Putin's Road to War (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] he's been called the most dangerous man in the world putin the great is what he wants to be and one of the deeds that putin the great will have accomplished is reuniting russia with ukraine what he has opened up with this invasion is unthinkable because he is backed into a corner that is now existential for him that makes him also much more dangerous now on frontline putin's road to war [Music] this program contains graphic imagery viewer discretion is advised vladimir putin is about to chair a meeting of the russian security council vladimir putin will address his security council at a special session it was three days before vladimir putin ordered the invasion of ukraine you have him striding in his sort of cocky walk and sitting by himself and his advisors they're literally sitting like 30 feet away from putin they're sitting in an array like school children this looked more like something you would see in a royal court than than you would see in a in a modern government slovakia it was unhinged having his national security team one by one press him to invade ukraine they went up there and dutifully said what the master wanted them to say i think back to that security council meeting and i realized how scared they must all be of him it just felt like they were dancing bears performing for their master who is impossible to please what was especially weird and creepy was the way he dressed down the head of his foreign intelligence service nadyshkin narishkin was sweating he was stammering absolutely but uh he seemed to go off the rails angry and berating his intelligence teeth it was such a strange and such an orchestrated performance that that's the moment when i realized that putin was actually going to attack ukraine [Music] you see how this all went down how much of it was driven just by one man his deranged ideas and everybody around him was too scared to say anything about it or to resist the theatrics were over russia would go to war it seemed almost as if putin had drawn up a plan a long time in advance and now he had finally decided to execute it this was not uh the war of the russian people against the ukrainian people this really is vladimir putin's war it was a war he'd been building up to for years there are grave fears that this could be the beginning of the biggest land war here in europe fueled by a lifetime of grievance biggest war in europe since world war ii war in ukraine has begun determined to rebuild an empire signaling the beginning of what the world has been fearing for months and willing to stop at nothing huge russian military offensive is underway with attacks by land air and sea [Music] vladimir putin's road to war began decades earlier as a young kgb officer trained to see enemies and threats to the empire that was the soviet union the kgb was a monopoly that produced violence it was a monopoly that was responsible for political surveillance on everyday basis of soviet citizens nothing could go without the kgb putin's first assignment wasn't undercover espionage they thought he was better suited to counter intelligence a counter intelligence officer right is somebody for whom conspiracy theories and the enemy within are the job and rooting those out and carrying that kind of paranoid uh everyone might actually always be out out to get us it was a disappointing but defining assignment he's an unhappy man he has wanted to be a secret agent all of his life as long as he can remember and then he gets posted to east germany and not even to berlin to dresden which is just such a backwater while he was in east germany the soviet union would collapse mr gorbachev tear down this wall this protest movement may now be reaching a critical we're remembered for communism's loss of influence in the world here the feeling is the end of the cold war is at hand for many people there is a defining moment in their history when all things after that moment refer back to it in some way from abc this is world news for lieutenant colonel vladimir putin reporting tonight from berlin they are here in the thousands they are here in the tens of thousands the berlin wall coming down was such a moment putin sees that this thing that had always seemed to be glued together well seemed to be impervious that had gone from generation to generation of change in the top party officials um seemed to be a rock one battle in a non-violence it was starting to crumble before his eyes 1989 will be a year remembered for communism's loss of influence mr putin joined russian intelligence during their waning days in the latter years of the cold war when they really felt uh aggrieved and the much lesser power than the united states so i think they just reinforced some of his feelings of insecurity they say they'll never return to communism and promise free democratic elections the protests spread to dresden the angry crowds marched on the german secret police the stasi headquarters then putin's kgb building it would be the first time putin confronted a group of protesters he calls moscow trying to understand what he is to do trying to get orders and moscow doesn't respond a soviet military officer told him moscow is silent and this is a massive massive trauma for him that this massive historical event is happening soviet influence is collapsing before his eyes and he calls home he radios home and home isn't there freedom and democracy are coming to parts of eastern europe and a rusty iron curtain is beginning to come down [Music] by the time putin returned to russia the ussr was falling apart even in front of the kgb headquarters the statues were coming down for many people this was a time of great excitement and enablement and experimentation with democracy and vladimir putin missed this the american president george h.w bush declared it a triumph this is a victory for democracy and freedom it's a victory for the moral force of our value but to putin the end of the soviet union was a humiliation suddenly the old empire was collapsing everything he knew growing up was disappearing and this was a moment that defined him and his life from this moment on you could argue that he was determined to re-establish in some ways what had been lost in his view in the new russia putin quickly began to climb to power reinventing himself from kgb officer to political operative and bureaucratic fixer he's a master bureaucrat russia has always been a bureaucratic autocracy this is how for example stalin became the general secretary he was an amazing bureaucrat he out bureaucrated all the other bureaucrats and putin does too he is very good at the bureaucracy of all of it by the late 90s he'd earned the confidence of russia's first president boris yeltsin they were an odd couple the former spy and a progressive politician who was trying to bring democracy to russia boris yeltsin decided to break totalitarianism to crush what was left of communism with a simple idea which is maximum freedom first before long yeltsin promoted putin to lead the kgb's successor the fsb he undertakes this remarkable rise basically having nothing to do with the center of power in moscow to running its most important security agency working in the kremlin putin convinced yeltsin that he shared the president's democratic goals he's a professional liar to lie is what he was taught in the intelligence school he was pretending that he was going to pursue the same development of russia as yet did but that's all is just one big lie another major shake-up of the kremlin yelston fires his entire cabinet again who's in charge putin rose to become yeltsin's prime minister the second most powerful man in russia it's a new prime minister vladimir putin a man of little political experience but a long time the biggest and the initial reaction when people heard his name being announced as acting prime minister on the 9th of august 1999 by president yeltsin the first reaction was who is that most people had never heard of this guy how putin would wield power would quickly become clear just a few weeks really after he became prime minister we had a very suspicious slate of apartment bombings across russia a bomb destroyed an apartment building in moscow there were suspicions about who really set off the bombs but the government claimed it was the work of separatists from the russian republic chechnya everybody's home asleep in their beds and these large apartment blocks just folded in on themselves burying these people alive or dead but burying everybody in the building for putin it was a chance to demonstrate russia's might this prime minister that most people don't even remember his name and suddenly he comes on television he says we're going to hunt down the terrorists and we're going to wipe them out in the outhouse we'll be chasing the terrorists everywhere at the airports or in the toilet we'll waste them in an outhouse end of story when the apartment bombings happen it gives him the excuse he needs to finally go after what has become a morass in cheshire neighboring dagestan putin struck chechnya with incredible force this was his decision he was angry and he wanted to punish the separatists he is seen on tv as a doer an a man of action he goes down there he's talking to the troops he is in command as putin suited up for the cameras his political fortunes were on the rise and just a few months later he was inaugurated as russia's new president the powers of the head of state have been turned over to me today putin's first promise to the russian people strength i assure you that there will be no vacuum of power not for a minute he came to power because of the war in chechnya inside russia's own borders just as brutal as the horrors that we're seeing in ukraine today again against a part of his own country they are willing to destroy the village in order to save it [Music] as president he wasn't just presenting himself as the strong man he commissioned film and photo shoots he is a man who is obsessed with tv he watches tapes of the evening news over and over and over again to see how he's portrayed to see how he looks [Applause] he wears very good suits like any other western leader he speaks fluent german and he understands english in those early years he continued to publicly cultivate the image of a reformer russian narrative was the victory of democracy the triumph of popular will that sort of thing so a young guy who speaks a foreign language fits into that narrative as long as you ignore everything else about him putin learned how to sell himself for the help of his public relations guru he began to think that everything can be manipulated any kind of press any tv program is all about manipulation it was decided what tv channels would show what news they made sure a dynamic vital and charismatic putin was on display for all russians to see he's healthy he's young he's virile he casts himself as a savior temperamentally and in style he is the anti-yeltsin he's bringing back a kind of dignity and strength to the russian presidency that had been missing under boris yeltsin president clinton arrived in moscow carrying a message of cooperation putin's first test with the united states a visit from the american president bill clinton had come to the kremlin to evaluate putin for himself president clinton wanted to get a little bit of feel he wanted to meet him in the in the kremlin as president two presidents who won near the end of his term putin seemed indifferent to the american president who had championed yeltsin and liberalization and expanded nato putin conveys a huge amount through body language he tries to show you that he's the alpha male in the room through the way he spreads his legs through the way he slouches a bit in his chair through the way that he will look at people and kind of give them a dismissive hand wave putin doesn't have much time for him and this is not what clinton was used to when it came to russia he was used to having somebody he could relate to and putin is a cold fish and clinton didn't respond well to him if mr clinton was hoping for a foreign policy triumph he won't get it here later that day clinton received a warmer reception from boris yeltsin and issued a warning about putin bill clinton looked hard into yeltsin's eyes and said i'm a little bit concerned about this young man that you have turned over the presidency to he doesn't have democracy in his heart and he reached over and poked him in his heart and i will never forget the the expression that came over yeltsin yeltsin's confidants say by the end of his life he would come to agree with clinton before boris yeltsin died he told intimates that it was a great mistake for him to have selected putin as his successor [Music] the signs were there from the beginning putin moved to consolidate power one of his first targets television one of the first things he did was to take control of television because more than 90 percent of russians got all their news from television during the yeltsin years independent television channels like ntv flourished even as they ridiculed political figures ntv has a comic show called puppets and when putin comes to rise in public life it features a putin puppet as well and he's never portrayed very flatteringly putin apparently was driven to madness by the show and by the way he was portrayed on it the way he was mocked on it ntv and its owner vladimir guzinski came into the crosshairs of putin's government he sent armed operatives from the uh prosecutor general service and the tax police to raid the offices of media most the parent company of ntv which was at the time the largest independent media holding in russia gusynski is imprisoned and while he's in jail one of putin's lieutenants comes to visit him in jail and says you know you could get out of this mess if you sign over ntb guccinski eventually does that hands over ntv to a kremlin friendly oligarch in doing that putin made clear the broadcast media which is how most russians get their news was no longer going to be outsourced this was going to be a a state-run operation and it's remained that way throughout putin's terms putin was now well on his way to dismantling russian democracy pursuing his vision of a restored russian empire he came to see himself as almost ordained to lead russia back to greatness if that is your ordained mission then there aren't a lot of limits on the means you can use to achieve that goal and in those years another warning of how far putin was willing to go it began with a tragedy in the small town of beslan men and women wearing explosive belts attacked a scooter definitely the worst hostage tragedy that russia has ever seen terrorists seizing a school and the plan was that putin would either capitulate or he would lose his image his reputation this was a serious crisis this was a really serious crisis putin wouldn't back down he ordered his army in tanks and troops encircled the school and then an explosion and chaos [Music] the army shelled the school at point blank range they fired at it from tanks putin's troops were armed with rockets grenade launchers and flame throwers a lot of the children who burned alive burned alive because of a fire that raged it turns into this debacle and the end result is corpses of little children stacked like firewood more than 320 people were killed half of them children in the tragedy in the town of beslan putin seized on the tragedy to expand his power and control security and greater power elections throughout the country governors and leaders forced out the most outspoken members of the parliament and it was a cynical move but at the same time it also expresses the way to respond to to extreme violence and to extreme disorder is to create more dictator dictatorial powers he's demanded a radical shakeup of security and greater powers after beslan the kremlin had full power the government did not matter much any longer it doesn't matter where it is it belongs to the president it comes from the president flows out of the presidency the attack on the school in beslan was a signature moment of revelation about who is vladimir putin what kind of brutality would use the tragedy of piles and piles of dead bodies of kids to eliminate democracy and now we're seeing vladimir putin use dead ukrainian children to eliminate democracy and its vestiges inside of russia and that domestic crackdown goes hand in hand with putin's war those are one in the seam phenomenon [Music] as he cemented control in russia during those formative years he had to contend with another dangerous challenge popular uprisings in former soviet republics people in the streets is a really frightening sight to police people in the streets can make all sorts of things happen they were called the color revolutions and he saw in them a threat from the united states [Music] putin concluded that these were efforts by the united states and our intelligence services to in fact install in these neighboring countries regimes that would be anti-russian because you acted georgia is today both sovereign and free and a beacon of liberty for this region and the world lieutenant is convinced that people don't just come out into the streets they have to be driven by somebody there has to be a puppet master somebody's funding them and it's probably the united states americans respect your courageous choice for liberty the american people will stand with you georgia ukraine and kyrgyzstan putin feared russia was next i think this makes him sit up and pay attention could that happen to me and if it does not only do i lose a job that i like what else do i lose do i lose my freedom do i lose my life he perceives them through his fuzzy history of conspiracy-minded paranoia as the work of the west and it's all of a piece with this year's long war and effect that he believes he's been uh waging with the americans and the cia who and his his mind are trying to push him out of power russian president vladimir putin is speaking in february 2007 putin's simmering grievances and his ambitions came into full view in munich at a conference of western leadership and so he comes to the security conference in munich and says basically i don't have to mince words do i i can say what's on my mind and then he'll he just lashes out and he lists all these resentments first and foremost the united states has overstepped its national borders in the economic political and humanitarian spheres it imposes on other nations well who would like this who would like this my head snap it was so searing and blunt and i i felt this was the real god this is of course extremely dangerous it results in the fact that no one feels safe i want to emphasize this no one feels safe americans were pissed frantic angry i was four rows back and you could almost feel the humidity from the spittle that was spewing yeah it was it was pretty shocking because it was pretty aggressive putin echoed cold war rhetoric by accusing the us of making the world unsafe premiere vladimir putin left no doubt who he sees as responsible for the current global crisis the speech was a turning point putin clearly in this speech was drawing a line and saying we're not going to try anymore we're just giving up on you and we're going to make our own world in which we are the master it's one of putin's harshest attacks on america in his seven year term that speech in 2007 is the anchor point at which he tells us the europe he wants and the international order he wants and he has worked towards it since then he had set russia on a course towards conflict and war he sees himself as restoring russia to absolute greatness in the world and reassembling basically the russian empire tracking this a very serious development in the arab world it wouldn't be long before putin would face another threat [Music] as with the color revolutions cries for democracy in the middle east tunisia syria egypt vader putin looks at what's happening in the arab world and he sees it as dresden all over again he sees it as the american meddling in other countries affairs to the detriment of mother russia the sound of freedom president mubarak has one of the first to fall egyptian president hosni mubarak i think that particularly for putin what happened in egypt was something that really went right to his heart especially after the president of the united states weighed in the united states will continue to stand up for democracy in egypt and around the world they'd like to spread american style democracy supported with the help of money from abroad with the help of intelligence service with the help of diplomatic service and even in some cases with the help of pentagon political mutiny that began in tunisia spread to egypt and iran and has for putin the peril of the arab spring exploded into sharp relief in libya where rebel forces captured his ally libyan dictator muammar gaddafi [Music] vladimir putin talked about the fall of libya over and over again he would talk about the scene of muammar gaddafi the great lion of libya reduced to a man hiding in a drainage pipe cowering with his own gun in his hand where he was dragged out by his people and was killed watches that tape over and over and over again it's all he can talk about for quite some tens time thousands came out on the streets to tell prime minister vladimir putin they'd had enough soon the fervor reached moscow protests at his seat of power the kremlin more than a hundred thousand people came out to say no enough we are fed up with this this was the largest demonstration held in russia in moscow since the democratic revolution of august 1991 the protests had been sparked by claims that putin's party had rigged the parliamentary election allegations of fraud captured for the first time on cell phone videos they took their smartphones and they recorded everything and they immediately uploaded that on the internet and the whole country could see it so the social networks have played a huge role in those protests they saw ballot boxes being stuffed even before the polls open ballot stuffing suddenly people saw this evidence with their own eyes and there was no explaining it away ballots hidden in the bathroom campaign officials filling out ballots the pens at one polling place filled with erasable ink the russian people reacted to that by going out into the streets with signs that said literally president putin must go putin responded with force he ordered a crackdown on protesters and dissidents they started enacting searches arrests detentions actions against opposition leaders persecution in the mass media and they launched individual persecution that applied to tens of hundreds maybe thousands of people in the country this is a clear message that it's over you've had your fun it's done it's over the election's over i'm the president you are not toppling me i am the law bad things often happen to opponents many of putin's opponents inside russia fled the country others had died mysterious deaths vladimir putin's top opponent saying quote i'm scared that putin will kill me death of a former vladimir putin aide one who nearly died twice from poisoning was vladimir kremlin they're very close to vladimir putin's office there's been a very high mortality rate in the last several years among the people who have crossed the path of vladimir putin scrambling independent journalists anti-corruption campaigners opposition activist supposition leaders many people have died some in strange and unexplained deaths others and just straight out assassinations having demonstrated his power at home putin turned his attention to projecting russia as a global superpower [Music] give you a live look now at sochi today's opening ceremony takes place it cost russia close to 50 billion euros in 2014 he commanded the world stage putin hosting the olympics is the crescendo of his campaign to revive russian greatness it was the kind of pageantry which putin and russians in general loved he was riding very high this was you know moment of personal and national triumph from his point of view [Applause] olympia was a huge moment for vladimir putin and it was meant to be his validation and crowning moment of acceptance on the world stage as uh you know sort of the new russian tsar but it was at this moment of glory that ukraine would begin to emerge as the ultimate test for putin's vision for russia ukraine is stuck very much in the middle east protests in neighboring ukraine what is russian president again resistance to russian dominance violence protests first flared back in november when ukraine to have a democratic ukraine a ukraine that cared more about being in nato than it did being in moscow's orbit that's a huge threat to vladimir putin that was something that was simply unacceptable he has a special thing about ukraine he believes ukraine really is part of russia and he is determined to reverse this geopolitical catastrophe that separated ukraine from russia putin was determined to act his response came in the ukrainian territory of crimea moved in with what the aquarians called little green men and they were clearly by the way they handled themselves no weapons professional military we're in russian style combat uniforms but no insignia i think it was a tactically impressive move that he was able to basically invade a huge chunk of a neighboring country a tug of war in ukraine where and do it in a way that made it difficult to figure out exactly what was going on and until it was too late putin didn't stop there he supported a separatist war in ukraine's east he is going to make clear to the world that no russia is not weak anymore russia cannot be pushed around anymore and i'm going to go into ukraine if i want to because ukraine is part of russia it is not an independent state [Music] in washington the american government was struggling to devise a response to putin's actions how do you deter behavior when the other side is basically denying that it's even taking place when the other side is saying i don't even know what you're talking about we're not involved president obama says he's deeply concerned in several phone calls president barack obama confronted putin about the little green men tony blinken was in the oval office for those calls putin denied their presence and it was striking and flat-out lying about russia's presence in ukraine and obama would say to him vladimir we're not blind we have eyes we can see and putin would just move on as if nothing had happened at the pentagon some believed putin only understood one thing military force the most important thing that we could do was to deter russia and the best way to do that we thought in my office was to make the russians afraid that they would have to pay a higher price for their military intervention the higher price would be a price in russian lives that if we had anti-tank weapons the russian tanks coming at the ukrainians would get hit and russian soldiers would die yesterday the cia director agreed that tough action was needed i remember being on the school yards of new jersey when i grew up and you know bullies and tried to intimidate and they keep moving forward unless they get their their nose bloodied a little bit and i felt as though mr putin really needed to get his nose bloodied and i think it would have caused him to back off because like most bullies he knows that he can't stand up to others it's a lot of luster but the president was reluctant to be drawn into a conflict with russia he would not approve providing weapons to the ukrainians obama responds to ukraine by imposing sanctions and they begin to penalize russian businesses and russian individuals that they blame for being part of this some who had dealt with putin worried sanctions would not stop him i think that putin successfully calculated that the hammer would not come down on him in a critically painful way if he did things deniably stealthily if he probed and if he sort of boiled the frog hotter and hotter and hotter rather than attacking directly and he was right putin had extended russian power tested u.s resolve now it was time to retaliate he would strike at the heart of american democracy you have to understand that 2016 attack on the u.s presidential election as putin's revenge and retaliation for what he considered to be essentially hostile acts by the west the attack was aimed at washington dc with a breach of computer servers belonging to the democratic national committee then email leaks designed to undermine hillary clinton's campaign this was the most aggressive and most direct and most assertive campaign that the russians ever mounted in the history of our elections and what characterized this were the variety and intensity of the techniques that they employed a campaign of misinformation fake users designed to look like americans trolls supporting the kremlin an army of automated bots on twitter and targeted advertisements on facebook and google all calculated to hurt hillary clinton and help her rival donald trump president putin's view of trump was a pension for authoritarianism backing off human rights and talking about wanting to have a more positive relationship with russia what's not to like if you're vladimir putin it sort of sounds like he's one of us in moscow putin denied being behind the hacking everybody started about to talk about russia some questions were asked vladimir putin clearly enjoyed himself when he was asking these questions and in the beginning of september he gave some well conventional answers with something but that was all here i don't know anything about that you know there are so many hackers today and they act so delicately and precisely then they can leave their trace in the necessary time and place or even someone else's trace there's always plausible deniability built into the system so a lot of the hackers that are working for the russian government they're not necessarily wearing you know epaulets and uniforms they're not necessarily sitting in gre bunkers in moscow or somewhere in russia a lot of them are freelancers does it even matter who hacked this data from the campaign headquarters of mrs clinton is that really important the important thing is the content that has been given to the public putin believes the west is inherently weak and can be pushed to a certain point and he pushes to that point and if he doesn't get a reaction he pushes some more and on election day the question would putin's attack pay off it's hard to imagine that many people in moscow thought that donald trump was going to win california since nobody else they read the same things that uh that we read and see the same polls and the same pundits as the upset became clear it was a jubilation everybody was so happy because it was such a big surprise everybody believed that there is a special agreement secret agreement between the elites to get clinton elected [Music] some russian legislators collectively raised a champagne toast they didn't expect trump to win they just thought they were going to bloody clinton's nose they didn't expect to break her neck trump's election was seen as a sign of strength for putin it did demonstrate to ordinary russians putin is deciding the fate of american elections is taken as a sign of putin's greatness and of russia's greatness as well from pune's point of view he won not only to the candidate he favored come out on top he has disrupted americans faith in their own democracy so that we're all turning on each other and we're busy fighting with each other and in his mind hopefully too distracted to pose a threat to him on the world stage [Music] with tensions between the u.s and russia at the highest level president trump's helsinki as they held their first summit meeting between donald trump and vladimir putin it was clear that in trump putin had a very different american president all of a sudden there's this president of the united states who is a putin groupie he's a putin fanboy the things president trump said about his admiration for vladimir putin the way he called nato's mutual defense pledge into question it's great to be with you must have seemed like an amazing gift to vladimir putin in their first joint press conference trump surprised everyone president putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. every u.s intelligence agency has concluded that russia did my first question for you sir is who do you believe who do you believe that's the starkest possible way to put that question question to the president my people came to me dan coats came to me and some others they said they think it's russia i have president putin he just said it's not russia i will say this i don't see any reason why it would be that is such a win for putin it is such a you know it's like watching your enemy shoot himself in both feet both hands i will tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did it's your enemy admitting that you are better i mean it's everything he's ever wanted it's for the u.s to admit that the u.s is stupid and weak and bad and that russia is good and strong and powerful extraordinary moment in american history something i thought i would never see in moscow putin was emboldened as long as trump was president i think putin felt he had a free hand essentially putin felt unbound and unconstrained continuing to tighten his hold on russia is building up his own power at home he's he's smothering out opposition police in russia arrested one of the country's most prominent opposition leaders anti-corruption activist alexei navalny was detained as he does what he can to smother it in the crib overseas audacious operations designed to send a signal of a spy and his daughter apparently poisoned britain's foreign minister accused putin of ordering the poisoning he's gotten away with everything so far so why not push it a little step further deploying his brutal way of war u.n investigators just linked russia to a possible war crime in syria he's using the battlefields of syria as ways to improve his own military's operational performance to show that russia is a king maker beyond russia's so-called near abroad in central asia even risking direct confrontation with american military forces a couple of times in skirmishes in syria and in the division and disarray he'd helped so in his longtime adversary an opportunity he correctly sees america as a nation so divided that it's paralyzed that it is a nation at each other's throats that can't agree on anything then afghanistan happens the message that sends to putin is that america has no more appetite for war [Music] putin was now poised to make his boldest move yet he wants to be a great historical figure for russia putin the great is what he wants to be and one of the deeds that putin the great will have accomplished is reuniting russia with ukraine russia without ukraine is a country russia with ukraine is an empire and that's where putin seems to be headed that means a lot of wars and a lot of dead people [Music] [Music] putin's war had begun [Music] he has gambled his entire time in office on this one decision this is what he will be remembered for not anything else he did in the prior 22 years then he decided to put everything on this creating apocalyptic scenes on the outskirts of the capitol a non-stop onslaught over the last 24 hours with mass casualties tens of thousands of civilians trapped in cities under near constant russian shell fire vladimir putin is going to rank up there as one of the worst and most brutal killers of the 21st century and his his career in power has been marked by uh a willingness to use extreme force and violence and war as a tool of his repression in ukraine europe the consequences of his war war in ukraine creating a flood of refugees pouring across european borders it is the fastest growing humanitarian crisis on the continent since world war ii now putin's war is the worlds we are already at a tipping point risking world war iii could the ukraine russia war cause a world war or even a nuclear war he's more dangerous than he's ever been at any point in the last 22 years he will not lose he will grind the country down to a fine fine ash vladimir putin signals he has no intention of stopping his campaign putin has no interest in backing down and it doesn't matter how many russian soldiers die in the process how many ukrainian soldiers and civilians die in the process he will not be humiliated and that makes him also much more dangerous vladimir putin is getting more unpredictable and more dangerous as the war goes on the question everyone is asking is what do we do about vladimir putin the russian leader sees this as a war he cannot afford to lose [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline [Music] front lines putin's road to war is available on amazon prime video so [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 4,288,488

Keywords:

Id: MsfUiTJv2lE

Length: 53min 19sec (3199 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/mikenitro]

I watched this, it's a good summary, but yeah, unavailable. Back in 2016 or 2017 Frontline covered Putin and this is sort of a refresh of it. For both the recent stuff and the old stuff you can on find Youtube the full interviews with the journalists they interviewed; they are very interesting and worth a listen. Just search PBS Frontline Putin Files there and you'll find them. Here's one to help get you started, but there are others that are excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5aFnB-1ec

[u/Birdman-82]

Absolutely love PBS and Frontline is always good. They’ve had a lot of great coverage about Ukraine.

[u/ImBecomingMyFather]

Non US Mirror?

[u/KartoFFeL_Brain]

gone

[u/CutsOfRisk]

Does anyone else remember when 45 was pushing to de-fund PBS?

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/pbs-statement-trump-administration-proposes-elimination-of-federal-funding-for-most-trusted-institution/

[u/jsktrogdor]

MUTHA FUCKIN FRONTLINE

I'm so excited to watch this.

[u/Dorito_Troll]

Really great peace of journalism, highly recommended

[u/krneki12]

Interesting watch.

[u/Ellas-Baap]

This is fantastic. I recommend watching the full interviews of each of the participants which are like an hour each.