Inside Putin’s dark rise to power | Full documentary

It's a story of Russia and how Russia has changed for all this period of time Vladimir Putin saw himself very much in the kind of romantic tradition of Soviet spycraft Putin thinks he's a brilliant spy he decided that he was going to do everything he could to crush any sort of opposition in Russia there is a government operated death squat inside the security services this guy had that feel about him that he was a Criminal what threatens him is the idea of sovereignty the idea of freedom and the idea of democracy for Ukraine it's this

secret mentality that everything has to be sort of behind closed doors Anga was terrified of dogs she had a phobia of dogs Putin knew that he wants to prove that he's the toughest guy in the room Vladimir Putin has recently warned Western countries that he's prepared to Use nuclear weapons in his war with Ukraine did Putin always have such views consider these thoughts expressed long ago in this first ever on camera interview we found deep in the Russian archives the belief that all russian-speaking people should be United as they were in the old Russian Empire

he blames the founders of the USSR for creating territories like Ukraine that became Countries the Soviet leaders broke broke our Fatherland into separate territories which had never appeared on any world maps provided those territories with governments and parliaments now we have what we have Putin's rise to supreme power in Moscow and his attempt to rebuild the old Russian Empire would lead to his shelling of the Russians speaking areas of Ukraine killing thousands of the former Soviet countrymen he professed to Care for this is the story of his dark Journey on many occasions Vladimir Putin has

performed his favorite judo moves before TV cameras at age 24 he had been the Judo champion of his hometown of Leningrad now St Petersburg he has also spoken of Judo as the thing that turned his life around when he was introduced to it as a young boy I did not start school until I was Almost 8 years old we still have the photo in our family archive I am in an old-fashioned gray school uniform Putin grew up in poverty his father was a factory worker the family was assigned an apartment in a five-story building with

no [Music] elevator we lived in one room in a communal flat on the fifth floor the last floor sometimes the ceiling leaked these Were our living conditions we didn't even have a shower there were hordes of rats in the front entryway my friends and I used to chase them around with sticks once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me I got a lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered now a journalist Constantine Edgard grew

up in similar circumstances To Putin in the same era I immediately recognized the type that would have been the boy with whom my mother would not have recommended that they play in the yard uh the one who would you know uh torture cats and hit uh the young children I really was a bad boy I was a hooligan I got into sports when I was about 10 or 11 I decided to go into boxing but I didn't last long there I quick got my nose broken the pain was terrible I decided to go for [

__ ] a Soviet combination of Judo and wrestling it was sports that dragged me off the streets I think that Putin wanted to be the bully uh that will be yes eventually one of the biggest at least in his crowd put says that another big turning point in his life came when as a teenager he saw the Soviet TV film series The Sword and the shield a heroic portrayal of Soviet spies working Behind Enemy Lines in Nazi Germany even before I graduated from school I wanted to work in intelligence then books and spy movies like

The Sword and the shield took hold of my imagination what amazed me most was how one man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not one spy could decide the fate of thousands at least that's the way I understood it Putin set his sights on becoming an Officer of the KGB the Soviet Secret Police Service that was the most powerful branch of the communist government Australian journalist Zo shf talovich was born in the Soviet Union I think it was quite a startling thing that someone might say that they wanted to join the KGB it was

a an organization that was feared and reviled by many it would pit neighbor against neighbor it would set children against their parents so it was quite astounding that that was Something that he wanted but it gave a pretty good indication of the direction of travel for Putin from seemingly a very young age in order to find out how to become a spy sometime around the beginning of the 9th grade I went to the KGB office a guy came out and listened to me I said I want to get a job with you he said that's

terrific but you can come to us only after the army or after some type of Civilian higher education I was Intrigued what kind of higher education I asked law school who eventually made it to the Leningrad University Law Department and sure enough as he was about to graduate the KGB came knocking he was thrilled shortly after completing his agent training he met lud Milla an airline flight attendant and he eventually proposed they were married in 1983 quickly had their first daughter and he received his first foreign posting to Dresden East Germany they lived around the

corner from the cage GB offices there he was regularly in and out of the headquarters of the stazi the dreaded East German secret police this was his East German police ID card later found in the stazzy archives the stazzy headquarters in Dresden has been turned into a museum where you can see the old Patty wagons that transported hundreds of dissidents That were arrested every month the four floors of cells where they were detained the rooms where they were interrogated and the dungeons where many were tortured or murdered preserved here too are the photos of the

young Soviet agent Vladimir Putin who served here for 5 years he was awarded a medal from the stazzy for his service Hubertus canab is Germany's Leading historian of the stazi he says Putin fit the profile of someone who wanted to work for the secret police you have a secret organization who are like little Gods if you want uh to put it like that so they could decide if somebody who walked on the street came to prison or not Putin worked at this KGB Dresden Outpost at number four Angelica stasa there are photos of him posing

behind his superiors here and many photos of His daily life in Dresden you see Vladimir Putin as a young man trying to serve his higher ranking comrades and uh you can see in his face that he was not like a leading figure more like a serving figure I would say that Putin was not very important Luke Harding served as the Moscow bureau chief for the Guardian newspaper I think Vladimir Putin saw Himself very much in the kind of romantic tradition of of Soviet spycraft as someone who could who could join this world and thrive in

this world the the problem was I mean he did manage to to get inside but within a decade he was not running around New York or or or Washington or Paris or London having the sort of Adventures you might imagine from Soviet films he was stuck in Dresden in communist East Germany Shuffling Bits of Paper in November 1989 the Soviet Empire began to crumble as the Berlin Wall came down it was the climax of a period of mass uprisings against Communist governments throughout Eastern [Applause] Europe Delirious protesters began taking down the wall with their bare

hands at first the East German police tried to scare the away with water cannons and fire hoses but it was no use The police were soon overwhelmed within weeks the crowds had surrounded then Burst Into The Dresden stazy headquarters they wanted to stop the destruction of Records the evidence of those who secretly spied on and betrayed their fellow citizens some moved on to the nearby local KGB Outpost where they encountered Vladimir Putin at the entrance in this first crisis of his Career Putin showed that he was willing to shoot human beings to protect some documents

we had to show we were prepared I even had to tell our security team to show their weapons unfortunately which wasn't great in my view I had an appropriate weapon of course I was an officer we were prepared to defend ourselves against the crowd and we would have been within our rights to do so we had documents in our building our lists of Contacts and our agents networks I personally burned a huge amount of material those crowds were a serious threat I called our group of forces and I was told we cannot do anything without

orders from Moscow and Moscow is silent I got the feeling that the country no longer existed that it had disappeared 2 years later the Soviet Union would disappear which Putin would describe as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Century while Putin would see the fall of the Berlin wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union as a catastrophe it would actually prove beneficial for his career he would return to Leningrad where he would use his KGB methods to advance his political [Music] [Music] ambition Vladimir Putin now lives in opulence in the golden crusted Kremlin but

says he remembers the tough times in His hometown of Leningrad after the fall of the Berlin wall when he had to Moonlight as a taxi driver sometimes I had to earn extra money I mean earn extra money as a private driver it's unpleasant to talk about to be honest but unfortunately that was the case momentous change was arriving in the Soviet Union Democratic reformers were on the March and the KGB was trying to stop Them the agency assigned Putin to penetrate the reform movement he offered to work as a driver and organizer for several leading

figures I was happy to go undercover at Leningrad State University I wanted to check out the university and perhaps get a job there Putin was hired as an assistant to the crusading liberal University Professor Anatoli soek who became the first elected mayor of St [Music] Petersburg he claims that he confessed to soak that he was a KGB agent and that soak didn't care Putin was eventually named deputy mayor in those first years of democracy St Petersburg was being overwhelmed by chaos there was open Warfare between criminal gangs fighting for Turf there were murders every day

Putin made connections with the heads of some of the criminal gangs Theoretically to mediate the turf wars there have been fairy tales about the criminal St Petersburg but things could get violent at my Cottage I would sleep with my gun such were the times better safe than sorry he was very deeply involved with the uh St petersburger underworld uh of the time of course he was prev to a lot of very very uh dirty stuff Putin was becoming a political figure And he invited a local filmmaker to start following him around to build up his

image we should there were rumors at that time that Putin was corrupt some businessmen approaching him for a license to set up new companies in the city say they were told to give a $10,000 bribe as part of their application Putin was even asked on camera about the allegations and he didn't actually deny it what for [Music] it would be impossible for a Russian official during this period to be Mr Clean it's just not how it worked if if you were Mr Clean then you would be removed uh Putin was not Mr Clean he was

Mr grubby despite the notorious corruption in St Petersburg Putin became known as an effective can do manager he was brought to Moscow to serve in the presidential administration of Boris Yelson his career took off yelson was so impressed with Putin that he appointed him to head the FSB the renamed KGB Security [Music] Agency by this time yelton was in serious decline he had had several heart attacks and was drinking to excess he often seemed lost and confused and was sometimes making a fool of himself in public most presidential decisions seem to be made by his

daughter Taana the yelton family were also the target of a major corruption investigation their secret Swiss bank accounts and massive credit card spending had leaked into the newspapers the yelton corruption investigation was being led by Russia's prosecutor General Yuri skuratov skuratov suddenly found himself the target of Vladimir Putin in a classic KGB style operation called a honey trap a drunken skuratov Was lured into a hotel room with two prostitutes and the ensuing threesome was filmed by hidden cameras skuratov was confronted with the evidence in a meeting in yel 's office attended by then prime minister

ieni primov himself a Former Intelligence Chief and Putin Mr yelson took out the videotape and photos made from it he just put them on the table and said I don't think you should work as prosecutor General any Longer primakov agreed yes Mr skuratov I think you had better write a letter of resignation Yuri thought for a while then he took out a piece of paper and wrote that he was resoled R after that meeting skuratov friends in government rallied around him and so he tried to resend his resignation until Putin delivered the cig by giving

the Honey Trap tape to a national TV channel where it was broadcast to millions of Viewers skuratov was finished that impressed I mean there's there's um nothing like um uh bringing down a a a a prosecutor in a public sex scandal to to impress the boss and and really was was almost like a kind of calling card for for for yelson and yon's team that that Putin was reliable um and he got the job done yelson was extremely appreciative of Putin's Relentless dirty campaign to defend him his family decided that Putin Was just the man

to succeed yelon as president and protect their interests as especially as they were still the target of corruption investigations in August 1999 yelson stunned the country with an announcement that the relatively unknown Putin was his new choice for prime minister he was looking for someone who was going to be unfailingly loyal and that was Putin Putin demonstrated through the sarav affair and then Subsequently as well through the promise that he made to yelon that he would deliver immunity for him he essentially gave yelson a way out which was not necessarily going to occur if yelson

had appointed someone else facing an election in a few months as a complete unknown Putin needed to build a wave of popular support fast and so he turned to tried and true methods patriotic propaganda and War in Moscow the reminders of Putin's war in Ukraine have been everywhere on recruitment Billboards at many subway stops even in Christmas decorations many believe that Putin declared this war to keep himself in power much as he went went to war in 1999 to increase his popularity heading into his first presidential election his Target was the southern Russian Republic of

CIA where the yelton regime had been struggling for years to Deal with a rebel Insurgency suddenly the new prime minister was on TV every night posing as a fighter pilot personally handling weapons and declaring that he would crush the cin Insurgency it a month after he became prime minister the stakes got much higher in September 1999 a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities Killing more than 300 injuring more than 1,000 there was this real fear this feeling that you never know what's going to happen you don't know if your

building is going to be next a tragic loss of life but something didn't seem right or [Music] real at the leading Russian TV network famous Anchor Man evi kiselov was suspicious when I learned about the second explosion it came to my mind Immediately that this is a conspiracy to disseminate fear and by manipulating people's fear they are going to build a whole political uh campaign on it that's what happened Putin immediately blamed the chesan Rebels for the terrorism he vowed [Music] Revenge then residents of another apartment complex saw suspicious men in the basement of their

building at first local police said they found explosives And had foiled a terrorist Mission then the FSB made a stunning announcement it admitted the suspicious team were actually FSB agents and claimed they were on a training Mission contradicting police evidence it was claimed the explosives were actually bags of sugar many Russians saw it as evidence that the secret police had been behind all the explosions a false flag operation to build support for Putin's war Effort what blowing up our own apartment buildings you know that is really utter nonsense it's totally insane no one in the

Russian special services would be capable of such a crime against his own people I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming this was an inside operation uh organized clandestinely by the fs B and it worked brilliantly because the apartment bloomings um Consolidated um support for Putin they they um increased hatred towards the Jens and it meant that when when when Putin launched this sort of Special Operation against Chan Rebels there was almost kind of universal support from ordinary Russians so it was kind of foundational act yeah on New Year's Eve 1999 in his annual holiday TV

address Boris yelton dropped another surprise bombshell he announced that he would be leaving his job immediately and that Vladimir Putin would be taking over as acting President soon after yelton named Putin as acting president an article appeared in a Moscow newspaper predicting Putin would become a dictator like Joseph [Music] Stalin remarkably it was written by the great granddaughter of another famous Soviet leader Nikita kushev one of the kushev legacies is that we're going to tone down the KGB and Elevate the party because at least the party is not going to kill You my mother for

example was very um upset about yelson about the chaos and Corruption and crazy capitalism and drinking and how embarrassing it is and she was saying this cannot be worse than yelson and I said trust me we are going to be [Music] missing Putin called in a new team of Image Makers to help him prepare for the presidential election scheduled just three months Away he also invited documentary fil filmmaker Vitali mansky to follow him through the critical months ahead mansky was apparently granted Total Access to Putin accompanying him through late nights at the office training his

dog in the Kremlin Courtyard on midnight motorcades through the streets of the capital and even to his daily swim sessions [Music] Mikel casanov was a crusading liberal economic reformer who had served in the yelton government Putin chose casanov to be his first prime minister we all believe that Putin is a young energetic person and could continue reforms Mr yelon President yelon believed to him and many of us also believed I also was among those who believed that Putin was democratically devoted person election night March 2000 behind the scenes Putin gathered with his Campaign team led

by the young Dimitri medv his campaign manager also there was yelton's daughter taana and her future husband whom he kept on in his administration he won on the first ballot at that moment everything seemed possible for the new leader many believed he would change Russia for the better American businessman Bill Browder ran the biggest investment Fund in Russia when part of his campaign was That he was going to bring the power of the government back um to the presidency is seemed like an attractive thing to me because the oligarchs were there's 22 oligarchs who had

stolen 40% of the country from the Russian people and every everyone was living in abject poverty other than these 22 oligarchs and Putin was going to at least in his pitch he was going to correct that imbalance by the time of Putin's first inauguration as president in May 2000 His Devotion to establishing a personality cult was in full flower it was a ceremony such as Russians had never before witnessed focusing on him as an almost Godlike figure but his presidency nearly foundered during his first months in [Music] power some indelible images of Putin's 25 years

in power come from his vacations swimming in Russia's Rivers fishing Hunting or just taking in the sun with his closest friends and ministers in the first summer after his inauguration Putin went off on a long family holiday but his presidency was nearly torpedoed before it began in August 2000 the Russian nuclear submarine K lost contact with headquarters it appeared as if it had gone to the bottom of the barren sea with 118 Sailors on board when the news broke Putin decided He didn't have to interrupt his vacation to deal with the crisis several other countries

offered to help rescue the Russian Sailors marooned on the ocean floor but the offers were rejected multiple Russian rescue attempts over 4 days failed the 118 Sailors perished [Music] the victim's families were in a rage by the time Putin decided to finally end his vacation 10 days later and come to Speak with them in fact it was not the truth foreign countries said they could have rescued the sailors when Putin was confronted by Angry Angry relatives he didn't think these are angry relatives who are upset because their loved ones are dying or dead he assumed

of course this must be a provocation by his enemies because that's the sort of paranoid way his brain [Music] Works in a remarkable scene on national TV a mystery woman with a hypmic needle approaches a distraught mother raging about the death of her Submariner son the mother is injected and eventually Falls unconscious it was a strong message that dissent would not be tolerated after the scene was broadcast Putin phoned into to the TV network to say the complaining women were acting the anchor man said he called them $10 [ __ ] special edition of Larry

King live it's are honor to have as our special guest for the full hour here in New York Vladimir Putin the submarine Scandal followed Putin on his first official visit to the United States where he appeared as a guest on the CNN show Larry King live tell me what happened with the submarine it sunk put in displayed such a stunning degree of cynicism and insensitivity That even Larry King was lost of speech what it showed was his complete almost sociopathic lack of empathy lack of empathy that that for him human life is nothing uh that

that humans are are people that if need be can be tossed away another incident early in Putin's regime showed how touchy he was about any criticism [Music] my kley was the name of a very popular Russian TV show in which devastating Political satire was enacted with puppets Vladimir Putin was often portrayed on the show as yelton's ugly baby then as an annoying little child the portrayal really bothered Putin got under his skin and his advisor said he immediately threatened the owner of the NTV Network that produced the show they say that he was just kind

of running around the room cursing and hitting the walls and the table with a feist and saying I'm going to put him in In in a cell with the cellmates uh who suffers tuberculosis uh I'm going to rot him one of Putin's very first acts after being elected president was to send his Stormtroopers over to raid the NTV headquarters the head of the network was arrested and eventually forced to sign away the ownership of NTV Putin was sending a strong signal about the future of any Independent Media in Russia at one point Putin invited the

senior Journalists of NTV to the Kremlin and tried to convince them that nothing was really changing they were not buying it he immediately became very hostile and uh start started to accuse us of lacking proper understanding of government of the country's National interest why should the government uh support you if you criticize it and all kind of that that things um how how did you feel when you walked out of that Meeting like covered in [ __ ] I was I had a very bad thinging Frankly Speaking because because it was obvious that this man

uh is capable of thinking about uh Independent Media only in terms of uh manipulating it so if he cannot uh manipulate a a medium then uh this medium is his enemy Putin decided to take over all TV in Russia and build it into the overwhelming propaganda machine it is Today foreign leaders did not seem to notice or care I wouldn't have invited him to my Ranch if I didn't trust him back in 2001 the United States also had a new President George W bush he came to meet Putin at a summit in Slovenia where he

shared his instant Judgment of his Russian counterpart is this a man that Americans can trust I look the man in the I I found it to be very Straightforward and trustworthy uh we had a very good dialogue I was able to um get a sense of his soul well I think George W bush regrets having said that now because it's not not clear exactly where Putin's soul is Ambassador John Bolton served in the Bush Administration and met Putin numerous times but it was indicative of the optimism that we felt that the Cold War was over

that we could find a way to To bridge the differences and and work together against what we saw as common threats I think in retrospect we badly misjudged Putin [Music] stand it was not only the Americans who seemed to fall under the Putin spell on a visit to the United Kingdom in 2003 Putin was given the Royal Treatment touring London beside the queen in a horsedrawn [Music] carriage it was a shock to the Russian dissident journalist Vladimir karura in June of 2003 literally on the same week that Vladimir Putin's government pulled the plug on the

last independent television channel in Russia he was treated to a lavish State visit to London and arrived with the queen of of England it was clear from the very beginning and yet so many leaders of Western Democratic Countries deliberately chose to turn a blind eye on all these domestic authoritarian [Music] abuses back in Moscow in 2002 Vladimir Putin was building an elaborate corruption scheme the beneficiaries were often his old PALS like his longtime Judo partner arcati Rottenberg who was becoming obscenely rich along with Putin's St Petersburg Friends who were all on the path to becoming

billionaires the level of Kremlin corruption was offensive to Russia's richest man Mikel hovi he had built yukos a wildly successful oil company and was well connected to international business and Poli political leaders he thought that gave him some protection and so he took the faithful decision to confront Putin about corruption at a televised Roundtable Discussion in that famous meeting Putin reacted to hosk's criticism with a threat prime minister casanov was sitting beside Putin at the meeting and was alarmed by Putin's threat after this meeting I came together with Putin to his to his to his

room and said just you absolutely wrong just shouldn't do this he said no you don't know and Putin said just general prosecutor knows what to do stop all This criticism hosk's confidence was misplaced had him arrested and dragged before a court he was subjected to what could only be described as a show trial but was often seen smiling and laughing during the court proceedings there was a complete theater of the Absurd this demonstrated that the regime didn't even have an interest in pretending that these proceedings were Real Court proceedings that was their wish that was

demonstration of example for other uh big owners of properties that if you don't agree with the general line of the president that what will just your destiny will go this way businessman Bill Browder had a different view he thought Russia would be better off without the old oligarchs I was cheering I thought okay one down uh one oligarch down 21 oligarchs to go I thought it was a great thing um turned out that he was the only oligarch U he took down after the show trial hodosi was found guilty of tax crimes and sentenced to

14 years his financial Empire was dismantled and the pieces were grabbed by Putin's friends it was a very powerful signal that no one is immune from Putin's wroth and that's why we've seen very very little resistance since then To any anything that puton did so in many ways it was a master stroke it was clear that Putin's alliance with liberal reformers was at an end Mikel casanov resigned as prime minister and joined the opposition ranks Vladimir Putin would go on to become much more aggressive in dealing with perceived enemies domestic and foreign today the city

of marupa like much of eastern Ukraine lies in Ruins Laid waste by Russian bombing this is the result of Putin's long obsession with Ukraine an obsession that dates back to the Ukrainian election of 2004 this was a time of hope in the country a vibrant young candidate for president Victor yusenko was leading a pro-western movement Putin came to campaign on behalf of the pro-russian candidate Victor Yanukovich in a TV interview on every Ukrainian Channel he emphasized that he respected the independence and borders of Ukraine Adrian karnitsky worked closely with several Ukrainian presidents this whole effort

this charm offensive uh designed to bolster yanukovich presenting this guy as a real powerful respected Ally of a great power and so Putin played that role in this uh political theater the first dramatic election Development came when the pro-western candidate yusenko was poisoned with dioxin he nearly died and was left with a badly disfigured face suspicions fell on Russia then after a dubious vote count it was announced that the pro-russian candidate had won Putin quickly recognized his friend yanukovich as president but there was an immediate Uprising in the streets called the Orange Revolution the Supreme

Court threw out the rigged election result and in the revote yusenko emerged as the clear winner it was a major embarrassment for Putin when I saw the orange revolution in Ukraine was happening at around the same time as the rose revolution in Georgia and the expansion of NATO to include Estonia lvia Lithuania Slovakia Slovenia Romania and Bulgaria Putin clearly saw all this as An example of the United States working against him as he complained in a landmarked speech to the Munich security conference in 2007 former Canadian foreign minister Peter McKay was at that meeting he

was somehow the victim Russia was uh was wronged by the west and uh I was at that conference and you know I remember sort of looking around at at other people who I knew in The room and sort of saying what's this all about you know is this is this leading somewhere or is this just the aggrieved president of Russia is evidence of uh somebody who's conspiracy-minded but it's also good politics for Putin and and his like in Russia because it explains their reverses in one country after another it's not uh in that in that

explanation a rejection of Russia it's a it's a conspiracy by the US Victor yusenko was not the last Putin opponent to be poisoned my name is Alexander Lan I am for KGB and FB office Alexander fenko was a KGB agent who had actually met with Putin when he was named head of the Spy Service and had appealed to Putin to reform the organization when that did not happen laneno and other officers held a press conference accusing Putin's secret police of murdering People litvinenko was charged with crimes but acquitted and he fled to London England with

his family back home in Russia litvinenko had now become a Kind of Traitor poster boy for Vladimir Putin's secret police they used his photograph for target practice Putin himself had always been very clear about what should happen to Russian traitors [Music] in November 2006 at the Millennium Hotel In London Alexander litvinenko was invited to a business meeting with two former KGB agents who were visiting the city Dimitri kovon and Andre lugovoy there were hotel security photographs of all three at a Rendevous in the hotel bar laneno was served tea that was spiked with Radioactive ionium

210 litvinenko suffered an agonizing decline over several days he allowed this Photograph to be Taken and he issued a statement that he had no doubt that Vladimir Putin had ordered his death alexand litvinenko died after 3 weeks of Agony at the funeral his radioactive body was buried in a lead-lined coffin he left a young son Anatoli and his wife Marina it's not only my story it's a story of Russia and how Russia has changed for all this period of time and how many other people have been killed and I believe all responsibilities Is on the

Russian government and a man who responsible for all of what happened to Russia now it's a Mr Putin [Music] himself Sergey magnitsky would become another prominent victim of the Putin regime magnitsky acted as a lawyer for the businessman Bill Browder Browder was expelled from Russia in 2005 then the offices of his Russian lawyers were raided by the police documents and corporate seals Seized the in the raid were used to falsely re-register his $200 million companies magnitsky a funloving young family man documented the theft of browder's companies and publicly identified the government officials responsible he was

arrested and then murdered in prison he was killed on November 16th 2009 I got the news the next morning and it was the most horrifying traumatic life-changing news I could Have ever gotten he was effectively killed because he worked for me if Sergey hadn't been my lawyer he'd still be alive today and um when I was able to sort of uh get through the fog of Hysteria and heartbreak to think clearly I made a vow to his memory to his family into myself that I was going to put aside everything else I was doing in

my life and devote all of my time time energy and resources going after the people who killed him to Make sure they face Justice and for the last 15 years that's what I've been doing Mr Browder has traveled from overseas to be here today to testify about the Browder campaigned in the US Congress and in parliaments around the world to bring in strict new sanctions for Russian officials accused of Human Rights abuses many governments passed such laws named for Sergey magnuski those laws especially aggravate Vladimir Putin who blamed Browder by 2010 Putin had been credibly

accused of responsibility for the deaths of Alexander laneno Sergey magnitsky and thousands of civilians in the city of gry chucha found [Music] And yet when he held a charity party in Russia he was enthusiastically applauded and cheered by an audience of invited western movie stars including Goldie Han and Kurt Russell Kevin Cosner and Sharon Stone my dreams came Putin could see that Western countries had short memories and attention spans and that Western leaders weren't about to stop him [Applause] [Music] many believe that the personal relationships of world leaders have a lot to do with how

history unfolds and Vladimir Putin's 25-year interaction with foreign leaders provides a Fascinating case study of that theory he recently invited India's narenda Modi to a private dinner at his home and Modi proclaimed himself very touched by the gesture China's Xi Jinping has called Putin his best friend and at the 2024 bricks Summit Putin said that his friendships provided the basis for a new world order in the past his adversaries got a different treatment there was evidence Putin played psychological games with Foreign leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel in this 2007 meeting the Russian president brought

in his large labrador dog it's that classic KGB mindset everyone knew that Angela Merkel was terrified of dogs she had a phobia of dogs Putin knew that probably better than most he is well briefed he knows what people's buttons are and he pushes them he evidently wants to dominate all the Time he wants to prove that he's the toughest guy in the room he always has to have someone to humiliate it speaks to a dark nature a a character flaw in that man that crosses all lines in terms of diplomacy and and just human human

nature former French president franois Anand was also struck by Putin's psychological tactics in their personal meetings in 2008 Putin was prevented by constitutional term limits to run again For the presidency and so he temporarily stepped aside and allowed his longtime assistant Demitri MV to take the job Putin was appointed prime minister he takes the medv as his chair Waring person I remember my joke was at the time is that Russia is so patriarchal that even our first lady is a man so whatever medv was doing is only he's on a Long Leash or a short

leash but it's a leash the US government misread the Situation they thought Putin's power had been eclipsed and they could now deal directly with the seemingly more liberal mediative in a clumsy maneuver Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian foreign minister Sergey lavro with a button to symbolically reset relations with the us but mistranslated the word reset in Russia the Americans the Obama Administration fell into the kind of naive trap that they could build up Medvedev who by the way is a very short man and push down on Putin and that that would work as

a strategy it it was never going to work and and it was extraordinary that they even pursued it while Dimitri medv was filling in as President of Russia the Middle East went through a period of upheaval the Arab Spring in 2011 Swept Away dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt and then focused on the longtime Russian clients state of Libya as Western Powers moved to Aid the uprising against dictator muamar Gaddafi president medv decided to stand aside and not interfere Gaddafi was tracked down by Angry mobs as he tried to flee dragged out of a sewer pipe

and murdered in front of the cameras this was reportedly a very important moment for Vladimir Putin who watched the videotape of this moment over at and over he became determined That he should not share the same eventual fate I think that was a key and seminal moment for him where he decided that he was going to do everything he could to crush any sort of opposition in Russia so that there was never any danger of a popular Uprising coming for him in the same way that it had come for [Applause] Gaddafi Vladimir vladimirov Putin in

another fixed election in 2012 an Apparently emotional Putin took the Russian presidency back from Dimitri Med in his new term he clearly decided to be much more aggressive with Western countries something that became apparent in his first private meeting with then French president franois Anand Putin complained about being surrounded by NATO missiles installed in Europe for [Music] Putin would soon go on the attack in Syria where he had long supported the dictator Bashar al-assad in the Civil War there the US President Barack Obama said it would be a red line if chemical weapons were used

by Russia or their Syrian regime allies when chemical weapons were in fact imployed as all the world could see from TV images of children choking to death once again the Western World did almost nothing by 2013 Putin indeed turned his Attention back to Ukraine and tried to force the pro-russian president Victor yanukovich to cancel a proposed new treaty with Europe just like the orange Revolution the majority pro-western population rebelled and again the maidan square was filled with anti-russian protesters egg Dawn by European and American politicians people of Ukraine this is your moment yeah ovich tried

to put down the Maidan protest with police violence and bullets the demonstrators held their ground the Putin back president yanukovich fled the country on a helicopter in the dead of night Putin saw Ukraine as a part of Russia and he saw eurom maidan as essentially the first part of a potential Uprising that could eventually end in him being uh removed from power so it was unacceptable to him that yidan had swept in and that these protests had Removed his man from the job there were joyous celebrations in ke but Putin was plotting his revenge he

had decided to break up Ukraine by seizing the Crimean peninsula in the South and the majority Russians speaking areas in the east of the country he deployed to Crimea an army of Russian soldiers without any markings on their uniforms who became known as The Little Green Men when he was asked about them Putin lied and said they had Nothing to do with Russia Russian soldiers and russian-backed separatists began attacking Ukraine's Army in the Eastern Russian speaking areas of the daas Gary Kasparov was the longtime World chess champion who gave up chess to work in opposition

to Vladimir Putin's regime he was arrested numerous times he saw Putin's Crimea move as a key turning point that was the best way for Bo Putin saw it to tell the West that you know He's no longer playing by the rules so annexing territory is just it's it's it's very important element of of destroying the world order but dictators they are opportunists even Hitler was a p or Stalin they they had ideology but still opportunity this is what what made them really strong so smell it grab it attack once again the Western response to Putin's

action seemed weak Putin was still invited to the June 2014 70th Anniversary commemorations of the Normandy invasion in France he was greeted as an honored guest by French president franu aland the new pro-western Ukrainian president Petro poreno was also there Putin did agree to have a brief meeting with poroshenko away from the cameras the Ukrainian president knew what he was up against I have several recommendation those who have a plan to meet with Putin Point number one don't Trust Putin Putin is a KGB officer especially learn to lie second please don't be afraid of Putin

if because if you're afraid of Putin this is feeding him and Putin go as far as we together allow him to go at a G20 meeting a few months later in Australia in contrast to previous Western passivity then Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper tried a tough approach Vladimir Putin came into this private session with with other world Leaders and went immediately to our Prime Minister Steven Harper who had been quite vocal about Putin and uh in his obvious plans for Crimea and he made a beline for him put his hand out to which you know

prime minister Harper then looked at him and uh and said you need to get out of Crimea and Putin said we're not in Crimea that was the beginning of the end for Russia's participation in the G8 because everybody in the room knew that He was lying it became clear that Putin basically didn't care what the leaders of Western Democratic countries said or did he thinks that Western leaders are gullible and shortlived they sort of colorful butterflies that that flatter around for a bit and and then get wiped out when winter comes in where whereas Putin

whom we know has outlasted or is close to outlasting Stalin um doesn't have to worry about pesky things like Elections and he he he knows what he'll be doing in two years time four years time well Putin has been very open about his dealings with foreign leaders he has been very secretive about his private [Music] life Putin has always kept his personal life very private and so Russians were surprised in 2013 when he and wife lud Milla casually strolled over to a camera after a ballet performance and announced they were Divorcing well Putin said it

was a mutual decision that they had simply Grown Apart because he was so busy hello welcome behind the decision was his yearslong relationship with a much younger woman that he had tried to hide Alina kabaya had come to fame as a Russian gymnast who won Gold old medals in international competitions Putin met her when he Handed out one of those medals even after she was suspended from International competitions because she was caught using banned steroids and other substances her relationship with Putin deepened she actually became a member of the Duma Parliament for Putin's United Russia

party then she dropped out of sight for a few years in which she was reported to to have become pregnant and given birth to several Putin Children Putin was actually asked about his relationship to kabaya on a 2008 visit to his friend Sylvio Berlusconi the Italian Prime Minister the Moscow newspaper that reported the Putin kabaya relationship was a immediately shut down Putin has been equally secretive about his two grown daughters from his first marriage both of whom have amassed vast fortunes the whole mentality of the Current regime in the kremin has its roots back in

the Soviet KGB it's this secret mentality that everything has to be sort of behind closed doors nothing can be revealed to the public the popular Russian opposition leader Alexi Nali was effective at winning a younger generation to the anti-putin side Putin's private life and incredible wealth became a major Target for him in a film called Putin's Palace Nali Documented how many Putin Pals from his St Petersburg days had become fabulously wealthy and how many of them had streamed millions of dollars into building his giant opulent home constructed on a prime location overlooking the Black Sea

in addition to Fabulous Gardens and helicopter pads the palace would include a private Arena where Putin could indulge one of his favorite hobbies hockey Russians were very familiar with Putin's Devotion to hockey they had seen him playing in games with former Russian NHL stars where he had somehow been able to score at least five goals the audience of that film about Putin's Palace was bigger than the audience of Russian State television channels that sort of showed to millions of people in Russia the true nature of of this regime that sort of purports to be this

sort of patriotic government looking out for Russia's National interests but it's in fact just a bunch of Aging KGB officers who want to steal as much as they can after the 2014 invasion of Crimea it was becoming more and more dangerous to be an opposition figure in Russia there were some anti-war demonstrations led by one of the most popular opposition politicians in the country Boris nof nof was arrested numerous times but he persisted in his denunciations of Putin that seem to be gathering Momentum Boris couldn't accept the fact that the country was in the hands

of this criminal you know just l y it was like a physical contempt and I think it was vice versa I think this is Putin also SS that Boris was just different you know look at Putin this a dwarf [ __ ] and Boris Nam so the strong in February 2015 a stunning crime Boris nsof was gunned down on a bridge right in front of the Kremlin as he Walked home from work they just found the easiest way to deal with him it was a shocking effect but surprise I don't think even he was I

think it's just again he I'm sure he knew he was doomed but just he just didn't want to to show [Music] weakness the opponents of the Putin regime began receiving attacks with an iodine likee green D called zelonka Alexi naly was hit several times Along with journalists opposition political figures including Putin's former prime minister Mikel casanov there was a number of such signals to me that I should stop that that activity Boris NSO was killed I was under pressure just to to to give me an understanding that uh that I could be next the threats

got more intense casanov along with Vladimir karura were featured in a sniper video on the Instagram page of one of Putin's Allies Karam murza was poisoned twice once in 2015 and again in 2017 he was hospitalized in a coma that lasted for days but he survived then in 2020 Alexi naly was poisoned with a toxic radioactive substance called novich chuk he barely survived and was flown out to Germany for medical treatment as he recuperated in Germany he set out to document how such poisonings were carried Out with the help of investigative journalists at the bellingcat

organization Nali was able to show in astonishing detail how he had been followed around by Russian secret agents for months before he had been poisoned it's it's just something that a normal human mind cannot Pro process but it is the reality of Vladimir Putin's Russia that there is a government operated death squad inside the security services the main task of which the only Task of which is to physically eliminate political opponents of the current Russian government after his embarrassing Revelations about Putin's poison Squad in 2021 Alexi naali decided to return to Russia even though was

sure to face imprisonment there as a citizen of Russia he says I have the absolute right to return home there was a debate about whether it was a courageous or fool hearty decision he Was arrested at the airport on arrival gave his wife a last kiss goodbye and then was given one prison sentence after another on a long series of charges with his major critic silenced in July 2021 Putin started to prepare the ground for his invasion of Ukraine echoing his words of 30 years before it began with an astonishing 5,000-word personal essay in Russian

newspapers that reviewed a thousand years of Russian history from the time Of St Vladimir founder of the Russian Orthodox Church the modern Vladimir strongly argued that all Russian speakers were part of one great nation and suggested that Ukraine was not a real country even that the Ukrainian language was not a real language I thought it was an indication um that he had a very different course planned both for Russia and for Ukraine it may be important to note that he sent that article to every soldier in the Russian army so he intended this view of

history and this kind of paranoid nostalgic um Imperial IST view of the past to be the ideology of the modern Russian army immediately before The Invasion came the angry Putin speech that put a similar message in a much more threatening manner the anger at Ukraine is the anger a country that has successfully overcome exactly the kind of autocratic Kleptocracy that he has in Russia and Putin is afraid that Russians will make that kind of decision in Russia he wants to eliminate Ukraine as a country and as a democracy um that's what threatens him is the

idea the idea of sovereignty the idea of freedom and the idea of democracy for Ukraine as Putin surrounded Ukraine with armored divisions and prepared his invasion Western leaders like France's Emanuel Macron and Germany's Olaf Schultz traveled to Moscow to try to talk him out of military action he rebuffed their efforts [Music] when Putin launched his fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 it didn't go as planned Russia's latest invasion of Ukraine began in the early hours of February 24th with a barrage of rocket and missile [Music] attacks on that first day hundreds of Russian tanks

crossed into Ukraine the tanks attacked from Crimea in the south towards the city of Heron from the East towards the city of harv and from the north down towards the capital Kei the tank columns were stopped in their [Music] tracks the ukrainians used Western Supply Javelin and other anti-tank Missiles to Target them Putin clearly expected to capture or kill the Ukrainian president vadir zinski or that he would flee in Terror instead zalinsky announced that he and his government were staying in place to lead the resistance Ukrainian civilians armed themselves to fight back against Vladimir Putin

the Guardians Luke Harding has covered the war from the beginning There's a paradox at the heart of this story uh Putin thinks he's a brilliant spy and he was told by Russia's intelligence agencies that ukrainians would would welcome Uh Russian troops and and cheer them applaud them as they came in on tanks and in fact that they fought back uh big time and and Putin pretty quickly discovered that he was not battling against the sort of small unpopular corrupt pro-western government of Vladimir zilinski but fighting an Entire nation of about 40 million [Music] people in

the early days of the invasion there were a handful of anti-war demonstrations across Russia but they were mercilessly crushed by Putin's police all Independent Media in Russia was shut down by the government all that remained were government controlled propaganda TV programs where the hosts had promised a quick [Music] victory for for many years Dimitri muratov ran the main independent Russian newspaper Nova gazetta in the early days of the war it was still possible to find dissenting voices in the streets of Moscow now that is much more difficult the CBC was expelled from Russia shortly after

the invasion but we were able to get gather a few young people together To carefully share their views of Putin the only leader they have ever known I fully trust our Mr Putin and I fully trust um God the government structures and I um definitely support well all the things that are happening in Russia currently [Music] Russia recently announced a change in school history textbooks gone under any criticisms of the Soviet past instead there are glowing endorsements of the Words and actions of Vladimir Putin you've got textbooks being changed you've got children being taught uh

to hate the West to view the West as as an aberration and and you've got a complete whitewashing of history on Putin's behalf where has essentially Rewritten literally Rewritten history documentary filmmaker Vitali manky has Revisited the early uncritical film he made about Putin he now sees all Russians as complicit in Putin's march To dictatorship he is entitled his documentary Putin's Witnesses Putin has a number of major advantages in his fight against Ukraine with a far larger population he has sent millions of young men into the battle and can avoid the normal media coverage when according

to Nato over 700,000 have become casualties then there are nuclear weapons Russia has the world's largest collection when Putin announced the Ukraine invasion he also made a show of instructing his military commanders to place the Russian nuclear forces on alert Putin gave a chilling pre-war interview about the prospect of nuclear war Putin's threats brought a wave of speculation about his mental state about whether he is unbalanced enough to use a nuclear device Ambassador John Bolton negotiated with Putin about nuclear weapons he says The man he knew then was not crazy I think he's about as

coldblooded as you can get he would say in English sometimes well you have your logic we'll have ours we'll see which one prevails uh but I don't think he's a Fanatic in that respect and I think if you uh overstate your concern about whether for example he'd resort to nuclear weapons he wins just by Bluff Putin has explicitly stated he is not bluffing Russian newspaper editor Demetri matatov was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 he is not so sure Putin's nuclear threats can be discounted the Americans have warned Putin that there would

be a catastrophic military response if he used any nuclear weapon he's never going to do it because Moscow would be a parking lot and Putin is a lot of things and there's lots of adjectives to describe him but he's not crazy in the true sense that he Doesn't want to survive he's not suicidal what role will Donald Trump play in this tug of war it has become apparent that he wants to pressure Ukrainian president zalinski to accept a peace deal in which Russia gets to hold on to the Ukrainian territories it has conquered and Ukraine

gets some kind of extra security guarantees from the West to prevent Russia from invading again polls show ukrainians are ready to make a Deal now majority of ukrainians favor an end to the to the conflict even if it doesn't mean the restoration of the territories if the United States can force a deal U I think uh you know the Ukrainian side will will go along on the Russian side there is very little pressure on Putin to make a deal especially because all opposition to him has been wiped out during his two years in prison Alexi

Nali continued his spirited resistance To Putin until his sudden death was announced in February 2024 small crowds of brave people attended Memorial demonstrations for him but his death was a serious blow to the opposition movements in Russia like naali Vladimir kerah had been arrested and sentenced to 25 years for his opposition to the war God bless sir he was released in a prisoner exch change in August 2024 and has gone on to meet many Western leaders in his ongoing campaign of opposition to Vladimir Putin he fights alongside nal's Widow Julia I have absolutely no doubt

on this as a historian myself uh Vladimir Putin will be remembered in history in the same line of names as uh Hitler and Stalin and musolini that's exactly the type of tyrant that he is a tyrant that disregards the rights of his own people and it tramples on the Civilized Norms Of international behavior for Liberal democracies we're back where we were at the beginning of the of the Cold War we're back to containment where there's no point in trying to understand Russia the answer is simply to contain it to invest in in defense and Military

production to stop it from overrunning other countries the the problem with this theory is is someone called Donald Trump he is more in the deal making mode Where where big Powers cut deals quite often over the heads of smaller powers and Putin would love a world where he can sit down with with Donald Trump over there XI jingping over there and they can have they can look at a map of the world and they can divide it up between them that's what he wants what will happen when the time finally comes for Vladimir Putin to

leave the stage 25 years ago Putin arrived in the Russian presidency in a wave of Hope for the future his critics worry about what will be left in his wake when Putin is gone he will leave behind him a wasteland of cynicism indifference and vast moral crisis Russia will have to to to to live for Generations rebuilding itself redeeming itself recouping at least bits and pieces of trust of not only the world Community but of its own people 8 years before he became Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined his belief that all russian-speaking people should be

part of the same country that belief led to his seizure of Crimea to building a bridge joining it to Russia and then to the massive destruction of 20% of Ukraine in a war that killed hundreds of thousands that challenged the world order and the resolve of the western Powers his drive to rebuild the Russian Empire threatens all his neighboring countries and it is far from clear that the Democratic world has the political will to stop him [Music] [Music]