at 10:30am.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" airs live on Sony Ten 1 HD and Sony Ten 1 in India. And airs exclusive in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" streams live on TAP GO app with a live and encore telecast on TAP Sports (Philippines) on the same day and 5 in delayed telecast every Sunday nights.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" airs both live and delayed on Fox8 and Thursday nights on 9Go! as a one-hour version in Australia.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" airs in China on various local networks within China and Videoland Television Network in Taiwan in both English and Thai.


title: WWE Raw

text: "Raw" airs live on Fox Sports in Mexico and across Central and South America. It also airs on La Red in Chile, Unitel in Bolivia, Canal Uno in Colombia, Teleamazonas in Ecuador, Andina de Televisión in Peru, in Costa Rica, Canal VTV in El Salvador, Canal 5 in Honduras, RPC Canal 4 in Panama and Imagen Televisión in Mexico.


title: WWE Raw

text: Previously the rights to broadcast Raw, along with other WWE shows, were held by free-to-air broadcaster e.tv. Raw would play on Sundays in the evening, with a 7-day delay, edited to one hour and was the most watched program on the channel. However, in 2017 e.tv decided not to renew its broadcasting deal with WWE. The rights were later resold to SuperSport (the initial broadcasters of WWE programming).


title: WWE Raw

text: In 2019 SuperSport, along with its parent company MultiChoice, signed a deal to broadcast the 24-hour WWE channel as a pop-up channel for five months on their DStv platform. It is now a permanent channel on DStv under the channel number 128


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. The group was among the first to play jazz that featured the guitar as a lead instrument. Reinhardt recorded in France with many visiting American musicians, including Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter, and briefly toured the United States with Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1946. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1953 at the age of 43.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become standards within gypsy jazz, including "Minor Swing", "Daphne", "Belleville", "Djangology", "Swing '42", and "Nuages". Jazz guitarist Frank Vignola says that nearly every major popular-music guitarist in the world has been influenced by Reinhardt. Over the last few decades, annual Django festivals have been held throughout Europe and the U.S., and a biography has been written about his life. In February 2017, the Berlin International Film Festival held the world premiere of the French film "Django".


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt was born on 23 January 1910 in Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium, into a Belgian family of Manouche Romani descent. His father, Jean Eugene Weiss, domiciled in Paris with his wife, went by Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, his wife's surname, to avoid French military conscription. His mother, Laurence Reinhardt, was a dancer. The birth certificate refers to "Jean Reinhart, son of Jean Baptiste Reinhart, artist, and Laurence Reinhart, housewife, domiciled in Paris".


title: Django Reinhardt

text: A number of authors have repeated the claim that Reinhardt's nickname, Django, is Romani for "I awake"; however, it may also simply have been a diminutive, or local Walloon version, of "Jean". Reinhardt spent most of his youth in Romani encampments close to Paris, where he started playing the violin, banjo and guitar. He became adept at stealing chickens. His father reportedly played music in a family band comprising himself and seven brothers; a surviving photograph shows this band including his father on piano.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt was attracted to music at an early age, first playing the violin. At the age of 12 he received a banjo-guitar as a gift. He quickly learned to play, mimicking the fingerings of musicians he watched, who would have included local virtuoso players of the day such as Jean "Poulette" Castro and Auguste "Gusti" Malha, as well as from his uncle Guiligou, who played violin, banjo and guitar. Reinhardt was able to make a living playing music by the time he was 15, busking in cafés, often with his brother Joseph. At this time, he had not started playing jazz, although he had probably heard and had been intrigued by the version of jazz played by American expatriate bands like Billy Arnold's.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: At the age of 17, Reinhardt married Florine "Bella" Mayer, a girl from the same Romani settlement, according to Romani custom (although not an official marriage under French law). The following year he recorded for the first time. On these recordings, made in 1928, Reinhardt plays the "banjo" (actually the banjo-guitar) accompanying the accordionists Maurice Alexander, Jean Vaissade and Victor Marceau, and the singer Maurice Chaumel. His name was now drawing international attention, such as from British bandleader Jack Hylton, who came to France just to hear him play. Hylton offered him a job on the spot, and Reinhardt accepted.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Before he had a chance to start with the band, however, Reinhardt nearly died. On the night of 2 November 1928, Reinhardt was going to bed in the wagon that he and his wife shared in the caravan. He knocked over a candle, which ignited the extremely flammable celluloid that his wife used to make artificial flowers. The wagon was quickly engulfed in flames. The couple escaped, but Reinhardt suffered extensive burns over half his body. During his 18-month hospitalization, doctors recommended amputation of his badly damaged right leg. Reinhardt refused the surgery and was eventually able to walk with the aid of a cane.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: More crucial to his music, the fourth finger (ring finger) and fifth finger (little) of Reinhardt's left hand were badly burned. Doctors believed that he would never play guitar again. Reinhardt applied himself intensely to relearning his craft, however, making use of a new guitar bought for him by his brother, Joseph Reinhardt, who was also an accomplished guitarist. While he never regained the use of those two fingers, Reinhardt regained his musical mastery by focusing on his left index and middle fingers, using the two injured fingers only for chord work.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Within a year of the fire, in 1929, Bella Mayer gave birth to their son, Henri "Lousson" Reinhardt. Soon thereafter, the couple split up. The son eventually took the surname of his mother's new husband. As Lousson Baumgartner, the son himself became an accomplished musician who went on to record with his biological father.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: After parting from his wife and son, Reinhardt traveled throughout France, getting occasional jobs playing music at small clubs. He had no specific goals, living a hand-to-mouth existence, spending his earnings as quickly as he made them. Accompanying him on his travels was his new girlfriend, Sophie Ziegler. Nicknamed "Naguine," she and Reinhardt were distant cousins.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In the years after the fire, Reinhardt was rehabilitating and experimenting on the guitar that his brother had given him. After having played a broad spectrum of music, he was introduced to American jazz by an acquaintance, Émile Savitry, whose record collection included such musical luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. (The swinging sound of Venuti's jazz violin and Eddie Lang's virtuoso guitar-playing anticipated the more famous sound of Reinhardt and Grappelli's later ensemble.) Hearing their music triggered in Reinhardt a vision and goal of becoming a jazz professional.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: While developing his interest in jazz, Reinhardt met Stéphane Grappelli, a young violinist with similar musical interests. In 1928, Grappelli had been a member of the orchestra at the Ambassador Hotel while bandleader Paul Whiteman and Joe Venuti were performing there. In early 1934 both Reinhardt and Grappelli were members of Louis Vola's band.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: From 1934 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Reinhardt and Grappelli worked together as the principal soloists of their newly formed quintet, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, in Paris. It became the most accomplished and innovative European jazz group of the period.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt's brother Joseph and Roger Chaput also played on guitar, and Louis Vola was on bass. The Quintette was one of the few well-known jazz ensembles composed only of stringed instruments.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In Paris on 14 March 1933, Reinhardt recorded two takes each of "Parce que je vous aime" and "Si, j'aime Suzy", vocal numbers with lots of guitar fills and guitar support. He used three guitarists along with an accordion lead, violin, and bass. In August 1934, he made other recordings with more than one guitar (Joseph Reinhardt, Roger Chaput, and Reinhardt), including the first recording by the Quintette. In both years the great majority of their recordings featured a wide variety of horns, often in multiples, piano, and other instruments, but the all-string instrumentation is the one most often adopted by emulators of the Hot Club sound.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Decca Records in the United States released three records of Quintette tunes with Reinhardt on guitar, and one other, credited to "Stephane Grappelli & His Hot 4 with Django Reinhardt", in 1935.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt also played and recorded with many American jazz musicians, such as Adelaide Hall, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, and Rex Stewart (who later stayed in Paris). He participated in a jam session and radio performance with Louis Armstrong. Later in his career, Reinhardt played with Dizzy Gillespie in France. Also in the neighborhood was the artistic salon R-26, at which Reinhardt and Grappelli performed regularly as they developed their unique musical style.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In 1938, Reinhardt's quintet played to thousands at an all-star show held in London's Kilburn State auditorium. While playing, he noticed American film actor Eddie Cantor in the front row. When their set ended, Cantor rose to his feet, then went up on stage and kissed Reinhardt's hand, paying no concern to the audience. A few weeks later the quintet played at the London Palladium.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: When World War II broke out, the original quintet was on tour in the United Kingdom. Reinhardt returned to Paris at once, leaving his wife in the UK. Grappelli remained in the United Kingdom for the duration of the war. Reinhardt re-formed the quintet, with Hubert Rostaing on clarinet replacing Grappelli.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: While he tried to continue with his music, war with the Nazis presented Reinhardt with a potentially catastrophic obstacle, as he was a Romani jazz musician. Beginning in 1933, all German Romani were barred from living in cities, herded into settlement camps, and routinely sterilized. Romani men were required to wear a brown Gypsy ID triangle sewn on their chest, similar to the pink triangle that homosexuals wore, and much like the yellow Star of David that Jews had to subsequently wear. During the war, Romani were systematically killed in concentration camps. In France, they were used as slave labour on farms and in factories. During the Holocaust an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Romani throughout Europe were killed.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Hitler and Joseph Goebbels viewed jazz as un-German counterculture. Nonetheless, Goebbels stopped short of a complete ban on jazz, which now had many fans in Germany and elsewhere. Official policy towards jazz was much less strict in occupied France, according to author Andy Fry, with jazz music frequently played on both Radio France, the official station of Vichy France, and Radio Paris, which was controlled by the Germans. A new generation of French jazz enthusiasts, the Zazous, had arisen and swollen the ranks of the Hot Club. In addition to the increased interest, many American musicians based in Paris during the thirties had returned to the US at the beginning of the war, leaving more work for French musicians. Reinhardt was the most famous jazz musician in Europe at the time, working steadily during the early war years and earning a great deal of money, yet always under threat.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt expanded his musical horizons during this period. Using an early amplification system, he was able to work in more of a big-band format, in large ensembles with horn sections. He also experimented with classical composition, writing a Mass for the Gypsies and a symphony. Since he did not read music, Reinhardt worked with an assistant to notate what he was improvising. His modernist piece "Rhythm Futur" was also intended to be acceptable to the Nazis.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In 1943, Reinhardt married his long-term partner Sophie "Naguine" Ziegler in Salbris. They had a son, Babik Reinhardt, who became a respected guitarist.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In 1943 the tide of war turned against the Germans, with a considerable darkening of the situation in Paris. Severe rationing was in place, and members of Django's circle were being captured by the Nazis or joining the resistance.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt's first attempt at escape from Occupied France led to capture. Fortunately for him, a jazz-loving German, Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, allowed him to return to Paris. Reinhardt made a second attempt a few days later, but was stopped in the middle of the night by Swiss border guards, who forced him to return to Paris again.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: One of his tunes, 1940's "Nuages", became an unofficial anthem in Paris to signify hope for liberation. During a concert at the Salle Pleyel, the popularity of the tune was such that the crowd made him replay it three times in a row. The single sold over 100,000 copies.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Unlike the estimated 600,000 Romani people who were interned and killed in the Porajmos, the Romani Holocaust, Reinhardt survived the war.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: After the war, Reinhardt rejoined Grappelli in the UK. In the autumn of 1946, he made his first tour in the United States, debuting at Cleveland Music Hall as a special guest soloist with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. He played with many musicians and composers, such as Maury Deutsch. At the end of the tour, Reinhardt played two nights at Carnegie Hall in New York City; he received a great ovation and took six curtain calls on the first night.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Despite his pride in touring with Ellington (one of two letters to Grappelli relates his excitement), he was not fully integrated into the band. He played a few tunes at the end of the show, backed by Ellington, with no special arrangements written for him. After the tour, Reinhardt secured an engagement at Café Society Uptown, where he played four solos a day, backed by the resident band. These performances drew large audiences. Having failed to bring his usual Selmer Modèle Jazz, he played on a borrowed electric guitar, which he felt hampered the delicacy of his style. He had been promised jobs in California, but they failed to develop. Tired of waiting, Reinhardt returned to France in February 1947.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: After his return, Reinhardt re-immersed himself in Romani life, finding it difficult to adjust to the postwar world. He sometimes showed up for scheduled concerts without a guitar or amplifier, or wandered off to the park or beach. On a few occasions he refused to get out of bed. Reinhardt developed a reputation among his band, fans, and managers as extremely unreliable. He skipped sold-out concerts to "walk to the beach" or "smell the dew." During this period he continued to attend the R-26 artistic salon in Montmartre, improvising with his devoted collaborator, Stéphane Grappelli.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In Rome in 1949, Reinhardt recruited three Italian jazz players (on bass, piano, and snare drum) and recorded over 60 tunes in an Italian studio. He united with Grappelli, and used his acoustic Selmer-Maccaferri. The recording was issued for the first time in the late 1950s.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Back in Paris, in June 1950, Reinhardt was invited to join an entourage to welcome the return of Benny Goodman. He also attended a reception for Goodman, who, after the war ended, had asked Reinhardt to join him in the U.S. Goodman repeated his invitation and, out of politeness, Reinhardt accepted. However, Reinhardt later had second thoughts about what role he could play alongside Goodman, who was the "King of Swing", and remained in France.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In 1951, Reinhardt retired to Samois-sur-Seine, near Fontainebleau, where he lived until his death. He continued to play in Paris jazz clubs and began playing electric guitar. (He often used a Selmer fitted with an electric pickup, despite his initial hesitation about the instrument.) In his final recordings, made with his Nouvelle Quintette in the last few months of his life, he had begun moving in a new musical direction, in which he assimilated the vocabulary of bebop and fused it with his own melodic style.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: On 16 May 1953, while walking from the Gare de Fontainebleau–Avon Station after playing in a Paris club, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: It was a Saturday, and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive. Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau, at the age of 43.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt developed his initial musical approach via tutoring by relatives and exposure to other gypsy guitar players of the day, then playing the banjo-guitar alongside accordionists in the world of the Paris bal-musettes. He played mainly with a plectrum for maximum volume and attack (particularly in the 1920s-early 30s when amplification in venues was minimal or non-existent), although he could also play fingerstyle on occasion, as evidenced by some recorded introductions and solos. Following his accident in 1928 in which his left hand was severely burned and he lost most of the use of all except his first two fingers, he developed a completely new left hand technique and started performing on guitar accompanying popular singers of the day, before discovering jazz and presenting his new hybrid style of gypsy approach plus jazz to the outside world via the Quintette du Hot Club de France.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Despite his left hand handicap, Reinhardt was able to recapture (in modified form) and then surpass his previous level of proficiency on the guitar (by now his main instrument), not only as a lead instrumental voice but also as a driving and harmonically interesting rhythm player; his virtuosity, incorporating many gypsy-derived influences, was also matched with a superb sense of melodic invention as well as general musicality in terms of choice of notes, timing, dynamics, and utilizing the maximum tonal range from an instrument previously thought of by many critics as potentially limited in expression. Playing completely by ear (he could neither read nor write music), he roamed freely across the full range of the fretboard giving full flight to his musical imagination and could play with ease in any key. Guitarists, particularly in Britain and the United States, could scarcely believe what they heard on the records that the Quintette was making; guitarist, gypsy jazz enthusiast and educator Ian Cruickshank writes:


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Because of his damaged left hand (his ring and pinky fingers helped little in his playing) Reinhardt had to modify both his chordal and melodic approach extensively. For chords he developed a novel system based largely around 3-note chords, each of which could serve as the equivalent of several conventional chords in different inversions; for the treble notes he could employ his ring and little fingers to fret the relevant high strings even though he could not articulate these fingers independently, while in some chords he also employed his left hand thumb on the lowest string. Within his rapid melodic runs he frequently incorporated arpeggios, which could be played using two notes per string (played with his two "good" fingers, being his index and middle fingers) while shifting up or down the fingerboard, as opposed to the more conventional "box" approach of moving across strings within a single fretboard position (location). He also produced some of his characteristic "effects" by moving a fixed shape (such as a diminished chord) rapidly up and down the fretboard, resulting in what one writer has called "intervallic cycling of melodic motifs and chords". For an unsurpassed insight into these techniques in use, interested persons should not miss viewing the only known synchronised (sound and vision) footage of Reinhardt in performance, playing on an instrumental version of the song "J'Attendrai" for the short jazz film "Le Jazz Hot" in 1938–39 (copies available on YouTube and elsewhere).


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In his later style (c.1946 onwards) Reinhardt began to incorporate more bebop influences in his compositions and improvisations, also fitting a Stimer electric pickup to his acoustic guitar. With the addition of amplification, his playing became more linear and "horn like", with the greater facility of the amplified instrument for longer sustain and to be heard in quiet passages, and in general less reliance on his gypsy "bag of tricks" as developed for his acoustic guitar style (also, in some of his late recordings, with a very different supporting group context from his "classic", pre-war Quintette sound). These "electric period" Reinhardt recordings have in general received less popular re-release and critical analysis than his pre-war releases (the latter also extending to the period from 1940 to 1945 when Grappelli was absent, which included some of his most famous compositions such as "Nuages"), but are also a fascinating area of Reinhardt's work to study, and have begun to be revived by players such as the Rosenberg Trio (with their 2010 release "Djangologists") and Biréli Lagrène. Wayne Jefferies, in his article "Django's Forgotten Era", writes:


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt's first son, Lousson (a.k.a. Henri Baumgartner), played jazz in a mostly bebop style in the 1950s and 1960s. He followed the Romani lifestyle and was relatively little recorded. Reinhardt's second son, Babik, became a guitarist in a more contemporary jazz style, and recorded a number of albums before his death in 2001. After Reinhardt died, his younger brother Joseph at first swore to abandon music, but he was persuaded to perform and record again. Joseph's son Markus Reinhardt is a violinist in the Romani style.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: A third generation of direct descendants has developed as musicians: David Reinhardt, Reinhardt's grandson (by his son Babik), leads his own trio. Dallas Baumgartner, a great-grandson by Lousson, is a guitarist who travels with the Romani and keeps a low public profile. A distant relative, violinist Schnuckenack Reinhardt, became known in Germany as a performer of gypsy music and gypsy jazz up to his death in 2006, and assisted in keeping Reinhardt's legacy alive through the period following Django's death.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, and the first important European jazz musician to make a major contribution with jazz guitar. During his career he wrote nearly 100 songs, according to jazz guitarist Frank Vignola.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Using a Selmer guitar in the mid-1930s, his style took on new volume and expressiveness. Despite his physical disability, he played mainly using his index and middle fingers, and invented a distinctive style of jazz guitar.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: For about a decade after Reinhardt's death, interest in his musical style was minimal. In the fifties, bebop superseded swing in jazz, rock and roll took off, and electric instruments became dominant in popular music. Since the mid-sixties, there has been a revival of interest in Reinhardt's music, a revival that has extended into the 21st century, with annual festivals and periodic tribute concerts. His devotees included classical guitarist Julian Bream and country guitarist Chet Atkins, who considered him one of the ten greatest guitarists of the twentieth century.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Jazz guitarists in the U.S., such as Charlie Byrd and Wes Montgomery, were influenced by his style. In fact, Byrd, who lived from 1925 to 1999, said that Reinhardt was his primary influence. Guitarist Mike Peters notes that "the word 'genius' is bantered about too much. But in jazz, Louis Armstrong was a genius, Duke Ellington was another one, and Reinhardt was also." David Grisman adds, "As far as I'm concerned, no one since has come anywhere close to Django Reinhardt as an improviser or technician."


title: Django Reinhardt

text: The popularity of gypsy jazz has generated an increasing number of festivals, such as the Festival Django Reinhardt held every last weekend of June since 1983 in Samois-sur-Seine (France), the various DjangoFests held throughout Europe and the US, and Django in June, an annual camp for Gypsy jazz musicians and aficionados.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Woody Allen's film "Sweet and Lowdown" (1999), the story of a Django Reinhardt-like character, mentions Reinhardt and includes actual recordings in the film.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In February 2017, the Berlin International Film Festival held the world premiere of "Django", a French film directed by Etienne Comar. The movie covers Django's escape from Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943 and the fact that even under "constant danger, flight and the atrocities committed against his family", he continued composing and performing. Reinhardt's music was re-recorded for the film by the Dutch jazz band Rosenberg Trio with lead guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: The documentary film, "Djangomania!" was released in 2005. The hour-long film was directed and written by Jamie Kastner, who traveled throughout the world to show the influence of Django's music in various countries.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In 1984 the Kool Jazz Festival, held in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, was dedicated entirely to Reinhardt. Performers included Grappelli, Benny Carter, and Mike Peters with his group of seven musicians. The festival was organized by George Wein. Reinhardt is celebrated annually in the village of Liberchies, his birthplace.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Numerous musicians have written and recorded tributes to Reinhardt. The jazz standard "Django" (1954) was composed by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet in honour of Reinhardt. The Allman Brothers Band song "Jessica" was written by Dickey Betts in tribute to Reinhardt. American country music artists Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard named their sixth and final collaborative studio album "Django and Jimmie". It was released on 2 June 2015, by Legacy Recordings. The album contains the song "Django and Jimmie" which is a tribute to musicians Django Reinhardt and Jimmie Rodgers.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: Ramelton, Co. Donegal, Ireland, each year hosts a festival in tribute to Django called "Django sur Lennon" or "Django on the Lennon" the Lennon being the name of the local river that runs through the village.


title: Django Reinhardt

text: In coincidence with the 110th anniversary in 2020 of Django's birth, a graphic novel depicting his youth years was published under the title "Django Main de Feu", by writer Salva Rubio and artist Efa through Belgian publisher Dupuis.