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SPEAKS IN RUSSIAN | 0:00:00 | 0:00:03 | |
CHANTING | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
For over a decade, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
Vladimir Putin has been the undisputed master of Russia. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
But after claims he fixed parliamentary elections, | 0:00:19 | 0:00:21 | |
tens of thousands of middle class Russians took to the streets, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:26 | |
demanding his resignation. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
They put on a symbol of protest - | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
white ribbons. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:33 | |
Putin has announced his intention | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
to remain in charge for at least six more years. | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
This is the story of how he dominated Russia, | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
tried to dominate its neighbours, and how the West dealt with him. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
It began in 1999. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
Russian President Boris Yeltsin was desperate to fill a key post. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
His eyes fell on his intelligence chief. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
Four months after he was appointed Prime Minister, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
Vladimir Putin was summoned by President Yeltsin. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
It was a few days before the millennium new year. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
As soon as Yeltsin resigned, Putin became President. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
He set out to restore Russia as a great power. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
It made the world uneasy about him and his country. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
He spent his first night as President with the front-line troops | 0:03:27 | 0:03:32 | |
fighting to reverse Russia's humiliation in Chechnya. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
By the time Putin was elected President, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
Russia's forces in Chechnya had pushed the rebel fighters into the mountains. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:19 | |
The mountain village of Shatoy was one of the last rebel strongholds. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:58 | |
Putin's triumph boosted his popularity. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:03 | |
But in Moscow, he could not be an effective President | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
while the government remained a mess. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
It regularly went broke, failed to provide basic services, | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
and had to be bailed out by billionaire oligarchs. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
Putin appointed a new prime minister | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
and told him they must finally tackle Russia's biggest problem. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
The first step was to get Russians to pay their income tax. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
So Putin's ministers proposed a massive cut, | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
to just 13% for all, even the rich. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
The Prime Minister himself was worried. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:12 | |
Putin knew that his reforms could not work | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
unless he faced down Russia's business elite, the oligarchs. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
The oligarchs were used to popping into the Kremlin | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
to twist government policies. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
The oligarchs who wielded most political power were media barons. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
In Putin's first month, one, Vladimir Gusinsky, was arrested. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:03 | |
Gusinsky was released | 0:08:27 | 0:08:28 | |
only after he agreed to sell his television network | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
to a state-owned company and leave Russia. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
It was the first step to Putin's taking control of Russian TV. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
Then Putin called the other leading oligarchs to the Kremlin. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
This meeting would radically change the rules of the game | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
for the oligarchs. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:13 | |
These men had won the decade-long struggle for Russia's natural resources. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:20 | |
On the left, the CEO of Gazprom, the world's largest gas company. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:25 | |
The boss of Russia's biggest oil company is next to him. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
These three made their fortunes in advertising, aluminium and oil. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:35 | |
This man controlled the largest nickel company in the world. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
The leading bankers were there. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
So too was the owner of Russia's fastest growing oil company, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:47 | |
Mikhail Khodorkovsky. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:49 | |
He told what happened right afterwards. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
But everybody there knew Putin had just stripped one oligarch of his business | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
and forced him into exile. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
The oligarchs had, Putin thought, been cut out of politics. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
Now he faced an even more powerful opponent - | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
America's new president. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:47 | |
The challenge came soon after George W Bush was inaugurated. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
The Cold War was over but distrust still lingered. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:59 | |
Both sides maintained huge nuclear arsenals. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:03 | |
Agents lurked in both countries' embassies. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
There was an agreement between the sides over the years | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
that you could have so many people within each other's country | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
who were essentially spies, they were intelligence people. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
But gentlemen understand these things | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
and as long as it was within limits then it was accepted. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
But the Russians had been, shall we say, ignoring the rules | 0:13:20 | 0:13:25 | |
and they'd been adding more and more people. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
The FBI asked the new Secretary Of State to expel 50 Russian diplomats. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:34 | |
He made an appointment with the Russian Ambassador. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
He came in just for a courtesy call. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
We drink a little tea, we shake hands, we, you know, | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
we have a nice conversation. "Dobre", "How are you?", "Spasibo" - | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
all the nice courtesy words that are used between Russian | 0:13:52 | 0:13:56 | |
and Americans, and instead he walked out with a problem. | 0:13:56 | 0:14:00 | |
A major problem. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
The Ambassador took away a list of Russians to be expelled. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:06 | |
Then the Secretary Of State tried to limit the damage. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
He said, "Are you really going to do this? | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
"Is this how you want to start out a relationship?" | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
I said, "Yes, we're going to do this, | 0:14:31 | 0:14:33 | |
"and we have to have a relationship that's based on trust." | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
Powell expected the Russians to expel an equal number of American spies - and that would be that. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:45 | |
But he hadn't reckoned with the secretary of Russia's National Security Council, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
like Putin, ex-KGB. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
The Russians carried out their threat. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:28 | |
The Americans feared it would derail the President's big idea. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
They wanted a missile defence shield | 0:15:32 | 0:15:34 | |
to protect America from nuclear attack by rogue states - | 0:15:34 | 0:15:38 | |
like North Korea or Iran. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:40 | |
But this was banned by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
signed when Russia and America faced each other | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
as enemies in the Cold War. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
Russia and the United States | 0:15:48 | 0:15:49 | |
should work together to develop a new foundation for world peace | 0:15:49 | 0:15:54 | |
and security in the 21st century. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:56 | |
We should leave behind the constraints of an ABM Treaty | 0:15:56 | 0:16:01 | |
that perpetuates a relationship based on distrust | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
and mutual vulnerability. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
President Bush sent me to Russia. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:11 | |
The conventional wisdom of the nuclear priesthood | 0:16:13 | 0:16:17 | |
was that Russians would never go along with this issue. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
We made the case to the Russians that missile defences | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
were not about defending Russia against the United States | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
or the United States against Russia | 0:16:30 | 0:16:32 | |
but defending both of our populations against third countries. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
We got a fairly chilly reception. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:48 | |
The Russian side have raised some serious and important questions. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
We began to give them some answers to those questions. We've done a lot of thinking about this subject. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:17 | |
We'll obviously have some more thinking to do. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
'The message we brought back to President Bush' | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
was that if this was going to be done, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
it was going to have to be done top-down. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
He was going to have to do it with President Putin. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
The highlight of George Bush's first presidential trip to Europe | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
was another first - a summit meeting with Putin, at a castle in Slovenia. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:44 | |
Then they go off to be by themselves | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
while the rest of our delegations are busy sitting around | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
pretending to have a conference and discussing vital issues, | 0:18:14 | 0:18:17 | |
but we're all just sitting there tapping our thumbs | 0:18:17 | 0:18:19 | |
and our fingers on the table, wondering what these fellows are doing. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:23 | |
Only the translators and the two national security advisors stayed with the presidents. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:29 | |
After the initial pleasantries, Putin delivered a prophetic warning. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:34 | |
Putin turned quite, er, dramatically to Pakistan, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
accusing the Pakistanis, saying it wasn't just that they supported the Taliban, but in fact they were | 0:18:39 | 0:18:45 | |
feeding extremists into Afghanistan | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
and they were a lot of the problem. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
And basically saying this is going to explode, on your watch. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:55 | |
The warning fell on deaf ears. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
Instead, President Bush pitched his idea to Putin | 0:18:59 | 0:19:03 | |
that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty had outlived its usefulness. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
Despite being rebuffed, President Bush was keen to show the meeting had been a success. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Question to President Bush, is this a man that Americans can trust? | 0:19:26 | 0:19:31 | |
That's one of those trap questions | 0:19:31 | 0:19:33 | |
that when you're the Staff person, you think, "Oh my goodness, I wish we'd gone over that". | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
If the President says, "No, I don't trust him", then the relationship's off to a very bad start | 0:19:37 | 0:19:42 | |
and if he says, "Yes, I do trust him", then people think, "Oh, well, that's naive". | 0:19:42 | 0:19:46 | |
I'll answer the question. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
I looked the man in the eye - I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:54 | |
We had a very good dialogue. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
I was able to, um... | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
..get a sense of his soul. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
-(Good job.) -Thank you. -Good job. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:05 | |
For me, as a rather practical guy and a soldier, | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
I was taken aback a little bit by it. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:15 | |
And thought perhaps he shouldn't have gone that far. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
And in fact, I said to him later, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:22 | |
"Well, you know, you may have seen all that, but I still look in his eyes and I see KGB." | 0:20:22 | 0:20:28 | |
Remember, there's a reason he's fluent in German! | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
He used to be the resident in Germany and he is a chief KGB guy. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:36 | |
Putin had BEEN KGB, but by now he had turned his back on communism. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:43 | |
In Moscow, he took on the Communists. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:55 | |
He proposed a law to legalise the right to buy and sell land, | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
something the Communists had been fighting for years. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
THEY CHANT | 0:21:05 | 0:21:07 | |
Russian parliamentary rules require the minister responsible | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
to read out a bill before it is voted on. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
This gave the Communist members of parliament their moment. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
Putin's reforms began to work. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had a budget surplus. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
Wages and pensions began to be paid regularly. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
But Russia was still far from its former superpower status. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
Then came 9/11. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
In the White House bunker, Bush's national security team | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
put America's military on a high state of alert. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
We're going to go to DEFCON 3. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
Everyone had always feared the so-called spiral of alerts. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
We go to an alert level, the Russians follow | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
and pretty soon everybody's at a very high level of alert | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
and that can be very dangerous. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:14 | |
And so, erm, I thought to myself I'd better get a hold of the Russians and let them know. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:19 | |
I remember President Putin saying, "We know that your forces are going up on alert," | 0:24:37 | 0:24:43 | |
and it occurred to me of COURSE they know, they're watching our forces go on alert. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:47 | |
He said, "We are bringing ours down, we're cancelling all exercises." | 0:24:47 | 0:24:51 | |
And at that moment I thought to myself, "You know, the Cold War is really over." | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
Russia now faced a difficult decision. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
NATO was going to attack Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:05 | |
But NATO had no military bases close enough. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
The former Soviet republics in Central Asia did. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
We were going to need Russian help. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
It was good for Russia to give a signal to the Central Asians that | 0:25:18 | 0:25:22 | |
American basing out of, say, Uzbekistan or, Kyrgyzstan would not be a problem. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:28 | |
But it was a problem for Sergei Ivanov, | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
recently promoted to Minister of Defence. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
For half a century, Russia had kept America out. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:07 | |
Now the Americans were asking to be invited in. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
Putin gathered his national security team. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
Putin then offered them the clinching argument. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
Thus, Putin opened the door to a remarkable period of cooperation with the West. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:56 | |
Putin had helped the West - | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
now he wanted to know what he could get in return. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
He travelled to the headquarters of NATO, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
the alliance that for 40 years had kept Russia out of Western Europe. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:49 | |
In the grandeur of the Palais d'Egmont, | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
Putin opened the meeting by saying, "Well, when are you going to invite | 0:29:54 | 0:29:57 | |
"Russia to join NATO?" And I said, | 0:29:57 | 0:29:59 | |
"Well, you know - that's a fairly blunt start to the meeting." | 0:29:59 | 0:30:01 | |
Putin knew that the idea of Russia in NATO | 0:30:15 | 0:30:18 | |
would outrage hardliners in Washington...and Moscow. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
And I said, "Well, Mr President..." | 0:30:31 | 0:30:33 | |
I said, "We don't invite people to join NATO. You apply for membership." | 0:30:33 | 0:30:38 | |
So he sort of shrugged and said, "Well, Russia is not going to | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
"stand in a queue with a lot of countries that don't matter." | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
The limits of the relationship were now clear. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
Russia and the West were allies only when it suited them. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:53 | |
So despite Russia's help in the war on terror, the US went ahead with its missile defence plans. | 0:30:54 | 0:31:00 | |
Colin Powell flew to Moscow to announce that America was tearing up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:10 | |
Putin looked at me with those steely eyes | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
of his and he started to complain... | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
"This is terrible - you are kicking out the legs from under the strategic stability | 0:31:18 | 0:31:22 | |
"and we will criticise you." | 0:31:22 | 0:31:24 | |
And I said, "I fully understand that, Mr President." | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
And then he, he broke into a smile | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
and I'll never forget it, he leaned forward to me and he said, | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
'Ah, good - now we won't have to talk about THIS any more. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
"Now, you and Igor get busy on a new strategic framework." | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
And I said, "Yes, Sir." | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
MUSIC: "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker | 0:31:43 | 0:31:48 | |
In less than six months, President Bush was in the Kremlin. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:55 | |
He had come to sign a treaty that cut US and Russian offensive nuclear weapons by about a third. | 0:31:55 | 0:32:01 | |
Then, Putin took his American guests | 0:32:04 | 0:32:06 | |
to a command ballet performance - The Nutcracker. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:09 | |
I thought, "It's summertime - why are we seeing The Nutcracker?" | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
It turns out we share a love of ballet, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
but a dislike of classical ballet. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
And so he said, "Wouldn't you rather go to see Eifman instead?" | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
We snuck out and went to the Eifman studios. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:08 | |
We did take Rushailo, the National Security Adviser with us, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
however I don't think he likes ballet of any kind. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
And then before the lights came up, we snuck back in. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:12 | |
I came to...trust that Sergei Ivanov was someone | 0:34:12 | 0:34:15 | |
who was going to deliver on what he set to do | 0:34:15 | 0:34:18 | |
and I think he believed the same about me. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:20 | |
Personal relationships do matter. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
You speak very good English! | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
Hey, there. Nice to meet you. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
A few days after the Bushes and the Putins wandered through the Kremlin, | 0:34:29 | 0:34:34 | |
Russian soldiers in Chechnya carried out a routine raid on a village. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:38 | |
Eight years later, this young man's remains were dug up at a Russian base. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
He'd been shot twice in the head. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
Russia's overwhelming force drove the Chechens to suicide bombings and terror attacks. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:06 | |
In Moscow that autumn, a musical called Nord Ost was one of the hottest tickets in town. | 0:35:08 | 0:35:14 | |
Then the war in Chechnya came to the theatre. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
GUNSHOTS | 0:35:23 | 0:35:24 | |
Some 40 Chechens, men and women, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
armed with bombs and suicide belts, took over 800 theatre-goers hostage. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
They said they would kill them | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
if Putin did not withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
Chechens had carried out mass hostage-takings before - | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
and the Kremlin had tried to negotiate. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
Putin gathered his closest advisors. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
Putin had been scheduled to leave for a summit in Mexico. Instead, | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
he sent his cautious Prime Minister. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:12 | |
The stand-off in the theatre lasted two days. | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
Putin then let loose the special forces. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:22 | |
They pumped a narcotic gas into the theatre that knocked everybody out. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:28 | |
EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
The doctors on the scene couldn't revive the hostages | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
because the secret services wouldn't tell them | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
what gas they had used... | 0:37:40 | 0:37:42 | |
so 129 theatre-goers died. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
All the Chechens were shot. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:48 | |
The United States, since 9/11, backed Putin over Chechnya. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
President Bush spoke out very clearly that this had been a terrorist incident. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:05 | |
And President Putin really did appreciate, from 2001 on, | 0:38:05 | 0:38:09 | |
that the United States saw the terrorism that they were experiencing | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
and the terrorism that we were experiencing as linked. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:16 | |
This alliance was soon put to the test over Iraq. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:22 | |
The US sought support to take the war on terror to a new battleground. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:27 | |
I thought that in making that case to the Russians, | 0:38:45 | 0:38:48 | |
they might not in fact join in any kind of military effort, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:53 | |
I thought that was well beyond the pale, er, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:55 | |
but that they wouldn't really oppose a military effort either. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
A new UN resolution justifying an attack on Iraq was coming up. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:04 | |
Germany and France, firm opponents of the war on the Security Council, | 0:39:04 | 0:39:09 | |
also decided to seek Russian support. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:11 | |
Putin visited both countries. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:13 | |
Putin said he was happy to make common cause with the Chancellor, | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
but he worried that France's President Chirac would not stand firm. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:53 | |
Schroeder phoned Paris. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:54 | |
When Putin had visited Paris before, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:13 | |
Chirac had sent an official to meet him at the airport. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
But now the French President turned on all his charm. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
BRASS BAND PLAYS | 0:40:20 | 0:40:21 | |
Putin wanted Chirac's word that he would vote against the war | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
unless there was hard evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:55 | |
The two presidents walked out and buried America's chances of getting UN approval. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:25 | |
And at that point, we knew our efforts were...had failed. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
We didn't much like the spectacle of America's closest allies, er, | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
standing with the Russians on a security interest of interest to the United States. | 0:41:54 | 0:42:00 | |
The war Putin opposed was soon helping to make Russia rich. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:16 | |
The price of oil steadily increased. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:18 | |
Russians who'd grown up in Soviet poverty learned to love their bling. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:23 | |
Putin decided to seize a share for the state - via a huge tax on oil exports. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:31 | |
This started a battle between Putin and Russia's richest man, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:41 | |
It became a war over democracy. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
The night before the vote on the bill to raise oil tax, | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
an executive from Yukos Oil called on the Minister in charge. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
The next morning in parliament, the government withdrew its tax bill. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
But tax wasn't the only way for Putin to get at the oil wealth. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
A small oil company owned by the state, Rosneft, | 0:44:47 | 0:44:51 | |
began to buy up oil fields. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
It outbid the private companies so massively that it led to | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
the allegation that its officials were stealing money from the state. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:01 | |
Khodorkovsky complained to Putin | 0:45:01 | 0:45:04 | |
about what he thought Rosneft was up to. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:07 | |
Khodorkovsky prepared a presentation on how corruption was spreading - | 0:45:13 | 0:45:18 | |
even into the Kremlin. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
What followed started a political conflict | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
that divides Russia to this day. | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
Khodorkovsky's presentation was to be televised. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
He cleared what he would say | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
with both the Kremlin chief of staff and the Prime Minister. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:11 | |
It was a tough presentation, | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
but nothing that Putin himself hadn't said. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:27 | |
Then Khodorkovsky went after one of Putin's closest Kremlin aides. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:32 | |
Rosneft had done this deal with the blessing of an old friend of Putin's | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
at the KGB, now his deputy chief of staff. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:56 | |
A few weeks later, Khodorkovsky's oldest friend | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
got some disturbing news from a contact | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
in Russia's intelligence service. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:48 | |
Putin issued a thinly-veiled threat to Khodorkovsky | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
not to challenge him politically. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:20 | |
Khodorkovsky knew he was vulnerable. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
He had built his company in the 1990s, when Russian business law | 0:52:56 | 0:53:00 | |
was in its infancy. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
Five months after the public confrontation with Putin, | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
one of Khodorkovsky's inner-circle was arrested | 0:53:24 | 0:53:27 | |
for a deal they did back in the 1990s. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:31 | |
Nevzlin left Russia. Khodorkovsky stayed and fought. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:22 | |
With parliamentary elections approaching, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
he bought a publishing house, poured money into the opposition parties, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
and spent most of his time promoting democracy through his foundation, Open Russia. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:35 | |
But within a month, eight more of Khodorkovsky's people were arrested. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:09 | |
To protect the company, he decided to merge it | 0:55:09 | 0:55:11 | |
with the American oil giant Exxon Mobil. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:14 | |
The head of Exxon Mobil came to Moscow. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:37 | |
He told Putin about his plans. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
Within hours, the police raided Yukos, | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
seizing tax records going back a decade. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
Khodorkovsky's friends advised him to flee. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
Instead, he set off on a trip around Russia, campaigning for democracy. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:14 | |
While Khodorkovsky was on the road, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:37 | |
his deputy was called by a contact in the prosecutor's office. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:41 | |
A few hours later, Khodorkovsky was arrested. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:50 | |
Yukos was broken up. Its assets were seized | 0:57:51 | 0:57:55 | |
and transferred to the state oil company. | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
Khodorkovsky remains in prison, a symbol, to many Russians | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
and to the West, of Putin's indifference to the rule of law. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
Now Putin was the unchallenged master of a stronger | 0:58:29 | 0:58:33 | |
and less democratic Russia. | 0:58:33 | 0:58:36 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:59 | 0:59:03 |