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Yevgenia Albats

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Yevgenia Albats

Russian journalist

Yevgenia Albats is an investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The New Times, a Moscow-based independent political weekly. She is the author of four books, including The State Within a State: KGB and Its Hold on Russia -- Past, Present and Future.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Michael Kirk conducted on July 10, 2017. It has been edited in parts for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Putin’s Road to War

The Putin Files

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Vladimir Putin's Early Life

OK, so here we go.Let’s start back in the moment where the Wall hasn’t fallen quite yet.Tell me about the KGB that Vladimir Putin is in at that time.

The KGB was the most powerful institution of the Soviet Union.If you compare it to what you have in the United States—and in the United States, you have the Community of Intelligences, you know, about 15 or 16 organizations who comprise the community of intelligence services in your country.In the Soviet Union, KGB had everything inside one institution.It was your FBI, your CIA, your NSA and everything else, just in one.It was a monopoly that produced violence.It was a monopoly that was responsible for political surveillance on everyday basis of Soviet citizens.

Nothing could go without the KGB.There were departments that controlled intelligentsia, intellectuals; that controlled media; that all, without no exception, were state-owned, controlled the church.Any confession [faith], each and every confession, KGB was responsible for appointing the leaders of different congregations.For instance, one of the documents that I have in my possession, and I had in my book, was that they installed the KGB officer as the leader of the Pentecostals in the Soviet Union.

… So they controlled church; they controlled sports; they controlled everything that had to do with science; they controlled everything that had to do with the work of Soviet research institutions.And so it goes.

You said in your book, I think, it was a state within a state.

Yep.

What does that mean?

It meant exactly that it was the Soviet state.Communist Party wasn’t a party, of course; it was the institution of the state.It was what we mean in political science by a state, right?It was the way of running the country.And this was very important institution in the Soviet Union.And there was the second institution that also, as the Communist Party, had its officers top down from the center, Moscow, all the way to the smallest town in the furthest provinces of the Soviet Union, all across its 11 time zones, in all 15 republics, everywhere.

So there was some sort of competition between the Central Committee of the Communist Party and its regional organizations and the KGB and its regional organizations in the provinces of the Soviet Union.Now we understand that it was, by the way, not a bad idea to have this competition between two monopolies, because at least they were somehow concentrated on each other, and they were less concerned about us.

What we have now in Russia is the same KGB, only without any control from the side of another monopoly.It is an organization that is responsible for political policing of institutions in this country, monetary and businesses and you name it.At the same time, it has access to the biggest resources of this country.The representatives of the KGB, these were another.They controlled the major state-owned corporations.Just look around it.The biggest now in the world, oil company, Rosneft, it is so to say state-owned oil company; its CEO, Mr. Igor Sechin, the closest person to Vladimir Putin, and himself a graduate from the intelligence.

Rostec, huge industrial state-owned corporation, which own something like over 500 different enterprises, heavily involved, of course, in the military-industrial complex, etc.It is run by Putin’s pal.They both were in the resident tour in Dresden, East Germany, back in 1980s, Sergey Chemezov.

We can go one by one, and I will be able to show you that all the major institutions, all the major businesses that [are] connected with oil and gas or with telecommunications or with financial transactions, especially those that are responsible for the cash in-and-out flow, they're all controlled by the KGB people.Basically, as I said, what we have in Russia now, it is that the state within the state became the state; that the state, that the corporation by the name KGB regained its power, and on the bigger scale than it had during the Soviet Union.

Let’s go back to the powerful KGB in ’88, ’89, ’90.Place Vladimir Putin in that KGB for me, will you?Who is he, and what does it mean for young Vladimir Putin to be in the KGB?

First of all, I think it’s important to say that there are a lot of misunderstandings in the West with respect to his education.When you read Western newspapers and Western publications, they say that Putin graduated from the law school.He never did.The St. Petersburg University had a faculty that was called the Department of Judiciary, but it had nothing to do with preparing lawyers or attorneys or anything like that.These were the usual education for the future Soviet Union bureaucrats.This department didn’t prepare lawyers or didn’t teach the supremacy of law, never, ever.This department was preparing obedient bureaucrats.That’s number one.

Secondary, as we know, after graduation, he was accepted to the KGB headquarters in St. Petersburg.Well, then it was Leningrad.And he worked in the counterintelligence.He worked in this counterintelligence.Some of his duties were closely interrelated with the ideological counterintelligence, which was responsible for supervising and treating dissidents.

At some point in his life, Putin became a student of the Intelligence Academy; back then it was called School.Now it is Academy, which is named after Yuri Andropov.Yuri Andropov was the one-time head of the KGB, and then, at the end of his life, he became the leader of the state, the general secretary of the Communist Party.

Putin started in this Intelligence School.He wanted to be transferred from counterintelligence to intelligence.It is the separate department, separate directorate; it was the separate directorate in the KGB.But he never succeeded in that.Back at that time, in early and mid-1980s, there were two very special outposts of the Soviet intelligence, one in Europe and another one in Afghanistan.In Europe it was in Berlin, in East Germany, which was called back then German Democratic Republic, GDR.There was a huge compound called Karlshorst which basically resembled the structure of the KGB in Moscow.Each and every department of the Soviet KGB sent their representatives to East Germany.And the same was done in Afghanistan, in Kabul, because Soviets, as you well aware, were conducting a war with Afghanistan.

There was, however, in GDR, there was another post, a secondary source, in Dresden, and that’s exactly where Vladimir Putin was sent after he graduated from the Intelligence School.His German was very good.There are gossips about what department sent him.To my knowledge, he was sent by the so-called Personnel Department of the KGB.As I said, each and every department had their positions in the GDR’s intelligence offices.

His job there was he served as a director of—it’s called House of French.It’s like a club.Anyway, he was responsible for surveillancing of the foreign businessmen and Soviet bureaucrats who were coming to Dresden to conduct different kinds of negotiations.That was his responsibility.He had quite an unfortunate end of his career, because the Berlin Wall fell.Crowds stormed the Stasi offices in Karlshorst and in Dresden, and basically, Soviet intelligence had to run as quickly as possible in order to escape the angry crowds. …

But tell me for a moment, just what was his life story before getting into the KGB?Was he a wealthy young man? What class did he grow up in?

There was no wealthy young or old men in this country back then.All of us, we were poor as, you know, as rats.So no, there were no wealthy people.He grew up in the very—in a low-class family, in a working-class family.His father was not exactly working-class family.They were very poor.However, his father, during the World War II, served in what was called SMERSH [counterintelligence directorate]. …

So this young man, who comes from a low-class family—

So Putin came from a very poor family.His parents survived the war.And he was born when his parents already, I believe, were around 40 years old.They lived in what was called in the Soviet Union a communal flat.It means several families were living in one apartment.I gather his life was pretty difficult.In a way, it became important when he joined the KGB because there was—KGB was a very caste organization.Those who were children of the Soviet nobility, Soviet aristocracy, meaning members of the central committee of the Communist Party, Politburo, or top layers of army and KGB, they were accepted to Department of Intelligence, because they were stationed abroad.And each and every Soviet citizen dreamed to get outside the country and to live outside the country without all these pleasantries of the Communist state.

Putin was from the low background, ... and for him, … joining KGB, it was a sort of a social lift for him.

He moved up the ladder.

Yes.KGB, as I said, KGB was the most, especially in the late, last decade of the Soviet Union, it was the most powerful institution of the country, and being a KGB officer meant that you were going to have, not probably luxury life, but for sure well better than the life of the average Soviet citizen. ...

So here is this guy who comes from a lower class.It’s a lift to him to get into the KGB, to get a posting outside of the country.That’s a big positive, too.

Yes.

So he probably thinks he’s on a kind of glide path. He’s going to have a successful life.And then, lo and behold, he and 800,000 other KGB members are shipwrecked, as David likes to say. They're out of work.Describe the circumstances for them, or what that must have been like for Vladimir Putin.

In fact, you know, he was unfortunate even before the Soviet Union collapsed, and KGB guys found themselves to be in perils.No, it was when he returned back from his post in German Democratic Republic, he tried to join the ranks of the intelligence, and he was denied.He was denied this job, and it became clear that his career was over.Soviet Union was still in place.So he had to return back to Leningrad.And he wanted to be in the Intelligence Headquarters here in Moscow in Yasenevo.It’s in the south of the city.

He had to return back to Leningrad, and he became deputy to dean in Leningrad State University, responsible for surveilling foreign students and whatever foreigners were coming to the university.

Not exactly James Bond.

Not exactly James Bond.That’s the kind of job that was reserved for the retired intelligence people.And he was young.He was still in his 40s.And of course, you know, life had to look to him as that his life was evolving in quite unfortunate way.

Putin's Political Rise

So tell me, what's the difference?What happens to him?That guy—of course there's [Leningrad Mayor Anatoly] Sobchak.But there's also, he finds himself years later—not that many years later—as the head of the FSB [Federal Security Service] in Moscow.What happened? How did he do that?

First of all, I think that he’s a smart guy.He’s smart. He’s very shrewd. He is capable.He was trained very well in the Intelligence School.He’s very capable of recruiting people.You know, when you talk to people who know him and knew him personally, they keep telling you that Putin was, during their conversations, Putin was very charming, and he used to say during the conversation what exactly what you wanted to hear from him.Few people realized that he was very skillful recruiter as an intelligence officer, KGB officer.He was able to talk to people in a way that people felt like he was their best friend; that in fact he was going to basically you can do everything together; that he’s, you know, he’s one of us.

I remember when I was doing a first profile on Putin, back in 1999 for the Newsweek International, and I spoke with one of his colleagues from St. Petersburg.… And he told me, “Zhenia, he’s exactly like you and me.”I said: “What do you mean, like you and me? We come from the intellectual backgrounds. I was in dissident circles during the Soviet times. What do you mean?”“He’s exactly like us,” he said.

And that’s the kind of impression that many of those liberals and democrats who met Putin back in mid-1990s, and in St. Petersburg, and later in Moscow, they felt like: “Yeah, he’s from the KGB, so what? You know, he’s one of us. He’s exactly like us. He's a democratically minded person.”He’s not.He’s a big liar.He’s trained—he’s a—I would correct myself.He’s a professional liar.To lie is what he was taught in the Intelligence School.He knows the art of pretendance.That’s what he was told in the Intelligence School.He knows how to recruit people, how to make people think that he is going to work in their favor, on behalf of them.But that all is just one big lie.

So he was lying to Yeltsin and the people around Yeltsin?

Of course, of course.Of course he was lying to them.He was pretending that he was going to pursue the same development of Russia as Yeltsin did.In fact, you know, to be honest, what's important to understand, Yeltsin didn’t like him.Yeltsin had the choice of several—among several people, and he favored a person who is no longer with us, Mr. [Nikolai] Aksenenko, who was head of railroad’s monopoly back in late 1990s and a transportation minister in the then-Cabinet of the Russian government.

So Yeltsin wanted Aksenenko.However, people around him, and especially those who were extremely influential—I'm talking about Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva; his son-in-law and former chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev; and Putin’s first chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin.These were people around Yeltsin.And Yeltsin was sick, and not exactly coherent, when the decision was made.

They convinced him to look closely at Putin.And I remember, you know, I had a conversation with one of them shortly before the first inauguration of Vladimir Putin in 2000, in May of 2000.It was in Kremlin, in the building of the administration of the president, and I said: “What are you doing?Don’t you understand that it’s not just one man, one person from the KGB who’s coming into top leadership of the country?It is the corporation, the corporation of the KGB, which is going to take over.”And the response was—first of all, you have to understand, I was talking out loud, and he was writing to me responses.He knew that he was under surveillance.Anyway, and he wrote to me, “We fully control him.”Uh-uh.It’s the biggest mistake that you can make, because no civilian is capable to control intelligence officer.To be sure—

What was the—

Just one second. Let me finish this.

Yep.

No civilian organization is capable to control a special service.Only another special service is capable to control.

Because?

Because the special services, they have special techniques. ...That’s why it’s so important that in the United States, you have several competing secret services, which compete with each other for the money from the same intelligence committee of Congress.Of course it was a huge mistake on the part of Yeltsin’s advisers that they chose a KGB colonel as the next president of Russia.Basically, I mean, what happened next was doomed to happen, and was decided back when they made this choice.And that’s exactly what we see now.

Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term

What was it?What was the first indication you had, looking at the new president, that this was going to be what it has become?

I can give you a very simple example.The same person who told me that he is like us, like you and me … He told me, “What kind of proof do you want that Putin is not just this nasty KGB bastard?”And I said: “Listen, Sergei Kovalev, a great human rights activist, who spent seven years in the Soviet gulag as a political dissident, who was the publisher of the underground newspaper Khronika Tekushchikh Sobytiy [Chronicle of Current Events], he’s about to have his jubilee.Let’s make Putin to send him a telegram with his congratulations.”It’s, of course, a joke.A KGB guy sending a congratulation message postcard to a dissident who fought against KGB his entire life—of course it’s a joke.

Anyway, I wrote a letter.My conversator picked it up in the special envelope and delivered this directly to Putin.Sure enough, Sergei Kovalev never received this postcard.But that’s some sort of an anecdote.When Putin was making his speeches, it became clear that the guy has no views of his own, or he was trying to console him.He was talking a lot about dictatorship of law.I remember one of the first columns I wrote back then for the Moscow Times, my argument was, “Look, we are going to see dictatorship without law, precisely because we know something about Putin from his years in St. Petersburg.”

By then, there were already some research done by reporters in this country, which became clear that Putin was involved in all kinds of very murky affairs in St. Petersburg government.To be sure, ’90s were not about the law; 1990s in Russia was about stealing the state.And you know, there [is] one very good book called Oligarchs, written by David Hoffman, that tells you all about these 1990s.

But Putin was involved, and we know this very well, that he was involved in all kind of very murky affairs, one of which was called “oil in exchange for food.”Obviously, he made his first—I don’t know, millions—he probably became wealthy out of those first deals back in St. Petersburg.Anyway, so it was clear that he wasn’t exactly the guy with very clean hands.

But he was young, very vocal, very capable of making people—and not just in a room, but people in the streets, crowds—to believe that on one hand, he’s one of them; on the other hand, he’s capable to protect them.He was this strongman, guy with a strong hand, who came to help Russia to find some law and order at long last.He never provided neither law nor order.We are facing political repressions now, beatings of the political opposition on a daily basis, and many other things that we hoped never to see again.

However, back then, Putin was very capable in convincing people that he was going to be as much democratic leader as Yeltsin was.But he’s not going to be drunk on a daily basis as Yeltsin was.He’s going to be strong, smart, and he will constrain oligarchs who were still in the state.And he was going to make Russian people well, prosper[ous] and happy.

When he takes over the television and the media, in that sense, what does that tell you?

Putin, as I said, he’s smart.His first campaign back in 1999-2000, it wasn’t a real campaign; it wasn’t a presidential campaign.The whole campaign was on TV sets.He himself was made a public figure by a TV network, by TV networks.Putin realized that in order not to have any contester, any opposition, he has to have full control over networks.

His first move was to take control over private TV network and TV, and then, step by step, he got control over each and every TV network in this country.And then, you know, everything else followed: newspapers, information agencies.Now we are left—there is one independent magazine, one independent newspaper, one Internet-based independent TV channel.That’s it.That’s all left for the country of 150 million people.

That’s just enough to make it look like there's a loyal opposition, but not enough for there to be a real opposition?

No, of course there is a real opposition.It’s weak, and it’s fighting for its survival.But there is a real opposition.

Let’s stay for a minute back in the 2000s.… My sense was, he’s re-elected a couple of times.People liked him.But what is happening to him and Russia and the view of Russia by Russians while he’s president in those first years?

We have a huge problem, you and I, because by saying elected, we mean different things.

What do you mean?

There was no elections.Each and every election since 2000 was staged.There was no elections.They were controlled by Kremlin.⁵

The distribution of money was controlled by Kremlin.Each and every sponsor of any party had to bring cash to Kremlin.[In] 2003, Putin put Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail, once the wealthiest man in Russia and the sponsor of a couple of political parties.Precisely for doing that, Khodorkovsky went in jail, even though, you know, he was sentenced for tax evasion, etc.

Anyway, so—and Putin made it clear to businessmen that if they want to be well and free and alive, they should abstain from providing any money to any political parties, any media, anything, without consensus from the Kremlin.Beginning 2003 elections, each and every sponsor of any political party or any political candidate had to bring cash, first to Kremlin, and then it was Kremlin who decided where the money went.There was no contestation.There was no equal access to the media.Putin’s political opponents, whether parties or personalities, they were unable, get it, to get the same representation at TV as party in power or not talking about Putin himself.

And besides that, there was all kind of fraud conducted during the day of the elections.There were fake ballots that were submitted in many, many voting booths across the Russian Federation, especially so in the ethnic republics.I remember there was a great case in 2007, I believe, or maybe it was in 2011—doesn’t matter—during the parliamentary elections, when in one voting region of the republic of Chechnya, it is a republic in the Russian Caucasus, 102 percent of the villagers voted for the party in power, 102 percent.That was an ordinary thing across the ethnic republics, whether we’re talking about Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Moldavia, Bashkiria, Tatarstan, etc.That’s predominantly Muslim enclaves inside the Russian Federation, which are tightly controlled by the local barons.These are some sort of sultanates that existed inside the Russian Federation.Western media doesn’t go there, don’t go there and don’t know anything about that.But it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, that’s the place where the biggest fraud [is] done.However, not just there.As a result precisely of this election fraud, resulted into the mass protests in December of 2011 and the winter of 2012.

Putin Returns to the Presidency, Sparking Protests and a Crackdown

Tell me the specifics of that.What happens there?You know, we—

There, where?

In the protests that emerge following the elections in September and into the fall of ’11 and ’12, what does Putin chalk that up to?What does he believe is actually happening in that protest movement?What does he recognize it as, and what is it really?

In December of 2011, there was parliamentary elections in the Russian Federation, and there was a massive fraud.However, by 2012, we see the rise of the middle class in the Russian Federation that didn’t, of course, exist in the Soviet times.As a result of high oil prices and windfall profits, a lot of people, especially in this city, Moscow, got pretty rich, or at least wealthy, by our standards.And as a theory of democratization will argue, they had time and money and desire to ask those in power to share in power.They were taxpayers, and they paid taxes, and they wanted to have control over their taxes.

So these people went out in the streets, in Moscow, in December 2011, when the massive fraud during the elections was reported by the independent media.However, back then, a couple months before, on October 24, 2011, the then-president of the Russian Federation, who basically was Putin’s puppet in Kremlin, Dmitry Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin, who back then was the prime minister of the Russian Federation, they decided to make a change.They announced to all of us that they decided that, from now on, Putin is going to be president, and Medvedev was going to be prime minister.

Somehow people got confused. “Wait a second,” they said. “You two decided they are going to make a change? And where are we in this puzzle?”And apparently, the answer was: “F--- you.We couldn’t care less about you guys. You pay taxes? Yeah, keep doing this, you know.But we already decided. So, you know, stay clean. Don’t bug us.”

And that made people mad.Especially those things—this wasn’t just those poor, poor Soviets who were working 24/7 to get some bread.These were people who already had bread and butter, so they decided to request their rights.They said: “Wait a second. Uh-uh. No, no, we don’t like this, you know. You have to ask us.”That’s how the whole protest started.

It went into the winter of 2011.Many people in Kremlin did believe that crowds were going to storm the administration of the president.They were dead afraid.They were dead afraid, but Putin wasn’t.And Putin made it clear that he didn’t believe that these were Russian people who asked for their share in political life.I believe it was March 2012 when he said that it was State Department of the United States of America and its then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who provided funds and means to the Russian opposition and made them to get out on the streets.

He blamed America.

He blamed Hillary Rodham Clinton personally, State Department as an institution, and United States as the country.The trick is—and you know, if you ask him, you would realize that he believes in that, because in his KGB mentality, there is no freewill.He just doesn’t understand this.You know, all these ideas about values, freedom, democracy, rule of law, he believes that this is nothing but chattering; that that’s what Western powers are trying to present their values.But in fact everywhere, countries are run exactly as Russia is run.

Let me give you one story.I think it was something like in 2010, wherein my magazine, The New Times, a very hard story on the Russian police.Police got mad, Kremlin got mad, and especially so since they requested from me the names of our sources.And as I am supposed to, by the Russian law, I said: “No, I am not going to provide you with any sources. You can call me to the court, but I'm not going to do this.”

They searched the office, and they created all kind of problems to the newsroom.And that, you know—it was still, you know, this marvelous times, 2010.God, you know, Putin’s regime was still in vegetarian state.So it was reported by foreign media, by independent press here in Moscow.And I'm getting a call from Michael McFaul, who then was a special assistant to President Obama.He worked in National Security Council.He came to Moscow, and I knew Mike McFaul since late 1980s.He was a political scientist who was doing his dissertation, a Ph.D. thesis on Russia, etc.We met back then.And then, when I was at Harvard, you know, he was at Stanford.

Anyway, he called me and said, “Zhenia, how can I help you?” And I said: “You know what, Mike? Would you please to come to my office?”Mike came the next day.We had a conversation.I knew that the office was taped, of course.I knew that.So he asked what happened.I explained to him what happened, we wrote the story, they want a source—blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this kind of stuff.I knew, of course, that everything was taped.

Two days after, a colonel who conducted the search in my office, who was in charge of—called me and said, “You know, we need to meet.”I said, “OK, Come.”He came; he said, “You know, where we can speak?”I said, “You know, you know better than I do where you installed your equipment.”So we went to the stairs.I said, “It’s safe here?”He said, “It’s safe here.”“OK,” I said, “Thanks for telling me that.”

And he said: “Well, Yevgenia, I know that you had this conversation with a special assistant to President Obama.I am afraid now I am going to have troubles getting a visa to the United States, and I have my sister living in the United States.”Anyway, to cut a long story short, approximately eight months later, he called me again; he came and said, “You know, we stopped an investigation into”—they, you know, police start the investigation into our report, our story, and they were claiming they were going to run a case against the magazine.So he came and said: “You know, everything stopped. Worry not.”I said, “What happened?”He said: “You know what happened, and we know what happened. Michael McFaul returned back to that Washington, D.C. He went to President Obama, and told him about what happened with The New Times.President Obama called President Medvedev. Medvedev called our minister and ordered to stop any investigations against The New Times.”

Sure enough, it never happened.You understand that Michael McFaul never told a word to President Obama, and President Obama never called President Medvedev on our behalf.But that illustrates that people here, especially those in the law, in the punitive organizations, they believe that the world is run exactly as it is in Russia.Everything is very corrupted.There is no rules, you know, and everything is based on this personal basis.

That’s why Putin himself, he honestly doesn’t believe that people can get out on the streets just because they don’t like people in power or because they want to get some rights.That’s why he doesn’t believe, when people in the Ukraine, in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, went out on Maidan and stayed there for several months until the corrupted—the then-president of Ukraine, corrupted from top down, Mr. [Viktor] Yanukovych, fled the country, and he believes that it was the United States who conducted a coup in Ukraine.

Sincerely, he doesn’t believe that democracy, freedoms, desire of people to share in governments, desire of people to control those in power, free journals with all those things, do exist.He just doesn’t believe.His understanding of the world is very simplistic, very simplistic.All countries, all governments, all people, all they want is to be rich and safe.That’s it—if not rich, but well-to-do and safe, that’s it.They couldn’t care less about anything else.And all these chattering about human rights, democracy, forget about this.It’s all—it’s like some sort of a performance, he believes, conducted by the Western states in order to grab their piece of control over the sovereignty of the Russian Federation.That’s the biggest problem, that his education, his background, his personal experience doesn’t allow him to believe in anything in what you and I, we believe.It’s all foreign to him.

You know, one version of this story a lot of people tell us, going all the way up to Ukraine, is that Putin comes in, he wants a kind of respect from the world.He believes that the world, the presidents from Bush on look at Russia as a—even from what Obama says, you know, as a sort of developing nation or something like that, a sort of lower class, one rung lower, smaller than Portugal, whatever.

Regional power. Obama said regional power.

Yeah, regional power.… Putin’s quest, probably tied up in his own ego, his quest for respect, for Russia and for himself, goes across that decade, 2000 to 2010, ’11, ’12.Certainly the Medvedev, the idea that we are going to push the button and change everything about American policy and Obama and Hillary came in, with all of that, his quest has been to get respect for Russia and for himself, so that by 2012-2013, there is a sort of revenge component to what he is doing vis-à-vis the West.You first hear about it in 2007, in the Munich speech.You hear about it again.You look for what he’s doing in Sochi.What’s he trying to do there?Ukraine is meanwhile happening.Help me with that perspective.Do you see it that way?Do Russians see it that way?

First of all, you know, I cannot speak, of course, for all Russians.I think that it’s true that Putin personally had a trauma when Soviet Union fell apart.He was crème de la crème of the Soviet bureaucracy, the KGB officer.He probably believed that he was defending the interests of this inhuman state when he was posted in Germany, so it was a trauma to him when Soviet Union fell apart, and all of a sudden, KGB became an institution that was blamed by everything for what happened in August of 1991, during failed coup in Moscow and other cities of the Soviet Union.

I think he has these ideas.First of all, you know, I think Putin is a Stalinist.He’s not this Orthodox Stalinist whom we used to know, people who kept saying about, you know, who kept excusing Stalin for the mass murder he committed in this country.Millions of people were killed in this country, in the gulag, during Stalin’s purges, during the Great Terror.But Putin believes that the way Stalin ran this country and the place that Stalin gained for the Soviet Union in the West was a success.Russia was an agricultural country before the Great October Socialist Revolution, and it became an industrial state before the World War II.

So I think it was very unpopular, sort of archaic, in 1990s to praise Stalin.However, obviously, now he has the possibility not to counsel his true feelings, and that came out in the last years in full.He believes that people, they're like children. They're babies, you know.They have to be told how to behave, what to think, what to believe in.We clearly see it now in the politics that he conducts in this country.

He believes that Russia is an empire, and he would like to reinstate the Soviet Union, not as it was back before the 1991, when it was a huge country comprised of 15 republics.There were 300 million people living in the Soviet Union.No, he doesn’t want to be responsible for people in Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or Uzbekistan in Central Asia, no.But he does want for Russia to be in control for those former republics of the Soviet Union.He wants [the] West to stay aside.He wants [the] West to know that countries like Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Baltics, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, these are countries [within] this sphere of influence of Russian Federation, and you stay away.

He doesn’t believe in the sovereignty of these small countries.They were part of the Russian Empire before 1917.They were part of the Soviet Union after 1917, and all the way to 1991.… So yes, he’s imperialist for sure, and he doesn’t want anyone to tell him what he has to do or not to do in this country.He doesn’t believe that human rights doesn’t have boundaries, that regardless where it happens, rulers are supposed to at least, you know, to pretend that they respect the values that they're proclaiming by the United Nations.

He doesn’t believe in all of that.He has to have free hands to do for him whatever he wants in this part of the world. That’s it.

And the idea that he’s been disrespected by the American—that Russia has been disrespected by American presidents, Clinton through Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and the sense that he personally doesn’t have the clout, the whatever, that he wishes he would have.You see him sitting alone in G-20 conferences.To what extent does that contribute to what almost feels like revenge?

I guess if we’re talking about revenge, it’s probably something that does drive Putin, revenge for the humiliation of late 1980s, 1990s, when Russia was dead poor and had nothing in the central bank coffers and had to ask for support from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund—for sure, you know.But I don’t know.I just think that Putin feels himself as a new type of Russian czar.He wants to have this place in history and in the minds of the people that he is the one who is running the country, running the lives of the citizens of this country, and who is capable to withstand any pressure, whether it’s coming through United States, Germany or any European Union or any other place in the world. …

Intervention in the U.S. Election

Do you think he initiated the hack?

We have very little information to be honest with you.It’s difficult, I guess, for journalists, and especially for journalists here in Russia.We read the reports produced by the intelligence community without any facts.There are almost no facts in those reports.There are just, you know, the joint statement of the American intelligence organizations who say Russians hacked computers.Putin himself gave orders to do that.

I am a reporter.It’s difficult for me to make conclusions based on such insufficient evidence.What I do know is that there was a huge desire on the part of the KGB people and the community of members of these punitive organizations in Russia for Donald Trump to become a president.They believed that he was going to drop down sanctions; that all the problems, economic problems, that Russia is experiencing now, because of the sanctions imposed by the then-President Obama, Donald Trump is going to drop down and say, “Forget about these,” and everything will come to normal.They will start getting cheap Western money once again, and they will start traveling abroad, and they will conduct the same life they had before those sanctions.

When Donald Trump won the election, there was huge celebrations here in Moscow, in the governmental institutions.It was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life.To be sure, this country is run on the anti-American rhetoric, and it’s like 24/7.You know, if there is evil exists in the world, it has your face, an American face, right?There was a celebration in what they call parliament, this conglomerate of those people who call themselves representatives.They're not.Don't buy this, but they pretend as if they are.

A notorious figure of the Russian politics, Mr. [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky, toasted for Trump and for his success in the elections.The head of the Russian propaganda mouthpiece, Russia Today, or RT, she wrote, she tweeted a saying that she was almost ready to put American flag on her car.Unbelievable, you know.Anyway, so for sure, Trump was the first choice of the Russian bureaucracy, of all these KGB men.

It’s true, too, that Putin hated Clinton and was afraid of Clinton.Now, we can review the question by comparison, by historical comparison.It once happened—probably not once, but you know, this was documented—when Soviets took part in the American elections.It wasn’t the first time now. …

We know this from so-called Mitrokhin Archives.The slogan of the operation, the slogan of this disinformation campaign that was conducted by the Soviet agents on the territory of the United States, as well as in Europe, was “Reagan Means War!”Soviet agents were quite successful in Europe.A lot of newspapers in Northern Europe and Central Europe ran stories that was cooked in the KGB headquarters.Some, as far as I understand, some American media were also involved.However, as we’re well aware, Reagan had a landslide victory back then.They totally failed.

However, what’s interesting about this example, that Soviet leadership seriously believed that they were able to corrupt American elections through their money, through their cooked publications, etc.Putin grew up inside the KGB.Andropov was, according to what we know about him, … Andropov was one of those whom, you know, he believed to be—to model his life after, right?

I don’t have trouble imagining that somebody from the intelligence community brought him this case and said, “You know, why don’t we try?”In any case, if what we read in the American newspapers is true, it doesn’t sound to me as forma impossible.I think, you know, yes, if there is a proof, then of course these kind of covert action could have happened only with OK from President Putin himself.Nobody beneath him would have allowed himself to conduct that type of operation without president’s OK.So for sure, Putin was, if it had happened, for sure that Putin was involved.

Now, what we suspect we know is that Russian hackers, Russian hackers supposedly, allegedly hacked the computers of the Democratic Party as well as Republican Party, and also hacked computers in the 30 states, the electoral computers of 30 states.Is it possible? Of course it’s possible.We do know that Russian hackers, during the war—during the short-lived war between Russia and Georgia, Russian hackers hacked the computers of the Georgian government.Russian hackers hacked the computers of the Estonian government when there was some problems between the two states.Russians hacked the computers of Moldavian government.

Ukraine.

And I believe Ukrainian government, yes, and Ukrainian government, of course.Once again, we do know that Russian cyber divisions, and they existed in this country, cyber divisions, cyber army, that they are capable of putting down the computers of the foreign governments, foreign states.So if they're capable to do this in Georgia and Ukraine, why not try to do it in the United States?

What does he want?If it happened, if he did initiate it, what does Putin want?

I think, first and foremost, he wanted to create a mess.He wanted to make it clear, both domestically and to show this to the world, that democracy is all about cash.And that it’s—that’s a mess; that there is no way for an honest election.He wanted to make it clear that there is no difference between what is happening here domestically in Russia, what they call elections, and the kind of elections that exist in the United States.He wanted to present democracy as a chaos, as something that is full of lies, corruption and distortions and etc., etc., etc.I think that was his basic goals.He is going after Western values, not just after personalities.He is eager to portray the Western values as something that is not valuable to fight for.

His audience is domestic first and foremost, of course, but not just that.He is looking at former Soviet allies in Southern and Central Europe.That’s also message to them, to people in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania, etc., etc.He wants to tell them: “Forget about this, you know.What are you talking about?Elections, freedoms, democracy—forget about all that.It’s just bulls---.It’s just the way Western governments, leaders of the Western world, they are trying to take over our resources, our people, our minds, etc.”

If you listen to his top allies, to his top advisers, like for instance his national security adviser, they are talking about the United States as a power that is trying to take over Russian resources.They believe that you sit over there in Washington, D.C. and New York, or in Montana, and all you’re dreaming about is how you are going to conquer Siberia.It’s minus 40 or 50 degrees there in Siberia; I'm not sure you want this.But anyway—

So the Russian people—I know you're not all the Russian people, but when the Russian people think about the fact that their president feels this way, do their hearts fill and swell with pride at what Putin was able to do, disrupt and reflect chaos in the United States democracy?

Sure. There are some people in this country who feel proud that Putin was able to knock down the United States.I think damage is made, for sure.You just think about this: Only 17 percent of Russians do have foreign passport that allows them to travel.Of these, 7 or 8 percent traveled abroad.Of the 7 or 8 percent, 4 percent traveled to Egypt and Turkey, so they have no idea what Western world is all about.Very few of them travel to the United States because it’s very difficult to get a travel visa to the United States.

But there are all kind of—you know, there are a lot of myths about the United States.And there is, for many of the Russian people, you know, United States is a manifestation of prosperity and freedom, and you know, that’s the land of milk and honey, though we know that it’s not all that.Anyway, so in this country, the United States was sort of a face of democracy, face of liberty, of pursuit of happiness.United States was everything that Soviet Union and then Russia never was.And then, all of a sudden, they are told that some hackers are capable to destroy the very essence of the American democracy, its elections.You start thinking, wait a second.Is it that fragile? Is it that insecure?Our beliefs in the power of democracy in the United States is false?

I think many of us feel very uneasy and very insecure.All of a sudden, we found ourselves in this very, very unsteady, unsafe world.You know, it’s no fun to be in political opposition in this country, and there was always belief that there across the ocean, there is this country, the United States, who stand behind those who fight against dictatorships in their own country; that when worse come to worse, this country is going to, and its leaders are going to, stand for those in other parts of the world who are fighting for their rights, for their freedoms, for their beliefs.No longer.I think this is gone.

So that when you look at President Trump and President Putin at the G-20 Conference shaking hands, looking at each other, it’s almost like they share—first, what do you think when you see that picture of those two men, especially given what you’ve just said?

I think that I want to apply for jobs in New Zealand. ...I feel very disillusioned.I feel, when I see—when President Putin and President Trump shake hands, I feel like, oh, I want to fall asleep and wake up a couple of years later.

What do they share?It seems like they share a list of grievances; that it was really a grievance conversation, not anything else.

You know, I think that both of them, they share a very cynical view of the world.I think President Trump is the first president of the United States, at least from what I know, who doesn’t believe in American values.I have mine in American politics.I read your Founding Fathers.I read Federalist Papers.You know, a copy of the American Constitution and Bill of Rights always sits on my desk.It is like when you want to see the kind of writings that make you happy, when you read this, you know, “pursuit of happiness,” this is really important, that in the foundation of the American state were people who believed that they're co-citizens; they want to be happy.And the deed of a leader to help he or she to be happy, that’s—for somebody from my part of the world, it’s unbelievable.It is something, like, it’s a dream ideas.It just—it never happened in my part of the world, and never in my country for sure.

No leader in this country ever dreamed about happiness of ordinary people.And it’s really hard to understand.I do know that Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote, that she got almost 3 million votes more than Donald Trump.But still, it’s hard to understand how people in the United States, in such huge numbers, voted for somebody who clearly doesn’t believe in the values of the American democracy, at least the way I understand this from afar.

Well, they were helped along, according to so many people, by the things that we’re talking about: the hack for sure, but fake news; RT; you know, a lot of things that happened in the election.Obviously there was also a huge number of people that Hillary Clinton didn’t perceive were going to vote the way they voted, and Trump was more powerful in all kinds of other ways.But there is a substantial contribution, it seems, it appears, from the president of Russia, in the composite at least of what happened, and yielding Donald Trump.

To be honest with you, I don’t believe that Russian involvement in the American elections, if it did happen at the scale described by the American media, was sufficient and changed the outcome of the elections.I covered American elections.I covered primaries in New Hampshire.I went to listen to Trump and others, you know.I covered both conventions. I was in Cleveland. I was in Philadelphia.No, I don’t believe that it was Russia.I think that was, you know, that Trump was elected because so many Americans got disillusioned with the ideas represented by Trump’s opponents.

Putin and Trump

Do you think this could backfire on Putin?

What do you mean?

I mean, is there any way that, if this gets pinned on Putin, it isn't good for Russia or him in the world, or even especially here in Russia?

I think the fact that U.S. Senate passed new sanctions against Russia would feel as a punishment to Putin.I think part of the reason they had such a long discussion during the G-20 in Hamburg, I'm absolutely aware that Putin was talking about that, you know, we know that Congress is going to pass the bill.Then it’s up to Trump either to veto these new sanctions against Russia or to sign the bill into law.

So yes, I do think that Putin and his pals are afraid of new sanctions, because the state of the economy is very complicated here.And despite what they said, that the impact of the sanctions was minimal, it’s not true.It’s all about access to cheap Western money, and now, you know, they have a very small access to this money.And money in Russia are very expensive.We’re talking about 14 percent at best, interest rate.

So anyway, yes. In that respect, it can backfire.Other than that, I think Putin is happy.He proved a point.Now all Russians, they can see that all this chitchat about American democracy is nothing but chitchat.Look at them. You know, they have this guy, Mr. Trump, who one day says this, and another day he says that, and you never understand what he means.And he is trying to run the country with 140 characters allowed for a tweet.So I think, you know, Putin’s successful.It made a point.You know, Russian state propaganda TV keep showing all these reports from the United States that just prove that everybody—all countries are corrupted.There is no difference between authoritarian politics and democratic politics.All this conversation about values, you know, just forget about this.There are no values whatsoever.

And basically, the world is a tease everywhere, whether in Russia or in the United States.And, you know, just stop talking about human rights; stop talking about free and fair elections.Forget about this.And, you know, Putin made a point to Russians for sure.So I think he’s very happy.

Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term

When Putin goes into the first meeting, when he’s first president and he goes into the meeting with Bush, and it’s the famous story that he tells the story of the cross, and that Bush says he looked into his soul, at that point in Putin’s presidency, what did he want from Bush and from the United States?Was it an adversarial relationship at that early point in Putin’s presidency?

I think back at the start of his first presidency, Putin was looking for some friendly bilateral relationship with the United States.But I guess, you know, with American invasion in Iraq, then Afghanistan, then events in Libya, with all the chaos that was created in the Middle East, he got to believe that American leaders are quite irrational, that they create troubles, and he knows better.

But I do think that, you know, that at least at the very beginning, he was looking for some good relationship with the United States.He even once mentioned that he was ready to join NATO.

Putin Returns to the Presidency, Sparking Protests and a Crackdown

The 2011 protests into 2012, how much of a turning point is that for Putin in his view of the West and the threat of the Internet?How does that change Putin?

Putin, as I said, Putin doesn’t believe that people have a freewill, that ordinary citizens in their good conscience would get out on the streets and demand rights.He doesn’t believe in that.He doesn’t believe in people. He doesn’t believe that people have any freewill.He doesn’t believe that people even think about their rights when they come home and have their supper.But he does believe that foreign powers are trying to destroy Russia; that he has to protect Russian borders and Russian wealth and Russian resources; that it was foreign entities who provided money and resources to those who were on the streets.Otherwise, why did they go out?There were no rational reasons for Russians to go out on the streets; especially it was very cold winter back then.

And of course, you know, Putin himself doesn’t use Internet.He believes that Internet is just a basket of all things dirty and all things corrupted, and Internet brings all kind of disinformation to ordinary Russian people.Therefore, beginning 2012, after he returned back to Kremlin from his position of the prime minister and once again became president, as if he wasn’t before, that Internet is his enemy.And the Russian authorities started to introduce all kind of measures that are supposed to put constraints on Internet.

Right now, they are about to pass a law that makes all kind of VPN [virtual private networks] illegal in this country.You know what is VPN?

VPN? Sure.

Yeah. All kind of VPNs to be illegal in this country.And there are all kind of other laws so that they're supposed to control the Internet.

So it’s safe to say the West and the Web become enemies in a way, even stronger than they might have been before 2011-2012?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.I think it is, you know, it’s pretty much at the same scale as it was under Brezhnev or Andropov, with one big difference.Both Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Andropov, all of them, they had a memory of the World War II.They were afraid of wars.They were afraid of devastation that the World War II brought to Russians.We lost plus/minus 30 million people during that war.We lost a whole generation that never was born.So they were afraid of the wars.

Putin doesn’t.He’s not afraid.And that’s the biggest difference.Not just Putin, but Putin and his entourage, they are not afraid.If you remember, Brezhnev was into detente.I think Soviet leaders, they were sincere in trying to prevent nuclear war, precisely because they remember the previous war.Putin doesn’t have this memory and doesn’t have this fear.He is investing a hell of a lot of resources and money and manpower, everything, into Russian military-industrial complex.He’s preparing for another war.

The fact that he’s not afraid, that Russian military doctrine, Russian national security doctrine allows for a war as it didn’t before, that is what makes it so dangerous.Putin is not just cynical guy or KGB guy or, you know, undemocratic guy.Putin is not just some man who doesn’t respect borders or sovereignty of elections in another country.Putin is a bad man, and Putin is a dangerous man.He’s dangerous not just for us; that’s for sure.None of us, you know, really has a great future.But he’s dangerous.He’s a dangerous man for the world, precisely because he doesn’t have fear of a war, and nuclear war is one in particular.

He is a light version of North Korean dictator.All of us, we got accustomed to look at North Korea and think, you know, well, they're lunatics.Putin is one of us. He looks like us.He wears very good suits, like any other Western leader.He speaks fluent German, and he understands English.After all, he comes from a country with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and great education, etc.You make a huge mistake.Of course, you know, he’s not a lunatic he’s a very pragmatic man.But he may become a very, very dangerous man for the future of the mankind.

The 2011 parliamentary elections, you talked about it, but can you describe a little bit more, what do we know?What did you see that proved that the elections weren’t perfect?I mean, you write about the carousels.You write about the ballot stuffing.What did you guys see on the ground was happening that created the demonstrations?

It wasn’t just my reporters who reported about the corruption of the elections, that brought, all these thousands of people brought from other cities, who were voting twice, thrice, God knows how many times; about ballot boxes that was stuffed with fake ballots; about the situation in the ethnic republics of Russia, Chechnya, where, you know, the numbers, they were totally fake, totally fake.I mean, it’s a known problem, you know.

People in those ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, there were 90 percent, 99 percent, 100 percent of voters who showed up for elections voted for the party in power, the United Russia.It’s impossible.We do know it’s impossible.We do know that everything over 70 percent is either falsified or it is some—or it implies some sort of fraud.So we were writing about this.But the trick is that the first time I think in the post-Soviet history, Russian intellectual journalists, political activists, they decided to take control of the elections.They went to serve their duty at the polling stations.

So it probably—it was also, you know, they reported using their smartphones.People reported about the fraud on the Internet, and therefore it went viral all across the Web.And everybody—you know, it became a common knowledge.The elections were hacked; elections were sabotaged.And I guess we knew this before.We journalists knew that before the previous elections were hacked as well and were fraudulent as well.But that time, precisely because of the Web, because of the Internet, because of the social networks, that became common knowledge.

Already Facebook was in place. Twitter was in place.And everyone was distributing this information all around.So that’s why people came out in the streets in the major cities of the Russian Federation, in Moscow and St. Petersburg first and foremost.However, what we saw here on March 26 and on June 12 is much bigger than what we had back then.Now, thousands of people, young people came out on the streets, not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but in 80-plus cities all across the Russian Federation.We are watching here a totally new development, a very new type of a position that didn’t exist before.It’s a totally new phenomenon that we witnessed on June 12 and March 26.

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