Former correspondent of FinancialTimes in Moscow, Catherine Belton, now a journalist at the Washington Post, publish Putin’s Men (Talent editions). She tells how the former KGB colonel seized Russia before attacking the West. Six months after the start of “his” war in Ukraine, she describes an isolated man who now relies on only one adviser: the arch-conservative and much feared Nikolai Patrushev, who succeeded him at the head of the services FSB intelligence for nearly nine years.
L’Express: Who are the “president’s men”?
Catherine Belton: Putin’s main adviser is Putin himself, to which must be added Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB [NDLR : successeur du KGB], until 2008, and since then a powerful secretary of the Security Council of Russia – the main advisory body of the Kremlin. The latter takes strong positions on all subjects. He is the only one to exert influence on Putin. At the famous meeting of the Security Council last February, [NDLR Poutine avait humilié publiquement le patron du service de renseignement extérieur Sergueï Narychkine]Patrushev was the only one to show some confidence.
Better still, as he spoke, Putin seemed a bit withdrawn. Patrushev is truly his eminence grise. It was he who convinced him that the United States was using Ukraine to weaken Russia. Before the war, he advised him to continue to discuss with Joe Biden while explaining to him that, in any case, Washington was determined to push Ukraine towards confrontation. Like Putin, this hard-liner rewrites history and lives in paranoia, which only grows as their power continues.
“Putin’s men”, by Catherine Belton (Talent Editions, 2022), 592 p. 23.90€,
Talent Editions
Could Patrushev succeed Putin?
It’s not topical. And it is not provided for by the Constitution. In the event of a problem or impediment, it is the falot Prime Minister Mikhaïl Michoustine, 56, who is supposed to succeed Putin (69). Former director of the Russian tax authorities, the latter took office in 2020. Next to it, Nikolai Patrushev, 71, is a heavyweight. He appears in Putin’s shadow from the beginning. Already in 1999, he was there during attacks against buildings in Moscow, which left around 200 dead. [NDLR : attribués à des Tchétchènes, ils auraient en réalité été perpétrés par le FSB afin d’augmenter la popularité de Poutine qui se préparait à succéder à Boris Eltsine]. Since then, Patrushev has always worked to keep his leader in power. If one day he is appointed Prime Minister, then we will have to worry, because he is an intransigent man.
Who are the other men in Putin’s entourage?
It’s hard to tell because they are less visible. But we can name a few. There is for example Sergueï Kirienko, 60 years old, who has gained notoriety lately. Deputy Director of the Presidential Administration, it is he who is responsible for incorporating the occupied territories in Ukraine (Kherson for example) into the Russian Federation. And this, by means of referendums. On their side, Dmitry Medvedev, 56, currently vice-president of the Security Council of Russia, and Vyacheslav Volodin, 58, who chairs the State Duma [Assemblée nationale]have recently multiplied the virulent anti-Western positions.
Dmitry Medvedev, then Prime Minister, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow, on April 17, 2017.
afp.com/Alexei Druzhinin
But these hawkish postures are essentially aimed at positioning themselves vis-à-vis Putin. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is one of the flat but loyal “Yes men”. Accustomed to living in a certain comfort, he was not prepared for an all-out war with Ukraine. Finally, General Valeri Guerassimov, who is the Chief of the Defense Staff, is also in an uncomfortable position. I was told that he was not in favor of this war because he knew the state of his army. But, of course, he never told Putin about it. Ultimately, the master of the Kremlin governs practically alone, with Nikolai Patrushev at his side.
What do all these characters have in common? Saint Petersburg?
Yes, and to come from the crucible of the intelligence services. The fact that the Yeltsin family bet on Putin in 1999 is an accident of history. The story could have been different. At the time, Putin presented himself as a moderate, young, modern man who would preserve Yeltsin’s liberal legacy. But he brought with him to Moscow the most brutal and ruthless Petersburgers, while pushing aside moderates such as Yevgeny Primakov or Sergei Stepashin, short-lived heads of the Russian government in 1998 and 1999. Soon enough, the people of Moscow came to the conclusion that it was impossible to work with the people of Petersburg. They said to themselves: “These guys from “Piter” [le surnom de Saint-Pétersbourg] have an inferiority complex and they are much more violent than the Moscow mobsters. We can’t work with them.”
Sergei Shoigu, at Defense (right), and Valery Guerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff (left), have not been seen in public since March 11.
Alexey NIKOLSKY / SPUTNIK / AFP
You mention the “paranoia” of the regime…
There are clearly signs of paranoia. The attempted poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020 was a turning point. At the time, major demonstrations were organized in Siberia after the Kremlin’s dismissal of a very popular regional governor. For his part, Navalny mobilized the local electorate to vote against the Kremlin candidates in local elections organized in the Russian Far East. During the same summer, demonstrations, largely apolitical, took place in Belarus against the power of Minsk following fraudulent elections. These elements worried Moscow. And the Kremlin, which until then reserved poisonings for former KGB members considered traitors, decided to apply the same method to Navalny.
Since then, Putin’s physical isolation during Covid has certainly not improved his state of mind. We know that his visitors had to stay in confinement for a fortnight before being allowed to approach him. As he perpetuates himself in power, the Putin system becomes more and more paranoid because he has nothing to offer the population, which has lost 10% of its income since the annexation of Ukraine in 2014.
However, the propaganda seems to work on public opinion. What about?
She is very effective. What is not really surprising insofar as the capacity is in place since two decades, that it completely controls the televisions and that moreover, it has very creative people and experimented as regards propaganda. Added to this is a very human feeling. Russians don’t want to believe that their government is perpetrating atrocities like those committed in Boutcha, Mariupol and elsewhere. They prefer to believe in the fable that the war is the result of a provocation by Ukraine to damage Russia’s reputation. This official discourse works… to a point.
A recent poll showed that 20% of Russians were against the war. This is six points more than at the start of the conflict. Knowing that it is illegal to speak of “war” concerning Ukraine, this shows a fairly high level of defiance. But let’s be realistic: we don’t have a clear “snapshot” of the state of opinion in Russia. We only know that some soldiers refuse to fight, which is a sign that something is wrong. In any case, in time of war, propaganda is always effective at the beginning, then it erodes. A powerful Russian businessman reminded me that in 1914 war was very popular in Russia. In 1916 appeared the first mutinies. And in 1917, the army rose up against power.
Where have the oligarchs gone?
There are no more oligarchs in the sense that we understood it under the Yeltsin era. They no longer have any power. It’s awful for them. Everything they have built for thirty years has been destroyed, including their reputation which they had taken so long to build with millions of dollars, with the support of lawyers and public relations agencies. They are helpless and stunned because they thought Vladimir Putin would be more pragmatic and content to recognize the independence of the separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Today, they have no voice because complaining could send them to prison. In this context, it is remarkable that Oleg Deripaska, the president of Rusal [deuxième plus grande société d’aluminium au monde] declared, in July, in Moscow, how shocked he was to see Russia giving up everything that had been built since the 1990s and 2000s. “We are waiting for victory, but what victory?” he insisted, annoyed. And he added: “It would be a colossal mistake to destroy Ukraine. Sanctions hurt us much more than they hurt the West.” Deripaska was the first to voice his opposition to the war in this way, and that from Moscow.
And Roman Abramovich?
He is in Russia and cannot travel. At the start of the war he took on the role of mediator between Moscow and the administration of Volodymyr Zelensky, where he has a few allies. This allowed him to get the Ukrainians to ask the Americans not to punish him too much. In the Kremlin, he represents what could be called the “peace party”. But it is clear that Vladimir Putin does not listen to him. The irony is that Abramovich took me to court because I wrote that he had close ties to Putin. Today these links are public knowledge.
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, under pressure from possible Western sanctions, has decided to sell the Chelsea club.
Grigoriy Sisoev/Sputnik/Sputnik via AFP)
Even Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the negotiations with Ukraine, said a few weeks ago that he had asked Abramovich to convey a message to Putin. There is ample evidence that Roman Abramovich’s leader is called Vladimir Putin. Anyway, the Russian oligarchs will come back to the fore one day, but when? In two, three, four years? Impossible to know. Things will get worse first before they get better…