Warnig distinguished himself in the Stasi, receiving a silver medal in October 1984 and the title Honored Activist, one of only thirty-seven from the 1974 intake class so recognized by the leadership that year.74 In 1985 he was assigned to the group to establish residencies in the West (SWT/AG1, Working Group 1), and he was sent to Düsseldorf in 1988 to recruit new agents. He became acting head of SWT’s Department for Rocket Science and Technology in 1989 and was then sent to Dresden in October to cooperate with the KGB.75
It is not known exactly when Putin and Warnig met, especially since Warnig long denied his Stasi past. They both received awards at the same GDR National People’s Army ceremony on February 8, 1988, when Warnig received a bronze Medal of Merit of the National People’s Army. While many have commented that Putin “only” received a bronze, it is worth noting that he was one of only fifteen Soviets who received a medal that day from Stasi chief Mielke, and he was only thirty-six, as compared with the average age of fifty-four for the rest.76 Warnig and Putin were again pictured together in a group to commemorate the seventy-first anniversary of the Cheka (precursor to the KGB), along with Sergey Chemezov, Putin’s co-worker and neighbor in Dresden who has risen to be the head of Rosoboroneksport—in charge of Russian arms exports.
The problem with developing capitalism in Russia was that, in contrast with Eastern European states, almost no Russians had any experience of working in legitimate business enterprises in the West. Thus those like Putin, who worked close to the West or were stationed as KGB operatives to study the West, had an advantage, however skewed. Warnig’s job had been industrial espionage, and he is said to have worked with Putin to recruit West German agents.77 The Wall Street Journal interviewed Frank Weigelt, who claimed to be Warnig’s supervisor at the time; Weigelt said that Warnig had recruited twenty agents in the 1980s in West Germany to steal military rocket and aircraft technology. The Journal also interviewed Vladimir Usol’tsev, a coworker of Putin with whom he shared an office, who claimed that Putin’s task was the same kind of recruitment, but for the KGB. The two men’s paths crossed when Warnig was stationed in Dresden in October 1989—one month before the Berlin Wall came down—to start cooperating with the KGB, which “was running an operation in the city to recruit key Stasi members, with an eye toward getting its hands on their West German spies.” According to Zuchold, “Mr. Warnig was in one of the several KGB cells Mr. Putin organized in Dresden.” Zuchold further claimed that Warnig’s cell operated “under the guise of a business consultancy” but was actually recruiting agents for the KGB.78 The close relationship between Warnig and Putin was also affirmed by Irene Pietsch.79 Pietsch told the Wall Street Journal that Lyudmila Putina had once commented that it was easier to talk to East Germans than West Germans. When Pietsch asked what she meant, she used Warnig as an example: “She said we all grew up in the same system, and that Volodya [diminutive of Vladimir, i.e., Putin] worked for the same firm. I asked her what she meant. She said Matthias was in the Stasi, and Volodya the KGB,” and that they had worked together in Dresden in the 1980s. Moreover Pietsch showed the Wall Street Journal faxes that Putina had sent her not only from the St. Petersburg mayor’s office and the Kremlin, but also from Dresdner Bank, or Dresden Bank, which Warnig headed.80
In the atmosphere of postunification Germany, no one wanted to admit that he had hired an ex-Stasi officer, and the CEO of Dresdner Bank later insisted that “he would not have hired Warnig had he known of his Stasi past.”81 Warnig was hired by Dresdner in March 1990 and was sent to open their first branch in Russia in St. Petersburg in 1991. By 2002 he was heading all their operations in Russia. Initially his Stasi past was career suicide. But as Putin’s power became consolidated around a state filled with officials from the former KGB and other so-called power ministries, known as siloviki, Warnig’s background became, if anything, an asset. So much so that his public biography on the Russian bank VTB’s website, on whose board he sat, stated that Warnig had been an “officer at the Ministry for Foreign Trade and Cabinet Council of the German Democratic Republic, and Main Intelligence Directorate; in 1989 retired as major.”82
This picture was taken January 24, 1989 on the occasion of the joint visit of Stasi, KGB, and military forces to the 1st Guards Tank Army Museum to “commemorate the 71st anniversary of the formation of the Cheka and the 70th anniversary of the formation of the Soviet military defense organs.” Putin is pictured second from the left; Matthias Warnig, third from the left in the back row; and Sergey Chemezov, seventh from the left in the back row. Stasi Archives, BStU MfS-BV-Ddn-AKG-10852-Seite-0002-Bild-0001. www.miamioh.edu/havighurstcenter/putins-russia.
Therefore, when it was time for St. Petersburg to set up branches of foreign banks, Putin chose from among the many applicants his friend and Dresden coworker Matthias Warnig. Warnig opened Dresdner’s first branch in Russia in St. Petersburg in 1991, located on Malaya Morskaya, just steps away from St. Isaac’s Square, where the city parliament building is located, in the building of the former Imperial German Embassy. Soon after the formal opening in September 1993, Russia imposed a moratorium on the registration of foreign-owned banks.83 Warnig then became deputy director of the Moscow branch, and in 2000 he became the chief coordinator of the Dresdner Bank Group in Russia. Some reported that he was an early shareholder in Bank Rossiya, established in 1990 by Leningrad Communist Party insiders and then reregistered in December 1991 under Mayor Anatoliy Sobchak and Deputy Mayor Putin, who had become the city’s supervisor in charge of foreign economic relations.XI Warnig became a member of the board of directors of Bank Rossiya in 2012.84
Warnig was always available to assist Putin personally and professionally, stepping in to pay for Lludymila Putina’s surgeries and lengthy medical treatment in Germany after a serious car accident in 1993, as well as several of Putin’s trips to Hamburg and traveling expenses for Putin’s two daughters, Maria and Ekaterina, to attend public schools in Hamburg—this according to Pietsch and Dieter Mankowski, who was head of the German Industry and Trade Association’s Petersburg office in the early 1990s.85 His bank also provided St. Petersburg with $10 million in low-interest (7.8 percent) credits—at a time when inflation officially was running at 200 percent—to equip a children’s hospital.86 In 2003, when Putin needed help in taking apart Yukos, the oil company owned by the oligarch Mikhayl Khodorkovskiy, Warnig and Dresdner Bank were instrumental.XII By 2014 Warnig had been named a trustee or member of the boards of Bank Rossiya, Rosneft, Verbundnetz Gas, and VTB Bank, as well as chairman of the board of Rusal (the world’s largest aluminum producer) and Transneft, chairman of the administrative board of Gazprom Schweiz AG, and managing director of the $10 billion Nord Stream project bringing Russian gas to Germany via an entirely offshore pipeline.88 Dmitriy Medvedev’s decree in 2011 that state officials could not serve on boards of directors only elevated Warnig’s position: Putin loyalists Warnig, Chemezov, and Akimov all moved in to take over positions held by state officials.89 Many of these companies are the subject of a high level of speculation about Putin’s personal corruption.90
Nikolay Tokarev is another person with whom Putin worked in Dresden, according to Russian newspapers. Vedomosti’s Roman Shleynov ran a biography of Tokarev in 2013, stating that after graduating from college, he had gone to the KGB Higher School in Moscow and was in the same class as fellow KGB member and, beginning in late 2011, chairman of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin. After completing the course, he was posted to Dresden, where he became Putin’s boss. A mutual colleague told Shleynov, “Nearly all the KGB residency in Dresden lived in the same apartment block. The front doors were not closed. We constantly visited each other’s homes. Once we were sitting with Tokarev in a group. Someone comes in who is pale, quiet and shy. ‘That’s Vova [Putin].’ Someone invites him: ‘Vova, sit down have a drink. . . .’ ‘No,’ Tokarev answers for him, ‘Vova does not drink with us.’ ”91 The quote implies that Tokarev was responsible for Putin’s actions in every respect.
After
Dresden, Putin went back to Leningrad and Tokarev to Berlin, returning to the USSR after German reunification in 1990. In 1996, when Putin went to Moscow, he hired Tokarev as his deputy in the Presidential Property Management Department. Tokarev acknowledged working in the PPMD but was characteristically reticent when he described working with Putin. In a 2008 interview in Vedomosti he said simply that “their work there had been full, but after that life demanded we deal with different themes.”92 When Putin became president, Tokarev became the CEO of Zarubezhneft, a state-owned oil company that in Soviet days had provided oil to client states such as Vietnam, Syria, and Cuba. In 2007 he became the CEO of Transneft.93 In 2010 the opposition activist and corruption blogger Aleksey Navalnyy charged that Transneft’s construction costs for the East Siberian–Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline were inflated and had led to the embezzlement of over $4 billion in state funds. While Navalnyy appeared to be focusing on the actions of Tokarev’s predecessor, with the implication that Tokarev had been put there to get the project back on track, the Kremlin clearly signaled there would be no investigation. Hours after Navalnyy’s post, Putin issued an order praising Transneft “for the great contribution to the development of the energy partnership between Russia and China.”94
Sergey Chemezov also claims to have met Putin while the two were with the KGB in Dresden, where they were neighbors and friends, often gathered for social occasions, and drank beer together, a detail also noted in the Usol’tsev biography.95 Chemezov told the magazine Itogi in 2005, and later posted on his Web page for the Novikombank board of directors, that he had worked there from 1983 to 1988.96 In one of the few interviews he gave, Chemezov admitted that he had worked in the GDR, not just anywhere but in Dresden, and lived in the same apartment building as Putin and all the other KGB and Soviet representatives: “We worked in East Germany at the same time. From 1983 to 1988, I was the lead representative of ‘Luch’ in Dresden,XIII and Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] arrived there in 1985. We lived in the same house, and were associated with each other both in the service [obshchalis’ i po sluzhbe], and as neighbors.”98 When Usol’tsev was interviewed about Chemezov and his role in Luch, whether it was intelligence, counterintelligence, or control of the East German Party nomenklatura, he certainly did not deny that Luch existed, but he would not be drawn on anyone’s exact assignment, simply responding, “Let’s just leave this question without an answer.”99 Chemezov admits to having worked with Putin occasionally when he was in Moscow as the deputy director general of Sovintersport,XIV and so “their professional interests sometimes intersected” and they maintained their personal friendship.104
Chemezov followed Putin into the Presidential Property Management Department as head of the External Economic Relations Department. He admitted, “I do not hide that Vladimir Vladimirovich recommended me for the post. I was committed to trying to regulate the use of Russian foreign property, restoring to the state that which it once owned but was lost as a result of incompetent management.”105 He rose through the ranks with Putin, becoming in September 1999 the head of the state company Promeksport and in 2004 the head of the main Russian arms exporter, Rosoboroneksport, for which he traveled with Putin to reopen the market for Russian arms after a lull in the 1990s.
Also part of the Dresden team while Putin was stationed there was Yevgeniy Mikhaylovich Shkolov, who was born in Dresden, reportedly the son of a Soviet spy. Shkolov was trained by the KGB in the USSR before returning to Dresden at the same time as Putin, where the two of them shared an office. While not from St. Petersburg and not part of his inner team, Shkolov had a career path that paralleled Putin’s, becoming the head of the department for foreign economic relations in the city of Ivanovo after the collapse of the USSR and rising to work in the Kremlin as assistant to the head of the Presidential Administration under Aleksandr Voloshin and then Dmitriy Medvedev. He was a member of the board of directors of both Transneft and Aeroflot and in 2006 was named deputy minister of interior and head of the department of economic security in the MVD. In 2013 Putin appointed him to “take decisions on the implementation of the checks provided for legal acts of the Russian Federation on combating corruption.”106
With Ivanov, Tokarev, Chemezov, Shkolov, and Warnig, Putin had the beginning of an inner circle. He met others when he was stationed in Leningrad in the 1970s, and when he returned there in 1990 the core team would take shape.
Putin in Leningrad prior to the Attempted Coup
There is no solid evidence about Putin’s roles either in moving KGB and CPSU money abroad or in preparing for the August 1991 coup, and what evidence there is happens to be highly circumstantial. Putin did receive promotions while in Germany, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and, according to Stasi documents, Party secretary of the local Dresden office.XV Putin himself acknowledges that he was a member of the Party Committee for the KGB for the whole GDR.108 Masha Gessen interviewed a defector in Germany, Sergey Bezrukov, who claims that in February 1990 “Putin had a meeting with Major General Yuriy Drozdov, head of the KGB illegal-intelligence Directorate ‘S’ within the First Chief Directorate, when the major general visited Berlin. ‘The only possible purpose of the meeting could have been giving Putin his next assignment. . . . Why else would the head of the directorate be meeting with an agent who was scheduled to be going home? That sort of thing just did not happen.’ ”109, XVI Gessen’s conclusion, that Putin remained an employee of the KGB until after the attempted coup and received instructions, assignments, and a salary from them, is supported by other Putin biographers,118 and Putin readily admits that he continued to have contact with the KGB in St. Petersburg until the coup attempt, that he was on their payroll, and that they relied on him for support in the mayor’s office, although he implies that the support was mainly for their business ventures.119
Drozdov’s presence in Dresden was confirmed by Major General Shirokov in his memoirs when he stated that Drozdov came to Dresden when they were trying to organize the withdrawal of all their forces, documents, and equipment while at the same time simulating a normal workday. Evidently Drozdov arrived under the cover of a vacation with his wife and children, and he and Shirokov put the most secret machines, presumably those for cryptography, into compartments in two cars, placed their children and families on top of these, and drove through the night via Poland to return them to the USSR. Under such conditions it is more than likely that Putin was involved.120
There has never been any other direct evidence, however, that Putin met with Drozdov, although Drozdov was in and out of the Dresden office over the years and is said to have attended Putin’s inauguration in 2000. One possibility was raised by Yevgeniya Al’bats, whose work on the KGB in the early 1990s focused on the transformation of the security services from the old KGB to the new FSB and their continuing efforts to remain “the state within a state.”121 She underlines the role of KGB foreign intelligence officers, of which Putin was one, in infiltrating domestic democratic movements prior to the attempted coup against Gorbachev. She quotes testimony published afterward from Lieutenant Colonel V. Aksyonov from the First Chief Directorate: “The First Chief Directorate has begun to interfere actively in internal domestic processes. Intelligence officers and illegal agents are being recalled from abroad to the territory of the Union, primarily to the areas of maximum tension (the Baltics, Azerbaijan, Moldavia), for the purpose of gathering information and conducting active measures.”122 What is not known is the extent to which Putin personally was part of an active core of KGB officers who placed their people (or were themselves placed) into the offices of democratic leaders in the late Gorbachev period for the purpose of preparing for a coup, although the clear view among writers is that the highest levels of the KGB did struggle to maintain group cohesion and promote the power of the security services over time.123 What is known for certain is that when Putin became president, Drozdov did what he could to promote him as a worthy successor to Andropov by publishing a biography called Yuriy Andropov and Vladim
ir Putin: On the Path to Re-Birth.124
Certainly a rich but hybrid combination of Chekists, mobsters, and officials in bureaucratic positions of power existed throughout the USSR at this time, and Leningrad was no exception. Putin was at the nexus of these three worlds: the two well-known Italian investigative journalists Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo, who conducted an investigation of Putin, interviewed a former KGB First Directorate employee, “Nikolay,” who claims that he was approached by his superior in the spring of 1990 to be part of the following scheme:
[You will be part of a] new clandestine structure where you will work with the best of the best. Your personnel files will be removed from the archives. No one will ever know your past. You will become a clandestine agent; you will begin to work for the Fatherland. Against those who want to destroy it. . . . I agreed. . . . I worked directly on cleaning up the archives of the KGB. Together with my files, hundreds of others were removed. Including that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. After the failed coup of ’91, I found myself working as the chief financial officer of a major joint venture on behalf of the KGB. My life is divided between Moscow, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Vienna, and Geneva. Money, money and more money. I took care of nothing except running their affairs, in one offshore paradise or another. We, the patriots of the KGB, were moving millions and millions of dollars into bank vaults. And along those same channels also moved the money from organized crime, to the point that I would not be able to tell which monies belonged to the KGB and which to the mafia. In response to my timid questions, they responded: just move the damn money. And I did.125
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