Why we interviewed Vladislav Sourkov – L’Express

He is one of the most enigmatic characters in Russia. A man in the shadows who made secret a weapon. For two decades, Vladislav Sourkov whispered in the ear of Vladimir Putin. For him, he created a tailor -made political system, “poutinism”, precepts aimed at placing the “tsar” at the heart of the state apparatus – the “vertical power”. In 2020, this mysterious advisor, who inspired Giuliano Da empoli his masterful Kremlin mage (Gallimard), disappeared from the scene. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, he has not given an interview.

However, the one that was also called the “new Rasputin” still has things to teach us. Listening to Sourkov is entering the head of Vladimir Putin. Understanding your geopolitical agenda, designs and obsessions – such as the destruction of the Ukrainian state.

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This is why L’Express has gone in its footsteps, which was not easy. Vladislav Sourkov first refused to speak to us, before changing his mind. For what ? “First of all, because he knew that you would ask him different questions from those he receives in Russia,” replied Alexei Tchesnakov, scientific director of the political conjuncture center, in Moscow, one of those who made this interview possible. During the first two mandates of Vladimir Putin (2001 to 2008), Tchesnakov worked in the presidential administration under the direction of Sourkov. He was responsible for political planning. Today, he advises Russian politicians and collaborates regularly with Sourkov. “I told him about L’Express, his history and the fact that great French writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux, had written there in the 1950s. It helped convince him. It is perhaps even the decisive element.”

Some will no doubt wonder why L’Express offers this platform to the man who played, according to several sources, a key role in the annexation of Crimea and separatist regions. The answer is given to us by the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, who knows the character well : If Western leaders had read Sourkov, they would have understood faster than their appeasement policy would not take them anywhere.

A document for history

We must take our long interview with Vladislav Sourkov as a document for history: the disturbing confession of a man who irrigated the Russian doctrine, and whose great ideas remain current. “We will extend in all directions, as far as God will want and we will have the strength,” he asserts.

Who is Sourkov? Like many key men in the Putinian system, he experienced a lightning ascent, which begins in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union, at the time when fortunes were made and defeated themselves at the whim of a happy meeting … For him, this one took place in the late 1980s, in a boxing club. The coach remarks and recommends it as a bodyguard to that which is not yet called “Oligarch”: Mikhail Khodorkovski, founder of one of the first private banks of the USSR. Sourkov quickly goes up in rank, until he found himself in charge of the company’s public relations. But he blurs with Khodorkovski – which will save him from being trained, a few years later, in his fall. In 1999, when Sourkov worked on Russian state television, Alexandre Volochine, the director of the presidential administration, invited him to join the Kremlin as an advisor.

A few months later, Putin was elected president. To install the designated successor of Boris Yeltsin, Sourkov creates a tailor -made political party to him, and provides him with an ideological arsenal. Because above all, Vladislav Sourkov is an inventor of concepts: the “vertical power”, according to which the whole Russian state is subject to its president; “sovereign democracy”, an understatement to designate an authoritarian system in which the stability of the State prevails over the freedom of the individual; “Systemic opposition”, which consists in letting some parties lead a semblance of political activism, provided that the preponderance of the master of the Kremlin is never questioned; The “Russian world”, a sphere of influence of Moscow at elastic borders; Or the “deep people”, with whom the head of state would maintain a direct link, close to the sacred … put end to end, these principles draw a political ideology, which Sourkov himself calls “poutinism”.

Eminence Grise, King’s maker … Another expression, more modern, perfectly describes Vladislav Sourkov: “Political technician”, as we designate these men in Moscow, who, from the Kremlin, use the levers of power, the control of the media or more muscular methods to ensure that Russian political life turns round … Around Putin. In fact, his relationship with the Russian president is complex. Sourkov has never been part of his first circle – those who accompanied his ascent and shared the country and its wealth. Above all, the Mage Sourkov lives himself as a servant of the Russian State, for which he designed a functional system with, at his head, a Tsar which, he is convinced, Russia needs.

I accept “for Sartre and for Malraux”

His political activism did not prevent him from falling into disgrace. In 2013, Sourkov was dismissed from his duties for daring to publicly contradict Vladimir Putin, when he criticized the failures of the government he was part. But he comes back quickly. A few months later, he was propelled special advisor to the Russian president on the affairs of “close stranger”. Abkhazie, Southern Ossetia and, above all, Ukraine. Influence operations, support for the Prorussian candidate Viktor Ianoukovitch during the Maidan Revolution in 2014… Sourkov’s hand is everywhere. He is even part of the Russian delegation which will sign the Minsk agreements, which he will later say that there had never been a question that they were really applied.

In 2020, Sourkov left power a second time … Voluntarily, he said, justifying his departure with a “context change”. He then defines himself as a “heretian poutinist”. Some sources evoke a position on Ukraine considered at the time as too hard. It would have been said, the lawyer for the annexation of the separatist regions of the Donbass and a definitive rupture with the Westerners. Since then, Vladislav Sourkov has disappeared from radars.

Why did he tell us? Political will of a man who says he has accomplished “99.9 % of what he had to do”? Or will to return to the foreground? After all, the chief of the Kremlin ended up following his precepts on Ukraine … When we asked for this interview, Vladislav Sourkov had this answer: I accept “for Sartre and for Malraux”. He also posed two conditions: that the questions “are not offensive for Russia” (sic) and that we were doing the interview in writing. On February 19, we sent him a dozen questions, then, on February 27, a second salvo.

What does Sourkov teach us? First, that Westerners have, in the last two decades, has shown a lack of vigilance and a guilty denial. Some comments, then. First, Vladislav Sourkov remains quite circumspect in the face of the spectacular rapprochement of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. If it seems obvious to him “that, ideologically, Trump is closer to Putin than Macron”, the fact that the American president “does not give the impression of a person who wants to make allies”. Another teaching, his moderate enthusiasm with regard to the “great alliance” between China and Russia. More than “limitless friendship” between Xi and Putin, Sourkov is primarily interested in the survival of “great Nordic civilization”-United States, Europe and Russia-, which he calls the global North. This is, for him, the meaning of history … finally remains this unquenchable rage against Ukraine. Sourkov sees only a way out of this war: the “sharing of this quasi-artificial state in its natural fragments”. Namely a song for Russia, another for Brussels … A “meal meal”, of which Ukraine would be the cynical menu.