Friday Night Watch Party | The West vs. Vladimir Putin

➡ This text talks about the life of Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. Putin was born into a poor family and grew up in tough conditions, which led him to learn martial arts. He was interested in becoming a spy from a young age and eventually joined the KGB, Russia’s main security agency. He worked his way up in the KGB and later in politics, eventually becoming the president of Russia, a position he has held for a long time.
➡ Putin, while working as the head of the committee for external relations at the mayor’s office in St Petersburg, was accused of misusing his position for personal gain. He allegedly brokered a $93 million deal to acquire food supplies for the city, but the food never arrived. Despite accusations and investigations, no solid evidence was found against Putin. He later entered politics, becoming deputy mayor and fostering international connections, but was also linked to corruption and crime during this period.
➡ The text is a long monologue about the speaker’s perspective on various global conflicts, including the war in Ukraine. The speaker criticizes NATO and Western countries for their actions and accuses them of hypocrisy. They also argue that mainstream media keeps people uninformed about the true nature of these conflicts. The speaker ends by urging listeners to question their governments’ actions and to consider the consequences of their actions.
➡ The text talks about the rise of Vladimir Putin, from his early days as a KGB agent to becoming the leader of Russia. It discusses how Putin’s time in the KGB and his experiences during the collapse of the Soviet Union shaped his leadership style. The text also mentions some controversial events, like apartment bombings and political maneuvers, that played a role in Putin’s rise to power. Lastly, it raises questions about Putin’s true intentions and his impact on global politics.
➡ In the late 1990s, Russia’s economy collapsed, leading to political instability and a search for new leadership. Boris Yeltsin, the then-president, chose Vladimir Putin as his successor, but Putin was unknown to the public. A series of bombings, blamed on Chechen terrorists, raised Putin’s profile as he promised to restore order. Despite some controversies, Putin was elected president in 2000, promising to restore Russia’s status as a great power.
➡ After the Cold War, countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO, which Russia didn’t like. In 2004, Ukraine had a presidential election where the pro-Russian candidate won, but after protests and a re-vote, the pro-NATO candidate became president. This made Russia’s leader, Putin, want to expand Russia’s influence more. He even had a former Russian spy killed in England, which showed the world he was willing to do anything to keep his power and make Russia stronger.
➡ Russia was upset about the possibility of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, seeing it as a threat. This led to conflict with Georgia, with Russia supporting separatist regions and eventually invading Georgia. This action sent a message to other Eastern European countries considering joining NATO. Meanwhile, in Russia, many people protested against Putin and his party, accusing them of corruption and election rigging.
➡ In the 1990s, Putin worked his way up in Russian politics, gaining respect for fighting corruption and managing government money. He became prime minister under President Yeltsin, who saw Putin as a stable and loyal successor. When Yeltsin resigned, Putin became president and stayed in power by manipulating the constitution and controlling the media. Despite facing criticism for his methods, Putin maintained his power by emphasizing stability over freedom and appealing to Russian nostalgia for the Soviet era.
➡ Despite rumors that Russian President Putin is one of the wealthiest people in the world, his publicly reported finances show a much simpler picture. He earns a salary of around $100,000 to $190,000 per year and has assets like apartments, cars, and a small plot of land. However, his expensive watches and clothing, as well as his connections to luxurious estates and yachts, have led to speculation that he has hidden wealth. Putin denies these claims, stating that his greatest wealth is the trust of the Russian people.
➡ There are rumors that Russian President Putin is extremely wealthy, with estimates ranging from $70 billion to $200 billion. These estimates are based on claims that Putin owns significant shares in several large companies, and that he and his friends have been taking billions from these companies each year. However, there’s no hard evidence to support these claims, and the companies deny that Putin owns any shares. Some believe that Putin doesn’t officially own most of the wealth attributed to him, but uses his position to enrich those close to him, who in turn provide him with money and assets as needed.
➡ The article discusses the wealth of Russian President Vladimir Putin and how it’s tied to his power. It suggests that Putin’s wealth isn’t in his name but is held by his close associates, who have a vested interest in him staying in power. The article also mentions that Putin’s lifestyle is funded by the Russian government and his wealthy friends. Despite speculations, there’s no concrete evidence of Putin having a massive hidden fortune.
➡ This text talks about a series of bombings in Russia in 1999 that killed many people and caused widespread fear. The blame was put on the Chechens, leading to a renewed war and the rise of Vladimir Putin, who was then the prime minister. However, some people doubt the Chechens’ involvement and suspect that the Russian secret services may have had a role in the bombings. The text also mentions a YouTube channel discussing these events and the presenter’s views on Putin.
➡ Chef Pavel Volashin and others found a potential bomb in a building, which led to a panic and evacuation. The local head of the FSB, Serge, initially confirmed it was a real bomb, but later, government officials contradicted each other, with one saying it was a failed terrorist attack and another claiming it was just an exercise. This confusion led to suspicion and anger, especially when it was revealed that the local FSB was not informed about the operation from Moscow. The incident raised questions about the truth of the situation and the credibility of the officials involved.
➡ This text talks about a confusing situation where bags were found in a building’s basement, and people weren’t sure if they contained explosives or sugar. The FSB, a Russian security agency, first said they found traces of explosives, but later denied it and said it was just an exercise. There are many inconsistencies in their story, and some people think they’re trying to cover up a planned terrorist attack. The FSB insists it was just sugar and an exercise, but many people don’t believe them.
➡ This text talks about a controversial event in Russia, where the government claimed to be conducting a security exercise, but many people didn’t believe them. Some people think it was a real threat, not a drill, and that the government was trying to scare people or cover up something else. The text also discusses how the government treated those who questioned the event, including threats and intimidation. Lastly, it questions whether the Russian president knew about the event and if he should investigate it.

It is Friday night watch party. It has been an interesting day, guys. I’m just going to leave it at that. I had quite a few twists and turns and. Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. Interesting day. So apologize for my tardiness. It was not deliberate. I it. But I have three videos that I want to play today. Each one are about 45 minutes long, so not 100% sure if I’m going to be able to get to all of them.

Hold on 1 second. I’m live. What’s up, Troy? And he said he didn’t know if, you know, paperwork for you. Okay, so somebody is needing my presence at the front door. So without further ado, I’m going to go ahead and get this party started. Let’s see here. Go ahead. And here we go. Just real quickly, I’m not 100% sure I’ve seen all of these, and I’m going to start with this one and we’ll just see how it goes.

Yes, I’ll get to some of the stuff in the adventures in Kittyland, but for now, let’s get started with the video here today. So here we go. When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of the Russian Federation, it was expected, but sudden. He resigned so his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, could become president on January 1, 2000, the start of the new millennium. Since then, Putin has been the most powerful man in Russia and one of the most powerful men in the world.

Today, that power has been felt worldwide as the war rages in Ukraine, contributing to gas price hikes, food insecurity in many countries, and not exactly helping the soaring inflation felt around the world. It may surprise many to learn that this man, who was only the Russian Federation’s second president, is not a career politician and had his position more or less thrust upon him precisely because of this. So how did Vladimir Putin come to power in the first place? And how has he managed to maintain his position as the leader of Russia for quite so long? Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 1752 in Leningrad.

Vladimir’s father, also called Vladimir, was a factory worker and a former soldier who fought in the siege of Leningrad. His mother, Maria, gave birth to two sons who died before Vladimir was born. At first, the family lived in a communal apartment that was barely big enough for them, let alone the other two families they had to share it with. As you might have deduced from all of this, Putin grew up in poverty and would get into fights around his apartment building, a habit that would land him in trouble as an adult and even risk jeopardising his career at points.

This habit would also lead him to channel that energy into sambo, a russian martial art that combines catch as catch can wrestling with judo. Putin would later practice judo proper, and it is one of the things he is known for on the world stage. As for education, Vladimir did not get good grades at first, but the chance to join a sports club to learn martial arts inspired him to improve his mind as well, along with another motivation to improve his marks, which we’ll get into shortly.

He also learned German in school, which would likewise greatly influence his trajectory later. What may come as a surprise, given where he’s ended up, is that Putin was politics averse as a youth. For example, he declined to join the youth wing of the communist party, even as he was pressured to do so by teachers and fellow students. However, Putin would eventually relent and find that he was a natural leader.

One thing that he was far more interested in, even as a child, however, was spycraft. As a teenager, he dreamed of joining the KGB, inspired by approved literature and film about soviet spies during World War II that circulates whether fully accurate or not, a famous story where in 1968, a teenage Putin walked into the KGB headquarters in Leningrad and asked a guard what he needed to study in order to get into the KGB, the guard told him he should study law.

Allegedly emboldened by the response, Putin started to put more energy into school, hoping to enter Leningrad State University for law and ultimately achieve this goal. However, he was warned by his coaches and friends early on that he would not enjoy the more realistic life of a KGB officer compared to the one he saw in films. Still, Putin persisted, and his studies in university instilled in him a great respect for law and order.

He ultimately interned for the city’s transport ministry and its criminal division, until he wound up getting recruited to the KGB in 1975. In 1976, Putin became a first lieutenant, working for the KGB’s counterintelligence department, the second chief directorate. Here he learnt how to recruit informants and collaborators in the war with the Soviet Union’s internal enemies, as much talk of deep states in modern conspiracy theories. But the KGB was truly a state within a state.

It monitored everything to ensure law and order within and without of the Soviet Union, and Putin learned a lot from his time working for them. The without part is something Putin would become more familiar with, as after six months, he was transferred to the first chief directorate, which handled intelligence outside of the borders of the Soviet Union. That said, while you might envision Hollywood spy type scenarios where his daily life, in fact, according to journalist and biographer Masher Genson, quote, putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless produced by the KGB.

Nevertheless, his employment in the KGB brought out a side of Putin that would become central to his rise to power. He worked, he worked hard, meticulously, and he kept his head down. He had ambitions, no doubt, but they don’t appear to have been initially to rule the country or party, but rather to advance in the KGB. For now, he monitored and shadowed foreigners in Leningrad until 1985, when he would be sent to the Red Banner Institute for training in Foreign Intelligence.

This was the real spy school where he fulfilled his childhood dream. However, his fondness for fighting continued as an adult, with the consequence that his conduct there resulted in him being unable to get into the secret service. Instead, he was assigned to Dresden in East Germany because of his knowledge of German. There he worked with the KGB and the Starseed, East Germany’s secret police during the last half decade of the eastern bloc.

There, he immersed himself in german culture and by all accounts, performed his duties with distinction. The unraveling of eastern Germany, which was most dramatically captured in the fall of the Berlin Wall, impacted Putin deeply. He saw the Soviet Union’s reach in the area crumble before his eyes and Moscow unable to even relay some borders to the KGB in its chaos. In 1989, he returned under Russia due to Gorbachev’s social and economic reforms.

Like glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet Union’s days were visibly at an end. At home as well, Putin didn’t know what the future held for him, either as a russian or as a KGB officer. This was not unique to him. As for most Russians, the future was uncertain. A way of life was coming to an end, and there was a lot of chaos in building a new one. While still working for the KGB, he was assigned the position of assistant to the rector at Leningrad State University.

This was a semi official KGB post used to spy on foreign students. And now into the picture, Anatalie Sobchak. A professor of law at the university and would be democratic reformer, Sobchak recruited Putin in May of 1990 for his elections to the city council. In this, Putin disclosed to Sobchak that he was an active KGB agent. But Sobchak did not mind. He ran for city council and then chairman of the city council.

He wished to establish free elections for the post of mayor as part of his platform of democratic reforms. The hope was that a referendum could be held in which he would be elected mayor and the city would be renamed its original name, St Petersburg. And that’s exactly what happened in 1991. In all of this, Sobject trusted Putin as a reliable worker and soon he would reward him. Also during this period, Putin tried to quit the KGB twice, as his active status with the agency attracted too much scrutiny.

The first time he tried to quit was in the beginning of his tenure with Sobchak. He tried again during a failed coup in 1991. However, the KGB were only too happy to have him in Sobchak’s midst. They even tried to lean on Putin to supply them with a document which would allow them to manipulate Sobchak, which Putin refused to provide. Not wanting to violate Sobchak’s trust, his resignation was ultimately accepted and he was officially out of the agency that had served for most of his life.

Now, going back to Sobchak, his time as mayor did not go well. The democratic reformer became known as anti democratic in his dealings with the city council. He often tried to shut them out of important decisions, kneecap his rivals and any challenges to his mayorship. And he was accused of numerous under the table dealings. Putin also was not immune from this seemingly shady behaviour. In fact, the first rumour that Putin was using a government position to stash away quite a lot of money for his own personal gain came around this time in his then position as head of the committee for external relations at the mayor’s office in St Petersburg, specifically when he allegedly helped broker a $93 million deal to acquire various food supplies for the city.

In a nutshell, various companies were granted permits that would allow them to supply huge amounts of materials to foreign entities, and in exchange, they’d be given an equivalent value back in foodstuffs to then be used within the famished city. The thing was, as far as anyone could tell, while the companies did send out the materials, no foodstuffs came back in return. The matter was ultimately investigated by one marina Sally, at the behest of the city council, with Sally in turn claiming Putin’s signature could be found authorizing the deals.

She states the raw materials were shipped abroad, but the food didn’t materialize. There’s 100% proof that in this, Putin was to blame. As a result, in 1992, when there was no food at all, the city was left with nothing. The evidence I have is as solid as it gets. Putin. Well, his committee made bartering contracts to get food for the city. He issued licenses and commodities. Wood, metal, cotton, heating oil and oil flew out of the country.

That said, while she states Putin was to blame, and at least according to her she had definitive proof. She did not find any evidence that Putin had received anything in return for the apparently botched deals. As for Putin, he claimed that the companies that had been given the export permits in the deal were to blame for the foodstuffs not coming back as they were supposed to have, implying Putin had no knowledge the deals wouldn’t be completed as originally brokered when he issued the licenses.

The city council would move forward with further investigation, but ultimately mayor Sobjack put a stop to it and the matter was dropped. While you’re reading many outlets reporting this story, that Sally would die of so called natural causes mere weeks after she made these accusations and the investigation was killed. In truth, she would go on to help found the Free Democratic Party of Russia and more or less continually rail against Putin to anyone in the media and the public who would listen until eventually giving up in 2000, after the election and moving to the countryside.

There she lives until her death at the age of 77 in 2012, although she still did give a handful of interviews during that span, still unabashedly antiputin. In any event, going back to his rise to power, Putin was linked to the federal government of the new Russia under Boris Yeltsin’s administration. Sobjack and Yeltsin were friends and shared a lot of the same economic ideals that made 1990s Russia a tumultuous place.

Boris Yeltsin’s shock therapy was an attempt to shock Russia’s economy into rapid capitalism. In the end, it also encouraged a lot of corruption and rising crime. And speaking of seediness, Sobchak’s regime in St. Petersburg attempted to change the city into a russian Las Vegas. To help him and his various ventures, Sobchak gave Putin the position of deputy mayor. This is when we can ostensibly say Putin entered politics.

Putin was supposedly surprised at the promotion, but he accepted the new duties. He used his knowledge of the german culture and language to travel to Germany to foster connections for the mayor there. Putin claimed these visits changed him as he got to see West Germany for the first time and how it was so different from the former East Germany. During this time, he also researched models for casinos and in the process saw an erotic performance that shocked him to his core.

This was the unfettered lust and vice of a world without strict soviet discipline. He also came to the conclusion that if such vices were to be allowed in Russia, the profits should go to the state. Sobjek tried to reshape St. Petersburg into this image, but along with the rest of Russia, crime came calling. Corruption with these casinos was high and the government itself was not making the types of profits from the casinos as expected, but organized crime, and presumably many of the politicians themselves, were.

Organised crime became such a huge problem that contracted murders and assassinations became common. This issue gripped all of Russia, with no clear way as to solve it, given the power structure and the chaos. Reporters blamed Sobjek and his inner circle for the corruption. Some of the blame even landed on Putin. However, while Putin did get paid a little more than he was at the KGB, his property remains modest for his position.

Like many things in this story, this could be an attempt to clean Putin’s image in the wake of his later success. And rumours swirl that his public property didn’t exactly match his actual total earnings when factoring in earnings under the table, something we’ll get to in a bit when we discuss how Putin accumulated his wealth and how much he actually has. Whatever the case, Sobchak did not escape scrutiny the way Putin might have.

Tell all books were published by former allies and betrayals were common. Many former deputies and aides started running against Sobjack in elections, while accusing him of countless improprieties. Sobjack did not help himself either. He was focused on improving the city in all the wrong ways. He brought Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Ted Turner and other international figures for political and economic visits, some of which Putin oversaw in one of his many accumulated positions.

Some of these visits led to misguided attempts at diverting business to the city, like Ted Turner’s goodwill games. The games were a mismanaged disaster for St Petersburg. However, any opposition to Sobchak from the council was met with undemocratic resistance from Sobchak, who would use his control of the city’s tv channel to block rivals from having as much screen time as himself. In 1996, Putin’s fellow deputy mayor, Vladimir Yakilev, ran against Sobchak.

As mayor. Sobjack had his back against the wall and Putin was allegedly horrified at Yakilev’s betrayal. In the end, Sobchak and Yakilev made it to a runoff election, which Sobchak lost upon his loss. An official investigation into Sobchak caused him to flee Russia. However, Putin’s experience with Sobchak had made them friends, and Putin had developed a loyalty for those within Sobchak’s circle and for the man himself. From this, he supposedly developed a bitter hatred for those who betrayed Sobchak.

Putin’s fierce loyalty and lack of forgiveness for betrayal are something the future president would come to be known for. Another trait Putin picked up in this time working for Sobchak is a distrust of the public and a growing hatred for the reach of journalism. He saw their attempts to hold officials accountable as something that got in the way of the government’s work and its progress. Putin also embraced Sobjack’s attempts at privatization of markets and companies the Soviet Union once controlled.

He was also party to some of Sobjack’s mistakes in dealing with newly privatized assets, as was all of Russia during this time of transition. Whether this was deliberate corruption on his part or growing pains is debated, however, with some who have been exiled by Putin and little reason to bly about it at this point, claiming that while Putin was no saint, it was more of the latter. Growing pains as we’ll get into shortly when discussing how wealthy is these days.

Whatever the case, in all this, he learned the inner workings of the government, albeit on a municipal level. Even then, Sobchak gave him very high responsibilities, such as dealing with foreign dignities. This was a natural extension of his KGB training and time in East Germany, but it is something he would carry forth with him to the federal level. Putin gains a lot of knowledge under Sobjack. He learns not so much how to gain power, but what to do with it and the many ways that it can be lost.

With Sobjack’s career finished, Putin found himself jobless again. However, his work with Sobjack put him in the orbit of Boris Yeltsin’s people. Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was not going well. It suffered a lot of the same issues St. Petersburg suffered under Sobjack. The rapid transition to a capitalist economy opens the country to rampant corruption and crime, with many politicians seeming not too upset about this, given the opportunity for their own advancement.

Yeltsin also dealt with two major issues Sobjack did not an unpopular war in Chechnya between 1994 and 1996 and ailing health, which saw Yeltsin disappear from the public eye on occasion. He was, at this point, still the federation’s first president and was constantly worried about a safe transition of power. He also knew russian history was not kind to former rulers or their families, so picking a successor with a thing for loyalty and who was able to keep him and his family safe were high on his list of qualifications.

On this note, Yeltsin’s Moscow had a thick atmosphere of mistrust by the time Putin fully entered that world. And this brings us to August of 1996, when a member of Yeltsin’s cabinet called Putin to Moscow for an interview. The opportunity fell through. But instead of returning to St. Petersburg with nothing, Putin found himself working for Pavel Boradin of the Presidential Property Management Directorate. He worked as Boradin’s deputy and it was more or less his job to purchase the soviet property that now lay outside of Russia’s borders.

From there, in March of 1997, Putin was placed in the position of main control directorate. He was given authority in investigating how government money was being spent and to end government corruption wherever he could find it. From this new position, he discovered just how corrupt and damaged the federation was. He also became respected for doing his job well and returning government control to sectors that had gone rogue due to corruption.

His outsider status, competence and staying out of the Yeltsin inner circle drama allowed Putin another promotion. He was appointed to director of the FSB, the KGB’s successor. This was an attempt by Yeltsin to control the more old fashioned leaders of the FSB by appointing someone who understood them but was loyal to him. In this position, Putin guided the FSB through some modernising reforms that reflect some of his later interests, such as monitoring the emergent Internet.

He also worked to corral the old guard, reshape the FSB to Yeltsin’s demands, and even deal with the torrent of scandals dealing with the Kremlin, the FSB and tensions in Chechnya. Because of all of this, Putin was once again rewarded for his diligence. On August 5 of that year, Yeltsin would tell Putin, a man who just a short time before was relatively unknown to the wider public, of his plan to appoint him as prime minister.

Being prime minister was more than a big deal. It was the ticket to the presidency. Yeltsin was worried about his own health and on top of that, he had a habit of firing prime ministers. Putin, the aloof yet competent outsider, showed none of the signs of machinations or overt, visible corruption of the previous prime ministers. Yeltsin wanted a stable picture for whom to leave the country to avoid the repeated fates of Russia’s previous rulers.

On this note, he also sought a successor who would guarantee the safety of his family upon leaving power. Putin’s reputation for loyalty preceded itself on that one. He was the perfect candidate. Putin supposedly didn’t want to accept the position at first, but he eventually folded to Yeltsin. He was also put in charge of the Security Council in March of 1999, something he would hold on to even after he became president.

During this time, the second war in Chechnya started when rebels invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan. This war thrust Putin into a repeat of the mid ninety s. The people feared an unpopular and bloody war. However, innocent as prime minister, he proved to be more effective in leading the war than Yeltsin was before him. As a result of this and his other work, he became popular as prime minister, his successor firmly in place.

At the end of the millennium, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president. This put Putin in the position of acting president, but he would have to run for election after six months, which he did, winning as his predecessor had hoped. From here, Putin held onto power with little difficulty. However, in 2008, after two terms as president, he faced a dilemma. The constitution only allowed two consecutive terms for any president.

To overcome this obstacle, he had his prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, run for the presidency. Medvedev won and appointed Putin as prime minister. In reality, Putin held the real power and was subsequently reelected in 2012 back to his old position. As for his presidency, Putin’s outlook changed over the years with a pronounced conservative turn, starting with the ongoing tensions in Chechnya in 2004, Putin also became an ally of the Russian Orthodox Church as a byproduct of this turn.

As with countless politicians, whether true or not in any given case is a matter of debate. But his asserted Christianity is often a talking point in his appeal to the people, emphasizing the importance of family and christian values. Whatever the case there, Putin is often accused of scheming in his presidency to keep his inner circle in line and himself in power. On this note, it is speculated that he was in a rather good position for this, given his rise from the lowest ranks to the highest once he reached a state of power as president, he had a good understanding of how Russia worked, from the municipal level all the way to the federal level.

He also knew where the bodies were buried, literally and figuratively, for all the people all the way up the chain, further contributing to his maintaining of power. He saw the way constitutions could be manipulated. Putin believed more in the latter of the law than the spirit of the law, and any constitution in Russia did not have the same semi scriptural status that, say, the american constitution has. In the end, Putin’s time with Sobjak showed him just how malleable constitutions are.

On his own, Putin developed the idea that stability was more important than freedom, a position he has carried forth increasingly into older age. As previously alluded to, he has little love for journalists. His curtailing of the media is well known, and it largely stemmed from his time rising through the ranks. He saw media and journalism as an obstruction to the government’s workings and making rapid progress, either because enterprising individuals would use the media to their advantage, whether what they said was true or not, or journalists would poke their noses into sensitive business that may hinder something ostensibly overall good for the people.

Even Putin’s long connections to the oligarchs did not shield some of those who ran media companies that stepped on his toes, such as the case of the oligarch who owned NTV, which, after being critical of Putin, was given to a more Putin friendly oligarch in 2001. Controlling the media with an iron fist is one way to stay in power, but it’s not the only way. As such, Putin maintained countless connections that he made in his career.

Like elsewhere, these connections remained important in russian politics, but they were leaned on more heavily as social currency. He understood this and developed and maintained numerous such associations even as he reached the top, continuing to keep a large core of allies loyal to him among those below him. Part of this social currency is loyalty and punishment of betrayal, which Putin took extremely seriously. Loyalty was rewarded, such as helping out Sobshak during his legal troubles heading into 2000.

The system of connections is how he keeps the oligarchs in line. As long as they don’t get involved in politics against him and do support him, they’re more or less free to operate how they want. So what about the infamous assassination attempts that the regime is known for? Shootings and poisonings were never something Putin was known for during his time with the KGB. He denied ever committing crimes for the agency during his political rise.

If anything, he had experience investigating hits and assassinations during his time with the FSB, rather than him being the one towards them. That said, it’s probable he trained in assassinations at the Red Banner Institute. And it is noted that the assassinations of people like Boris Nebsov, Boris Berazovsky, and the attempted assassination of Aleksey Navalny helped protect Putin’s regime. Of course, whether he was directly involved or simply the people who have an interest in keeping Putin in power, just take care of it for him without consulting him is a matter of debate.

Moving on from there, Putin also values the aesthetic of the old Soviet Union over its ideology. He appeals to a nostalgia of Russia’s central place in the soviet empire. But he is no communist. One of Putin’s famous quotes is anyone who doesn’t mourn the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains. On a domestic level, Putin offers a form of continuity between soviet and federal Russia that appeals to many hardliners left over from the soviet days, while also courting those who enjoy the freedoms gained during the federation.

This is especially true for the orthodox Christians, he also appeals to nostalgia for the russian empires of Peter and Catherine the Great. This plays into the fears of republics like Chechnya breaking away. Such breakaways are feared to trigger a domino effect of independence movements that would weaken Russia and the pride of the russian people. The pre soviet legacy hangs heavily on Putin. After all, he took part in changing Leningrad back to St.

Petersburg. He often struggles to keep lands that was gained during imperial Russia, such as the Caucasus republics. On an international level, his soviet nostalgia is less assuring for former eastern bloc and soviet republics. The presence of Russians in many of these countries and the claims of former soviet lands have opened these countries to invasions and excursions, of which there were the wars in Georgia and Ukraine. Putin uses the specter of the Soviet Union and Russia’s past as an empire to fuel the drive forward for a modern russian identity.

Now, you might notice in all of this that we haven’t really explicitly mentioned Putin accumulating wealth as a means for himself to stay in power or protect himself. Now, this might seem strange, given that Putin is rumored to be one of, if not the wealthiest person alive today. But is Putin actually anywhere near as wealthy as the rumors say? Beyond, as mentioned, the seemingly rather shady 1990 St.

Petersburg $93 million food supply scandal, which again, at least as far as anyone can tell, did not make Putin himself a single dollar richer. What about after? And what about now? One selected Putin, like his predecessor, began reporting his finances and holdings publicly, including his salary and exact amount in his many bank accounts. He has continued to do so since. The result? Well over the years. While his salary has changed regularly from year to year, he has made approximately 100 to 190,000 american dollars annually in that span, for example, in 2018, reporting an income of 135,000 american dollars today.

Between his wife’s and his own accounts, the couple seem to have a little over half a million dollars in cash in various bank accounts, though why he isn’t investing this is rather curious, given his apparent lack of any other investments and almost complete lack of actually needing any cash for his day to day life. Given the government foots the bill for most of everything of this, Putin states, honestly speaking, I don’t even know what my salary is.

They deliver it to me. I take it, put it in my bank account, and don’t even count it. As for his other assets, he also owns a studio sized apartment in St. Petersburg, a slightly larger apartment in Moscow, owns a small garage, a couple of cars, a small plot of land outside of Moscow, and otherwise has various minor assets of no great worth. Of course, over the years, people can’t help but notice that Putin has a collection of watches that he wears very publicly, whose purchase price combined is around that of his reported entire net worth, ringing in at about $400,000 to $700,000, if various reports are to be believed.

For reference, the highest valued watch he has been spotted wearing costs around $140,000. It’s a Patek Philippe perpetual calendar watch, good choice. On top of that, the clothing he can often be seen wearing is likewise extremely expensive, such as his $6000 plus tailored suits from outlets like Kiton and Brioni. Not only expensive suits. In one photo of him working out, Putin can be seen wearing sweatpants that cost over $1,400 a pair, apparently being made from silk, cashmere and the tears of impoverished children, along with a similarly priced top on top of that, among other mansions, he is long rumored to own an estate known as Putin’s palace near Praskovica, widely reported to be worth $1 billion by media outlets.

However, this was actually sold in 2011 to one Alexander Ponamaranco, a former associate of Putin’s, for somewhere around $350,000,000, though the exact amount has not been publicly disclosed. But Pomeranko has indicated that it’s in the ballpark of that widely reported figure. Pomeranko purchased the estate from a group led by businessman Nikolai Shamalov. Pomerenko claims that he decided to buy the company behind the estate project, and thus the mansion, as it was a steal of a deal, owing to the project being stalled from lack of funds to complete the estate and the business route, wanting to cut their losses on it rather than complete it.

That said, businessman Sergey Kolasnikov, who is exiled from Russia, claims that the palace was built specifically for Putin’s use. He claims Putin was able to afford its construction in part thanks to a gift given to him by the aforementioned Nikolai Shamalov in the form of 94% of the shares in the company called Lyrus holding. Among other personal knowledge of the development of the palace, Kolosnikov claims Shamalov himself told him this, and to quote him, I have no reason not to believe him.

However, no documents concerning any ownership connected to the project seem to indicate Putin or any holdings of Putin’s ever were directly involved with this estate. That said, some contract documents concerning its construction allegedly have the signature of one Vladimir Kozin, one of Putin’s inner circle of confidants. Of course, this still doesn’t definitively indicate whether Putin actually owned the palace or even was behind its building at all. Simply allegedly, someone he is close with was involved in some capacity, and later someone else he is close to bought it.

A bit of a theme for a lot of these rumours, though this perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, even if nothing shady is going on, given Putin’s widespread connections to most of the powerful and extremely wealthy elite in Russia, that comes naturally by his very position in the government. On this specific one, Putin himself denies he had anything to do with the palace being built. Nevertheless, Putin allegedly frequently visits the palace, and federal Protective Service guards have been seen at the mansion, along with locals reportedly seeing Putin in the area regularly.

Of course, among the extremely wealthy with such mansions, it is not uncommon at all to let friends and guests into one’s estate whenever they please, so Putin would not actually have to own the thing to stay there, nor would it be a big ask to do so, more or less par for the course among the exorbitantly wealthy with giant mansions. That said, on top of this estate, Putin has been connected to causing, or having secretly had built, several other mansions, as well as yachts, planes, etc.

Whether he actually owns any of these or, like Putin’s palace, seemingly is just using them whenever he pleases. His flashing of extreme wealth, in the case of his watches and other items, along with an awful lot of not implausible allegations of widespread corruption within his government connected to him, has led to belief that he has boatloads of money secretly stashed away in accounts throughout the world. Others speculate Putin is simply using the government coffers to finance all of these extravagances.

For many items, this would not actually be that uncommon for a major world leader, if more excessive than most. For example, the replacement Air Force one planes the US president will have at his disposal have a budget of over $3 billion. The US president also gets a pretty posh mansion, a White House, and vacation spots to go to at their leisure, with the taxpayer footing the bill for quite a lot of such perks, with few batting an eyelid at these extravagances.

But of course, the US government isn’t funding $140,000 of watches for the presidents, though bulletproof tailored suits, occasionally worn by the presidents, are presumably paid for by the US taxpayer. For more on this incredibly thin bulletproof fabric, go see our video. How many times can you shoot through a bulletproof vest before it stops working? To attempt to clarify these items, requests have been made to the russian government asking if, for example, Putin’s watches are actually his property or property of the state that he is simply wearing.

But no answer to this question has been given that we could find, whatever the case, and going back to the issue of how he has stayed in power so long. Yet others claim Putin is simply enriching many people around him, and it is they who are happy to provide Putin with anything and everything his judo master heart can desire. Yet others claim it’s all three Putin is enriching himself through shady means and using government funds and people he is helping make wealthy to get whatever he wants while he’s in office.

But what does the man himself say about all these rumors of him accumulating insane amounts of wealth? To quote him, I am the wealthiest man not just in Europe, but in the whole world. Case closed, right? He admitted it well. In truth, he wasn’t finished talking. He goes on, I collect emotions. I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia.

I believe that is my greatest wealth. Of course, whether he collects emotions or not, it doesn’t inherently negate the first part of that statement, simply that he considers that a greater wealth than whatever he has possession wise. Argue amongst yourself whether this was Putin cleverly admitting to being the wealthiest person in the world while making it seem like he was saying he wasn’t, and also simultaneously admitting he’s a lizard person, given a hallmark of these creatures, is apparently feeding on human emotions.

For a more direct answer to the question about the rumors of his extreme wealth, he clarifies, it’s just chitchat, nonsense, nothing to discuss. They picked it out of their noses and smeared it on their pieces of paper. The press and information office of the president of the Russian Federation also asserts of these rumors, this information has no substance. As you may know, the declarations of Mr. Putin’s income and property are published annually.

We recommend you to use only reliable sources, henceford, and not to believe fake news. Naturally, nobody seems satisfied with these assertions, given his apparent and frequent flashing of wealth, far beyond what anyone with his salary should be able to afford. So what do others who might know a little bit more say? First, we air political analyst and noted critic of Putin, Stanislav Belkovsky, who claimed to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2012 that Putin had a net worth of approximately $70 billion.

Though how he came up with that figure isn’t exactly definitive, nor does it inspire a lot of confidence in his own words. The figure of $40 billion emerged in 2007. That figure could now have changed, I believe, at the level of $60 to $70 billion maximum. We cannot know. I suspect there are some businesses I know nothing about, mildly more concrete, at least in terms of giving something more specific.

He also claims much of this wealth is because of Putin’s alleged 4. 5% stake in Gazprom, 37% stake in surgut Neft gas, and an allegedly 50% ownership stake of Gunvore. How he knows this, however, isn’t fully clear. Belkovsky simply states he got this information through sources he has within the companies. It’s also noted that for a time, Gunvar was co owned by a friend of Putin’s, billionaire Geneti Timchenko.

But what do the three companies say? For whatever it’s worth, corporate affairs director of the swiss based Gunvall Group, Seth Thomas Pietrus, states, President Putin has never had any interest in, investment in, or involvement with Gunvall Group, either directly or indirectly. Mr. Belkovsky’s claims are based on absolutely nothing and are fundamentally ridiculous, and the US government, despite its statement, has never sanctioned Gunvar in any capacity, nor has it provided any evidence of its own.

Moving on to surrogate neftergas, they likewise deny Putin owns any shares. Gazprom, which is majority owned by the russian government itself, with the rest of the stock publicly traded, likewise shows no records of Putin owning any shares. Belkovsky counters these denials by the companies and lack of records, stating, putin has a rather elaborate network of offshore companies and funds that own the shares, which all ultimately mask that he himself actually owns, or at least controls them.

Now let’s move on to the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, Bill Browder. He is the one that seems to have started the widespread rumor that Putin’s personal wealth is in excess of $200 billion, stating before a Senate judiciary committee, I believe he is worth $200 billion. The purpose of the Putin regime has been to commit terrible crimes in order to get that money. He keeps his money in the west, and all of his money in the west is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation.

Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions. On this latter note, one of Browder’s former associates, russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, was investigating corruption within the russian government and allegedly found evidence of various russian officials taking part in a near quarter of a billion dollar tax fraud scheme. Magnitsky himself was then arrested for allegedly being the mastermind behind the tax fraud and died while in jail before his trial because, of course, he did.

At the partial encouragement of Browder, the US then passed the Magnitsky act in 2009. In an oversimplified nutshell, this allows the US government to sanction various individuals thought to be human rights offenders, ban them from entering the US, and, more importantly, freeze their assets where the government is able. The bill was essentially meant to allow the government to legally hold somewhat accountable those thought to have been involved in Magnitsky’s death.

As for hard data, however, Browder offers little. Next up, noted economist Anders Asland, author of the book Russia’s Crony Capitalism, the path from Market Economy to kleptocracy, states, I would estimate that Putin is worth around $100 to $160,000,000,000. We can see that Putin and his friends have taken ten to $15 billion from Gazprom every year since 2014. And that’s just gazprom. There are large numbers of transactions being made.

What’s much more difficult is to see where the money goes. It’s typically Cyprus, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Wilmington, Delaware. As to how he came up with these figures, he, uh. I’m going to address a couple things in the chat, just because I want to. I don’t know how much of this stuff is legit and how much of it is show. I’m only playing it because it’s a collaboration of things that I found on Putin.

But considering that the vast majority of this stuff is coming from the west, I don’t trust it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s not some element of truth to it. But at the same time, I remain highly skeptical. I remain highly skeptical. And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I was talking to Mike Harris the other day, and I’m very leery of information that is coming out from the west that paints Putin in a bad light.

Putin, in my humble opinion, is having to do a lot of things to wrestle control away from, call it the kazarian mafia, and he may have to do things that would appear to be underhanded or below the belt or whatever. But I guess, let’s put it like this. Let me phrase the question to you in this way. If Trump had to do things that were. If Trump could only play by the rules, and I’m just using Trump as an example, just this is for the purpose of conversation.

If Trump had to play exclusively by the rules, and everybody was playing without any set of rules, but they were forcing Trump to play by the rules, and anytime he played outside of those rules, that he was the evil. That’s kind of what I view a lot of this stuff as. So if you were in a position where you could do whatever was necessary to take control of your country back from these evil criminals who have been raping and pillaging your country for the longest time, would you not take advantage of that? Would you not do it if you had the ability? I can tell you for one thing, if it were me, you’re damn skippy.

I would. Damn skippy. I remember watching a bongino episode where he was talking about fighters, boxers using. One boxer was using razor blades in his boxing gloves, and the other one was fighting above normal, within the bounds of the rules. And at what point do you fight their game? Anyway, I’m just pausing it for a second to give you guys an idea that I don’t necessarily know if I agree 100% with all of the crap that’s being coming out here, because we don’t know what has been done to Russia and to Putin and anybody who’s trying to be patriots to their country and the lengths to which they have to go to wrestle control away from these evil sons of bitches.

So I’m only playing this because I want you guys to see how. I just want you guys to see what is being said. But I also want you to pay attention to what the moves that Putin is being said that he’s done, and think to yourself, well, isn’t that what they do to us on a daily basis? I mean, what? So anyway, I just wanted to pause it for a second to kind of inject this.

I wanted to say it earlier, but time was not on my side. So anyway, so I wanted to pause it there and say that. So here we go. I’m going to get back to this particular one. So anyway, see where the money goes. It’s typically Cyprus, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Wilmington, Delaware. As to how he came up with these figures, he states, my assessment is that since Putin’s circle got its looting fully organized around 2006, they have extracted $15 to $25 billion a year, reaching a total of $195 to $325,000,000,000, a large share of the russian private offshore wealth.

Presuming that half of this wealth belongs to Putin, his net worth should amount to $100 to $160,000,000,000. Naturally, Putin and his cronies cannot enjoy their wealth. It’s all about power. If they are not the wealthiest, they fear they will lose power. Why he assumes Putin would get half of these alleged amounts instead of some other percentage is not fully clear on that note, like so many before, nobody seems to be able to actually offer hard evidence that Putin has any money stashed away anywhere not publicly known.

Which when taking sums of allegedly $200 billion, is a pretty neat trick for someone who has been so highly scrutinized, including by the US Senate, who presumably, if they wanted, could just ask the CIA or other entities good at collecting such data to look into it given instead they are asking the likes of browser it has been presumed and widely claimed that the CIA and other such government entities have no definitive intelligence on this, either from this lack of a paper trail directly linking money or assets to Putin, yet his clearly lavish lifestyle indicating he does indeed have access to an awful lot of money.

This has led many to conclude that Putin himself doesn’t actually officially own most or all of the wealth attributed to him, but rather he is leveraging his position and connections to enrich those close to him who in their gratitude, are more than happy to provide Putin with any money or items he wants, from access to mansions to yachts to sweatpants, that keep his judo jublies extra comfortable while working out.

And of course, all of this keeps them having a vested interest in Putin staying in power. So it works out for everyone. If true, as alleged evidence for this, we turn to the 11. 5 million documents from the Panama Mossak Fonsaca law firm made public in 2016, dealing in offshore holdings by over 200,000 entities. While Putin himself is not listed in any of them, the documents do reveal three close associates of Putin’s among those having offshore holdings partially managed by the law firm, with a combined amount of around $2 billion between the trio.

Despite not owning these assets, there are many claims by various individuals that Putin uses some of these, like his personal bank accounts, most notably the holdings of a man claimed by many in the media to be Putin’s best friend, famed russian musician conductor Sergey Roldugin. Not just a friend, Roldugin is also the godfather to one of Putin’s children, and was the man who introduced Putin to Putin’s wife.

As for where Roldugan supposedly got his extreme wealth beyond his noted music career, starting in the 1990s, Roaldugan began investing in various oil and other business entities to great success. Beyond all of this, in 2009, Roll Dugan was also accused of being involved in a massive multibillion dollar money laundering scheme in conjunction with Spurbank’s CIB, which allegedly profited for him greatly. That said, for those using these records as proof of Putin having money elsewhere via his associates, it should be again noted that these are the records of well over 200,000 entities throughout the world, and the vast majority who are using the firm are doing so completely legitimately, including actor Jackie Chan, who reportedly had six perfectly above board offshore companies the law firm helped manage.

Various facets of the fact that three among Putin’s numerous friends who are exorbitantly wealthy should be included isn’t necessarily proof of anything other than that they wanted to have some assets outside of Russia, which isn’t uncommon among the wealthy in Russia, as some formerly close to Putin who have had their assets stripped away and been forced to flee the country demonstrate. Having some offshore holdings is probably a good security blankets of sorts, you know, just in case.

On this note, political scientist, professor, and author of Putin’s Kleptocracy, Karen Dewisha, stated before a death from lung cancer in 2018, why is it that $150,000,000,000 left the country last year? Because they believe that their wealth can only be secured in the long term outside their own country. Coming back to the question of Putin’s wealth, whether these funds are being held for him or not, this is still not Putin’s money.

Not just technically, but we’re guessing. Regardless of the amount of goodwill Putin has built up with these various businessmen and women, should he no longer be in power, they might quickly find themselves less than willing to continue to support his lifestyle, if that is what has been happening, as people believe, and some speculate that he might even find himself in a rather unsafe circumstance, in that case, giving him even more of a vested interest in staying in power.

For example, one time billionaire and the man formerly known as Putin’s banker but now exiled from Russia, Sergey Pugachev says everything that belongs to the territory of the Russian Federation, Putin considers to be his everything. Gazprom, Robzneft, private companies any attempt to calculate it won’t succeed. He’s the richest person in the world until he leaves power. As for leaving power, he goes on that Putin chose not to leave office after his first term and beyond, not because of a desire for continued power, but rather because he feared for his own safety should he no longer be in that position.

Even today, Boguchev claims, I don’t see any guarantees for him. If he steps down, Putin doesn’t see them either, which is why he finds it unlikely that Putin will ever willingly leave office. Also, for whatever it’s worth, Pugachev, despite having billions stripped from himself by the russian government, being currently in fear of his life and in exile states in his opinion, Putin himself is not evil. Nor did Putin originally plan to set up a corrupt government when he took power, simply that he surrounded himself with like minded people whom he didn’t know very well and who had served with him in the KGB.

They immediately began enriching themselves. Putin wanted to get rich too. He was a pragmatic person. We talked about this. He didn’t want to leave office poor. As for the russian government’s position with regards to Pukachev, it is claimed that Pukachev defrauded the government of hundreds of millions of dollars, which is why the one time bosombuddy of Putin originally had to go on the run. Pukachev counters the state steals something, then has to defend its theft.

In my case, the scale is huge, but in other respects, this is normal contemporary practice in Russia. This has all left the one time billionaire with, by his accounts, only about $70 million to his name, which he’s kept in offshore holdings. It’s got to be rough. In truth, this amount is unfortunate for him because Pugachev allegedly was offered a deal from a russian official that if he paid $300 million to certain entities, his legal troubles in Russia would be made to be resolved to his benefit and he could return to Russia, further siding in the camp that Putin doesn’t have hundreds of billions stashed away.

He officially owns the aforementioned Karen Dewisha, who perhaps gives some of the best accounts and most concrete details of the alleged corruption within the russian government. In her book, Putin’s kleptocracy states that Putin’s real worth comes from his position. He takes what he wants. When you are the president of Russia, you don’t need a written contract, you are the law. Again, backing up this position, financial investigator Elberg Fal states, Putin controls wealth through proxies.

He then makes up examples to illustrate. Sergey owes his fortune to Putin. So when Putin asks Sergey a favour, the favor must be honoured. A luxury cruise, use of a private DACA, expensive consumer goods, etc. Ivan owns a shipping company and owes his wealth to Putin. So when Putin requests a favor, Ivan, like Sergey, honors the request. So again, is Putin actually enriching himself in all of this while, as Gaddafi demonstrated, it is possible to squirrel away $200 billion secretly? Given the level of scrutiny thrown Putin’s way by governments, the world overlooking into the matter, with nobody seemingly able to come up with any kind of hard evidence, most think he probably doesn’t have anywhere close to such an absorbent amount that is actually his.

Though it is generally accepted that he probably does have at least some significant amount stashed away somewhere. For most, however, the explanation for his rather luxurious lifestyle is more reasonably explained by the simple fact that he can pretty much have the russian government foot the bill for anything he wants without much uproar or oversight. And it does seem like an awful lot of his compatriots have gotten exceedingly wealthy during his tenure, at least part in thanks to their connections with Putin and him leveraging his position to help facilitate their enrichments.

Thus, if that is what has happened, it’s reasonable enough that many of those people are happy to scratch his back whenever he feels the need for a new yacht or something, without Putin actually needing to have his name on anything to avoid the backlash that would result should he be discovered to have such things. This further also all ensures that many wealthy and powerful people have a vested interest in keeping Putin in power, so long as the spice continues to flow, so to speak.

Thus, going back to the question of using his wealth to stay in power, it’s alleged that he doesn’t exactly use any of his own money to make this happen, but it is speculated he does use money, via his influence on a pretty broad scale, to help ensure that he does stay in power, as previously described. Make everyone loyal to him rich, and they will ensure that he’s going to stay in power.

Of course, as to the idea that he really does have $200 billion simply being held in other people’s names, as alluded to, we’re guessing, even if many of these individuals are actually holding money for Putin, that should he ever step down from power and ask for that money to be given to him en masse, or even to remain in power and ask for a combined sum of $200 billion, that shortly thereafter, memorials and monuments would be being built for the former russian leader who, sadly died in his sleep of natural causes.

But for now, the man himself remains in power via a variety of means that really aren’t that different from many a leader of the world over, today and throughout history. In the end, Putin is a complicated man who rose from almost nothing to heights of power few in history have achieved. Like him or hate him, he has been and continues to be, one of the most important shapers of the 21st century, and his presence can be felt more now than ever with little end in sight.

Although unless he is really one of the lizard people, he’s probably not immortal. So at some point in the next couple of decades, he’ll probably shuffle off this mortal coil, and perhaps then, like Gaddafi, more definitive data will be revealed about his wealth and his conduct while in office, or perhaps sooner, if he eventually loses the protection of his position and the vultures swoop in to pick clean his political corpse on the 9 August 1999, muted.

Sorry, guys. When I first watched that, I genuinely thought. I initially thought that he was just going to be blasting Putin. It was going to be a hit piece, but I kind of felt like he was semi fair in many respects. He presented information just as it was there, not with any sort of like a bias towards or against Putin. But at the end, I still think he probably has a little bit more of the western mentality of he’s more anti Putin.

He’s a YouTube channel that has like, 1. 4 million subscribers. So if you’re going to be a YouTube channel with that kind of a following, typically you are going to be peddling the BS narrative from the get go. Or at least nobody gets to that size of a channel, in my opinion, without pedaling something that you’re not going to get in trouble for. Am I still on mute? Am I still on mute, guys? It’s saying that he can hear me.

Okay, good. Okay. All right, so the next one is going to be how it’s called, the assassination of Russia, Putin blowing up. So now this one is really going to be kind of. I don’t want to say it’s more of a hit piece, but it’s going to be drawing serious questions about Putin. But I’m only playing it because I want you guys to see this, how they’re presenting.

Don’t by me playing this. I don’t want you to get the impression that I am agreeing with this. I’m only playing it because I want you all to see exactly what they’re doing and how they’re presenting it. Actually, after I get done playing this, I’m going to find one more to play that I want you guys to see, but I’m going to go ahead and play this first.

And I doubt that I’ll jump in on this one, but if I hear something that I feel like I need to jump in and say something, I will. But for the most part, I’m going to let just go ahead and just play through. So here we go. It. Autumn 1999. A wave of bloody explosions swept through russian cities. On the 4 September, in Bunaksk in Dagestan, 62 people died in the rubble of a tower block.

On the night of the 9 September in Moscow, an eight story apartment building in Gurianov street was blown to bits. A toll of 94 dead and 164 wounded. At dawn on the 13 September, in the capital city, again a powerful explosion totally destroyed a seven story building on the Kashira road. 119 bodies were pulled from the rubble. They included twelve children. Three days later, in Volgadonsky in southern Russia, 17 people died in another explosion.

Russia had never before been subjected to such acts of terrorism. Mass psychosis quickly set in. All offices and nonresidential premises. Cellars and basements were thoroughly checked. Civilians volunteered to patrol courtyards, stairways, and landings. A multitude of checkpoints paralyzed road transport. Responsibility for the attacks has never been claimed. But from day one, the secret services put the blame squarely on the Chechens. The people who organize these missions, who prepare the explosives, who deliver them, and have overall responsibility for everything that has happened, are obviously in Chechnya.

I can tell you with the utmost certainty, I can guarantee you that they come from the training camps of Hathab and Basayev. After a three year truce in Chechnya, the war had now moved to the heart of Russia. With public anger running so high, the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, ordered a bombing campaign to bring the rebellious Chechens to heal. Russian planes are only striking the terrorist bases. We will follow the terrorists wherever they go.

If they are at the airport, we will be there. Excuse me, but if they’re in the toilets, we will go in there and blow them away. That’s all there is to it. The problem is solved. When the first explosions took place in Moscow, then in Volgodonsk, the public was in a state of stupefaction and shock. Shock. This coincided with the appointment of Putin as prime minister. And I think that then about 90% to 95% of people, just like today in America, supported the action the president was taking to eliminate the chechen bans.

But what’s interesting is that even now, it hasn’t been proved that the Chechens did it. Okay, so the finger is pointing at a whole people, the Chechens. But show me who carried out the attack. Show me who planted the bombs. They can’t do it. The slow progress of the inquiries, the absence of proof, the sheer scale and professionalism of the bombings, all cast doubt on chechen involvement. Speculation as to the possible involvement of the Lubianca.

The secret services began to emerge to judge from the consequences. And they say that in politics, you should always look to see who benefits. Then, of course, there are all sorts of different versions, but the public is still very interested in the role played by the special services in all of this. After public demands for peace, the enraged russian people turned against the Chechens, and the war was renewed.

There’s little doubt that it was the toughened public opinion that put the young, hard line of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the secret service, the FSB, into the Kremlin. To this day, the only terrorists detected in connection with the bombings were FSB agents. The first suspicions of special service involvement in the bombings came after three explosions had already claimed more than 300 lives. It was then, on the 22 September 1999, that a bomb attack was apparently averted in Ryazan.

It was officially passed off as a civil defense exercise using a mock up device. But many Russians believe the bomb was real. To them, President Putin’s rise to power is now seen in a very different light. Those involved in investigating the mysterious events in Riazan include journalists from Navaya Gazetta, one of Moscow’s last remaining independent publications. And since the FSB doesn’t like it when people pry, the newspaper has had more than its fair share of problems.

We consider that, according to the law, according to the russian penal code as it stands, the facts disclosed by our paper should lead to the opening of a criminal inquiry to establish if those facts are indeed well founded. But instead of that, a slander suit has been brought against the paper. In August 2001, Navaya Gazetta took a risk when it published extracts from a book by Yuri Felstinsky and Alexander Litvinenko.

The FSB bombs Russia. The historian Yuri Felchinsky was born in Moscow and since 1978 has lived and worked in the United States. He has written several books on the history of the USSR. An american citizen, he was the first foreigner to obtain a russian doctorate in history. We all know that information often comes out after failed operations. That’s what’s happened here. The FSB tried and failed to blow up a building in Riazani.

The details are clear enough now to make it a textbook case. We know everything. What car they came in, how many of them there were, when and how they planted the bomb. We even know what time it should have gone off. And it can hardly be a coincidence that these attacks stopped after the bungling of Rayazan. It would have been stupid to carry on with a flawed battle plan.

The NTV television channel, then, still independent, took an interest in the Ryazan case. In March 2000, it broadcast an open debate with everyone involved in the affair in its show, independent inquiry. Thanks to these images, which, strangely enough, have neither been seized nor destroyed, we can reconstruct what really happened in Ryazan. On the 22 September at 09:10 in the evening, a suspicious scene was played out in front of an apartment building.

Two men and a woman unloaded three large bags from the boot of a white car and carried them into a basement. A second suspicious point was that the number 62, indicating a Ryazan vehicle registration, was written on a piece of card and taped over the car’s real number. I drove straight past them, but I went back to look at the rear number plate too, and sure enough, it was the same, a piece of paper with 62 on it taped over the end of the registration number.

It made me suspicious. So when I got home, I called the police. A patrol car arrived at the scene 1 hour later, the car had gone. But the police made an important discovery. In the basement of the building, three large 50 kilo bags and a homemade detonator programmed for 530. The patrol chief was Andre Chenny. Chef Pavel Volashin and a via gazette journalist met him soon afterwards. He told me he was sure it was a serious situation.

He’d seen the bags, a wire coming out of the bags, and there was a detonator. He was sure he had prevented an attack, and that thanks to Kartifannikov’s phone call, hundreds of lives had been saved. On the NTV program. The tenants of the building recounted the details of what they saw and went through that night. When the police went down to the basement, they weren’t very enthusiastic, because it’s in a terrible state and some people use it as a toilet.

But when they came back up, the expressions on their faces were very different. The cops were running all over the building, banging on doors and shouting, everybody out, there’s a bomb in the building. After what had happened in Moscow and other places, everyone went down into the street in their dressing gowns and slippers. We’ve got a three year old. We grabbed him out of the bath, soaking wet.

We wrapped him up in a towel, put our heads down and ran. I got there at 1015 that evening. I brought all the people who live in the building together and told them, we’ve checked the basement and the attics, the building is safe. And I told them, as head of the local FSB, you can go back to your homes. This is the first statement by Serge to contradict the facts.

The tenants actually spent the whole night in a nearby cinema. The inspection of the buildings was taken so seriously that they couldn’t go back to their homes until the following morning. We weren’t allowed back in, and the police stayed in the building until 10:00 in the morning. They led us away at 02:00 I noted down a quarter past midnight. We were taken to the October cinema. There was no heating.

It was freezing for the children. But I was there with you. We were all there in the October cinema. There’s no point in lying. Maintaining a false version of events is always difficult. Not long before this clash, General Sergeyev had been telling a completely different story. I was with you all night. I worked with you until morning. We spoke to each other and yes, the situation was certainly serious.

On the night itself, the former head of the Ryazan office of the FSB was as certain as anyone else that there had been a bomb in the building. Sergeyev came over to us several times around 02:00 in the morning, when the bags had been checked, he got us all together in a circle around him and said, today is your second birthday. There were three bags of explosive programmed to go off at 05:30 you would have all been there and you would all have been blown sky high.

From this statement made on the night by the local head of the FSB, it was clear to all that a real bomb had been diffused. There were three bags. The one in the middle had a hole in it. There was an electronic watch inside with wires coming off it. I put my hands in and started gently taking the wires out of the bag. This photo of the detonator was taken the next day, the 23 September.

As for the bags, analysis revealed traces of hexagon, an extremely powerful explosive. Acting on the experts conclusions, on the night of the 23 September, the Ryazan public prosecutor ordered criminal proceedings to be instigated in accordance with article 205 of the penal code terrorism. 1200 police officers and soldiers were thrown into the hunt for the bombers. Their identicate pictures were pasted all over town and distributed to all police patrols.

There were two men, one with a mustache, and a woman in a tracksuit. She was sitting in the back. On the evening of the 23 September, Prime Minister Putin announced to the world, as far as the events in Ryazan are concerned, I don’t think they made some kind of cock up. If these sacks with the explosives were noticed, that means there is at least one plus factor that the public is reacting in the right way to the events taking place in our country today.

In this way, Putin confirmed that a terrorist attack really had been thwarted in Ryazan. The Ryazan telephone exchanges had been put on red alert. The telephonist, Nadeshda Yuknova intercepted a suspicious call to Moscow. The number that was dialed began with two, two, four, which is the exchange that services the Lubianka, the FSB headquarters, they said. Is the woman with you? No, she’s taking the trolley bus at noon.

Where’s the car? The car’s in the car park. Leave Riyazan separately. There are checkpoints and patrols everywhere. And, I mean, anyone would have thought. Because everyone was thinking about terrorism. Thanks to that phone call, just 24 hours after the discovery of the bomb, the police had already located the suspect’s hideout. But then something quite inexplicable happened. On the same day, the 24 September 2 government ministers, speaking half an hour apart in the same place, made two completely contradictory statements.

Vladimir Rachelo, minister of the interior, categorically stated that there had been a failed terrorist attack in Riazan. Positive measures are already being taken. One example is the prevention of an explosion in an apartment building in Riazan. But then Nikolai Patrushev, director of the SFB, immediately contradicted his colleague. First of all, there wasn’t an explosion and that explosion wasn’t prevented. But it wasn’t good work. It was an exercise.

There were no explosives, just sugar. The fact that Interior Minister Rashilo apparently knew of no such exercise could suggest that a real bombing had been thwarted. Several months later, during an NTV broadcast, an FSB spokesman stressed the official line it had been an exercise. But he let slip that it was a joint exercise between the FSB and the local police. The exercise order, he said, had been signed by both ministries.

A major operation involving all the members of the Russian Federation was jointly planned by the police and the FSB. The operation was codenamed anti terror whirlwind. It was signed by Petrushev and Roshilo. Even high ranking secret service officers had difficulty supporting the exercise version of events. I don’t get it. Why did it take two whole days to tell the world it was an exercise? Frankly, it’s incomprehensible. Well, it’s obvious we wanted to check the logical follow through of our operation, including the hunt methods for terrorists.

That’s why we didn’t reveal it was an exercise. Right, but you couldn’t have told Rochelle. Well, you know, things can sometimes get muddled during an exercise. Anyway, during the exercise, we were checking our systems and the systems of the interior ministry. Well, can you believe this? Rochello says it was a great achievement. And half an hour later, Patrushev says, oh, no, it was just an exercise. So. But Vladimir Putin found himself in an even more awkward position.

He had also announced that a bombing had been thwarted. Had the prime minister known about the exercises in Ryazan. The notion that until Patrushev’s announcement on the 24 September prime minister, Putin didn’t know about any exercise being held in Russia is improbable. If that was the case, Putin would have had to sack Patrushev the moment he heard that the exercise was being held in Ryazan, because it would have meant that Patrushev had not only misled the whole country, but Putin, too.

Patrushev didn’t lose his job. So Putin must have known that Patruchev was holding an exercise in Rayazan on the blowing up of an apartment block. The members of the Ryazan FSB were not informed about the operation run from Moscow because of the need for secrecy. But they had seen with their own eyes that the detonator and the explosives were genuine. They found themselves in a very tricky situation, to put it mildly.

Serge wasn’t pleased. In fact, he was beside himself with rage. After all, in this case, his professional pride as a member of the special services had been trampled in the dirt. How could an FSB general not know what was going on in his own patch? Even worse now, the Moscow bosses were trying to force the local Riazan FSB to change their game completely. And then to cover themselves and separate themselves from the actions of the centre, the local secret servicemen published an absolutely unique statement.

I would say this document is concrete proof of the involvement of the FSB in the Ryazan attack. I’m going to read these few lines from the Ryazan FSB statement. It has been made known that an imitation detonator discovered on the 22 September was part of a joint operation. This announcement came as a surprise to us. It came out just as our agents had identified the place where the bombers were living in Ryazan and were preparing to arrest them.

It was precisely at this moment that Patrushev replaced the real attack story with the exercise theory. Just hours after the Ryazan incident, Alexander Zdanovich had appeared on Hero of the day on NTV. But he didn’t mention an exercise. His accusers say that either the excuse hadn’t yet been conjured up or he was buying time for the Moscow FSB bombers to escape. But he was already downplaying the Ryazan affair.

According to the information currently in my possession, no explosives were discovered. Even the reports that came out on the morning, supposedly analyzing hexagen fumes or Hexagon, haven’t been confirmed by our specialists. And the detonator, you know, there weren’t any detonators. There were things that only looked a bit like a remote control or several components of an explosive device. But many of the tenants of the building had seen the contents of the bags that were planted in their basement, and the substance did not resemble sugar.

I saw those bags lying there, no more than 10ft away. They looked like. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t hexygen that was in them. But to start with, it was yellowish and really fine, like chopped vermicelli. Some kind of granules, I’d say. I can assure you with total confidence that there wasn’t any hexagon. And by the way, to go back to the explosions that happened in Moscow and other cities, there was no hexagon there either.

A quite different explosive was used. Six months earlier, the leaders of the FSB had said something entirely different about the explosions in Moscow. We have received new information that traces of hexagon and tnt were discovered. This already indicates that the explosion was definitely not an accident. So why did the FSB suddenly start denying that hexagen had been used in other bomb massacres? It’s alleged this was to eliminate the similarities between the real bombings and the so called exercise in Riazan at various different stages.

The discovery of the explosive and the gas, the analysis, the panic. The FSB had several opportunities to make a prompt announcement that this was an exercise. Why was that not done? Because the FSB didn’t think anyone would pick up the trail just at the moment when the terrorists were about to be arrested in Rayazan, when the people and their hiding place had been identified. At that moment, Patrushev announced that there was an exercise going on.

And so the announcement by Patrushev himself that exercises were going on in Rayazan was, of course, an indication that the terrorist attacks had been planned from the top. And with Patrushev’s knowledge, in order to support their exercise explanation, the FSB produced an agent who’d been involved. The public was presented with a back to camera interview of a special services officer. Following orders issued by my superiors at the FSB as the first step in Operation anti terror whirlwind, our group was instructed to go to Rayazan to carry out a mission.

And that’s what we did. We bought sugar and made an imitation detonator. The three bags of sugar were purchased at the local market in order to lend the exercise version credibility, the leaders of the FSB appealed to veterans from its own special units to put on a show of corporate solidarity. That’s simply the kind of people we are. And no matter what happens, we never retire. The special services veterans were poorly rehearsed for the press conference.

Or perhaps they simply learned their lines badly. They deliberately pasted over the front plate, like the paper said, and wrote the number in ink. They deliberately didn’t paste over the back number because it might attract attention. I went back to have a look at the rear number plate and sure enough, it was the same. A piece of paper with 62 on it taped over the end of the registration number.

Our FSB officers went down there and worked out why. The sample analyzed had indicated the presence of an explosive. The kind of instrument used for analysis has to be absolutely sterile. But there was old sample material still in it. But what does practically no explosives mean? The FSB claimed the analysis was tainted. Maybe to cast doubt on the first analysis of the sack’s contents by local explosives expert Yuri Kachenko.

Kachenko himself was very amused by the statements from the FSB Public Relations Centre that his hands and the test instrument were tainted and that he hadn’t washed the instrument down. According to Kachenko, that kind of instrument should never be washed. In the numerous interviews with the vimple FSB groups who supposedly took part in the operation, not even the times of their arrival added up. They claimed to have left Moscow on the evening of the same day.

But anyone who’s traveled from Moscow to Rayazan by car knows that it’s physically impossible, whatever speed you’re going at, to get to Rayazan so quickly as to have the time to buy sugar in the local market. The FSB claimed the sugar had been bought in the evening, but an operation’s photo was taken in daylight. In the face of such major discrepancies, the FSB stuck to their story. It was sugar.

Sugar. As for the explosion of the detonator, there wasn’t any detonator at all. They bought three batteries in a shop, a shotgun cartridge, wires and all the rest made a mock up and put it on the bags of sugar. The FSB spokesman tries to cover every point like a report, but he doesn’t mention the most important part of the detonator the electronic watch. And furthermore, as the explosives expert Kochenko stated, the detonator was not placed on the bags.

There were three bags. The one in the middle had a hole in it. There was an electronic watch inside with wires coming off it. I put my hands in and started gently taking the wires out of the bag. There’s one surefire way of blocking investigation. Turn to the official secrets laws. We have people on our secret stuff, but we never show them. The pictures we released when they related the details were taken from behind.

But by all means, show them again. Don’t bother. According to what the boss of your investigative department says, there was a cartridge, an imitation detonator. So why didn’t Sergeyev figure out it was a mock up? Stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes. And welcome. Let’s start from the fact that they told us it was sugar. Does this mean that neither the FSB specialists nor the interior ministry know what sugar looks like? People who’ve seen Hexagon just once in their lives could never take it for sugar.

You just have to put a bit on your tongue and taste it. You can tell in a couple of seconds there are no explosives with a sweet taste. Could the evaporation detector have mistaken sugar for hexygen? No, it’s not possible. And yet an analysis that requires just a few minutes was dragged out for six months in the FSB laboratories. As soon as the investigation’s over, I’m prepared to meet you again and give all the details.

When might that be? That I can’t say. How can it take several months to analyze sugar? Well, there’s a queue. You know the way it is. In its efforts to be seen to be doing everything by the book, the FSB went to the point of absurdity. The bags that the FSB claims contain sugar that we’re convinced contained hexygen were confiscated. And then it was announced that the bags were undergoing further analysis.

Now, if it is sugar, and we’re sure of that, why do we need this analysis? And after that, they were blown up in a safe zone. But if you know it’s sugar, why do you need to blow it up? A bombing attempt or a blundered exercise? The FSB continued to serve up explanations with no apparent concern for how ridiculous this sometimes appeared. The material evidence in this inquiry is sealed in this bag.

We can’t open it without the permission of a judge. But we brought it with us especially to show that it was properly documented and all is on the record. So there’s no question you can go on saying it’s explosive when it’s sugar. The FSV are watertight against investigation. Once again, when the chips were down, they resorted to their final protection state secrecy. I repeat, we’re a secret service, and as such, we use all means at our disposal in the law to carry out operations that you’re not aware of and shouldn’t be aware of apart from what’s stipulated by the law, we’re talking about state secrets.

Even this is inaccurate. In the law on operational and investigative activity, not only is there no article about exercises, the word is not even mentioned. So the operation in Riaazan was clearly carried out on some other basis. I’ve been sitting here and I don’t believe these fairy tales I’ve been hearing from the FSP. I’m an old military man, too, retired with the rank of head of staff of an entire military unit.

Do you know how many exercises I held in 28 years in the service? And now no one will believe you or believe in that sealed bag or those files with all your papers and analyses. No one will believe you. The idea of the exercises appeared after the public discovered that something was going on. Exercises have to be announced in advance because the public is involved with them, because this is a civil defense exercise.

I’m certain there weren’t any civil defense exercises going on. If there had been an exercise, they would have presented us with mountains of paperwork signed by the top brass at the FSB. The fact is that this paperwork doesn’t exist, because if it existed, they would have shown it to us. This proves, of course, that it wasn’t an exercise. Apart from all that, in a country where bombs are already going off everywhere, where several apartment blocks have already been blown up, nobody with any common sense would hold exercises that were so similar to what happened in Moscow.

Nobody would organize exercises in a country where a war was already going on. Remember that the NTV program was broadcast before the new president began tightening the screws, and the residents of Riazan openly mocked the exercise version of events. Danovich Sergeyev and the other gentlemen of the FSP are trying to convince us that it was an exercise, but we don’t believe them. Is it because the citizens of Riyazan are too stupid? Or is it because your lies are unconvincing? Alexander Badanoff, who offered to help our film crew, had a bag of heroin planted in his pocket by FSB operatives.

Then they threatened to take action against him if he met up with us. And the reception we were given in Ryazan in November 2001, two years after the memorable events, there was not very hospitable. We tried to interview one of the central characters, General Sergey F. He refused, which is understandable. We hadn’t arranged in advance to meet him. But that wasn’t why our group had to leave Rayazan.

As we left his office building, some men in civilian clothes took us to one side. They give us a long winded lecture on how the streets of Rayazan are unsafe, on the rampant criminality in the town, and on the dangerous driving habits of certain local hoodlums. They asked us, if anything happened to you, which it probably will, whose fault would it be? Later on, three months after this trip, Pavel volushin was interrogated by the police in Moscow.

The only citizen of Ryazan who was not too afraid to be interviewed was Viktor Lesinski. And that might have been because after what happened, he was forced to emigrate to the USA. As the president of the Ryazan branch of the Helsinki monitoring group, he was given an unambiguous warning by the local FSB. It was obvious they were simply going to kill me. A local FSB agent would just go up to a down and out in the square and tell him, you see that guy with the beard buying cucumbers at the green ghosts? He’s bothering my wife.

I’ll give you a bottle of vodka and a packet of cash if you bash him on the head in a dark alley one night. Unfortunately, that’s how the secret services have been doing their business for the past five years. There are no written orders, no paperwork, nothing to be stored in the archives. Just a corpse some wino finished off with an ice pig. So were all these threats and persecutions triggered by a simple civil defense exercise in Riazan, or are the exercises continuing? But now all over the country, MTV’s talk show was shot in an age that is now past, an age when people were not afraid to speak out.

It’s the same old story. They’re trying to make us look like fools. The FSB themselves are investigating an FSB exercise. It’ll be an open and shut case. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I think it was all true and it wasn’t an exercise. I don’t understand why we allow ourselves to be led by the nose by these people. They’re just trying to clean the filth off their uniform coats, but they’re covered in filth underneath.

Anyway, who had the right to organize this operation? An operation involving civilians? Who had the right? Who gave the orders? Who had the right to give such orders? The president. Who else? Citizens may only be involved in exercises with their consent. Otherwise, no matter who took the decision, it’s yet another infringement of the law. Let’s just imagine that real explosives were planted and it was a real attempt at provocation in order to increase tension in the Caucasus and so on and so forth.

Do we have any guarantee that we would have been given an accurate reply that the public would find convincing to the question of what had happened. I suspect, unfortunately, that we wouldn’t. There’s no secret about it. When the inquiry is over, you’ll be able to ask all the questions you want, either yourselves or through a lawyer. And if you don’t trust the security service, we’ll answer to the public prosecutor.

One more falsehood. After the broadcast, the citizens of Riazan tried in vain to bring an action against the FSB. They got nowhere. Even though the criminal case was closed, it was classified as top secret in direct contravention of article seven of the law on state secrecy. This makes it illegal to classify as secret information on events which threaten the health and safety of the general public. Of course, these classifications remain in force for 75 years, so I don’t think we’re likely to learn what really happened for at least 75 years.

The russian parliament could intervene and see to it that the truth was known. That is why, on the 18 March 2002, Yablaco party mps Yuri Shikoshikin and Sergai Ivanenko demanded an inquiry into the revelations in the Navaya Gazetta newspaper. It was a fairly innocuous request. Look into a newspaper story and get answers to some questions about what happened and what didn’t. Even this attempt met with violent rejection because it was seen, and rightly so, as an attempt at civil control over secret service activity.

We haven’t had an answer yet about whether it really was a terrorist attack that was thwarted or whether it was passed off as some sort of secret service operation, Crit shrouded in Dubs. We still don’t have any reliable information on the matter. If the truth about the incident in Ryazan came out, the government would be forced to answer questions about who was behind the explosions in Bunaksk, Moscow and Volgadonsk.

And that’s something. GB is just full of this kind of activity. And in this context, I believe the incidents in Moscow and Volgodansk, and then late, preferably in the basement or a ground floor, and the explosive was shipped in in a day, you could quite easily bring it in and set up the explosion. It was delivered disguised as bags of sugar. But if we assumed that all the explosions in houses in 1999 were the work of the special services, clearly it must have taken several months to plan and prepare for them.

And right up to August 1999, the FSB was headed by Vladimir Putin. Yes, of course, it’s possible that the president and the top brass had nothing to do with it. And there could have been a group of patriotically inclined officers who planted bombs and blew up not just one hut, but ten or 15, taking the risk for the salvation of the state they love. One more question. The explosive tickets, the.

So Ryazan exercises have been held. So now, why doesn’t Putin, as president of the country, hold an investigation into what happened? I think the answer is obvious. Either he knows perfectly well what actually happened, or there is, in the final analysis, another global explanation that Putin doesn’t really control anything that happens in the country. Whether a special service plan to mobilize public opinion against Chechnya or a genuine antiterrorist exercise, a genuine investigation of the 1999 bombings is too risky.

If the inquiry were to establish that responsibility rests with the secret service, then the legitimacy of all those presently in power in Russia would be called into question. Guys. So that is that. I don’t know if you guys remember when I did that video with Stan, but let me discuss this for a minute. Is it possible that Putin had to do some false flags to wrestle away control from a lot of these people? Is it possible? Absolutely.

Look at what we’ve been reading in the war against Putin and how they have been going after Russia and encircling Russia for the better part of basically 15 years, 15 to 20 years. And, I mean, look, it was the Sochi Olympics when they did all that stuff with the know. And again, I ask, if you were in a position of control, what would you be willing to do to save your country? What would you be willing to do to save the United States? Well, to what ends? Would you go? Would you be willing to go to save the United States? If you have the ability to do mean, I know that there’s a lot of stuff that we are told in terms of the United.

In terms of the queue posts. Well, hey, we have to do everything by the book. Well, are we doing everything by the book? Are we? I would bet that we’re not doing everything by the book. I don’t think that we can do everything by the book. If we did everything by the book. And again, it goes to the notion of if they’re fighting with. Let’s just use it in these terms.

If they’re fighting with tanks and automatic weapons and aircraft and we’re fighting with napoleonic tactics, with muskets and cannons and horses, who do you think is going to win? I want to look at some of the chat here. Do we even know what’s in the book? When you say the book, and I’m sorry for a couple of times there were a few things that popped up on the screen.

I didn’t know that that was happening. I’ve been listening to a lot of this and not watch. Yeah, sorry about that. Especially, she’ll add, I saw that there’s. Let’s see here. Do we even know what’s in the book? By the book. Covid was like a plan b and we funk that possibly. Um, there’s a video that I’m. But I’m going to show you guys here in just a second.

I’m waiting for it to finish to. I pulled it apart of a video that I did. I did a video interview with a guy named Stan quite some time ago and it was about a year and a half ago and let me see, where is it? 730 in the morning. All right, so I don’t know if you guys have seen this in the past, but it’s got russian subtitles and he starts it off by saying that his phone rang at 07:00 in the morning.

Let me go ahead and hit play on this and I’ll reconvene when this is over. It’s only about 6 minutes long. Rang at 730 in the morning on the 24 February. The dialer was my american friend from my high school days in the US. He was the last person I expected to call, especially at 730 in the morning. I knew immediately that the war has actually broken out.

The beginning of the war did not surprise me. In fact, it’s long overdue. What surprised me was the fact that he knew nothing about the suffering that the russian Ukrainians had endured over the past eight years. Let me get something straight. NATO promised that they wouldn’t move an inch to the east. That was a lie. And now we are surrounded by an aggressive military alliance. NATO gladly bombed Yugoslavia under the pretenses of a potential genocide.

Did they bomb just military installations? No. NATO destroyed schools, hospitals, bridges, cultural monuments, private businesses and industrial plants. Did you forget about that? Did you forget about how NATO pumped money and weapons into Georgia right before Georgia bombarded russian peacekeepers and civilians? Of course you did, because your media doesn’t want you to know. Did you forget how yet another territory was ripped away from Serbia? Do you not remember Kosovo? Did you protest then? I bet you didn’t.

And I bet you didn’t even care. Did you forget the invasion of Libya? If you’re in Europe, you can’t forget thousands of migrants are your daily reminder of what your government did to that country. Did you protest the illegal invasion of Syria by Turkey and the US I bet you didn’t. Do you care about Saudi Arabia starving Yemen? I bet you don’t. Do you care? Or did you care about the illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan under false pretenses? What? They aren’t people to you? Why haven’t you been vocal against the murder of children and civilians at iraqi and afghani weddings by american bombardment? That’s right.

They’re brown people. They’re probably worth less to you. Where were your crocodile tears when Kiev started bombarding ukrainian Russians in the east simply for doing the exact same thing as the Ukrainians did in the west was to get rid of a corrupt government? Where were your crocodile tears when Kiev shut off electricity and water to crimea? Where was your save the ukrainian people when 48 civilian antimaidan ukrainian protesters were rounded into a union tradehouse and burned alive whilst those who tried to escape the fiery hell were beaten and shot? Do you by any chance know who the Madonna of Gorlovka is? Do you know what the alley of angels memorial is? Let me give you a hint.

People engraved into that memorial aren’t alive and they are not adults. Did you shed even one digital virtue signaling tear when the children at the children’s beach in Zagrest were purposefully bombed by the ukrainian military using illegal cluster bombs? I bet you didn’t. But that’s okay. How would you? Your mainstream media keeps you in the dark. For eight years the US and its allies have been pumping billions of dollars worth of lethal weapons into Ukraine.

For eight years the Ukrainians have been waging a war with their own people in the east. And for seven years Russia and the people of the Donetsk and Lagosk republics have been patiently waiting for Kiev to adhere to the miscagments. Should Russia have waited maybe 20 more years, the amount of years that the US spent killing Afghanis? So whilst leaders like Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Schultz and Ursula Vonderlain have been virtue signaling about the poor Ukrainians, they have been robbing the Ukrainians of their dignity, making their economy run on loans from the IMF and basically robbing them of their future.

And Russia is to blame. When we were their primary trading partner, the west pushed Russia into a corner. Protect yourself from an increasingly hostile neighborhood. Who wants to become part of a hostile military alliance called NATO and blues? Nordstream two, for example. Or watch russian Ukrainians get slaughtered by the thousands. The west wanted to fight this war with Russia until the very last Ukraine hit. Remember Kosovo? Well, the Lugansk and Donesk republics have every right to exist.

Russia didn’t set the precedent your leaders did when they recognized Kosovo. And final food for thought, why was there no bombardment of innocent civilians in Crimea, even though it’s closer to Kiev than Donetsky is? I’ll give you a hint. The actual russian military was there protecting the people. Here’s another. The ukrainian army has been fighting this invisible russian army for eight years now in the east, according to your mainstream media.

Why then did the ukrainian army collapse within 24 hours when fighting the actual russian military? And since it did, what do you think your tax dollars were doing in Ukraine? That’s right. Your tax dollars were used by Ukrainians in the west to kill Ukrainians in the east, and you didn’t give a flying fuck about it. So if you haven’t been following this conflict from day one and now you put the blue and yellow flag on your photo, wipe away your crocodile tears, please, and find out why your governments have been supporting those who have made a nazi criminal, tipan bandera, their national war hero.

Don’t expect a good result from pushing a bear and the dragon into a corner. And definitely don’t be surprised when that bear and that dragon begin pushing back. So if you haven’t been crying for the collectively millions of the Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Libyans, Yugoslavians, and East Ukrainians these past 20 years, put your crying crocodile tears for ukrainian military installations, wipe them away and think about what your governments have been doing and what they’re still doing.

And I hope that this eight year story of a war started by a criminal ukrainian government against its own people can finally come to an end and Ukrainians and Russians can finally live in. All right, so that was a friend of mine, actually. I interviewed him. Guess it’s been. Oh, shoot, almost two years ago. I interviewed him in March of 2022, right after the war started. I saw his clip and I found him online and I reached out to him and I was the first westerner to interview him.

That was a long time ago. We still trade emails here periodically and I need to get him on and get him back on the channel just to talk about a lot of the things that are going on right now. But anyway, I don’t know. I’m debating on whether or not I should show this third one because it really is. I’m going to go ahead and do it. Actually, it’s 45 minutes long.

It’s 45 minutes long, but it’s worth the time. Again, it is not very kind to Putin. It’s very much a. I don’t know, it’s very much. Just like, kind of like this was where they’re blaming Putin for doing false flags and that’s how he came to power and he was pulling strings and all this other stuff. But again, I reiterate, I know I’ve been beating it like a dead horse.

What would you do if you had the power to wrestle control of your country away from these evil people? Just leave it at that. So I’m going to go ahead and hit play on this. On the 9 August 1999, Russia’s president Boris Yeltsin announced a new acting prime minister. Most Russians had never heard of him, and in a poll, just 2% said that they vote for him to become president.

Exactly one month after Yeltsin’s announcement, a massive explosion in an apartment building just half an hour’s drive from the Kremlin killed more than 100 people. Less than four days after that. Let me just say here real quick before I do this, and I said it the other day, but I want to make sure that I say it again. Yeltsin. I think Yeltsin’s approval rating at the end of his presidency was like, I don’t know, it was single digits.

In fact, let’s look that up. Let’s see here. Boris Yeltsin approval rating graph. Let’s see. That’s Boris Johnson. I don’t want Johnson. I want Yeltsin. Okay. Images and see what we have. Here’s, so here is, here’s Yeltsin’s approval rating. Okay. So it looks like what they’re doing here is they’re doing it on a scale of ten instead of 100. So it saying here that his approval rating was like.

It was. That’s just what they’re saying here. I don’t know what it exactly was, but at the end of the day, it was very low. Yeltsin’s approval rating was extraordinarily low. And when I talked to Mike the other day, the reason that I went to Mike on this is because Mike actually knows quite a few people over in Russia. And when I asked him about a lot of this stuff, he knew a lot of people that were going as this stuff was happening real time.

He was plugged in and knew a lot of the stuff that was going on. And he told me that Yeltsin’s approval rating, or Yeltsin, was basically our Biden. He was then. And Putin was like the Trump. So take that with a grain of salt. But that was how it was described to me by Mike Harris. And Mike Harris is actually somebody who has traveled the world many times over and knows people all over central Asia.

He would know. Anyway, let’s go ahead and watch this last video just because I want you guys to see what he’s saying here. So let’s do that. Another apartment bombing less than 4 miles away killed 119 people. The morning after the second bombing, the speaker of the russian parliament paid tribute to the victims that had died in the city of Volgodonsk. But he’d made a mistake. Volgodonsk is 700 miles away from Moscow, where the bombing had actually happened.

So when a car bomb actually exploded in Volgodonsk three days later, things got even weirder. But there was no time for questions. Russia was under attack. The new prime minister quickly ordered a massive bombing campaign against separate. And since he took power, he has not let go. He has had his enemies killed, started wars, and destabilized the global order. But for someone so dangerous and so important, we know surprisingly little about him.

Who is Vladimir Putin, really? Why did he invade Ukraine? What’s the real story behind those apartment bombings? And why is he actually weaker than ever? The Moscow apartment bombings are a key part of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. And don’t worry, I’m going to talk more about them. But to truly understand how he became the man he is today, you need to understand the organization that molded him.

The KGB. The KGB was one of the main instruments of soviet state power. It operated totally above the law, spying on dissidents, carrying out espionage, and acting as a secret police force. And because the Soviet Union had lots of enemies, the KGB needed lots of agents. One of the best places to find them was in the country’s most prestigious universities. That’s exactly where they found a young law student at Lendingrad State University named Vladimir Putin.

They waited until he graduated before recruiting him in 1975. Lots of KGB agents joined because they basically had no choice. When your country’s notorious spy agency asks you to join, it’s kind of hard to say no. But Putin joined because he wanted to. He spent his first few years with KGB, pushing papers in a gloomy office in Leningrad. But his first big breakaround went in the early 1980s.

He was summoned to Moscow to attend the agency’s elite foreign intelligence training institute. That’s right. It was basically a professional development course for soviet spies. After he learned how to be a better spy, Putin was assigned to Dresden. Deep at the heart of East Germany, as a boundary between communism and capitalism, East Germany was a rich source of cold war intrigue and information. This is building number four.

Angelica Straussa, today, it’s the regional hq for an esoteric spiritual movement. But during the Cold War, it was the local KGB station. And for the last five years of the 1980s, it was Vladimir Putin’s office. His mission was to recruit communist party and Stasi officials, compromise visiting westerners, and travel undercover to West Germany. It also involved stealing western technology. Despite being first to space and shocking the west with Sutton, by the 1980s, the eastern plot was lagging way behind the west.

After five years in Dresden, Putin returned to Russia and to his old university in Leningrad. Even though his cover story was that he worked as an aide to the dean, everyone knew that Putin was still working for the KGB, spying on and recruiting students. Of course, there wouldn’t be a next generation of cracked KGB spies working undercover to steal western technology and NATO secrets. Because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, brought undone by failed reforms and the pressure of trying to keep up with the United States, Putin could see the end coming before it arrived.

By then, he quit the KGB to go work for one of his old law professors, a guy named Anatoli Subcheck. Subcheck was one of the leading voices calling for democratic reforms in the Soviet Union. After the Cold War ended, he was elected mayor of Leningrad, which by then had reverted to its original name of St. Petersburg. Putin got a job working for subcheck at city hall, and he saw how bad things really were.

The decline in living standards in Russia after the Cold War is hard to comprehend. Life expectancy at birth plunged by more than five years. Between 1990 and 1994, things got so bad that there are stories of people paying for things with bricks because they were worth more than russian rubles at the time. Even for the millions of russian people who, by the end, hated the communist system, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought chaos and humiliation.

Russians went from living in a country that went toe to toe with the United States as a superpower to needing handouts. After his boss, Amatoli Sochek, was voted out in 1996, Putin went to Moscow. There, for reasons that had never really been explained, he suddenly started moving up really fast in his career. He got a job in the presidential property management department at the Kremlin. It sounds like a boring admin job, but it actually gave Putin lots of leverage to grant or turn down favors to other political insiders.

He must have done a lot of effective networking, because his next job after that was as deputy chief of Boris Yeltsin’s presidential staff. He was obviously busy, but he still somehow found the time to get what’s basically the russian equivalent of a PhD in economics. Putin’s dissertation was about maximizing the value of mineral resources in his home region. It’s more than 200 pages of discussion about stuff like the quality of gravel pits in Russia.

There are real questions about whether he even wrote it. But believe it or not, Putin’s PhD wasn’t really about education. It was about ticking the boxes he needed in order to keep advancing in his career. After working for Yeltsin, Putin became director of the FSB, the intelligence agency which replaced the KGB. How did Putin go from being a mid ranking KGB officer in East Germany to running the successor agency less than ten years later? Maybe there’s no conspiracy here.

Maybe he was just really great at time management and really great at all the jobs he was given. Or maybe his bosses really liked the dissertation he wrote. But if you worked in russian politics at the time, you could only climb the ladder as quickly as Putin did. If someone even higher wanted it to happen, however he did it, Putin quickly earned Yeltsin’s trust. His timing was perfect.

After 30 years in soviet and russian politics, which included surviving a coup, Yeltsin was done. He was extremely pessimistic about the problems Russia faced. And his bad health, which was exacerbated by his drinking, meant that he just didn’t have the energy to try and fix them. So Yelton believed his final act in public life should be to choose the right successor, someone who could do what he had failed to do, rebuild Russia into a world power.

He had a few candidates in mind. One of them was his deputy premier, Boris Niemsov. Niemsov was very different from Putin. For a start, he had years of actual political leadership experience, having served as a provincial governor and member of parliament. He was also, by the standards of russian politics, a liberal democrat. Instead of looking to the past for ideas on how to reform Russia, he looked to the west.

At one stage, Boris Yeltsin introduced him to Bill Clinton as his chosen successor. Everything appeared to be on track until fate intervened. The day that ruble fell 20%, Vogue magazine held a party for 4000. Financial crises are complicated. This one is no exception. The basic story is that another market crisis, this one originating in Asia, reduced the price of commodities like oil, gas, and metals that the russian economy was dependent on.

As the country’s revenue sharply decreased, so did its ability to repay its debts, which were mostly in the form of bonds held by foreign investors. On August 17, 1998, the russian government defaulted on its debts and was forced to devalue the ruple. It was a disaster. For millions of Russians, Yeltsin sacked the prime minister and his entire cabinet. But even that didn’t contain the fallout. Boris Nemsov had staked his political legitimacy on making Russia’s economy look more like the west.

So when it collapsed, he got blamed. He went from receiving more than 50% in a presidential poll to being one of the most hated men in the country. In addition to killing Demsoft’s hopes of being Yeltsin’s successor, the financial crisis accelerated Yeltsin’s desire to find a replacement and stand down. And eventually just r1 choice remained Vladimir Putin. But Yeltsin and his inner circle had a problem. The public had no idea who Putin was.

It was one thing to name him prime minister. Yeltsin could do that, no problem. But Russia was meant to be a democracy, and in a democracy, you can’t just snap your fingers and make someone the president. They actually had to win an election. Putin had no profile. He wasn’t a reformer like Nebsov. If people had even heard of him, they probably associated him with KGB. If russian elites wanted him to win an election, they needed people to know who he was.

Which brings us back to those bombings I mentioned at the start of the video. They’re a key part of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. So let’s construct a timeline. On the 9 August 1999, Boris Yelton named Vladimir Putin acting prime minister. 26 days later, on the night of September 4, 1999, a truck blew up a barracks in Bunask, a garrison town on Russia’s border with the breakaway region of Chechnya.

Just after midnight on September 9, a bomb went off in the basement of an apartment building in southeast Moscow. The FSB, the internal security agency that until recently had been run by Vladimir Putin, reported that items removed from the scene contained traces of tnt and another explosive called RDX. Government officials started blaming chechen terrorists for the attack almost immediately. Just after midnight on September 13, authorities were called to check on reports of suspicious activity at an apartment building less than 4 miles away from the previous bombing site.

They didn’t find anything, but just a few hours later, a massive car bomb destroyed a nine story building on the cashier Squia highway. Three days later, another bomb blew up near an apartment building in the southern city of Volvodonsk. The whole nation was terrified. On the evening of September 22, several residents from the city of Razan, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow, saw a white sedan pull up in front of their apartment building.

The car’s license plate had been altered. The residents also noticed two men removing several large sacks from the trunk and carrying them into the basement before driving away at speed. When local police arrived, they found three large sacks wired to a detonator and explosive timer. The bomb was diffused and sent away. Protesting the next morning, the 23rd, Putin congratulated the local residents on their vigilance and lauded the security forces for foiling what could have been another deadly attack.

That same evening, police apprehended the men who’d been seen loading the sacks into the basement. When they were questioned, they produced FSB identification cards. Remember, the FSB is the agency that ultimately replaced the KGB. And Vladimir Putin before he became prime minister was the FSB director. A short time later, a call came from FSB headquarters. The men were to be released the next morning, September 24, the director of the FSB appeared on national tv.

Suddenly, the story had changed. It wasn’t a foiled terrorist attack. It was an FSB training exercise meant to test public awareness. And the sacks in the basement didn’t contain explosives. They just had sugar in them. The FSB was trying to sweep the whole incident under the rug. And it might have worked until the results came back from the lab. The analysis, which was conducted by the local branch of the FSB, showed that the Sachs actually contained RDX, the same explosive that was found at the scene of the bombing at Gurrianova street two weeks earlier.

But RDX wasn’t something you could make at home. In fact, there was only one place you could get it in all of Russia. A heavily guarded facility in the city of Perm, near the euro mountains and about 1500 miles from Chechian. It’s details like this that make the official story that the bombings were all orchestrated by chechen terrorists. Hard to believe, but the time for asking questions was over, because at the same time as Putin was praising the residents of Razan for their bravery, russian warplanes was already launching massive airstrikes in capital of Chechnya.

Ordinary Russians were scared. Their country had gone from being a superpower to a basket case. People were going hungry, losing their savings and dying in their homes. Vladimir Putin promised an end to the chaos. Under him, order would be restored. People didn’t know about the gaps in the official story. Or if they did, they pretended not to notice. On March 26, 2000, Vladimir Putin was elected president with 53% of the vote.

The people of Russia might not have realized it, but they just made a very faithful decision. But Russia at the present time, the communists have been defeated, but the ideas of freedom now are on trial. Putin’s first major crisis came less than six months into his presidency. This is the curse, a nuclear powered Oscar two class submarine. At the time, it was the biggest cruise missile submarine in the world.

It was said to be virtually unsinkable. So it was the obvious choice to leave Russia’s first major naval exercise in more than ten years. These exercises were basically a way for Vladimir Putin to show adversaries like NATO in the United States that after a tumultuous few years, Russia was once again a military power. At about 11:00 a. m. On August 12, 2000, deep in the barren Sea, the crew of the curse were given clearance to launch two dummy torpedoes at the Peter the great battle cruiser.

But the torpedoes detonated prematurely. At 11:29 a. m. Nearby norwegian seismic detectors registered an explosion. 2 minutes later, another, much larger explosion was detected. The kirsk sank to the seabed. Amazingly, the US defense secretary, William Cohen knew about the accident. Before the Kremlin, the international community quickly offered assistance to try and save any crew who might still be alive. But the russian government refused all offers of help.

Publicly, they said they had everything under control. In reality, they knew the kirsk and its crew were in big trouble. It took 16 hours to locate the Kirsk after it sank, and two days before officials publicly acknowledged that anything was wrong. When they did, they said it was just experiencing minor technical difficulties. In truth, any crew members who survived the initial blast were rapidly running out of air.

Where was Vladimir Putin in all this? Well, he was on vacation. He actually wasn’t even informed of the accident until the day after it happened. The navy kept telling him that they had it under control and that there was strong possibility that the accident had been caused by a NATO vessel. If the COVID up was bad, the rescue attempts were even worse. The russian navy repeatedly failed in their attempts to get into the submarine from his seaside resort.

Putin finally agreed to accept outside help, but it was too late. By the time norwegian divers finally opened a hatch to the submarine, there were no survivors. On August 21, the russian navy was finally forced to admit the truth in the public. The russian media strongly criticized the government’s response as enacted and their explanations as totally unreliable. Putin decided to meet with family members a full ten days after the sinking.

Access to the meeting was tightly controlled. State media’s broadcast of the meeting showed only Putin speaking, but inside, the reaction was furious. Two journalists who got in by posing as family members witnessed distraught widows and mothers screaming at the president and demanding to know who would be punished for the disaster. Detective. Detective. When one extremely emotional mother wouldn’t stop interrupting. A nurse popped up behind her and forcibly injected her with a sedative.

Days later, Larry King asked Putin what happened. This is how he reacted. The Kurtz fiasco was terrible for Putin because it challenged the main part of his appeal, keeping Russians safe and restoring the country’s status as a great power. Great powers don’t lose their best ships and training exercises. And his response made it look like he didn’t really care about the people who died or the effect it had on their families.

Still, for the first few years of his presidency, most world leaders either didn’t see that side of Putin or didn’t care. I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy. I am confident that this new level of cooperation between NATO’s members and Russia will now change the world. And for the bit, was Putin the KGB mastermind, just tricking these world leaders into thinking he was a good guy? I think the truth is much more complicated, and a lot of it has to do with NATO.

Remember, NATO was created in order to contain soviet influence in Europe. So after the end of the cold war, most people believed the alliance had served its purpose. Western policymakers didn’t see any real reason to keep expanding it. They preferred to focus their energies on encouraging Russia to become a democratic, capitalist country. But that began to change in the mid 1990s. Now we have to finish what America started four years ago, welcoming Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic into our alliance.

If you look around who’s in room today, you can see that they are more than willing. Eastern european countries, which had spent decades under soviet influence, were suspicious of Russia’s long term motives. They wanted to join NATO while Russia was still weak, because they knew it wouldn’t be weak forever. Polish officials even told a team of researchers that if you don’t let us into NATO, we’re getting nuclear weapons.

And Bill Clinton and his team of idealistic foreign policy officials helped make it happen, just as he promised, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic all eventually joined the alliance. This was basically Russia’s worst nightmare, but it couldn’t do anything about it. The next round of NATO expansion in 2004 added seven more countries. Almost all had been part of the eastern bloc. The three baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were part of the Soviet Union itself.

Now they were part of the west, at least in geopolitical terms. For Putin, this shift in global order was part provocation, part existential threat. NATO was creeping up to its country’s doorstep, which threatened to permanently relegate Russia to the status of second tier power in its own region. It had to be stopped. Putin wanted to undermine NATO and destabilize the US led world order. In his mind, I’m sure he also wanted to inflict some pain on the countries that, in his eyes, had humiliated Russia at the end of the cold war.

But he knew there was no way Russia could win a war against NATO. To achieve his goals, Putin would need to find another strategy. In late 2004, Ukrainians went to the polls to elect a president. They weren’t just choosing between two guys with virtually indistinguishable policies. They were choosing between two different visions of what kind of country Ukraine should be. In one corner was the pro russian incumbent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

In the other corner was the pro NATO, pro EU opposition leader Viktor Yashchenko. The man who won would tilt Ukraine closer to the west or closer to Russia. The future of the country was on the line. The ukrainian parliament had already agreed to the formation of a free trade zone with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. And Yanukovych had promised to make Russian an official language in Ukraine. You better believe that Vladimir Putin was watching closely.

The first round of voting was held on October 31. It was incredibly tight because neither candidate got more than 50% of the votes. A runoff ballot was held on November 21 to determine the winner. The result was still close, but it looked decisive. Yanakovych got almost 900,000 more votes. The geographic distribution of the votes showed a clear east west division, with voters in western Ukraine favoring Yushenko and those in eastern Ukraine favoring Yanakovych from the first round to the second round.

Big increases in turnout were recorded in regions that supported Yanakovych. In his home district, the turnout went up by more than 40%. Some districts had the old soviet classic of more than 100% turnout. Victor Yoschenko was even poisoned with a toxic substance called dioxin. He survived, but was permanently disfigured. International observers immediately sounded the alarm, and Ukrainians took to the streets. On November 22, 2004, presidential election results were announced in Ukraine on a massive scale.

The defeated opposition leader, Victor Yashenko, offered national strike, and the People’s army occupied against revolution. It was the turning point in the bruises. Ukraine was electrified by acts of civil disobedience, citizens, and general strikes. The protests worked. Ukraine’s Supreme Court annulled the results of the runoff and ordered another vote for December 26. The whole world was watching, so Yanakovych and Putin couldn’t pull the same tricks. The final results showed a clear victory.

For Yushchenko, who received about 52% of the vote, compared to Yanukovych’s 45%. On January 23, 2005, Viktor Yushenko was inaugurated president of Ukraine. The Orange Revolution is an important chapter in the political evolution of Vladimir Putin. After years of cementing his rule at home, this was the first time he interfered in the politics of a neighboring country with the goal of installing a crow Kremlin regime. And he failed.

But his failure would only deepen his resolve to expand Russia’s sphere of influence. Putin understood that in order to turn failure into success, he needed to silence his enemies. Do you remember this man? What about when he looked like this? That’s Alexander Lipignko, three days before, he died of polonium poisoning. Until 1998, he was lieutenant colonel in the KGB, exactly the same rank as Vladimir Putin. But after giving a press conference about an assassination plot, he was fired and then jailed for nine months.

When he was released, Libinyenko fled Russia and eventually settled in England. There, with the help of another exile, the oligarch, Boris Berazovsky, he waged a years long media campaign against the Putin regime. They asked lots of uncomfortable questions, including about those apartment bombings. Litvinyenko was becoming an annoyance so deep in the heart of the Kremlin, the decision was made to eliminate him. Two russian ExKGB officers were dispatched.

Their destination, London. They met with Lipton Yanko at the Millennium hotel on November 1, 2006. That night, he fell ill. Two days later, he was admitted to the hospital under a fake name. As his condition worsened, he told his doctors who he really was and that he’d been poisoned. Testing of lip and Yanko’s blood and urine detected small gamma ray spikes. A scientist who worked on Britain’s early atomic bomb program overheard a conversation and recognized the gamma ray spike as the signature of polonium 210.

But detecting polonium was very different to treating it. Us and uk government officials had never heard of polonium being used as poison before, and no one could save Alexander Littenyanko. It took an agonizing 23 days for him to die. During that time, he wrote a statement blaming Putin for what had happened. After his death, investigators discovered that the assassins had put a lethal dose of the polonium in a teapot at the millennium hotel.

The assassination of Lip and Yanko shook the world out of their complacency regarding Putin, as long as he supported the war on terror and kind of looked like a democrat. If you didn’t look too closely, western leaders could convince themselves he was on their team. But now they could see the truth. If Putin could have one of his enemies killed like that in a western capital, he was capable of anything.

With the assassination of Alexander Livignko, Vladimir Putin showed everyone in the west who he really was. And the thing is, he was still a popular leader in Russia. Lots of Russians still remember the cold War and the shock therapy administered by western economists throughout the 1990s. To them, Putin was restoring Russia to its rightful place as a world power in its own right and a counterweight to west and the United States.

He was also growing the economy. The US invasion of Iraq was one of the factors that led to a massive increase in the price of oil and gas, which the russian economy depended on. Between 2003 and mid 2008, the price of crude oil rose from $30 per barrel to almost $150 per barrel. That translated to rapid economic growth. Russia’s gdp grew by an average of 7% per year.

Real disposable incomes doubled. Putin was helping Russians become wealthier while also asserting their interests abroad. In early 2007, he attended the Munich Security conference and gave a speech which would become a major turning point in his rhetoric towards the west. In language that was increasingly candid for such a setting, Putin accused the United States and the west of arrogance, hypocrisy, and violating democracy. This is a world of one master, one sovereign.

They constantly teach Russia, thus democracy. But those who teach us, for some reason, do not really want to learn. This speech is absolutely key to understanding Putin’s worldview. 15 years before he invaded Ukraine, and five years before Xi Jinping became the leader of China, Putin was telling the world that Russia wanted a multipolar world order. In other words, he wanted a system that represented capitalism, democracy, and other western values to become less powerful.

The speech was music to the ears of nationalists in Russia and contributed to his popularity at home. There was just one hitch. According to Russia’s constitution, he couldn’t actually serve a third term as president. So he hatched a scheme with his loyal prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev would become president, and Putin would serve prime minister. It was a blatant subversion of democracy. Everyone could see it was a way for Putin to maintain his grip on power and install someone who would keep seat warm for him.

More than 71% of Russians voted for Medvedev to become the figurehead president. Despite no longer being president, Putin’s grip on power was stronger than ever. And with things secured home, he was ready to focus on undermining established world order. The leaders of NATO straining the fabric of the alliance. Should NATO agree to give membership action plans to Georgia and Ukraine. Russia was extremely nervous about the prospect of countries on its borders joining NATO, which meant that when NATO released a communique which said that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO, it immediately set off alarm bells.

Those membership action plans actually never ended up happening. But in Putin’s eyes, that didn’t matter. From his perspective, allowing Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO amounted to a direct threat to Russia, and he had to respond. His first target was Georgia. Georgia’s pro western government was perpetually in conflict with South OCE and Atkezia, two breakaway regions on its border with Russia. Both regions, which had lots of native russian speakers, had declared their independence.

Most of the international community didn’t recognize those declarations, but Russia did. And what’s more, Russia was providing separatists in those regions with weapons and other support. The fighting between Russia and Georgia over the georgian breakaway region of South Ocetia. President Bush has told russian leaders that military action against Georgia is unacceptable. Tensions reached a breaking point on August 1, 2008, separatist forces started shelling georgian villages. Georgia responded by sending in the military to take control of separatist town.

The russian government claimed, falsely, that Georgia was committing genocide against south of Secha. They used it as a pretext to launch a full scale invasion, including into undisputed georgian territory. Russia’s decisive military strength meant the war was over in five days. Putin had sent a clear message to Georgia and other countries in eastern Europe that were thinking about joining NATO after failing to install his chosen candidate in Ukraine.

The war against Georgia showed that Putin was running a different playbook in order to destabilize pro western neighbor. Why try and rig an election when you just arm separatists as an imperial power? Russia has always looked to maintain spheres of influence on its borders. That’s a big reason why, as soon as Putin saw there was a chance of Georgia joining NATO, he tried to depose president. Winning wars against small countries was popular with Russians who yearned for the good old days.

But there were still lots of Russians who cared about things like democracy, and they were about to make themselves heard. Tens of thousands packed the streets of Moscow in the biggest antigovernment demonstration Russia has seen for 20 years. They shouted, putin is a thief in Russia without Putin. Protesters accused Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party corruption and rigging parliamentary elections last weekend. Russia’s 2011 parliamentary election.

All right, this is where I’m going to like, I don’t know. I can’t even really stomach listening to this guy because listening to him talk is nauseating because all he’s doing is singing the entire neocon line. And I don’t know, forgive me, I’m just done. I can’t stomach it anymore. It makes me want to hurl. I’ll share the link and if you guys want to watch it, you can.

But I can’t stand the dude’s face and I can’t stand listening to him spew about how he’s just singing the neocon globalist garbage. I’m done with it. I’m absolutely done with it. But anyway, on that note, guys, it’s getting a little late. It’s about 730. Been going up at this for about two and a half hours, so I’m just going to go ahead and call it a night.

And I hope you all enjoy the remainder of your Friday evening. This really kind of wasn’t so much a watch party as it was just me playing a few things that kind of gave some perspective on the book that I’ve been reading about the war against Putin. Even if I didn’t 100% agree with it, the war against Putin felt like I was reading the chapters that I was just reading yesterday and the day before felt like he was quoting right from their playbook.

And I don’t know, like I said, it’s just nauseating to try to listen, to try to listen to that, and I’m just done with it anyway. All right, everybody, well, listen, I appreciate everybody who is tuning in here, and I do hope that you guys enjoy your weekend. I may be back this weekend, I may not. I’m not 100% sure. I do have a few things that I need to get done.

There are a couple of things that I want to play, and if I do, I may go live and just play them because they’re kind of like in documentary form, things that have been kind of piling up on me. So I may do that, but I may not. I don’t know. We’ll see. Time will be the judge. But I’ve got a lot of things that I’ve got to get done this weekend here at the house, so I’m going to be busy.

But anyhow, that said, I do want to wish everybody a wonderful weekend. Have a fantastic weekend. And if I see you, great. If not, then I will see you on Monday, Lord willing. So have a great night, everybody. Appreciate you tuning in and we will see you. Or I will see you when I see you. .

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