Putin's Way (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] tonight on frontline with russia in economic crisis and tensions simmering over ukraine the world is watching vladimir putin when he's in the corner that's when he's dangerous tonight the inside story of the russian president's rise to power he has got so many guilty secrets so much money's been stoned that he doesn't really trust anyone to keep him safe if he steps down from par correspondent jillian findlay investigates the allegations that have haunted putin there have been a number of credible investigations all this propagandistic quasi investigation don't became victim of propaganda if you put these people in the united states and check what they've done they're criminals tonight on front line instead of seeing russia as a democracy in the process of failing we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding putin's way [Applause] [Music] in the spring of 2012 vladimir vladimirovich putin entered the kremlin to start his third term as president of russia it had been a remarkable ascent in just over 20 years a journey from unemployed spy to modern day czar [Music] lieutenant colonel andrei zikov has watched that climb to power a former police investigator who once wanted to arrest putin he says his rise has come at great cost well of course there has always been corruption in russia but building it into such a meticulous system was something only mr putin has managed to do it could putin be held criminally responsible based on the evidence that has already been gathered absolutely yes in 2010 zikov laid out evidence he had gathered from an investigation of putin's early years in city government in saint petersburg he posted it on youtube mysteriously there have been efforts to delete it from the web but not before it was downloaded by russia expert and author karen deweisha and and in its essence what did that series that he posted what did it what was the summation of it the summation of it was uh a detailed account of the criminal activities that he feels putin was involved in abusive power abuse of his official position involvement in relations with organized crime um knowledge about money laundering i mean a whole range of economic crimes teresha says that zika's charges are part of a larger culture of corruption in putin's russia she has been gathering extensive documentation for a new book on what she calls putin's kleptocracy and how he and his circle have shaped the country i started thinking instead of seeing russia as a as a democracy in the process of failing we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding that that they're not actually incapable of being democrats they don't want to be democrats what about that let's work on that thesis and if that's correct when did that start and that's what took me to the 90s because they were stealing from the very beginning in 1990 the old soviet system was collapsing but what exactly would replace it wasn't clear the uncertainty had a whole nation on edge among them was a young kgb officer named vladimir putin he'd returned to his hometown of saint petersburg from his posting in dresden east germany and he was looking for work he would eventually find it at st petersburg's city hall his former law professor anatoly sobchak had just been elected mayor [Music] sobchak's widow beardmilanarasova remembers her husband's response when his former student insisted on telling him that he'd been working for the kgb my husband was shocked by the candor and what his job was and he said he had worked in the german democratic republic in east germany and he said well i just happen to be looking for people that know europe that know the languages in order to work on uh foreign economic relations they wouldn't have hired an idiot to work in reconnaissance so i hope you can manage it and it needs to be said that according to my husband he never regretted it putin would soon be deputy mayor of the city and crucially chair of the committee on foreign economic relations he was the linchpin he controlled which foreign companies could register their offices and receive offices after all remember all this property was soviet property soviet union hadn't fallen yet so how was a company going to get access to property to set up a branch in some petersburg putin would have to assign it even as his star rose there was an early example of his ambition he commissioned a documentary about himself it was called power [Music] made by igor shotgun putin had an agenda he wanted to admit that he had been a kgb agent in foreign reconnaissance [Music] for putin it was an effective way to out himself as a former member of the reviled kgb but for mayor subchak putin's past would prove useful after all he was running a city with a notorious criminal history and according to prominent political analyst stanislav belkovsky he needed someone who could work in its shadows st petersburg called the banded capital of russia gangster capital of russia at that moment and the mayor's office should communicate to the european someway but of course not only stop chuck could not be involved in such contexts and it was vladimir putin who was in charge when i arrived for the shoot his entire lobby was full of foreigners this included finnish germans and there was some agreement they were all coming to now the agreement for the most part was about food aid for saint petersburg peterburgo putin had his work cut out for him the collapse of the soviet union brought terrible food shortages to st petersburg the agricultural system was in chaos and there was little foreign currency to buy food from abroad to fill the shelves a program was devised companies would be allocated raw materials like oil and minerals to be sold abroad and the money was then used to buy food in his film the deputy mayor assured hungary residents food was on its way to the trouble was most of the promised food never arrived despair turned to anger and then protests a city councilor named marina salye was charged with investigating what had happened salye would eventually leave politics disillusioned and retreat to the countryside but she kept all her documents she says they show what went wrong in saint petersburg in the 90s and who she believes was to blame so without going into all the details i'll tell you from this document signed by putin all 124 million disappeared without a trace without a trace because from this list of materials that i have listed not a single gram of food came up and what happened was um fly by night companies were set up many of his friends who were still around today were behind those companies the goods went out and incomplete or no shipments came back so millions millions were made just in that episode alone in the end the saint petersburg city council approved salier's recommendation to turn the case over to the prosecutors [Music] dismisses the investigation as a political vendetta against her husband [Music] when you it was just a way to somehow influence my husband to get rid of the problem but protected his deputy the case of the missing food would never be prosecuted and putin would deny the charges and blamed the companies and other bureaucrats a six-hour drive west of st petersburg is the ancient svyaragorski monastery andre zikov says he comes here often to find peace he is haunted by case 144128 it was an investigation into a construction company called 20th trust which had been registered by putin's economic relations committee lieutenant colonel zikov was the top federal investigator in saint petersburg and became convinced that crimes had been committed [Music] what does it would do so two and a half billion rubles were transferred to the company's account the way it worked was the funds were supposed to be used for specific building projects but ended up being used for completely different purposes the investigation tracked how the city paid 20th trust to do work how the work was never done and how much of the money disappeared in one case according to zikoff money was siphoned off by putin and his friends to build vacation villas in spain it was should have been jailed and would be in jail undoubtedly putin probably first and foremost as the greatest number of documents and orders were signed by him but putin didn't go to jail he went to moscow [Music] by 1996 he'd begun his rise in the kremlin and was soon in a position to help his mentor back in st petersburg anatoly sobchek had a problem he just lost the election and was the subject of yet another corruption investigation in 1996 when sub checks stopped being mayor as is often the case in the russian elite a lot of people immediately turn their backs on him vladimir putin was nearly the only one that didn't but suddenly he had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital so when my husband had the heart attack and it was hard to get him treatment because people were calling the chief cardiologist of the city who is treating him telling him don't read subject let him die that's when i decided to take him overseas for treatment it was an orchestrated escape sopchak took off on a national holiday weekend aboard a private plane apparently arranged by vladimir putin weeks later he showed up in paris looking surprisingly healthy vladimir putin helped me organize that risking everything [Music] back in the kremlin putin's loyalty to subject had been duly noted by 1999 an ailing boris yeltsin was nearing the end of his presidency and looking for a savior himself his administration was the focus of a massive corruption investigation having parceled out much of russia's wealth to a band of oligarchs and allowed aides and family members to enrich themselves in the process there was fear in the yeltsin camp about what might happen if his successor proved less than understanding he'd already hired and fired four prime ministers before anointing vladimir putin well i think what they saw in him was that he had protected chuck and as they said he didn't give up sub chalk and he's not going to give us up how vulnerable were they at the time very vulnerable but there was a problem putin was a faceless bureaucrat unknown to the public who would have to win an election if he was to become president of the country and protect her of the elson family [Music] as in saint petersburg an instant biography was commissioned natalia govokian was on the writing team she now lives in paris what was the narrative that they wanted out just just his everything i mean where he comes from who is he why he was in kgb he was that was the main thing about him he's the kgb man that's all so what they wanted to present him that he is a normal human being he has parents he had a biography his biography tells of an only child who grew up in a poor quarter of saint petersburg an unusual boy who at age 16 went to the local kgb office and asked to join up he was told to come back later seven years later he did with a law degree and after kgb training was assigned his post in east germany once and always kgb can you explain to a western audience what does that mean they they are the people who prefer to operate in shadow they are the people which are like state is first and people are second all these kind of things he has in him and he cannot i don't think he can change it you know it's unchangeable he was so much the kgb man he would take a turn as head of its successor agency the fsb and the year before he became prime minister then one month into his new job in the fall of 1999 this bombs obliterated four apartment buildings in moscow and other cities all blown up at night while people slept hundreds died this was russia's 9 11. russian historian yuri felshtinsky has written a book on the apartment bombings we have to understand that the whole country is very nervous that's the feeling that every several days or like once a week the building is going to be blown up all of a sudden a prime minister a few russians had heard about was everywhere swearing revenge [Music] putin would point to rebels in chechnya where a separatist movement was holding ground the russian officials said that there was a chechen trail in the apartment bombings not proof of chechen involvement a chechen trail it wasn't clear what that meant but it was used in order to justify a new invasion of chechnya and putin's invasion would be brutal [Music] the man who waged it was a new national hero he quickly became the most popular politician in russia even though before the apartment bombings he was believed to have had no chance to succeed yeltsin as president they needed a set of situations in which they could postpone the elections entirely and make it more difficult for the opposition to focus on unimportant things like the corruption of the olsen family the irony is that this is precisely how the first chechen war was started the first teaching war was started and provoked in 95 in order to have a situation would allow the government to cancel elections or to postpone elections claiming that you cannot have them during the war time and absolutely the same was done in 99. so there was a real yeltsin interest in this but there also was a putin interest because he wanted to be president [Music] and it worked three months into a new millennium russia had a new president he seemed a modern man a man for the future a future all russians hoped would be better than the past but 15 years later shadows from the past haunt this place it's a memorial to those who died in those apartment bombings since that day books newspaper reports and documentaries have all raised disturbing questions about what really happened here who was really responsible among the questioners mikhail trapashkin who spent two years trying to investigate the crime on behalf of one of the families [Music] a former kgb officer himself and a lawyer trepashkin was always dubious about the official story the chechen connection his doubts only grew when his former colleagues in the security services reacted to his investigation they were telling me don't dig into it otherwise you will get imprisoned yourself and then specifically they were telling me in a straightforward way just leave it if you don't want to have trouble and i was saying that well i'm the former investigator and i have experience and i can help i can run my own investigation [Applause] but there would be many obstacles placed in the way of an investigation the russian government destroyed all the evidence in the case of the earlier bombings no sooner had the bombings taken place than bulldozers showed up to to remove the rubble including human remains and that case they destroyed the crime scene but the troubling questions about the bombings were really fueled by what happened here a few days later in a town outside moscow called a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of an apartment building in riazon by by watchful inhabitants of that building and that bomb was defused and the people who had placed that bomb in the basement turned out to be not chechen terrorists they turned out to be agents of the fsb the russian security service tests showed that the bags contained an exclusive military explosive called hexagon the detonator too was military i think that the evidence that there was an fsb operation to place explosives in the apartment building in riazen is incontrovertible at the time the fsb claimed the riyazan operation was part of a training exercise but the broader conclusion that security services could have killed their own people in the other apartments was dismissed by the government in his biography putin called it utter nonsense totally insane no chechens were ever charged others arrested were convicted in secret trials and still others in trials tainted by allegations of forced confessions but all along it's been disturbingly dangerous to investigate too closely people who tried to investigate the apartment bombings in many cases ended up dead uh yuri shakachikan sergey yushenkov alexander litvinenko anna pollackovskaya sergey markov is a political analyst and often speaks for vladimir putin there have been a number of uh credible investigations that have concluded that this was the work of the fsb and could not have happened without the knowledge of mr putin it was a new one credible investigation which shows that it had been done by efforts bear all this propagandistic quasi investigation just using tricks and so on i already had about this story about this fsb exploded building in the moscow maybe hundreds of times and all of these people free no nobody was in jail don't became victim of propaganda it's very dangerous also there were three attempts in the russian uh duma to investigate the events in riaz on in all cases they were voted down or with with the ruling party under putin's control voting unanimously not to investigate and not to ask questions mikhail trapashkin was asked to help with one of those duma investigations a week before he was due to report his findings he was stopped by the police so they stopped me at a police checkpoint where there was a crowd of people they checked my identification twice and checked the car and they didn't find anything and when i was closing it one of the officers threw in a bag and i told him that's not mine why are you putting that in my car you opened the bag and said here is the gun here is the gun was sent to prison for two years he came out and again spoke about his investigation of the apartment bombings and was arrested and jailed for another two years well the apartment bombings saved the yeltsin system they saved the division of property that took place after the fall of the soviet union they cost thousands of innocent lives both russian and chechen by starting a new war they brought to power someone from the security services and that's putin who of course had had no interest in democracy [Music] his first act as president was to grant his predecessor boris yeltsin immunity from prosecution but putin's administration would quickly ensure his own safety too case number 144128 that corruption investigation in st petersburg quietly went away the prosecutor general gave an order that the criminal case should be terminated it was explained to us that criminal investigations are not pursued in relation to the president investigator zikov still wonders how things might have been different had he been allowed to continue with his case the situation in our country would be different people would respect civil law because everyone would understand that if the president can be prosecuted then in essence our officials would understand that the law has to be protected as it now stands russia has no laws in the early years of his presidency there was hope that putin would live up to his billing and take russia on a path closer to the west democratic liberal and capitalist in 2003 he summoned the country's oligarchs to a meeting in saint catherine's hall in the kremlin under yeltsin they'd become billionaires under putin they hoped for even more business and new legitimacy on the left the richest of all mikhail korakowski i got the impression that he was our a person of our generation our parents generation they have a totalitarian view even if they're against it as opposed to our generation we're closer to the west korkowski was concerned about a new u.s anti-corruption law that would affect russian companies doing business in america that forced the heads of companies who wanted to list their shares on the market to sign a disclaimer that they don't allow corruption practices within their companies at the same time by 2003 corruption was already the key method of state governance used by the bureaucrats and bureaucrats started to demand the kind of money that was impossible to hide one has to make a choice build companies that are open and list them or do business russian style in other words pay bribes receive privileges but remain within a closed system we decided the question was worth discussing absolutely asked if he could speak frankly and made the case that it was time for russia to change its ways anyway as i understand it what you were essentially doing with the television cameras running was accusing the president of of russia of running a corrupt state [Applause] yeah did not accuse him personally with corruption and this is not how he took it [Music] yes i did accuse his inner circle and him of creating a model that uses corruption as his backbone and he told me that we too took part in creating that model potent reminded him that his oil company yukos was facing tax problems i did not argue with him i said we may have started that but we must be the ones to end it did i realize it would provoke putin's displeasure of course he did but i thought he would choose the european model and i was not the only one thinking that because it was obviously more beneficial for the country was also perceived as a political threat he had been funding opposition parties and spending money to promote democracy the meeting in the kremlin had sealed his fate he was arrested his oil company dismantled and divided among putin loyalists russia's richest man would serve 10 years in a siberian prison camp today he lives in exile in switzerland and has no doubts about the system putin put in place once he at first he thought he would build a sort of a democratic model that he could control a model like this does not exist so he started to slide towards at first mild totalitarianism and then an increasingly harsh totalitarianism if the situation develops further he will reach a full totalitarian model uh in reality every authoritarian system is a cryptocracy let's ecliptic [Music] some early evidence of that kleptocracy and how it worked was found in 2003 when police raided the offices of a small company called spag in a suburb of frankfurt germany [Music] author and journalist jurgen roth has written extensively about the raid which targeted money laundering in several countries allegedly by saint petersburg's tambotskaya mafia group in this report they mentioned the spark as a company who has close links to criminal organizations the so-called tombowska mafia in san petersburg and mr putin and so they were it was money that was being being laundered in germany london in germany through investments in in real estate putin had been on sphag's advisory board since 1992 and had a close relationship to one of its principles he only stepped aside when he became president documents but when german police moved into raidspag's offices they discovered they had a problem uh-huh it was a political affair they must inform at this time chancellor gerhart schroeder so it's the first time i think that about a normal investigation from a prosecutor in a small town in germany mr schroeder get informed or would like to be informed about this investigation why he would like to be informed because putin it was so high level to this day gerhard schroeder and vladimir putin are close friends who celebrate birthdays together what happened to the investigation in the end it finished without any result schroeder has never publicly addressed the case but their friendship provoked a scandal in germany in 2005. just two weeks before losing a general election schroeder signed off on a billion euro loan guarantee to russia's gas pipeline to europe after he retired schroeder had a new job chairman of the pipeline's consortium [Music] georgetown epitomizes the scandal in in germany and to put it mildly he didn't seem to be very bothered about avoiding the appearance of impropriety [Music] in his early days in office putin went on a charm offensive towards the west president bush famously looked into putin's eyes and saw his soul he believed he was committed to the best interests of his country putin was trained in the kgb to deceive foreigners he has a very sharp eye for human weakness he's good at persuading people and intimidating them and he's been doing this with western leaders sometimes with charms sometimes with threats but boy does he do it early on british prime minister tony blair was charmed by him and as with germany their two economies would become even more entangled london's financial center was a city enchanted by russian money these were the years of high oil prices and putin's russia was growing like never before it fueled massive corruption and much of that money was flowing into london the city of london which has made a huge amount of money to laundering russian money over the years a city is ultimately the most of the british economy and it runs on russian money [Music] valeri morozov is a russian construction magnate who now lives in exile in london his company has done projects for the kremlin most recently on the scandal-ridden sochi olympics but finally he says the corruption under putin had gone beyond what he could live with if you put these people in the united states or in canada and check what they've done they're criminals jensen was brought and supported by criminals putin was brought up to power in these 90s he had his own group and it was called when he came to moscow and became prime minister and president it was called peter's group so he changed immediately the whole system but not changed he made it different he made it in order it is everywhere it is a system so the system is a system of mutual support and tribute it's a pay-to-play system if you are on a list of possible people who might be approached to be a member of the duma for example you have to pay for your seat once you're in there then you can turn around and charge businessmen to have line items in the budget same thing all across all sectors sergey kolesnikov is another russian tycoon who lives in exile he fled to talon estonia he has intimate knowledge of how the system works and how he says corruption goes right to the top prabhuti russian business entirely depends on protection you need protection it is called having a roof or in russian the more creature you have the more successful your business will be so every businessman dreams about giving presents and gaining protection and if you give a present to the president it's like having god himself says he used to run one of putin's gifting schemes and explains how it worked a business put money into a charity in this case pole of hope kolesnikov's company called petromad took the money to buy medical equipment purchased from siemens but the profit margin was huge around 40 percent that money was funneled through a myriad of other companies ending up in something called ross invest kolesnikov owned two percent of rosinvest but he says 94 was owned by vladimir putin all investments all projects of rosenvest were only implemented if putin said yes so no activity would have been possible without his acknowledgement kolesnikov says in the beginning the money was raised for a 20 million dollar retirement home for the president but then the president decided not to retire at that point kolesnikov says he was told to divert even more money and soon the retirement home had blossomed into a palace built on state land it's a 250 million dollar italianate extravaganza overlooking the black sea near sochi what is i started saying that i'm not happy with all finances going for this palace and i was told putin is the tsar and you are his servant putin said at putin has denied that he has any connection to the palace it was reportedly sold to a rich businessman but it remains a heavily guarded mystery kolesnikov believes his scheme was only one of many ways to hide money for putin through proxies how much is a matter of speculation and some educated guesswork i started such investigations more than seven years ago and in late 2007 i published my estimate on the assets being under a position's personal control it was the figure of 40 billion dollars 40 billion dollars that figure was reportedly confirmed by the cia in 2014 if true it would make russia's president one of the richest men in the world in 2008 as he approached the end of his second term that wealth was a problem under the constitution he would have to leave office for at least one term before he could run again diplomatic cables revealed he was worried about how his riches might be viewed by a new president he solved the problem by swapping places with his hand-picked prime minister dmitry medvedev it was an arrangement that worked for a while i think and it was improved by many sources in kremlin and around kremlin in 2010 and first half of 2011 he wanted to let mitri medvedev to go for the second term in 2012 but the chain of the revolutions in arab world has made too a big impression upon vladimir putin the arab spring surged out of tunisia into tahrir square and onto tripoli for putin these mass demonstrations overthrowing powerful dictators must have been worrying it was the first stage of jessandra has coming to understanding that he could never acquit the post because the destiny of qaddafi could be waiting for him in 2011 when vladimir putin announced he would run again for russia's presidency the response was mass demonstrations in moscow's streets [Applause] protests which had to be put down by police there's never been a good succession model um in the soviet union or in russia and he's very worried about how he will leave par he doesn't want to leave in a coffin he doesn't want to go to a jail cell he has got so many guilty secrets so much money has been stolen so many people have been killed but he doesn't really trust anyone to keep him safe if he steps down from par so in a way he's both the master of the kremlin but also a prisoner in it [Music] in 2012 putin moved medvedev aside and took back the presidency in a kremlin-controlled election by now the presidential term had been extended to two six-year terms vladimir putin could remain in power until 2024 but the country he rules over is in deepening trouble in russia's cities there is a veneer of prosperity left over from the earlier days of high oil prices but the economy has been pillaged and in the vast reaches where the majority of russians live deep poverty stubbornly prevails [Music] putin's greatest fear is that the russians will realize that his modernization project has failed he came into par promising to make russia into a modern western country and it's still basically a corrupt backward country the bottom line just to put it with two numbers two numbers is all we need the median or the midpoint wealth for the average russian is 871 dollars according to credit suisse very neutral report 871 dollars means half the population has more than that in wealth and half the population has less median wealth in india over a thousand dollars so the average russian is poorer than the average indian so that's one number 871. the other number is 110.

110 individuals own 35 percent of the wealth of russia they are the most unequal country by far in the world now to distract from that a very powerful tool he's got is anti-westernism blame the west for everything that's going wrong and couple that with a very powerful propaganda machine where all the mass media is under kremlin control and he's in a very good position he has a very strong sense of entitlement that russia had stuff taken away from it during the soviet collapse and russia has the right to get it back putin has invaded crimea and redrawn the map of ukraine claiming he is protecting ethnic russians according to a spokesman it is a justifiable response to western encroachment on territories the soviet union once held lucas latvia estonia which is became full members of european union and nato but they are not independent ethnical russians under the clear discrimination in those countries and look as it happened what with ukraine united states all this year supported diversification if you're russian you can be killed if you're russians your civil rights has would not be protected if your ukraine ultra ultra nationalist okay you will be in the parliament uh you will be the president everything will be to you but you if you're russian bombs artillery and killings will be answered this is or sorry we answer it strongly no it is a sentiment that has played well at home on the streets where they demonstrated against him only two years earlier they were now singing his praises meanwhile the united states was calling for strong sanctions against russia but in the capitals of europe there was reluctance keep on trying to bring mr putin in we invite him to our summit meetings we try and treat russia as a normal country and we think we're trying to calm things down but in fact what we're doing is we're staking things we're giving mr putin the impression that we're not to be taken seriously and he can continue to push us harder and harder and hard and that's extremely dangerous but then in july 2014 one violent act would transform the political landscape malaysian passenger plane mh17 was shot down over eastern ukraine by what was widely believed to have been a russian-supplied weapon 298 people were killed [Music] suddenly the west was galvanized i demand that russia fully cooperate with the criminal investigation into the downing of mh17 it's necessary to make it clear it will not be business as usual we're opposing russia's aggression against ukraine which is a threat to the world as we saw in the appalling shootdown of mh17 in november putin arrived at the g20 meeting in australia and found himself on the margins of the class photo obama and other leaders who'd once welcomed his rubles his gas and oil now distance themselves at lunch putin seemed a lonely figure [Music] he left the summit early he returned to a country in crisis an economy beset by plummeting oil prices a ruble in free fall and new tough sanctions the question is what will he do next i haven't seen any evidence that he's willing to back down and it's not his style at all ever he doesn't back down [Music] there's a story in his biography that putin tells about himself it happened in this building where he shared a one-room apartment with his parents and it involved a cornered rat [Music] he said that i learned very good i learned forever don't try to push somebody into the corner they will jump to because when you don't have what to lose you just you attack um i think it's um it's absolutely true about himself [Music] when he's in the corner that's why he's dangerous he can jump he will not say okay let's talk he will jam [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline [Music] front lines putin's way is available on dvd to order visit shoppbs.org or call 1 800 play pbs frontline is also available for download on itunes [Music] you

2022-03-08 10:33

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