The Putin Files: Masha Gessen

Watch author and journalist Masha Gessen’s candid, full interview on Putin and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election – part of FRONTLINE’s media transparency project for our investigation, “Putin’s Revenge.”

 

46:38
But among his first 10 decrees was a decree reinstating primary military education in
46:46
high schools, and this was something that was, to me, highly symbolic.
46:55
When I went to school in the Soviet Union, everybody—all the high school students had
47:00
to learn elementary military trades.
47:06
I mean, first of all, we had military games, survival games, from the time—I mean, games.
47:12
We called them games.
47:13
They weren’t games.
47:14
They were training sessions, right?
47:16
But from the time you’re very little, there are bomb raids, and you learn to recognize
47:21
chemical burns, and you are drilled on how to respond to chemical burns.
47:27
The thing is, you know, these classrooms that are—where the walls are covered with posters
47:33
on how to recognize different kinds of chemical weapons, the effects of different kinds of
47:41
chemical weapons and how to respond to them.
47:45
And then in ninth and 10th grade, so in high school, which is just two years, you learn
47:54
to administer first aid in a military situation and to take apart and clean a Kalashnikov
48:03
and put it back together again.
48:07
Anybody my age or older will be able to tell you how long it used to take them to take
48:13
apart and clean and put back together a Kalashnikov.
48:16
A good amount of time is around nine or eight seconds.
48:24
That was eliminated when the Soviet Union fell apart.
48:29
And we forget now how much the 1990s, even though Russia never really sort of fully entered
48:36
a post-imperial era, but still, it became a demilitarized country.
48:43
All of a sudden, there was much less emphasis on how every boy was a future soldier, which
48:49
is the way I was brought up.
48:51
You would just see very many fewer people in uniform in the streets.
48:57
When I was growing up, when I used to go meet my mother at the subway station when she was
49:04
coming home, I would—to entertain myself, I would count the number of people in uniform
49:11
coming off the trains as I waited for her.
49:14
Roughly every 10th person would be wearing a military uniform.
49:17
All of a sudden, that was no longer the case.
49:20
And of course children stopped learning how to take apart and put back together a Kalashnikov
49:24
in school.
49:26
One of the first things that Putin did, on the day that he became acting president, was
49:32
set in motion the process of bringing that back.
49:36
And I was convinced that—go ahead.
49:38
MICHAEL KIRK – Sorry.
49:39
MASHA GESSEN – No, I was convinced that he was signaling his intention to remilitarize
49:45
Russian society, which is exactly what he did.
49:47
MICHAEL KIRK – What does it do to a society to grow up with that eight-second Kalashnikov
49:53
rebuild and then have it reintroduced?
49:57
What’s the signal that that sends to people?
50:01
MASHA GESSEN – Well, different people receive the same signal differently.
50:09
It frightened me.
50:10
I didn’t want to live in a militarized society again, and I thought the militarized Russia
50:14
would be a dangerous country for the rest of the world.
50:20
Countries don’t militarize in order to be peaceful.
50:26
For a lot of people, though, it was a signal that they were going back to something that
50:32
was familiar and comfortable, both on a private level, which is that you would do the same—their
50:39
children would be doing the same things that they did as children, right, but much more
50:43
importantly on a public level, so that they would have a chance to identify with a great
50:47
country again.
50:48
He would make Russia great again.
50:51
For so many people in the 1990s, the instability and discomfort that they experienced became
51:00
concentrated in this idea of no longer belonging to a great power.
51:07
So a lot of Putin’s early signals were that he would bring back that wonderful feeling
51:17
of being part of a great power again.
51:19
MICHAEL KIRK – In a way, it’s right.
51:22
He’s merging probably how he felt, having missed glasnost and perestroika, not participating
51:27
in whatever was great about it, but he comes home, he’s shipwrecked, whatever happens
51:35
to him, it’s a different world than he probably anticipated finishing his life in.
51:41
That sort of ethos that he shared with the people was what he decided to employ as his
51:51
method.
51:56
In the end of his first year, George W. Bush becomes president of the United States.
52:02
One of the things we’ve noticed in tracing the arc of this gigantic narrative is how
52:09
often an American president arrives to a Russian president with hope that all is going to get
52:16
better, from Gorbachev on; democracy will flower now, and thank God.
52:23
…
52:24
MASHA GESSEN – Well, I want to say one more thing about what happened with George W. Bush
52:27
becoming president in ’99, or in 2000, is that Putin had just become president in a
52:34
very orderly manner.
52:38
He was handpicked by the previous president.
52:42
An election was scheduled.
52:43
He won it handily.
52:46
Everything went according to plan in his popularity.
52:50
His margin of victory was pretty good.
52:53
It was, I think, 53 percent in his first election.
52:57
And his popularity was sky-high.
52:58
Then America goes and has this ridiculous election that isn’t settled for two months
53:08
or two and a half months, and that just goes to show you how a democracy is such an imperfect
53:15
system, and probably an outdated and failed system.
53:19
I’m convinced that that’s the first time that Putin really watched an American presidential
53:24
election closely.
53:25
He’d never thought of himself as somebody who existed on that level.
53:30
Now he’s waiting to see who his counterpart is going to be, and he can’t even know who
53:39
his counterpart is going to be for two and a half months, because democracy is such a
53:42
mess.
53:43
…
53:44
MICHAEL KIRK – When they meet, the way the stories go, and especially—I’ve just talked
53:46
to a lot of American diplomats and ambassadors who were there at that first meeting.
53:52
This is the “I looked in his eyes and saw his soul” meeting.
53:57
Some people tell the story that here is a KGB guy who’s the president of Russia, who’s
54:03
studied Bush, knows he’s an evangelical, knows that he has a penchant and a weakness
54:07
for a religious story, dredges up a religious story out of his own past, the crucifix-in-the-ashes
54:14
story, and somehow they connect.
54:19
Tell me what you know about that version of the story.
54:23
MASHA GESSEN – Actually, I have nothing to add to that version of the story.
54:28
What I would say is that early on he was a charmer, early on in his term as president.
54:34
That’s no longer the case.
54:37
But everyone I’ve talked to [who] had a meeting with him in the first year or two of his becoming
54:46
acting president and then president came away transformed, at least for the first few minutes.
54:51
Well, actually, with one exception: one of the journalists who worked on that official
54:56
biography.
54:58
But everyone else felt that he sort of, he turned on the recruiter charm, and he was
55:06
well-briefed, and he always used a little personal anecdote to connect with you on the
55:12
grounds that he figured would be good for connecting.
55:18
A few years down the road, he stopped paying attention.
55:21
He would start mixing people’s names up or the facts of people’s biographies.
55:26
By the time I met him in 2012, he wasn’t even briefed.
55:32
He knew almost nothing about me, like he hadn’t bothered.
55:37
But early on, he was a real recruiter.
55:40
And I think he certainly worked his charm on George W. Bush, which apparently wasn’t
55:46
very difficult.
55:47
MICHAEL KIRK – There’s a lot of hope, of course, that they’ll do all kinds of things.
55:54
A lot of people have said—we’ll ask them: “What did Putin want from Bush?
56:00
What did Russia want from Bush?
56:02
But more importantly, what did Putin want from Bush and America?”
56:06
What do you think that was?
56:07
MASHA GESSEN – Well, Putin wanted the return of a bipolar world.
56:15
That was his agenda from the very beginning.
56:17
He wanted to be treated with respect.
56:19
He wanted people back home to see that he was being treated with respect.
56:24
This was also coming very soon after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, right, which, for the
56:35
Russian political establishment and for a lot of Russian people, was a really difficult
56:40
pill to swallow.
56:42
…
56:43
The U.S. and its allies decided to bomb Serbia and Kosovo to resolve the Kosovo crisis without
56:50
consulting with Russia.
56:51
And to make matters worse, they started bombing, or the U.S. started bombing when Yevgeny Primakov,
57:00
the then-prime minister, was in the air, on his way to the United States to meet with
57:04
Vice President Gore.
57:07
So they didn’t even make a show of informing Russia before starting bombing, never mind
57:13
consulting Russia, and that was really insulting for the entire Russian establishment and a
57:20
lot of Russian people.
57:23
One of the things that Putin wanted to project was that that kind of thing was never going
57:28
to happen again.
57:30
MICHAEL KIRK – Then America pulls out of the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, not really
57:36
consulting.
57:37
In fact, he begged Bush not to do it.
57:41
They invade, or we invade Iraq, taking down an authoritarian figure who stands astride
57:48
a big—somewhat in the sphere of influence of Russia.
57:54
Russia joins with France and Germany and says: “Please don’t do this.
57:57
Are you guys going to do this?
57:58
Are you really going to do this?”
58:00
And they do it with a certain level of impunity, at least.
58:06
It seems that the word you used early to describe what he was hoping for, which is respect,
58:11
was hardly in the air between George W. Bush and the United States of America, and Vladimir
58:16
Putin and Russia.
58:17
MASHA GESSEN – And what’s even worse, I think from Putin’s point of view, is the expansion
58:22
of NATO.
58:24
It doesn’t ever sort of—in his worldview, it is not a question of these countries asking
58:35
to be part of NATO.
58:36
It is merely a question of the United States deciding that NATO should expand to the Russian
58:43
border.
58:44
He’s also convinced that the Soviet Union got assurances from the United States that
58:52
NATO would not be expanded.
58:54
…
58:55
The quote that Putin likes to bring up was a quote by the then-NATO commander given during
58:59
the negotiations about the reunification of Germany.
59:05
The promise was that there would be no NATO troops stationed on what had been East German
59:11
territory.
59:12
That’s the quote.
59:13
And that was a matter of negotiations.
59:16
This was, first of all, this was a negotiation with the Soviet Union, and then—and the
59:21
Soviet Union was pushing for a solution where somehow Germany would be united.
59:26
But East Germany still wouldn’t be a part of NATO.
59:30
And the compromise solution was that there would be no troops on what had been East German
59:36
territory.
59:37
That has nothing to do with NATO expansion as such, and it also certainly has nothing
59:41
to do with Russia.
59:42
I mean, this was being negotiated with the Soviet Union.
59:45
This was before the demise of the Warsaw Pact.
59:50
But in 2007, at the security conference in Munich, Putin shocks world leaders by giving
59:59
a very, very strongly worded speech about how Russia was not going to take it anymore.
60:04
MICHAEL KIRK – Can you take me there?
60:07
What has angered him, or what has happened in his world that he can go to Munich and
60:12
so forcefully declare?
60:14
It’s not declaring war, but it’s certainly declaring verbal war on, in an unspoken way,
60:23
the United States of America.
60:26
MASHA GESSEN – This is the end of his second term, and he has really been transformed.
60:32
He has already taken over the media in Russia.
60:36
He’s already canceled gubernatorial elections.
60:39
He’s canceled elections to the upper house of the Russian parliament.
60:44
He’s solidified power.
60:47
He is ruling very much like a dictator.
60:50
The process of dismantling what democratic mechanisms had existed in Russia was completed
60:55
in his first term, and this is the end of his second term.
60:59
Also, Russia has been living for seven years through a period of unprecedented prosperity,
61:04
because oil prices just keep climbing.
61:07
Money is just flowing into Russia.
61:10
Putin has enriched himself.
61:12
Everyone around him has enriched himself.
61:14
At the same time, he has emasculated the men who used to be known as the oligarchs.
61:20
They’ve ceded their political power to him, and a lot of their financial power, in exchange
61:25
for safety and security of those assets that they’re allowed to keep.
61:29
He’s really the patriarch of this country.
61:34
In Russia itself, people perceive him as enjoying the respect of the West, but he doesn’t
61:42
feel any respect, because the United States has invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq without
61:51
consulting with Russia, and in fact ignoring Russia’s wishes.
61:53
The United States has pulled out of the ABM Treaty.
61:56
And worst of all, NATO has expanded.
61:59
He’s been saving all of this resentment up because there he is—he feels like he
62:07
has transformed his country.
62:09
He’s made it great again, and he still doesn’t get any recognition of that when he meets
62:14
with world leaders.
62:15
He is still treated very much like a junior partner by everybody.
62:20
And so he comes to the security conference in Munich and says, basically: “I don’t
62:25
have to mince words, do I?
62:28
I can say what’s on my mind.”
62:31
And then he just lashes out, and he lists all these resentments, especially the NATO

51:56
In the end of his first year, George W. Bush becomes president of the United States.
52:02
One of the things we’ve noticed in tracing the arc of this gigantic narrative is how
52:09
often an American president arrives to a Russian president with hope that all is going to get
52:16
better, from Gorbachev on; democracy will flower now, and thank God.
52:23
…
52:24
MASHA GESSEN – Well, I want to say one more thing about what happened with George W. Bush
52:27
becoming president in ’99, or in 2000, is that Putin had just become president in a
52:34
very orderly manner.
52:38
He was handpicked by the previous president.
52:42
An election was scheduled.
52:43
He won it handily.
52:46
Everything went according to plan in his popularity.
52:50
His margin of victory was pretty good.
52:53
It was, I think, 53 percent in his first election.
52:57
And his popularity was sky-high.
52:58
Then America goes and has this ridiculous election that isn’t settled for two months
53:08
or two and a half months, and that just goes to show you how a democracy is such an imperfect
53:15
system, and probably an outdated and failed system.
53:19
I’m convinced that that’s the first time that Putin really watched an American presidential
53:24
election closely.
53:25
He’d never thought of himself as somebody who existed on that level.
53:30
Now he’s waiting to see who his counterpart is going to be, and he can’t even know who
53:39
his counterpart is going to be for two and a half months, because democracy is such a
53:42
mess.
53:43
…
53:44
MICHAEL KIRK – When they meet, the way the stories go, and especially—I’ve just talked
53:46
to a lot of American diplomats and ambassadors who were there at that first meeting.
53:52
This is the “I looked in his eyes and saw his soul” meeting.
53:57
Some people tell the story that here is a KGB guy who’s the president of Russia, who’s
54:03
studied Bush, knows he’s an evangelical, knows that he has a penchant and a weakness
54:07
for a religious story, dredges up a religious story out of his own past, the crucifix-in-the-ashes
54:14
story, and somehow they connect.
54:19
Tell me what you know about that version of the story.
54:23
MASHA GESSEN – Actually, I have nothing to add to that version of the story.
54:28
What I would say is that early on he was a charmer, early on in his term as president.
54:34
That’s no longer the case.
54:37
But everyone I’ve talked to [who] had a meeting with him in the first year or two of his becoming
54:46
acting president and then president came away transformed, at least for the first few minutes.
54:51
Well, actually, with one exception: one of the journalists who worked on that official
54:56
biography.
54:58
But everyone else felt that he sort of, he turned on the recruiter charm, and he was
55:06
well-briefed, and he always used a little personal anecdote to connect with you on the
55:12
grounds that he figured would be good for connecting.
55:18
A few years down the road, he stopped paying attention.
55:21
He would start mixing people’s names up or the facts of people’s biographies.
55:26
By the time I met him in 2012, he wasn’t even briefed.
55:32
He knew almost nothing about me, like he hadn’t bothered.
55:37
But early on, he was a real recruiter.
55:40
And I think he certainly worked his charm on George W. Bush, which apparently wasn’t
55:46
very difficult.
55:47
MICHAEL KIRK – There’s a lot of hope, of course, that they’ll do all kinds of things.
55:54
A lot of people have said—we’ll ask them: “What did Putin want from Bush?
56:00
What did Russia want from Bush?
56:02
But more importantly, what did Putin want from Bush and America?”
56:06
What do you think that was?
56:07
MASHA GESSEN – Well, Putin wanted the return of a bipolar world.
56:15
That was his agenda from the very beginning.
56:17
He wanted to be treated with respect.
56:19
He wanted people back home to see that he was being treated with respect.
56:24
This was also coming very soon after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, right, which, for the
56:35
Russian political establishment and for a lot of Russian people, was a really difficult
56:40
pill to swallow.
56:42
…
56:43
The U.S. and its allies decided to bomb Serbia and Kosovo to resolve the Kosovo crisis without
56:50
consulting with Russia.
56:51
And to make matters worse, they started bombing, or the U.S. started bombing when Yevgeny Primakov,
57:00
the then-prime minister, was in the air, on his way to the United States to meet with
57:04
Vice President Gore.
57:07
So they didn’t even make a show of informing Russia before starting bombing, never mind
57:13
consulting Russia, and that was really insulting for the entire Russian establishment and a
57:20
lot of Russian people.
57:23
One of the things that Putin wanted to project was that that kind of thing was never going
57:28
to happen again.
57:30
MICHAEL KIRK – Then America pulls out of the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, not really
57:36
consulting.
57:37
In fact, he begged Bush not to do it.
57:41
They invade, or we invade Iraq, taking down an authoritarian figure who stands astride
57:48
a big—somewhat in the sphere of influence of Russia.
57:54
Russia joins with France and Germany and says: “Please don’t do this.
57:57
Are you guys going to do this?
57:58
Are you really going to do this?”
58:00
And they do it with a certain level of impunity, at least.
58:06
It seems that the word you used early to describe what he was hoping for, which is respect,
58:11
was hardly in the air between George W. Bush and the United States of America, and Vladimir
58:16
Putin and Russia.
58:17
MASHA GESSEN – And what’s even worse, I think from Putin’s point of view, is the expansion
58:22
of NATO.
58:24
It doesn’t ever sort of—in his worldview, it is not a question of these countries asking
58:35
to be part of NATO.
58:36
It is merely a question of the United States deciding that NATO should expand to the Russian
58:43
border.
58:44
He’s also convinced that the Soviet Union got assurances from the United States that
58:52
NATO would not be expanded.
58:54
…
58:55
The quote that Putin likes to bring up was a quote by the then-NATO commander given during
58:59
the negotiations about the reunification of Germany.
59:05
The promise was that there would be no NATO troops stationed on what had been East German
59:11
territory.
59:12
That’s the quote.
59:13
And that was a matter of negotiations.
59:16
This was, first of all, this was a negotiation with the Soviet Union, and then—and the
59:21
Soviet Union was pushing for a solution where somehow Germany would be united.
59:26
But East Germany still wouldn’t be a part of NATO.
59:30
And the compromise solution was that there would be no troops on what had been East German
59:36
territory.
59:37
That has nothing to do with NATO expansion as such, and it also certainly has nothing
59:41
to do with Russia.
59:42
I mean, this was being negotiated with the Soviet Union.
59:45
This was before the demise of the Warsaw Pact.
59:50
But in 2007, at the security conference in Munich, Putin shocks world leaders by giving
59:59
a very, very strongly worded speech about how Russia was not going to take it anymore.
60:04
MICHAEL KIRK – Can you take me there?
60:07
What has angered him, or what has happened in his world that he can go to Munich and
60:12
so forcefully declare?
60:14
It’s not declaring war, but it’s certainly declaring verbal war on, in an unspoken way,
60:23
the United States of America.
60:26
MASHA GESSEN – This is the end of his second term, and he has really been transformed.
60:32
He has already taken over the media in Russia.
60:36
He’s already canceled gubernatorial elections.
60:39
He’s canceled elections to the upper house of the Russian parliament.
60:44
He’s solidified power.
60:47
He is ruling very much like a dictator.
60:50
The process of dismantling what democratic mechanisms had existed in Russia was completed
60:55
in his first term, and this is the end of his second term.
60:59
Also, Russia has been living for seven years through a period of unprecedented prosperity,
61:04
because oil prices just keep climbing.
61:07
Money is just flowing into Russia.
61:10
Putin has enriched himself.
61:12
Everyone around him has enriched himself.
61:14
At the same time, he has emasculated the men who used to be known as the oligarchs.
61:20
They’ve ceded their political power to him, and a lot of their financial power, in exchange
61:25
for safety and security of those assets that they’re allowed to keep.
61:29
He’s really the patriarch of this country.
61:34
In Russia itself, people perceive him as enjoying the respect of the West, but he doesn’t
61:42
feel any respect, because the United States has invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq without
61:51
consulting with Russia, and in fact ignoring Russia’s wishes.
61:53
The United States has pulled out of the ABM Treaty.
61:56
And worst of all, NATO has expanded.
61:59
He’s been saving all of this resentment up because there he is—he feels like he
62:07
has transformed his country.
62:09
He’s made it great again, and he still doesn’t get any recognition of that when he meets
62:14
with world leaders.
62:15
He is still treated very much like a junior partner by everybody.
62:20
And so he comes to the security conference in Munich and says, basically: “I don’t
62:25
have to mince words, do I?
62:28
I can say what’s on my mind.”
62:31
And then he just lashes out, and he lists all these resentments, especially the NATO
62:37
expansion, referring to a nonexistent agreement, a nonexistent promise that NATO would never
62:44
expand.
62:45
It’s a total change of tone that comes as a complete surprise to his Western counterparts.
62:51
MICHAEL KIRK – Then one of the other things we do is we’re tracking the development
62:58
of military power, including hybrid power and including cyber and information war and
63:06
hard power.
63:13
Things begin to happen.
63:14
Estonia is two months later.
63:17
Then Georgia 1, or Georgia 2, Ukraine—all of it begins to happen, and all of it feels
63:25
like a rehearsal for something, or a perfecting of the military might.
63:34
Help me understand what he’s doing in terms of military power and where that fits into
63:40
this sense I’m getting from you, that he’s looking for not only making Russia great again,
63:45
but making people believe Russia is great again.
63:48
MASHA GESSEN – So he starts increasing military spending.
63:55
First it’s not extraordinary.
63:56
Now it’s quite extraordinary, the amount of money that Russia has been spending on
64:01
the military.
64:03
But he’s certainly interested in military reform.
64:07
A lot of people believe that he has militarized the Russian power establishment.
64:11
There are some counterarguments against that, but I mean, he loves his generals, and he
64:18
loves talking about how he’s bringing the military back.
64:23
He’s also investing money in ways of waging hybrid warfare, and an excuse to test some
64:34
of that presents itself.
64:36
Really, it’s just—it’s even hard to call it—it’s a pretext.
64:41
In the spring of 2007, Estonia moves a monument to
64:55
a Russian soldier, right?
64:58
When the Soviet Union occupied Eastern and Central Europe in 1945, it erected monuments
65:13
to the liberation of those countries, in the centers of every capital of those occupied
65:21
countries.
65:23
Now, some countries have chosen to look the other way, like Austria, which still has a
65:28
giant monument to its liberation by the Soviet soldiers in central Vienna.
65:38
But for some countries, it was much more problematic.
65:40
And for Estonia, which had been not only under Soviet occupation for half a century, but
65:49
really based its post-Soviet identity on the idea of occupation, right, to have that monument
65:59
in the center of town was really problematic.
66:03
It also became a focal point for both Estonian nationalists who would deface the monument
66:13
and [for] pro-Russian gatherings.
66:19
Estonia has a huge ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking population of non-citizens.
66:25
So this was—it was a problem in town.
66:32
They decided to solve this problem by moving the monument to a military cemetery.
66:36
The monument included 12 graves, so they moved the monument to a military cemetery, and Russia
66:45
really could have reacted in any number of ways, but Russia reacted with outrage.
66:49
Now, another thing that Putin had been doing is he had been creating these youth movements
66:52
sort of semi-vigilante, military in style if not—though not armed, basically para-armies
67:07
of young people to support the Kremlin.
67:11
So they are unleashed on the Estonian Embassy in Moscow.
67:16
The Estonian Embassy is essentially occupied for three days, and these so-called activists
67:25
demand that the Estonian ambassador go home.
67:30
The ambassador finally went home officially on vacation, but they said, “OK, our job
67:35
is done,” and left.
67:36
But at the same time—and Estonia is the most technologically advanced country in the
67:45
world.
67:47
Its entire government is electronic.
67:49
It’s the first country to offer e-citizenship.
67:53
Everything is on a chip.
67:54
You get stopped for a traffic violation or you go see a doctor, you use the same ID card
67:59
with a chip in it.
68:00
And all of a sudden, the entire Estonian system of government goes down because of pretty
68:08
primitive but enormous DDoS attack, [Distributed] Denial of Service attack launched on Estonia.
68:18
At the time, Russia denies that it’s involved.
68:20
Two years later, the leader of one of those youth movements says, “Yeah, it was an army
68:25
of volunteer hackers who unleashed that war.”
68:31
But it really shows Estonia who’s boss, because Estonia may be the most technologically
68:38
advanced country in the world, and it may have built a great democracy, but it’s just
68:40
1.2 million people, and you unleash 1.2 million hackers on them, and they can’t stand up to
68:49
it.
68:50
MICHAEL KIRK – How much of this and the Orange and Rose Revolution responses by Russia are
68:58
manifestations of Putin’s temper?
69:00
MASHA GESSEN – I think it’s both his temper and his perception of the world as essentially
69:08
hostile.
69:09
He personally perceives the world as essentially hostile, not just hostile to Russia, but hostile
69:18
to him, hostile to people he loves, just a really dangerous place.
69:27
So every time something happens, it’s probably a sign of danger, and the revolutions in both
69:35
Georgia and Ukraine were signs of danger.
69:39
In fact, in 2004 Ukraine had an election.
69:44
The election was very clearly rigged.
69:46
People started protesting in the streets, and eventually the Supreme Court, the Ukrainian
69:51
Supreme Court, ruled that—invalidated the results of the election and called for a third
69:57
runoff election to set things right.
70:00
Now, there were a couple of things that, for Putin, I think, were indications of danger.
70:05
One is— there’s an obvious one—which is that an independent judiciary is really dangerous
70:11
for a leader who relies on the rigged elections.
70:14
But again, people in the streets is a really frightening sight to Putin.
70:21
People in the streets can make all sorts of things happen, so instead of sort of watching
70:25
it and thinking, oh, we don’t have an independent judiciary, so people can come out in the streets
70:30
and then go right back home, because they can’t set in motion any mechanisms, because
70:37
he’d long since reversed judicial reform in Russia, which didn’t get very far in
70:41
the first place, instead he sees people in the streets wreaking havoc.
70:46
But he’s also convinced that people don’t just come out into the streets.
70:51
They have to be driven by somebody.
70:53
There has to be a puppet master.
70:55
Somebody’s funding them, and it’s probably the United States.
71:00
That’s actually when he started creating these youth armies.
71:07
There’s a wonderful Australian scholar named Robert Horvath who calls it “Putin’s preventive
71:11
counterrevolution.”
71:14
He launched a counterrevolution in his own country without waiting for a revolution to
71:18
happen, but he was terrified of a revolution like the one in Ukraine or the one in Georgia.
71:24
The one in Ukraine is known as the Orange Revolution, and the one in Georgia is known
71:27
as the Rose Revolution.
71:29
Nothing like that would ever happen in Russia, because there was already an army of young
71:33
people in place to basically to fight the protesters in the streets if they should come
71:37
out into the streets.
71:39
MICHAEL KIRK – By the time Obama comes in—we’re talking about the reset—[Dmitry] Medvedev
71:47
is in.
71:49
Is it an obvious fiction—was it an obvious fiction to you what it was going to be, or
71:57
is it an irrelevant fiction?
71:58
He [Putin] is still the most powerful guy in the country no matter what?
72:01
I know to Obama and Hillary, it seems like they—and we’ve talked to lots of people
72:07
who are around them—they really had high hopes that it was a true reset moment.
72:13
MASHA GESSEN – … I think at this point I can probably say it.
72:22
I was able to observe a little bit of that policymaking, and part of it was this idea,
72:30
this cynical and I think overconfident idea that if the United States empowered Medvedev,
72:38
then he would become the actual president.
72:43
I think that there were certainly intelligent people in the State Department at the time
72:48
who knew perfectly well that it was a fiction, and the basic understanding in the State Department
72:53
was that yes, it’s a fiction, but maybe we can make it real.
72:58
MICHAEL KIRK – So what did you witness?
73:01
What did you see?
73:02
What can you talk about?
73:07
MASHA GESSEN – I witnessed some of those, sort of the policymaking, and the idea—I
73:15
mean, everybody on the team, on the Russia team, I think in the State Department, did
73:21
realize that Medvedev was a fiction; he was a placeholder.
73:26
But there was a hope that sometimes these things take on a life of their own.
73:32
They really do.
73:33
I don’t think it’s—it’s not a crazy idea.
73:36
In fact, Putin was very much that kind of phenomenon as well, right?
73:41
He was sort of a fake accidental president, and then he was a real one.
73:47
I think that what they underestimated hugely was just how entrenched the clan system that
73:56
Putin had put in place was by 2008 when he put Medvedev in that chair as a placeholder.
74:08
I think that’s best described as a mafia state, which is a term invented by a Hungarian
74:15
scholar named Bálint Magyar, who actually makes a very strong argument that it’s important
74:21
to understand that it’s not crony capitalism or a kleptocracy; it’s a mafia state.
74:27
It’s administered by a patriarch, and power is distributed by the patriarch, just as money
74:32
is distributed by the patriarch.
74:34
Putin was still the patriarch.
74:35
It doesn’t matter what title he had.
74:38
I think they also didn’t realize, and I didn’t realize this until probably a couple
74:42
of years into the so-called Medvedev administration, that Medvedev just had absolutely no resources.
74:51
He had a couple of people working for him, a press secretary and an assistant, and like
74:56
one other guy.
74:58
Everything was concentrated around Putin.
75:01
At the same time, Medvedev had—legally, he had the right to fire Putin.
75:07
The president can fire the prime minister.
75:09
MICHAEL KIRK – But he’s not going to do that.
75:13
MASHA GESSEN – Well, one could hope that he would do that.
75:16
Then it’s very hard to sort of to discuss a counterfactual.
75:21
Like if the United States had not gone for the reset, would it have worked any better?
75:29
I don’t know.
75:31
I think that the fact that the reset came after the war in Georgia, and the war in Georgia
75:43
was technically fought under the Medvedev administration, and to sort of come to Russia
75:52
and say, “We’re willing to write it off, you know, write off the annexation of a third—of
75:59
a neighboring country,” it’s deeply immoral.
76:07
It also so happens that it was completely ineffective.
76:11
So the U.S. sacrificed some of its key foreign policy principles for nothing.
76:20
MICHAEL KIRK – It seems like it all falls apart, really falls apart starting with the
76:29
Arab Spring, from [Egypt’s Hosni] Mubarak to [Libya’s Muammar al-]Qaddafi and the
76:37
vote Medvedev makes.
76:42
But when do you think it—what was the tipping point in that sort of false presidential moment?
76:49
What happens?
76:51
MASHA GESSEN – The false presidential moment?
76:53
MICHAEL KIRK – Well, it makes Putin reassert himself actually and say, “I’m going back
76:57
in.”
76:58
MASHA GESSEN – Oh, I think he was always planning to go back.
77:00
MICHAEL KIRK – No matter what?
77:02
MASHA GESSEN – Yeah, I don’t think that he ever considered the possibility of not
77:09
running for election again.
77:11
If he did, it was more of a possibility of changing the constitution to make it basically
77:17
a parliamentary republic.
77:18
MICHAEL KIRK – And then he’d have it anyway.
77:20
MASHA GESSEN – And then he’d have all the power legally.
77:22
There was no way he was going to stay in a legally less powerful position for more than
77:30
four years.
77:32
The fact that the first thing that Medvedev did when he came into office was change the
77:36
constitution to extend the presidency to six years indicates that, from the very beginning,
77:42
the plan was for Putin to then come back in for six years.
77:46
Then it was, you know, it was done right away, and it wasn’t being done for Medvedev’s
77:52
benefit.
77:53
MICHAEL KIRK – When the people hit the streets in the midst of the announcement that he’s
78:01
coming back, and Hillary says, the statement she says around the election, the unfairness
78:08
of the election, and Putin reacts so negatively, negatively enough that, whether it’s a pretext
78:16
or not, he seems to remember it, a lot of people are saying it’s a motivation for
78:20
the attack in 2016.
78:22
How do you read what was happening with the people on the street?
78:26
Here we are again, people on the street, Putin; it’s becoming a familiar pattern.
78:31
But how do you read that, Hillary’s statement and the effect it had on Putin?
78:37
What did that look like from Putin’s perspective?
78:39
MASHA GESSEN – Well, so from Putin’s perspective, I mean by 2011-2012, he has completely lost
78:49
the ability to distinguish himself from his regime, his regime from the country—from
78:55
the state, and the state from the country.
78:57
When he sees people coming out into the streets to protest him and his regime, he sees them
79:05
protesting Russia itself.
79:07
I think that’s a sincere view of the world.
79:11
He knows what’s best for Russia.
79:13
They want to destroy Russia.
79:15
If they want to destroy Russia, then obviously they’re not Russians.
79:19
So they must be—their puppet master—and he’s always been convinced that there are
79:24
puppet masters behind any protest—but their puppet master has to be whoever is opposed
79:30
to Russia.
79:31
Well, obviously, what’s the only thing that’s powerful enough to oppose Russia and to incite
79:42
these protests?
79:43
It has to be the U.S. State Department, because it would be insulting to think that it was
79:46
anything else, anything less than that.
79:50
And Hillary is the secretary of state, so obviously it’s her fault, personally.
79:56
MICHAEL KIRK – Let’s address Sochi, Crimea, Ukraine, all in a kind of moment, if you can.
80:06
What does Sochi mean?
80:09
It’s been going on since late November, early December [2014], down in Ukraine.
80:12
I don’t really need to know the details since I know about [Ukrainian President Viktor]
80:17
Yanukovych and all the rest.
80:19
But it’s to Putin this glorious moment.
80:22
This other thing is happening.
80:24
He hates it for all the reasons you’ve just articulated, and he’s got a kind of plan,
80:28
I guess, to go after Crimea and then down into Ukraine, using his new hybrid forces,
80:34
I suppose.
80:35
MASHA GESSEN – I think that by 2014, really military buildup has become his number one
80:43
priority, and there are a few reasons for this.
80:46
One is that he loves the military.
80:49
He sees it as Russia’s ultimate greatness.
80:51
But the other thing is that he has to become a mobilizational leader.
80:57
The bargain that he had with the population, which is basically exchanging sort of a sense
81:08
of overwhelming prosperity that he was giving them for unlimited power that they were giving
81:14
him, that’s not working anymore, because the Russian economy is becoming stagnant.
81:20
Oil prices haven’t started dropping yet, but because of corruption and because of the overreliance
81:27
on extractive economy, the economic growth has basically slowed to a crawl by 2013, by
81:37
the end of 2013.
81:41
He still has to throw this big party, which he’s been planning for many years.
81:45
He went to Guatemala City personally to lobby for the Olympics.
81:51
Not only that, he gave a speech in English, which he’d never done before.
81:55
I think it was—or was it French?
81:58
Anyway, it was a language that he doesn’t usually use.
82:05
So he has been planning for this great moment.
82:10
And the Olympics—remember, the last Olympics in Russia were the Moscow Olympics in 1980,
82:19
which were supposed to also be a symbol of greatness, and turned into something entirely
82:24
different because the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics over the invasion of Afghanistan.
82:31
So it’s also partly taking revenge for that humiliation of 1980.
82:40
All of that is on one pile.
82:41
And then in the fall of 2013, it turns out that a lot of Western countries aren’t sending
82:51
their luminaries, the first—I think it was the president of Germany [Joachim Gauck] who
82:59
said he wasn’t coming, then Belgium, then someone else.
83:03
Then finally Obama announces his delegation, which doesn’t include an elected official.
83:14
The highest placed official that it includes is a deputy assistant secretary of state,
83:18
which is just an insult.
83:20
And, to add more insult, there are two openly gay former Olympians in the delegation.
83:29
This is about a year and a half into Putin’s anti-gay campaign, because the way that he
83:34
ended up dealing with the protesters was by queer-baiting them and by sort of focusing
83:40
Russia’s ire on the LGBT population.
83:44
There are no good photo ops in Sochi.
83:48
It’s basically, instead of a party, it’s a disaster.
83:52
At the last minute, Putin tried to clean up his act by releasing [Mikhail] Khodorkovsy,
83:57
the former oligarch, who had been a political prisoner for 10 years; releasing the members
84:02
of Pussy Riot, who had been in jail for nearly two years; releasing the 30—I think [thirty]
84:08
two members of Greenpeace who were in a ship that Russia had hijacked in neutral waters,
84:15
in international waters in September, a ship flying the Dutch flag.
84:22
So they release all of those people.
84:24
But it’s too late to save Sochi.
84:27
That adds more resentment to his feelings around Sochi.
84:32
Meanwhile, Ukraine, which is not just Russia’s closest neighbor but very much sort of the
84:39
country that Russia identifies with, and really, really identifies with, right—I mean, Russians
84:44
of all kinds look at Ukraine to understand their own country, and Putin is no exception.
84:50
In Ukraine, there have been these protests going on for now several months, and it’s
84:56
because Ukrainians want a closer association with Western Europe rather than [with] Russia.
85:06
He interprets those protests as anti-Russian.
85:10
But they’ve thrown the country into absolute turmoil.
85:14
Now, so all of that is in place.
85:16
And his military buildup is in place.
85:19
I don’t think it’s a matter of having plans for the Crimea in place.
85:23
It’s a matter of having plans for everything in place.
85:27
It’s like Chekhov’s gun hanging on the wall, except that they have a plan for invading
85:32
every country on the wall, right?
85:35
That’s what a lot of the investment of the military has been, is making plans for how
85:39
are we going to fight this war and this other war?
85:41
How are we going to re-annex parts of Finland, and how are we going to re-annex the Baltic
85:48
states and Moldova and Ukraine?
85:51
So here is the moment to take Crimea.
85:55
And it’s clear, from the way that the Crimean operation was carried out, that it was indeed
86:00
a well-planned operation.
86:01
It was carried out on the spur of the moment when he saw the opportunity, but the plans
86:07
for the operation had long since been designed.
86:13
It was just a matter of implementation.
86:16
Then there are a lot of people around him who want to go further, who want to go into
86:22
Ukraine, and he has nothing to lose by going into Ukraine—not that he actually thinks
86:27
about his losses.
86:28
He’s a brilliant opportunist and not a planner.
86:32
Actually, Sochi is a perfect example of how little he plans.
86:36
Usually, the Olympics aren’t very often held in dictatorships, and dictatorships usually
86:43
clean up their act a year or two before the Olympics, and then do things like arrest all
86:49
the political dissidents and reinstate the death penalty like China did the day after
86:54
the Olympics ends.
86:55
But not Russia.
86:56
Russia didn’t clean up its act because Putin is not a planner, right?
86:59
Putin realized that he had to do something six weeks before the actual Olympics and released
87:04
everybody, but it was too late.
87:05
It’s not like he’s looking ahead to what’s going to happen if he invades Ukraine.
87:10
He invades Ukraine because he can, and because it’s good for mobilization, and it’s worked
87:17
really well for him.
87:19
If you look at his popularity curve, it goes up vertically again, just like it did in September-October
87:30
1999, when he promised to hunt down the terrorists.
87:33
It goes up vertically again, just as the economic expectations curve goes down.
87:45
You never actually see that in a normal country.
87:48
You never see a leader whose popularity is up and holding while people’s subjective
87:54
economic well-being is down, drops down precipitously and holds.
88:02
Sociologists will tell you that those lines have to meet.
88:05
In fact, they have to cross in opposite direction.
88:08
But that doesn’t happen in Russia.
88:12
And I think the reason it doesn’t happen in Russia is because ultimately, Russia has
88:17
reverted to this state of mobilization identification with the state.
88:24
He has delivered what he promised, which is to bring back to people the feeling of identifying
88:30
with something great.
88:31
MICHAEL KIRK – And when they’re hammered with sanctions, does that diminish him in some
88:41
way?
88:42
Does it diminish him with his people?
88:43
MASHA GESSEN – Well, did something really interesting with the sanctions.
88:51
The U.S. and the European Union and Australia and I think a couple other countries introduced
88:57
sanctions, which were designed to—they were based on a ridiculous premise that comes from
89:14
a basic misunderstanding of the way that Russia works, that if they squeezed him economically
89:22
a little bit, his popularity would suffer, people would protest, and then he would have
89:33
to change his behavior.
89:34
First of all, Putin had been power, by that point, for 15 years.
89:44
He had never shown an ability to change course.
89:49
He had never shown that he reacts to pressure with anything but aggression.
89:55
But also, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how his dialog with his people was working.
90:01
By this time, he had cracked down in the wake of the protests, so Russia was two years into
90:06
a full-fledged political crackdown.
90:09
It’s not like he was worried about feedback, and it’s not like protests were a real option.
90:18
But they also clearly weren’t looking at how much more popular he had become because
90:23
of the invasion.
90:26
So sanctions—I’m not opposed to sanctions.
90:29
I just think that sanctions should be based on moral considerations and values, not on
90:35
the idea that they could squeeze him into changing his behavior.
90:40
But after sanctions went into effect, Putin did something extraordinary, which is he made
90:45
the sanctions worse.
90:47
He introduced countersanctions, banned the import of food products from all the countries
90:57
that had joined the sanctions, with the exception of Switzerland.
91:04
That actually was a huge blow to the Russian economy, but especially to sort of individual
91:11
economy, because at the time, nearly all Russian food was imported, partly because it’s an
91:19
extractive economy.
91:20
The ruble had been very strong for many years.
91:23
There was no reason for Russians to make their own food.
91:27
They were importing it.
91:31
The saner rationale for those countersanctions was to jumpstart Russian food production,
91:38
but of course, that’s not how it works, right?
91:42
Prices went through the roof.
91:44
People really felt the squeeze.
91:46
But that actually made the sense of being at war stronger.
91:49
Even though people suffered, Putin’s popularity didn’t suffer, and it still hasn’t suffered.
91:58
The reason that he hates the sanctions is not because they put the squeeze on the Russian
92:03
economy.
92:04
He is concerned about a different set of sanctions.
92:08
He’s concerned about personal sanctions against that—that really make things difficult
92:15
for him and his friends who are banned from entry to this country, who are banned from
92:20
having assets in this country, and who are essentially banned from doing any business
92:25
involving U.S. currency, which really hampers their style.
92:30
MICHAEL KIRK – So let’s take ourselves to the summer of 2016.
92:37
Why does Vladimir Putin, really in 2015 and in the spring of 2016, initiate, unleash the
92:48
hounds if that’s what he did, decide to go in to, invade the presidential election
92:57
in the United States of America in 2016?
93:00
MASHA GESSEN – A couple of things.
93:02
One is that Russia has actually made a habit of being a disruptive force in Western elections
93:14
for a few years now.
93:15
It didn’t begin with the American presidential election.
93:22
A better way to ask the question might be, why wouldn’t Russia try to meddle in American
93:28
elections when it’s made a habit of meddling in democratic elections?
93:32
Now, the reasons for meddling in elections are obvious, and I would actually begin with
93:40
psychological reasons rather than strategic reasons.
93:43
The psychological reason is that Putin is really and truly convinced, and the people
93:48
around him are really and truly convinced, that democracy is an unsound way of running
93:52
things.
93:54
It is messy.
93:56
It is, as he saw with Bush and Gore, doesn’t run very well, and it also probably isn’t
94:06
as honest as everybody says, right?
94:10
In fact, when you ask a Russian official or a Russian patriot about rigged Russian elections,
94:21
they will always say, “You think your elections are so honest?”
94:24
That’s a sense of relief.
94:27
It’s not, you know, this bit of—it’s not hypocritical “What about-ism?”
94:30
It’s sincere “What about-ism?”
94:32
They’re really arguments that democratic elections are rigged.
94:34
Well, if their democratic elections are rigged, why wouldn’t you want a part of the rigging
94:40
if you have an interest in the outcome?
94:42
Of course Russia has an interest in the outcome of American elections.
94:47
It also has an even deeper interest in proving that democracy is as rotten as they say it
94:53
is.
94:55
To prove that democracy is as rotten as they say it is, it is good to help it along in
95:01
becoming more rotten.
95:05
The other thing is that I think in this country, we’ve come to imagine the Russian system
95:11
of meddling as a well-oiled machine or a well-commanded army.
95:21
That’s not what it is at all.
95:23
There are a lot of technically savvy and not so savvy people who want to get federal grants,
95:32
and the Kremlin throws a lot of money at organizations that will sell a good pitch of being able
95:42
to meddle in something or wreak some sort of havoc somewhere, where havoc ought to be
95:48
wreaked, right?
95:50
It’s not so much that Putin sends out an army of hackers; it’s that there are groups
95:55
of hackers who want to take the initiative of doing something really awesome, which is,
96:00
of course, how we get two different groups hacking the Democratic National Committee
96:06
at roughly the same time, without apparently being aware of each other.
96:09
MICHAEL KIRK – Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.
96:12
MASHA GESSEN – Right, Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.
96:17
The whole thing is self-perpetuating and messy in different sorts of ways.
96:23
But of course there’s also the element of his personal hatred for Hillary Clinton, and
96:27
it’s not just hate her.
96:28
I think it’s like Hillary Clinton was impossible as a U.S. president.
96:33
To imagine that he would have to deal with her as a senior partner, a woman—I mean,
96:38
he already has to deal with [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel.
96:44
The lengths that he has gone to to assert his masculine dominance over Merkel is amazing.
96:52
He literally sicced dogs on her.
96:57
He has made indecent jokes in front of her, just to try to discomfort her.
97:07
He hates dealing with a strong woman, and one as president of the United States would
97:13
be just awful.
97:14
I don’t think he ever believed that he was going to be able to help get Trump into office.
97:19
I think in that sense, the people who prepared his briefs read all the same sources as we
97:28
do.
97:29
They were just as convinced that Hillary Clinton was going to win the American election as
97:35
The New York Times was convinced that she was going to win the American election.
97:41
MICHAEL KIRK – So in 2008 and other times, it was obviously espionage, and everybody
97:48
steals everything from everybody.
97:49
It’s when it’s activated through WikiLeaks and others that it changes into pure politics?
97:56
MASHA GESSEN – Well, that’s where it gets really—I mean, we don’t know, right?
98:05
I think that Julian Assange has his own megalomaniacal views of his role in the world.
98:16
He’s certainly alone against the entire world.
98:22
Who made the decision to release the products of the leaks at that particular time?
98:27
I think there’s actually every indication it was Assange.
98:31
How long had he been sitting on that material?
98:33
Did he get it on the eve of the leak, or months and months before?
98:38
We actually don’t know.
98:42
MICHAEL KIRK – One question in passing.
98:49
Nobody’s actually reached out and tried to stop Putin along this long narrative we’ve
98:55
been discussing, that we know of.
98:59
When Ukraine happens, we don’t fire back cyber stuff or close a bank.
99:04
…
99:05
With the lethal arming of Ukrainian rebels or Ukrainian soldiers, one might have said,
99:12
“Well, we’ve stepped up to him and stood up to him,” but maybe not.
99:15
And, as you have articulated, it might have pissed him off, and off we go again further
99:20
and further along.
99:21
We get here, we know it.
99:22
[Then-Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper knows it.
99:25
Eventually the FBI knows it.
99:26
Certainly Obama knows it.
99:28
And there were certainly arguments: “We’ve got to push back here.
99:31
We’ve got to let him know.”
99:33
From what you know about Putin, and what you’ve been talking about this afternoon, how would
99:38
Putin have reacted if there would have been pushback?
99:41
MASHA GESSEN – Again, it’s very hard to argue a counterfactual, and I don’t think
99:49
that Putin’s reaction should be the consideration.
99:53
I think we have known for a very, very long time that Putin is dead set on a particular
99:59
course, and he’s going to pursue it.
100:01
When he gets very strong pushback, he steps back, and then he comes back again in the
100:06
exact same direction, doing the exact same thing.
100:11
The question should not be, what does Putin do?
100:14
Obviously it’s responsible to consider it, but it’s not terribly complicated to predict
100:20
what he is going to do.
100:21
The question should be, what are our values, and what do we do in accordance with our values
100:29
in this situation?
100:30
The sanctions, I think, are a very good example, right?
100:34
The sanctions, as a strategic move, are a failure, and a predictable failure.
100:40
The sanctions, as an expression of American values, wouldn’t have been a failure if
100:45
they had been framed and implemented that way, right?
100:48
It is wrong to do business with a dictator.
100:51
It is wrong to do business with a head of state or with a state that carries out the
100:55
first forcible annexation of land in Europe since World War II.
101:00
In accordance with those considerations, what does the United States do?
101:03
It probably introduces similar sanctions.
101:05
Doesn’t do it step by step the way it was done, because it is not gradually more and
101:13
more wrong to do business with that kind of state.
101:15
It is instantly wrong to do business with that kind of state.
101:18
So you introduce sanctions all at once, and perhaps in somewhat different areas, or perhaps
101:24
not.
101:25
But you don’t do it step by step, because the step-by-step process was intended to show
101:28
Putin that we mean business, and he has to stop.
101:31
Like hell he’s going to stop, right?
101:33
That’s not the kind of pushback that will make him stop.
101:37
You know, again, there’s also basic misunderstanding that he thinks that making life worse for
101:42
his people—I mean, we think that making life worse for Russians is going to make Putin
101:47
stop.
101:48
He has been making life worse for Russians for years, and it certainly hasn’t made
101:54
him stop.
101:56
MICHAEL KIRK – So what do you think Trump—what do you think Putin thinks of Trump?
102:04
…
102:05
MASHA GESSEN – Oh, he very clearly sees Trump as a buffoon.
102:10
Trump is, in some ways, the expression of everything that Putin disdains.
102:14
He disdains lack of control.
102:18
One thing that he also has cultivated as part of his image is his never betraying emotions.
102:25
That’s not true.
102:26
He actually betrays emotions quite a lot, but his idea of himself is somebody who has
102:33
a flat affect and purposefully never shows any emotions and is always calculated in everything
102:42
he does and says.
102:43
Also not true, but that’s how he thinks of himself.
102:46
Trump is the exact opposite of that.
102:49
I mean, I think that that kind of lack of control over his words and actions and emotions
102:58
and reactions makes Putin look down on him.
103:03
And I think, at this point, Putin feels also a little bit betrayed, because along with
103:09
much of the media establishment, and certainly much of Russian media, he has bought the idea
103:14
that he elected Trump.
103:16
He loves that idea.
103:17
He took a couple of victory laps after the election.
103:21
And now Trump hasn’t delivered.
103:26
In a way, Russia is worse off with Trump in office than it was with Obama in office.
103:33
MICHAEL KIRK – Because?
103:34
MASHA GESSEN – Sanctions remain in place.
103:36
There’s no sign that they will ever be removed.
103:38
Trump is less predictable.
103:40
Obama was always—you could basically easily predict that he was going to go for the least
103:45
engagement possible in any given situation.
103:48
It’s not true of Trump.
103:51
Trump liked firing 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria.
103:55
Trump loved dropping the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan.
103:58
It looks really good on television.
104:00
As Trump gets pushed into a corner, what is he going to do to make himself to look good
104:07
on television again?
104:09
Putin understands that kind of thinking very, very well.
104:14
As we speak, things are getting pretty rocky in Syria between Russia and the U.S.
104:22
I was just in Moscow recently, and Russian television is talking about how Trump hasn’t
104:30
sort of made good on his promises.
104:32
Russian television is also spending a lot of time on Syria, on how Russia is waging
104:38
a heroic war against ISIS and Syria, and American-backed terrorist forces are pushing back.
104:48
That’s the narrative.
104:50
America is backing terrorist forces in Syria, and Russia is waging war against them.
104:57
It’s hard to get Russians mobilized behind the Syrian effort.
105:02
It hasn’t been nearly as popular as Ukraine.
105:05
But it’s important to Putin personally.
105:08
And he will not step back from it.
105:10
MIKE WISER – So one of the questions is by 2016 election, there’s a lot of talk of Russian
105:18
botnets, propaganda, influence on social media.
105:22
How does that happen?
105:28
Going back to 2011 and 2012, the Russian government, what does Putin see when, at that point, it’s
105:34
Facebook and social media seem to be driving protests, change and the Arab Spring?
105:40
Is there a moment where they’re reconsidering tactics, are realizing the power and the danger
105:46
of social media after 2012?
105:49
MASHA GESSEN – I wouldn’t overemphasize it.
105:53
I was just talking recently to Adrian Chen, who did that wonderful story on the Russian
105:59
troll factory, and he said, “If I had known that the intelligence agencies were going
106:04
to use my article so prominently in their report, I would have emphasized how incompetent
106:10
they are.”
106:12
It’s not all that we imagine it to be.
106:18
They did catch onto social media.
106:19
They caught onto social media late, and not every agency has even figured out that social
106:27
media exists.
106:28
When the political crackdown began, they didn’t employ social media at all in their investigations.
106:35
They would go through people’s printed out photographs and handwritten notes to try to
106:43
figure out context.
106:44
They never went online to try to figure out how to crack down on people’s actual networks.
106:50
So it’s—they have a lot of money to throw around.
106:54
They are interested in increasing their electronic influence around the world.
107:00
This is true.
107:01
And there are some companies that are enterprising in sort of absorbing that money and doing
107:06
stuff for that money, and they have no scruples about what they do.
107:10
But to imagine it as a concerted effort and as sort of an all-out war on Western democracy
107:16
through high-tech means gives them a little bit too much credit.
107:20
MIKE WISER – But does he change his approach even inside Russia after those protests?
107:26
How does Putin change once he sees all those people in the street?
107:29
MASHA GESSEN – Oh, well, no, what changed when he saw people in the streets was actually
107:34
much more conventional.
107:36
They started arresting people.
107:38
They changed the laws.
107:40
They changed the laws to enable them to prosecute anybody for perceived violations of public
107:49
assembly laws.
107:50
So it used to be that—I mean, the laws were very restrictive in the first place, right?
107:58
You had to get a permit to hold a demonstration, and on that permit you had to indicate how
108:04
many people were coming to the demonstration, and if the number of people who came to the
108:07
demonstration exceeded the number of people on the permit, then you went to jail for 15
108:13
days.
108:14
But that still only hit the organizers of these protests, right?
108:18
So that’s what happened, for example, after the first protest, the first large protest.
108:22
People had a permit for 300 people because that’s how many people used to show up,
108:27
and 10,000 people showed up.
108:29
So the people whose names were on the permit application went to jail for 15 days for all
108:36
those people who showed up.
108:37
What they did, when Putin cracked down, is they changed those laws to be able to prosecute
108:43
anybody who participated in the protests for violations.
108:49
That is a basic instrument of state terror.
108:54
You have to create the mechanism of random prosecutions, because by definition, you can’t
109:00
apply a law like that uniformly.
109:04
If 50,000 people come to a protest, you can’t arrest 50,000 people.
109:10
You can only arrest some of them.
109:11
You certainly can’t send 50,000 people without reinstating the Gulag.
109:15
You can’t send 50,000 people to prison colonies, put them through the courts, etc., etc., so
109:19
you have to pick out a few to make the threat credible to the many.
109:23
But they can’t be the leaders, right?
109:26
They have to be ordinary people.
109:28
So they did that.
109:30
And they prosecuted—at this point, the number of people who have been prosecuted in connection
109:33
with the 2012 protests is over 30, and most of them have gone to jail for three or four
109:40
years.
109:41
These are just ordinary people, right, going to jail for peaceful protests.
109:47
They’re picked out at random, and they’re picked out at random times.
109:50
It can be two years after the protest.
109:52
They say, “We found videotape of you beating up an officer,” and then that person is
109:59
picked up.
110:00
So that’s one thing they did.
110:01
Another thing they did is the “foreign agents law,” which creates unbearable burdens for
110:12
functioning of any NGO [nongovernmental organization] that receives foreign funding.
110:17
Basically they’ve decimated civil society through doing this, and they’ve prosecuted
110:22
a lot of people from various organizations for failing to register as foreign agents.
110:31
They’ve paralyzed the work of many organizations, basically, with these prosecutions.
110:37
Let me just finish.
110:41
The third thing they did is the anti-gay campaign.
110:44
The anti-gay campaign is, it’s much more of a sort of standard scapegoating campaign.
110:51
But queer is a perfect stand-in for everything that Putin perceives the protesters to be.
110:56
They’re foreign; they’re other; they are something that didn’t exist in the Soviet Union.
111:01
We’ve only had queers since the Soviet Union collapsed.
111:06
They’re a stand-in for everything Western and everything imported.
111:12
And it gets traction with sort of this desire to return to an imaginary past with the traditional
111:18
values, whatever they were.
111:20
That’s also unleashed a lot of violence on people who are perceived to be gay.
111:26
So that channels a lot of the violent impulses in the population.
111:31
MIKE WISER – So what does Putin want now?
111:35
He started wanting respect from Bush.
111:37
But where are we at this point?
111:38
What’s his approach to the West?
111:40
MASHA GESSEN – Oh, he still wants the same thing.
111:42
He still wants a bipolar world.
111:45
The Syria story is actually a perfect example of how this unfolded.
111:49
You know, Putin’s happiest moment came in September 2013, when he hijacked Syria.
111:55
If you recall, Obama said there was a red line, and then he couldn’t get congressional
112:02
support for intervention in Syria.
112:04
Then he decided not to do it without congressional support, and he basically was losing face.
112:11
Putin stepped in and allowed him to save face and said that he was going to negotiate a
112:19
chemical disarmament with [Bashar al-]Assad.
112:22
He wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, which the Times published, that was just perfect
112:30
Soviet use of American rhetoric against the United States, calling out the U.S. for its
112:39
willingness to violate international law.
112:41
I mean, this is the man who annexed huge chunks of neighboring countries.
112:50
So that was—he was on top of the world then.
112:54
And then, a year later, suddenly he is an international pariah.
112:59
Nobody comes to his party.
113:03
He’s under sanctions.
113:05
I mean, Ukraine, he could have anticipated that there would be a strong reaction.
113:09
But the anti-gay campaign, he certainly never anticipated that there would be an international
113:14
outrage over it.
113:16
So he comes back to the U.S. for the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, Sept. 20,
113:21
2015, with a proposal.
113:28
He spoke at the General Assembly of the United Nations, and he basically articulated his
113:31
proposal.
113:32
His proposal was that a new international coalition, an anti-ISIS coalition modeled
113:38
after the anti-Hitler coalition should be formed.
113:45
What he means is, because the Soviet Union was part of the anti-Hitler coalition, the
113:51
Soviet Union got to be a superpower and got to have Eastern Europe.
113:58
He wants the same thing.
114:01
He wants to enter into this coalition with the United States and get to be a superpower
114:05
again, and also take parts of the world that he wants, which is not necessarily former
114:11
Soviet territories, but certainly what he’s already taken and some more.
114:15
Obama didn’t even meet with him.
114:19
He was completely snubbed.
114:24
He went back to Moscow humiliated, untended to.
114:32
Russia started bombing Syria a week later, and has been ever since.
114:36
The war, Russia’s participation in the war in Syria, is basically an attempt to blackmail
114:44
the United States into giving Russia its superpower status back.
114:49
JIM GILMORE – I think you missed the back in September of 2004, Beslan and what it represented,
114:57
and why it was important to understand about what was going on there.
115:11
MASHA GESSEN – Beslan was, if you could imagine, an even more shocking terrorist attack than
115:17
the explosions that killed people in their sleep.
115:19
That was Beslan, the siege of a school in the south of Russia, where nearly 1,000 people
115:29
were taken hostage.
115:31
Then more than 300 people died, most of them children.
115:37
As we learned, thanks to an independent investigation carried out over the next couple years, the
115:46
deaths of those children were really the FSB’s doing, the federal troops’ fault.
115:55
They shelled the school at point-blank range.
116:00
They fired at it from tanks.
116:04
A lot of the children who burned alive because of a fire that raged, because the school was
116:13
shelled at point blank range.
116:19
I think that they were trying to do everything to maximize the number of casualties, to maximize
116:23
the shock effect.
116:24
It’s also possible that they were just so inhumane that they would just do it without
116:33
even having that goal in mind.
116:37
But Putin used Beslan as a pretext for canceling gubernatorial elections.
116:46
He framed it as an antiterrorism measure.
116:52
It was a cynical move, because clearly his very detailed decree in canceling gubernatorial
116:57
elections had been prepared before Beslan happened.
117:03
But at the same time, it also expresses, I think, his basic belief that anything democratic
117:10
is always messy, and the way to respond to extreme violence and to extreme disorder is
117:17
to create more dictatorial powers.
117:20
MICHAEL KIRK – So now my last question, which is, are we at war?
117:25
Is he at war with us?
117:27
MASHA GESSEN – He is.
117:30
Putin has portrayed and the Kremlin-controlled Russian media have portrayed both the wars
117:36
in Ukraine and the wars here as proxy wars against the United States.
117:41
Russia does not perceive itself as being at war with Ukraine.
117:47
It perceives itself as being at war with the United States by proxy of Ukraine.
117:53
And it certainly doesn’t perceive itself as being at war with ISIS, even though it
117:58
says that it’s firing at ISIS fighters.
118:01
It perceives itself as being at war with forces that are backed by the United States in Syria.
118:09
They’re quite open about it, on television.
118:14
It would be beneath Russia’s station to go to war with Syria or to go to war with
118:19
Ukraine.
118:20
Only the United States is big enough to go to war against, and only the United States
118:24
is grand enough to mobilize people enough to have the kind of popularity that Putin
118:32
has come to depend upon. …