openpolitics.com

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. …

English