Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [95]
After that, the Kremlin stopped calling him.
On July 18, the Duma approved Putin’s federalism proposals by an overwhelming majority. Boris resigned his Duma seat to protest “the imposition of authoritarian rule.” On July 20, threatened with another arrest, Goose signed an agreement to sell his media holdings to Gazprom, which was still controlled by the government. He immediately left for his villa in San Roque, Spain. Later, he announced that he considered the sale of NTV null and void because it had been signed under duress.
And then came Kursk, and Boris’s exile into the political wilderness.
Kursk was a nuclear submarine armed with cruise missiles, a part of Russia’s Northern Fleet, named after the city of Kursk in central Russia. On August 12, it was conducting firing exercises when a huge explosion occurred, apparently resulting from a faulty torpedo launch. Kursk sank eighty-five miles off Severomorsk, in the Barents Sea, to a depth of 350 feet. There were 118 sailors aboard. When it hit bottom, another huge explosion occurred. At least twenty-three men survived the blasts, only to face several days of agony on the ocean floor while the world watched a fiasco unfold.
For Putin, the Kursk catastrophe turned into a PR disaster. For twenty-four hours after the submarine went down, ORT and NTV showed shots of icy waters and grieving families onshore, alternating with footage of Putin water-skiing and enjoying a barbecue at his dacha in Sochi.
The media coverage made much of the fact that the Russian government, unable to mount a rescue on its own, stalled for four days despite British and Norwegian offers of assistance. After the help was accepted, it took another three days to get the rescue vessels to the site. When British divers finally reached the escape hatch of the Kursk it was too late.
When Boris heard about Kursk he was in France in his Cap d’Antibes château. He started calling Putin immediately, but could reach him only on August 16, the fifth day of the unfolding tragedy.
“Volodya, why are you in Sochi? You should interrupt your holiday and go to that submarine base, or at least to Moscow. You do not feel the situation and it will damage you.”
“And why are you in France? You are on a well-deserved vacation, aren’t you?” Putin sounded sarcastic.
“First, I am not the father of the nation, and no one gives a shit where I am. Second, I am flying to Moscow in the morning.”
“Okay, Boris, thank you for your advice.”
When Boris landed in Moscow on the 17th, Putin was still vacationing. He arrived in Moscow early on Saturday August 19. By then, Voloshin’s propaganda masters had woken up to the magnitude of the PR disaster. Putin’s press office reported that he immediately went into a series of emergency meetings with senior ministers about Kursk.
All Saturday morning Boris was calling the Kremlin, seeking a meeting with the president. He believed that this was the moment when he could get through to Volodya, to make him learn from the lessons of the previous week, to explain how the style of his operation was hurting him. Finally he got through.
“Okay, come over, let’s talk,” said Putin.
But when he arrived, it was Voloshin who was waiting for him. He went straight to the point.
“Listen, we feel that ORT is working against the president. I am asking you, yield control and we will part amicably.”
“Say that again,” said Boris.
“Surrender your stock to someone loyal to us. If you don’t, you will follow Goose to Butyrka.”
Boris tried to find the right words for a response. Voloshin was his own former asset manager, whom he had placed in Yeltsin’s Kremlin three years ago, as his best go-getter. Now he was getting him.
“You go fuck yourself,” said Boris. “I want to talk to Volodya.”
“Okay,” said Voloshin, as emotionless as ever. “Come back tomorrow.”
In the morning, the three of them met in Voloshin’s office. Putin walked into the room holding a folder. He started off