All language subtitles for KGB.The.Sword.and.the.Shield.3of3.Putin.and.Co.1080p.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR: For the past century,
Russian history has also been

the history of its
security services.

They were used by the Soviet state
to crush dissent.

Millions suffered at their hands.

But, while many things may have
changed in today's Russia,

its security network
is arguably stronger than ever.

And the reason behind that
is the rise

of a lowly lieutenant colonel
to president of this vast country.

MAN: I know the KGB
better than anyone else

because I was part
of the inside circle.

This is
the story
of the KGB

told by its
veterans

and its
victims.

In the summer of 1991, secret orders
were sent out from KGB headquarters

to field officers
throughout the Soviet Union.

The chairman of the KGB,
Vladimir Kryuchkov,

had ordered 250,000 pairs
of handcuffs

and 300,000 arrest warrants,

and cancelled all KGB leave.

Citizens of Moscow
knew nothing of all this

until the tanks were on the streets.

The announcement didn't reveal

that President Gorbachev
was under house arrest

in his dacha in the Crimea.

He managed to record
a brief message to the Soviet people

and aides smuggled it out.

KGB hardliners believed that
Gorbachev brought it all on himself,

introducing Western-style reform.

The KGB was committed
to saving the Soviet Union.

Indeed, that's one of the reasons
why the head of the KGB

was part of a coup against
Gorbachev in August 1991.

As tanks closed in around
the White House, Russia's parliament,

the people realised that
their government was under threat,

and thousands came out
onto the streets.

Crowds put their bodies
in the way of tanks and trucks,

determined to stop the putsch.

(HORN HONKS, PROTESTERS SHOUT)

Tank crews were reluctant
to hurt the protestors.

They had to choose -

fire on your own people
or switch sides.

The standoff continued
through the night.

No-one knew which way
it was going to go.

(PROTESTERS WHISTLE)

The following morning,

when Boris Yeltsin stepped
onto a tank, the crowd cheered.

A simple handshake effectively
determined the coup was over.

President Gorbachev
returned to Moscow,

having steadfastly refused
to negotiate with the coup leaders,

who'd held him
and his family captive.

The cadre of coup leaders
became known as the August Kings.

They were all arrested,
except Boris Pugo,

who killed himself to avoid capture.

WOMAN: The putsch in 1991 failed

because the people preparing it
were incompetent.

They hadn't made contact
with the army,

they didn't have a clear plan

and also, I think they failed to
account for the fact that, by 1991,

quite a lot of Russians
weren't willing

to go back to the old Soviet times.

And the putschists seemed really
like yesterday's men, you know -

they just wanted
to dial back the clock.

The leaders of the coup
were, in large part,

the old guard of the Soviet Union,

who'd watched, with despair,
the reforms.

But they had no new ideas to offer,
they had no new policies

and had their coup succeeded,

I think it would have been
a recipe for disaster.

(CROWD CHEERS)

The last gasp of the old guard

was symbolised by the toppling
of Felix Dzerzhinsky

from his place of honour
in Lubyanka Square.

(HORN HONKS)

The founder of Lenin's security
service was carted away face down

to the delight
of a celebrating crowd.

(PEOPLE SHOUT, HORN HONKS)

But President Mikhail Gorbachev

was no longer
the man of the moment either.

Boris Yeltsin
had taken the initiative

and captured the public imagination.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

The dissolution of the Soviet Union
was the end of Gorbachev's empire

and Boris Yeltsin,
President of Russia,

was ruthless in dispatching him.

Having dissolved the old KGB
and split it into several parts,

Yeltsin now had control
of the security apparatus.

MAN: His idea of reform
was superficial.

The idea was just
to split the agency.

So, you have a monster,

you just split it
into different parts

and that gives you
some sort of control.

LAUCHLAN: He can't forget that this
is a great threat to his position.

So he breaks it up
into its component parts -

foreign intelligence,
domestic intelligence,

border guard, signals intelligence,
communications, and so forth.

He also sacks large numbers
of its staff,

weeding out people who are
probably hostile towards him.

Yeltsin turned his attention
to the domestic agenda.

He saw the need
to raise living standards.

And, from January 1992,
he came up with a big idea.

He announced
that state-owned industries

would be handed back to the people.

Everyone would be given shares.

Large-scale privatisation
was intended to give citizens

a personal stake
in the Russian economy.

But the public had no experience
of a private economy,

so many of these shares
were snapped up for pennies

by a few entrepreneurs.

There are lots of people saying,
"Everything's falling apart.

"No-one knows what's going on.

"This is a great opportunity

"to basically embezzle huge amounts
of money from official funds,

"stick them in secret accounts
that no-one else has access to.

"And so, when the system
does fall apart,

"me and my friends
are going to be rich."

Soon, Moscow had
almost 100 billionaires,

while most Russians
struggled to survive.

There's not many people
who are making large amounts
of money in the mid-'90s

who aren't in some way or other
involved in organised crime.

The Yeltsin years were marked

by a dramatic rise
in violence and corruption.

Russia became notorious
as the Wild East.

Mafias of every description
took control of business.

Those they didn't own outright
were forced to pay protection money.

Inevitably, the people cried out
for an end to the chaos.

The internal security service,
rebranded under Yeltsin

as the Federal Service
of the Russian Federation, the FSB,

now stepped into the breach.

Former KGB officers start taking
over businesses in the mid-1990s.

It's a means of employing
the security apparatus

to restore law and order,
they would say.

But, at the same time,
it means that they themselves

move into the business
of organised crime.

LAUCHLAN: In the 1990s, there's
a booming industry of security.

Former KGB officials
flourish in this sphere.

They go into banking security,
bodyguards,

high level oligarchs, working out
their own security apparatus.

And so a lot of KGB officers make a
great deal of success of the 1990s.

MAN: At the end of the Soviet Union,

when there was a realisation
in the KGB

that they were
the only people with access

to foreign currency,
effective networks,

means of getting things done

and this was the time to leverage
this into personal fortune.

Because all of the vast reserves
of foreign currency

that were at the KGB's
disposal overseas

could now be turned
into making money.

One lieutenant colonel
from the former KGB

was well placed to capitalise
on these recent developments.

Vladimir Putin returned
to his home city of Leningrad

and landed a job in City Hall.

He was kept on what's called
the active reserve,

where you sort of
stay within the service

but you actually get a job outside.

And, in short order,
he ended up at the mayor's office,

where, because he spoke
foreign languages and so forth,

he became an adviser
on international affairs.

And in some ways,
that was the making of him

because he caught the eye
of the mayor, Sobchak.

Anatoly Sobchak was a rising star,

a man many saw as a future president.

GALEOTTI: And he basically
became Sobchak's fixer.

Fixer, bagman -
he was the guy who liaised

with the powerful local
organised crime syndicates.

He was the guy who basically
kept things working.

Putin was typical of a whole
generation of KGB officers

who used their power in the past
to become very rich.

And they were then in a position
by the late 1990s and early 2000s

to retake a political role as well.

Later, in what was now St Petersburg,

Putin became friends
with Boris Berezovsky,

one of a number of oligarchs

who'd made vast fortunes
when the Soviet Union collapsed.

MAN: Russia at that time
was in a really bad situation

in terms of food supplies.

And people would stand in lines
to buy bread and everyday stuff.

But in St Petersburg things were OK.

And Yeltsin called Sobchak,

who was the mayor
of St Petersburg at the time,

and said, "How come
you have everything

"and we have problems
around the country?"

And Sobchak said, "Well, you know,
we're on the Baltic sea,

"Bay of Finland, I mean,

"and we have a very good, nice guy
who handles all this stuff."

"What's his name?" "Well, Putin."
"Well, let him come to Moscow."

And when he came to Moscow, again,
you know, he ended up working

for some of the most corrupt figures
within the Russian government

as their loyal henchman.

And that's how he rose.

Putin's friend, Berezovsky,
was highly influential in Moscow.

He funded Yeltsin's re-election
and later claimed that it was he

who suggested that Putin might be
effective as head of the FSB.

Yeltsin duly appointed him
in July 1998.

Putin's command
of Russia's security service

marks the return of intolerance.

Internal critics were again
viewed as enemies,

plotting with the West
to bring down the state.

Prominent among those critics
was Galina Starovoitova.

An outspoken Russian MP,
she tried twice to pass a bill

that would exclude
Communist Party officials

and, crucially, former employees
of the security services

from taking political office.

Galina Starovoitova was
one of the first Russian MPs

to act differently
from other politicians.

She was human, she talked
like other Russians,

she wasn't seeking
to make money for herself.

And she was mysteriously
murdered in the stairway

of her St Petersburg
apartment building.

It's a very usual way,
I would say a kind of tradition,

for the Russian law enforcement
to investigate only the low level.

Like, you have
a high-profile killing,

you just investigate the people
who actually physically did that,

but you never try to investigate
the whole chain to find masterminds.

There is nothing to connect
Starovoitova's murder

with Vladimir Putin.

But, if her legislation
had become law,

he could never have migrated
from the security services

into political office.

This impediment removed,

Putin used his security service

to get President Yeltsin
out of a tight spot.

The Attorney General, Yuri Skuratov,
was preparing a corruption case

against the very highest
state officials.

Putin used FSB surveillance

to catch Skuratov
having sex with two prostitutes

and broadcast the footage
on national television.

Skuratov tearfully resigned

and his allegations about corrupt
politicians were silenced.

It would not be long before Putin
was promoted to Prime Minister.

From the beginning,

Prime Minister Putin painted
a picture of Russia under siege,

both from external enemies and
from separatist extremists within.

Just one month after he took office,

four apartment blocks in major
Russian cities were bombed.

The outrage was attributed
to Chechen rebels.

But former KGB investigator
Mikhail Trepashkin believes

Putin was well placed
to take advantage.

No rigorous investigation has been
undertaken into these bombings,

so all kind of accusations
have floated around,

it's got a lot of people killed
who have made these accusations too.

But we haven't got to
the bottom of that mystery.

Whoever was behind these atrocities,

they convinced
the Russian people once again

that their country was under siege
and they needed a strong leader.

Within three months
of these bombings,

Boris Yeltsin conferred the office
of President on Vladimir Putin.

In the eight years between the
collapse of the Soviet Union

and Putin taking
the highest public office,

a new class of political figure
had arisen - the Siloviki.

It was peopled by well-connected
former KGB officers,

who had climbed over the old guard
and assumed authority.

With Putin in the top job and these
like-minded figures in support,

the Siloviki had become
a formidable force.

With Putin in charge, well,
actually, the KGB took over.

This is really a unique situation.

Well, in the old Soviet days,

the Soviet system was built
on three pillars -

the Communist Party,
the security services

and the military industrial complex.

With the collapse of the USSR,
number one now is KGB,

with the president of the country

a former KGB officer from
St Petersburg - I mean Mr Putin.

LAUCHLAN: When he found out that
he was going to be made president,

just in the December of '99,

he gave a speech at the Lubyanka
to the gathered KGB officers.

There's a round of applause
and laughter afterward in the room,

but it's not entirely clear
whether he was joking or not.

As an early demonstration
of his authority,

Putin set about crushing Chechnya.

The West had been urging restraint.

But, after the apartment bombings,
the gloves were off.

This new offensive was
much better planned and executed

than Yeltsin's previous campaigns.

The enemy was no longer
the Chechens -

this was the beginning
of a war on terror.

Putin had boots on the ground there
for the next 10 years.

SOLDATOV: Officially, the Second
Chechen War was not a war -

it was a counter-terrorism
operation.

And the thing is that when you have
a counter-terrorism operation,

the primary role is, by definition,

given to the security services,
not to the military.

Colonel Evgeny Petrushin
served in the Second Chechen War.

He led an Alpha unit
of Spetsnaz, or special forces.

They were established under the KGB

specifically for
counter-terrorism operations.

Chechen fighters were no match
for the Russian military.

Grozny was virtually
razed to the ground.

But, in October 2002, the militants
took the fight to Moscow.

(SIREN WAILS)

They attacked a theatre,

taking the cast, orchestra,
and the entire audience hostage.

The gunmen demanded
an end to the Chechen War,

which had been triggered
by the apartment bombings
three years before.

They threatened to blow up the
theatre with 850 hostages inside.

A Russian journalist,
Anna Politkovskaya,

was allowed in
to try and negotiate terms.

Day and night, live images
were beamed around the world.

Hostages made brief calls
on their cell phones.

When two captives were executed,

the FSB were standing by,
ready to mount an assault.

The terrorists had laid explosives
round the theatre

and the women among them
wore suicide vests.

The security forces had devised
a strategy to minimise loss of life.

Before Colonel Petrushin and his
FSB special forces crew went in,

anaesthetic gas, 1,000 times
more potent than morphine,

had been piped into the building.

The idea was to subdue
everyone inside.

After a brief firefight, all
the terrorists were reported dead.

But evacuating and reviving
the hostages proved difficult.

It was even made more
challenging for the medics

because no-one would tell them
which gas had been used.

The government says
130 hostages died.

But a public investigation
set the figure at 174.

As he had promised in 1999,
Putin now had justification

to crush the Chechen resistance
for a generation.

He sent in his elite forces.

SOLDATOV: Special operation forces
of the FSB,

they played much more important role
because they were better trained.

Colonel Petrushin was dispatched
for a second tour in Chechnya.

But, just like
the apartment bombings,

the trigger for the new onslaught
in Grozny, the theatre siege,

may not have been quite as it seemed.

Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin
also finds it suspicious

that all the hostage takers
were shot dead.

LAUCHLAN: What could they gain
from keeping any of them alive?

A complicated trial, more chance for
propaganda from the Chechen cause.

It's very inconvenient
to have celebrity terrorists,

and that's the last thing they want.

An independent enquiry was launched
into the theatre siege.

Of the six investigators involved,

one died in a hail of bullets
in Moscow,

a second was poisoned,

and a third was murdered
in her apartment building.

Mikhail Trepashkin
was also one of the six.

He served four years in prison
on trumped-up charges.

Still the most vocal
of the surviving three,

he may be living on borrowed time.

(APPLAUSE)

In Putin's Russia,

anyone who raises their head above
the parapet is in grave danger.

In 2003, the billionaire oligarchs

who had underwritten his ascent
to the presidency

were summoned to St Catherine's Hall
in the Kremlin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
the wealthiest of all the oligarchs,

took the opportunity to raise
concerns about state corruption.

Putin was visibly angry,

and criticised Khodorkovsky's
oil empire, Yukos.

Khodorkovsky was arrested soon after

and served a total of 10 years,
mostly in a Siberian prison camp.

His business was seized,

and the oligarchs were left
in no doubt who runs the country.

Journalists have also tried
to hold the state to account.

Between the criminal world
and the security services,

they stand little chance.

LAUCHLAN: They warn them before.

Then, when those warnings
aren't heeded, they kill them.

And the murders are not there
just to remove them,

though that is a factor -

it's there to send a message
to the less bold journalists

that this is what faces you
if you're as brave as that.

Yuri Shchekochikhin,
who exposed KGB corruption

and vigorously opposed
the Chechen War,

died in what can only be described
as suspicious circumstances.

KALUGIN: In Russia, to be
a real, free journalist

is a very risky business,
it's a really risky life.

Another journalist,
Anna Politkovskaya,

who had tried to negotiate
a resolution to the theatre siege,

ignored warnings.

She championed human rights
for minorities

and campaigned against
the Chechen War.

She too was silenced brutally.

She died on
Vladimir Putin's birthday.

No-one can say
who ordered her execution.

Shchekochikhin and Politkovskaya
both worked for Novaya Gazeta.

It's one of the last major
independent newspapers in Russia -

most of the media is owned
or controlled by the State.

Six of Novaya Gazeta's correspondents
have met untimely deaths

in the era of the FSB,

yet no-one can say with certainty
who was behind their deaths.

Mikhail Trepashkin is still alive,

but some inside the FSB
wished otherwise.

He left the organisation in 1997

and has been a constant critic of
corruption in the service ever since.

Some of his former colleagues
still serving

secretly admire his stance,

and they've stayed his execution
more than once.

In 1998, Colonel Alexander Litvinenko
dropped by uninvited.

Litvinenko had been ordered
to kill Trepashkin

but instead, he too rebelled.

Together with other FSB rebels,
they held a press conference.

To no-one's surprise, the authorities
moved against the rebels,

first arresting the spokesman,
Litvinenko.

The runaway colonel
was denounced as a traitor

and quite literally became
a target of special forces.

Litvinenko's fatal error
may have been

writing about Vladimir Putin's
personal life.

KALUGIN: Putin and Litvinenko
both were graduates of the KGB,

they knew each other.

And Litvinenko knew some parts
of Putin's private life.

He would... He made them public.

And I warned him over the phone,
calling from Washington,

I said "Alexander, you should not
talk about Putin's private life

"because you may be in trouble.

"You do not understand
who you are dealing with."

Six months later, Litvinenko
was dead, poisoned by polonium.

The poison attack
was a warning to others -

if you step out of line,
there is no safe refuge.

Radioactive polonium
destroyed Alexander Litvinenko

over 22 agonising days.

GILES: It's always supposed to have
been part of the popular folklore

of the Soviet and ex-Soviet
intelligence agencies

that defectors are dealt with

in the most painful and
ruthless manner possible.

We hear the stories from
the defectors during the 1980s

of how they would be shown videos

of traitors being fed feet-first
into a furnace while still alive

in order to teach a lesson
to everybody else.

No-one can be certain
of those stories,

but the British public inquiry
concluded that Litvinenko's murder

was probably approved
by Nikolai Patrushev

and also President Putin.

It named the killers,
Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun,

but Russia has always refused
their extradition.

Viktor Yushchenko is one of the few
who drank from the poisoned chalice

but lived to tell the tale.

CROWD: (CHANTS)
Yushchenko! Yushchenko!

In the Autumn of 2004, these streets
were thronging with his supporters

as he ran for President of Ukraine.

He hoped he might lead his country
into NATO and the EU.

Yushchenko! Yushchenko!

Late one Sunday in September,

he was summoned to the deputy head
of the Ukraine security service,

formerly the KGB.

After a short
and rather frosty meeting,

they sat down for a meal together.

Yushchenko was driven home
with a searing headache.

His wife was immediately alarmed.

Hours later, wracked with pain,

Yushchenko was rushed
to a local clinic.

But, after exhaustive tests,

doctors still didn't know
what was wrong.

Gravely concerned,
the senior consultant advised him

to urgently seek
specialist treatment abroad.

Yushchenko was flown
by air ambulance to Austria.

The dioxin concentration in his body
was 50,000 times higher than normal.

That last supper
was obviously suspect,

but the entire catering crew
evaded questioning.

Victor Yushchenko
is lucky to be alive.

He went on to be
President of Ukraine.

But his West-leaning policies
were stymied.

Putin would never accept
the NATO alliance on his doorstep,

not least because

he had his eye on Crimea.

Crimea was strategically valuable.

It had a Black Sea coastline

and until 1991 had been
part of the Soviet Union.

The Tatars had enjoyed nation status
under the government of Ukraine

but, in 2014, heavily armed men

in combat fatigues,
but without insignia,

appeared on the streets.

These were Russian
security service units,

together with Russians
who'd settled in Ukraine,

asserting Russian authority.

Putin had annexed Crimea.

One year after
the annexation of Crimea,

a protest march
was organised in Moscow

by opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

On the eve of the March,

Nemtsov was murdered
within sight of the Kremlin.

He was shot four times,

in the head, heart, liver
and stomach.

All the CCTV cameras in the area
were switched off for maintenance.

The killers would need
very high security clearance

to contrive a blackout
so close to the Kremlin walls.

GILES: Russia is no longer concerned
about its denials being plausible.

Russia no longer cares
whether it is believed.

The Novichok poisoning
of the Skripals

in Salisbury, England,
is a striking example.

In 2018, two men, quickly
identified as officers in the GRU,

a military branch of Russian
security services,

were captured repeatedly on CCTV

in the vicinity
of Sergei Skripal's home.

When named as suspects,

they claimed to have an interest
in Salisbury Cathedral.

There doesn't seem to have been
any effort put into

making these two individuals'
cover story plausible.

In fact, if you look
at what they are saying

about their movements in Salisbury,

it's almost as if they hadn't
been shown the CCTV photographs

and their movements during that day
that have already been established.

Because they're saying things
that are completely incompatible

with what's already known.

Russian security services seem

to operate with impunity
at home and abroad.

But there are limits.

A Lubyanka conversation
was recounted to Oleg Kalugin

about his own survival.

KALUGIN: And he asked him,
"How come Kalugin is still alive?"

And that Russian guy,

a top official, number three man
in the Soviet KGB in the old days,

he said, and I quote,

"Had he lived in Europe,
in Asia or elsewhere,

"He would have been dead
a long time ago.

"But he lives in America. Sorry."

FSB assassins don't set foot
on American soil,

and Russia is no match for America
in economic terms.

But they do compete aggressively
in other ways,

and they can do real damage
in the virtual world.

A lot of people think that
having a GDP the size of Spain
is a huge disadvantage,

but this is one of those cases

where it doesn't matter how big
it is, it's what you do with it.

If Russia is determined
to use its national resources

to confront what it sees
as its adversaries,

whether those adversaries
are aware of it or not,

then it can do,
it can exercise power,

it can create headaches for those
countries that it's targeting.

The internet is an inexpensive
weapon, with global penetration.

Russia has found that it can
exploit the hyperconnectivity
of the internet

and the speed at which conspiracy
theories flourish

to set societies and target
countries against each other.

The use of hackers, the use
of the internet as a weapon,

weaponising social media,

all of these things are
carried out by the FSB,

but through very informal networks,

because these informal networks
are completely decentralised

and completely deniable.

Names including Cozy Bear,
Office Monkey and Fancy Bear

have emerged as persistent cyber
threats to US national security.

They have penetrated
major institutions in the EU,

installing malware in banks,
hospitals, power stations

and military facilities,

as well as diplomatic
organisations and governments.

All have been associated
with Russian intelligence.

There is no direct link back
to who provided the orders,

because that is simply not
how the Russian system works.

You will not be able to find
a piece of paper that says,

"Yes, go and hack the US election."

Interference in
the Brexit debate in Britain

and the US election process

are still under investigation.

No obtainable evidence can prove

that Russian interference
changed any votes.

But James Clapper, the former
Director of US National Intelligence,

said, "It stretches credulity

"to think that the Russians
didn't turn the election."

Russia was sowing social discord

by pushing the extremist
narratives at both ends,

setting off disputes,
and seeing what would happen.

If you conduct an operation

with some very ambitious target,
such as regime change,

but you fail at that and instead
just stir the pot a little,

and weaken your adversary,
disrupt its social cohesion,

weaken its societal resilience,

weaken its government,
trust in authority, etc,

then that is still a bonus,
as far as Russia is concerned.

Because, in their zero-sum
view of security,

if you weaken your adversary
even by a little,

that makes yourself,
in relative terms, stronger.

This thinking, espoused long ago

by the founder of Lenin's security
service, Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky,

has had a resurgence under Putin,

and his statue
has been quietly restored

and now stands
in a Moscow sculpture park.

APPLEBAUM: In order
to understand today's Russia,

very important to understand
the KGB mentality.

Because Putin, and the people
around him, really,

a whole class of people who rule
Russia, still have that mentality.

Any threat, any challenge, can never
be considered loyal opposition,

you know, loyal criticism, people
who want to make Russia better.

Any challenge is,
by definition, treason.

Under Vladimir Putin, the KGB,
or FSB as it's now called,

rules Russia with an iron rod
directly from the Kremlin.

To challenge its authority,

even from apparent safety abroad,

means risking your life.

Over a century has passed

since Lenin established
the organisation

as a temporary measure
to defend the revolution.

But the KGB has even managed
to outlive communism itself.

Today, Russia is no longer
a state with a security service -

instead, the security service
has a state.

Captions by Red Bee Media
(c) SBS Australia 2021