This book stems partly from my work as chief consultant on a four-part BBC television documentary titled ‘Putin, Russia & the West’, made by the Brook Lapping production company. For the series, we conducted hundreds of hours of top-level interviews not only in Russia but also in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine and Georgia. These original interviews cast fresh light on many of the events covered, and are at the heart of my narrative.
I also draw, particularly for Chapter 9 of the book, on my personal experiences while working for three years as an adviser to President Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov. When the Kremlin decided in 2006 to take on a New York public-relations company, Ketchum, and its Brussels-based partner, GPlus, I found myself making an unexpected detour from my career as a journalist. Neither Ketchum nor GPlus had anyone on their staff who knew much about Russia, and suddenly they needed someone and offered me a job. After eight years covering the European Union, the idea of immersing myself in Russia again was appealing. Most of my career had revolved around it: I had studied and taught Russian, worked as a translator in Moscow and for the BBC Monitoring Service, been Moscow correspondent of the Sunday Times and later the BBC.
There was one piquant moment in my biography that made the offer even more tempting. Back in 1989, when Putin was a KGB spy in Dresden, his bosses deported me from Moscow in retaliation for Margaret Thatcher’s expulsion of Soviet spies from London. I was then the Sunday Times correspondent and was one of three journalists and eight diplomats who were kicked out in the last big spy scandal of the Cold War. How ironic, I thought, to return to Moscow as Putin’s adviser! I accepted, and became a Kremlin media consultant, based in Brussels but travelling regularly to Moscow. I was part of a team of some 20–30 people worldwide, but the only full-time consultant. I came to know Peskov and his team very well, and although they always kept up their guard, I was as close as any foreigner in those years to the corridors of power. My personal observations form the basis for much of what I describe during the years 2006–2009.
Our main task as media advisers to the Kremlin was to persuade them to open up to the press, on the rather obvious premise that the more you speak the more your views will be heard. The Russian political class proved remarkably resistant to this idea, and remained so long after I left the PR world and returned to journalism – as I discovered while working on the BBC television series. Persuading senior Russian politicians to give interviews was immensely difficult, and several key figures refused altogether. Others agreed, but only after many months of obstruction by their subordinates who seemed unwilling or afraid even to pass on our request. President Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova, refused point-blank even to speak to us. Ironically it was easier to gain top-level access to the Kremlin in the final years of communism, when I worked on the BBC series The Second Russian Revolution, than it is now. Our task became even harder as political uncertainty crept in during the year prior to the 2012 presidential elections. The entire administration was in limbo, as Putin and his president, Dmitry Medvedev, refused to reveal which of them would run for re-election. Suddenly we found that interviews that had been promised were declined. It became clear that canny politicians and functionaries did not dare to stick their necks out in such a time of flux.
Nonetheless we did interview more than a hundred people (either on or off the record) for the TV series and this book. They include heads of government, foreign ministers and senior advisers in eight countries. In Russia we spoke to Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Anatoly Antonov, Stanislav Belkovsky, Vladimir Chizhov, Boris Chochiev, Arkady Dvorkovich, Viktor Gerashchenko, German Gref, Alexei Gromov, Sergei Guriev, Andrei Illarionov, Igor Ivanov, Sergei Ivanov, Grigory Karasin, Mikhail Kasyanov, Viktor Khristenko, Yevgeny Kiselyov, Eduard Kokoity, Andrei Kolesnikov, Konstantin Kosachev, Alexander Kramarenko, Alexei Kudrin, General Marat Kulakhmetov, Sergei Kupriyanov, Sergei Lavrov, Fyodor Lukyanov, Mikhail Margelov, Sergei Markov, Vladimir Milov, Oleg Mitvol, Dmitry Muratov, Gleb Pavlovsky, Dmitry Peskov, Sergei Prikhodko, Yevgeny Primakov, Dmitry Rogozin, Sergei Ryabkov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Viktor Shenderovich, Dmitry Trenin, Yuri Ushakov, Alexander Voloshin and Igor Yurgens.
In the USA we interviewed Matthew Bryza, Bill Burns, Nicholas Burns, Eric Edelman, Daniel Fata, Daniel Fried, Philip Gordon, Rose Gottemoeller, Thomas Graham, Stephen Hadley, Lt-Col Robert Hamilton, John Herbst, Fiona Hill, General James Jones, David Kramer, Michael McFaul, General Trey Obering, Stephen Pifer, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Sestanovich, Dean Wilkening and Damon Wilson.
In Georgia we spoke to Irakli Alasania, David Bakradze, Giga Bokeria, Nino Burjanadze, Vladimer Chachibaia, Raphael Gluckmann, Natalia Kinchela, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Daniel Kunin, Batu Kutelia, Alexander Lomaia, Vano Merabishvili, Mikheil Saakashvili, Eka Tkeshelashvili, Grigol Vashadze, Temur Yakobashvili and Eka Zguladze.
In the UK we spoke to Tony Brenton, John Browne, Nick Butler, Jonathan Cohen, Michael Davenport, Martha Freeman, David Miliband, Craig Oliphant, Jonathan Powell, George Robertson and Alexander Temerko.
In Ukraine we interviewed Leonid Kuchma, Hrihoriy Nemyria, Oleh Rybachuk and Viktor Yushchenko, and in Poland Alexander Kwaśniewski and Radoslaw Sikorski.
In Germany we interviewed Rolf Nikel, Alexander Rahr, Gerhard Schröder and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and in France our sources were Jean-David Levitte and Maurice Gourdault-Montagne.
I would like to thank the producer of the Brook Lapping series, Norma Percy, and the executive producer, Brian Lapping, for giving me the opportunity to work on this long but rewarding project. My thanks go to directors Wanda Koscia and David Alter for reading some of the chapters, and to assistant producer Tim Stirzaker for his indefatigable research and organisational help. Above all I am indebted to the series director, Paul Mitchell, and the Moscow producer, Masha Slonim, for their stream of advice and insights. Neil Buckley and Fiona Hill kindly read the manuscript or parts of it and made many sensible suggestions, for which I am very grateful. Lastly, warm thanks to my agent Bill Hamilton, and my excellent editor at I.B.Tauris, Joanna Godfrey.
1
THE SECRET POLICEMAN’S BALL
A new millennium
The Putin era began at midday on the last day of the twentieth century. Taking the entire world by surprise, a wheezing, faltering President Boris Yeltsin appeared on television to announce his resignation, six months ahead of schedule. In a voice breaking with emotion he asked Russians to forgive him for his mistakes and failings, and told his people that Russia should enter the new millennium with ‘new politicians, new faces, new intelligent, strong and energetic people’.
Yeltsin had recorded the address in the Kremlin earlier that morning. The first people to know about it, apart from his daughter Tatiana and his closest advisers, were the television technicians who loaded his script into the autocue machine. When he finished he turned away and wiped tears from his eyes, then opened a bottle of champagne, poured a glass for the camera crew and the few presidential staff who were present, clinked glasses and downed his own one in a single go. Even as he did so, his designated successor, Vladimir Putin, was being made up behind a screen in the same room to record his own New Year’s address to the people.