Thursday 12/17 was the day of Vladimir Putin's annual press conference. On Monday 12/14, the product of the investigation carried out by CNN with the investigative journalism website, Bellingcat, was published, according to which the Federal Security Service of Russia had created a special team to monitor Alexei Navalny, for years. The opposition politician of the Tsar was poisoned last August, in Omsk, Siberia, miraculously survived and was taken to a clinic in Berlin where he is still. According to Putin he 'enjoys the support of the US intelligence services' . When asked about the investigation's finding, he denied any involvement of his country's secret services in the incident. If he had put a period there, I probably wouldn't have written what follows. But he continued, "if the Russian special forces wanted to kill him, they would have finished the job."
And just like that, I got the assist for the new 'chapter' of News24/7's 'History' column, which 'clicked' on that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. That is, what Putin experienced before taking the first office. It was that of the country's interim Prime Minister, a position handed over to him by Boris Yeltsin, on 9/8 1999. On 31/12 of the same year, Yeltsin left the presidency and our man temporarily took it over - giving his predecessor immunity from prosecution. On 3/26/2000, he officially assumed the presidency. In 2004 he was re-elected with an overwhelming majority and until today his primacy in Russia has not been disputed. That is, it has 'closed' 20 years of success and continues.
Let's start with the official figures.
He was officially born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, as the benjamin of the family of five "made" by Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanovna Putina. Before he was born, his parents had 'lost' two children. One when he was an infant. The other from diphtheria, during the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis. World War II also 'took' other relatives from him. The same sources state that his grandfather was Vladimir Lenin's cook. His mother worked in a factory and his father had been drafted - he served in the navy, in the destruction battalion of the Ministry of the Interior. He was later posted to another corps, was seriously wounded in 1942 and was demobilized. His young son started sambo and judo at 12. He excelled in both. When he first saw a spy movie in the cinema, he dreamed that he was the protagonist himself.
Now let's go to what Frontline discovered as it searched for material for the movie 'Putin's Revenge'.
The outlet conducted 56 interviews with former US intelligence chiefs, diplomats, Russian and American political insiders, journalists, historians and others in Washington, Moscow, New York and California over a six-month period. Thirty-three interviews are on camera and 23 have audio documents. This one by Yevgenia Albats you will find in both video and written form.
Albats works as an investigative journalist and editor-in-chief at New Times, an independent political weekly based in Moscow. He has also written four books. One was titled 'The state within the state:the KGB and what it means for Russia - past, present and future'. He told Frontline that "his parents had survived World War II where his father served in the counterintelligence directorate. After the war he wasn't even working class. He was very poor—like most people after the war, like ' were rebuilding the Soviet Union. The family lived in a shared apartment - with other families - when they had their son. He was around 40 ".
According to other accounts, people remembered Putin as a rambunctious, somewhat scrawny little kid, smaller than you might expect 'but certainly someone who would go into battle no matter how much bigger he was up against.' Since then he had the habit of writing in a diary what he experienced every day.
He has said countless times that 'one of the biggest lessons I learned in life is not to show weakness, because the weak always lose'.
At a time when there weren't many options (entrepreneurship and personal gain were forbidden), joining the Communist Party or the Party-protected KGB was ideal. 'The first thing every KGB agent learned was to be suspicious of everyone and everything. To suspect that everyone can do harm to the country. He still 'carries' that belief, which is not good for a president' , says Irina Borogan, investigative journalist and co-author of 'Red Web:the struggle between Russia's digital dictators and new online revolutionaries'.
"Putin's life changed when Putin joined the KGB, the Soviet Union's caste organization for the children of the aristocracy, that is, members of the Communist Party's central committee or the top ranks of the military " continues Albats, "these were mostly accepted, in the Secret Intelligence Service, as they were appointed outside the country - and then it was every Soviet's dream to live away from the 'pleasures' offered by the communist state ".
Albats explained that “the KGB was the most powerful institution in the Soviet Union. If I compare it to what America has, I'd say it was the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and whatever else you have on the intelligence side, combined. All in One. A monopoly that produced violence. There was a section that controlled the citizens, another for the intellectuals, a different one for the sciences, a separate one for the church or the media or sports and so on. He policed politicians, money, business - everything. And at the same time he had access everywhere ".
The Communist Party was afraid of photocopiers, because they wanted complete control of information - and to be sure there was no way to share any information Even if there was one in a factory (that made, say, pipes) if there was one, it was locked in a room and the key was held by one of their own people.
"The largest oil company in the world now, Rosneft is formally state-owned. CEO is Igor Sechin, Putin's protégé and KGB graduate. Rostec, huge industrial state-owned company with more than 500 businesses involved in everything is headed by a Putin crony, Sergey Chemezov. They did the tour together in Dresden, East Germany, in '80. What I'm saying is that what we have now in Russia is the resulting state , from the state we had within the state".
Contrary to what we have read “Putin does not have a law degree.
Indeed, he studied at the Judicial Department of the University of St. Petersburg, although this did not "produce" lawyers and lawyers. He 'produced' obedient bureaucrats of the Soviet Union” . We have also read that after graduation (1975), he was accepted into the headquarters of the KGB, in St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad. “There he worked in counterintelligence. Some of his duties were closely related to ideological counterintelligence responsible for monitoring and dealing with dissidents ". Then he became a student of the Information Academy "which was then called a school ”, because he wanted to move into this field. “He never got to do it ".
Until the mid-80s, the KGB had two special 'outposts' outside the borders. One was in Europe - in Berlin - and one in Afghanistan. In a secondary role, it also had an 'annex' in Dresden, East Germany. They sent Putin there when he graduated from the Intelligence School. Before we move on to Germany, look at an incident he said he experienced during his early years in the service. "Some dissidents had come and wanted to hold a small demonstration, at a monument in Leningrad. The KGB had been informed. What did he do; He hired a small band and posed as spies wearing the uniforms. They also had wreaths to lay, before the demonstrators appeared whom they 'blocked'. And it was never revealed that this was all the KGB's work ", who often used such little tricks of deception and control.
Officially he went to Dresden because his German was very good - it was a school subject. “As far as I know he was sent there by the personnel department of the KGB and his job was that of director. In essence he was responsible for monitoring foreign businessmen and Soviet bureaucrats going to Dresden for various types of negotiations. Towards the end of his career he was a bit unlucky, because he 'fell' in the fall of the Berlin wall. The crowd had stormed the Stasi offices and the Soviet spies fled for their ". He watched from Dresden the collapse of the Soviet Union as he tried to destroy all the documents at his disposal before running for his life.
Putin applied for a position in Moscow's intelligence service, of its 800,000 registered members - no one knows the exact number. They refused him.
This meant that his career had ended there. He returned to Leningrad and became deputy dean, at the University - responsible for monitoring foreign students or whatever else was in the institution that was foreign. He was still young. In his 40s. He had not given up on his 'wants'. He had found another way to reach them. “He's very smart. Intelligent, capable and highly trained thanks to his time at the School, where he had also learned how to 'recruit' the right people . These are the ones he used. If you talk to people who know him, they will tell you that he is very charming and says whatever you want to hear.
"He makes you feel like his friend and that together you can do anything. How he is one of us, even though he was from the KGB. Everyone believed this story those who met him in the mid-1990s. He convinced everyone he was a democrat. He's not. He's a professional liar who has mastered the art of dissimulation."
Boris Yeltsin had understood him. “And she didn't like him. He had preferred to have Nikolai Aksenenko close to him, who is no longer with us. He was the head of the railroad monopoly. He then became Minister of Transport. People who were around Yeltsin - and especially those who were very influential - told him about Putin. First and foremost his daughter, Tatyana, his son-in-law and former chief of staff Valentin Yumashev, and Putin's first ever chief of staff, Alejander Voloshin" . At that time Yeltsin was both ill and had limited coherence. They persuaded him to rethink Putin, who had watched his country's leader befriend Bill Clinton up close and saw that Russia was not treated as a great power. That is why he considered Yeltsin a shame for Russia '
Albats concluded with a memory:"I remember a conversation I had with one of the members of Yeltsin's 'court' at Putin's first inauguration in May 2000. I told him 'you don't understand that he is not just one man, but a representative of the KGB, who is taking over the leadership of the country? The KGB is taking over'. I had raised my voice. The one who knew we were being watched answered me, with a note on which he had written 'we are monitoring him fully'. It was the biggest mistake they could make, because no citizen can control an intelligence agency. This can only be done by another special agency ".
Tikhon Dzyadko, also a Russian journalist, addressed another misconception. “For most Russians he is a guy who started from nowhere and became a strong, real leader. Journalists know that he was in the secret services and before that he worked for the then Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak ”, who influenced his career and his whole life He explained that “we don't know much about his family, his daughters. We were told how he became a grandfather, but no names or any other information. Everything about his personal life remains hidden", something Putin has demanded, saying 'I have a private life and I don't allow anyone to interfere with it'.
"The list also includes information about his childhood and the years he lived in Germany. We have been told that he was in East Germany and that he was a good agent, before he went to Moscow and was chosen as the next president of Russia. The biography it has been fully checked before it isgiven to us ". So don't believe the story about the fight he had with a mouse that had entered his house and was looking at him 'before I knew I had to fight, to forget that I was afraid '. They attribute it to an attempt to present him as courageous.
In December 2018, he had said that he was thinking of remarrying.
Without even saying who was the chosen one of his heart. He had been divorced from Lyudmila Putina since 2013, after 20 years of marriage. After the divorce, there were quite a few stories about his relationships. Alina Kabaeva, Olympic gold medalist in artistic gymnastics and mother of twins with the Tsar - was identified as his partner - according to information that was not confirmed by him. Rumors want him to have married Alina, who was caught on camera wearing an engagement ring. Since then she has not been seen -making a public appearance.
Gennady Gudkov served in the Russian parliament from 2001 to 2012. He was also a KGB agent before becoming one of Putin's most prominent critics. He assures that "those who say he was not a good agent are not right. I followed the same route. I graduated from the same school and I know how the selection is made. We go through very difficult and serious exams. Only the elite survive all the requirements. And just the fact that he graduated means he was a goodagent ".
Until 1988, anyone who entered the KGB did not leave, before the end of 25 years. I mean he didn't say 'I want to leave' and they said 'okay'. Since then contracts were allowed to be 'broken'. In 1991 there was a mass exodus that did not stop until 1993. Those who left were employed in new businesses. Many 'lost'. Others became very successful in banks, insurance, export companies, etc. Gudlkov also referred to Yeltsin “who made too many mistakes and created many problems for Russia, but he was the first leader who left alone. The first who had power and left it. In fact, he gave it to his successor. He considered many cases and chose Putin. I know his family has regretted it many times. It was the time when the country seemed to be falling apart. There was instability, so he needed a man who knew the situation, the problems and the causes from the inside. We believed that Putin knew how to gather information and could stop centrifugal forces that were dangerous.
"In the beginning he lived up to expectations and we supported him. We believed he was the one we needed".
Putin has said he took over when the country was nearly broken. David E. Hoffman writes for the Washington Post and was the newspaper's Moscow bureau chief from 1995 to 2001. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of three books on Russian politics. He explains that “Putin spent his entire career in an institution that used fraud and subversion as tools of the state. He spent 17 years studying these methods before entering politics - without putting aside what he had learned. When he took over he did what he knew best. He tried to claim power, to compete with the big, rich countries of the world. He lacked resources and focused on finding ways to cover his weaknesses. Use asymmetric methods, such as the internet.
He was educated to believe that the Soviet Union was a superpower, a world power that enjoyed the respect of the whole world and influenced developments for half a century. In 1989, 1990 an entire empire was falling apart around him. Everything he knew, everything that had been passed down from generation to generation and seemed solid as a rock, was crumbling before his eyes, without him being at the center of the decisions.
Gorbachev started the revolution from the top, encouraging the world to see that the totalitarian regime was coming to an end and he was giving people freedoms - which they took. They could vote, have some type of democracy, some type of socialism. Later, the dark secrets that were hidden in the history of the country began to 'come out'.
"In 1989 he went to East Germany where Putin was, who had lost all the enthusiasm that existed in Russia. He didn't live the changes, he didn't believe in them, he didn't agree with them. He was received with honors. The countries of Ανατολικής Ευρώπης καταλάβαιναν πως πια δεν είχαν τη στήριξη της Μόσχας. Τότε ο Πούτιν ήταν junior πράκτορας της KGB στη Δρέσδη που ήταν το high tech εργοστάσιο του ανατολικού μπλοκ. Δεν συγκρινόταν με αυτά της Δύσης. Δεν ήταν το επίκεντρο κάποιου πράγματος, γεγονός που σημαίνει πως ο Πούτιν δεν ήταν ο James Bond.
Οι καθημερινές υποχρεώσεις του δεν ήταν τόσο ενδιαφέρουσες. Για παράδειγμα, αν κάποιος καθηγητής της Ανατολικής Γερμανίας επρόκειτο να ταξιδέψει στη Δυτική, τον ενημέρωνε για το τι έπρεπε να αναζητήσει για να μελετήσει και να τα μεταδώσει, με την επιστροφή του".
"Κάποιος μπορεί να ήθελε ένα πλαστό δίπλωμα ή μια μεταμφίεση. Ό,τι έκανε ο Πούτιν ήταν διοικητική δουλειά. Ήταν και δίπλα στα αρχηγεία της μυστικής υπηρεσίας πληροφοριών της Ανατολικής Γερμανίας (Stasi), που ήταν πολύ μεγαλύτερη σε δυναμική. Ισχύει πως στη Δρέσδη η δουλειά του ήταν αδιάφορη. Αλλά πίστευε στην αποστολή που υπήρχε, ότι προστάτευε το κράτος. Στην πραγματικότητα δεν ήταν κάτι περισσότερο από ένας αντισυνταγματάρχης στα 17 χρόνια στην KGB”.
Μετά την επιστροφή του στη Ρωσία (1991) και ενώ προσπαθούσε να βρει τον τρόπο του, έβλεπε πως είχαν δημιουργηθεί ρωγμές στους θεμέλιους λίθους της KGB. “Yπήρχε ένα μέρος συλλογής ξένων πληροφοριών που γινόταν κάτι άλλο. Κάποια στιγμής, ο Boris Yeltsin είχε 'σπάσει' την KGB σε εννέα διαφορετικούς οργανισμούς, δημιουργώντας νέες, διαφορετικές υπηρεσίες για πράγματα όπως οι τρόποι επιβολής του νόμου εντός της χώρας. Η αλήθεια είναι πως τα κορυφαία στελέχη βρήκαν πολύ καλές δουλειές, τις οποίες τους έδωσαν οι νέοι ολιγάρχες που άρχισαν να εμφανίζονται το '90. Εισχώρησαν στον ολιγαρχικό καπιταλισμό. Πολλοί άλλοι, του επιπέδου του Πούτιν ένιωσαν πως είχαν 'χαθεί', αφού δεν ήξεραν τίποτα για εκείνη τη νέα κοινωνία. Έγινε δύσκολο να βρουν τη θέση τους σε αυτήν, κάτι στο οποίο να πιστέψουν, ενώ είχε καταρρεύσει αυτό που ήξεραν έως τότε:πως το κράτος 'τρέχει' τα πάντα.
Ο Πούτιν φάνηκε ρεαλιστικής και πραγματιστής. Δεν έχασε χρόνο να αναρωτιέται τι συνέβη στη μεγάλη Σοβιετική Ένωση. Βγήκε εκεί έξω και επιχείρησε να βρει τη δική του θέση, στη νέα πραγματικότητα. Δεν είχε ψευδαισθήσεις πως ας πούμε σύντομα θα άλλαζαν όλα, με την επιστροφή σε αυτό που ήξερε ως κανονικό. Ήξερε πως δεν υπάρχει επιστροφή και έψαξε να βρει από πού μπορεί να πιαστεί, χωρίς να χρειαστεί να φύγει από το Λένινγκραντ ".
Η γνωριμία με τον καπιταλισμό ήταν αποτυχημένη
Σε διάφορες πόλεις υπήρχαν νέοι δημοκράτες. Στην πόλη του ήταν ο Anatoly Sobchak, ο οποίος όπως και όλοι οι άλλοι ήταν εξαιρετικοί στις ομιλίες τους και στις θεωρίες, αλλά δεν ήξεραν πώς να κάνουν πράγματα. Πώς να λύνουν βασικά προβλήματα, όπως ήταν ας πούμε τότε το φαγητό -το οποίο κάπως έπρεπε να μεταφερθεί στις πόλεις από τις επαρχίες. "O κόσμος πεινούσε και ο Πούτιν έγινε η λύση στο πρόβλημα του Sobchak, αφού ήταν εκείνος που έκανε πράγματα ”. Ξεκίνησε με ένα deal που έγινε μεταξύ 19 διαφορετικών εταιριών -μεταξύ τους ήταν και πολλές ξένες- και αφορούσαν όλες τις βασικές ανάγκες των ανθρώπων. Μόνο που το 'πλάνο' τσάκισε, όταν χάθηκαν χρήματα σε τραπεζικούς λογαριασμούς. Κάτι που τότε ήταν συχνό φαινόμενο.
“Για τον Πούτιν ήταν η πρώτη του εμπειρία από τον καπιταλισμό της νέας Ρωσίας. Πρέπει να τον άφησε με την εντύπωση πως ο καπιταλισμός ήταν ένα πραγματικά περίεργο και άγριο μέρος, ενδεχομένως πιο αυθαίρετο και ίσως πιο χειραγωγήσιμο από ό,τι καταλάβαιναν τότε οι κάτοικοι της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης”.
Ο Sobchak δεν επιβίωσε για πολύ ως πολιτικός. Ο Πούτιν του έμεινε πιστός, ενώ σκεφτόταν και τον εαυτό του. Δηλαδή, τι μπορεί να κάνει στη ζωή του. Τότε τον κάλεσαν στη Μόσχα.“Όχι γιατί ήταν γνωστός, τουναντίον ήταν ντροπαλός, αλλά επειδή ήταν γνωστός ως γραφειοκράτης ικανός να κάνει πράγματα. Αρχικά ανέλαβε κάποιες μικρές θέσεις στο Κρεμλίνο (πχ την ανακαίνιση των κτιρίων του) και πρόκληση στην πρόκληση αναρριχήθηκε στην κορυφή, γιατί ήταν απρόσωπος. Ήταν αυτός που 'ναι μεν είναι πρώην πράκτορας της KGB, αλλά επίσης κάνει ό,τι δουλειά του αναθέτουμε'. Έτσι βρέθηκε στην Federan Security Service, τη διάδοχο κατάσταση της KGB και έγινε επικεφαλής για ένα χρόνο. Ήταν αυτός της μάξιμουμ ελευθερίας, των νέων ιδεών, του υπερμεγέθους πλούτου, των ολιγαρχών που άρχισαν να παίρνουν δύναμη και να ορίζουν -παρασκηνιακά- τις εξελίξεις. Δεν υπήρχε ο κανόνας του νόμου. Τον έφτιαξε και το Μάρτιο του 1999 ανέλαβε τα ηνία της Επιτροπής Ασφαλείας του έθνους. Μετά έγινε διάδοχος του Yeltsin, ο οποίος είχε πιστέψει πως είχε βρει το συνεχιστή του έργου του ”.
Το be continued