The XX Trest Corporation created by Putin together with the legislative assembly deputies Nikeshin and Goldman transferred the money it received for construction, including the construction of the Peter the Great business-center to Spain where a hotel was bought in the city of Torviejo. Part of the stolen money went to buy a villa for the Putins in the Spanish city of Benidor (the materials are kept by Saint Petersburg’s Control Department of the Finance ministry). …”
I have cited the “informative-analytical note” with small abridgements. And I started to ponder. Whatever the accusations are all true (and now it is impossible to investigate these accusations because Putin is the first person of the State) one has to acknowledge that Putin was occupying a lucrative post. A post, on which he could have done all of this. Moreover, during these years from 1991 to 1996 all of this was not considered a crime. Many functionaries, if not all, enriched themselves and used their official post shamelessly. And it was customary in these days to employ criminal methods. You will agree with me that after what you have read you think that Putin did not have the moral right to try Khodorkovsky.
What was I doing during these years? I worked as a military journalist in hot spots: in 1991-93 I was on three Serbia wars, in Transdniestr and Abkhazia. I shared the sorrow and the joy of peoples who defended their independence with arms: the Serbs, the Moldavians, the Russians, and the Abkhaz. In October 1993 I fell under the Ostankino fire on the side of the Supreme Council, I was in the White House. I founded the National-Bolshevik Party. I founded the Limonka newspaper. I remember that until March 1995 I was renting an apartment without telephone. I had no money at all. I earned the reputation of a red-brown. Editors in France and in Russia refused to publish my books because I was politically incorrect. The NBP ideology was developing; the Party was growing slowly but steadily.
YOU CAN’T SPOIL PORRIDGE WITH BUTTER
(PUTIN THE POLITICIAN)
Was Putin doing politics during these years? According to some in the fall of 1994 he was supervising the pre-elections to Saint Petersburg’s legislative assembly. Since about half of the seats in the assembly went to businessmen loyal to the city hall as well as center and moderately democratic politicians, his supervision, if there was any, can be considered more or less successful.
In the beginning of 1995 Putin obtained the removal of the candidacy of the rear admiral Vyacheslav Sherbakov to the legislative assembly’s speaker post, unacceptable for Sobchak. The more neutral Yuri Kravtzov was elected as a speaker in a same bunch with the speaker deputies and independent deputies Sergey Mironov (now head of the RF Federal Assembly) and Viktor Novoselov (later killed).
In April 1995 Viktor Chernomirdin charged Sobchak creating a regional department of the movement Our House – Russia in Saint Petersburg. After all the party in power was preparing for the elections and it was clear that the people will not vote for Gaidar who has robbed them and his party. A fictive party was hastily created right for the elections. Sobchak in his turn charged Putin with the creation of the regional fictive organization of a fictive party. In the beginning of May Putin headed the organizational committee of Saint Petersburg’s department of the Our House – Russia party and was elected as the council’s chairman on its constitutive conference. In Moscow on May 12th 1995 on the OHR constitutive congress Putin was elected as one of the 126 members of the OHR Assembly.
In summer and fall 1995 Putin was leading the OHR campaign for the State Duma elections. He showed the qualities of a perfect finance manager in such a way that he managed to raise almost 1 billion 100 million rubles (non-dominated) provided by Saint Petersburg’s banks while only 15 million rubles were transferred to Saint Petersburg from the OHR central quarters. It is revealing that if the OHR election campaign was financially overflowed with the money provided by Putin, the political result was a failure. The OHR candidate, the only one for some reason put in one of Saint Petersburg’s first-past-the-post districts, has lost the elections, while in the proportional system OHR occupied the third place in the city after Yabloko and Russia’s Democratic Choice, receiving two seats. Who got one of them you think? Sobchak’s wife Lyudmila Narusova.
The posters with the picture of Viktor Chernomirdin plastered on almost every lamppost in the city were an example of the lack of political judgment from the organizers of the OHR campaign. When he was asked “Why?” Putin has then answered: “You can’t spoil porridge with butter”. And we too, the Russian people have thought: “Why should they go to waste?” The nonsense with Chernomirdin’s portraits (I explain for the slow ones) is that Chernomirdin was not running in Saint Petersburg.
However, in cases where Putin was convincing and acting behind the scene he was able to achieve something. It is considered that Putin managed to obtain the passing of the 1996 budget in the legislative assembly. In exchange for the ratification of the budget the deputies received the right to the so-called deputies’ “reserve funds”. (We, Russian people, call this deputies’ bribing). Putin also assisted the formation of the Mariinskaya fraction in the legislative assembly headed by the first vice-speaker Sergey Mironov; the fraction supported the city hall’s policies.
In January 1996 Putin joined the manufacturers’ and businessmen’s club Club-2004 created to support Saint Petersburg’s candidacy for the 2004 Olympic games. It remains a mystery whether he considered himself a manufacturer or a businessman. And in March 1996 he joined the staff of Saint Petersburg’s regional department of the All-Russian movement of social support of the president, where were reunited organizations in favor of B. Yeltsin’s reelection as the RF president.
It is striking but despite the failure on the State Duma elections, in April-May 1996 Putin was appointed by Sobchak (together with Alexey Kudrin) to lead Sobchak’s campaign for the elections of Saint Petersburg’s governor. Why did Sobchak decided to appoint him, who has failed the Duma elections? Most probably the answer should be looked for in the events of March 1996. In March 13th 1996 Putin arrived to the legislative assembly with a decree from president Yeltsin allowing reporting the elections and then managed to practically force the deputies to adopt a resolution about reporting the elections from June 16th to May 19th 1996. The shortening of the pre-electoral campaign duration was advantageous for Sobchak because his opponents were not so publicized as he was.
As it is known Sobchak lost the May 19th elections. It was the fault of Putin, his campaign manager, but Sobchak’s as well. During the campaign Putin came up with and realized a not so bright idea about making a public (in the presence of the press) loyalty oath to Sobchak by the top-management of Saint Petersburg’s administration. During the campaign Petrosovet’s chairman Alexandr Belyaev, Sobchak’s opponent in the elections accused Putin of management violations and also of having real estate on France Atlantic coast. In response Putin sued him for moral damage and asked a compensation of 200 million non-dominated rubles. However since the suit was not addressed to Belyaev’s residence, no action was taken. One of the newspapers has then published an article entitled “A spy must know where his respondent lives”. The press was affirming that Putin “despite his service in the foreign intelligence service” claimed, “He doesn’t know where France’s Atlantic coast is”.
After Sobchak’s defeat Putin resigned from all of his posts in the Saint Petersburg’s administration. Putin’s last service to his boss, the ex-mayor, was the organization of his escape. On Sobchak’s demand, in the midst of the “apartment scandal” (Sobchak was accused of corruption, in particular of appropriating a luxurious apartment) he was moved by the RUBOP first to the Military-medical academy where Yuri Shevchenko (under president Putin he later became the health ministry in Kasyanov’s government) diagnosed Sobchak with heart failure, because of which he needs to be hospitalized and cannot be interrogated by the investigators for some time. And a day later Shakhanov and Milin, already known by their search at Shutov’s house in 1991, and also the head of Saint Petersburg’s FSB department Alexandr Grigorie
v supposedly have executed an operation consisting of bringing Sobchak out to France. It should be reminded that Sobchak returned in Russia right after Putin became the prime minister. And shortly and conveniently died in Kaliningrad in February 2000, as if not to hamper his deputy from following his glorious path to the top. Doubtlessly Sobchak knew as much about Putin as Putin knew and knows about Sobchak.
A SOLID MANAGER
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin did not remain unemployed for long. On May 19th Sobchak lost the elections and already in June 1996 we find Vladimir Vladimirovich in Moscow as the deputy of the RF president’s business-manager Pavel Borodin. Who organized him this high appointment? Observers of V. V. P. ’s life differ in their opinions. We will name the principal versions. 1). Pavel Pavlovich Borodin himself assisted Putin in his promotion. Putin met him during Yeltsin’s visits in Saint Petersburg. Later in Moscow Pavel Pavlovich presented Putin to Valentin Yamashev and then to Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dochenko. Borodin’s version is supported by the fact that when Borodin found himself in an American prison, the president allowed to pay over a million dollars in order to bail him out. 2). According to other information, it was Anatoly Chubais, also a Sobchak’s nestling who recommended Putin on that post (by that time he was already the first vice primer-minister). Supposedly Chubais was aiming to collect compromising materials on Borodin with Putin’s help. 3). A role was played by the recommendations of another Sobchak’s nestling Alexey Kudrin, he was taken to Moscow a bit earlier on the post of head of the Central Department of Control. 4). Alexey Bolshakov, former first deputy chairman of Lengorispolkom, who became a vice prime minister in V. Chernomirdin’s government, contributed to Putin’s appointment. 5). And finally, the most unpleasing version linked to the name of the new governor Yakovlev, Sobchak’s rival. Supposedly he organized a lucrative post in the Kremlin to Putin in exchange of his betrayal of Sobchak during the electoral campaign in Saint Petersburg.
Whatever it was, in June 1996 Putin first appeared in the Kremlin. Putin’s work with Borodin consisted of what he was always used to do – business management of Russian real estate abroad. From 1995 this property – in total 715 objects totaling an area of 550 thousand square meters – was claimed by the Ministry of foreign affairs, the Ministry of the Navy and others. Only the profits from renting a part of this property amounted to about $10 million (Argumenty i Fakty, 2000 issue 3). The businessman Philip Turover, witness on the “Berezovsky case” and the Swiss “Borodin case” accused Putin of being involved in financial machinations when he was occupying the post of deputy manager of the RF president. Novaya Gazeta issue 49 (27. 12. 1998 – 02. 01. 1999) cited Turover’s testimonies in a Swiss court: “When he (Putin) started to work on the so-called classification of the ex-USSR’s and CPSU’s property abroad in 1997, instantly all sorts of sham firms, public organizations and joint-stock companies were created. Most of the expensive real estate and other assets abroad were registered under these structures. This way, the State received its property from abroad in a quite plucked state. ”
On March 26th 1997 Putin received a new appointment – he was appointed deputy of the RF president’s head of administration – the head of the president’ Central Department of Control. He replaced Alexey Kudrin on this post. According to Putin it was Alexey Kudrin himself who recommended him for this post. As for Kudrin, he became the deputy minister of finance. Under Putin the Central Department of Control led the verification of Rosvooruzhenie, the State armament company, which finally led to the resignation of its general director Evgeny Ananyev. The Central Department of Control also discovered abuses during the import of Russian armament to Armenia. It also discovered a lack of financing of the RF Armed Forces. The CDC wrote a secret paper about arms trade with Armenia, which Putin sent to the Defense minister Igor Rodionov. However the secrete paper suddenly found itself in the hands of the chairman of the State Duma Committee on defense – Lev Rokhlin and then in the hands of the journalists, which led to a scandal. When in June 1998 Lev Rokhlin was killed under circumstances that have not been clarified to this day, some journalists were linking Rokhlin’s death with the scandal around Putin’s paper. Still as usual no evidence was found.
On May 25th 1998 Putin became the first deputy of the RF president’s head of administration responsible for the work with the regions, while remaining also the head of the Administration Control Department. Among his other functions on this post Putin participated in fixing a distribution system for transfers to the regions: on June 15th 1998 he headed the commission that prepared the agreements about the divisions of power between the federal bodies and the regions. Putin replaced Sergey Shakhray on this post.
It is clear that switching posts so quickly it is doubtful that Putin had much success on either of them. But it is doubtless that he constantly broadened his relations with the State’s high functionaries. On June 25th 1998 Putin was appointed director of Russia’s Federal Security Service.
What was happening with me all these years, from June 1996 to July 1998? On September 18th 1996 I was attacked near the NBP headquarters situated at 7, 2nd Frunzenskaya Street. This happened around 7:30 PM. I was hit from behind, I fell and I was kicked in the head. As a result I got injuries of both eyes’ balls (I have problems with them up to today), many fractures of the nose and the face bones and a serious brain concussion. I spent April and May in Central Asia heading a group of National-Bolsheviks who went to assist a congress of Kazaks in the city of Kokchetav in Kazakhstan. We were arrested there, and then we ran through the entire Asia in Tajikistan. We spent some time there in the lines of the 201st division. On June 14th 1997 our headquarters on 2nd Frunzenskaya were blown up. The charge of explosives was equal to 250 grams of TNT. Fortunately nobody was injured; there were only major property damage. In June, August and September 1997 I was in the Stavropol region in the city of Georgievsk and I was running in Georgievsk’s electoral district on the State Duma pre-elections. I lost the elections; however the experience I got from there was unforgettable and useful. A part of the region’s territory, in particular the Kursky district with the Galyugaevskaya stanitsa are situated on the border with the Chechen republic. Also my district comprised the ill-famed Budenosvk where, by the way, I took the third place in the numbers of vote. In April 1998 the NBP split, Alexandr Dugin left us; with E. Letov and me he was the Party’s founder. In 1998 the first swift growth of the National Bolshevik Party took place; it appears that the seeds sawed by the Limonka newspaper from 1994 sprouted four years later.
LUBYANKA’S BOSS
Putin’s appointment at the head of the FSB took place on June 25th 1998. Finally he got a job in his specialization. After eight years of being on management posts. Well actually, as I already noted, a good number of people who have explored his life think that even in the KGB in 1975-1990, especially in the last five years in the GDR, Putin was mostly doing management work.
Putin’s arrival coincided with the downsizing of the FSB central staff. From six thousand to four thousand. It does not mean that the Lubyanka was emptied. New structures were created under Putin: the Department on the work with the regions (apparently Putin grew to like this thing after working with the regions in the president’s administration), the Department on the defense of the constitutional order (that was the department that started to spy on political parties and repress the activists of political organizations) and the Department on computer security. Putin also started to transfer his former colleagues from Saint Petersburg to leading posts in the FSB.
It should be said that since Putin had close ties with the worst enemy of the Russian special services Anatoly Sobchak (he is accused of slandering the KGB and the army in the period when he was the chairman of the Commission investigating the Tbilissi events), the corporation of special services agents received Putin with displeasure. And since the downsizing of the FSB staff was executed rather wildly – everybody who had the right to a pension because of their seniority was fired – it turned
out that the most experienced specialists were fired. In the first place, those who had a real work experience in combat situations, since there the seniority was calculated two years for one. This did not add popularity to Putin among the agents. And of course, the agents’ corporation, like any other corporation would have preferred someone from their ranks, a worthy person, standing high in the FSB hierarchy. In their opinion they were disgraced with a parvenu, a lieutenant colonel.
Simultaneously with the staff downsizing Putin managed to enlarge the staff of the FSB Board up to seventeen people. Putin did not forget the Petersburger general-lieutenant Alexandr Grigoriev, formerly the first deputy of the FSB head in Saint Petersburg. He appointed him on the post of director of the FSB Department of economic security. It was Grigoriev who helped bring Sobchak in France. One good turn deserves another.
As for the former head of the FSB department in Saint Petersburg, the general lieutenant Viktor Cherkesov, he was appointed the first deputy of the FSB director Putin. (Later he became the RF president’s plenipotentiary in the Northwest federal district and a bit later – the head of the State Drugs Control.)
The general-major Sergey Ivanov was appointed the head of the FSB Department of analysis, prognosis and strategic planning; he was transferred from the foreign intelligence Service. Ivanov is an old friend of Putin’s still from Leningrad’s University. (Later Ivanov became (at the end of November 1999) the head of the RF Security Council, then minister of defense. Experts see him as Putin’s potential successor in 2008.)
Limonov vs. Putin Page 4
