Missing - Probably Dead

On April 20th 1992, an expert team of the military and civilian authorities carried out an investigation on the swampy terrain near the Sunja river, north of Hrvatska Kostajnica. It was then in that swampy region that they dug out an "Opel - Vectra" motor vehicle, which was previously destroyed by being squashed with a heavy construction machine. The serial numbers of the chassis and the engine were found with great difficulty. The vehicle was - according to the notes from the investigation - first hit by 30 to 40 bullets from rifles of various calibers, and was then set on fire. In the vehicle, the team found mortal remains in the form of charred and crushed bones, parts of a portable radio station and one lid of a fuel reservoir of Russian make, from a "Lada". There were no pieces of clothes, equipment, personal things and so on. By expanding the area of investigation the team found out that the vehicle was drawn to the place where it was buried, after having been squashed with a heavy construction machine: parts kept falling off while the vehicle was dragged. Thus it was reconstructed how the car got to the place where it was probably burned: the crossroads in the village of Kostajnicki Majur, across the "Lug" pub, at the beginning of the road leading towards Petrinja, through the village of Kukuruzari. Clear traces of burning were found there: melted asphalt with parts of plastic from the automobile which show that the vehicle was heading towards Petrinja. The results of the crime investigation show that the parts found at the scene of the fire are the same as the material on the wreck that was dug out. The investigation team, consisting of a military investigator, a security officer of the Yugoslav People's Army, a traffic engineer from the Banja Luka traffic patrol (with two observers from the Russian embassy), concluded that the fire took place long ago enough for it to coincide with the time of the disappearance of the two Russian journalists - Victor Noggin and Genadiy Kurinoy. The serial numbers of the engine and chassis are the same as the numbers on the car in which Noggin and Kurinoy set off on their last journey; one of them took with him, by chance, the lid of the reservoir from the "Lada", and this detail was remembered at the embassy. Genadiy Kurinoy and Victor Noggin were last seen - according to military sources - in front of the post office in Hrvatska Kostajnica, while they were talking to the local commander of the town's defense, on September 1st; this is the town from which they sent their last report. It is not known whether they were in the vehicle when it was attacked and burned. But, if they tried to get from Kostajnica to Petrinja via Kukuruzari when clashes were taking place around Kostajnicki Majur, this was an impossible undertaking. The only road they could have taken was via Sunja, but they had to go around Hrastovac (in Serbian hands). It is not clear who was where and who controlled what at that crossroads at the time (the beginning of September) when they appeared in Majur. The vehicle was hit from the front left side, that is from the ditch by the road and, in principle, it was heading towards Serbian positions, which doesn't have to mean anything due to the confusion that was present and the moving of the front line during those days. Both sides had good reason to regret having killed the Russian journalists. All this happened at the beginning of September, after the unsuccessful coup in Moscow, when the Serbs cherished hopes that they would get help from their "Orthodox Slav brothers" (some still do); it was still not known what stand Russia would take at the United Nations, not to mention the pan-Slavic brotherhood. If it was the Serbian fighters who shot, it is logical that - when seeing what they had done - they would try to cover up the entire matter and to hide the traces. The possible explanation that the Orthodox Russian brothers were spying for the Croats, would simply be unimaginable (both psychologically and in the propaganda sense). And if it was the Croatian forces that shot, the situation is even worse: first of all they were trying to get international recognition and secondly they kept insisting on their "thousand year old civilization"; if it were to be discovered that they killed two Russian journalists, there would be trouble... However, where did the remains of the portable radio station in the vehicle come from? Unfortunately, there is no information about the type of device; it is known that, at the time, journalists used all kinds of radio stations and receivers to get as much information as possible in the midst of clashes and other events. Some of these devices were of a commercial type; others were special receivers used by the army and police; some of them had "Motorols" and similar portable radio devices used by the army and police. The unconfirmed information established by the investigation team says that Noggin and Kurinoy got bullet-proof vests, helmets and a radio station from the local authorities in Hrvatska Kostajnica; the remains of all that should have been found in the vehicle, but there were only parts of the radio. The most sensitive political question refers to the fact that the already burnt vehicle was destroyed (squashed), dragged and buried. This was obviously an attempt to hide the traces of the crime. The motivation to go to such an effort must have been strong and - most probably - it had to do with the knowledge about who had been killed in the hit vehicle. Both sides had reason to eliminate the traces: the fact that the vehicle was dragged at least two kilometers, or six at the most north-west from the spot, through fields and swamps, points to the fear of some kind of investigation one day. Who was, at the time (the beginning of September) more afraid of the results of an investigation: the Croats or the Serbs? The two vital Croatian lines of communication towards Hrvatska Kostajnica were Petrinja - Kukuruzari (the shorter route) and Sunja - Hrastovac - Kostajnicki Majur (the longer route). Serbian forces blocked the first route in August; the second one could be used until the first half of September, when Majur was seized (but even until then one had to go around Hrastovac). Croatian forces never boasted of having entered Kukuruzari, a Serbian village with a partisan tradition, which, in World War II, suffered great losses from the hands of their neighbors in Majur. This whole story and the fact that the buried vehicle was found near the territory of the Serbian village of Kukuruzari does not necessarily point to the conclusion that the Russian journalists were shot by the Serbs; one can only conclude that the car was dragged and buried by the Serbs. The question is - why? According to the most probable scenario, to all intents and purposes, the Russian journalists found themselves, by mistake, in the zone of combat activities and in an ambush of someone who could not know whom he was dealing with, nor pay attention to that in the midst of clashes. When Noggin and Kurinoy set off, the car was marked "TV", but we don't know whether the letters were still on the vehicle when it was ambushed. However, no matter what it said on it, it was all the same to the Serbs if the vehicle came from the direction of Kostajnica and got into the zone of combat; before this, there were cases when ambulances and vehicles marked "PRESS" were fired at from both the Croatian and the Serbian sides in that region. Psychologically speaking, the burying of the wreck fits into the pattern of behavior in these wars: even when something that had been done could be justified by tactical reasons or some other circumstances, if it is a politically sensitive matter, it is preferred that this be concealed rather than let out into the open. Even if it was the Croats who shot - which is possible in that chaos - the Serbs could not be sure who had done it, otherwise they would have created an enormous fuss: "They killed our Russian brothers!" It was decided that the matter be covered up and forgotten, with the use of all possible smoke screens and mutual accusations; all this latest a short while. The Russian embassy had promised a reward for any information about the fate of the missing journalists, but - no results. On this case, no one tried very hard; except military security bodies, which proves that this event was a local doing, and that the perpetrators tried to hide the facts even from the Yugoslav People's Army. When the Yugoslav People's Army withdrew from Bosnia-Herzegovina, the file - with the notes from the investigation and the evidence material - stayed in the hands of the military prosecutor of the Serbian Republic's Army in Banja Luka, and it is still there. Observers from the Russian embassy concluded the Noggin and Kurinoy cannot be identified with certainty on the basis of the available evidence (the remains of bones and objects), which is understandable for diplomatic circumstances. If the remains in the smashed automobile are not the remains of the bodies of the two Russian journalists, the question is: what happened to them? Someone could have taken their car in Kostajnica, for instance, in order to use the vehicle for his own purposes. Had they survived, this would certainly have been found out in a year's time; they would not have been the first to have their car taken. If they were taken somewhere and killed, this would mean that someone had reason to get rid of them. Did the two of them know something especially interesting and sensitive, which we still do not know? Possibly, just as everything else in this war is possible. All scenarios are probable here, but some are more probable than others, if one bears in mind the experiences and patterns according to which things usually happen. Criminology says that the first assumption should be that regarding the most banal and usual version (that they got into an ambush by accident, so that someone preferred to conceal the entire affair than to have to explain afterwards); then, that this was a stupid incident in which the perpetrator found it easier to conceal the matter - this is how one gets into problems - than to confess; and only in the end (if none of the previous versions produce results), one is to start examining complicated theories about plots, "espionage", "high politics". In the chaos that reigned in Kostajnica at the beginning of September 1991, it is most probable that everything happened in a banal and prosaic way. This doesn't help Noggin and Kurinoy in the least: they probably ended up as bodies without names that have never been found, like thousands of other people in this Balkan mud.