From spy to president The rise of Vladimir Putin

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00:00Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia since 1999.

00:04In that time, he shaped the country into an authoritarian and militaristic society.

00:08He successfully invaded two of Russia's neighbors and strengthened ties with Syria and Iran.

00:13He's intent on pushing back against the Western world order, and it appears to be working.

00:18Putin, Putin, Putin, Vladimir Putin, 17 years of the most powerful man in the world.

00:23To understand how one man could have such a powerful influence on this country,

00:27you need to go back to the chaos and corruption that gripped Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

00:33When the Berlin Wall fell, a 40-year-old Putin was working as an undercover spy in East Germany

00:38for the Soviet security agency, the KGB.

00:41The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 new countries, including the new Russian Federation.

00:46In Putin's eyes, Russia had just lost 2 million square miles of territory.

00:50He later called this a major geopolitical disaster of the century,

00:53lamenting that tens of millions of his co-patriots found himself outside Russian territory.

00:59The new government had to sell off nearly 45,000 public businesses,

01:03like energy, mining, and communication companies that had been run by the communist regime.

01:08And it was chaos.

01:09The Russian economy was in a freefall, and all of these companies ended up in the hands of a few extremely wealthy men,

01:14known today as Russia's oligarchs.

01:16At the same time, the new Russian state was having a hard time establishing itself.

01:20Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, was wildly unpopular for cooperating with the West.

01:25And to make matters worse, he was an alcoholic, and many Russians thought he was an embarrassment.

01:30In order to stay in power, he leaned on the support of these oligarchs,

01:33surrendering an immense amount of political power to them.

01:36This graph shows how inequality actually worsened after the fall of the Soviet Union.

01:40This is where Vladimir Putin enters politics.

01:43He leaves the KGB in 1991 and becomes the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.

01:48Putin uses his position to give special treatment to friends and allies in the private sector.

01:52He helps them structure monopolies and regulates their competitors,

01:55quickly becoming a favorite among the oligarchs.

01:58Before long, he's assembled a support network of oligarchs, crime bosses, and security officials,

02:03mostly fellow former KGB officers like he was.

02:06With their help, he rapidly ascends to the upper echelons of the new Russian state.

02:11In 1999, President Boris Yeltsin appoints Putin, still relatively unknown in national politics,

02:18to be the prime minister.

02:19A fierce nationalist, Putin feared Yeltsin was letting the U.S. dominate Russia,

02:23and that NATO, the alliance that worked for decades to contain Soviet influence,

02:27would expand into the new liberated countries and surround Russia.

02:30Putin's goal then became to build a strong Russian state,

02:34one that would be both stable at home and capable of exercising more influence over its neighbors.

02:39And he quickly got his chance.

02:47During the post-Soviet chaos, there was escalating violence in Chechnya,

02:51a region that had informally seceded from Russia in the mid-90s.

02:54Chechen warlords and terrorists were pushing into Russian territory and attacking the border.

02:59In August 1999, a series of deadly bombings killed more than 300 people in several Russian cities,

03:05including Moscow.

03:08Putin, the new prime minister, immediately blames Chechen separatists for the attacks.

03:17He regularly appears on Russian television claiming he will avenge Russia.

03:21The population quickly rallies around him.

03:24Putin's approval ratings jumped from 2% before the bombings to 45% after the bombings.

03:30Journalists later uncovered evidence that suggests Russian security services

03:34could have been complicit in the Moscow bombings,

03:36perhaps knowing they would spark support for a strong man like Putin.

03:39But a closed state investigation quickly quashed any dissenting theories.

03:44So Russia launches a popular and devastating war in Chechnya.

03:47The capital city of Grozny was leveled by Russian bombing,

03:50and some estimate close to 80,000 people died.

03:53And in less than a year, Russia successfully brings Chechnya back under its control.

03:57In December 1999, Yeltsin suddenly resigns, making Putin the interim president.

04:02In May, during the bloody campaign in Chechnya, Putin wins the presidential election.

04:06He begins to shape the Russian state to his vision.

04:09Patronage and corruption remain some of his key tools,

04:12but he quickly suppresses the oligarchs under his rule.

04:15Those that support Putin are rewarded, those that don't are eliminated.

04:18Once Russia's richest man, imprisoned Kremlin critic and former oil magnate,

04:23Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was sentenced to 14 years in jail,

04:26this on a new conviction of embezzling oil.

04:28This is effectively a vendetta from Vladimir Putin for Khodorkovsky getting involved in opposition politics.

04:36With the oligarchy tamed, Putin was now free to move his vision outside of Russia's borders.

04:41At the time, relations with the U.S. were fairly good.

04:44Putin even vacationed at George W. Bush's summer home.

04:47I looked the man in the eye.

04:49I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy.

04:53But things were about to change.

04:55In August 2008, Russia invades Georgia, a former Soviet republic.

04:59It's a display of aggression and strength on behalf of pro-Russian separatists there.

05:03Russia quickly annexes two small parts of Georgia, drawing condemnation from all over the world.

05:08Interestingly, though, Putin was not president during the invasion.

05:11See, the Russian constitution says a president can only serve two consecutive terms,

05:16but sets no limit on the total number of terms one can serve.

05:19So Putin took the prime minister role again, when his handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev served as president.

05:25When Obama's elected U.S. president in 2008, he attempts to reset relations with Russia,

05:30and they make some progress, most notably to limit both countries' nuclear arsenals.

05:34But Putin remains paranoid about U.S. intentions and remains opposed to these new relations.

05:39He's particularly bothered by U.S. interventions in the Middle East, especially in Libya in 2011.

05:44He publicly criticizes Medvedev for not vetoing the action in the U.N. Security Council.

05:49Putin announces his candidacy for president and wins the 2012 election by a preposterous margin.

05:55Injustice, says Dmitry, this outrage can't continue. I'm here to say no to Putin.

06:01Putin starts his third term, once again, amid chaos.

06:05He doubles down on his authoritarian governance style at home and his militaristic strategy abroad.

06:10But in both cases, he showcases a mastery of information.

06:14Since he first took office in 2000, Putin has kept a tight leash on Russian television.

06:19Essentially, all news outlets are state-owned propaganda machines.

06:23His regime decides which stories air and how, always depicting him as the strong Russian leader.

06:28In 2012, he cracked down on human rights and civil liberties, making clear there was no room for dissent in his Russia.

06:35Using state television, for example, he administered a blistering campaign against a feminist and gay rights music group Pussy Riot.

06:41The latest and the loudest such performance was the so-called punk prayer at the Christ the Savior Cathedral,

06:46where they were yelling things which were rather profane to be yelled in church.

06:50Of course, three members of the punk group Pussy Riot were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.

06:57Putin has also bolstered his aggressive foreign strategy.

07:00He's used traditional military methods, like sending weapons and fighter planes to help dictator Bashar al-Assad

07:05fight a bloody civil war in Syria.

07:08But Putin's regime has also developed and fostered the most effective cyber army in the world,

07:13and he's used it to wreak havoc in the West.

07:16These hackers have stolen classified U.S. information, hacked politicians' email accounts,

07:21even shut down Georgia's internet while Russian troops invaded,

07:24and, of course, they tried to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016.

07:29Russian hackers have also launched propaganda campaigns in support of right-wing candidates in Europe.

07:34With this, Putin hopes to exploit and deepen the political divide in Western democracies.

07:39In 2014, the Putin vision culminated in the targeting of Ukraine, another former Soviet country.

07:44Ukraine's president was opening up to the West, and Putin feared he would join NATO.

07:49So Russian hackers launched a propaganda campaign against him, stoking protests in the pro-Russia eastern part of the country.

07:56He then sent in disguised Russian troops, and before long, violence erupts.

08:00In goes the Russian military, and in early 2014, Putin annexes Crimea.

08:04He continues to support the fighting in Ukraine, and as of 2017, over 9,000 people have died.

08:10The world erupts in protests, but Putin doesn't give in.

08:13See, his aggressive foreign policy successfully weakens his neighbors while also rallying Russians around him.

08:18But he has done all of this at the expense of his own people.

08:22His invasions have prompted harsh sanctions from the West, barring Russian businesses from trading in Western markets.

08:28Russian currency has plummeted in value, and the energy industry that Russia relies on is collapsing.

08:33It's hard to imagine Russia can continue under these circumstances.

08:37But the election of Donald Trump brings new hope for the Putin vision.

08:40Trump's rhetoric has been notably soft on Russia.

08:43He could lift sanctions and weaken NATO, potentially freeing up space for Putin's Russia to become a dominant power once again.

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