Original subtitles

ROBERT GATES: I looked into Putin's eyes,

and I saw a stone-cold killer.

LEON PANETTA: When you look in Putin's eyes,

what you see is KGB, KGB, KGB.

MASHA GESSEN: People working to oppose Putin

have made the conscious decision to sacrifice their lives.

BILL BROWDER: If Vladimir Putin could have me killed,

and have it done in a way that doesn't come back to him,

I'd be dead by now.

♪ ♪

GATES: Working on the National Security Council staff

for four presidents, I had a pretty good understanding

of how the politics worked at a very high level in Washington.

There was a period when it looked like

there were some real opportunities

between the West and Russia.

Partly it's because, for most of Bush's administration

Putin was still, I think,

looking for a way to work with the West.

He was the first leader to call President Bush after 9/11

and offer help.

I mean, it couldn't have been scripted better

in the White House.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I looked the man in the eye,

I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.

I was able to get a sense of his soul.

GATES: President Bush met with Putin,

and famously came back and said

that he had looked into Putin's eyes

and thought he'd seen his soul.

And after my first meeting with Putin,

I came back and reported to President Bush,

well, I looked into Putin's eyes,

and I saw a stone-cold killer.

JOHN SIMPSON: I've traveled the length and breadth of Russia.

It's a country I love very much.

I'm very fond of Russians, difficult though they often are.

I first saw and was aware of Putin

in the office of a man called Anatoly Sobchak

who was the mayor of St. Petersburg.

Sitting in a desk just beside his,

was this smallish, slightly weasely character

with fair hair looking very modest,

and it was indeed Vladimir Putin.

I certainly didn't speak to him.

Why would I? He wasn't of any importance.

Let's put it this way-- if I had to make a list

of the hundred people

most likely to be prime minister in Russia,

his name wouldn't have been on the list.

And I think that was how a lot of people felt,

I mean, sheer amazement

that Putin would rise so fast and so quickly.

♪ ♪

[speaking Russian]

♪ ♪

MASHA GESSEN: Back in the late '70s,

my parents decided to leave the Soviet Union.

And I remember asking my mother why they'd made that decision,

and my mother said, 'You know what?

We can either sacrifice our lives to fighting this regime,

or we can go have a life elsewhere.

And we're not ready to sacrifice our lives.'

There were many things that happened in the 1990s

that were questionably legal.

And at one point Yeltsin realized

that if the opposition came to power,

then he ran a high risk of being prosecuted.

And Yeltsin could certainly see himself

spending the rest of his days in a Russian jail.

And the simplest way to avoid that

would be to anoint somebody successor,

and make sure that that was somebody who would guarantee

Yeltsin, personally, immunity from prosecution.

Within days of Putin's being appointed prime minister,

a series of terrorist attacks begins.

NEWSCASTER: The midnight explosion

collapsed 64 apartments, one on top of the other.

The living have been rescued, all that remains is the dead.

GESSEN: Putin positions himself as commander in chief,

and Yeltsin lets him.

GESSEN: And his popularity soars.

So this guy goes from having no name recognition,

to not only being known to every person in the country,

but being the most popular politician in the country

in the space of two months.

After the first apartment building explosion,

I went into my editor's office.

She said, 'Some people are saying this is an FSB job.'

The FSB is the successor agency to the KGB.

We laughed, because it's such a crazy idea.

And then a couple of weird things happened.

One was that a politician

speaking in the Russian parliament

referred to the catastrophic explosion in Volgodonsk.

The only thing is that that announcement

preceded the actual bomb by three days.

So in six months, I went from thinking,

from laughing at the idea that this could have been an FSB job,

to thinking that that was the most likely explanation.

That this was somebody's plan

for taking Putin from no name recognition

to being the most popular politician in the country.

GATES: Knowing the magnitude of Putin's ruthlessness,

it would not surprise me in the least

if the Russian intelligence services

were behind that bombing.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: In London today, authorities revealed

that former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko,

who died yesterday,

was killed by a rare and deadly radioactive poison.

♪ ♪

MARINA LITVINENKO: Sacha used to work for the FSB

against organized crime.

But then, Sacha realized something wrong.

Particularly in corruption, what started to be very big in FSB.

He openly said FSB became a very dangerous organization.

MAN: He was in charge of the internal investigation unit

looking into corruption

within the Russian intelligence service.

He found a lot.

He made a great deal of enemies.

SIR ROBERT OWEN: I have concluded

that the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko

was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev,

then head of the FSB,

and also by President Putin.

LITVINENKO: Everything started at midnight.

He started to feel very, very sick.

He was not able to talk

because all his throat was just so painful and white,

because all his tissue inside was damaged.

And then I just tried to calm him down,

saying, 'Sacha, it will be fine,'

and I realized all his hair, and on my gloves.

It was the last two days of Sacha's life.

For 23 days, it was a torture from very beginning to the end.

And when they decide to collect of samples of urine,

they realized it was polonium.

Everybody were shocked.

It was the first time ever investigated case

of killing a person by radioactive material.

WILLIAMS: Litvinenko left behind a death bed statement,

leaving no doubt who he thought had killed him.

MAN: You may succeed in silencing one man,

but the howl of protest from around the world

will reverberate, Mr. Putin,

in your ears for the rest of your life.

LITVINENKO: It's very important for people to understand

how he loved life.

He was full of life.

He tried to help people.

But Sacha was a normal person,

and never expecting maybe to be a hero.

I want all world will understand--

Russia, it is not Putin, and Putin is not Russia.

GESSEN: If I were to try to remember,

off the top of my head,

people who have died under mysterious circumstances,

whom Putin would have had reason to want to see dead,

you might start with Anatoly Sobchak,

died of a mysterious heart attack.

Sergei Yushenkov, member of parliament,

shot dead in front of his apartment.

Yuri Shchekochikhin,

investigative journalist and member of parliament,

died of a strange allergic reaction.

Stanislav Markelov, who was a human rights lawyer,

and Anastasia Baburova,

who happened to be walking alongside him.

Natalya Estemirova, Chechen human rights activist,

abducted and found dead.

Anna Politkovskaya, investigative journalist,

survived one assassination attempt by poisoning,

was shot dead in her apartment building.

There have been times when I've had,

I think my record was 400 death threats in a week.

So, I'd be stupid if I never thought about risks to my life.

SIMPSON: A country where some of the leading dissident figures

are killed, is a country where somebody's got a short fuse.

[gunshot]

♪ ♪

Most people think that Putin is kind of mujik figure.

Mujik is a kind of village tough guy.

Not one of these smoothies that would go off to Paris or London,

but a real proper Russian.

That's what Russian people, by and large,

want their leader to be.

They want people that don't do any apologizing.

They want a tough guy who's perfectly prepared

to punch you in the face when he meets you.

♪ ♪

BILL BROWDER: When Russia went from communism to capitalism,

from a business person's perspective,

the sky was the limit,

and fortunes could be made

instantaneously,

and I saw this as a big opportunity.

I set up this investment fund to invest in these companies.

One of the things that we did to try to understand the situation

was do a stealing analysis of Gazprom.

We were able to determine that the management of Gazprom

between 1996 and 1999

had stolen oil and gas reserves equal to the size of Kuwait.

Once I shared this information,

it created a whole political firestorm inside of Russia.

[applause]

Everything was going great as an investor until October of 2003

when Putin arrested the richest man in Russia, put him on trial,

and allowed the television cameras to film

the richest man in Russia sitting in a cage.

And one by one by one, the oligarchs went back to Russia,

and they sat down with Putin, and said,

'Vladimir, what do we have to do to not sit in the cage?'

And from that moment on,

the oligarchs were no longer Putin's enemies,

they were his business partners.

And from that moment on,

my alignment of interests with Putin ended,

and he turned against me.

GATES: Putin has, I think, a very Manichean view

of the people that he deals with.

Basically, you're for me, or you're against me.

So you have some oligarchs

that have spent a lot of time in Siberia,

others who have had to flee to the West,

a couple who have been killed.

On the other hand, the oligarchs that have done what Putin said,

there 15 years or so ago,

have remained billionaires,

and remain influential

and powerful and very rich.

So, I mean, Putin has kept his word to them.

I think Putin's attitude toward most of the people around him

is, 'What have you done for me lately?'

BROWDER: November 13, 2005, I was flying back to Russia,

and I was stopped at Sheremetyevo 2

in the VIP lounge,

roughly taken down to the detention center of the airport,

I was locked up for 15 hours,

deported back to London

and subsequently declared a threat to national security.

My offices were raided.

They seized all of our corporate documents.

Then those documents were used

to perpetrate a massive, $230 million tax rebate fraud,

basically stealing the taxes that we had paid

from the Russian government.

So we went out and hired the smartest lawyer we could find,

a young Russian man named Sergei Magnitsky.

Sergei exposed that crime,

and roughly a month after he testified against them,

the same officials we exposed came to his home, arrested him,

put him in pre-trail detention,

where he was then tortured

to get him to withdraw his testimony.

They put him in an isolation cell.

They chained him to a bed,

and eight riot guards with rubber batons

beat him until he died.

JOHN McCAIN: I want to recognize Sergei Magnitsky,

whose remarkable life and tragic death is the reason,

the catalyst, that brought us here today.

BROWDER: Putin and his cronies steal money in Russia,

they travel to the West, they keep their money in the West,

they send their kids to school in the West.

So I came up with an idea, which is to take away their ability

to travel to the West, and to spend their money in the West.

And this became known as the Magnitsky Act in America.

Putin said this was the single largest foreign policy priority,

to stop the Magnitsky Act.

It hit the Achilles' heel of the Putin regime.

MCCAIN: We are sending a signal to Vladimir Putin,

and to the Russian kleptocracy,

that these kinds of abuses of human rights

will not be tolerated.

BROWDER: In retaliation, Putin held a trial in 2013,

in which he put Sergei Magnitsky,

who his officials had killed in prison, put him on trial.

Dead.

They put me on trial in absentia as his co-defendant.

There were two empty seats in a cage

in a major Russian courtroom.

There was a judge, there was prosecution lawyers,

there was appointed defense lawyers,

there was bailiffs, there was court reporters,

there was a gallery, there was journalists.

And they found us both guilty.

This was the first time in the history of Russia

they'd ever put a dead man on trial.

They couldn't do anything more to Sergei

after they found him guilty,

but they sentenced me to nine years in absentia

in a Russian prison.

If Vladimir Putin could have me killed,

and have it done in a way that doesn't come back to him,

I'd be dead by now.

GATES: Putin was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB,

posted in Dresden in East Germany.

At least once I pointed out to him

that when I was deputy director of CIA

and meeting with his bosses,

that he'd been a lieutenant colonel in Dresden.

Facing Putin is different than what one might think.

In all my meetings with him, he never once raised his voice.

He can be very sarcastic, he's very matter of fact.

So he's a very serious person.

He doesn't have what I would call a sense of humor.

LEON PANETTA: When you're head of the CIA

and head of intelligence,

you get some insight into what someone who's been involved

with intelligence is all about.

You have a pretty good sense about how Putin operated,

because they did exactly the same thing--

engaged in intelligence operations, engaged in spying,

engaged in trying to undermine our country

in whatever way they could.

He's operating on the basis

that he can do whatever the hell he wants.

And when somebody feels they can do that, they're dangerous.

When you look in Putin's eyes, what you see is KGB, KGB, KGB.

BROWDER: Vladimir Putin was the head of the secret police,

and the secret police is an organization that kills,

that poisons, that assassinates.

And so, I have no doubt that

all the high-profile assassinations

that have been done in Russia

have been done with Putin's blessing, for sure,

and perhaps his instruction.

SIMPSON: The Russian state for hundreds of years, really,

has used poison as a weapon against its enemies.

GATES: Putin was at the Munich Security Conference

in February of 2007.

I was on the aisle on one side, in the front row,

and Putin was on the aisle in the front row on the other side.

Next to him was Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany,

and next to her was President Yushchenko of Ukraine,

who believed, I think with some good reason,

that the KGB had tried to poison him.

And so his face was all pockmarked

from the results of this attempt.

So when Merkel gets up

to welcome everybody,

to give the keynote,

for all practical purposes Putin and Yushchenko

are sitting next to each other.

And the look that Yushchenko gave Putin

was one of unmitigated hatred.

It was amazing.

[piano playing]

GESSEN: At this point,

people who are working to oppose Putin at home

are people who have made the conscious decision

to sacrifice their lives to fighting this regime.

They're absolute and total heroes.

And I would certainly include the women of Pussy Riot

in that number.

[women yelling]

They were the first people jailed by Putin

for peaceful protest.

Which, at this point, is impossible to imagine.

That was just four years ago; now it's like old hat.

NEWSCASTER: It was a mixture between hard-rock music gig

and prayer vigil to the Virgin Mary,

who they implored to remove Vladimir Putin from office.

Several days later,

alleged participants in this punk prayer protest

were detained.

The young women now face seven years in jail for hooliganism.

NADYA TOLOKONNIKOVA: They didn't mention actually

on Russian TV news

that we came to the church to protest against Putin.

They told the Russian people that we came to the church

to destroy religion, which wasn't the case at all.

INTERVIEWER: I'd like to talk about the trial

and jailing of Pussy Riot.

PUTIN [TRANSLATED]: Could you please translate

the name of the band into Russian?

INTERVIEWER: Pussy Riot the punk band.

I don't know what you call them in Russian, sir,

maybe you could tell me.

PUTIN: The attacks had a devastating effect

on all our traditional religions,

and so, in general, I think the state has to protect

the feelings of believers.

I will not comment on whether the verdict is well-grounded,

and the sentence proportionate to the offense.

GESSEN: I was in correspondence with them actively,

and visited one of them while they were in jail.

This is the Gulag as it was when Solzhenitsyn wrote about it.

I saw what a nightmare it was.

It is slave labor, it is sleep deprivation,

it is starvation, it is torture.

It is just physical and emotional humiliation 24/7.

It is very difficult to remain unbroken.

They did, they remained unbroken,

although I saw how close Nadya came to being broken.

TOLOKONNIKOVA: Russian female prisons

is, is much more severe than male prisons.

We have just one source of power in female prison,

and it comes from a prison boss.

We call him Master,

and he's really master of your life.

We had to work for 16 hours per day.

They don't allow you to go to toilet, to go to have a snack,

or to go to smoke.

We have problem with medicine, we have problems with food,

we have problem with unofficial punishments.

It was officially prohibited for people to talk with me,

because I could spread

my political viruses.

But anyway, some of them pass me notes,

some of them secretly spoke with me.

I was like, I have to do something with that.

So I started a hunger strike.

I wrote an open letter, it was published

in the main independent Russian media source.

Because I started hunger strike,

I had official right to be isolated.

So when I'm isolated, it's just me,

I would face all troubles and not people around me.

Because of hunger strike,

I started to have blisters on my skin.

All around my body and behind my hairs, like between my hairs.

And like, it was painful, and it was kind of scary,

because I never know, like, will I have scars after that?

And obviously, all prison bosses and doctors

are running around me like, 'You will die tomorrow!

You have to finish your hunger strike!'

MADONNA: They have done something courageous.

I think they have paid the price for this act,

and I pray for their freedom.

And I know that everyone in this auditorium,

if you're here as my fan,

feels they deserve the right to be free.

[cheering]

TOLOKONNIKOVA: We expected to be in prison,

like, around three years.

So when we only got two years, it wasn't so bad, relatively.

And probably we had this two years

because of all this media attention,

like, a lot of people were helping us,

and we're really thankful to them.

Ultimate boss is Vladimir Putin.

I'm sure that he knows about our situation

which is going on in Russian prisons,

and moreover, it's super comfortable for him,

because people should be afraid.

It's formula which work for every dictator,

and for Putin, too.

ZHANNA NEMTSOVA: Putin is a person who values two things

in his life--

money and power.

People's lives are not a value for him.

NEMTSOVA: My father was the leader of the opposition,

and he believed that his mission was to fight with Putin.

Not with those people who actually worked with Putin,

but directly with Putin.

Facing is confronting, and my father faced Putin

because he wanted our country

to be based not on the word of Putin.

His favorite words were 'Russia without Putin.'

NEMTSOVA: My father experienced increasing pressure.

He was kept in custody two times for taking part in protests,

and this protest was approved by the city council.

They launched lots of slandering campaigns against my father.

NEMTSOVA: He was attacked in the streets

by some pro-Kremlin youth movements.

His cell phone was overheard,

and once his private conversations were published.

My father was depicted as a national traitor.

It was a big stress for him, because he thought of himself,

and it was very true,

that he was a very pro-Russian politician.

He wanted the best for Russia, and he fought for better Russia,

and he sacrificed lots of things for this, and finally, his life.

NEWSCASTER: There is more breaking news tonight.

One of Vladimir Putin's top opponents,

who just last week was quoted in Russian media

saying, quote, 'I'm scared that Putin will kill me,'

has been gunned down in Moscow, shot in the back.

NEMTSOVA: It was a big shock I think for all people.

No one could have imagined, honestly,

that that might have happened to my father.

BROWDER: The only way that anyone could have conducted

an assassination in front of the Kremlin,

against the most beloved Russian opposition politician

would be with the formal blessing and instructions

from Vladimir Putin.

SIMPSON: Putin may be a very tough

and, and possibly nasty character.

But of all the stupid places to have Nemtsov shot,

under the walls of the Kremlin

is, you know, going to be right up there with them.

[people shouting]

♪ ♪

PLATON: Someone told me recently that I'd photographed

more world leaders than anyone in history.

I don't know if that's true, but I'm very familiar with power,

and I'm fascinated by it.

Nothing is like Putin.

Nothing.

It's different.

It's not trying too hard, it just is.

And it has this quiet, calm chill

that leaves you really humble.

I got the call about four weeks before the shoot was to happen.

And it was for TIME Magazine,

and they were preparing person of the year.

They flew me to Moscow, I wasn't sure when it's gonna be.

So I was put in this hotel and just told to wait.

And it went on and on and on, forever,

and it got more and more painful.

And then one day, I got the call,

'Tomorrow morning,

you will be picked up by a black Kremlin BMW.'

We drove through the streets of Moscow,

approaching this imposing building of the Kremlin.

And then we went past the Kremlin,

into a dark, bleak, gothic forest.

And I, I thought I was gonna get whacked.

no one knows where I am.

It felt like intimidation.

Eventually we arrived

at probably the most imposing building

I've ever seen in my life.

And it's not that it was big, it was just mean.

You're confronted by a one and a half or two stories

security wall on the outside that's covered in snipers.

And I looked up,

and I see, like, all the snipers turned to me.

It was like snow up to here, and I'm just in a suit.

And at gunpoint, out in the trunk of the car,

I had to open all my equipment,

and I remember this guy was using the barrel of his gun

to point to every lens, and he said, 'Open! Open! Open!'

And, I mean, I didn't have a coat, I was shivering,

my nose was dribbling, this is, I'm not James Bond, man.

I'm not cool.

And this was so intimidating.

And then at gunpoint I'm led into the building.

I was led into a small room,

and kept in this room for about seven, eight hours.

And then suddenly there's a knock at the door,

and they said, 'You can go into his office to set up.'

So I grabbed all my equipment,

and they said, 'You got 15 minutes.'

And at one point in my mad scramble,

I realized I needed power for my strobe light.

I was watched by a gang of bodyguards,

and I saw one power socket,

but there was already a plug in it, it was near his desk.

So I went to pull that one out, to put mine in.

I remember them screaming, 'Nyet! Nyet!'

And then one of them pointed to the wire,

and he followed the wire, which went onto his desk,

into the back of a red phone

in a glass case with a single button on it.

So, I mean, that just added

to the insanity of the whole situation.

It felt like I'm going rogue in Putin's office.

The swing doors open.

Putin enters the room.

He's flanked by, I think it was two translators

who'd constantly whisper in his ear.

He had a group of probably political advisors,

and then he had a whole gang of tough guys, heavies.

You know, just kind of, they have shaved heads,

one had a scar, it was that kind of thing.

They all come up to me, and I said, 'Mr. President,'

you know, I nervously said,

'It's such an honor to be in Russia,

and I have a question to ask you, if I may.

It's got nothing to do with politics.'

So the translators whispered in his ear,

and they all look, turn around and look at me, and they say,

'What is the question? We have to be quick.'

So I said, 'Well, I'm a massive Beatles fan, um, are you?'

So they translated the question.

And then he looked at the translators and his advisors,

and I guess in Russian

he just ordered them all out the room immediately.

It was very abrupt, and it was almost as if, 'Get out!'

So it was me, Putin, and a gang of heavies.

And, again, I didn't know what's about to happen now, you know.

Have I done something terrible? Should I not have been human?

Should I not have been an ordinary citizen,

and just asked what the question

that I was quite interested in asking?

Then he looks at me, and in pretty much perfect English,

he says, 'I love the Beatles.'

So I said, 'I didn't know you spoke English.'

And he kind of nods, very quietly,

he's not, he doesn't say a lot, you know, he's very quiet.

But there's sort of this crystally charisma in his eyes.

And he says, 'What do you want? Let's do it.'

I remember as I'm focusing my camera,

trying to stop my hand shaking.

I ended up an inch and a half away from his nose.

I could feel his breath on my hand as I focused the camera.

Now, from that view, when I looked into his eyes,

I just saw power.

And it was cold, it was calm,

it was power that I've never felt before.

And to me, it felt like, 'Russia first, at all costs.'

GATES: Putin technically can remain president of Russia

until 2024.

I think he will bend every effort

to remain president of Russia

for the rest of his life.

He will somehow change the constitution

that allows him to continue to be re-elected,

very much like elections took place in the Soviet Union,

where the outcome was a forgone conclusion.

GESSEN: He came to rule a great country

at a very painful moment in its development.

It had not recovered from totalitarianism,

it had not recovered from communist rule,

it had not reckoned with its memory.

He destroyed the culture

by returning it to a totalitarian state.

And I don't know whether Russia

will ever recover from this period.

PANETTA: He moves quickly.

He sees an opening, he decides to move into that opening.

He believes that by asserting power,

that he can control, ultimately, what happens.

But he isn't thinking about where this is all headed.

I think he's engaged in a mission

that is not going to have a good outcome.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

BROWDER: Putin has created this myth of himself,

that if he's not in power, if he's not the strong man,

then the whole country will disintegrate.

The Russian people deserve better than that,

and Russia deserves better than that.

♪ ♪

TOLOKONNIKOVA: Getting rid of Putin

will be just the beginning for Russia.

GATES: He became president

because he was able to promise Boris Yeltsin

that he would protect the Yeltsin family

and all the money the Yeltsin family stole.

And he's kept his word.

There is nobody in Russia today who can make that promise,

realistically, to Vladimir Putin.

My personal belief is he will leave that office feet first.

♪ ♪

Over time, Putin convinced himself

that he was not just a Russian president,

but that he had been chosen.

That this was a God-given mission

that he had to restore Russia to greatness.

[applause]