Putin's Kleptocracy_Who Owns Russia?
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Putin could have been under no illusions that if OVR won, their plan had to include putting him in jail, along with other members of the Family. Primakov had already called for “freeing places in the prisons and camps for those we will be sending there.”157 In a subsequent interview, Putin’s PR chief, Gleb Pavlovskiy, developed this theme: “Putin always said, we know ourselves . . . we know that as soon as we move aside, you will destroy us. He said that directly, you’ll put us to the wall and execute us. And we don’t want to go to the wall. . . . That was a very deep belief and was based on [the] very tough confrontations of 1993 when Yel’tsin fired on the Supreme Soviet [Parliament] and killed a lot more people—Putin knows—than was officially announced.”158
That summer Kremlin insiders started to court the country’s human rights community and liberal elites, seeking support for Putin. Pyotr Aven, who had a strong relationship with Putin from the very beginning, hosted one such dinner at his palatial estate with Putin and Igor Malashenko, one of the founders of NTV, who had been Yel’tsin’s campaign manager in 1996. In a subsequent interview, Malashenko stated that he thought the evening was going to end without his getting a real feeling for who Putin was. But then Malashenko’s wife received a call from her daughter in London complaining that the private school she was attending had failed to send a car to pick her up from the airport. “Our daughter is a strange girl,” she sighed. “I would certainly take a taxi instead of waiting at the airport so long.” Putin immediately responded, “Listen, your daughter is correct and you are not.” Malashenko’s wife was slightly irritated. “Why do you say that?” “You could never be confident it’s really a cab.” Not long afterward Yumashev asked Malashenko to support Putin as Yel’tsin’s successor, saying, “He didn’t give up Sobchak. He won’t give us up.” But Malashenko declined Yumashev’s request, insisting, “He’s KGB and KGB can’t be trusted.”159 Andrey Kolesnikov similarly described the veteran human rights campaigner Sergey Kovalev’s hesitation as liberal and human rights circles debated the issue “Who is Mr. Putin?”160XVI
At the end of the summer of 1999, Putin was named prime minister. What happened that made him so indispensable to the Family? What did he have to do to maneuver himself to avoid prosecution in Petersburg? What evidence is there, if any, that he was part of a plan to escalate the conflict with the Chechens as a way of increasing his own chances of taking power? In May, Berezovskiy and the Family, with Putin’s help, were shaping Stepashin’s cabinet and limiting his choices. Chubays, who had evidently tried to block Putin’s rise, suffered a major defeat at this time, when neither the IMF nor the World Bank would intervene with Yel’tsin to prevent his ouster.166 Chubays was said to favor Stepashin over Putin as Yel’tsin’s successor,167 and Yel’tsin himself had initially been taken with Stepashin’s “naïve optimism.”168 But in his own memoirs he reveals why, during the summer of 1999, he decided that Putin was the better choice to deal with the very real threat of an OVR victory: “It was clear to me that the final round of a pitched political battle was approaching. . . . Stepashin was able to reconcile some people for a time, but he wasn’t going to become a political leader, a fighter, or a real ideological opponent to Luzhkov and Primakov. . . . The Prime Minister had to be changed. I was prepared for battle.”169
What kind of “battle” was being contemplated? In two articles in Moskovskaya Pravda, in July and August, the military correspondent Aleksandr Zhilin claimed that “sources in the Kremlin” had confirmed that plans included declaring a state of emergency and canceling elections for five years after creating a “Hungarian version of events” in Moscow that would simultaneously discredit Luzhkov and create the conditions for declaring the state of emergency. The plan, allegedly called “Storm in Moscow” by the Kremlin planners, was laid out in a document dated June 26, 1999,170 and involved “high-profile terrorist attacks (or attempted attacks) against a number of public buildings of the FSB, MVD, Federation Council; . . . the kidnapping of a number of famous people and ordinary citizens by ‘Chechen fighters’; . . . criminal-enforcement actions against companies and businesses who support Luzhkov; . . . provoking a war between criminal groups in Moscow, creating an unbearable crime situation in the capital on the one hand and providing a cover for the planned terrorist attacks against State institutions on the other.”171 Zhilin also quoted Kremlin sources justifying Stepashin’s removal because he “rejected all these adventurist plans . . . that could have led to civil war” and because he was becoming popular and could make an independent run for the presidency without requiring the backing of the Family. “Stepashin was educated, fairly strong, intelligent, ready for tough decisions while at the same time rejecting dictatorship. . . . After another couple of months he would have developed a solid political base and it would have been difficult to force his resignation.”172
Concerned about the imminent collapse of Yel’tsin’s physical and psychological well-being, which would force his resignation, the Family pushed to shape a team that would be completely reliable. According to Zhilin’s Kremlin sources, reportedly Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergey Zverev, who was fired on July 29,173 this team included Putin as acting president, a Putin appointee in the FSB, and pro-Berezovskiy appointees as prime minister and minister of internal affairs.174 On August 9, Putin had been named prime minister and designated presidential successor; also on August 9 his Petersburg colleague Patrushev had taken over as head of the FSB; and Stepashin, who wouldn’t do Berezovskiy’s bidding when it came to declaring a state of emergency and ratcheting up the conflict in Chechnya, had been replaced by Vladimir Rushaylo as minister of interior on May 21. Rushaylo would famously declare in 2001, “You should not confuse corruption with bribe taking.”175 In the Soviet period, he had risen through the ranks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to supervise the foreign-currency-only Beryozka stores popular with expats and dollar-possessing Soviet citizens. He then headed the Moscow branch of the Organized Crime Unit in 1992–96, before becoming deputy minister and then minister of interior. Stepashin would run for the Duma as an opposition Yabloko candidate and win a seat in December. Chubays, discovering that Yel’tsin was about to name Putin as his successor, feverishly tried to prevent it; he attempted to talk Putin out of accepting the promotion and then appealed directly to the Family.176 Others claim that Chubays supported Putin in principle but felt he could not get acceptance from the Duma.177
Other evidence of Kremlin intrigue emerged publicly when, on August 3, Yel’tsin signed a decree releasing Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergey Zverev from his position. Zverev responded by calling a news conference the same day, blasting Chief of Staff Voloshin for forcing him out, saying Voloshin’s actions were “harmful to the country and harmful to the president.” He continued, “The [Presidential] Administration has turned into a body that has actually wreaked havoc.”178 Using a chess analogy, he did not rule out that the Kremlin was developing contingencies to cancel the elections: “Perhaps these kinds of plans are hatched in the Kremlin, if the situation is getting out of control, or if there are no ‘free moves.’ ”179 Zverev sharply condemned the influence of both Berezovskiy and Abramovich, who had pushed the Presidential Administration into serving “corporate not state interests.”180 He declared that the Kremlin did not make decisions without consulting with them. In blunting the rise of OVR, Zverev stated, the government “in the conflict with regional leaders needed an effective instrument of struggle. . . . Stepashin is a reasonable person and will not participate in such activities. He understands what might be the results. This means it might be necessary to find another instrument and another man who will do this.”181
In August and September, Chechen and Dagestani militants, numbering into the hundreds or even low thousands, according to some reports, and led by Shamil Basayev and Movladi Udugov, seized several villages in Dagestan and triggered a Russian military response. Investigative reports suggested that the raid may have been planned at the ve
ry top. According to transcripts that were published (allegedly recorded and leaked by a Dagestani FSB official) in mid-June, someone who sounded like Berezovskiy had a series of conversations with two people who sounded like Udugov and Kazbek Makhashev, representing Basayev and his radical Chechen wing, in which he promised them money for preparing a raid.182 In July more meetings were allegedly held at a private house on the French Riviera, where Basayev met with a man “resembling Kremlin chief of staff Voloshin” in a deal in which Basayev would come to power in Chechnya while Russian forces would suppress the conflict, giving them “a small war, a border conflict, a big performance with fireworks” that could be exploited for political gain.183 Stanford University’s Hoover Institution historian John Dunlop writes that both French and Israeli intelligence monitored and verified the meeting,184 and Boris Kagarlitskiy reports that French intelligence was able to eavesdrop on the entire conversation.185 General Ovchinnikov, the head of MVD Internal Forces, warned on July 30 that “shelling, attacks and other acts of provocation . . . launched from Chechen territory were increasing.”186 He subsequently stated in an interview that he had raised concerns at the time with Interior Minister Rushaylo about MVD forces along the Dagestan-Chechen border being withdrawn at the same time that warnings about an imminent invasion were increasing, giving the Basayev forces complete access to two villages the MVD had seized.187 The local MVD commander in Dagestan also subsequently reported, “That there would be a war in August was spoken of as early as the spring [of 1999] starting from operatives from the power structures and ending with women at the bazaars.”188 The Chechen deputy prime minister and national security minister Turpal-Ali Atgeriev claimed that he had twice told FSB chief Putin in July 1999 of Basayev’s plans, knowing full well that Basayev could be playing into the hands of those who wanted a second Chechen war. Atgeriev was captured in October 2000 and sentenced to one year in prison, where he died of leukemia on August 22, 2000, according to Moscow’s Interfax. His parents and Chechen authorities, however, insist he was tortured to death.189
Dunlop’s extensive research of this episode lends significant credibility to the argument that the Chechen incursion into Dagestan was the beginning of an extended “false flag” operation in which specific Chechen leaders, paid by the Family, acted to create a state of panic in the country that would justify putting the government on a war footing and declaring a state of emergency if needed. The Chechen incursion into Dagestan was unimpeded by federal forces. During the fight to capture the villages, where the Chechens faced stiffer than expected resistance from local villagers, the Russians came to the “aid” of the Dagestanis by razing the villages through bombardment, in the process killing hundreds of Russian soldiers and an unknown number of innocent Dagestani civilians. Then, despite the carnage, the Chechens were allowed to withdraw unimpeded.190
Prime Minister, August 9, 1999
Two days after Basayev’s initial incursion into Dagestan, Yel’tsin announced that he had fired Stepashin and replaced him with Putin. Not only was he naming Putin to be yet another prime minister, but Yel’tsin also named him as his preferred successor, the first of his five prime ministers to be so designated. In the transcript of his remarks, Yel’tsin stated, “I have decided to now name the person who is, in my opinion, able to consolidate society and, drawing support from the broadest political forces, to ensure the continuation of reforms in Russia. He will be able to unite around himself those who are to renew Great Russia in the new 21st Century. He is the Secretary of the Security Council and the Director of the FSB of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”191 Discussing his dismissal on that day, Stepashin pointedly stated, “The main thing now is that we should act in a constitutionally legal way. The elections must take place on time.”192 Chubays reportedly once again tried to block the move, without success.193
Yel’tsin frankly admitted that Putin had expressed some reluctance about accepting this position, less due to lack of willingness to do the day-to-day work than from distaste for campaigning and being in the public eye. Yel’tsin said Putin told him, “Electoral campaigns—I don’t like them. I really don’t like them. I don’t know how to fight them and I don’t like them.”194 Yel’tsin also conceded that Chubays fought against the appointment, that he complained both to Yel’tsin personally and to the Family, saying that Yel’tsin had “lost his mind” (soshol s uma) and that the Duma should step in to stop the appointment. Yel’tsin also maintained that Chubays warned Putin that he wasn’t ready for the attacks he would sustain in the public eye. But Putin told him this was Yel’tsin’s decision and Chubays should abide by it.195
Over the next week the still largely unknown Putin made his first forays onto the public stage. In a speech before the Duma on August 16, as part of the confirmation process, he laid out his priorities. In his very first sentence he stated what would become the trademark of his rule: “The first thing that ought to concern us all equally right now is the stability and reliability of authority.” On the issue of elections, he clearly did not close the door to emergency rule since elections require “calm and order,” but neither did he suggest he was leaning in that direction: “Second, one of the government’s main tasks is to ensure calm and order in the country and the holding of honest and just elections, both State Duma elections and presidential elections.” He repeatedly returned to the need to strengthen the state: “The weakness of state institutions . . . is the bait for unscrupulous entrepreneurs and a reason for blackmail and pressure on the authorities in the pursuit of selfish interests. The result of this is the proliferation of crime throughout our economy. This is particularly dangerous against a background of attempts to privatize law-enforcement bodies and to turn them into an instrument of war among clans and groups. In its fight against this phenomenon, the government will avail itself of all of its potential. . . . Laws on the market are only truly effective when there is no disorder in the united mechanism of state management, when the work of all branches of power is aimed at one thing—preserving the unity and integrity of our state.” On the instability in the North Caucasus he was more forthcoming about the potential for introducing emergency rule: “Regional leaders are looking to the executive authorities for the most resolute measures against the terrorists. The possibility of imposing a state of emergency there was discussed. Today, this morning, right up to now, we have been discussing this issue in detail, and demands have been made in this house for a quicker decision, within the law, on a state of emergency. I think that we can contain the conflict and remove its root causes without resorting to that extreme measure.” His concluding words summed up his main point: “I do know one thing for sure: not one of these tasks can be performed without imposing basic order and discipline in this country, without strengthening the vertical chain of command in the executive authorities.”196
Although Putin was confirmed, he received only 233 votes—only seven votes more than the minimum of 226 required for passage.197 It was clearly not yet the case that the future of the Family was secure. And the announcement the following day, August 17, that Yevgeniy Primakov, universally rated in public opinion polls the country’s most respected leader, and Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, rated number two in the polls, would “unite all healthy, centrist forces”198 around OVR to fight for victory in the December Duma elections was a lightning bolt to the Family. A furious campaign would be required by the Kremlin to prevent their victory. It seems likely that Yel’tsin’s personal preference was for proceeding with the elections, but given his physical incapacity, those around him were willing to explore all options to keep their potential jailers from coming to power. Of course, they were able to use the “administrative resources” of the Kremlin to help bring to power a group that would secure their future. The spinmeister of the Putin project, and the PR guru for the Family since 1996, Gleb Pavlovskiy, subsequently explained, “In 1999, when Putin was pulled into project ‘Successor,’ there was always a certain amount of physical fear for the existence of the
‘Family.’ ” When the interviewer asked Pavlovskiy whether this extended to Putin, he replied, “Yes. Maybe back then [in 1999], internally he [Putin] was skeptical about all that, but now [after the 2011 election demonstrations], probably, not anymore. Now there is fear.”199
The public didn’t know Putin, and if the Family was going to secure their future through legal immunity granted by Putin as the next president, Putin needed to be “created.” This was Pavlovskiy’s job. As part of the Family’s brain trust, Pavlovskiy had a significant task: to create an image of Putin out of thin air. Beginning in August, Pavlovskiy arranged for Putin to speak at various venues to build alliances and to show the Moscow elite in particular that he was more than a lowly officer from the KGB. Pavlovskiy relates that Putin was so effective at a meeting at the end of August at Moscow’s elite PEN Club with leading Russian writers, an ordinarily extremely skeptical group, that after an hour they practically became his proxies. The image that Pavlovskiy worked on was of Putin as someone who, through everything, remained “on his post,” protecting the “true” interests of the nation against all enemies. He was to be the latter-day Stierlitz, the mythologized Soviet spy portrayed in the famous Soviet series Seventeen Moments of Spring who won World War II by serving undercover deep inside the SS regime. As discussed earlier, Putin himself had already shaped the 1992 documentary by Igor Shadkhan that made the connection between Stirlitz and himself, with both men portrayed as having sacrificed their personal happiness to protect the motherland. Similarly the message Pavlovskiy helped convey through Putin (and Pavlovskiy clearly admits that he initially underestimated Putin’s ability) was “I am still on my post amidst these corrupt oligarchs. Just wait. I will deliver.” Pavlovskiy’s task was made easier, he admits, by the huge contrast between Yel’tsin’s feebleness and Putin’s youth. The fact that Putin’s main opponents, Primakov and Luzhkov, were of the Yel’tsin generation also helped—as did Pavlovskiy’s carefully constructed leaks of details about Primakov’s supposed failing health and Luzhkov’s alleged corruption.200