All language subtitles for Putin.A.Russian.Spy.Story.Part.1.720p.HDTV.x264-CBFM

Happened twice, both times
in exactly the same way.

Both times I was in Moscow,

I started feeling really sick
for no reason.

And within the space of
a few minutes,

I was completely incapacitated.

I couldn't breathe,
my heart was racing,

and within hours all of my major
life organs were shutting down

one after another.

I remember both times
very clearly thinking,

"This is it. This is the end."

The official diagnosis give to me
by my doctors in Moscow was

toxic action
by an unidentified substance,

so translated from medical speak
to normal human language,

it means poisoning.

I have no doubt
by the way this was done,

that this was done by people

somehow connected with the Russian
domestic security services,

and I have no doubt absolutely
that this was done as retribution,

for my political activity
in the Russian opposition.

There's been a strangely high
mortality rate

over these past two decades

among the people who are standing up
against Putin's regime...

..journalists,
human rights activists,

political opposition figures.

A mortality rate that I don't think
can be explained

by any normal statistical model.

We're all products of our experience
we're all products of our background

we're all products of our education.

Vladimir Putin's background
is the Soviet KGB...

..one of the most repressive
organisations

in the history of humanity.

He's doing what he was taught to do.

Manipulate, lie, recruit, repress.

He seems to be quite good at his job.

Putin was very small,
but he was a fierce fighter.

There is a vengeful side
to Putin.

He is a man who never forgets
a slight.

I'm quite clear on
what I think drives him -

to make Russia great again.

He's a convinced patriotic Russian.

You can't make a president
in a few months, just like...

..a click of your hand.

It's just impossible.

This is the code of the spy.

Nothing is forgotten
and nothing is forgiven.

Good evening.

Could this be another example
of a Russian being poisoned

on UK soil?

The man in hospital tonight,
Sergei Skripal,

is in a critical condition.

Counter-terrorism officers have
take charge of the investigation

into the suspected poisoning
of a former Russian agent

in Salisbury on Sunday.

Sergei Skripal had been convicted
in Russia 12 years ago

of passing secrets to MI6.

President Putin's spokesman
told me earlier,

"We have no information about
what happened. We cannot comment."

For many people,
Soviet childhoods are pretty grim.

Most people lived in
appalling conditions.

Behind the grandiose architecture,

these dark alleyways and dark
courtyards and street gangs,

and it's... it's pretty filthy.

It's not a very nice place
to be a small boy.

He was a schoolyard thug,

and part of a gang.

He was very small,
but he was a fierce fighter.

He was saved from going into
the crime life by sports.

His coach of judo pulled him out
of this street life,

and he became a very avid fighter.

The KGB were watching

who was doing this kind of sports
in the Soviet Union.

Putin didn't make any secret
out of the fact

that he wanted to work
for the secret services, with KGB.

He dreamt to become
a kind of Stierlitz,

which is the Russian version
of James Bond.

Asking, you know, "Do you
remember the character Stierlitz?"

it's like asking anybody
in this country,

"Do you remember the character Bond?"

You know, yes, you remember
the character Bond.

The theme of Stierlitz
in Seventeen Moments Of Spring,

the idea of, sort of,
a glorious Soviet spy,

I think is very important,

and this was an extremely important
film to Putin.

He was 21 years old when Seventeen
Moments of Spring was released,

and two years later,
he joined the service.

He joined the KGB.

Now, I can easily talk about that,
you know.

For 20 years,
I was intelligence officer.

My generation of... of kids

were brought up in the sentiments

of very heroic novels
about World War II.

In the heroic of small kids,
who were fighting fascism.

And the heroism of
our intelligence officers.

For an agent,
it was very important,

if he wanted to have a good job,

to be married, happily married,

'cause otherwise,
we can't trust you fully.

You could do your own business
with other woman there.

We would dislike this.

Putin's wife, Lyudmila, when
he dated her for the first time,

he never told her
that he working for the KGB.

He was telling her
that he worked for the police.

And he examined her character.

He sent his friends
and they wanted to date her as well,

and she said, "No,
I have already boyfriend.

"I have Vladimir."

And that was enough for him
to be proud of her

and to understand
that she really likes him.

He ends up in Eastern Germany,

and he's not even in the capital,
Berlin.

He's sent to Dresden,
a provincial backwater.

And I think if you've been brought up
in Leningrad

and then you've trained a bit
for the KGB in Moscow,

going to Dresden,

quite the opposite from what
you'd hope from your foreign posting,

to taste the forbidden fruits
of the West.

And I think it probably must've been
a bit of a let-down.

You get a hint of it.

His wife talks about
how they were homesick

and longed for the Soviet Union.

So, it feels as though
they had a comfortable life,

but not a particularly exciting one.

He drank a lot of beer
and there were a lot of pictures

at parties, in restaurants,
or among friends.

You know, if you go there on a very
secret mission and you're a top spy,

no picture exists of you,

not in books, nor in the collections
of your friends

or in family albums.

So, I shouldn't portray him
more than he was.

And then his world collapsed.

His dreams collapsed.

East Germany has tonight
opened its borders to the West.

28 years after the Berlin Wall
was built,

its people are once more free
to travel anywhere.

I was Moscow correspondent
at the time,

and I wouldn't have said at the end
of 1989, the beginning of 1990,

that I would expect

that within two years, the whole
Soviet Union would collapse.

So, I don't suppose he did either.

I think it must've been a huge shock.

He didn't welcome these changes.

He knew that he had to...
return back from the GDR,

a country which didn't exist anymore
'cause it was reunited as Germany.

He had a wife
and two small daughters.

He had a car, which he took to drive
back from Dresden to St Petersburg.

He didn't know what kind of career
he will have in the new Russia,

what will happen to him,
to his family, to the country.

Coming back to '90s
in St Petersburg...

..it was gloomy city.

Despite the fact that there
were some new expectations...

..it was a real trauma
to Soviet society.

They were losing their sense
of belonging to great country,

to great history.

They were losing
the means for survival.

When the institutions
lost the ability to function,

of course criminality is rising.

They had contract killings
every single day.

They had bombings
nearly every single day.

There's people being killed
left and right.

I mean, it's, like, pretty much
comparable to Chicago in the 1930s.

And probably Chicago was not
as violent as Russia.

Just now President Putin denied

having anything to do with
the election interference in 2016.

Every US intelligence agency
has concluded that Russia did.

Who do you believe?

People came to me,
they said they think it's Russia.

I have President Putin.
He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this - I don't see
any reason why it would be.

I have great confidence
in my intelligence people

but I will tell you that

President Putin was extremely strong
and powerful in his denial today.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Well, Vladimir Putin
came into my life

through a problem that I had
with my investment at the time.

Through my activities as a supplier
for law enforcement equipment,

I ended up in Russia.

One of the deputy police chiefs
thought it was a good idea

to try to take over my investments.

So, I want to the US consulate
and someone there said,

you know, "The guy you should...
you should confront with this problem

"is really Vladimir Putin."

Putin is a guy that became sidekick

to the first democratically elected
mayor of St Petersburg,

Anatoly Sobchak.

And so I went to see him.

Vladimir Putin was a very dry,
obviously very humourless man

of rather small stature.

You could see it was very important
to give you a good handshake,

to look you straight into the eyes.

He basically says,
"No, I'm not gonna get involved.

"I'm busy enough protecting my mayor.

"I don't need
an additional headache."

That's exactly what he said.

I didn't understand what...
what that meant

until I went out and I learned

that Mayor Sobchak was completely
corrupt, corrupt to the bone,

and one of Putin's main functions was
to keep him out of trouble.

There were no real rules,
there were no real laws.

Of course, people bribed in order
to get certain privileges.

I was told by people
who were close to Sobchak,

"You have to pay $100,000

"in order to have a soup with him."

But they didn't manage to keep
the city running as it should be.

The city was collapsing.

People were searching for food.

Everything was dark.

Sobchak needs someone
who is, sort of the interface

between what they call
the organs of state,

that is the KGB, the police,
anybody of executive power

that he could potentially get
into a conflict with.

For a simpler term, I would call
Putin a fixer in the day.

He was always in the shadows.

You know, if there were pictures
being taken

of Sobchak doing something,

even if Putin was there,
he wasn't gonna be in the picture,

or if he was, he was gonna be off
in the corner.

Sobchak trusted him,

because Putin proved, first of all,
to be very loyal.

Loyal to Sobchak.

He's a bulldog.

He grabs on and he gets something.

1992, there is
a documentary film director

who wants to make
a series of short films

to introduce those people working
in the St Petersburg administration

to the public, the whole team.

And for the film,
he decides to set the scene.

And Putin, sitting behind the wheel
of the Soviet Volga he's driving,

and in the background,
there is music,

there is a theme tune from
Seventeen Moments of Spring playing.

Putin is not an accidental man.

The idea to bring this tune

and bring out this association
with Stierlitz

was... was clearly very important.

Power, power,
more and more influence

in St Petersburg connections,

with Western politicians.

He made himself indispensable
for Sobchak.

Until 1996...

..when Sobchak lost
the governors elections.

He lost everything. He had no money.

He was again in a situation
where he had nothing.

The lesson
from Sobchak's loss was that

you cannot leave
the democratic process to elections

and you cannot leave the elections
to ordinary people,

in the sense that someone
could vote you out of office.

I would like to make a statement

about the death of
Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko suffered
a cardiac arrest

caused by his ingesting polonium 210

while drinking tea at the Pine Bar
of the Millennium Hotel.

Mr Litvinenko was
deliberately poisoned

by Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun

acting on behalf of others.

There is a strong probability

that they were acting
under the direction

of the Russian domestic
security service,

the Federal Security Service,
or FSB,

and the inquiry has found

that the FSB operation
to kill Mr Litvinenko

was probably approved
by President Putin.

There's a very famous word
in Russia, 'poryadok',

which means 'order'.

If you ask Russians
what they want out of their leaders,

what they want is poryadok.

What they want is order.

At that time,
the president was Yeltsin,

who was visibly very unhealthy,
kept on humiliating himself.

For the ordinary Russian,

who thinks of himself as a citizen
of a proud country,

this was just intolerable.

A lot of the people
who were around Yeltsin at the time

were looking for someone
who could take a grip.

Russia had spent ten years
sliding into anarchy

with hyperinflation,

trying to cope with the loss
of all the Soviet republics.

It had defaulted on its debts.

It had, sort of, lost its way.

And society seemed to be
out of control.

Putin moved to Moscow
from St Petersburg in 1996...

..as a...
..low-mid-level bureaucrat,

whom they found a position
inside the Kremlin apparatus.

Very quickly he starts growing.

In a year, year and something,

he becomes the head of Russian FSB,

the Russian special forces.

This is an incredible career.

When Putin was installed
as director of the FSB in 1998...

..corruption had become
so pervasive,

FSB assets were just simply
there for hire

for any gangster or businessman
who wanted to use them.

When Putin came in,

everybody expected that he would
start cleaning the stables...

..ridding the FSB of corruption.

So, that's how it all started.

I've never met Putin in my life,

but he's the subject of my obsession
in a way,

since he ordered the killing
of my friend Litvinenko.

Sascha Litvinenko's conflict
with Putin was not political.

It was a conflict of...

..an honest cop with
corrupt superiors, essentially.

They met,

and Sascha Litvinenko
started explaining to Putin

that this one should be removed
and that one should be removed

and that is a crook and so on,
and Putin listened to him.

Then ordered him out of the FSB,

because he was making
too much trouble.

That's how Sascha Litvinenko's
conflict with Putin started.

The stakes were very high.

Yeltsin could be prosecuted.

The danger comes in the figure
of the prosecutor general,

Skuratov.

Skuratov already started
investigation

in Yeltsin's financial dealings,

with huge political support of
Russian parliament behind him.

Behind Yeltsin is Putin
as the head of FSB

and... and... and... and...
and a willingness to... to fight.

So, what they do?

They expose this prosecutor general
on television.

They have this footage of him
having sex with some ladies

in some apartment in Moscow,

and they air this footage
on television.

After that...

..Prosecutor General Skuratov
was dismissed.

It was the first time,
probably, when

we saw that you can achieve...

..a very important political outcome

through some kind of
special operation

by exposing your opponent
with kompromat.

Yeltsin won this fight.

And of course we know
Vladimir Putin played huge role

in this special operation.

When Yeltsin appointed Putin as
active prime minister in August '99,

he immediately said,
"This is my successor.

"He will be Russia's president."

And that was impossible to believe.

That was just simply impossible
to... to sort of grasp,

because we just didn't know
his face.

Even those who supported Yeltsin
were thinking that,

"Hey, this is crazy.
He can't make it.

"You can't make a president
in a few months,

"just like a click of your hand.

"It's just impossible."

He would definitely lose,

and everything that had been
achieved by then

would be destroyed.

I have to admit, I don't remember
my first feeling of,

"What is Putin, who is Putin?"

You remember this famous question,
"Who is Mr Putin?"

We didn't know who he was.

But what definitely changed
everything was...

..the war.

Rescue workers are searching

through the remains of
a block of flats

destroyed by a huge bomb blast
early today.

There were reports that

an apartment building in Moscow
had been blown up.

About 100 people were killed
and many, many more were injured.

Then several days later,

another apartment building
was blown up in Moscow.

This is number six
Kashirskoye Avenue,

or what's left of it,

home until today to 120 people.

The eight-storey building
collapsed in on itself,

pulverising all who lived inside.

It was clear that what
we were dealing with was

a series of terrorist acts.

This is when fear came to Moscow.

This was something very new
feeling in the air.

The authorities said that this was
the work of Chechen terrorists.

No proof.

But the aggressivity
of the population was such

after so many years of hardship
under Yeltsin...

..and the anger against the Chechens
was so great

after an unsuccessful war

that was fought in the middle
of the 1990s,

in which Russia suffered
serious defeats,

that no-one waited for evidence.

Ryazan is a city south-east
of Moscow, about 100 miles.

One night, a resident of a building
saw a car pull up to the building,

and he witnessed people going down

and taking sacks of some mysterious
substance into the basement.

He called the police, they came,
they went down into the basement

and they bolted back up
the stairs and they said,

"There's a bomb in the basement."

Shortly afterwards, those who were
responsible for placing the bomb

were arrested.

But they produced
FSB identification.

And an order came from Moscow
saying to release them.

Short time later,
the head of the FSB

got on national television
and said that

the events in Ryazan were not
an attempted terrorist attack.

For two days,
they had been saying that

this was an attempted
terrorist attack

and the vigilance of the citizens
of Ryazan had prevented it.

Now, with the FSB agents arrested,
caught red-handed,

they changed their story
and said that

this was a training exercise.

What was taking place
was a test of vigilance.

Well, I personally have no doubt

that is could not have been
a training exercise.

It could not have been
a test of vigilance.

I consider it
as a conspiracy theory.

I can't take it.

I can't believe...

..that Russia's government
or special forces

were able to orchestrate
a terrorist...

..terrorist attacks like that.

If you talk about forensic evidence,
it's an open question.

Who blew up the houses?

But there is lots of
circumstantial evidence

pointing at some group in FSB,

engaged again of Chechens
to blow up these houses

to provoke the invasion of Chechnya.

And two weeks after the explosions,
after these bombings,

the assault on Chechnya started.

That's when the real war started.

There was a demand to restore
Russia's pride...

..some self-esteem...

..and to win the war.

That was the primary demand,
not people's lives.

He used criminal slang.

He used the word 'mochit',
which in Russian is...

It's what Russian gangsters use.

It means 'turn into liquid',
'liquidate',

but it's..it's a very crude word.

Putin's popularity rating soared,

and he immediately became
the saviour of the country.

Suddenly, he was the defender
of the homeland.

Kind of curtain of silence
fell over Russia

on the issue of
the apartment bombings.

The phrase "The less you know,
the better you sleep",

in Russian, if you'd like it...

It means,
"better not to know too much".

It's dangerous to know too much.

Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk)
www.opensubtitles.org