Thread by @Heidi_Cuda

PRISONER TSAR: In weaving together my evidentiary thread: “A Layperson’s Guide to Trump Russia: It’s komprocated”, I encouraged readers to view the @frontlinepbs documentary on Putin’s rise to power. It’s an essential framework, predating Russia’s psych war on America.

A review.

https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1128037831685730304

1/ UNEMPLOYED SPY: The film documents how Putin went from “unemployed spy to modern day tsar.”

“There has always been corruption in Russia, but building it into such a meticulous system was something only Mr. Putin has managed to do.”-Andrey Zykov

2/ ABUSE OF POWER: Zykov, a former police investigator, gathered evidence of corruption from Putin’s early years in St. Petersburg, and posted it on YouTube.

3/ STEALING FROM THE VERY BEGINNING: Karen Dawisha, Prof., Miami University, Ohio, discovered Zykov’s evidence: “The summation of it was a detailed account of criminal activities..a whole range of economic crimes.”

4/ “Instead of seeing Russia as a democracy in the process of failing, we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding..if that’s correct, when did that start? And that’s what took me to the ‘90s—they were stealing from the very beginning.”-Karen Dawisha

5/ POWER: Putin was an unemployed KGB officer returning to Russia after a posting in Dresden. He was hired by St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, and he became deputy mayor of the “gangster capitol of Russia.” and crucially, chair of the committee on foreign economic relations.

6/ “KGB MAN”: “Even as his star rose, there was an early example of his ambition. He commissioned a documentary about himself. It was called ‘Power’, made by Igor Shadkhan. ‘Putin had an agenda. He wanted to admit that he had been a KGB agent in foreign reconnaissance.’”-Shadkhan

7/ RECEIPTS: Intense food shortages presented an opportunity.

“I’ll tell you from this document, signed by Putin, all $124 million disappeared without a trace, without a trace, because from this list of materials that I have listed, not a single gram of food came.”-Marina Sayle

8/ HUNGER GAMING: “Fly-by-night companies were set up. Many of his friends..were behind those companies. The goods went out, and incomplete or no shipment came back. So millions, millions were made just in that episode alone.”-Karen Dawisha

9/ DESPAIR TURNED TO ANGER: “In the end, the St. Petersburg city council approved Salye’s recommendation to turn the case over to the prosecutors.”

“We concluded that Putin and his assistant should be fired.”-Marina Sayle, former city council

10/ CASE 144-128: “The case of the missing food would never be prosecuted.”

But Zykov is haunted by another case.

“Funds were supposed to be used for specific building projects but..money was siphoned off by Putin and his friends to build vacation villas in Spain.”-Andrey Zykov

11/ “It was theft. Sobchak and Putin should have been jailed and would be in jail undoubtedly, Putin probably first and foremost, as the greatest number of documents and orders were signed by him.”-Andrey Zykov, former police investigator

12/ FACELESS BUREAUCRAT: “But Putin didn’t go to jail, he went to Moscow.”

Yeltsin needed a loyal thug, and Putin, then just another “faceless bureaucrat” needed to make a name for himself.

Here’s where this story takes a sinister turn.

13/ KGB MAN: “They are the people who prefer to operate in shadow. They are the people who are like state is first, and people are second. I don’t think he can change it..It’s unchangeable.”-Nataliya Gevorkian, Putin Biographer

“He would take a turn as head of the FSB.”

14/ THE APARTMENT BOMBINGS: “In the fall of 1999, bombs obliterated four apartment buildings in Moscow and other cities, all blown up at night while people slept. Hundreds died. This was Russia’s 9/11.”

Putin, by then prime minister, was suddenly everywhere vowing revenge.

15/ REBEL HELL: “Putin would point to rebels in Chechnya.”

“Russian officials said there was a Chechen trail in the apartment bombings—not proof..but it was used in order to justify a new invasion of Chechnya.”-David Satter, Russia Scholar

“Putin’s invasion would be brutal.”

16/ “STRONGMAN”: “The man who waged it was a new national hero.”

“He quickly became the most popular politician in Russia, even though before the apartment bombings, he was believed to have had no chance to succeed Yeltsin as president.”-David Satter

17/ “They needed a set of situations, in which, if they could postpone the elections entirely and make it more difficult for the opposition to focus on ‘unimportant’ things, like the corruption of the Yeltsin family..”-Prof. Karen Dawisha

18/ “The first Chechen war was..provoked in ‘95 in order to have a situation that would allow the government to cancel elections or to postpone elections, claiming that you cannot have them during wartime..the same was done in ‘99”-Yuri Feltshtinsky, co-author, “Blowing Up Russia

19/ “Three months into a new millennium, Russia had a new president. He seemed a modern man, a man for the future, a future all Russians hoped would be better than the past..but shadows from the past haunt this place. It’s a memorial to those who died in those apartment bombings”

20/ “Mikhail Trepashkin, a former KGB officer himself, and a lawyer, was always dubious about the official story, the Chechen connection. His doubts only grew when his former colleagues in the security services reacted to his investigation. ‘They were telling me, ‘Don’t dig..’”

21/ “The Russian government destroyed all the evidence in the case of the earlier bombings. No sooner had the bombings taken place than bulldozers showed up to—to remove the rubble, including human remains..They destroyed the crime scene.”-@DavidSatter author, “Darkness at Dawn