Alexandra Tolstoy Shares How Life Is Inside Putin's Inner Circle | Lorraine

now my next guest was part of vladimir putin's inner circle for about eight years alexandra tolstoy she was in a relationship with russian billionaire sergey pochev who was known as putin's banker before he fled the country and was later branded a traitor their story the subject of a fascinating documentary is called the countess and the russian billionaire well you can see that documentary on netflix it is absolutely fascinating alexandra of course no longer with sergey she joins me now it's so good to see you it really is what you've been through is astonishing now you met this man you were teaching in russian weren't you that's serious in english he spoke pretty good russian yes he spoke really good russian last year sorry about that well just yeah sorry about that no but you were you make cause your russian's fantastic and you were teaching him english and you just fell in love yes it was absolutely magical and magnetic and he was deeply attractive and very personable great sense of humor very charming very child of these things yes and you are the kind of woman that follows her heart yes i have had a history of following my life exactly because i remember i remember reading about you years ago when you gave up everything to be with your first husband she was like a cossack horseman and you had this incredibly incredibly romantic i suppose relationship yeah that broke down though and then of course you couldn't go from one extreme to another there you are with one of the richest man in the world yeah extraordinary relationship it was really crazy and gave me actually a rather horrible insight into what's going on now because you were really in that in that inner circle weren't you well yes he was very i mean sergey is meant to be one of the people who put putin in power he was when i met him he was already falling out with him i think i realized in retrospect but he was still very powerful within that circle he was a senator and um yes he was still operating in that world of course he was but when you two got together putin wasn't really happy was he because because you were british so i'm afraid that was the fabrication of sergeys right in order to manipulate his family and manipulate everybody against me putin didn't know who i was of course he didn't know abramovic was already with dashajukova who's american i actually hold russian citizenship so i'm sure that putin had no problem and my name is obviously extremely russian tolstoy yeah and and and doesn't really related to the man who don't warn peace i mean you know that this is this is the thing and you love russia and you i love russia i'm it's just devastating for me absolutely devastating i have dedicated so much of my life to i taught i learned russian myself i wasn't brought up speaking russian i obviously have championed russian culture russian literature my children i have gone to such great lengths to they speak fluent russian better russian than i do we are practicing russian orthodox my best friends live in moscow it's it's truly devastating it must be really difficult for you with what's going on just now it must be really interesting i mean everything you've been through with him because the relationship is very volatile very difficult he's now in exile the whole thing is is very very tough and then this happens well yes but nothing nothing that i have gone through is compares to what's happening in ukraine and i it is devastating i you know even my nine-year-old we're just crying all day long it is how can they be doing this and i think what a lot of people in the west don't understand every single russian has a relative in ukraine you know i have secret messages coming out from people i don't know where my relatives are what's going on and then i think perhaps the worst story i've heard is where russian parents are phoning their children in ukraine and the children are saying this is just horrific we're being bombed what are we going to do and the parents say no you're not stop listening to propaganda and we've come to liberate you and it's this so they've been sold all of this so stalinist yes it's horrific what do you think is going on in putin's mind having met the man and been in his company i haven't i haven't met him or spoken to him but i have been in the room with him and i would say more that my insight was that uh sergey is a sort of microcosm i would say of putin right and his the way he operates it's a it's a bandit's world and these bandits operate they inevitably are massive narcissists and i and sergey himself told me a lot about putin and i would say that he he doesn't act with a strategy i think that's a misconception i think he's very spontaneous and his ego plays a huge part uh there's a lot of speculation about whether he's ill and his face seems to imply that with this huge bloating and yes it does look very very different i mean some have said it's like plastic surgery it's it's botox it's whatever but i mean we all look different as we get older of course but that is so different no that's so different and i think i've noticed there's a dripping of information about steroids use which does seem to talk to uh and about some kind of illness and this would seem to i just know from the way that sergey behaved that when they are on the back foot they really lash out and will do incredibly self-destructive things because what putin is doing is so destructive for russia it's just i mean russia might not exist soon it is uh it's like it's so isolated now and it's like the whole world i mean even china that they're supposed to be yeah you know the allies you know everyone's kind of turning on you and when the taliban are taking the mural high ground which they have been you know it's just something that's very wrong but it's it's absolutely unfathomable isn't it yeah it's unfathomable um there's the most enormous brain drain going on in russia now every single educated young russian will be fleeing they're trying to flee to georgia to armenia to dubai just anywhere anywhere that they can get out and have some kind of future and it's going to be very difficult for people like your husband i mean he's he's an exile he's his he's very privileged yeah he's he's he's living somewhere out of everything that's going on and that's probably going to happen to an awful lot of them but for you i would imagine you just want some peace for you and your kids yeah watch this documentary i just think you know you just want to be safe yes and i do feel very safe i feel very lucky and fortunate to live in the uk but i also feel it's just such a hideous irony my grandfather fled my father and my grandfather grew up in exile i made a huge effort to go back to russia and my children will grow up in exile and it's just this horrible relationship with russia that's gone so wrong i know it's a place i mean it's obviously a place that you love dearly and we should separate putin and his regime from the russian people and the people that the incredibly brave people that are you know that are protesting against the war and people like as you said that are just believing the propaganda because that's all they're hearing that's all they're doing and who wants to believe that something like that could be happening well i know yeah alexandra thank you for coming in the documentary is quite remarkable you can download it right now on on netflix and uh indeed as you said so sorry i said you were teaching your your next partner russian because you know obviously he speaks that it's a monday it's been a long weekend thank you so much thank you thank you very much don't forget you can watch full episodes of lorraine on the itv hub and all the best clips compilations and playlists right here on our channel just subscribe now and you'll never miss an upload click here to watch another video similar to this one or click here to head to our channel's home page to explore all of our 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Channel: Lorraine

Views: 505,267

Keywords: lorraine, lorraine kelly, lorraine itv, lorraine interview, interview on lorraine, chat show, talk show, stv

Id: QqdLIDG1C6o

Length: 7min 34sec (454 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2022