The major interviews given to L’Express by Mikhail Gorbachev, ultimate President of the USSR, Garry Kasparov, grand master of chess and declared political opponent of Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Fedorovski, former diplomat and writer of Russian-Ukrainian origin, bear witness strong on the master of the Kremlin.
Mikhail Gorbachev: “Russian society will resist”
The last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
afp.com/Str
In an interview with L’Express on December 14, 2011, the former leader of the USSR shares his views on Vladimir Putin, the oligarchs, corruption and human rights abuses in his country.
“During his first term, Putin accumulated political successes: he preserved the unity of Russia and gave oxygen to the people. Therefore, it cannot be said that he is a politician without a future. But, in the next six years, the country must democratize and modernize, and if Putin does not manage to lead it on this path, the problems will be such that we can no longer solve them peacefully. able to change its methods, to assimilate the lessons of the recent past.”
Garry Kasparov: ‘Conflict is the only way for Putin to stay’
Garry Kasparov on January 5, 2016 in New York City. (Natan Dvir/Polaris Images)
Natan Dvir/Polaris Images for L’Express
Retired from competition in 2005, the grand master of chess, Garry Kasparov immediately joined the opposition to Vladimir Putin.
In an interview published on November 15, 2007 when he was the leader of the political movement The Other Russiathe great strategist of the chessboard places the head of the Kremlin at the heart of the system of corruption which plagues Russia.
“To question whether or not Vladimir Putin is corrupt is like asking whether Stalin knew about the terror, the executions, the gulag… Whoever is at the head of the pyramid is responsible for what is happening from above at the bottom. And Putin sits at the top of corruption.”
In January 2016, Garry Kasparov receives L’Express to settle his account with Vladimir Poutine, target of his book, winter is comingin which the former chess player does not spare Western leaders either, guilty in his eyes of capitulation to Moscow.
Philippe Coste, correspondent for the newspaper in the United States where Garry Kasparov has lived in exile since 2013, questions the chessboard strategist about the comparison he draws in his book between Putin and Hitler.
“I am not comparing their misdeeds, of course, but the rise of their powers. I denounce the inability of Western democracies to read the signals that Putin sent fifteen years ago; to simply listen to him when he tells that the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the worst tragedy of the 20th century or that one never ceases to be an agent of the KGB”.
Vladimir Fedorovski: “Putin sees himself on the same line as the tsars and Stalin”
The writer Vladimir Fedorovski, in Paris, in December 2009.
J.-P. Guilloteau/L’Express
In April 2014, Vladimir Fedorovski, a former diplomat and writer, analyzes the psychological springs of the master of the Kremlin.
“Vladimir Putin is completely in tune with this dominant feeling: he thinks that the absence of guilt is a very positive factor for a people and that the fact of being part of long history, as Stalin did to make people forget his mistakes and his crimes, is a guarantee of longevity in power. Even if it means proceeding to a very bizarre construction: Putin inscribes on the same line the tsars, Stalin and himself, all in the enlightened service of the character, because he considers himself chosen by Providence. This is why he conceives of Russia as a world apart – neither Europe nor Asia, or both at the same time – and he skillfully maintains the myth in which he has come to believe. When Angela Merkel sees Putin “in another world”, she is not wrong, but that does not worry the interested party at all – quite the contrary.”