MICHAEL KIRK - OK, so here we go.
Let’s start back in the moment where the
Wall hasn’t fallen quite yet.
Tell me about the KGB that Vladimir Putin
is in at that time.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - The KGB was the most powerful
institution of the Soviet Union.
If you compare it to what you have in the
United States—and in the United States,
you have the Community of Intelligences, you
know, about 15 or 16 organizations who comprise
the community of intelligence services in
your country.
In the Soviet Union, KGB had everything inside
one institution.
It was your FBI, your CIA, your NSA and everything
else, just in one.
It was a monopoly that produced violence.
It was a monopoly that was responsible for
political surveillance on everyday basis of
Soviet citizens.
Nothing could go without the KGB.
There were departments that controlled intelligentsia,
intellectuals; that controlled media; that
all, without no exception, were state-owned,
controlled the church.
Any confession [faith], each and every confession,
KGB was responsible for appointing the leaders
of different congregations.
For instance, one of the documents that I
have in my possession, and I had in my book,
was that they installed the KGB officer as
the leader of the Pentecostals in the Soviet
Union.
… So they controlled church; they controlled
sports; they controlled everything that had
to do with science; they controlled everything
that had to do with the work of Soviet research
institutions.
And so it goes.
MICHAEL KIRK - You said in your book, I think,
it was a state within a state.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Yep.
MICHAEL KIRK - What does that mean?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - It meant exactly that it
was the Soviet state.
Communist Party wasn’t a party, of course;
it was the institution of the state.
It was what we mean in political science by
a state, right?
It was the way of running the country.
And this was very important institution in
the Soviet Union.
And there was the second institution that
also, as the Communist Party, had its officers
top down from the center, Moscow, all the
way to the smallest town in the furthest provinces
of the Soviet Union, all across its 11 time
zones, in all 15 republics, everywhere.
So there was some sort of competition between
the Central Committee of the Communist Party
and its regional organizations and the KGB
and its regional organizations in the provinces
of the Soviet Union.
Now we understand that it was, by the way,
not a bad idea to have this competition between
two monopolies, because at least they were
somehow concentrated on each other, and they
were less concerned about us.
What we have now in Russia is the same KGB,
only without any control from the side of
another monopoly.
It is an organization that is responsible
for political policing of institutions in
this country, monetary and businesses and
you name it.
At the same time, it has access to the biggest
resources of this country.
The representatives of the KGB, these were
another.
They controlled the major state-owned corporations.
Just look around it.
The biggest now in the world, oil company,
Rosneft, it is so to say state-owned oil company;
its CEO, Mr. Igor Sechin, the closest person
to Vladimir Putin, and himself a graduate
from the intelligence.
Rostec, huge industrial state-owned corporation,
which own something like over 500 different
enterprises, heavily involved, of course,
in the military-industrial complex, etc.
It is run by Putin’s pal.
They both were in the resident tour in Dresden,
East Germany, back in 1980s, Sergey Chemezov.
We can go one by one, and I will be able to
show you that all the major institutions,
all the major businesses that [are] connected
with oil and gas or with telecommunications
or with financial transactions, especially
those that are responsible for the cash in-and-out
flow, they're all controlled by the KGB people.
Basically, as I said, what we have in Russia
now, it is that the state within the state
became the state; that the state, that the
corporation by the name KGB regained its power,
and on the bigger scale than it had during
the Soviet Union.
MICHAEL KIRK - Let’s go back to the powerful
KGB in ’88, ’89, ’90.
Place Vladimir Putin in that KGB for me, will
you?
Who is he, and what does it mean for young
Vladimir Putin to be in the KGB?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - First of all, I think it’s
important to say that there are a lot of misunderstandings
in the West with respect to his education.
When you read Western newspapers and Western
publications, they say that Putin graduated
from the law school.
He never did.
The St. Petersburg University had a faculty
that was called the Department of Judiciary,
but it had nothing to do with preparing lawyers
or attorneys or anything like that.
These were the usual education for the future
Soviet Union bureaucrats.
This department didn’t prepare lawyers or
didn’t teach the supremacy of law, never,
ever.
This department was preparing obedient bureaucrats.
That’s number one.
Secondary, as we know, after graduation, he
was accepted to the KGB headquarters in St.
Petersburg.
Well, then it was Leningrad.
And he worked in the counterintelligence.
He worked in this counterintelligence.
Some of his duties were closely interrelated
with the ideological counterintelligence,
which was responsible for supervising and
treating dissidents.
At some point in his life, Putin became a
student of the Intelligence Academy; back
then it was called School.
Now it is Academy, which is named after Yuri
Andropov.
Yuri Andropov was the one-time head of the
KGB, and then, at the end of his life, he
became the leader of the state, the general
secretary of the Communist Party.
Putin started in this Intelligence School.
He wanted to be transferred from counterintelligence
to intelligence.
It is the separate department, separate directorate;
it was the separate directorate in the KGB.
But he never succeeded in that.
Back at that time, in early and mid-1980s,
there were two very special outposts of the
Soviet intelligence, one in Europe and another
one in Afghanistan.
In Europe it was in Berlin, in East Germany,
which was called back then German Democratic
Republic, GDR.
There was a huge compound called Karlshorst
which basically resembled the structure of
the KGB in Moscow.
Each and every department of the Soviet KGB
sent their representatives to East Germany.
And the same was done in Afghanistan, in Kabul,
because Soviets, as you well aware, were conducting
a war with Afghanistan.
There was, however, in GDR, there was another
post, a secondary source, in Dresden, and
that’s exactly where Vladimir Putin was
sent after he graduated from the Intelligence
School.
His German was very good.
There are gossips about what department sent
him.
To my knowledge, he was sent by the so-called
Personnel Department of the KGB.
As I said, each and every department had their
positions in the GDR’s intelligence offices.
His job there was he served as a director
of—it’s called House of French.
It’s like a club.
Anyway, he was responsible for surveillancing
of the foreign businessmen and Soviet bureaucrats
who were coming to Dresden to conduct different
kinds of negotiations.
That was his responsibility.
He had quite an unfortunate end of his career,
because the Berlin Wall fell.
Crowds stormed the Stasi offices in Karlshorst
and in Dresden, and basically, Soviet intelligence
had to run as quickly as possible in order
to escape the angry crowds.
…
MICHAEL KIRK - But tell me for a moment, just
what was his life story before getting into
the KGB?
Was he a wealthy young man?
What class did he grow up in?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - There was no wealthy young
or old men in this country back then.
All of us, we were poor as, you know, as rats.
So no, there were no wealthy people.
He grew up in the very—in a low-class family,
in a working-class family.
His father was not exactly working-class family.
They were very poor.
However, his father, during the World War
II, served in what was called SMERSH [counterintelligence
directorate].
…
MICHAEL KIRK - So this young man, who comes
from a low-class family—
YEVGENIA ALBATS - So Putin came from a very
poor family.
His parents survived the war.
And he was born when his parents already,
I believe, were around 40 years old.
They lived in what was called in the Soviet
Union a communal flat.
It means several families were living in one
apartment.
I gather his life was pretty difficult.
In a way, it became important when he joined
the KGB because there was—KGB was a very
caste organization.
Those who were children of the 
Soviet nobility, Soviet aristocracy, meaning
members of the central committee of the Communist
Party, Politburo, or top layers of army and
KGB, they were accepted to Department of Intelligence,
because they were stationed abroad.
And each and every Soviet citizen dreamed
to get outside the country and to live outside
the country without all these pleasantries
of the Communist state.
Putin was from the low background, ... and
for him, … joining KGB, it was a sort of
a social lift for him.
MICHAEL KIRK - He moved up the ladder.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Yes.
KGB, as I said, KGB was the most, especially
in the late, last decade of the Soviet Union,
it was the most powerful institution of the
country, and being a KGB officer meant that
you were going to have, not probably luxury
life, but for sure well better than the life
of the average Soviet citizen.
...
MICHAEL KIRK - So here is this guy who comes
from a lower class.
It’s a lift to him to get into the KGB,
to get a posting outside of the country.
That’s a big positive, too.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Yes.
MICHAEL KIRK - So he probably thinks he’s
on a kind of glide path.
He’s going to have a successful life.
And then, lo and behold, he and 800,000 other
KGB members are shipwrecked, as David likes
to say.
They're out of work.
Describe the circumstances for them, or what
that must have been like for Vladimir Putin.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - In fact, you know, he was
unfortunate even before the Soviet Union collapsed,
and KGB guys found themselves to be in perils.
No, it was when he returned back from his
post in German Democratic Republic, he tried
to join the ranks of the intelligence, and
he was denied.
He was denied this job, and it became clear
that his career was over.
Soviet Union was still in place.
So he had to return back to Leningrad.
And he wanted to be in the Intelligence Headquarters
here in Moscow in Yasenevo.
It’s in the south of the city.
He had to return back to Leningrad, and he
became deputy to dean in Leningrad State University,
responsible for surveilling foreign students
and whatever foreigners were coming to the
university.
MICHAEL KIRK - Not exactly James Bond.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Not exactly James Bond.
That’s the kind of job that was reserved
for the retired intelligence people.
And he was young.
He was still in his 40s.
And of course, you know, life had to look
to him as that his life was evolving in quite
unfortunate way.
MICHAEL KIRK - So tell me, what's the difference?
What happens to him?
That guy—of course there's [Leningrad Mayor
Anatoly] Sobchak.
But there's also, he finds himself years later—not
that many years later—as the head of the
FSB [Federal Security Service] in Moscow.
What happened?
How did he do that?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - First of all, I think that
he’s a smart guy.
He’s smart.
He’s very shrewd.
He is capable.
He was trained very well in the Intelligence
School.
He’s very capable of recruiting people.
You know, when you talk to people who know
him and knew him personally, they keep telling
you that Putin was, during their conversations,
Putin was very charming, and he used to say
during the conversation what exactly what
you wanted to hear from him.
Few people realized that he was very skillful
recruiter as an intelligence officer, KGB
officer.
He was able to talk to people in a way that
people felt like he was their best friend;
that in fact he was going to basically you
can do everything together; that he’s, you
know, he’s one of us.
I remember when I was doing a first profile
on Putin, back in 1999 for the Newsweek International,
and I spoke with one of his colleagues from
St. Petersburg.
… And he told me, “Zhenia, he’s exactly
like you and me.”
I said: “What do you mean, like you and
me?
We come from the intellectual backgrounds.
I was in dissident circles during the Soviet
times.
What do you mean?”
“He’s exactly like us,” he said.
And that’s the kind of impression that many
of those liberals and democrats who met Putin
back in mid-1990s, and in St. Petersburg,
and later in Moscow, they felt like: “Yeah,
he’s from the KGB, so what?
You know, he’s one of us.
He’s exactly like us.
He's a democratically minded person.”
He’s not.
He’s a big liar.
He’s trained—he’s a—I would correct
myself.
He’s a professional liar.
To lie is what he was taught in the Intelligence
School.
He knows the art of pretendance.
That’s what he was told in the Intelligence
School.
He knows how to recruit people, how to make
people think that he is going to work in their
favor, on behalf of them.
But that all is just one big lie.
MICHAEL KIRK - So he was lying to Yeltsin
and the people around Yeltsin?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Of course, of course.
Of course he was lying to them.
He was pretending that he was going to pursue
the same development of Russia as Yeltsin
did.
In fact, you know, to be honest, what's important
to understand, Yeltsin didn’t like him.
Yeltsin had the choice of several—among
several people, and he favored a person who
is no longer with us, Mr. [Nikolai] Aksenenko,
who was head of railroad’s monopoly back
in late 1990s and a transportation minister
in the then-Cabinet of the Russian government.
So Yeltsin wanted Aksenenko.
However, people around him, and especially
those who were extremely influential—I'm
talking about Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana
Yumasheva; his son-in-law and former chief
of staff, Valentin Yumashev; and Putin’s
first chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin.
These were people around Yeltsin.
And Yeltsin was sick, and not exactly coherent,
when the decision was made.
They convinced him to look closely at Putin.
And I remember, you know, I had a conversation
with one of them shortly before the first
inauguration of Vladimir Putin in 2000, in
May of 2000.
It was in Kremlin, in the building of the
administration of the president, and I said:
“What are you doing?
Don’t you understand that it’s not just
one man, one person from the KGB who’s coming
into top leadership of the country?
It is the corporation, the corporation of
the KGB, which is going to take over.”
And the response was—first of all, you have
to understand, I was talking out loud, and
he was writing to me responses.
He knew that he was under surveillance.
Anyway, and he wrote to me, “We fully control
him.”
Uh-uh.
It’s the biggest mistake that you can make,
because no civilian is capable to control
intelligence officer.
To be sure—
MICHAEL KIRK - What was the—
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Just one second.
Let me finish this.
MICHAEL KIRK - Yep.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - No civilian organization
is capable to control a special service.
Only another special service is capable to
control.
MICHAEL KIRK - Because?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Because the special services,
they have special techniques.
...
That’s why it’s so important that in the
United States, you have several competing
secret services, which compete with each other
for the money from the same intelligence committee
of Congress.
Of course it was a 
huge mistake on the part of Yeltsin’s advisers
that they chose a KGB colonel as the next
president of Russia.
Basically, I mean, what happened next was
doomed to happen, and was decided back when
they made this choice.
And that’s exactly what we see now.
MICHAEL KIRK - What was it?
What was the first indication you had, looking
at the new president, that this was going
to be what it has become?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I can give you a very simple
example.
The same person who told me that he is like
us, like you and me … 
He told me, “What kind of proof do you want
that Putin is not just this nasty KGB bastard?”
And I said: “Listen, Sergei Kovalev, a great
human rights activist, who spent seven years
in the Soviet gulag as a political dissident,
who was the publisher of the underground newspaper
Khronika Tekushchikh Sobytiy [Chronicle of
Current Events], he’s about to have his
jubilee.
Let’s make Putin to send him a telegram
with his congratulations.”
It’s, of course, a joke.
A KGB guy sending a congratulation message
postcard to a dissident who fought against
KGB his entire life—of course it’s a joke.
Anyway, I wrote a letter.
My conversator picked it up in the special
envelope and delivered this directly to Putin.
Sure enough, Sergei Kovalev never received
this postcard.
But that’s some sort of an anecdote.
When Putin was making his speeches, it became
clear that the guy has no views of his own,
or he was trying to console him.
He was talking a lot about dictatorship of
law.
I remember one of the first columns I wrote
back then for the Moscow Times, my argument
was, “Look, we are going to see dictatorship
without law, precisely because we know something
about Putin from his years in St. Petersburg.”
By then, there were already some research
done by reporters in this country, which became
clear that Putin was involved in all kinds
of very murky affairs in St. Petersburg government.
To be sure, ’90s were not about the law;
1990s in Russia was about stealing the state.
And you know, there [is] one very good book
called Oligarchs, written by David Hoffman,
that tells you all about these 1990s.
But Putin was involved, and we know this very
well, that he was involved in all kind of
very murky affairs, one of which was called
“oil in exchange for food.”
Obviously, he made his first—I don’t know,
millions—he probably became wealthy out
of those first deals back in St. Petersburg.
Anyway, so it was clear that he wasn’t exactly
the guy with very clean hands.
But he was young, very vocal, very capable
of making people—and not just in a room,
but people in the streets, crowds—to believe
that on one hand, he’s one of them; on the
other hand, he’s capable to protect them.
He was this strongman, guy with a strong hand,
who came to help Russia to find some law and
order at long last.
He never provided neither law nor order.
We are facing political repressions now, beatings
of the political opposition on a daily basis,
and many other things that we hoped never
to see again.
However, back then, Putin was very capable
in convincing people that he was going to
be as much democratic leader as Yeltsin was.
But he’s not going to be drunk on a daily
basis as Yeltsin was.
He’s going to be strong, smart, and he will
constrain oligarchs who were still in the
state.
And he was going to make Russian people well,
prosper[ous] and happy.
MICHAEL KIRK - When he takes over the television
and the media, in that sense, what does that
tell you?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Putin, as I said, he’s
smart.
His first campaign back in 1999-2000, it wasn’t
a real campaign; it wasn’t a presidential
campaign.
The whole campaign was on TV sets.
He himself was made a public figure by a TV
network, by TV networks.
Putin realized that in order not to have any
contester, any opposition, he has to have
full control over networks.
His first move was to take control over private
TV network and TV, and then, step by step,
he got control over each and every TV network
in this country.
And then, you know, everything else followed:
newspapers, information agencies.
Now we are left—there is one independent
magazine, one independent newspaper, one Internet-based
independent TV channel.
That’s it.
That’s all left for the country of 150 million
people.
MICHAEL KIRK - That’s just enough to make
it look like there's a loyal opposition, but
not enough for there to be a real opposition?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - No, of course there is a
real opposition.
It’s weak, and it’s fighting for its survival.
But there is a real opposition.
MICHAEL KIRK - Let’s stay for a minute back
in the 2000s.
… My sense was, he’s re-elected a couple
of times.
People liked him.
But what is happening to him and Russia and
the view of Russia by Russians while he’s
president in those first years?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - We have a huge problem,
you and I, because by saying elected, we mean
different things.
MICHAEL KIRK - What do you mean?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - There was no elections.
Each and every election since 2000 was staged.
There was no elections.
They were controlled by Kremlin.
The distribution of money was controlled by
Kremlin.
Each and every sponsor of any party had to
bring cash to Kremlin.
[In] 2003, Putin put Mikhail Khodorkovsky
in jail, once the wealthiest man in Russia
and the sponsor of a couple of political parties.
Precisely for doing that, Khodorkovsky went
in jail, even though, you know, he was sentenced
for tax evasion, etc.
Anyway, so—and Putin made it clear to businessmen
that if they want to be well and free and
alive, they should abstain from providing
any money to any political parties, any media,
anything, without consensus from the Kremlin.
Beginning 2003 elections, each and every sponsor
of any political party or any political candidate
had to bring cash, first to Kremlin, and then
it was Kremlin who decided where the money
went.
There was no contestation.
There was no equal access to the media.
Putin’s political opponents, whether parties
or personalities, they were unable, get it,
to get the same representation at TV as party
in power or not talking about Putin himself.
And besides that, there was all kind of fraud
conducted during the day of the elections.
There were fake ballots that were submitted
in many, many voting booths across the Russian
Federation, especially so in the ethnic republics.
I remember there was a great case in 2007,
I believe, or maybe it was in 2011—doesn’t
matter—during the parliamentary elections,
when in one voting region of the republic
of Chechnya, it is a republic in the Russian
Caucasus, 102 percent of the villagers voted
for the party in power, 102 percent.
That was an ordinary thing across the ethnic
republics, whether we’re talking about Chechnya,
Ingushetia, Dagestan, Moldavia, Bashkiria,
Tatarstan, etc.
That’s predominantly Muslim enclaves inside
the Russian Federation, which are tightly
controlled by the local barons.
These are some sort of sultanates that existed
inside the Russian Federation.
Western media doesn’t go there, don’t
go there and don’t know anything about that.
But it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, that’s the place where the biggest
fraud [is] done.
However, not just there.
As a result precisely of this election fraud,
resulted into the mass protests in December
of 2011 and the winter of 2012.
MICHAEL KIRK - Tell me the specifics of that.
What happens there?
You know, we—
YEVGENIA ALBATS - There, where?
MICHAEL KIRK - In the protests that emerge
following the elections in September and into
the fall of ’11 and ’12, what does Putin
chalk that up to?
What does he believe is actually happening
in that protest movement?
What does he recognize it as, and what is
it really?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - In December of 2011, there
was parliamentary elections in the Russian
Federation, and there was a massive fraud.
However, by 2012, we see the rise of the middle
class in the Russian Federation that didn’t,
of course, exist in the Soviet times.
As a result of high oil prices and windfall
profits, a lot of people, especially in this
city, Moscow, got pretty rich, or at least
wealthy, by our standards.
And as a theory of democratization will argue,
they had time and money and desire to ask
those in power to share in power.
They were taxpayers, and they paid taxes,
and they wanted to have control over their
taxes.
So these people went out in the streets, in
Moscow, in December 2011, when the massive
fraud during the elections was reported by
the independent media.
However, back then, a couple months before,
on October 24, 2011, the then-president of
the Russian Federation, who basically was
Putin’s puppet in Kremlin, Dmitry Medvedev,
and Vladimir Putin, who back then was the
prime minister of the Russian Federation,
they decided to make a change.
They announced to all of us that they decided
that, from now on, Putin is going to be president,
and Medvedev was going to be prime minister.
Somehow people got confused.
“Wait a second,” they said.
“You two decided they are going to make
a change?
And where are we in this puzzle?”
And apparently, the answer was: “F--- you.
We couldn’t care less about you guys.
You pay taxes?
Yeah, keep doing this, you know.
But we already decided.
So, you know, stay clean.
Don’t bug us.”
And that made people mad.
Especially those things—this wasn’t just
those poor, poor Soviets who were working
24/7 to get some bread.
These were people who already had bread and
butter, so they decided to request their rights.
They said: “Wait a second.
Uh-uh.
No, no, we don’t like this, you know.
You have to ask us.”
That’s how the whole protest started.
It went into the winter of 2011.
Many people in Kremlin did believe that crowds
were going to storm the administration of
the president.
They were dead afraid.
They were dead afraid, but Putin wasn’t.
And Putin made it clear that he didn’t believe
that these were Russian people who asked for
their share in political life.
I believe it was March 2012 when he said that
it was State Department of the United States
of America and its then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton who provided funds and means
to the Russian opposition and made them to
get out on the streets.
MICHAEL KIRK - He blamed America.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - He blamed Hillary Rodham
Clinton personally, State Department as an
institution, and United States as the country.
The trick is—and you know, if you ask him,
you would realize that he believes in that,
because in his KGB mentality, there is no
freewill.
He just doesn’t understand this.
You know, all these ideas about values, freedom,
democracy, rule of law, he believes that this
is nothing but chattering; that that’s what
Western powers are trying to present their
values.
But in fact everywhere, countries are run
exactly as Russia is run.
Let me give you one story.
I think it was something like in 2010, wherein
my magazine, The New Times, a very hard story
on the Russian police.
Police got mad, Kremlin got mad, and especially
so since they requested from me the names
of our sources.
And as I am supposed to, by the Russian law,
I said: “No, I am not going to provide you
with any sources.
You can call me to the court, but I'm not
going to do this.”
They searched the office, and they created
all kind of problems to the newsroom.
And that, you know—it was still, you know,
this marvelous times, 2010.
God, you know, Putin’s regime was still
in vegetarian state.
So 
it was reported by foreign media, by independent
press here in Moscow.
And I'm getting a call from Michael McFaul,
who then was a special assistant to President
Obama.
He worked in National Security Council.
He came to Moscow, and I knew Mike McFaul
since late 1980s.
He was a political scientist who was doing
his dissertation, a Ph.D. thesis on Russia,
etc.
We met back then.
And then, when I was at Harvard, you know,
he was at Stanford.
Anyway, he called me and said, “Zhenia,
how can I help you?”
And I said: “You know what, Mike?
Would you please to come to my office?”
Mike came the next day.
We had a conversation.
I knew that the office was taped, of course.
I knew that.
So he asked what happened.
I explained to him what happened, we wrote
the story, they want a source—blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, this kind of stuff.
I knew, of course, that everything was taped.
Two days after, a colonel who conducted the
search in my office, who was in charge of—called
me and said, “You know, we need to meet.”
I said, “OK, Come.”
He came; he said, “You know, where we can
speak?”
I said, “You know, you know better than
I do where you installed your equipment.”
So we went to the stairs.
I said, “It’s safe here?”
He said, “It’s safe here.”
“OK,” I said, “Thanks for telling me
that.”
And he said: “Well, Yevgenia, I know that
you had this conversation with a special assistant
to President Obama.
I am afraid now I am going to have troubles
getting a visa to the United States, and I
have my sister living in the United States.”
Anyway, to cut a long story short, approximately
eight months later, he called me again; he
came and said, “You know, we stopped an
investigation into”—they, you know, police
start the investigation into our report, our
story, and they were claiming they were going
to run a case against the magazine.
So he came and said: “You know, everything
stopped.
Worry not.”
I said, “What happened?”
He said: “You know what happened, and we
know what happened.
Michael McFaul returned back to that Washington,
D.C.
He went to President Obama, and told him about
what happened with The New Times.
President Obama called President Medvedev.
Medvedev called our minister and ordered to
stop any investigations against The New Times.”
Sure enough, it never happened.
You understand that Michael McFaul never told
a word to President Obama, and President Obama
never called President Medvedev on our behalf.
But that illustrates that people here, especially
those in the law, in the punitive organizations,
they believe that the world is run exactly
as it is in Russia.
Everything is very corrupted.
There is no rules, you know, and everything
is based on this personal basis.
That’s why Putin himself, he honestly doesn’t
believe that people can get out on the streets
just because they don’t like people in power
or because they want to get some rights.
That’s why he doesn’t believe, when people
in the Ukraine, in the Ukrainian capital Kiev,
went out on Maidan and stayed there for several
months until the corrupted—the then-president
of Ukraine, corrupted from top down, Mr. [Viktor]
Yanukovych, fled the country, and he believes
that it was the United States who conducted
a coup in Ukraine.
Sincerely, he doesn’t believe that democracy,
freedoms, desire of people to share in governments,
desire of people to control those in power,
free journals with all those things, do exist.
He just doesn’t believe.
His understanding of the world is very simplistic,
very simplistic.
All countries, all governments, all people,
all they want is to be rich and safe.
That’s it—if not rich, but well-to-do
and safe, that’s it.
They couldn’t care less about anything else.
And all these chattering about human rights,
democracy, forget about this.
It’s all—it’s like some sort of a performance,
he believes, conducted by the Western states
in order to grab their piece of control over
the sovereignty of the Russian Federation.
That’s the biggest problem, that his education,
his background, his personal experience doesn’t
allow him to believe in anything in what you
and I, we believe.
It’s all foreign to him.
MICHAEL KIRK - You know, one version of this
story a lot of people tell us, going all the
way up to Ukraine, is that Putin comes in,
he wants a kind of respect from the world.
He believes that the world, the presidents
from Bush on look at Russia as a—even from
what Obama says, you know, as a sort of developing
nation or something like that, a sort of lower
class, one rung lower, smaller than Portugal,
whatever.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Regional power.
Obama said regional power.
MICHAEL KIRK - Yeah, regional power.
… Putin’s quest, probably tied up in his
own ego, his quest for respect, for Russia
and for himself, goes across that decade,
2000 to 2010, ’11, ’12.
Certainly the Medvedev, the idea that we are
going to push the button and change everything
about American policy and Obama and Hillary
came in, with all of that, his quest has been
to get respect for Russia and for himself,
so that by 2012-2013, there is a sort of revenge
component to what he is doing vis-à-vis the
West.
You first hear about it in 2007, in the Munich
speech.
You hear about it again.
You look for what he’s doing in Sochi.
What’s he trying to do there?
Ukraine is meanwhile happening.
Help me with that perspective.
Do you see it that way?
Do Russians see it that way?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - First of all, you know,
I cannot speak, of course, for all Russians.
I think that it’s true that Putin personally
had a trauma when Soviet Union fell apart.
He was crème de la crème of the Soviet bureaucracy,
the KGB officer.
He probably believed that he was defending
the interests of this inhuman state when he
was posted in Germany, so it was a trauma
to him when Soviet Union fell apart, and all
of a sudden, KGB became an institution that
was blamed by everything for what happened
in August of 1991, during failed coup in Moscow
and other cities of the Soviet Union.
I think he has these ideas.
First of all, you know, I think Putin is a
Stalinist.
He’s not this Orthodox Stalinist whom we
used to know, people who kept saying about,
you know, who kept excusing Stalin for the
mass murder he committed in this country.
Millions of people were killed in this country,
in the gulag, during Stalin’s purges, during
the Great Terror.
But Putin believes that the way Stalin ran
this country and the place that Stalin gained
for the Soviet Union in the West was a success.
Russia was an agricultural country before
the Great October Socialist Revolution, and
it became an industrial state before the World
War II.
So I think it was very unpopular, sort of
archaic, in 1990s to praise Stalin.
However, obviously, now he has the possibility
not to counsel his true feelings, and that
came out in the last years in full.
He believes that people, they're like children.
They're babies, you know.
They have to be told how to behave, what to
think, what to believe in.
We clearly see it now in the politics that
he conducts in this country.
He believes that Russia is an empire, and
he would like to reinstate the Soviet Union,
not as it was back before the 1991, when it
was a huge country comprised of 15 republics.
There were 300 million people living in the
Soviet Union.
No, he doesn’t want to be responsible for
people in Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or Uzbekistan
in Central Asia, no.
But he does want for Russia to be in control
for those former republics of the Soviet Union.
He wants [the] West to stay aside.
He wants [the] West to know that countries
like Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Baltics,
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, these
are countries [within] this sphere of influence
of Russian Federation, and you stay away.
He doesn’t believe in the sovereignty of
these small countries.
They were part of the Russian Empire before
1917.
They were part of the Soviet Union after 1917,
and all the way to 1991.
… So yes, he’s imperialist for sure, and
he doesn’t want anyone to tell him what
he has to do or not to do in this country.
He doesn’t believe that human rights doesn’t
have boundaries, that regardless where it
happens, rulers are supposed to at least,
you know, to pretend that they respect the
values that they're proclaiming by the United
Nations.
He doesn’t believe in all of that.
He has to have free hands to do for him whatever
he wants in this part of the world.
That’s it.
MICHAEL KIRK - And the idea that he’s been
disrespected by the American—that Russia
has been disrespected by American presidents,
Clinton through Obama, Clinton, Bush, and
Obama, and the sense that he personally doesn’t
have the clout, the whatever, that he wishes
he would have.
You see him sitting alone in G-20 conferences.
To what extent does that contribute to what
almost feels like revenge?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I guess if we’re talking
about revenge, it’s probably something that
does drive Putin, revenge for the humiliation
of late 1980s, 1990s, when Russia was dead
poor and had nothing in the central bank coffers
and had to ask for support from the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund—for
sure, you know.
But I don’t know.
I just think that 
Putin feels himself as a new type of Russian
czar.
He wants to have this place in history and
in the minds of the people that he is the
one who is running the country, running the
lives of the citizens of this country, and
who is capable to withstand any pressure,
whether it’s coming through United States,
Germany or any European Union or any other
place in the world.
…
MICHAEL KIRK - Do you think he initiated the
hack?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - We have very little information
to be honest with you.
It’s difficult, I guess, for journalists,
and especially for journalists here in Russia.
We read the reports produced by the intelligence
community without any facts.
There are almost no facts in those reports.
There are just, you know, the joint statement
of the American intelligence organizations
who say Russians hacked computers.
Putin himself gave orders to do that.
I am a reporter.
It’s difficult for me to make conclusions
based on such insufficient evidence.
What I do know is that there was a huge desire
on the part of the KGB people and the community
of members of these punitive organizations
in Russia 
for Donald Trump to become a president.
They believed that he was going to drop down
sanctions; that all the problems, economic
problems, that Russia is experiencing now,
because of the sanctions imposed by the then-President
Obama, Donald Trump is going to drop down
and say, “Forget about these,” and everything
will come to normal.
They will start getting cheap Western money
once again, and they will start traveling
abroad, and they will conduct the same life
they had before those sanctions.
When Donald Trump won the election, there
was huge celebrations here in Moscow, in the
governmental institutions.
It was the funniest thing I have ever seen
in my life.
To be sure, this country is run on the anti-American
rhetoric, and it’s like 24/7.
You know, if there is evil exists in the world,
it has your face, an American face, right?
There was a celebration in what they call
parliament, this conglomerate of those people
who call themselves representatives.
They're not.
Don't buy this, but they pretend as if they
are.
A notorious figure of the Russian politics,
Mr. [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky, toasted for Trump
and for his success in the elections.
The head of the Russian propaganda mouthpiece,
Russia Today, or RT, she wrote, she tweeted
a saying that she was almost ready to put
American flag on her car.
Unbelievable, you know.
Anyway, so for sure, Trump was the first choice
of the Russian bureaucracy, of all these KGB
men.
It’s true, too, that Putin hated Clinton
and was afraid of Clinton.
Now, we can review the question by comparison,
by historical comparison.
It once happened—probably not once, but
you know, this was documented—when Soviets
took part in the American elections.
It wasn’t the first time now.
…
We know this from so-called Mitrokhin Archives.
The slogan of the operation, the slogan of
this disinformation campaign that was conducted
by the Soviet agents on the territory of the
United States, as well as in Europe, was “Reagan
Means War!”
Soviet agents were quite successful in Europe.
A lot of newspapers in Northern Europe and
Central Europe ran stories that was cooked
in the KGB headquarters.
Some, as far as I understand, some American
media were also involved.
However, as we’re well aware, Reagan had
a landslide victory back then.
They totally failed.
However, what’s interesting about this example,
that Soviet leadership seriously believed
that they were able to corrupt American elections
through their money, through their cooked
publications, etc.
Putin grew up inside the KGB.
Andropov was, according to what we know about
him, … Andropov was one of those whom, you
know, he believed to be—to model his life
after, right?
I don’t have trouble imagining that somebody
from the intelligence community brought him
this case and said, “You know, why don’t
we try?”
In any case, if what we read in the American
newspapers is true, it doesn’t sound to
me as forma impossible.
I think, you know, yes, if there is a proof,
then of course these kind of covert action
could have happened only with OK from President
Putin himself.
Nobody beneath him would have allowed himself
to conduct that type of operation without
president’s OK.
So for sure, Putin was, if it had happened,
for sure that Putin was involved.
Now, what we suspect we know is that Russian
hackers, Russian hackers supposedly, allegedly
hacked the computers of the Democratic Party
as well as Republican Party, and also hacked
computers in the 30 states, the electoral
computers of 30 states.
Is it possible?
Of course it’s possible.
We do know that Russian hackers, during the
war—during the short-lived war between Russia
and Georgia, Russian hackers hacked the computers
of the Georgian government.
Russian hackers hacked the computers of the
Estonian government when there was some problems
between the two states.
Russians hacked the computers of Moldavian
government.
MICHAEL KIRK - Ukraine.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - And I believe Ukrainian
government, yes, and Ukrainian government,
of course.
Once again, we do know that Russian cyber
divisions, and they existed in this country,
cyber divisions, cyber army, that they are
capable of putting down the computers of the
foreign governments, foreign states.
So if they're capable to do this in Georgia
and Ukraine, why not try to do it in the United
States?
MICHAEL KIRK - What does he want?
If it happened, if he did initiate it, what
does Putin want?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I think, first and foremost,
he wanted to create a mess.
He wanted to make it clear, both domestically
and to show this to the world, that democracy
is all about cash.
And that it’s—that’s a mess; that there
is no way for an honest election.
He wanted to make it clear that there is no
difference between what is happening here
domestically in Russia, what they call elections,
and the kind of elections that exist in the
United States.
He wanted to present democracy as a chaos,
as something that is full of lies, corruption
and distortions and etc., etc., etc.
I think that was his basic goals.
He is going after Western values, not just
after personalities.
He is eager to portray the Western values
as something that is not valuable to fight
for.
His audience is domestic first and foremost,
of course, but not just that.
He is looking at former Soviet allies in Southern
and Central Europe.
That’s also message to them, to people in
Poland, in Hungary, in Romania, etc., etc.
He wants to tell them: “Forget about this,
you know.
What are you talking about?
Elections, freedoms, democracy—forget about
all that.
It’s just bulls---.
It’s just the way Western governments, leaders
of the Western world, they are trying to take
over our resources, our people, our minds,
etc.”
If you listen to his top allies, to his top
advisers, like for instance his national security
adviser, they are talking about the United
States as a power that is trying to take over
Russian resources.
They believe that you sit over there in Washington,
D.C. and New York, or in Montana, and all
you’re dreaming about is how you are going
to conquer Siberia.
It’s minus 40 or 50 degrees there in Siberia;
I'm not sure you want this.
But anyway—
MICHAEL KIRK - So the Russian people—I know
you're not all the Russian people, but when
the Russian people think about the fact that
their president feels this way, do their hearts
fill and swell with pride at what Putin was
able to do, disrupt and reflect chaos in the
United States democracy?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Sure.
There are some people in this country who
feel proud that Putin was able to knock down
the United States.
I think damage is made, for sure.
You just think about this: Only 17 percent
of Russians do have foreign passport that
allows them to travel.
Of these, 7 or 8 percent traveled abroad.
Of the 7 or 8 percent, 4 percent traveled
to Egypt and Turkey, so they have no idea
what Western world is all about.
Very few of them travel to the United States
because it’s very difficult to get a travel
visa to the United States.
But there are all kind of—you know, there
are a lot of myths about the United States.
And there is, for many of the Russian people,
you know, United States is a manifestation
of prosperity and freedom, and you know, that’s
the land of milk and honey, though we know
that it’s not all that.
Anyway, so in this country, the United States
was sort of a face of democracy, face of liberty,
of pursuit of happiness.
United States was everything that Soviet Union
and then Russia never was.
And then, all of a sudden, they are told that
some hackers are capable to destroy the very
essence of the American democracy, its elections.
You start thinking, wait a second.
Is it that fragile?
Is it that insecure?
Our beliefs in the power of democracy in the
United States is false?
I think many of us 
feel very uneasy and very insecure.
All of a sudden, we found ourselves in this
very, very unsteady, unsafe world.
You know, it’s no fun to be in political
opposition in this country, and there was
always belief that there across the ocean,
there is this country, the United States,
who stand behind those who fight against dictatorships
in their own country; that when worse come
to worse, this country is going to, and its
leaders are going to, stand for those in other
parts of the world who are fighting for their
rights, for their freedoms, for their beliefs.
No longer.
I think this is gone.
MICHAEL KIRK - So that when you look at President
Trump and President Putin at the G-20 Conference
shaking hands, looking at each other, it’s
almost like they share—first, what do you
think when you see that picture of those two
men, especially given what you’ve just said?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I think that I want to apply
for jobs in New Zealand.
...
I feel very disillusioned.
I feel, when I see—when President Putin
and President Trump shake hands, I feel like,
oh, I want to fall asleep and wake up a couple
of years later.
MICHAEL KIRK - What do they share?
It seems like they share a list of grievances;
that it was really a grievance conversation,
not anything else.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - You know, I think that both
of them, they share a very cynical view of
the world.
I think President Trump is the first president
of the United States, at least from what I
know, who doesn’t believe in American values.
I have mine in American politics.
I read your Founding Fathers.
I read Federalist Papers.
You know, a copy of the American Constitution
and Bill of Rights always sits on my desk.
It is like when you want to see 
the kind of writings that make you happy,
when you read this, you know, “pursuit of
happiness,” this is really important, that
in the foundation of the American state were
people who believed that they're co-citizens;
they want to be happy.
And the deed of a leader to help he or she
to be happy, that’s—for somebody from
my part of the world, it’s unbelievable.
It is something, like, it’s a dream ideas.
It just—it never happened in my part of
the world, and never in my country for sure.
No leader in this country ever dreamed about
happiness of ordinary people.
And it’s really hard to understand.
I do know that Hillary Clinton did win the
popular vote, that she got almost 3 million
votes more than Donald Trump.
But still, it’s hard to understand how people
in the United States, in such huge numbers,
voted for somebody who clearly doesn’t believe
in the values of the American democracy, at
least the way I understand this from afar.
MICHAEL KIRK - Well, they were helped along,
according to so many people, by the things
that we’re talking about: the hack for sure,
but fake news; RT; you know, a lot of things
that happened in the election.
Obviously there was also a huge number of
people that Hillary Clinton didn’t perceive
were going to vote the way they voted, and
Trump was more powerful in all kinds of other
ways.
But there is a substantial contribution, it
seems, it appears, from the president of Russia,
in the composite at least of what happened,
and yielding Donald Trump.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - To be honest with you, I
don’t believe that Russian involvement in
the American elections, if it did happen at
the scale described by the American media,
was sufficient and changed the outcome of
the elections.
I covered American elections.
I covered primaries in New Hampshire.
I went to listen to Trump and others, you
know.
I covered both conventions.
I was in Cleveland.
I was in Philadelphia.
No, I don’t believe that it was Russia.
I think that was, you know, that Trump was
elected because so many Americans got disillusioned
with the ideas represented by Trump’s opponents.
MICHAEL KIRK - Do you think this could backfire
on Putin?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - What do you mean?
MICHAEL KIRK - I mean, is there any way that,
if this gets pinned on Putin, it isn't good
for Russia or him in the world, or even especially
here in Russia?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I think the fact that U.S.
Senate passed new sanctions against Russia
would feel as a punishment to Putin.
I think part of the reason they had such a
long discussion during the G-20 in Hamburg,
I'm absolutely aware that Putin was talking
about that, you know, we know that Congress
is going to pass the bill.
Then it’s up to Trump either to veto these
new sanctions against Russia or to sign the
bill into law.
So yes, I do think that Putin and his pals
are afraid of new sanctions, because the state
of the economy is very complicated here.
And despite what they said, that the impact
of the sanctions was minimal, it’s not true.
It’s all about access to cheap Western money,
and now, you know, they have a very small
access to this money.
And money in Russia are very expensive.
We’re talking about 14 percent at best,
interest rate.
So anyway, yes.
In that respect, it can backfire.
Other than that, I think Putin is happy.
He proved a point.
Now all Russians, they can see that all this
chitchat about American democracy is nothing
but chitchat.
Look at them.
You know, they have this guy, Mr. Trump, who
one day says this, and another day he says
that, and you never understand what he means.
And he is trying to run the country with 140
characters allowed for a tweet.
So I think, you know, Putin’s successful.
It made a point.
You know, Russian state propaganda TV keep
showing all these reports from the United
States that just prove that everybody—all
countries are corrupted.
There is no difference between authoritarian
politics and democratic politics.
All this conversation about values, you know,
just forget about this.
There are no values whatsoever.
And basically, the world is a tease everywhere,
whether in Russia or in the United States.
And, you know, just stop talking about human
rights; stop talking about free and fair elections.
Forget about this.
And, you know, Putin made a point to Russians
for sure.
So I think he’s very happy.
MIKE WISER - When Putin goes into the first
meeting, when he’s first president and he
goes into the meeting with Bush, and it’s
the famous story that he tells the story of
the cross, and that Bush says he looked into
his soul, at that point in Putin’s presidency,
what did he want from Bush and from the United
States?
Was it an adversarial relationship at that
early point in Putin’s presidency?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - I think back at the start
of his first presidency, Putin was looking
for some friendly bilateral relationship with
the United States.
But I guess, you know, with American invasion
in Iraq, then Afghanistan, then events in
Libya, with all the chaos that was created
in the Middle East, he got to believe that
American leaders are quite irrational, that
they create troubles, and he knows better.
But I do think that, you know, that at least
at the very beginning, he was looking for
some good relationship with the United States.
He even once mentioned that he was ready to
join NATO.
MIKE WISER - The 2011 protests into 2012,
how much of a turning point is that for Putin
in his view of the West and the threat of
the Internet?
How does that change Putin?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Putin, as I said, Putin
doesn’t believe that people have a freewill,
that ordinary citizens in their good conscience
would get out on the streets and demand rights.
He doesn’t believe in that.
He doesn’t believe in people.
He doesn’t believe that people have any
freewill.
He doesn’t believe that people even think
about their rights when they come home and
have their supper.
But he does believe that foreign powers are
trying to destroy Russia; that he has to protect
Russian borders and Russian wealth and Russian
resources; that it was foreign entities who
provided money and resources to those who
were on the streets.
Otherwise, why did they go out?
There were no rational reasons for Russians
to go out on the streets; especially it was
very cold winter back then.
And of course, you know, Putin himself doesn’t
use Internet.
He believes that Internet is just a basket
of all things dirty and all things corrupted,
and Internet brings all kind of disinformation
to ordinary Russian people.
Therefore, beginning 2012, after he returned
back to Kremlin from his position of the prime
minister and once again became president,
as if he wasn’t before, that Internet is
his enemy.
And the Russian authorities started to introduce
all kind of measures that are supposed to
put constraints on Internet.
Right now, they are about to pass a law that
makes all kind of VPN [virtual private networks]
illegal in this country.
You know what is VPN?
MICHAEL KIRK - VPN?
Sure.
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Yeah.
All kind of VPNs to be illegal in this country.
And there are all kind of other laws so that
they're supposed to control the Internet.
MICHAEL KIRK - So it’s safe to say the West
and the Web become enemies in a way, even
stronger than they might have been before
2011-2012?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I think it is, you know, it’s pretty much
at the same scale as it was under Brezhnev
or Andropov, with one big difference.
Both Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Andropov,
all of them, they had a memory of the World
War II.
They were afraid of wars.
They were afraid of devastation that the World
War II brought to Russians.
We lost plus/minus 30 million people during
that war.
We lost a whole generation that never was
born.
So they were afraid of the wars.
Putin doesn’t.
He’s not afraid.
And that’s the biggest difference.
Not just Putin, but Putin and his entourage,
they are not afraid.
If you remember, Brezhnev was into detente.
I think Soviet leaders, they were sincere
in trying to prevent nuclear war, precisely
because they remember the previous war.
Putin doesn’t have this memory and doesn’t
have this fear.
He is investing a hell of a lot of resources
and money and manpower, everything, into Russian
military-industrial complex.
He’s preparing for another war.
The fact that he’s not afraid, that Russian
military doctrine, Russian national security
doctrine allows for a war as it didn’t before,
that is what makes 
it so dangerous.
Putin is not just cynical guy or KGB guy or,
you know, undemocratic guy.
Putin is not just some man who doesn’t respect
borders or sovereignty of elections in another
country.
Putin is a bad man, and Putin is a dangerous
man.
He’s dangerous not just for us; that’s
for sure.
None of us, you know, really has a great future.
But he’s dangerous.
He’s a dangerous man for the world, precisely
because he doesn’t have fear of a war, and
nuclear war is one in particular.
He is a light version of North Korean dictator.
All of us, we got accustomed to look at North
Korea and think, you know, well, they're lunatics.
Putin is one of us.
He looks like us.
He wears very good suits, like any other Western
leader.
He speaks fluent German, and he understands
English.
After all, he comes from a country with Tolstoy
and Dostoyevsky and great education, etc.
You make a huge mistake.
Of course, you know, he’s not a lunatic
he’s a very pragmatic man.
But he may become a very, very dangerous man
for the future of the mankind.
JIM GILMORE - The 2011 parliamentary elections,
you talked about it, but can you describe
a little bit more, what do we know?
What did you see that proved that the elections
weren’t perfect?
I mean, you write about the carousels.
You write about the ballot stuffing.
What did you guys see on the ground was happening
that created the demonstrations?
YEVGENIA ALBATS - It wasn’t just my reporters
who reported about the corruption of the elections,
that brought, all these thousands of people
brought from other cities, who were voting
twice, thrice, God knows how many times; about
ballot boxes that was stuffed with fake ballots;
about the situation in the ethnic republics
of Russia, Chechnya, where, you know, the
numbers, they were totally fake, totally fake.
I mean, it’s a known problem, you know.
People in those ethnic republics of the Russian
Federation, there were 90 percent, 99 percent,
100 percent of voters who showed up for elections
voted for the party in power, the United Russia.
It’s impossible.
We do know it’s impossible.
We do know that everything over 70 percent
is either falsified or it is some—or it
implies some sort of fraud.
So we were writing about this.
But the trick is that the first time I think
in the post-Soviet history, Russian intellectual
journalists, political activists, they decided
to take control of the elections.
They went to serve their duty at the polling
stations.
So it probably—it was also, you know, they
reported using their smartphones.
People reported about the fraud on the Internet,
and therefore it went viral all across the
Web.
And everybody—you know, it became a common
knowledge.
The elections were hacked; elections were
sabotaged.
And I guess we knew this before.
We journalists knew that before the previous
elections were hacked as well and were fraudulent
as well.
But that time, precisely because of the Web,
because of the Internet, because of the social
networks, that became common knowledge.
Already Facebook was in place.
Twitter was in place.
And everyone was distributing this information
all around.
So that’s why people came out in the streets
in the major cities of the Russian Federation,
in Moscow and St. Petersburg first and foremost.
However, what we saw here on March 26 and
on June 12 is much bigger than what we had
back then.
Now, thousands of people, young people came
out on the streets, not just in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, but in 80-plus cities all
across the Russian Federation.
We are watching here a totally new development,
a very new type of a position that didn’t
exist before.
It’s a totally new phenomenon that we witnessed
on June 12 and March 26.
