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00:00he is his nation's strongman savior of Russian pride and Russian manhood but Vladimir Putin
00:15sits astride a corrupt state he has got so many guilty secrets so much money is being stolen so
00:21many people have been killed this is a president with an astonishing past if you put these people
00:28in the United States or in Canada and check what they've done they're criminals I'm Jillian
00:35Findlay and this is the fifth estate
01:05it's May 2012 and Vladimir Putin arrives at the Kremlin to be sworn in for the third time as
01:15Russia's president it's an historic day the culmination of a remarkable ascent from unemployed
01:23spy to modern-day czar this man has a remarkable story too Andre Zikov was once the city of St.
01:34Petersburg's top police investigator in 1999 he wanted to arrest Vladimir Putin on charges of
01:42corruption could Putin be held criminally responsible based on the evidence that has
01:51already been gathered absolutely yes this is for the Russian scholar Karen del Wecher has come to
02:00the same basic conclusion I mean a whole range of economic crimes abuse of power abuse of his
02:09official position involvement in relations with organized crime knowledge about money laundering
02:20like many in the West that we should have assumed that Putin was a Democrat or at least an aspiring one a former advisor to both U.S. and British governments that we should have written several books on Russian politics her latest turns that hopeful Western assumption on its head I started thinking instead of seeing Russia as a as a democracy in the
02:26process of failing we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding
02:33that that that they're not actually incapable of being Democrats they don't want to be Democrats they don't want to be Democrats what about that let's work on Russian
02:40and if that's correct when did that start when did that start that when did that start the
02:57mean of the Chinese policy there about that you know the way but then that they are not doing this thing in the and it's right now that's the same thing I'm trying to hold you on I mean that you know the
03:05And if that's correct, when did that start?
03:09And that's what took me to the 90s,
03:11because they were stealing from the very beginning.
03:16Russia in the 90s was a desperate place.
03:20The certainties of the old Soviet system were gone.
03:24What would replace it wasn't clear to anyone.
03:27Least of all to a young ex-KGB officer named Vladimir Putin.
03:33In 1990, he'd returned from a posting in East Germany and was out of work.
03:39But he did have an important contact in St. Petersburg City Hall.
03:48Anatoly Sobchak, his former law professor,
03:50would soon become the city's first democratically elected mayor.
03:55When he did, he appointed Putin his deputy,
03:57and, crucially, to chair the city's committee on foreign economic relations.
04:04He was the linchpin.
04:07He controlled which foreign companies could register their offices
04:11and receive offices.
04:14After all, remember, all this property was Soviet property.
04:17The Soviet Union hadn't fallen yet.
04:19So how was a company going to get access to property
04:22to set up a branch in St. Petersburg?
04:27Putin.
04:28Putin would have to assign it.
04:31His star rose quickly,
04:34and in a hint of image-making to come,
04:36Putin commissioned a documentary about himself
04:38called simply Power.
04:40But there were many sources of power in St. Petersburg in those days,
04:48some of them criminal.
04:50Sobchak needed a person who could work in the shadows,
04:53and according to political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky,
04:57Putin was perfect.
04:59St. Petersburg called the bandit capital of Russia,
05:03gangster capital of Russia,
05:05at that moment,
05:07and the mayor's office should communicate to those groupings some way.
05:11But, of course, Anatoly Sobchak could not be involved in such contacts,
05:15and it was Vladimir Putin who was in charge.
05:20But Putin had his work cut out for him.
05:23The collapse of the Soviet system brought terrible shortages,
05:26and there was little foreign currency to buy food abroad.
05:30To fill the shelves,
05:32oil and other resources were to be bartered.
05:35In his propaganda film,
05:37the deputy mayor assured hungry residents
05:39that food was on its way.
05:42The meat oil is 2,2 thousand tons,
05:45the milk is 2 thousand tons.
05:47This is practically breaking into our needs.
05:52But it is surprising,
05:54to be honest.
05:56The trouble was,
05:59most of the food never arrived.
06:02As despair turned to anger,
06:04a city councillor named Marina Salye
06:06was appointed to find out what had happened.
06:11Years later,
06:12she still had all her documents,
06:14and was still clear about what went wrong,
06:17and who she believed was to blame.
06:19So, without going into all the details,
06:26I'll tell you from this document signed by Putin,
06:29all 124 million disappeared,
06:32without a trace.
06:37Without a trace,
06:39because from this list of materials that I have listed,
06:42not a single gram of food came.
06:44And what happened was,
06:57fly-by-night companies were set up,
07:00many of his friends,
07:01who were still around today,
07:02were behind those companies.
07:04The goods went out,
07:06and incomplete or no shipments came back.
07:09So, millions,
07:12millions were made,
07:14just in that episode alone.
07:18Salye turned the case over to prosecutors.
07:21We concluded that Putin and his assistant should be fired.
07:30The city council agreed,
07:32but Subchak intervened to protect Putin,
07:35and it wouldn't be the last time
07:37that the mayor and his deputy
07:38would be linked to corruption.
07:43In a monastery six hours from St. Petersburg,
07:46a man comes seeking peace.
07:48This former federal investigator is haunted
07:52by case number 144-128.
07:57Lieutenant Colonel Andrey Zikov
07:59investigated a construction company
08:01called 20th Trust,
08:03a company registered by Putin's
08:05Economic Relations Committee.
08:07His conclusion?
08:08Crimes had definitely been committed.
08:14So, two and a half billion rubles
08:17were transferred to the company's account.
08:20The way it worked was the funds
08:22were supposed to be used
08:23for specific building projects,
08:25but ended up being used
08:26for completely different purposes.
08:33The investigation tracked
08:35how the city paid 20th Trust to do work,
08:38how the work was never done,
08:40and how much of the money disappeared.
08:42In one case, he says,
08:44siphoned off to build Spanish vacation villas
08:47for Putin and his cronies.
08:51It was theft.
08:55Subchak and Putin should have been jailed
08:59and would be in jail, undoubtedly.
09:01Putin probably first and foremost,
09:03as the greatest number of documents
09:04and orders were signed by him.
09:06Putin would not go to jail,
09:11and neither would Subchak,
09:12although his days as mayor were numbered.
09:17In 1996,
09:18tainted by yet another corruption scandal,
09:21he lost the St. Petersburg election.
09:24His widow,
09:25Lyudmila Naruseva,
09:26remembers difficult days.
09:28Sobchak and Putin,
09:29in 1996,
09:30when Subchak stopped being mayor,
09:36as is often the case in the Russian elite,
09:38a lot of people immediately
09:40turned their backs on him.
09:44Vladimir Putin was nearly the only one
09:46that didn't do that.
09:51That loyalty would soon be tested.
09:54Under questioning by prosecutors,
09:56Subchak apparently suffered a heart attack,
09:59was rushed to hospital,
10:00and eventually right out of the country.
10:03In a highly orchestrated departure,
10:05the ex-mayor fled justice
10:07on a national holiday weekend,
10:10aboard a private plane
10:12arranged by Vladimir Putin.
10:14Vladimir Putin helped me organize that,
10:18risking everything.
10:20Weeks later,
10:21Subchak would re-emerge in Paris,
10:23looking surprisingly healthy.
10:26And Putin's reliability
10:27would be noted
10:28all the way to the Kremlin.
10:34When we come back,
10:35explosions shake a country.
10:38But who's to blame?
10:56By the late 1990s,
11:07Vladimir Putin had moved up in the world again.
11:10Now he was in the Kremlin,
11:12where crisis had set in.
11:15A sick and often drunk Boris Yeltsin
11:17was teetering his way
11:18to the end of his presidency.
11:20His administration, too,
11:22the focus of a massive corruption investigation.
11:26Having parceled out much of Russia's wealth
11:28to a band of oligarchs,
11:30allowed aides and family members
11:32to enrich themselves as well,
11:34there was fear in the Yeltsin camp
11:36about what might happen
11:37if his successor proved less than understanding.
11:40In Putin,
11:42they saw a man who protected his old boss,
11:44the former mayor of St. Petersburg.
11:46Now there was a new boss who needed help.
11:50Well, I think what they saw in him
11:52was that he had protected Subchak.
11:55And as they said,
11:57he didn't give up Subchak
11:58and he's not going to give us up.
11:59How vulnerable were they at the time?
12:01Very vulnerable.
12:02In 1999,
12:05Yeltsin not only made Putin prime minister,
12:08but declared him his successor.
12:10But there was a problem.
12:12Before Putin could get down
12:13to the business of protecting the Yeltsin family,
12:16he had to get elected.
12:18And Russians had no idea who he was.
12:22And so, once again,
12:23an instant biography
12:25was commissioned of the former spy.
12:27Natalia Gvorkian was one of the biographers.
12:30She now lives in self-imposed exile in Paris.
12:34What was the narrative that they wanted out?
12:36Just, just,
12:37he's everything.
12:38I mean,
12:39where he comes from,
12:40who is he,
12:42why he was in KGB,
12:44or whether he liked it or not,
12:46because everybody was speculating about KGB.
12:48Like, he was,
12:49that was the main thing about him.
12:51He's the KGB man.
12:53That's all.
12:54So, what they wanted to present him,
12:57that he's a normal human being,
12:59he has parents,
13:00he has a biography.
13:04His biography tells of an only child
13:07who grew up poor and scrappy.
13:09An unusual boy,
13:11who at age 16,
13:12went to the local KGB office
13:14and asked to join up.
13:16He was told to come back later.
13:19He did,
13:20with a law degree.
13:21And after training,
13:22he was sent to a posting in East Germany.
13:25Once and always KGB.
13:29Can you explain to a Western audience,
13:32what does that mean?
13:33They are the people who prefer to operate in shadow.
13:39They are the people which are,
13:42like, state is first and people are second.
13:46All these kind of things he has in him.
13:50And he cannot,
13:52I don't think he can change it,
13:54you know.
13:55It's unchangeable.
13:57Before becoming Yeltsin's prime minister,
13:59Putin had already served as head of the KGB's successor agency,
14:04the FSB.
14:05I think the fundamental point about Putin
14:08is his KGB training.
14:09Ed Lucas is an author and senior editor
14:12at The Economist magazine.
14:14He specializes in Russian affairs.
14:16And this organization
14:17attracts a particular breed of people,
14:19tough, unscrupulous people.
14:21And it trains them in a way
14:22that makes them even tougher,
14:24even more unscrupulous.
14:26They have ways of persuading people,
14:28of bending them to their will,
14:29playing all sorts of psychological tricks and games.
14:31It's a tremendous sense of self-righteousness
14:34that they alone are the true guardians
14:35of the national interest.
14:39In the fall of 1999,
14:41the national interest appeared to be in peril.
14:48Bombs obliterated four apartment buildings
14:51in Moscow and other cities.
14:54Hundreds of people killed in their sleep.
14:59All of a sudden,
15:00an unknown prime minister was everywhere.
15:03The embodiment of Russian anger
15:05and revenge.
15:20Author and journalist David Satter
15:22has investigated the apartment bombings.
15:25Putin was viewed by the public
15:29as the person who was avenging
15:31this horrific attack
15:34against innocent Russian civilians.
15:39Whoever was responsible for that attack
15:42had committed a horrible crime.
15:44And by placing himself
15:47in the center of the effort
15:49to avenge that crime,
15:51Putin managed to gain
15:54a lot of instant popularity.
15:59His first act was to point the finger
16:02at Chechen separatists.
16:04The Russian officials said
16:06that there was a Chechen trail
16:08in the apartment bombings.
16:11Not proof of Chechen involvement.
16:13A Chechen trail.
16:14It wasn't clear what that meant.
16:16But it was used in order to justify
16:19a new invasion of Chechnya.
16:24And Putin's invasion would be brutal.
16:30In Chechnya, thousands would die.
16:38In Russia, he would become a national hero.
16:41He quickly became the most popular
16:45politician in Russia.
16:47Even though before the apartment bombings,
16:50he was believed to have had no chance
16:52to succeed Yeltsin as president.
17:00If it was a strategy, it worked.
17:03Six months later,
17:04Russia had a new president.
17:07A modern man, the world thought.
17:08ready to take his country
17:11into the future.
17:19But 15 years later,
17:21questions of the past
17:23still haunt this place.
17:25It's a monument to those
17:26who perished in the apartment bombings.
17:28Why they died and who was responsible
17:31have never been adequately answered.
17:35Mikhail Trapashkin was hired
17:37by one family to try.
17:41He's a former KGB officer himself
17:43and a lawyer who had his own doubts
17:45about the official story.
17:47Doubts that only grew
17:49when he saw the reaction
17:50of his former security service colleagues.
17:56They were telling me,
17:57don't dig into it,
17:58otherwise you will get imprisoned yourself.
18:00And then specifically,
18:02they were telling me
18:02in a straightforward way,
18:04just leave it
18:04if you don't want to have trouble.
18:06And I was saying that,
18:07well, I'm the former investigator
18:08and I have experience
18:10and I can help.
18:11I can run my own investigation.
18:14But there would be many obstacles
18:16put in his way.
18:19The Russian government
18:20destroyed all the evidence
18:21in the case of the earlier bombings.
18:23No sooner had the bombings
18:25taken place
18:26than bulldozers showed up
18:27to remove the rubble,
18:29including human remains.
18:31And in that case,
18:31they destroyed the crime scene.
18:33But then something else would happen
18:37far away from Moscow
18:39that would cast even more doubt
18:41on the government's explanation
18:43of what happened here.
18:44In another apartment building
18:47in another town,
18:49residents noticed strangers
18:51putting sacks
18:52into a basement there.
18:54The residents called the police.
18:55The police called the bomb squad,
18:57which quickly discovered
18:58that the sacks marked sugar,
19:01in fact,
19:01contained the same explosive
19:03that had been found
19:04in the Moscow bombs.
19:06It was a military-grade explosive
19:09called hexagon.
19:10The detonator was one
19:12commonly used
19:13by Russia's military as well.
19:16But what really cemented the scandal?
19:18The strangers
19:19who'd placed the bomb.
19:21Under questioning,
19:22they admitted
19:22they were secret agents
19:24of the FSB.
19:26I think that the evidence
19:28that there was an FSB operation
19:30to place explosives
19:33in the apartment building
19:35in Riazin
19:36is incontrovertible.
19:37To murder your own citizens
19:42as they sleep in their beds
19:43for political reasons,
19:47how do you wrap your head
19:48around that?
19:50On a personal level,
19:52I think it is an example of evil.
19:56I personally have concluded
19:57that it was one of the worst things
20:02I can think of.
20:03The suspicion
20:06that the Kremlin itself
20:07was responsible
20:08for killing so many
20:10has been raised
20:10in several documentaries
20:12and books
20:13and investigations.
20:14But Putin has called
20:16the charge
20:16utterly insane.
20:19In trials
20:19that were widely questioned,
20:21a number of people
20:22were convicted
20:23of the bombings,
20:24none of them Chechens
20:25or members of the FSB.
20:27Since then,
20:28it's proven dangerous
20:29to ask questions.
20:31People who tried
20:35to investigate
20:36the apartment bombings
20:39in many cases
20:41ended up dead.
20:43The list is long.
20:46Sergei Yushchenkov,
20:47a Russian politician
20:48who headed
20:49an investigative committee,
20:50gunned down
20:51outside his home.
20:53Anna Polakowskaya,
20:54a well-known journalist
20:55and Putin critic,
20:57also killed
20:58in her apartment's elevator.
20:59And Alexander Litvinenko,
21:02a former SFB officer
21:03who publicly accused Putin
21:05of ordering the bombs,
21:07died in London
21:08poisoned with polonium.
21:10Each of the murder
21:11investigations
21:12remains clouded
21:13in suspicion.
21:15Sergei Markov
21:16is a longtime
21:16Russian analyst
21:17authorized to speak
21:19on President Putin's behalf.
21:20There have been a number
21:22of credible investigations
21:26that have concluded
21:27that this was the work
21:29of the FSB
21:30and could not have happened
21:31without the knowledge
21:32of Mr. Putin.
21:34It was no one
21:36credible investigation
21:38which shows
21:38that it had been
21:39done by FSB.
21:41All this propagandistic
21:43quasi-investigation
21:46just using tricks
21:49and so on.
21:50I already heard
21:52about this story
21:53about this FSB
21:55exploded the building
21:57in Moscow
21:58maybe hundreds of times.
22:01And all of these people
22:02free,
22:04nobody was in jail.
22:06Don't became victim
22:07of propaganda.
22:08It's very dangerous also.
22:11Mikhail Tropashkin
22:13knows that.
22:13he became a victim too.
22:16One week before
22:17he was to report
22:18his findings
22:19to a parliamentary
22:19investigation
22:20he found himself
22:22pulled over
22:22at a highway roadblock.
22:27So they stopped me
22:28at a police checkpoint
22:29where there was
22:29a crowd of people.
22:32They checked
22:33my identification twice
22:34and checked the car
22:35and they didn't
22:36find anything.
22:37And when I was closing it
22:38one of the officers
22:39threw in a bag
22:40and I told him
22:41that's not mine
22:42why are you putting
22:42that in my car?
22:43He opened the bag
22:45and said
22:46here is the gun
22:47here is the gun
22:47and I was immediately
22:50arrested.
22:55Tropashkin was sent
22:56to prison
22:57for two years.
22:58After his release
22:59he continued
23:00to speak out
23:01about his investigation
23:02and was jailed
23:03for two more years.
23:04Well the apartment bombings
23:11they cost thousands
23:13of innocent lives
23:14both Russian
23:15and Chechen
23:16by starting
23:17a new war.
23:19They brought
23:20to power
23:21someone
23:21from the security
23:24services
23:24and that's
23:25Putin
23:26who
23:27of course
23:29had no interest
23:31in democracy.
23:36The first thing
23:37Putin did
23:38after becoming
23:39president
23:39was grant
23:40Boris Yeltsin
23:41immunity from prosecution
23:42but his administration
23:44quickly moved
23:45to ensure
23:45Putin's safety too.
23:48Case number
23:48144128
23:50that corruption
23:51investigation
23:52in St. Petersburg
23:53quietly went away.
23:55The prosecutor general
24:00gave an order
24:00that the criminal
24:01case should be
24:02terminated.
24:04It was explained
24:04to us
24:05that criminal
24:06investigations
24:06are not pursued
24:07in relation
24:08to the president.
24:13Investigator
24:13Zikov
24:14can only wonder
24:15how history
24:16might have been
24:17different
24:17if he'd been
24:18allowed to arrest
24:19Russia's president.
24:22People would
24:22respect civil law
24:23because everyone
24:24would understand
24:25that if the president
24:26can be prosecuted
24:27then in essence
24:28our officials
24:29would understand
24:29that the law
24:30has to be protected.
24:31As it now stands
24:33Russia has no law.
24:39When we come back
24:41Putin woos the West.
24:44of all Vladimir Putin's
25:06strategies for maintaining power, charm is not to be underestimated.
25:14He seduced Russians with carefully crafted imagery, the West with promises
25:21that he was a man they could do business with.
25:23George Bush famously came to that conclusion after simply looking into his eyes.
25:32Putin was trained in the KGB to deceive foreigners, he has a very sharp eye for human weakness, he's good at persuading people and intimidating them, and he's been doing this with Western leaders, sometimes with charm, sometimes with threats, but boy does he do it.
25:48If Western leaders hoped that Putin would steer Russia towards their ideals of democracy, liberalism and capitalism, a meeting in 2003 would underscore just how wrong they were.
26:06It was an extraordinary gathering in the Kremlin's historic St. Catharines Hall.
26:24In attendance, the nation's oligarchs, those who'd become billionaires under Boris Yeltsin, and who had their own hopes for Putin as well.
26:35The richest of them all, the man with the glasses on the left, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
26:40I got the impression that he was our, a person of our generation.
26:47What do you mean by that, our generation?
26:51Our parents' generation, they have a totalitarian view.
26:59Even if they're against it, as opposed to our generation, we're closer to the West.
27:05But by the early 2000s, the West was cracking down on corruption.
27:09New legislation had just been passed in the United States.
27:13If Russians wanted access to financial markets, they'd have to start playing by new rules.
27:22By 2003, corruption was already the key method of state governance used by the bureaucrats,
27:28and bureaucrats started to demand the kind of money that was impossible to hide.
27:31One had to make a choice, build companies that are open, and list them, or do business Russian style.
27:41In other words, pay bribes, receive privileges, but remain within a closed system.
27:46We decided the question was worth discussing.
27:48In the meeting, Khodorkovsky asked to speak frankly.
27:55As I understand it, what you were essentially doing with the television cameras running was accusing the president of Russia of running a corrupt state.
28:16Khodorkovsky did not accuse him personally of corruption, and this is not how he took it.
28:23Yes, I did accuse his inner circle and him of creating a model that uses corruption as his backbone,
28:31and he told me that we too took part in creating that model.
28:35At that point, Putin turned the tables, reminding Khodorkovsky that his oil company, Yukos, was facing troubles.
28:48It was a veiled threat, delivered with a cold smile.
29:10Did I realize it would provoke Putin's displeasure?
29:17Of course it did, but I thought he would choose the European model, and I was not the only one thinking that,
29:24because it was obviously more beneficial for the country.
29:31But Putin also perceived Khodorkovsky as a political threat.
29:35He'd been funding opposition parties and spending money promoting democracy.
29:40The meeting in the Kremlin sealed his fate.
29:44Eight months later, he was arrested.
29:46His oil company dismantled and divided among Putin loyalists.
29:51Russia's richest man would serve ten years in a Siberian prison camp.
29:59Today, he lives in exile in Switzerland, and has no doubts about Putin's legacy.
30:04At first, he thought he could build a sort of democratic model that he could control.
30:18A model like this does not exist, so he started to slide towards, at first, mild totalitarianism,
30:24and then an increasingly harsh totalitarianism.
30:27If the situation develops further, he will reach a full totalitarian model.
30:34In reality, every authoritarian system is a kleptocracy.
30:37The roots of that kleptocracy have been exposed in a number of investigations throughout Europe.
30:46In Germany, a money laundering probe uncovered documents linking Putin to the Tembovskaya Mafia group in St. Petersburg.
30:54In Spain, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks quoted a Spanish investigator calling Russia a virtual mafia state
31:02and questioning whether Putin was implicated, and whether he controlled the Russian mafia's actions.
31:09If you put these people in the United States or in Canada, and check what they've done, they're criminals.
31:18Valery Morozov is a Russian construction magnate who did a lot of work for the Kremlin before going into exile in London.
31:27Corruption didn't start with Putin, he says, but under Putin, it was perfected.
31:33He changed immediately the whole system, but not changed, he made it different.
31:42He made it in order. It is everywhere. It is a system.
31:52Sergei Kolesnikov is another Russian tycoon who lives in exile.
31:57He fled to Tallinn, Estonia.
32:00He's known the system from the inside and claims the corruption goes all the way to the top.
32:06Russian business entirely depends on protection.
32:17You need protection.
32:19It is called having a roof, or in Russian, kriša.
32:25And the more kriša you have, the more successful your business will be.
32:28So every businessman dreams about giving presents and gaining protection.
32:34And if you give a present to the president, it's like having God himself watching your back.
32:45Kolesnikov used to run one of Putin's gifting projects and explained to us how the scheme worked.
32:51A business puts money into a charity, in this case, Poll of Hope.
32:56Kolesnikov's company, called Petromed, then takes the money to buy medical equipment, purchased from Siemens.
33:04But the profit margin is huge, around 40 percent.
33:08And that money gets funneled through a myriad of other companies to end up in something called Rosinvest.
33:15Before he fled, Kolesnikov says he owned 2 percent of Rosinvest.
33:19Who owned 94 percent?
33:22Vladimir Putin.
33:23All investments, all projects of Rosinvest, were only implemented if Putin said yes to it.
33:35So no activity would have been possible without his acknowledgement.
33:39So where did the money go?
33:46According to Kolesnikov, it was diverted to build a palace.
33:50And not just any palace.
33:53This multi-hundred-million-dollar extravaganza overlooking the Black Sea near Sochi.
33:59Kolesnikov believes his scheme was only one of many ways Putin made money.
34:25Hidden in a labyrinth of shady structures, often held by others.
34:30How much is a matter of speculation?
34:33But also some educated guesswork on the part of Moscow political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky.
34:39I started such investigations more than seven years ago.
34:44And in late 2007, I published my estimate on the assets being counter-repulsion's personal control.
34:52It was the figure of $40 billion.
34:56$40 billion.
34:58A figure that was later confirmed by the CIA, according to press reports,
35:02and that, if true, would make Russia's president one of the richest men in the world.
35:10But what happens when that man no longer sits atop of the system that made him so rich?
35:16A 2007 U.S. State Department cable, again made public by WikiLeaks,
35:22reported that as he neared the end of his second presidential term, Putin was worried.
35:26He understood, according to the cable, that there was no rule of law in Russia,
35:32no way to ensure the safety of his secret assets abroad held by proxies.
35:38To leave power would be dangerous, and Russia's president knew it.
35:45There's never been a good succession model in the Soviet Union or in Russia,
35:50and he's very worried about how he will leave power.
35:54He doesn't want to leave in a coffin, he doesn't want to go to a jail cell.
35:57And he doesn't really have the mechanism to do it,
35:59because he has got so many guilty secrets, so much money's been stolen,
36:03so many people have been killed, so many unspeakable abuses have happened,
36:08that he doesn't really trust anyone to look after him, to keep him safe if he steps down from power.
36:12So in a way, he's both the master of the Kremlin, but also a prisoner in it.
36:18Putin kept his proximity to power by swapping places with his prime minister in 2008.
36:24Three years later, he was pushed aside, and Putin announced he'd run for president again.
36:32That brought masses of angry Russians onto the streets.
36:38And for a time, Russia's strongman almost seemed vulnerable.
36:42But the demonstrations were quelled.
36:48And Vladimir Putin would go on to win his third election in a vote widely noted for its irregularities.
36:56When we come back, Putin on the offensive.
37:02He has a very strong sense of entitlement, that Russia had stuff taken away from it during the Soviet collapse,
37:07and Russia has the right to get it back.
37:08By 2012, Vladimir Putin was Russia's president, again.
37:29This time with an even longer mandate.
37:33Presidential terms had been extended to six years, which means Putin could remain in power till 2024.
37:41But the Russia he rules over is not the country he promised to build.
37:45In the cities, there is a veneer of prosperity, born of high oil prices.
37:55But the economy has been pillaged, productivity little better than in Soviet times.
38:01And in the vast reaches where the majority of Russians live, conditions remain stubbornly medieval.
38:07Putin's greatest fear is that the Russians will realize that his modernization project has failed.
38:16He came into power promising to make Russia into a modern Western country.
38:20And it's still basically a corrupt backward country.
38:26The bottom line, just to put it with two numbers, two numbers is all we need.
38:32The median or the midpoint wealth for the average Russian is $871, according to Credit Suisse.
38:43Very neutral report.
38:46$871 means half the population has more than that in wealth, and half the population has less.
38:53Median wealth in India, over $1,000.
38:56So the average Russian is poorer than the average Indian.
39:01So that's one number, $871.
39:04The other number is $110.
39:07$110 individuals own 35% of the wealth of Russia.
39:14They are the most unequal country, by far, in the world.
39:21Now, to distract from that, a very powerful tool he's got is anti-Westernism.
39:26Blame the West for everything that's going wrong.
39:28Blame the West, indeed, for the isolation and stagnation of Russia.
39:32And couple that with a very powerful propaganda machine, where all the mass media is under Kremlin control.
39:38And he's in a very good position.
39:40He has a very strong sense of entitlement, that Russia had stuff taken away from it during the Soviet collapse.
39:45And Russia has the right to get it back.
39:46In the last year, he has redrawn the map of Ukraine, annexing Crimea and supporting rebels in the former republic's eastern regions.
40:07It's all played well at home.
40:12On the streets where they demonstrated against him two years earlier, the invasion of Crimea had Russians singing Putin's praises.
40:19And the West, concerned about economic ties with Russia, unsure what to do.
40:25And we see a series of escalating provocations against the West, going back many years.
40:32And at every stage, we try and overlook it and keep on trying to bring Mr. Putin in.
40:37We invite him to our summit meetings.
40:40We try and treat Russia as a normal country.
40:42And we think we're trying to calm things down.
40:44But in fact, what we're doing is we're stoking things.
40:46We're giving Mr. Putin the impression that we're not to be taken seriously.
40:49And he can continue to push us harder and harder and harder.
40:52And that's extremely dangerous.
40:56After Putin's adventures in Crimea, the United States called for strong sanctions against Russia.
41:02But in the capitals of Europe, there was reluctance.
41:07Until July, and an act of violence that would change everything.
41:13Malaysian air flight MH17 brought down over eastern Ukraine,
41:17almost certainly by separatists using a Russian-supplied weapon.
41:24298 people were killed.
41:27And the West was finally galvanized to act.
41:32I demand that Russia fully cooperate with the criminal investigation of the downing of MH17.
41:40It's necessary to make it clear that it will not be business as usual.
41:45We're opposing Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
41:47Which is a threat to the world, as we saw in the appalling shoot-down of MH17.
41:57In November, at the G20 meeting in Australia,
42:01Putin was relegated to the margins of the class photo.
42:07Obama and European leaders who'd once welcomed him as one of their own
42:11now distanced themselves.
42:13At lunch, Russia's president seemed a lonely figure, and he left the summit early.
42:23But the country he headed back to was in even deeper crisis.
42:28Plummeting oil prices, a ruble in freefall, and new, robust sanctions beginning to take their toll.
42:34The question now, on many minds, is what does Vladimir Putin do next?
42:44To some, a story from his boyhood could yet prove telling.
42:49It happened in this building where he once shared a one-room apartment with his parents.
42:54And it involved a rat that Putin had cornered, biographer Natalia Gvorkian.
43:02He said that, I learned very good, I learned forever, don't try to push somebody into the corner.
43:11They will jump.
43:14Because when you don't have what to lose, you just, you attack.
43:18I think it's absolutely true about himself.
43:25When he's in the corner, that's why he's dangerous.
43:29He can jump.
43:31He will not say, okay, let's talk.
43:35He will jump.
43:36He will not say, okay, let's talk.
44:06He will not say, okay, let's talk.
44:27He will not say, okay, let's talk.
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