Putin's Gamble Panorama

This The West faces a new threat from an

enemy from the past of The West faces a new threat from an

responsible for the violence in The West faces a new threat from an

Ukraine. . Ukrainians, Russians and now Dutch, Malaysians and British

too. We ask all respective governments to bring to justice all

these bustards who committed these international crime. The fear is,

could this man start a wider conflict? Putin became a war

president and now he cannot back track. He cannot make Tonight, we

confront peace. Vladimir Putin. I'd like to ask you a question about the

war, Sir? I'm sorry, Sir, the killings in the Ukraine, thousands

dead, do you regret the killings in killings in the Ukraine, thousands

the Ukraine? No sooner was killings in the Ukraine, thousands

ceasefire was declared, it broke down. It's the innocent who pay the

This war has price. Little Roman

This war has ago, the first shots.

This war has day, 51 Ukrainians were gunned down.

Snipe rs day, 51 Ukrainians were gunned down.

emerged in Kiev. The Kremlin's day, 51 Ukrainians were gunned down.

response? To stir up rebellion day, 51 Ukrainians were gunned down.

Russia sees what it's doing as defensive. There's no country closer

Russia sees what it's doing as to them than Ukraine. It's sort of

Scotland to their England. Enter a ghost

Scotland to their England. Enter a stripped of anything that might

identify them occupied Crimea. They were Russian troops. Mr Putin was

quick to justify his action. TRANSLATION: Putin has a maniacal

fear of the possibility of you're's collapse. He fears it so much that

he throws himself in the opposite direction when he senses a threat.

In Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, many took to the streets, angry

about Kiev's shift to the West. But the rebellion was faltering. Enter

the Kremlin's ghost army. TRANSLATION: The original idea of

those who started this war was that the people would rise up, but they

didn't. Volunteers came from Russia and some local people took up arms

to defend their homeland, but the numbers just weren't there.

The ghost army kept the rebellion going. To date, the war has cost

3,000 lives. Welcome to Novo Rossiya, New Russia, an idea

promoted by Vladimir Putin. This is Donetsk, the capital of rebel-held

Ukraine. Government barely functions, if at all. The panic war

brings has come here too. This will give you an example of

what's happening. We've just heard a muffled explosion. There are reports

of a shootout at the railway station. The Ukrainian army are at

the city gates. People take shelter in Donetsk railway station.

The situation is the Ukrainian Army is three kilometres that way and

people are terrified there's going to be an enormous battle here. We're

right underneath the railway station and people are leaving. Somebody has

just fired, one of the rebels. And the situation sown tire chaotic. --

situation is entirely chaotic. That day, several people were killed.

Much of the city stayed intact and life carried on. Later, the

Ukrainian Army targeted a rebel base in town, but they missed. Shrapnel

hit the maternity hospital. We just heard a crumb p of artillery,

distant, not that close, but nevertheless, people, the patients

and some of the staff have run down here to the basement, because it's

the safest place in the whole hospital.

What kind of world is the next generation being born into? Many

here are little love for Ukraine's new president, Poroshenko.

The laundry in this part of the basement now serves as the premature

baby unit. This has become a media war and Mr

Putin is fanning the flames. This is Donetsk last month. This is

not the Nazi siege of Leningrad or anything like it.

TRANSLATION: The huge naivety of Russians has been used by those who

have spread this war. The people want justice. They've been told that

it will be just if we beat the fascist and they believed in it. But

it turned out to be a bloody Civil War of brother killing brother.

Putin's war has been massively pop particular Russia -- popular in

Russia. Alexander Dugin, a Nationalist who has the Kremlin's

ear, explains why. The Russian population, the majority is inclined

towards nationalism and towards empire, towards a powerful you're

and Putin could not ignore that. Putin has no possibility to go out

from this game, because he will immediately lose any support. One

Russian opinion poll gave Putin an approval rating of 82%. On the

ground in Ukraine, these chaps give him an even higher endorsement. Do

you trust the word of Mr Putin? TRANSLATION: He's our president and

we're proud of him. He's a great person, I'm serious. I'm honestly

ready to die for him. These rebels come from Stalin's neck of the

woods. Do you think Stalin was a good guy?

TRANSLATION: Stalin? Stalin was a man. Putin is smaller than Stalin,

but he's OK. He has everything ahead of him.

This isn't Putin's first war. It's his third. First there was Chechnya,

then Georgia. And now Ukraine. Its new government is rubbing shoulders

with the West, another separation Russia cannot bear.

The sun may be shining, buffer don't be fooled. Here in Moscow, the

citadel of Vladimir Putin's power, things are getting chillier by the

day. TRANSLATION: He probably isn't going

to do anything monstrous, but he's the only limit to that. There's not

a single person, nor a single institution, that can limit Putin.

He's the commander in chief and the only limit. Gleb Pavlosky used to be

Putin's spin doctor. Now he fears Putin is spinning out of control.

TRANSLATION: Putin is, by nature, a serious gambler. For a gambler,

success is precisely where the greatest danger lies. This leads to

more gambling. In the long run, the casino beats even the most

experienced player. By mid-July the rebels were losing, in part because

the government had an Air Force and they didn't. In Snezhnoye,

Ukrainians targeted a rebel base, but the bombs fell on this apartment

block. Did the Kremlin send a big antiaircraft weapon across the

border to even up the odds? One, two, three, four, five, six... Was

this the moment when Putin's gamble went horribly wrong and a passenger

jet was shot down by mistake? MH17 came from the West, where the sun is

setting over there, from Amsterdam. Here we are in the eastern Ukraine,

headed east for Malaysia and bang. And the lives of nearly 300 people

were skinning wished. -- were extinguished. Amongst the dead 193

Dutch, 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, and ten Britons.

The debris is strewn across ten miles in rebel-held territory.

Another site, more wreckage. Here, the engines and the wheels came to

rest. You can't see it but this whole place stinks of aviation fuel.

It stinks of the dead. This is a monstrous crime. Truth is a stranger

to these killing fields. In a war fought by ghost soldiers, lies stack

up like the carpss. But -- corpses, but who is responsible for this?

Some people say that man is in the Kremlin.

After the Boeing crashed, the Russians said it was shot down by a

Ukrainian fighter jet. Here in Moscow, a Russian general briefs the

world. So, did a Ukrainian fighter shoot

down MH17? What's left of the fuselage provides a major clue. They

all show large number of these small holes. That, to me, says blast

fragmentation warhead. The fragments are designed to puncture the

aircraft structure. It's like a shotgun basically.

A missile from a jet fighter would have blasted a big hole. This

shrapnel damage points to a Soviet Designed missile launcher called a

BUK. But the prime suspects were the

rebels. Alexander Borodai I was their self-styled Prime Minister.

Is this true? It matters because most Russians believe him. We set

out to investigate exactly what happened to MH17. And that is not

easy in a war zone. This is the road out of Zhures, east of Donetsk. We

are deep in rebel held territory. This footage was filmed on the

outskirts of town. In the video, you can see the BUK missile launch on a

road. In the foreground there is a blue box and a pillar. Luvox,

pillar. -- blue box. We believe that the BUK came along this road,

tracking East. The rebel denial is further undermined by this image,

taken ten miles from the crash site. It shows a low loader with red

ramps, going up this hill. On it, a BUK anti-aircraft missile launcher.

That missile launcher went up this hill. Both images were distributed

by the Ukrainian government. Could they be fake? We spoke to two

eyewitnesses who were in the next town along that day. They feared

being identified. TRANSLATION: We saw it being off-loaded and when the

BUK started the engine, the exhaust smoke filled the whole town square.

Would accrue local? They had pure Russian accents. They say the letter

G different to us. Both eyewitnesses believed that the BUK crew were

Russian. One said a soldier spoke with a Moscow Askham. This is the

first time that the crew have been potentially identified as Russian,

and that means the Kremlin has questions to answer. Two hours

later, at 4:20pm, locals heard two bangs. MH17 disappeared off the

radar screen. There is more. This disputed image shows the BUK at dawn

the next day, apparently heading towards Russia with one warhead

missing. The Russians felt the need to step up their support for the

dissidents. Material is no doubt coming across, including, more than

likely, the BUK missile. Ukrainian intelligence, their

version of MI5, have their own theory. They invited Panorama into

their Kiev HQ. They suspect this was a plot to shoot down a Russian

passenger jets to give Mr Putin a pretext for invading Ukraine. If the

BUK launcher was stationed here, was deployed to this position, it would

have a clear vision of the Aeroflot coming. If they launched a missile

from this place, the plane could crash somewhere on the territory

that was controlled by the Ukrainian army. We know for sure that Russians

were ready to invade that night. You are seriously suggesting that MH17

was shot down by mistake because the Russians meant to shut -- shoot down

one of their own civilian airliners? It looks like. It appears like that.

Has Putin's gambling led to this? That he is now such a bogeyman to

some that the unthinkable becomes all too thinkable? But the

explanation that best fits the evidence is that the BUK crew

thought they were firing at a Ukrainian military plane and they

got it wrong. In war, mistakes are made. What Putin did next was to

reshuffle his cards. The leaders of the rebellion,'s and "Defence

Minister Strelkov" were sent home to Moscow. The new rebel leader,

Alexander Zakharchenko, also echoes the party line. TRANSLATION: We have

no capability to shoot down aircraft at such high altitude, not at all.

How did he explain photos of the BUK one rebel territory. That is a BUK,

isn't it? If you are so knowledgeable about the systems, you

will know better. Looking at this picture, I would say this is the

back of a truck with some unknown equipment and a missile launcher. At

last, an admission of sorts. Tomorrow, the Dutch Safety Board

will announce its initial findings into the downing of MH17.

Putin's next move was to paint hundreds of green army lorries

white, and baptise them an aid convoy. This so-called humanitarian

convoy was a classic from instant. It exemplifies the way in which

Russia has nixed conventional military conflict with what we might

call information warfare, confusing public relations stunts which

distract western attention, model the story and make people think it

is rather complicated, I'd rather not pay attention. These graves are

part of the new battle ground in the info war. Here lie Russian soldiers

who are thought to have died in Ukraine. The dates they died, August

the 19th and the 20th of this year, point to them being Ghost Army. The

whole war, the Russian war in Ukraine, the undeclared war, the

so-called hybrid war, is based on falsification. This is probably the

perfect case of falsification on the part of the Kremlin. This video was

shot from a Ukrainian bus. This armoured column was filmed, it

seems, not far from the Russian border inside Ukraine.

The view from the back of the bus shows pretty

The view from the back of the bus This, and other

The view from the back of the bus shifted the military position

dramatically. shifted the military position

The game changer on the front line retreat.

The game changer on the front line was not

invaded, how would the West replied? -- reply?

The answer came at a NATO summit in Wales. Tougher sanctions, but

militarily Ukraine was on its own. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is underwhelmed

by the West's response. Once Russia's richest man, he crossed Mr

Putin and spent ten years behind bars. TRANSLATION: The West has

clearly bars. TRANSLATION: The West has

it is wheat -- knows that and will continue taking

advantage of it. knows that and will continue taking

substantial? It could, if the Western political

substantial? It could, if the thinking more strategically. I

substantial? It could, if the as if the gamble

substantial? It could, if the divided West at every turn. I think

substantial? It could, if the Putin has switched from chest to

poker. The long-term aims are the same as they have always been. To

bust the West, established Russian sway and domination over the former

empire, to sway and domination over the former

America. But he has certainly raised the stakes.

America. But he has certainly raised fed up with Putin, but there are

other points on the campus. -- compass. The Kremlin road show has

come to Yakutsk in Siberia, six time zones east from Moscow, to launch a

multi billion pounds gas deal with the Chinese. After the first round

of Western sanctions started to bite, Putin announced a new pipeline

to China. Russia is turning It is a signal to the West. But some

people are still eager to do business with Russia, come what

may. Before he was locked up, Mikhail

Khodorkovsky went head to head with Mr Putin. What makes Vladimir Putin

tick? Is he rational? He's changed a lot, he used to be more rational.

Now many of his actions depend on emotion. And that does not bode

well. The prospect of democratic change of power in Russia does not

exist any more. The country is already paying in blood for the lack

of political change and there will be more blood in future. Here, Mr

Putin is treated like an emperor. I wanted to challenge him about his

absolute denial of involvement in the war. John Sweeney, from the

BBC. I'd like to ask you a question about the war, sir. I'm sorry, sir,

the killings in Ukraine. Thousands of dead, Ukrainian, Russian,

Malaysian, British, Dutch. So, sir, do you regret the killings in

Ukraine? Mr Putin knows how to spirit away a

tough question. He is, after all, the general of the Ghost Army.

But what are the Russians doing, sir? There is a question about what

the Russians are doing. So, some answers there from Mr Putin, but on

the central question of what the Russians are doing, no answer at

all. Two days later, on Mongolian TV, a rare show of emotion from the

man with the poker face. The tune? The old Soviet anthem which, under

him, is once again Russia's. Vista Putin has a romantic longing for the

old Soviet Union, for Russian greatness. And that sets him on a

collision course with the West. I don't think Putin is going to give

way. This is not, for him, an economic issue. In any sense, he is

so heavily engaged now that to back off could easily be fatal for him,

so he's not going to do it. The future, according to this former

Kremlin insider, could be truly bleak. As a shed There are the

famous words said by Grey. Lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall

not see them lit again in our lifetime. I do not believe in a way

back. I think we are at the beginning of a series of crises that

will change the landscape of the world.

The landscape of Ukraine has already been torn by war. Russia's of the

neighbours are watching their borders and wondering if Mr Putin

will roll the dice again.