Taking Control Putin, Russia and the West


Taking Control

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SPEAKS IN RUSSIAN

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CHANTING

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For over a decade,

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Vladimir Putin has been the undisputed master of Russia.

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But after claims he fixed parliamentary elections,

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tens of thousands of middle class Russians took to the streets,

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demanding his resignation.

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They put on a symbol of protest -

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white ribbons.

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Putin has announced his intention

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to remain in charge for at least six more years.

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This is the story of how he dominated Russia,

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tried to dominate its neighbours, and how the West dealt with him.

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It began in 1999.

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Russian President Boris Yeltsin was desperate to fill a key post.

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His eyes fell on his intelligence chief.

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Four months after he was appointed Prime Minister,

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Vladimir Putin was summoned by President Yeltsin.

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It was a few days before the millennium new year.

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As soon as Yeltsin resigned, Putin became President.

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He set out to restore Russia as a great power.

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It made the world uneasy about him and his country.

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He spent his first night as President with the front-line troops

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fighting to reverse Russia's humiliation in Chechnya.

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EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

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By the time Putin was elected President,

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Russia's forces in Chechnya had pushed the rebel fighters into the mountains.

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The mountain village of Shatoy was one of the last rebel strongholds.

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Putin's triumph boosted his popularity.

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But in Moscow, he could not be an effective President

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while the government remained a mess.

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It regularly went broke, failed to provide basic services,

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and had to be bailed out by billionaire oligarchs.

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Putin appointed a new prime minister

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and told him they must finally tackle Russia's biggest problem.

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The first step was to get Russians to pay their income tax.

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So Putin's ministers proposed a massive cut,

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to just 13% for all, even the rich.

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The Prime Minister himself was worried.

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Putin knew that his reforms could not work

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unless he faced down Russia's business elite, the oligarchs.

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The oligarchs were used to popping into the Kremlin

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to twist government policies.

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The oligarchs who wielded most political power were media barons.

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In Putin's first month, one, Vladimir Gusinsky, was arrested.

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Gusinsky was released

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only after he agreed to sell his television network

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to a state-owned company and leave Russia.

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It was the first step to Putin's taking control of Russian TV.

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Then Putin called the other leading oligarchs to the Kremlin.

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This meeting would radically change the rules of the game

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for the oligarchs.

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These men had won the decade-long struggle for Russia's natural resources.

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On the left, the CEO of Gazprom, the world's largest gas company.

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The boss of Russia's biggest oil company is next to him.

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These three made their fortunes in advertising, aluminium and oil.

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This man controlled the largest nickel company in the world.

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The leading bankers were there.

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So too was the owner of Russia's fastest growing oil company,

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Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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He told what happened right afterwards.

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But everybody there knew Putin had just stripped one oligarch of his business

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and forced him into exile.

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The oligarchs had, Putin thought, been cut out of politics.

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Now he faced an even more powerful opponent -

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America's new president.

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The challenge came soon after George W Bush was inaugurated.

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The Cold War was over but distrust still lingered.

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Both sides maintained huge nuclear arsenals.

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Agents lurked in both countries' embassies.

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There was an agreement between the sides over the years

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that you could have so many people within each other's country

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who were essentially spies, they were intelligence people.

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But gentlemen understand these things

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and as long as it was within limits then it was accepted.

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But the Russians had been, shall we say, ignoring the rules

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and they'd been adding more and more people.

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The FBI asked the new Secretary Of State to expel 50 Russian diplomats.

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He made an appointment with the Russian Ambassador.

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He came in just for a courtesy call.

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We drink a little tea, we shake hands, we, you know,

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we have a nice conversation. "Dobre", "How are you?", "Spasibo" -

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all the nice courtesy words that are used between Russian

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and Americans, and instead he walked out with a problem.

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A major problem.

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The Ambassador took away a list of Russians to be expelled.

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Then the Secretary Of State tried to limit the damage.

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He said, "Are you really going to do this?

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"Is this how you want to start out a relationship?"

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I said, "Yes, we're going to do this,

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"and we have to have a relationship that's based on trust."

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Powell expected the Russians to expel an equal number of American spies - and that would be that.

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But he hadn't reckoned with the secretary of Russia's National Security Council,

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like Putin, ex-KGB.

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The Russians carried out their threat.

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The Americans feared it would derail the President's big idea.

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They wanted a missile defence shield

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to protect America from nuclear attack by rogue states -

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like North Korea or Iran.

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But this was banned by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,

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signed when Russia and America faced each other

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as enemies in the Cold War.

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Russia and the United States

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should work together to develop a new foundation for world peace

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and security in the 21st century.

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We should leave behind the constraints of an ABM Treaty

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that perpetuates a relationship based on distrust

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and mutual vulnerability.

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President Bush sent me to Russia.

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The conventional wisdom of the nuclear priesthood

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was that Russians would never go along with this issue.

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We made the case to the Russians that missile defences

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were not about defending Russia against the United States

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or the United States against Russia

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but defending both of our populations against third countries.

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We got a fairly chilly reception.

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The Russian side have raised some serious and important questions.

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We began to give them some answers to those questions. We've done a lot of thinking about this subject.

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We'll obviously have some more thinking to do.

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'The message we brought back to President Bush'

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was that if this was going to be done,

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it was going to have to be done top-down.

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He was going to have to do it with President Putin.

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The highlight of George Bush's first presidential trip to Europe

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was another first - a summit meeting with Putin, at a castle in Slovenia.

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Then they go off to be by themselves

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while the rest of our delegations are busy sitting around

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pretending to have a conference and discussing vital issues,

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but we're all just sitting there tapping our thumbs

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and our fingers on the table, wondering what these fellows are doing.

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Only the translators and the two national security advisors stayed with the presidents.

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After the initial pleasantries, Putin delivered a prophetic warning.

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Putin turned quite, er, dramatically to Pakistan,

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accusing the Pakistanis, saying it wasn't just that they supported the Taliban, but in fact they were

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feeding extremists into Afghanistan

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and they were a lot of the problem.

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And basically saying this is going to explode, on your watch.

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The warning fell on deaf ears.

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Instead, President Bush pitched his idea to Putin

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that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty had outlived its usefulness.

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Despite being rebuffed, President Bush was keen to show the meeting had been a success.

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Question to President Bush, is this a man that Americans can trust?

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That's one of those trap questions

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that when you're the Staff person, you think, "Oh my goodness, I wish we'd gone over that".

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If the President says, "No, I don't trust him", then the relationship's off to a very bad start

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and if he says, "Yes, I do trust him", then people think, "Oh, well, that's naive".

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I'll answer the question.

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I looked the man in the eye - I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.

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We had a very good dialogue.

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I was able to, um...

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..get a sense of his soul.

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-(Good job.)

-Thank you.

-Good job.

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For me, as a rather practical guy and a soldier,

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I was taken aback a little bit by it.

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And thought perhaps he shouldn't have gone that far.

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And in fact, I said to him later,

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"Well, you know, you may have seen all that, but I still look in his eyes and I see KGB."

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Remember, there's a reason he's fluent in German!

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He used to be the resident in Germany and he is a chief KGB guy.

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Putin had BEEN KGB, but by now he had turned his back on communism.

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In Moscow, he took on the Communists.

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He proposed a law to legalise the right to buy and sell land,

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something the Communists had been fighting for years.

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THEY CHANT

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Russian parliamentary rules require the minister responsible

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to read out a bill before it is voted on.

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This gave the Communist members of parliament their moment.

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Putin's reforms began to work.

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For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had a budget surplus.

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Wages and pensions began to be paid regularly.

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But Russia was still far from its former superpower status.

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Then came 9/11.

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In the White House bunker, Bush's national security team

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put America's military on a high state of alert.

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We're going to go to DEFCON 3.

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Everyone had always feared the so-called spiral of alerts.

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We go to an alert level, the Russians follow

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and pretty soon everybody's at a very high level of alert

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and that can be very dangerous.

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And so, erm, I thought to myself I'd better get a hold of the Russians and let them know.

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I remember President Putin saying, "We know that your forces are going up on alert,"

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and it occurred to me of COURSE they know, they're watching our forces go on alert.

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He said, "We are bringing ours down, we're cancelling all exercises."

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And at that moment I thought to myself, "You know, the Cold War is really over."

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Russia now faced a difficult decision.

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NATO was going to attack Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

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But NATO had no military bases close enough.

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The former Soviet republics in Central Asia did.

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We were going to need Russian help.

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It was good for Russia to give a signal to the Central Asians that

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American basing out of, say, Uzbekistan or, Kyrgyzstan would not be a problem.

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But it was a problem for Sergei Ivanov,

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recently promoted to Minister of Defence.

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For half a century, Russia had kept America out.

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Now the Americans were asking to be invited in.

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Putin gathered his national security team.

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Putin then offered them the clinching argument.

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Thus, Putin opened the door to a remarkable period of cooperation with the West.

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Putin had helped the West -

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now he wanted to know what he could get in return.

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He travelled to the headquarters of NATO,

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the alliance that for 40 years had kept Russia out of Western Europe.

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In the grandeur of the Palais d'Egmont,

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Putin opened the meeting by saying, "Well, when are you going to invite

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"Russia to join NATO?" And I said,

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"Well, you know - that's a fairly blunt start to the meeting."

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Putin knew that the idea of Russia in NATO

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would outrage hardliners in Washington...and Moscow.

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And I said, "Well, Mr President..."

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I said, "We don't invite people to join NATO. You apply for membership."

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So he sort of shrugged and said, "Well, Russia is not going to

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"stand in a queue with a lot of countries that don't matter."

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The limits of the relationship were now clear.

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Russia and the West were allies only when it suited them.

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So despite Russia's help in the war on terror, the US went ahead with its missile defence plans.

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Colin Powell flew to Moscow to announce that America was tearing up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

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Putin looked at me with those steely eyes

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of his and he started to complain...

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"This is terrible - you are kicking out the legs from under the strategic stability

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"and we will criticise you."

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And I said, "I fully understand that, Mr President."

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And then he, he broke into a smile

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and I'll never forget it, he leaned forward to me and he said,

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'Ah, good - now we won't have to talk about THIS any more.

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"Now, you and Igor get busy on a new strategic framework."

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And I said, "Yes, Sir."

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MUSIC: "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker

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In less than six months, President Bush was in the Kremlin.

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He had come to sign a treaty that cut US and Russian offensive nuclear weapons by about a third.

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Then, Putin took his American guests

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to a command ballet performance - The Nutcracker.

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I thought, "It's summertime - why are we seeing The Nutcracker?"

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It turns out we share a love of ballet,

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but a dislike of classical ballet.

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And so he said, "Wouldn't you rather go to see Eifman instead?"

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We snuck out and went to the Eifman studios.

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We did take Rushailo, the National Security Adviser with us,

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however I don't think he likes ballet of any kind.

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And then before the lights came up, we snuck back in.

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I came to...trust that Sergei Ivanov was someone

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who was going to deliver on what he set to do

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and I think he believed the same about me.

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Personal relationships do matter.

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You speak very good English!

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Hey, there. Nice to meet you.

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A few days after the Bushes and the Putins wandered through the Kremlin,

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Russian soldiers in Chechnya carried out a routine raid on a village.

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Eight years later, this young man's remains were dug up at a Russian base.

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He'd been shot twice in the head.

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Russia's overwhelming force drove the Chechens to suicide bombings and terror attacks.

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In Moscow that autumn, a musical called Nord Ost was one of the hottest tickets in town.

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Then the war in Chechnya came to the theatre.

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GUNSHOTS

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Some 40 Chechens, men and women,

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armed with bombs and suicide belts, took over 800 theatre-goers hostage.

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They said they would kill them

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if Putin did not withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya.

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Chechens had carried out mass hostage-takings before -

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and the Kremlin had tried to negotiate.

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Putin gathered his closest advisors.

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Putin had been scheduled to leave for a summit in Mexico. Instead,

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he sent his cautious Prime Minister.

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The stand-off in the theatre lasted two days.

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Putin then let loose the special forces.

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They pumped a narcotic gas into the theatre that knocked everybody out.

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EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

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The doctors on the scene couldn't revive the hostages

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because the secret services wouldn't tell them

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what gas they had used...

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so 129 theatre-goers died.

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All the Chechens were shot.

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The United States, since 9/11, backed Putin over Chechnya.

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President Bush spoke out very clearly that this had been a terrorist incident.

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And President Putin really did appreciate, from 2001 on,

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that the United States saw the terrorism that they were experiencing

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and the terrorism that we were experiencing as linked.

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This alliance was soon put to the test over Iraq.

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The US sought support to take the war on terror to a new battleground.

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I thought that in making that case to the Russians,

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they might not in fact join in any kind of military effort,

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I thought that was well beyond the pale, er,

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but that they wouldn't really oppose a military effort either.

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A new UN resolution justifying an attack on Iraq was coming up.

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Germany and France, firm opponents of the war on the Security Council,

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also decided to seek Russian support.

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Putin visited both countries.

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Putin said he was happy to make common cause with the Chancellor,

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but he worried that France's President Chirac would not stand firm.

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Schroeder phoned Paris.

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When Putin had visited Paris before,

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Chirac had sent an official to meet him at the airport.

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But now the French President turned on all his charm.

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BRASS BAND PLAYS

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Putin wanted Chirac's word that he would vote against the war

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unless there was hard evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

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The two presidents walked out and buried America's chances of getting UN approval.

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And at that point, we knew our efforts were...had failed.

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We didn't much like the spectacle of America's closest allies, er,

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standing with the Russians on a security interest of interest to the United States.

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The war Putin opposed was soon helping to make Russia rich.

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The price of oil steadily increased.

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Russians who'd grown up in Soviet poverty learned to love their bling.

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Putin decided to seize a share for the state - via a huge tax on oil exports.

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This started a battle between Putin and Russia's richest man, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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It became a war over democracy.

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The night before the vote on the bill to raise oil tax,

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an executive from Yukos Oil called on the Minister in charge.

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The next morning in parliament, the government withdrew its tax bill.

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But tax wasn't the only way for Putin to get at the oil wealth.

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A small oil company owned by the state, Rosneft,

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began to buy up oil fields.

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It outbid the private companies so massively that it led to

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the allegation that its officials were stealing money from the state.

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Khodorkovsky complained to Putin

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about what he thought Rosneft was up to.

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Khodorkovsky prepared a presentation on how corruption was spreading -

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even into the Kremlin.

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What followed started a political conflict

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that divides Russia to this day.

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Khodorkovsky's presentation was to be televised.

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He cleared what he would say

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with both the Kremlin chief of staff and the Prime Minister.

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It was a tough presentation,

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but nothing that Putin himself hadn't said.

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Then Khodorkovsky went after one of Putin's closest Kremlin aides.

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Rosneft had done this deal with the blessing of an old friend of Putin's

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at the KGB, now his deputy chief of staff.

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A few weeks later, Khodorkovsky's oldest friend

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got some disturbing news from a contact

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in Russia's intelligence service.

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Putin issued a thinly-veiled threat to Khodorkovsky

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not to challenge him politically.

0:52:170:52:20

Khodorkovsky knew he was vulnerable.

0:52:530:52:56

He had built his company in the 1990s, when Russian business law

0:52:560:53:00

was in its infancy.

0:53:000:53:02

Five months after the public confrontation with Putin,

0:53:210:53:24

one of Khodorkovsky's inner-circle was arrested

0:53:240:53:27

for a deal they did back in the 1990s.

0:53:270:53:31

Nevzlin left Russia. Khodorkovsky stayed and fought.

0:54:170:54:22

With parliamentary elections approaching,

0:54:230:54:26

he bought a publishing house, poured money into the opposition parties,

0:54:260:54:30

and spent most of his time promoting democracy through his foundation, Open Russia.

0:54:300:54:35

But within a month, eight more of Khodorkovsky's people were arrested.

0:55:050:55:09

To protect the company, he decided to merge it

0:55:090:55:11

with the American oil giant Exxon Mobil.

0:55:110:55:14

The head of Exxon Mobil came to Moscow.

0:55:340:55:37

He told Putin about his plans.

0:55:370:55:40

Within hours, the police raided Yukos,

0:55:440:55:47

seizing tax records going back a decade.

0:55:470:55:49

Khodorkovsky's friends advised him to flee.

0:56:070:56:10

Instead, he set off on a trip around Russia, campaigning for democracy.

0:56:100:56:14

While Khodorkovsky was on the road,

0:56:350:56:37

his deputy was called by a contact in the prosecutor's office.

0:56:370:56:41

A few hours later, Khodorkovsky was arrested.

0:57:460:57:50

Yukos was broken up. Its assets were seized

0:57:510:57:55

and transferred to the state oil company.

0:57:550:57:58

Khodorkovsky remains in prison, a symbol, to many Russians

0:58:210:58:25

and to the West, of Putin's indifference to the rule of law.

0:58:250:58:29

Now Putin was the unchallenged master of a stronger

0:58:290:58:33

and less democratic Russia.

0:58:330:58:36

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:550:58:59

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:590:59:03

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