How Did Vladimir Putin Rise To Power?

the ultimate goal of a dictator is to gain power and then once you've got power the goal of the dictator becomes to keep that power you it's like you've won a gold medal but people are wanting to snatch it away from you all the time so you've got to keep holding on to the gold medal it it becomes a vicious circle because in order to maintain power you've got to get more powerful as you gain more enemies and to get more powerful you've got to restrict people's Liberties more so in fact you get worse and worse power corrupts it feeds on itself and you end up becoming an evil [Music] bastard it's sort of On a par with you know dictatorships such as you will see in in Africa and parts of the Middle East and South America and so on The Economist intelligence unit has a thing they do every year called the Democracy index which ranks countries according to the to their democracy and it has four categories it has full democracy flawed democracy hybrid regime and authoritarian regime Ukraine is 85th and Russia is 124th and more to the point Russia is deemed an authoritarian regime so Russia is right down out of 180 odd countries Russia is right down in the bottom category in terms of its commitment or otherwise to democracy these number of rulers are increasing unfortunately I mean the world is moving in that populous authoritarian Direction most dictators start off with good intentions one thinks of pinet in Chile or leuan Yu in Singapore who they might be brutal they might want to get rid of their opponents but at the same time they have a real sort of modernizing goal for their country pinet sees himself as saving his country from the evils of Communism and creating the kind of Chile which can actually uh pay its way in the world and so he's really trying to improve the welfare of his citizens uh and of course Putin to some extent starts out in that kind of a way as well he has a vision of restoring order in Russia and improving the prosperity after the after the really difficult sort of economic situation in the [Music] 1990s one of the great ironies of Communism was that the two sets of people who kept the Soviet Union going pretty much from the mid-70s onwards with the KGB themselves which is why so many KGB officers became very rich after the fall of the Soviet Union and also um a network uh called the vori the thieves in law and the vori were were prisoners they rejected everything about the Soviet Union and they they happily served time a lot of them had incredibly low hairlines because they' had tattoos saying [ __ ] by the party and then had been scalped by the authorities and then you know res they would have tattoos they would tattoo Lennon and Stalin off their knees so they couldn't be forced to kneel for a firing squad and this was a sort of incredibly weird and very Soviet Alliance of the guys who were supposed to be running running the show and the guys who rejected everything about the show somehow get together and actually keep the show on the road for 15 years Communism had failed long before and so Putin knows that Putin knows that there's no real appetite to go back to Communism what there is an appetite for is imperialism is greatness is pride is self resect and so on and that's what he's that's what he's trying to to [Music] reestablish are you concerned no I'm not concerned I think about uh the people ordinary people in Russia and uh of course uh I see the protest uh groups and uh I think about it what uh I can to do with uh all our [Music] citizens good evening and we're coming on the air at this hour with breaking news after the US warned all day of a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that it was imminent Vladimir Putin has just addressed the Russian people moments ago announcing what Putin called the start of a military Special Operation in his words to demilitarize Ukraine the problem that all dictatorships have is how to keep on regenerating Reviving their purpose you come in and you do whatever it was that you were um that you wanted to to improve things but then how do you change and that's really the that's really the difference between a dictatorial kind of a regime and a democratic regime you the the the great advantage of democracy is that there's a means whereby countries can change peacefully change without a revolution but the problem is with dictatorships that there's no kind of internal mechanis for change so things which might have worked early on work increasingly less well later on but there's no succession mechanism there's no way in which in which the country can change direction without either a palace coup or an assassination or of course the dictator [Music] dying for a dictator like Putin what power means is having the ability to do whatever you feel like like a kind of medieval King or indeed in Russia of course a zar and you know press a button and things just happen there's no no one argues against you you have millions of people under your direct control and they just have to go along with what you are [Music] saying so the Hallmarks of your average dictator and all these Putin has in Spades are narcissism you've got to love yourself yeah because you think you're worthy of this power a ruthlessness certainly a Ruth business you've also got to be very insecure because let's face it the average person you know who actually wants all this power is probably missing something in their psychological makeup a commitment to power above almost everything else a total mistrust of almost anybody and everything you've also got to be incredibly selfish you've also got to try not to care what people think about you although many dictators do have very thin skins indeed you've also got to have the most enormous ego um to actually believe that you deserve this power a willingness to go down the sort of Personality cult route especially that you and again you see that with you saw that with Stalin you saw that with Hitler you see that with with with Putin and you certainly see that with the three generations of the Kim family in North Korea that it's all about the the person in charge the the office and the incumbent become as one you've also got to be brilliant at managing the message that is a very very smart way of saying lying all the time to everybody you've also got to have a lot of people who are loyal to you who have helped you on the way up and you've got to keep them loyal and also with those same people you've also got to divide them and what you want all those people to be doing beneath you is to be fighting each other rather than fighting you this is what Putin does this is what Hitler did this is what Stalin did it is dictator textbook tactics if we look at Russian history over the very long period what we see is a really pecular kind of politics to our Western eyes historically Russia's always had a kind of politics which is enormously ruthless a battle to the death you know if you lose power the consequences are catastrophic you will certainly end up in prison you'll probably end up dead it's it's not about compromise with your opponents it's about a battle with your opponent to utterly eliminate them to make sure that they are no longer any threat right from very earliest days right from the time of SAR I and the terrible we see the development of a secret police which is really operating completely outside of the law law and which is simply the instrument for the preservation of the power of the leader one of the ways to make your people fearful is to have intelligence and security agencies that spy on your own people and I think that if you are aware of the fact that you one in 100 of you or one in 20 of you is an Informer for those agencies then you're going to have power Putin was one of those frankly slightly strange kids being no doubt about it you know he he wasn't the kind of you know Jolly gregarious socially confident young man um this was a young man a young boy who actually knocks on the door of his local KGB office in St Petersburg and says can I have a job please and they say to Putin you know you know off you go and Putin says okay what should I go and do and they say well I don't know go and study law so dutifully Putin pops around St Petersburg University and and gets himself a law degree in the Soviet Union at that time a law degree did not mean that you would go and you know become a solic or barrass as you would hear I mean law was fundamentally an arm of the an arm of the state a politicized arm of the states so law was a pretty good introduction into being a KGB agent then comes back to the KGB and says can I join you now and they go yeah all right they were called the sword and shield of the Revolution you know they they were warriors for and Defenders of the system and he took great pride in that so I think a combination of of KGB and Leningrad has really has really shaped him but then he goes on to training school and it's always been his ambition to work uh abroad and especially work in the west this is why he said he wanted to become a KGB agent in the in the first place he he's inspired by this uh this film that the KGB had had made in the 1960s is called the The Sword and the [Music] shield kind of like the um the Soviet James Bond the kind of secret agents who's who's placed in Nazi Germany pretends to be a Nazi officer and sending all the information back to the Soviet Union and and defending the motherland as it were and so Putin says this is why he wants to become a Secret policeman and one person can make so much difference to the glory of the country as it were you know Orwell's view of the thought police was not a million miles away from the from the Soviet Union people got people got taken away for what we would regard as no reason whatsoever and that had been the case all the way through being secretive is is second nature to Putin especially as a spy you know you give away as little as you have to and even then reluctantly he was brought up very much within the folds of the system his his grandfather had been a cook for both lenon and Stalin he catered what one of the datas the country Cottages which was available for members of the Soviet Elite and so we don't know very much about him but clearly his grandfather was very much somebody who was part of the establishment you know you would imagine that Lenin and Stalin would have been um fairly careful about who was cooking their [Music] Foods his father had worked for the nkvd which were the forerunners of the KGB the secret police they came after the the Checker and now the KGB of the FSB different names same bunch of guys during the second world war what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War he was part of the nbd's destruction battalions and they were basically responsible for maintaining order among other things so they were just as Savage towards their own people as they were towards the Nazis his father was evidently given a mission to locate himself self Behind Enemy Lines and disrupt the enemy in whatever ways so it's a very risky Mission and almost a suicide mission I think only four of the 30 or so in his father's Battalion actually ended up Surviving his unit was ambushed and he survives by lying underwater in a bog with a reed sticking out to the W I mean we've no idea whether it's true or whether it's just kind of apocryphal when we're trying to speculate as to why young Vladimir uh wants to uh go and become a Secret policeman certainly uh his father's wartime history seems to be part of it at all this period probably taught him that uh kgb's effectivity is the ideal uh style system for the Russian bureaucracy that's why when he put people in places he always looked for someone he knows from the KGB background or from the intelligence background in the in the Russian system hisory closest confidence right now they all date back to the 70s they all worked with him as KGB agents in Leningrad so that you know that dies hard with with Putin he's very much a man of his of his place and of his time these people were the ones he relies on uh when he's doing these kind of international interventions in Syria uh and and now in [Music] Ukraine he wasn't of the top rank that got given the plum jobs in you know in London or Washington or or Paris but equally he was he was senior enough and trusted enough to go abroad I mean he wasn't you know sent to yakout school noo School whatever to to to run agents there or to or to collect information on on dissidents and so on he was he was trusted enough to go to what you might call the near [Music] abroad tourists from all over the world arrive in Berlin by bus car train and plane wall in fenc with barbed wire surrounded by Tank traps barricades and torn up streets they ran able to develop computer technology and so so the only way to get it was by stealing from the West he sent agents abroad to try and gather information of technical you know computer main frames microchips and so on this the early days of of you know the computer age they couldn't buy it because there were embargos and sanctions and so forth so it seems that one of Putin's roles was to facilitate this he would be the one who was developing links with Western companies who could be persuaded through financial incentives or or other kind of uh secret service operations to pass on technology to the Eastern block that wasn't supposed to be [Music] transferred there was a reasonable amount of of action in East Germany it was very much the sort of the jewel in the in the Warsaw pack crown for the Soviet Union this is one of the ironies of the Cold War that that Berlin was this sort of Beacon of Western freedom but in fact the Soviets could have walked in in 3 hours flat to the western side of it and just taking it over had they ever wanted to and had they ever wanted to risk World War so Dresden you know Dresden was it wasn't it wasn't you know the bright lights and big city but it wasn't a total Backwater either and that's and that's sort of and that's the slightly the thing about Putin he was he was good without being great and therefore you would never have thought as a young KGB agent you know if you if you lined up a lot of KGB agents in the late ' 80s and said in 10 years time one of you guys will be president of of Russia you know he would not have been the one you'd have chosen not in the million [Applause] years you asked me about 199 991 when I was there it was a hugely chaotic period economically I remember there was nothing in the shops most of the shops were closed and every day I was living in a flat in Central Moscow from archives to my flat I was just walking around sometimes 2 hours just to see who is selling what just getting a few things from the street because people were selling one orange here a little bit of cheese there some bread so it was so chaotic it was almost like a medieval period [Music] [Music] he resigns from the KGB during the coup against mikar gorbachov in August [Music] 1991 gorbachov was on holiday and crime here and a bunch of hardliners basically tried to arrest what was the the disintegration of the Union they did it totally c-h handedly Putin gave his loyalty to anatol subak who was his Superior in the Leningrad KGB and subak supported supported yelin because their view was that gorbachov was the elected president of the Soviet Union and that any ACC against him was unconstitutional for Putin the system was more important than any one person he didn't hold with with this kind of action from the pists but actually there's no evidence that he does resign from the KGB at that time we certainly haven't got any documents which were like a letter of resignation or anything like that and there's every reason to suppose actually that he doesn't and that he remains intimately connected with the uh with the KGB after the collapse of Communism in uh the Soviet Union in 1991 he gets a job with the new democratically elected mayor in St Petersburg and really um the the the specul is that the reason that soch gives him a job is that he wants somebody who has KGB connections as his kind of tough guy as his guy who can actually be the link person with the security services and the linked person with organized crime it basically becomes his bad carrier but what he's doing is he's forging connections by people you know in industry in politics all around in Petersburg Putin is the indispensable gray man you know he's he's not you know making speeches he's not being a politician he's simply being a functionary he's being a bureaucrat but what Putin knows and what people often know is it the people at the Nexus of power it's people in the mar it's people you know at the meeting Points of Power are the people who actually gain the power because they're the people who knows you know what different people want and they can manage those relationships and suddenly Putin finds himself you know at the Heart of Heart of parents in Petersburg he finds himself s enriching himself because everything is corrupt so that is a key part of the Putin narrative that relationship with sub all those pictures of those guys he's never you know he's always the one in the corner at the back but he's always obviously by the same token watching and absorbing information and you know that sort of he he is the gray man and and yet he was the one who succeeded because obviously he was very smart about where to position himself and who and whose coattails to follow and soak was a very good guy to Hitch his St [Music] to loyalty is something that he he was proud of in himself and values in other people when when subak wasn't reelected in in 1996 Putin was offered a job by his successor and and refused saying I'd rather be hanged for loyalty than rewarded for betrayal which is slightly melodramatic for for for a government job but I think it's also quite revealing that and that again that comes into the fact that he trusts his old KGB makes from the 70s loyalty is a very big thing for him as time's gone on it's become uh I think increasingly convincing to say that that really what's going on in St Petersburg in the 1990s is rather different to what's going on in Moscow in Moscow president yelton is trying to turn Russia into a democracy and not succeeding very well but really in St Petersburg the KGB remain in charge what we see when Putin moves from from St Petersburg to Moscow and then moves into the presidency is it's like the KGB reasserting themselves and and the KGB really regaining [Music] control [Music] Russia in the 1990s under Boris yelson was certainly a very chaotic environment yelon and his government have been trying to create a market economy rather than creating a market economy what they've done done is that they've transferred ownership in the most important bits of the Russian economy to a small number of individuals who've become Mega Rich Russia is much more stable now I mean that I mean that that that pace of change was unsustainable and it it was only it only happened because you've gone from an incredibly restricted system to something where you know certainly in economic terms all bets were off there's no legal system worth the name any country ility is based fundamentally around the rule of law you know you can talk about political diversity and and political plurality and and so on but without a rule of law that is basically efficient and impartial nothing happens and in Russia at that time there was no rule of law if you had disagreement with someone you sorted it out with violence because there was no you know you couldn't have a business dispute and take it to the court there were no there were no courts there was a ton of money floating around and the money was getting bigger you know especially because with the economic reforms the exchange rates on the uh International Market the disparity was so huge that you know you could you could buy a barrel of oil for next to nothing in Rubles and sell it for a fortune in dollars they called it the wild East anything went there there's a word for them they called Dadant they were decadent dogs they were they were the kind of dogs who back back home would never have you know got Anywhere But Here they were sort of you know there driving around in limousines and women and you know champagne and so on just because it was just because they they it was that time and place where they where they could and it was yeah it was it was [Music] Anarchy the memories of that time really die hard for lots of Russians and actually for a lot of Russians given them the choice between authoritarianism and and the Anarchy of the yson years they'll take authoritarianism they'll say you know we don't really we don't want that anymore you know freedom freedom is a pretty nebulous concept when when there's Anarchy [Music] around at the start of the year his approval rating was something like 5% and Gennady ziganov who was the Communist candidate was going to win and fundamentally that would have been a slide back into communism after four years of of the Soviet Union being over everyone be going back to where they'd been and a group of seven oligarchs clubbed together and basically bought the election for yels in and they funneled hundreds of millions of of dollars into his campaign I mean way more of than was allowed and they bought the election and it and it worked the FSB is the successor to the KGB it's a very notorious State intelligence agency and Putin ends up being nominated and becoming head of the FSB this is an extraordinary leap from what was effectively a very sort of low grade employee in Dresden in the 80s and then suddenly to become head of the successor organization it's a huge coup for Putin and what's interesting in the 1990s is that yelon says he's committed to democracy and to democratization but he never really reforms the security services they remain in pretty much the same kind of organization that they were in the Soviet times a tool which is there for the state to use to do its dirty work there's two intelligence services in Russia two main intelligence Services the FSB who are domestic intelligence and the svr who are foreign intelligence is pretty much the same as MI5 and MI6 here or as the FBI and the CIA in America so as as head of the FSB he would have been responsible for internal Russian Espionage he was Russia's top internal spy so really when Putin becomes head of the FSB becomes head of this organization that's still able to exercise I would see total power but an enormous amount of power within the country without any kind of accountability or scrutiny people who get that job know where the bodies are buried it's a circle you get that job because you know those things and having that job gives you access to more of the same it's an enormously important sort of political base for him the fsb's headquarters are are the lubianka in Moscow and the lubianka is Big um Brown building in the center of Moscow I've walked past it and you know perhaps it's sort of suggestiveness because you know what it represents but there is definitely a shudder as you walk past it you know people go into the Libyan and they and historically and they never came out you keep tabs on people so it's that kind of attitude that citizens are suspect when I see Putin because I studied Soviet history I see uh two other Soviet leaders uh Stalin and andropov the most significant aspect of st's personality is his insecurity and seeing enemies everywhere I mean he didn't trust more than a handful of individuals androp was like that Ando was the longest serving head of KGB and Putin is very similar this line explains quite a lot if we talk a little bit more about for andropov Putin never hides his admiration for andropov one of the first things he did when he was appointed as the prime minister by yelson he went to Lanka the building where the fsp was centered in in Moscow and he opened a memorial for andropov and andropov was a very interesting personality even though many historians didn't write about him because he stayed in power for a very short period as the president because of his health but when andrul came to power what he tried to do was very similar to what Putin did after 2000 after bra in 1984 one of the first thing is he just said I don't trust the bureaucracy the Soviet bureaucracy was so uh archaic uh there there is laziness everywhere so he said I want to bring order and discipline and this order and discipline also were Putin's uh ideas when he became the president and for instance one of the strangest things things happened in the Soviet history there is an operation intelligence gathering operation called operation Ryan uh this o operation Ryan is the largest ever intelligence gathering operation in the world but if you look at the details there was no reason for this Ando wanted to use this operation Ryan to shake the whole Soviet bureaucracy he prepared detailed questionnaire and so many tasks and send this to every single institution within and outside of the Soviet Union embassies diplomatic centers everywhere and ask them to collect information because he said I have reliable information that Western powers are getting ready to attack Soviet Union by nuclear power and said collect this information this will help us to prepare ourselves but the information was ridiculous for instance some of the information sent to the Russian Embassy in London was saying that ask uh your context in the other parts of the UK how much milk consumed this week how much blood blood donations were made price of bread the price of essential items he was asking all these things to be collected so creating the impression that if we can see some kind of a change in these essential aspects for instance more blood donations suddenly happened in one week then we can consider this get getting ready for a nuclear war so this is for instance a an example his suspicion his personality and he's he only relied on intelligence people coming from intelligence background and Putin is is more or less the same there's an interesting story about how Putin first gets to be prime min Minister he's appointed prime minister by Boris yelton at the end of the 1990s this this is really important because yelen is looking for the right successor yelon is very anxious about leaving office because if he leaves office he's very worried that people will want to get revenge for various things that happens what yelon wants is a peaceful retirement and in order to get a peaceful retirement he needs to hand over power to somebody who he trusts and why does he end up settling on Putin answer because Putin manages to deal with a corruption Scandal that's very greatly bothering yelen and deal with it in an extremely efficient and ruthless way this is the so-called mabitex Affair Russian news papers publish details of a project to refurbish the Kremlin which has been given to a Swiss owned firm which is which is owned by a rather dodgy Albanian businessman and they also publish credit card statements from yelton's daughters which show that the company which has been given the contract to refurbish the Kremlin has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars onto the credit cards of yelton's daughters and the the Russian prosecutor General announces an inest investigation into this so in other words the clouds of corruption are surrounding yelin now Putin at this time is head of the FSB he decides that uh he is going to deal with this in the most kind of Ruthless typical KGB style film is released and shown on the Russian evening news of the prosecutor General who's investigating the Y in family romping on a bed and in a saer with two prostitutes and so of course the P the prosecutor General is humiliated and has to resign and the story goes away and so yelon is said to be extremely impressed with how how well Putin deals with that think this is the kind of ruthlessness that a leader of Russia needs and that's the point at which yelton makes Putin prime minister [Music] now he's prime minister but no one's heard of him I think I think his poll rating at the time is 2% in the opinion polls U yelton's is about 3 or 4% yelton is universally hated by this time so how are they going to turn Putin from 2% in the polls to a credible presidential candidate who can beat the then favorite for the presidency who's a real enemy of yelin who yelin thinks will be returning com Russia to the Communist past and how do you do this well you fight a short Victorious War but Russia isn't at war with anybody so there's a need to manufacture a war in order to turn Putin into a kind of War leader first of all there's an explosion in a Moscow shopping Mal and then a truck bomb blows up outside an army barracks in the southern Republic of dagistan and then there are three so-called apartment bombings where apartment blocks are blown up in the middle of the night something like 300 Russian citizens civilians were killed in those bombings and immediately the authorities said they were Chans even before anyone came and did investigation in the place they said Chan Chans did this Chan terrorists did this and and and Putin's response was immediately send the Army to CH as of now Putin's rating is zero uh he was never regarded as a serious presidential Contender and I don't think that yon's approval would add much to that zero and Putin makes these speeches saying I will wipe out the terrorists wherever they are I will find them if they're in the ouse I will rub them out in the ouse he's using real kind of Mafia slang he's going to be the big dog who can who can keep the country safe from these terrorists who are just slaughtering Ordinary People so suddenly his poll ratings start shooting up now the interesting thing about the apartment bombings is that there's an awful lot of evidence that these were not in fact carried out by cetan terrorists that in fact the apartment bombings were a false flag operation by the FSB for example the expertise to to blow up buildings in the very precise way that it was done um the explosive which was used to do them which was only available to to to to the Russian states there was a a failed bombing in the city of ran the the the people who planted the explosives were actually caught and turned out to be FSB agents and then the head of the FSB comes out says well no that wasn't a that wasn't an attempted bombing at all that was a training exercise by the FSB so really uh one might say that this is the kind of founding crime of the Putin regime that actually Putin was prepared from the start to see hundreds of his own people blown up in order to secure his political power Chan War occupied Russian mentality Russian culture so significantly and there was a background to this it's not only in the postc Cold War period I think if you look at the Russian history from zaris period to the Soviet period to the post-soviet period Chia even such a small area uh in terms of geography very small population but Chia was very symbolically important for Russians to control any Noel you read there was some reference to Chia they were presenting Chans like some kind of a primitive creatures very brave uh Fearless but almost like uh they are not human uh they are different kind of people therefore capturing Chia controlling cha was an element of strong Russian personality taking the capital is is is almost sort of medieval in the way in which you you fight war and all it's going to do is is put more people out of their homes it's not actually going to destroy the fighters it is symbolic for the people back in Russia um back in Moscow and in the major cities in the East but it is it it's it's nothing uh literally nothing to do with with with winning the war in 1998 the ruble was devalued come 99 when Putin becomes prime minister and then becomes president on on Millennium Eve this is a country that is basically undergone a roller coaster for eight years business disputes were were were solved by by executions um you know people and people got shot in festar hotels in the middle of in the middle of the day you've got to remember when the Soviet Union collapsed you know at the beginning of the '90s Putin was an almost kind of pensioned off Junior nobody in the KGB who who had had a very unspectacular career and yet by the beginning of the '90s through to 2000 Putin then takes control of Russia so ultimately it takes less than a decade for this relative nobody to become one of the most powerful people in the [Music] world how are you going to show that those fears are misplaced and assure people that the hardw freedoms in Russia are now and I want to underline yet again that the actions of Russia are not against against Muslims against Chens they are directed entirely against International extremism and terrorism and which have a global characterless and lack of compassion I suppose is a is a fairly useful quality in a dictator you know we we see throughout Putin's uh presidency a sort of utter indifference to the value of human life if it's a a choice between human life and his power he's always consistently chosen his power there was no doubt that before Putin came to power Russia was you know in a pretty chaotic State you have yels in a basically a a barely functioning alcoholic notionally in charge you have those original oligarchs those very rich men were basically plundering Russia for its wealth people was of course still licking their wounds the Soviet Union had only collapsed a few years before and so National Prestige had been massively dented so you've got there you know just a few of the elements of a very noxious cocktail that Putin can turn around and go I can make all this better yelton resigns as president on typical yels in dramatic fashion he resigns on New Year's Eve of 1999 there the start of the New Millennium Putin becomes acting president so the first decree he signs is to give yelen and his family Perpetual immunity from prosecution and not just immunity from prosecution but the immunity from search seizure anything so it's quite interesting that politically isn't it because it's basically saying that politicians are not accountable for their actions it's really I I suppose sending a signal that the state is going to do what it wants and it's not going to accept any kind of [Music] accountability vladim vladim Putin the first thing he does is to make sure that he gets control of the media this is absolutely the core of the creation of the Putin system so under yelen there had been Independent Media wasn't necessarily a kind of broad spectrum but there were certainly television stations that were enormously critical of the Russian government and yelson was perfectly happy to allow that yelson didn't mind criticism um Putin isn't having any of it he wants to absolutely control the agenda it said that his predecessor president Boris yelton the only thing that he had on his desk was a pen which he used to sign presidential decrees and when Putin takes over from yelon the pen gets replaced by a remote control because he's so obsessed with uh his image on television and uh and various people who met him early in his uh presidency say sometimes he he used to uh stop the meetings to turn on the news to see how he's being reported you hold on to power as a dictator by getting increasingly ruthless you also hold on to Power by making sure uh that you control the message you got to keep lying lie lie lie lie lie so you've got to keep your people in the dark and that's how you keep power if we go back to the Soviet Union really propaganda is the attempts to persuade people that reality is something other than it is Soviet propaganda was was constantly saying how life is much better in the Soviet Union how people are starving in the outside world the West is corrupt and there's no truth to it but say it enough and force people to repeat it but Putin era propaganda is very different it's no longer trying to convince people of an ideology it's no longer trying to convince people that communism is the best kind of system actually pist propaganda isn't trying to convince people of anything it's just trying to confuse what Putin wants is for people not to know what's real now in cities with a with a younger population a more liberal population a more techsavvy population there's ways around that there there's YouTube there's social media and so on but they are also a minority of the population the vast majority of Russia's population live in the countryside and get their news entirely from State media but as we know this kind of conditions uh it is not always very easy I mean Russia is a very big country huge number of people and uh people living in the villages in the provinces they are more traditional and they are more open to official propaganda so change comes much much more slowly in a free press people in the West can see alternative narratives and decide for themselves which one they want to believe in Russia you don't get that you get one you get one narrative that you are presented with as fact when Putin came to power uh some of the news organizations were actually owned by oligarchs and sometimes these oligarchs could be critical of Putin and that would obviously be very annoying for Putin so what does he do he wrestles back control of those media networks from the oligarchs and that means that he's in charge of his own message you see that with with Hitler's Germany was there any kind of publication or or or or media y of the time ultimately not subject to Nazi control no none so a lot is made about you know dictatorships being propaganda Geniuses well it's not how hard to manipulate the message if you can control every newspaper every magazine every TV station you know every Cinema you name it forget it it's easy so that's the first point control over the media the next thing that you do is that you eliminate other political opponents how do you eliminate uh independent political parties answer by running very unfree elections you make sure that there's only favorable coverage for the for the parties that you approve of uh whereas the parties who are critical of Putin very quickly find their life is made very difficult they they're starved of airtime in the media they're you know they they turn up to the to campaign events to find that I'm sorry the hall is flooded you can't speak the people who are sponsoring them are pressured to stop sponsoring them and also you man you you manipulate their ability to actually run for office as well in this way basically Putin ends up eliminating all of the true opposition parties within Russia and we end up with a parliament which is still a multi party Parliament but basically all of the parties in the parliament end up agreeing with the Putin government [Music] line around yelton was this group called the family which is sort of half Mafia and half Charles Manson they weren't really an actual family to anyone who's who was an actual blood relative was his daughter Tatiana but it was you know it was some of the oligarch it was a guy called anat chewas who was minister of economic reform and and and in charge of privatization a lot of these guys had got fabulously rich on on the back of their proximity to power essentially what's happened is that the state has sold them assets at massively reduced prices as soon as these assets go onto the open market especially the oil industry it suddenly they're they're worth 8 10 12 times what the uh what the oligarch have paid for them so in other words the 1990s has been a process where the state has been appointing its own billionaires he got the oligarchs together and he said fundamentally right you stay out of my face and I'll stay out of yours so you don't get involved in politics you know preferably you go abroad barosi and abovich came to London the only one who really really stayed behind and challenged him was a guy called M kosi and the key point in terms of taking down the yels in ER at oligarchs it is the so-called yukos Affair so yukos is the oil company which is owned by a man called mikol kovski and kovski is Russia's richest man he has created this oil company yukos and he's an and he's he's kind of tried to uh portray it as this kind of kind of Flagship company which is introducing Western accounting standards and transparency and was run in a much more efficient way Putin is persuaded that even though kovski is the richest man in Russia he really has to take him down to cut a long story short kovski is arrested uh he's thrown into prison he's accused of various kinds of uh highly trumped up charges really he's accused of stealing from his own company and he's accused of not paying taxes and he's sentenced to 8 years I mean to see the fourth richest man of the world standing in a cage not much bigger than the chair I'm sitting on is an extraordinary turnaround and it shows you that you know it was you know the oligarchs that got Putin into power but it's now Putin who keeps the oligarchs where he wants them it's very clear and it was very clear to everybody at the time that these charges were made up that kovski might have been guilty of many things but he certainly hadn't been stealing from his own business but that wasn't the point the point was to send a signal to send a signal to the other oligarchs that if you challenge me and if you challenge me politically you will lose everything that you [Music] have that was Putin's emmo was to fundamentally say okay you can keep what you have but you you know you leave me alone and gradually he moved his own his own guys in so again you know the same pattern different person now really what this is is a new deal with Russia's business Elites they're no longer a sort of independent power they are now a power that is holding their wealth thanks to the Good Will of the leader I mean it's a very rational way of dealing of dealing with things because this is this is the thing there's no genuine there's no genuine opposition in Russia so it's a kind of political structure that that promotes mediocrity you know if there's anyone who stands out then there are potential threats so again there's this kind of internal mechanism inside dictatorships whereby whereby talented people do not [Applause] [Music] Thrive it's it's always hard especially with hindsight because as a western leader you have you have to try and build Bridges it's very easy when you're in opposition or when you're a journalist or when you're a voter to say oh these people are scum you shouldn't deal with them whatever as a leader you are responsible not only for the basics of international diplomacy but also for trade and on a slight tangent I remember Barack Obama saying in 2016 and someone asked him about you know Trump's transferring his business Acumen to government and Obama said listen running a business is is complex but fundamentally is also quite simple you have to maximize revenue for shareholders and you have to stay within the law as a as a as a president as a political leader you have to balance a 100 different things and there's no actual value on lots of them tangible value you have to you have you know you have endless people who want to piece of it who feel entitled to a piece of it and there's no right answer so I don't blame Bush and Blair for trying to forge good relations with Putin had it worked we wouldn't be where we are [Music] now but to an extent I would say that the opposite was true in some ways I think that you know you can make a good argument that Obama saying that if chemical weapons are used in Syria that would change my calcul cus and chemical weapons were used and it didn't change his calculus and that was you know that was a red line crossed and any politi knows the basis that if you threaten something you have to be prepared to carry it out and especially to someone like Putin on the on the other end of that that's like blood to a shark you can't threaten to do something and then not do it so trying to be friends with Putin in the broad sense of the word trying to co-opt him I don't think was a was a bad thing letting him get away with things was a bit was a much bigger [Music] mistake before I proceed to the formal part I would like to express to her majesty the queen and the people of the United Kingdom our sincere condolences with the loss of the British soldiers in Iraq it is clear for everyone that in spite of the differences that existed before today we need to act [Music] jointly my message to you Mr President is therefore one of admiration respect and support I wish both you and Mrs potina a most successful and enjoyable visit to this country may I now ask all our guests to raise their glasses and drink a toast his Excellency the president of the Russian Federation and the Russian people Putin's relationship with the West has changed and evolved over two decades you know it started off as as kind of hands being held out shaken George Bush saying I've looked into this man's soul and he's a good guy you know Blair Tony Blair prime minister of of United Kingdom saying you know he's man we can do business with he's all right Putin courted people like Blair and Bush at the beginning of his own presidency through invasion through murder through gangsterism through theft through Terror the West has finally realized that Putin is the world's latest [Music] Hitler for a long time the West have had this belief you know that Putin is a man they can do business with and this goes back to you know to Mrs SATA saying president gorbachov is a man I could do business with and and every Western leader likes to think they'll be the ones to sort of bring Russia into the fold and it never fully happens because the Russians just don't think that way and I think when when they do try and call it out it sort of causes so much diplomatic ructions and you see this now with with Biden fundamentally calling Putin a war criminal and then the state department start roaring back on the statement war criminal oh I I think he is a war criminal they sort of diplomatic protocols and their diplomatic president and and so on but yes and there's Al there's also the question of the UN Security Council that you know there are five permanent members of the UN Security Council of which Russia and China are two and so there is there is an element to which everyone wants to try and play nicely you know even if only for the cameras why do we think that we can trust uh the leader of leaders of Saudi Arabia it is the same thing I think it is the uh the global economy uh and and countries rely on each other and Russia was and is a very important country in terms of uh our economic conditions uh majority of the Europe depend on Russian energy so what matters to many global leaders was more than democracy was uh stability and the uh [Music] continuity [Music] [Music] the Russian prosecutor General briefed a very sober looking Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin this morning on the latest findings and series the head of the gang he said shot one of the gunmen and later detonated explosive belts on two of the women by remote control it was all about intimidating hostages and hostage takers alike he said this morning President Putin made an unannounced visit to both hospital and school solemn faced he toured the wars offering somewhat awkward Comfort one little girl a [Music] obious as time has gone on uh and he's and he's concentrated power more and more in his hands and he's eliminated the Independent Media and he's emasculated the Parliament and he's destroyed all of the opposition that he's found himself in a situation where he's surrounded by this kind of set of cronies who are praising him and telling him what a great leader he is and telling him how he's restored Russia's greatness and this seems to have gone to his head so his self-image now seems to be very different to what it was early in his presidency he now seems to see himself as the kind of philosopher king who the whole future the whole safety of Russia depends on him and him alone Russia has has got this this thing about being a great power this dates back to you know to the end of the Cold War and it's quite hard I think for lots of people in the west to understand how humiliating that loss for for Russia was because first they lost the Cold War without a shot being fired secondly they went through I think probably the greatest single transformation of any country that hasn't lost an actual physical war that they went from from from Empire to country from superpower to non-s superpower from 15 countries to to one and from communism to capitalism all in one go and it was incredibly disorientating especially to someone like Putin who you know who who had dedicated his life and his values to to maintaining an EMP to you know the Soviet Union that no longer existed um and ever since then I think he has you know he has feared the the people who beat him and he has wanted to to to get back some sense of of Russian pride in in the world and that is incompatible with an ever expanding NATO today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force military force in international relations force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts we are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law independent legal Norms are as a matter of fact coming increasingly closer to one State's legal system one state and of course first and formost the United States has overstepped its National borders in every way this is the point at which it's clear that Putin doesn't want to cooperate with the West anymore he he denounces the United States only acting its own interests uh it's hostile to Russia it wants to split it up it wants to uh steal its natural resources the United States wants to run the world so really this is this is the break any kind of a sense that Russia should become a sort of ordinary part of the International Community this is where Putin is saying we are going to do our own thing we are going to challenge American dominance it turns out that NATO has put its Frontline forces on our borders we continue to strictly fulfill the treaty obligations do not react to these actions at all I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the ization of the alliance itself or with theuring security Europe on the contrary it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust we have the right to ask against whom is this expansion intended he now wants to construct a narrative of there's an enemy out there that is trying to undermine us so that's why the Munich speech is so important because this is where this becomes obvious to the world world that Russia is no longer a reliable partner the NATO thing is interesting because there's he uses this this explanation that in 1990 um pledges were given by James Baker who was then US Secretary of State to M our gorbachov that after the fall of after the fall of the Soviet Union it were it to come to pass which it did the following year NATO would not expand eastwards there is relatively little evidence that Baker ever made such a claim and if he did make such a claim it was pretty much confined to to Germany it was basically in in in exchange for um Russia accepting the reunification of Germany certainly there is no written there's no written treaty gorbachov himself in 2014 denied that such a conversation had ever taken place and even if it had done you could argue why should a conversation between two men who haven't been in power for 30 years be forever binding on on their successes his problem with with NATO is that he thinks that NATO is an aggressive power whereas NATO regards itself as a defensive power and so you know this is why he has this sort of fundamental issue with former Soviet republics turning to Nato turning to the West because he sees it as as the world against him I think another really important Hallmark of any dictator is that they become become increasingly paranoid they think the world's against them and then they act in that way and then of course ultimately the world then does have to turn against them and the irony is that his big political hero Peter the Great actually looked to the West you know Peter the one of the reasons that the Russian flag is the same trior as the Dutch flag is how much Peter admired Dutch ship Builders back in the 17th century and actually looked towards the West one of the significant references in terms of Putin's ideology is is borski Club Putin's ideas were influenced by this group's ideas because this group included people who write who were philosophers writers newspaper columnists but Putin also is very clever he never committed himself fully into this group because he considered also some of the ideas of this group can be seen too extreme the name comes from the name of a city is Bor in the Northwestern part of Russia and this city has some uh symbolic significance for the Russian history especially eurasianists in the 13th century German Knights tried to capture uh that area and the the Russian soldiers defended that area successfully and this became a symbol of Defending Western uh influences Western attacks a group of individual came in that uh town in 2012 and established a club a kind of tin tank and their main idea since then to influence the political structure the politicians that Russia should move into a much greater position in the global system and one of the key names is panov panov is the owner of the newspaper zra it is a conservative Uh Russian patriotic newspaper and another one is dugin Alexander Dugan Alexander dugin is very well known both in Russia and abroad and he's the one of the uh creator of the current uh modern day eurasianism and according to many interpretations he's behind this uh Crimean and the eastern Ukraine operations and also he he's behind that idea that Ukraine is not a independent and it should be part of Russia every time when he feels that their ideas or their extreme position starts harming His Image he drops them Lan's ideas probably more than anybody else is influencing the whole Russian foreign policy he wrote a book called fundamentals of geopolitics which is one of the key books to understand to analyze the eurasianism currently what Russia is trying to do what Russia sees itself in a future world like Eurasia being the main land in the whole earth and the most important land uh as you you may know Eurasia has more than 70% of the global energy resources around 70% of the people live in Eurasia so therefore even if China is the biggest power in EUR Asia Russia still wants to be the leading power at least in terms of security because of his military and nuclear Arsenal uh so I think because of these kind of reasons eurasianism is very important to Putin even though he doesn't use the term too often he doesn't want to be seen as a eurasianist but eurasianist ideas kind of shapes his all overall world viiew and his his his his project for instance during 2016 there was a c attempt in turkey and the Turkish government blamed the Western Powers especially United States behind the qu temp dugin at that point was one of Putin's advisers he was visiting Ankara dugin was the person who told the Turkish government who passed the plans of the uh C plotters and after that the relations between Russia and Turkey became much closer so D is the kind of strategist as well kind of trying to expand the Russian links and Russian influence in the region of Eurasia these Russian Neons are individually influential people other members as well for there is one of the founding members is Bishop tikon Bishop tikon is a wellknown Orthodox priest and according to some speculations he was Putin's Confessor so Putin from time to time confesses to him even though we we have no direct evidence but people write about that this group for instance in 2014 when Crimea was annexed more than 20 leading members of this group they met in a a palace in Crimean Peninsula called lania palace and this Palace was significant most of the zaris periods leaders they used this Palace as their summer residents but also Yalta Conference took place in this Palace and Yalta Conference was considered a significant ific turning point for the Soviet Union uh after yta all Eastern Europe came under the Soviet control and they celebrated uh the return of Crimea into [Music] [Applause] [Music] Russia [Music] since then they established more than 20 branches in the other parts of uh Russia also one branch in Ukraine in dbas and in the opening event of this uh Ukrainian Branch there were uh many delegates from even from KF uh from various parts of uh Ukraine uh so this group is not just a one single official building in the center of uh Moscow it has also branches all over uh Russia and a branch in Ukraine so there are sh kind of shaping the public opinion and through them I think uh Putin also uh sending his his messages to unofficially Putin disdains what he would regard as sort of wokeism liberalism Freedom you know he is socially extraordinarily conservative so you know he doesn't like gay people you know he doesn't like you know anybody who you know deviates from what he sees as a kind of heterosexual Norm hates the fact that former countries that are in the Soviet Union or behind the Iron Curtain want to become westernized and not russified you know he hates the fact that a Big Mac is more seductive than anything Putin offers that's the problem with people of Putin's generation often in Russia you know people from his sort of political background is they loathe the fact that that the Soviet Union was a failure and the fact that actually ultimately American style capitalism and European style liberalism won the day clearly at this point he makes a judgment that it's too dangerous to retire you know if you like he's got too much blood on his hands by this time so he's got to find a way to maintain control over the Reigns of power even from outside of the presidency in 2007 Putin realized it was coming to the end of his second term as president the Russian Constitution said you can only do two terms uh so he knew that he had to step aside now Ed is arguable as to whether he could have changed the law to enable him to serve another term or indefinite numbers of terms some people think he could some people think he don't I don't have an opinion um what's key is though what he did do was obey the Constitution so it showed a message to the West look I'm not breaking my own rules here various people are considered as a replacement and eventually he settles on uh one of his Close Associates who he's known since his time in St Petersburg man called Dimitri meddev what does medv announced when he becomes president who's my prime minister going to be ah Vladimir V Putin will become my prime minister and of course everyone laughs about it it's so obvious that although meev has the keys to the car the bloke in the back seat with the steering wheel is of course Putin he's real liberal and he had good education good knowledge he's planning to do democratical processes in Russia in this case maybe you're right I mean the more liberal than Mr Putin Putin and Mev are pretty Inseparable they're kind of the same packet really aren't they no comment the Russian people are completely aware of the fact that that that Putin is is the backseat driver of the meev presidency uh everybody knows it it's it's the but of jokes and satire in a time when still in Russia you could laugh at Putin now it's a little bit harder it's very ingenious actually because the outside world and in fact the Russian liberal the sort of liberal elements within Russia have been getting a bit suspicious of Putin at this point and this enables him to kind of postpone things so he he gets meddev elected as president and meddev puts forward this this uh this image that he's going to be more liberal he's he's interested in tackling corruption he's interested in the rule of law he's also interested in technological developments and so on so there's this sort of sense that's created that Russia you know it LO looked like things were coming off the rails a bit with things like the Munich speech but actually now maybe there's an opportunity to pull Russia back and really this kind of carries on fooling people for for the next four years you see this with Putin that his decision- making becomes more and more concentrated the people he trusts become fewer and fewer and when your decision making becomes that concentrated you are getting less information in you're also being told increasingly what you want to hear rather than what is the truth and the consequences of your decisions become more and more catastrophic when they're wrong historically in Russia and in the Soviet Union bringing bad news tends to be tends to mean shooting the messenger you you're becoming increasingly an irrational irrational actor which is ironic for someone who has always been so ruthless in pursuing power but actually having a lot of sources for you to to make decisions is useful and he's losing that Putin is somewhat atypical of dictators in the sense that many dictators seize power quite forcibly or if they use the Democratic process you know knows that you know they fudged it so who are you kidding Mr dictator we know that election wasn't fair if Putin had just served two terms and left in 20072 2008 most people would have thought he was a great Russian leader yeah he had some problems but you know ultimately they would have thought that he probably won those elections fair and square he was a democratically elected strong man was so I think that you know his dictatorship is something that's kind of emerged and grown organically I don't I don't necessarily think that Putin's plan you know on day one is right I'm going to become a dictator I don't think it was that I think his narcissism and his desire to hold on to power and and his anger at some issues have emboldened him to take more and more [Music] power patience plays an absolutely key role uh in any dictator's Armory if you like they've got to play the long game if they want to stay in power and often dictators are saying to their people um you know the point about me being dictator is I'm going to make this country great again um and and I'm going to make this country and its Empire perhaps lasts for a thousand years you know Hitler I'm going to have a Thousand-Year Reich Putin I'm going to make Russia Great again I'm I'm going to claw back some of the territories we lost you've got to play the long game you know it's not like in a democratic cycle typically four or five years you know you're looking to that next election Putin doesn't really have to worry about election anymore he's now worried you know about his long-term Legacy and not whether he's going to get back in at the next election there's no doubt that when Putin you know runs for president again after he's been prime minister that you know there are people you know wanting to stand against him and those who stand against him find that you know that they can't get permission for their planes to take off or where they're going to give a me the water Pipers conveniently burst an hour before or where if they're trying to take their supporters out to eat they're no waiters for some reason you you it's it's dirty Ops nasty you know dirty tricks being played on all the [Music] opponents yeah after the financial crisis in 2008 when the economy stops growing and people's standards of living really stop improving and even more so in the recent period with the effects of the pandemic and so forth where where people's living standards have really taken a hit you've got to find some kind of a new source of legitimacy and that new source is we are unsafe there are enemies at our doorstep or even even inside our country there are fifth columnists inside our country who are traitors who are trying to destroy us and so you need me I am as it were the biggest dog in the pack I am the person who can take our enemies down and keep the people [Music] safe everybody said don't get involved in a civil war and he got involved in a civil war and managed to keep his Man In Charge but the other important thing I think about the intervention in Syria is it's part of this project to reassert Russia as a great power because really what he's saying is there are these various problems in the Middle East and you the outside world cannot solve the problems in the Middle East without me it's that exertion of Russia's power as a military force and so it it's part of this sort of ongoing campaign to be taken seriously you know I need to be at the top table it's not up to the United States to impose the world order that it wants and I think that's fundamentally the message that he sent through the intervention in Syria there's a kind of General points that that pin's willingness to Ally with a regime that's perfectly prepared to use chlorine gas or sarin or whatever on its own population is just an illustration that puin doesn't care about the lives of Ordinary People what puin cares about now is power politics and geopolitics it may or may not be coincidence that that happened in 2013 and a year later Putin you know invaded Crimea and and donbas I don't think anything is ever as simple as that but yes I would I would say that the moment that chemical attack is left unchallenged Putin will think okay if they won't challenge me and Syria which is in many ways a proxy war they certainly won't challenge me in crier and dbass which I regard as my backyard and and he was right um the flip side of course is at what point do you challenge in Risk escalation you know people at what point should we have challenged him over liano at what point should we have challenged him over Ser scel you can sit there and say we won't have these things happen on our soil but the alternative is that you react in a way that many people see as overreaction why did [Music] [Music] [Music] you I would go even further back than than Syria when the second Chan War was happening with huge amount of Civilian casualties and all human rights organizations including Russian ones and the Western ones they were shouting screaming saying that look this is huge crisis this is a crime against humanity none of the western governments seriously criticize Putin no enough people looked at the cetch war and realized quite how brutal and horrible that was how you know the death and destruction that went on was was was was barbaric and horrific and it was ordered by Putin they thought Putin's fight was similar to uh war on terror uh initiated by the United States around the same time because Putin was very clever because Chans were Muslim Nation he presented that fight as a a fight against Islamic terrorism you only have to look at Chen war and then how Putin is prosecuted the war in Syria to realize that you know the longer the war in Ukraine goes on the more it's going to get like Chia the more cities in Ukraine are going to look like Aleppo in Syria are no longer existent I mean this is the thing no one really knows why now as he could have done it at any time in the last eight years uh you know the invasion of of of crier and and donbass in 2014 I this is the thing that the conflict has been going on in Ukraine for for eight years now as to why he's done it now I mean he did it obviously in the winter because it's technically easier to go over frozen ground than it would be in the summer although not you necessarily know it by the by the losses the Russian army have taken there's lots of speculation about the state of his health about you know his own personal reasons for doing it again no one really knows and it's very tempting for people to look at pictures of his puffy face and go oh he must be you know have terminal cancer or whatever who knows it's you know it's tempting to think of him as this you know this sort of mix of Howard Hughes and Hitler in downfall sort of pacing vast Black Sea Mansions isolated paranoid about Co I think it's it's it's all of a piece with with his world view Putin defines it success strength anything that's revealed him to be strong anything that's made his opponent look weak so you know when he goes into these other countries and they do nothing like going to crime in 2014 and stealing that Ukraine that was a huge success you know he he he's a gambler he's Reckless he's like a person who drives through a red light 100 miles an hour and if he hasn't had a crash he says that's been a successful maneuver well you know most people regard that as not a particularly successful thing to have done you know you've always killed yourself and other people doing it but you know that's fine by [Music] him physically Vladimir Putin is a very slight and small man as a child he wasn't you know the pick of the bunch one might always call him like the run to the litter and there's this story that Putin always tells which you know has a kind of warning to the rest of the world that once when he was a little boy he was chasing a rat around the apartment blocks the very shabby apartment blocks where he lived and as he was chasing this rat he he cornered the rat the rat looks at Putin Putin looks at the rat and Putin runs away Putin tells this story to other politicians and world leaders and says look if you put someone in a corner their only option is to fight back as viciously as possible you know that's a kind of warning to people you know don't call to me because if you call to me I'm going to be like that rat and you're going to be like the little Putin so you know this is this kind of metaphorical story that Putin loves telling I think what this story also illustrates is that he was the type of young boy who would run away from a rat [Music] what's clear is that some political murders in the Putin period are absolutely inconceivable that they've been carried out without Putin's say for example the poisoning of Alexander L venko the former KGB agent in London Leno has poison put in his tea dies of radiation poisoning absolutely inconceivable that that wasn't done without the direct orders of Putin that was certainly the clear conclusion of the litvinenko inquiry similarly with the scre pal poisoning the attempted murder of the former KGB agent Sergey scow and his daughter ulia in Salsbury the Salsbury poisonings aren't unique but they're very rare they were certainly a shock to those of us who live just outside Salsbury you know uh the idea that that my child could have discovered that vile of novich chock rather than poor old Dawn Sturgis who did and died as a result so I I think that they are a absolutely despicable and vile way of trying to uh project state power which is exactly what Putin was doing and it's a way of saying that you know never be a traitor to me cuz you're always going to end up badly poisoning someone is actually hard to do and it's it's sort of they do it because they can and because it sends a message poison is is difficult It's Tricky it's dangerous to the to the people doing it it's a it's a peculiarly Russian thing to do it's just it's it's unnecessarily brutal some are done not on his direct orders but in his interests so the best example of that would be the journalist Anna poov skaya who's killed in 2006 poovaya has been a very critical voice writing about the horrors of the second cchan war she's one of the few journalists who's writing about things like the Russian interment camps where they would Round Up cin men and boys and basically the the people in the interment camps would then be found dead thrown into ditches you know these are the kind of reports that the PO koscar is writing so she's shot in her apartment block on Putin's birthday this is a great Mafia tradition in Russia like it's the birthday present to the boss this idea of of ordering things by implication you know the analogy is is it's a bit like when as a child you decide to be good for some reason you think I'm going to tidy up my bedroom because I think my mom and dad will like it they haven't told you to tie your bedroom but you do it because you know they're going to like it and it's that kind of childish relationship that people have with dictators which means that sometimes dictators never have to order anything because everybody below them knows what you want NV is an interesting case because NV was NV was probably the one leader who could have been the guy the West could have dealt with he was the wrong side of the of when the musical chair stopped and after that you know he's incredibly able um intelligent charismatic you know tall handsome I me so you know I mean quite a rockstar certainly by political terms and then he became an opposition politician an economic adviser to the Ukrainian government for a [Music] while [Music] he was preparing a report on Russian involvement in Ukraine this is after the first the invasion in 2014 and he was shot and killed and he was shot on that bridge just out of the KREM nothing happens on that bridge without the Kremlin knowing I mean it's one of the it's one of the most heavily guarded and most easily surveyed places in all of Russia as you'd expect from somewhere so close to the Kremlin all the cameras were off for maintenance there was one camera which is a TV company's camera you know 200 M away there was a street cleaning vehicle that stopped just at the right place I this this is you know this is proper proper FSB operation I mean you know this is very well done and Putin had this big thing that you know we're going to find out who did it and you know a variety of Chet Chens were blamed but that's what happens in Russia if you're any kind of threat you get you get jailed like kosi you get poisoned like Nal or you get shot lights of that's the way they do things that's the way they've always they've always done things you have some dictators who basically regularly organize blood baths I mean Saddam Hussein was constantly knocking off his opponents the Putin way is not to organize a blood bath of you know those around him or family members it's it's to organize blood baths of people whove who've turned against him as a public show of you know don't mess me around because you're going to end up either shot on a bridge outside the Kremlin poisoned in a street in Salsbury or or irradiated in a restaurant in [Music] London there's three ways that he might go um assuming that he doesn't either die or um hand over power voluntarily um and at the moment they're all pretty unlikely the first is some kind of Western operation either a special forces operation or a missile strike neither of which are going to happen I mean he's so well guarded that even the Best Western special forces in the world are not going to be able to a find a find him or B should do something about it the second is is a palace C is someone from the inside and there's a lot of talk about the oligarchs getting together and and somehow forcing Putin out that's not plausible either Putin keeps the oligarchs at arms length the only people he really trusts to what are called the siloviki the enforcers they are his old guys you know his old friends from um Leningrad KGB it's a very small circle who have access to him probably less than 10 um who have genuine unfettered access to him the problem with that is that their fortunes are tied to his and yes there's a there's a stage foreseeable stage where things get so bad that they could move against him but it would need to be so bad that they would all move against him because no one's going to be the first to put their head above the parapet if you're a Tory MP and you want to to get rid of Boris Johnson you send a letter to Gran Brady of the 1922 committee saying I'd like a leadership election if you're the first guy who does that in in the Kremlin you're takeen outside and shot because someone's going to betray you to Putin they they are his underlings but they're also Rivals for his his ear his attention his affection and so on and the third is a popular Uprising there was some research from a Harvard political scientist a few years ago that suggest suggested that you only need 3.5% of a population to be really committed to change and and active in doing so to get regime change 3.5% of Russia's population will be about 5 million people which is round about the population of St Petersburg round about half the population of Moscow but again that's so hard to imagine right now because you know you can be imprisoned for 15 years for using the word War you know let alone going out on the streets to protest so there you know there and there is a there is a plausible Tipping Point if things get bad enough but I think that's quite a long way down the line it's not obvious how the Russian people would be in a position to get rid of Putin I mean I suppose in general the the uh if you've got rulers that you don't like and you can't get rid of them through elections then your your only alternative is mass protest you know Revolution but it's very difficult to start a revolution in a police state it's far too risky it's far too personally dangerous it's not just personally dangerous is is if if if you're a political opposition in a police state that's a danger to everyone you know it's a danger to your friends it's a danger to your family their only Alternatives if they don't like what's going on is to leave the country and I think it's no coincidence that the one human rights that Putin has left alone is freedom of movement there's been an enormous out migration of the Russian middle classes don't have to purge your opposition you can just send them into Exile he had all the conditions he had a huge country with amazing level of resources it's not only oil and gas almost everything else you need any kind of mineral you can find under Russian soil and the geographically this huge land has huge potential large number of of people so by considering all this as an investment and building on top of this he could have become a very successful leader very very very popular leader for Russian people but this wasn't enough for him he he doesn't want to focus internally he wants to make Russia a great nation just like in the times of the Russian uh zaris Empire and he wants to be the leader of this greater Russia and that will be I think this is his vulnerability and if the Ukrainian situation one way or another kept under control with some kind of a ceasefire and then peace and maybe the conflict will continue for a while but at a lower scale I don't think that will be enough for him uh I'm sure he will he will find something else next to continue after that uh vake goal of greatness Putin's ailles he is his own ambition I think he's overreached himself I think that he is attempting now to do things that actually he doesn't have the Manpower or material or or ultimately the support to do it I think I think that's his problem he's been in power for too long that paranoia narcissistic mentality has now completely in control of him and he's no longer you know he's not mad but he's he's no longer got that perspective that he needs all of the economic progress that Russia has made in the 22 years before that decision is just frit of the way if his end game is to make Russia as big and as powerful as the Soviet Union he's still got a very long way to go and he's going to have a hell of a fight because I don't think that the free world is really going to stand for it I don't think the people of all the countries that Putin wants to have back under Russia's control are going to stand for it if his end game I think with Ukraine is to conquer the whole of Ukraine I think he's a long way from that if his end game is to find a kind of offramp and something that's going to give him a bit of territory or a bit of say so and what's going to happen in Ukraine in decades to come or years to come then he may be near to that it's hard to see how in the long run he's able to actually maintain his position there's been a sort of deal with the Insiders in the Kremlin in the boin presidency which is do what I want and you are free to steal at will and live the kind of lifestyle that you never imagined that deal has been completely broken so what's their motivation to continue to support him well in the short run Russian patriotism we're restoring our Imperial greatness us but if that fails what's left Putin's Legacy will undoubtedly be one of the most hated and reviled and evil men who's ever lived on this planet whoever replaces Putin I I I I will bet quite a lot of money on it most of us W have heard of him or perhaps her the problem with getting rid of Putin you know that's one thing but who's going to replace him and could the replacement be [Music] worse [Music] thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit. 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Channel: History Hit

Views: 260,379

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, vladimir putin, ukraine invasion, russian history, vladimir putin speaking english, ukraine invasion first days, russian history oversimplified, russian history crash course, putins rise, putins rise to power, putins rise to power timeline, putins rise to power documentary, vladimir putin psychology, putin psychopath, putin psychology

Id: HRnBoEcVW9Q

Length: 103min 58sec (6238 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024