Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [80]
“I am not sure that I am ready for that,” was Putin’s immediate response. Boris noted that he had been thinking about it.
“Yes, I know, you would rather be me.”
“I was not joking,” interrupted Putin. “Why don’t you guys give me Gazprom to run? I could handle that.”
By then Boris had realized something about Putin’s character. He was an officer who could not function outside the chain of command. Once he was at the top, there would be no one to give him orders. This was probably the reason for his insecurity. But Boris also knew that Putin was loyal, a team player, and it was a quality he could make use of.
“Volodya, I understand. Who needs the headache? But consider this: there is no one else. Primus would beat anybody but you. And we will always be around to help. You cannot let us down.”
There was a pause. Putin replied, with almost a sigh of resignation, “Yes, that’s true. But then I need to hear it from Boris Nikolaevich himself.”
“Of course, that’s why he sent me, to sound you out. That’s part of being presidential, he does not want to hear no for an answer.”
Putin accepted.
Makhachkala, Dagestan, August 7, 1999: Russian forces use artillery and air in an assault on Wahhabi militants holding several villages near the border of Chechnya. Eyewitnesses among 2,000 refugees camped at the central square of the Dagestani capital report seeing two Russian helicopters shot down. The 2,000-strong Wahhabi force is led by Shamil Basayev, who is trying to expand the area that has been administered by the militants for nearly a year. On August 8, Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin returns to Moscow from touring the area, only to learn that he and his entire cabinet have been sacked by President Yeltsin, the third change of government within a year.
Prime Minister-designate Vladimir Putin vows to restore order in the south.
CHAPTER 9 THE VICTORS
Buinaksk, Dagestan, September 4, 1999: A car bomb destroys a building housing military families, killing sixty-four and injuring 133. The next day, hundreds of gunmen led by radical warlord Shamil Basayev enter Dagestan from Chechnya, aiming to reclaim several border villages that were taken by Russian forces just two weeks earlier. Thousands of refugees arrive in the provincial capital of Makhachkala. Aslan Maskhadov’s government denies involvement in the incursion and disowns the militants. In Moscow, Prime Minister Putin convenes a National Security Council meeting.
Washington, DC, September 1999
The rise of Vladimir Putin was a surprise to many.
On a sunny day in September the Soros Foundation brought to Washington a Russian regional governor, Viktor Kress of Tomsk, Siberia. I took Kress to a luncheon at the State Department, where Russia watchers and policy planners had gathered from all over town.
“Mr. Kress, who will be the next president of Russia?” was the first question.
“Whom do you think?” asked Kress.
“Primakov? Luzhkov? Yavlinsky? Nemtsov? Lebed? Zyuganov?”
“Vladimir Putin,” said Kress.
There was a murmur at the table. Putin was the new prime minister—the sixth in Yeltsin’s presidency—but his approval rating stood at 2 percent. Primakov’s was at 22. Nobody had ever heard of Putin until two months ago. Who was this guy?
The man whom Sasha Litvinenko would accuse of his murder was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad (presently St. Petersburg), the son of a laborer in a train-car factory. According to First Person, a series of interviews with and about Putin hastily compiled and released on the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, his mother was a “kind … [but] not highly educated woman.” She’d had a series of menial jobs: as a worker in a grocery store, a glassware washer in a laboratory, a night security guard in a secondhand clothing shop. She was a survivor of the famine during the German blockade of Leningrad. When Putin was born, she was forty-one. He was a sickly child.
His father, a veteran of NKVD (wartime KGB) forces, who sustained a severe