The Age of Assassins

How Putin Poisons Elections

Yuri Felshtinsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky

• Publisher: Gibson Square
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781783340637
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Crooks and killers.' Vladimir Bukovsky, Observer

The Age of Assassins describes in gripping detail how Vladimir Putin destroyed democracy in Russia after his rise to President from an unpromising start as a Berlin KGB officer exporting East-German lingerie to supplement his income. Under the guise of manipulated elections, he and a few hundred secret service agents looted Russia's wealth through fake news and sophisticated cheating, co-operation with the Russian mafia and oligarchs, right up to murder with state-of-the-art poisons that leave no trace.Yuri Felshtinsky previously wrote Blowing up Russia with Alexander Litvinenko, whose 2006 assassination Vladimir Putin 'probably approved' according to the Litvinenko Public Inquiry of 20 January 2016. Vladimir Pribylovsky was found dead a week before the Litvinenko Inquiry Report came out.

1

Korzhakov’s Conspiracy

COMPONENT NO. 1: THE PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY SERVICE (SBP)

After the government coup by the State Emergency Committee in August 1991 failed and the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB was formally dismantled and split up into various independent agencies. One of the first of these new agencies was the Presidential Security Service (SBP), formed on the basis of the former Ninth and Fifteenth Directorates of the KGB, which had been responsible for the security of top government officials, members of the party nomenklatura and their families, and important government sites. The SBP was created by Alexander Korzhakov, the former bodyguard of Yuri Andropov (head of the KGB and later head of the Soviet government) and subsequently the bodyguard of Boris Yeltsin.

Despite the importance of providing security for top government officials, the nature of the Ninth Directorate’s functions had relegated it to the status of a subordinate department. Its staff and directors were inferior in skill and knowledge to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence officers. Ninth Directorate staff member Korzhakov—a man believed to be loyal to Yeltsin—knew perfectly well that any agency responsible for the security of even the president, and even such a willful president as Yeltsin, must under ordinary circumstances be of secondary importance within the newly formed successor organization to the KGB. But in 1991–1992, the situation in Russia was not ordinary, and Korzhakov did everything he could to make the Presidential Security Service essentially a mini KGB. At the head of the new agency that replaced the dismantled KGB—the Security Service of Russia (SBR)—Korzhakov placed his own man, the former Kremlin commandant Mikhail Barsukov, who silently assented to Korzhakov’s superiority over him. After successfully implementing the idea of creating an independent security service for the president and filling all key positions with people personally loyal to himself, Korzhakov effectively became—without this being noticed by anyone, least of all by his boss, Yeltsin—the second man in Russia.

It’s a bad soldier, however, who doesn’t dream of becoming a general. And in Russia, it’s a bad security chief who doesn’t dream of taking the place of the person he keeps secure. In Korzhakov’s case, that place was occupied by Yeltsin. Ever since the historic days of August 1991—when Korzhakov, a man full of vigor and still unknown to the great Russian nation, was seen on the news around the world standing behind Yeltsin like a devoted dog, ready to tear any enemy to shreds or to protect Yeltsin from a bullet with his own body—Yeltsin’s security chief wanted to replace Yeltsin at his post. In order for this wish to be fulfilled, several components had to fall into place.

Korzhakov built up his own security service, the SBP, with its own special forces—called the Center for Special Operations (TsSN)—quickly and without much difficulty. What proved more difficult was shaping public opinion in the country. Korzhakov needed his own television outlets and his own newspapers, especially since he wasn’t the only one who dreamed of occupying Yeltsin’s seat. And Korzhakov’s main rival, Filipp Bobkov, did have his own television and newspapers. But who was this now almost forgotten man?

THE RIVAL: FILIPP BOBKOV

Television, a powerful instrument of propaganda and a means for shaping public opinion, had been under constant control by the KGB in Soviet times. The Fifth Directorate of the KGB, with its various divisions across the Soviet Union, was responsible for fighting against “ideological diversions by the enemy.” Here, “the enemy” meant countries with a different ideology and morality—a bourgeois ideology and morality, based on free enterprise and civil liberties. All the capitalist countries and their allies were considered enemies.

The term “ideological diversions” could easily be given a broad interpretation and used in an expansive fashion. It encompassed such concepts as “harmful ideological orientation,” which could be applied to any activity that did not fit within the country’s political framework or ideological canon. The KGB, unswervingly following the political course determined by the Central Committee of the CPSU—specifically, by its Department of Agitation and Propaganda—carried out a wide-ranging fight against all expressions of dissent in Russia. In order to achieve total control over the political situation in the country and the mindset of its people, the security organs recruited agents among Soviet and foreign citizens alike, serving important strategic and tactical aims in the process. A vital strategic aim was to consolidate the CPSU’s ideological influence within the Soviet Union, in the other countries of the socialist bloc, and around the world. An associated tactical aim was to install the agents of the security services at all positions in society, in order to counteract “harmful ideological influences” on the population and to conduct counterpropaganda exercises against enemy countries.

For many years, practically since its inception, the KGB’s Fifth Directorate had been headed by Filipp Bobkov. He retired from the KGB at the beginning of 1991, having attained the position of deputy director of the KGB and the rank of army general. Soon he became quite well known as a consultant to the oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, the owner of the Most Corporation, which included Most Bank and Media-Most, along with other enterprises. In reality, Bobkov was the head of the corporation’s security service. Gusinsky had been within Bobkov’s field of vision for many years, having already become familiar to the Fifth Directorate during the preparations for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Bobkov’s deputy in the Fifth Directorate was Major General Ivan Pavlovich Abramov. Later, when Bobkov became deputy director of the KGB—replacing Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov, who was appointed head of the KGB after Andropov became general secretary of the CPSU—Abramov became the head of the Fifth Directorate and a lieutenant general. The officers who served under Abramov called him Vanya Palkin (from palka, “stick”) for his tendency to petty tyranny and his rigid, often unfair attitude toward his subordinates. At the end of the 1980s, Abramov, who dreamed of becoming deputy director of the KGB and had a real chance of seeing this dream come true, was transferred—unexpectedly for everyone, most of all himself—to the General Prosecutor’s Office and appointed deputy general prosecutor.

Abramov’s deputy was Vitaly Andreyevich Ponomarev. A veterinarian by training, and subsequently a party operative, Ponomarev was sent to work at the KGB in the beginning of the 1980s. He soon became the head of the KGB’s regional office in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, and shortly after that he was transferred to Moscow and appointed deputy head of the KGB’s Fifth Directorate. In this way, he became Abramov’s deputy. This occurred on the eve of the 1985 international youth and student festival in Moscow, a politically significant event that Ponomarev was ordered to supervise through the divisions of the Fifth Directorate. During the preparations and while the festival was going on, Ponomarev became acquainted with the main director of the opening celebration, Vladimir Gusinsky—the very same person who, several years later, would become one of the richest and most influential people in Russia and Bobkov’s “boss.”

Thus, while Korzhakov was creating his mini KGB through the Presidential Security Service of President Yeltsin, Bobkov was building his own mini KGB through the empire of his old acquaintance Vladimir Gusinsky.

The Most Corporation’s security service, which was headed by Bobkov, consisted predominantly of Bobkov’s former subordinates from the Fifth Directorate and was the largest and most powerful security service in the country. Its staff and its projects were substantially larger than those of Korzhakov’s SBP. The Most Corporation’s security service collected information about a wide range of topics in contemporary Russian life. It assessed the landscape of competing political forces within the government and assembled files on prominent politicians, businessmen, bankers, and various state and commercial entities. Korzhakov’s analysts were no match for their former colleagues from the KGB, who now toiled at the Most Corporation’s security service not for the sake of an idea but for high wages, in dollars rather than rubles, receiving a salary that was many times greater than General Korzhakov’s own nominal income. Bobkov’s smart and experienced procurers of information and analysts could not but notice the steps that Korzhakov was taking toward increasing his sway and creating an influential group of supporters. In addition, Bobkov’s employees maintained good professional relationships with their former colleagues who had stayed behind at the FSB, the Federal Security Service.

The Conflict of 1994

At the end of 1994—with a presidential election scheduled for 1996—Korzhakov and Bobkov decided to see which of them was stronger. Gusinsky had declared that he could make whomever he wanted president. Korzhakov had replied that “it’s not our place to choose the president,” and he entered into open war with Bobkov. On December 2, 1994, a detachment from the SBP’s Center of Special Operations (TsSN) attacked the cortege of Vladimir Gusinsky. The TsSN officer Viktor Portov later recalled, “Our task was to provoke Gusinsky into action and to find out whose support he had secured in the government before making such declarations.”

On the morning of December 2, an armored Mercedes and a jeep transporting Gusinsky’s bodyguards were traveling from Gusinsky’s dacha to Moscow on the Rublyovsko–Uspenskoye highway. At a turn in the road, a Volvo carrying TsSN operatives wedged itself between the jeep and the Mercedes. Traveling neck-and-neck at 60–70 miles per hour, the two cars reached Kutuzovsky Prospect in Moscow and came to a stop between City Hall, where Gusinsky’s office was located, and the White House.

Meanwhile, Gusinsky had called Yevgeny Savostyanov—the head of the FSB office for Moscow and the Moscow region—and the Moscow Directorate of Internal Affairs (GUVD), and told them that he was being attacked by criminals. (It was not yet clear who the people pursuing him were.) Savostyanov sent a unit from the Antiterrorism Department; the head of the GUVD dispatched a rapid response team. A shootout ensued, during which no one was hurt, since it turned out that the attackers were agents from Korzhakov’s SBP, and Gusinsky’s men had to give in. The TsSN agents dragged the passengers out of Gusinsky’s jeep and laid them face down in the snow. This marked the end of Korzhakov’s operation, which entered history as “Operation Face Down in the Snow.”

This brilliant maneuver revealed General Savostyanov to be one of Bobkov’s political allies. On the same day, at Korzhakov’s request, General Savostyanov was dismissed from his post by Yeltsin. He was replaced by Korzhakov’s protégé Anatoly Trofimov, whose job in Soviet times had been monitoring “dissidents.”

COMPONENT NO. 2: CHANNEL ONE

Korzhakov’s victory proved illusory, as the Gusinsky-controlled media proceeded to destroy him. From that day on Korzhakov was doomed, although he realized as much only in 1996, when it was already too late. Nonetheless, in December 1994 he learned a key lesson from what had just happened: In contemporary Russia, control over one’s own mini KGB is not enough; one also needs a media empire—one’s own private media outlets. To Korzhakov, the most natural and tantalizing object to devour seemed to be Russian TV’s Channel One, which reached up to 180 million viewers. Here too, however, Korzhakov’s position turned out to be not particularly strong.

Under the KGB, the Ninth Directorate—on the basis of which the SBP was created—was traditionally separated from the others. Most of its subdivisions were situated on the territory of the Kremlin, where the people and sites that had to be protected were located. The employees and directors of the Ninth Directorate rarely came in contact with members of other operative subdivisions of the KGB’s central apparatus. Consequently, the Ninth Directorate had no agents in the mass media, among prominent politicians, or in academic circles.

In an economic sense, the perestroika movement that began in the USSR constituted first and foremost an unprecedented restructuring of government property. Among the first to catch the smell of big money were the functionaries of Soviet television. Growing businesses needed advertising, and the possibilities of television for this purpose were unlimited. Many television stations, competing with one another, rushed to offer their services to businesses seeking to advertise on Russian central TV. The advertisements were paid for largely in U.S. dollars, and a substantial part of these payments ended up in the pockets of producers and their subordinates, who worked directly with clients. Fourteen newly formed advertising agencies were operating on Russian central TV during the period described here. They bought airtime from the producers of various television programs, divided it up as they saw fit, and sold it to clients interested in placing commercials on TV. The airtime was purchased at wholesale prices, in chunks ranging from tens of minutes to several hours per day and for periods ranging from several days to several months per year, and then resold in chunks of seconds or minutes, at considerably higher rates. The profits from such transactions were enormous. The revenue obtained in this way was not credited to the accounts of state television; instead, it was distributed among a group of people who had managed to circumvent the government and to divide the vast TV advertising market among them.

All this activity—which took place at the Ostankino television center, located in the Ostankino TV tower, the tallest building in Moscow—was monitored by at least thirty KGB agents, who carefully reported everything about this off-the-books business to their superiors, since all serious correspondence with agencies and organizations was conducted exclusively through the KGB office (the First Department) of the television center. And all these people had ties with Bobkov. So how did they end up at the television center, and who were they—these people who knew one another, helped one another, and promoted one another, both in Soviet times and afterward?

OFFICERS OF THE ACTIVE RESERVE

In addition to the official KGB agents who oversaw Soviet television, its various departments employed many members of the state security apparatus who worked in secret—residents and agents recruited from the television staff or retired KGB officers embedded among television employees. In FSB terminology, these people wer...