1
00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:09,420
Happened twice, both times
in exactly the same way.

2
00:00:12,280 --> 00:00:13,700
Both times I was in Moscow,

3
00:00:13,760 --> 00:00:16,020
I started feeling really sick
for no reason.

4
00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:19,460
And within the space of
a few minutes,

5
00:00:19,520 --> 00:00:20,820
I was completely incapacitated.

6
00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:22,900
I couldn't breathe,
my heart was racing,

7
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:25,136
and within hours all of my major
life organs were shutting down

8
00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:26,220
one after another.

9
00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:29,620
I remember both times
very clearly thinking,

10
00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:31,260
"This is it. This is the end."

11
00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:44,500
The official diagnosis give to me
by my doctors in Moscow was

12
00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:47,900
toxic action
by an unidentified substance,

13
00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:51,100
so translated from medical speak
to normal human language,

14
00:00:51,160 --> 00:00:52,260
it means poisoning.

15
00:00:59,760 --> 00:01:02,220
I have no doubt
by the way this was done,

16
00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:03,400
that this was done by people

17
00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:05,656
somehow connected with the Russian
domestic security services,

18
00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:09,300
and I have no doubt absolutely
that this was done as retribution,

19
00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:11,460
for my political activity
in the Russian opposition.

20
00:01:15,560 --> 00:01:18,500
There's been a strangely high
mortality rate

21
00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:19,660
over these past two decades

22
00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:23,060
among the people who are standing up
against Putin's regime...

23
00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:27,940
..journalists,
human rights activists,

24
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:29,260
political opposition figures.

25
00:01:30,240 --> 00:01:33,180
A mortality rate that I don't think
can be explained

26
00:01:33,240 --> 00:01:35,060
by any normal statistical model.

27
00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:43,216
We're all products of our experience
we're all products of our background

28
00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:44,680
we're all products of our education.

29
00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:48,260
Vladimir Putin's background
is the Soviet KGB...

30
00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:51,780
..one of the most repressive
organisations

31
00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:52,980
in the history of humanity.

32
00:01:54,560 --> 00:01:57,460
He's doing what he was taught to do.

33
00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:05,780
Manipulate, lie, recruit, repress.

34
00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:12,660
He seems to be quite good at his job.

35
00:02:14,480 --> 00:02:17,540
Putin was very small,
but he was a fierce fighter.

36
00:02:17,600 --> 00:02:19,460
There is a vengeful side
to Putin.

37
00:02:19,520 --> 00:02:21,540
He is a man who never forgets
a slight.

38
00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:23,540
I'm quite clear on
what I think drives him -

39
00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:25,220
to make Russia great again.

40
00:02:25,280 --> 00:02:28,300
He's a convinced patriotic Russian.

41
00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:30,780
You can't make a president
in a few months, just like...

42
00:02:30,840 --> 00:02:32,336
..a click of your hand.

43
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:33,700
It's just impossible.

44
00:02:33,760 --> 00:02:35,420
This is the code of the spy.

45
00:02:35,480 --> 00:02:37,660
Nothing is forgotten
and nothing is forgiven.

46
00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:53,740
Good evening.

47
00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:56,040
Could this be another example
of a Russian being poisoned

48
00:02:56,080 --> 00:02:57,380
on UK soil?

49
00:02:57,440 --> 00:03:00,340
The man in hospital tonight,
Sergei Skripal,

50
00:03:00,400 --> 00:03:02,060
is in a critical condition.

51
00:03:02,920 --> 00:03:05,980
Counter-terrorism officers have
take charge of the investigation

52
00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:09,820
into the suspected poisoning
of a former Russian agent

53
00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:11,740
in Salisbury on Sunday.

54
00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:16,260
Sergei Skripal had been convicted
in Russia 12 years ago

55
00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:18,660
of passing secrets to MI6.

56
00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:20,900
President Putin's spokesman
told me earlier,

57
00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:24,420
"We have no information about
what happened. We cannot comment."

58
00:04:25,160 --> 00:04:27,740
For many people,
Soviet childhoods are pretty grim.

59
00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:32,700
Most people lived in
appalling conditions.

60
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:34,780
Behind the grandiose architecture,

61
00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:38,700
these dark alleyways and dark
courtyards and street gangs,

62
00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:41,020
and it's... it's pretty filthy.

63
00:04:41,080 --> 00:04:43,740
It's not a very nice place
to be a small boy.

64
00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:20,420
He was a schoolyard thug,

65
00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:23,820
and part of a gang.

66
00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:27,100
He was very small,
but he was a fierce fighter.

67
00:05:28,920 --> 00:05:35,620
He was saved from going into
the crime life by sports.

68
00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:40,820
His coach of judo pulled him out
of this street life,

69
00:05:40,880 --> 00:05:44,220
and he became a very avid fighter.

70
00:05:48,600 --> 00:05:50,460
The KGB were watching

71
00:05:50,520 --> 00:05:53,980
who was doing this kind of sports
in the Soviet Union.

72
00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:56,460
Putin didn't make any secret
out of the fact

73
00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:01,060
that he wanted to work
for the secret services, with KGB.

74
00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:03,860
He dreamt to become
a kind of Stierlitz,

75
00:06:03,920 --> 00:06:07,420
which is the Russian version
of James Bond.

76
00:06:17,840 --> 00:06:20,400
Asking, you know, "Do you
remember the character Stierlitz?"

77
00:06:20,440 --> 00:06:23,060
it's like asking anybody
in this country,

78
00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:25,300
"Do you remember the character Bond?"

79
00:06:25,360 --> 00:06:27,200
You know, yes, you remember
the character Bond.

80
00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:31,620
The theme of Stierlitz
in Seventeen Moments Of Spring,

81
00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:33,900
the idea of, sort of,
a glorious Soviet spy,

82
00:06:33,960 --> 00:06:35,340
I think is very important,

83
00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:38,340
and this was an extremely important
film to Putin.

84
00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:46,980
He was 21 years old when Seventeen
Moments of Spring was released,

85
00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:50,340
and two years later,
he joined the service.

86
00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:53,180
He joined the KGB.

87
00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:58,060
Now, I can easily talk about that,
you know.

88
00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:02,260
For 20 years,
I was intelligence officer.

89
00:07:02,320 --> 00:07:06,180
My generation of... of kids

90
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:09,540
were brought up in the sentiments

91
00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:14,460
of very heroic novels
about World War II.

92
00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:20,900
In the heroic of small kids,
who were fighting fascism.

93
00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:29,740
And the heroism of
our intelligence officers.

94
00:07:31,760 --> 00:07:34,180
For an agent,
it was very important,

95
00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:35,860
if he wanted to have a good job,

96
00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:37,540
to be married, happily married,

97
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:40,900
'cause otherwise,
we can't trust you fully.

98
00:07:40,960 --> 00:07:44,580
You could do your own business
with other woman there.

99
00:07:44,640 --> 00:07:45,980
We would dislike this.

100
00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:53,380
Putin's wife, Lyudmila, when
he dated her for the first time,

101
00:07:53,440 --> 00:07:56,820
he never told her
that he working for the KGB.

102
00:07:56,880 --> 00:07:59,020
He was telling her
that he worked for the police.

103
00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:01,540
And he examined her character.

104
00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:05,700
He sent his friends
and they wanted to date her as well,

105
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:07,940
and she said, "No,
I have already boyfriend.

106
00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:09,460
"I have Vladimir."

107
00:08:09,520 --> 00:08:12,340
And that was enough for him
to be proud of her

108
00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:14,580
and to understand
that she really likes him.

109
00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:26,740
He ends up in Eastern Germany,

110
00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:28,620
and he's not even in the capital,
Berlin.

111
00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:32,020
He's sent to Dresden,
a provincial backwater.

112
00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:36,940
And I think if you've been brought up
in Leningrad

113
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,980
and then you've trained a bit
for the KGB in Moscow,

114
00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:42,940
going to Dresden,

115
00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:45,820
quite the opposite from what
you'd hope from your foreign posting,

116
00:08:45,880 --> 00:08:48,780
to taste the forbidden fruits
of the West.

117
00:08:48,840 --> 00:08:51,300
And I think it probably must've been
a bit of a let-down.

118
00:08:52,680 --> 00:08:53,820
You get a hint of it.

119
00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:56,300
His wife talks about
how they were homesick

120
00:08:56,360 --> 00:08:58,700
and longed for the Soviet Union.

121
00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:01,620
So, it feels as though
they had a comfortable life,

122
00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:03,540
but not a particularly exciting one.

123
00:09:05,560 --> 00:09:09,820
He drank a lot of beer
and there were a lot of pictures

124
00:09:09,880 --> 00:09:16,420
at parties, in restaurants,
or among friends.

125
00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:21,020
You know, if you go there on a very
secret mission and you're a top spy,

126
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:23,380
no picture exists of you,

127
00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:26,500
not in books, nor in the collections
of your friends

128
00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:27,820
or in family albums.

129
00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:31,540
So, I shouldn't portray him
more than he was.

130
00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:40,340
And then his world collapsed.

131
00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:42,620
His dreams collapsed.

132
00:09:42,680 --> 00:09:46,460
East Germany has tonight
opened its borders to the West.

133
00:09:46,520 --> 00:09:49,340
28 years after the Berlin Wall
was built,

134
00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:52,860
its people are once more free
to travel anywhere.

135
00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:54,700
I was Moscow correspondent
at the time,

136
00:09:54,760 --> 00:09:59,220
and I wouldn't have said at the end
of 1989, the beginning of 1990,

137
00:09:59,280 --> 00:10:00,660
that I would expect

138
00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:03,940
that within two years, the whole
Soviet Union would collapse.

139
00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:06,820
So, I don't suppose he did either.

140
00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:10,620
I think it must've been a huge shock.

141
00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:14,340
He didn't welcome these changes.

142
00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:20,740
He knew that he had to...
return back from the GDR,

143
00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:24,620
a country which didn't exist anymore
'cause it was reunited as Germany.

144
00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:29,300
He had a wife
and two small daughters.

145
00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:39,500
He had a car, which he took to drive
back from Dresden to St Petersburg.

146
00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:44,780
He didn't know what kind of career
he will have in the new Russia,

147
00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:49,500
what will happen to him,
to his family, to the country.

148
00:11:01,560 --> 00:11:06,500
Coming back to '90s
in St Petersburg...

149
00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:10,940
..it was gloomy city.

150
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:15,340
Despite the fact that there
were some new expectations...

151
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:21,180
..it was a real trauma
to Soviet society.

152
00:11:22,400 --> 00:11:29,820
They were losing their sense
of belonging to great country,

153
00:11:29,880 --> 00:11:31,020
to great history.

154
00:11:32,400 --> 00:11:35,340
They were losing
the means for survival.

155
00:11:49,400 --> 00:11:54,140
When the institutions
lost the ability to function,

156
00:11:54,200 --> 00:11:57,220
of course criminality is rising.

157
00:12:00,680 --> 00:12:03,740
They had contract killings
every single day.

158
00:12:03,800 --> 00:12:06,900
They had bombings
nearly every single day.

159
00:12:09,160 --> 00:12:11,700
There's people being killed
left and right.

160
00:12:11,760 --> 00:12:17,060
I mean, it's, like, pretty much
comparable to Chicago in the 1930s.

161
00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:21,860
And probably Chicago was not
as violent as Russia.

162
00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:04,500
Just now President Putin denied

163
00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:07,260
having anything to do with
the election interference in 2016.

164
00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:10,740
Every US intelligence agency
has concluded that Russia did.

165
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:12,420
Who do you believe?

166
00:13:12,480 --> 00:13:15,380
People came to me,
they said they think it's Russia.

167
00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:20,980
I have President Putin.
He just said it's not Russia.

168
00:13:21,040 --> 00:13:23,540
I will say this - I don't see
any reason why it would be.

169
00:13:25,240 --> 00:13:29,140
I have great confidence
in my intelligence people

170
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:31,940
but I will tell you that

171
00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:37,100
President Putin was extremely strong
and powerful in his denial today.

172
00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:38,460
Thank you.

173
00:13:38,520 --> 00:13:39,940
Thank you very much.

174
00:13:50,760 --> 00:13:53,380
Well, Vladimir Putin
came into my life

175
00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:56,940
through a problem that I had
with my investment at the time.

176
00:13:59,440 --> 00:14:02,860
Through my activities as a supplier
for law enforcement equipment,

177
00:14:02,920 --> 00:14:04,220
I ended up in Russia.

178
00:14:07,880 --> 00:14:11,580
One of the deputy police chiefs
thought it was a good idea

179
00:14:11,640 --> 00:14:13,420
to try to take over my investments.

180
00:14:16,280 --> 00:14:20,060
So, I want to the US consulate
and someone there said,

181
00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:22,856
you know, "The guy you should...
you should confront with this problem

182
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:25,140
"is really Vladimir Putin."

183
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,620
Putin is a guy that became sidekick

184
00:14:35,680 --> 00:14:39,580
to the first democratically elected
mayor of St Petersburg,

185
00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:40,900
Anatoly Sobchak.

186
00:14:52,320 --> 00:14:55,140
And so I went to see him.

187
00:14:55,200 --> 00:15:03,140
Vladimir Putin was a very dry,
obviously very humourless man

188
00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:06,780
of rather small stature.

189
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:09,620
You could see it was very important
to give you a good handshake,

190
00:15:09,680 --> 00:15:11,260
to look you straight into the eyes.

191
00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:16,300
He basically says,
"No, I'm not gonna get involved.

192
00:15:16,360 --> 00:15:18,900
"I'm busy enough protecting my mayor.

193
00:15:18,960 --> 00:15:21,500
"I don't need
an additional headache."

194
00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:22,860
That's exactly what he said.

195
00:15:24,160 --> 00:15:26,420
I didn't understand what...
what that meant

196
00:15:26,480 --> 00:15:29,020
until I went out and I learned

197
00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:33,260
that Mayor Sobchak was completely
corrupt, corrupt to the bone,

198
00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:37,260
and one of Putin's main functions was
to keep him out of trouble.

199
00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:41,540
There were no real rules,
there were no real laws.

200
00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:45,740
Of course, people bribed in order
to get certain privileges.

201
00:15:45,800 --> 00:15:48,860
I was told by people
who were close to Sobchak,

202
00:15:48,920 --> 00:15:52,820
"You have to pay $100,000

203
00:15:52,880 --> 00:15:56,300
"in order to have a soup with him."

204
00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:02,220
But they didn't manage to keep
the city running as it should be.

205
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:05,700
The city was collapsing.

206
00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:07,620
People were searching for food.

207
00:16:07,680 --> 00:16:09,900
Everything was dark.

208
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:38,140
Sobchak needs someone
who is, sort of the interface

209
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:41,420
between what they call
the organs of state,

210
00:16:41,480 --> 00:16:46,700
that is the KGB, the police,
anybody of executive power

211
00:16:46,760 --> 00:16:49,220
that he could potentially get
into a conflict with.

212
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:55,140
For a simpler term, I would call
Putin a fixer in the day.

213
00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:02,980
He was always in the shadows.

214
00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:05,540
You know, if there were pictures
being taken

215
00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:07,980
of Sobchak doing something,

216
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:11,100
even if Putin was there,
he wasn't gonna be in the picture,

217
00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:13,040
or if he was, he was gonna be off
in the corner.

218
00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:17,460
Sobchak trusted him,

219
00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:20,580
because Putin proved, first of all,
to be very loyal.

220
00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:24,580
Loyal to Sobchak.

221
00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:26,140
He's a bulldog.

222
00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:28,700
He grabs on and he gets something.

223
00:17:33,360 --> 00:17:36,380
1992, there is
a documentary film director

224
00:17:36,440 --> 00:17:38,940
who wants to make
a series of short films

225
00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:44,620
to introduce those people working
in the St Petersburg administration

226
00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:46,740
to the public, the whole team.

227
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:54,580
And for the film,
he decides to set the scene.

228
00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:59,940
And Putin, sitting behind the wheel
of the Soviet Volga he's driving,

229
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:02,780
and in the background,
there is music,

230
00:18:02,840 --> 00:18:05,980
there is a theme tune from
Seventeen Moments of Spring playing.

231
00:18:16,760 --> 00:18:18,780
Putin is not an accidental man.

232
00:18:21,520 --> 00:18:23,540
The idea to bring this tune

233
00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,380
and bring out this association
with Stierlitz

234
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:28,140
was... was clearly very important.

235
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:16,620
Power, power,
more and more influence

236
00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:18,500
in St Petersburg connections,

237
00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:21,100
with Western politicians.

238
00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:25,700
He made himself indispensable
for Sobchak.

239
00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:37,700
Until 1996...

240
00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:44,060
..when Sobchak lost
the governors elections.

241
00:20:46,920 --> 00:20:50,100
He lost everything. He had no money.

242
00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:53,940
He was again in a situation
where he had nothing.

243
00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:58,780
The lesson
from Sobchak's loss was that

244
00:20:58,840 --> 00:21:02,460
you cannot leave
the democratic process to elections

245
00:21:02,520 --> 00:21:05,380
and you cannot leave the elections
to ordinary people,

246
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:09,540
in the sense that someone
could vote you out of office.

247
00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:23,140
I would like to make a statement

248
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:25,940
about the death of
Alexander Litvinenko.

249
00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:30,260
Mr Litvinenko suffered
a cardiac arrest

250
00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:33,260
caused by his ingesting polonium 210

251
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:37,540
while drinking tea at the Pine Bar
of the Millennium Hotel.

252
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:43,100
Mr Litvinenko was
deliberately poisoned

253
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:46,460
by Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun

254
00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:49,100
acting on behalf of others.

255
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:50,980
There is a strong probability

256
00:21:51,040 --> 00:21:52,940
that they were acting
under the direction

257
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:55,140
of the Russian domestic
security service,

258
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:58,820
the Federal Security Service,
or FSB,

259
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:00,700
and the inquiry has found

260
00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:04,740
that the FSB operation
to kill Mr Litvinenko

261
00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:08,100
was probably approved
by President Putin.

262
00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,660
There's a very famous word
in Russia, 'poryadok',

263
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:00,460
which means 'order'.

264
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,696
If you ask Russians
what they want out of their leaders,

265
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:03,800
what they want is poryadok.

266
00:23:03,840 --> 00:23:05,580
What they want is order.

267
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:09,860
At that time,
the president was Yeltsin,

268
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,420
who was visibly very unhealthy,
kept on humiliating himself.

269
00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:23,180
For the ordinary Russian,

270
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:24,976
who thinks of himself as a citizen
of a proud country,

271
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:26,180
this was just intolerable.

272
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,380
A lot of the people
who were around Yeltsin at the time

273
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,100
were looking for someone
who could take a grip.

274
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:26,620
Russia had spent ten years
sliding into anarchy

275
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,500
with hyperinflation,

276
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:31,740
trying to cope with the loss
of all the Soviet republics.

277
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:33,980
It had defaulted on its debts.

278
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,180
It had, sort of, lost its way.

279
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:39,220
And society seemed to be
out of control.

280
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:25,740
Putin moved to Moscow
from St Petersburg in 1996...

281
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:34,500
..as a...
..low-mid-level bureaucrat,

282
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:39,420
whom they found a position
inside the Kremlin apparatus.

283
00:25:41,360 --> 00:25:43,060
Very quickly he starts growing.

284
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,140
In a year, year and something,

285
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,540
he becomes the head of Russian FSB,

286
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:58,780
the Russian special forces.

287
00:26:21,360 --> 00:26:23,300
This is an incredible career.

288
00:26:23,360 --> 00:26:27,620
When Putin was installed
as director of the FSB in 1998...

289
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:32,180
..corruption had become
so pervasive,

290
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,820
FSB assets were just simply
there for hire

291
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,460
for any gangster or businessman
who wanted to use them.

292
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:41,940
When Putin came in,

293
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,700
everybody expected that he would
start cleaning the stables...

294
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:50,060
..ridding the FSB of corruption.

295
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:03,780
So, that's how it all started.

296
00:27:06,360 --> 00:27:08,820
I've never met Putin in my life,

297
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:12,820
but he's the subject of my obsession
in a way,

298
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:17,620
since he ordered the killing
of my friend Litvinenko.

299
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:27,820
Sascha Litvinenko's conflict
with Putin was not political.

300
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,060
It was a conflict of...

301
00:27:31,120 --> 00:27:36,140
..an honest cop with
corrupt superiors, essentially.

302
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:57,940
They met,

303
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,620
and Sascha Litvinenko
started explaining to Putin

304
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,380
that this one should be removed
and that one should be removed

305
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,420
and that is a crook and so on,
and Putin listened to him.

306
00:28:09,360 --> 00:28:12,500
Then ordered him out of the FSB,

307
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:14,820
because he was making
too much trouble.

308
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:20,140
That's how Sascha Litvinenko's
conflict with Putin started.

309
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:04,460
The stakes were very high.

310
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:05,820
Yeltsin could be prosecuted.

311
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:14,900
The danger comes in the figure
of the prosecutor general,

312
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:15,960
Skuratov.

313
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,540
Skuratov already started
investigation

314
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,220
in Yeltsin's financial dealings,

315
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:27,540
with huge political support of
Russian parliament behind him.

316
00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:36,220
Behind Yeltsin is Putin
as the head of FSB

317
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:43,540
and... and... and... and...
and a willingness to... to fight.

318
00:29:47,840 --> 00:29:49,860
So, what they do?

319
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:55,420
They expose this prosecutor general
on television.

320
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:12,740
They have this footage of him
having sex with some ladies

321
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:14,900
in some apartment in Moscow,

322
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:18,140
and they air this footage
on television.

323
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,180
After that...

324
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,260
..Prosecutor General Skuratov
was dismissed.

325
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:37,980
It was the first time,
probably, when

326
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:39,620
we saw that you can achieve...

327
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:42,860
..a very important political outcome

328
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,820
through some kind of
special operation

329
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:50,140
by exposing your opponent
with kompromat.

330
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:53,420
Yeltsin won this fight.

331
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:59,020
And of course we know
Vladimir Putin played huge role

332
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:00,860
in this special operation.

333
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:39,300
When Yeltsin appointed Putin as
active prime minister in August '99,

334
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,700
he immediately said,
"This is my successor.

335
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:44,860
"He will be Russia's president."

336
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:47,060
And that was impossible to believe.

337
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,180
That was just simply impossible
to... to sort of grasp,

338
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:54,340
because we just didn't know
his face.

339
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:58,500
Even those who supported Yeltsin
were thinking that,

340
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:00,620
"Hey, this is crazy.
He can't make it.

341
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:02,500
"You can't make a president
in a few months,

342
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:04,620
"just like a click of your hand.

343
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:06,060
"It's just impossible."

344
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,300
He would definitely lose,

345
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,940
and everything that had been
achieved by then

346
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:14,140
would be destroyed.

347
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,380
I have to admit, I don't remember
my first feeling of,

348
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:56,740
"What is Putin, who is Putin?"

349
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,580
You remember this famous question,
"Who is Mr Putin?"

350
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:01,820
We didn't know who he was.

351
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:06,740
But what definitely changed
everything was...

352
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:08,260
..the war.

353
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:43,300
Rescue workers are searching

354
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:45,180
through the remains of
a block of flats

355
00:34:45,240 --> 00:34:48,060
destroyed by a huge bomb blast
early today.

356
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,940
There were reports that

357
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,940
an apartment building in Moscow
had been blown up.

358
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:00,500
About 100 people were killed
and many, many more were injured.

359
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,780
Then several days later,

360
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,820
another apartment building
was blown up in Moscow.

361
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:12,300
This is number six
Kashirskoye Avenue,

362
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:13,780
or what's left of it,

363
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,220
home until today to 120 people.

364
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,700
The eight-storey building
collapsed in on itself,

365
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:22,940
pulverising all who lived inside.

366
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,220
It was clear that what
we were dealing with was

367
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:30,460
a series of terrorist acts.

368
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,300
This is when fear came to Moscow.

369
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:43,740
This was something very new
feeling in the air.

370
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:27,500
The authorities said that this was
the work of Chechen terrorists.

371
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:29,140
No proof.

372
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:33,020
But the aggressivity
of the population was such

373
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:36,260
after so many years of hardship
under Yeltsin...

374
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:41,500
..and the anger against the Chechens
was so great

375
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:43,540
after an unsuccessful war

376
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,460
that was fought in the middle
of the 1990s,

377
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:50,260
in which Russia suffered
serious defeats,

378
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:53,860
that no-one waited for evidence.

379
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,740
Ryazan is a city south-east
of Moscow, about 100 miles.

380
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:17,800
One night, a resident of a building
saw a car pull up to the building,

381
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:20,220
and he witnessed people going down

382
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:24,980
and taking sacks of some mysterious
substance into the basement.

383
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,740
He called the police, they came,
they went down into the basement

384
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,340
and they bolted back up
the stairs and they said,

385
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:32,720
"There's a bomb in the basement."

386
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:42,020
Shortly afterwards, those who were
responsible for placing the bomb

387
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:43,380
were arrested.

388
00:37:46,240 --> 00:37:49,780
But they produced
FSB identification.

389
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,820
And an order came from Moscow
saying to release them.

390
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:06,780
Short time later,
the head of the FSB

391
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:10,020
got on national television
and said that

392
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:14,340
the events in Ryazan were not
an attempted terrorist attack.

393
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,180
For two days,
they had been saying that

394
00:38:16,240 --> 00:38:18,220
this was an attempted
terrorist attack

395
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:22,060
and the vigilance of the citizens
of Ryazan had prevented it.

396
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:26,500
Now, with the FSB agents arrested,
caught red-handed,

397
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,260
they changed their story
and said that

398
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:31,340
this was a training exercise.

399
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:35,060
What was taking place
was a test of vigilance.

400
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,300
Well, I personally have no doubt

401
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:42,620
that is could not have been
a training exercise.

402
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,860
It could not have been
a test of vigilance.

403
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,340
I consider it
as a conspiracy theory.

404
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:52,700
I can't take it.

405
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:53,820
I can't believe...

406
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,620
..that Russia's government
or special forces

407
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:01,660
were able to orchestrate
a terrorist...

408
00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:03,180
..terrorist attacks like that.

409
00:39:03,240 --> 00:39:07,700
If you talk about forensic evidence,
it's an open question.

410
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:09,420
Who blew up the houses?

411
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:13,100
But there is lots of
circumstantial evidence

412
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:17,460
pointing at some group in FSB,

413
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:21,860
engaged again of Chechens
to blow up these houses

414
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:25,020
to provoke the invasion of Chechnya.

415
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:37,100
And two weeks after the explosions,
after these bombings,

416
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,580
the assault on Chechnya started.

417
00:39:41,720 --> 00:39:44,940
That's when the real war started.

418
00:39:56,720 --> 00:40:00,900
There was a demand to restore
Russia's pride...

419
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,060
..some self-esteem...

420
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:09,700
..and to win the war.

421
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:14,340
That was the primary demand,
not people's lives.

422
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,460
He used criminal slang.

423
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,940
He used the word 'mochit',
which in Russian is...

424
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:38,280
It's what Russian gangsters use.

425
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,620
It means 'turn into liquid',
'liquidate',

426
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:44,540
but it's..it's a very crude word.

427
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,780
Putin's popularity rating soared,

428
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,460
and he immediately became
the saviour of the country.

429
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:23,100
Suddenly, he was the defender
of the homeland.

430
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:45,100
Kind of curtain of silence
fell over Russia

431
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:48,020
on the issue of
the apartment bombings.

432
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,060
The phrase "The less you know,
the better you sleep",

433
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:05,020
in Russian, if you'd like it...

434
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,940
It means,
"better not to know too much".

435
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:09,980
It's dangerous to know too much.

436
00:45:55,920 --> 00:46:01,420
Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk)
www.opensubtitles.org