Beyond the Kremlin: a ruthless story of Putin’s KGB suppressing both Russia and the West | Culture

In 1985, a young KGB agent arrived in the city of Dresden in East Germany, and was later considered a province. His name was Vladimir Putin.

What exactly he did in Dresden is still unclear. The official version of the jacket: V.Putin allegedly drank beer, as a result of which he gained weight, and otherwise lived in a simple apartment with his wife Lyudmila and their two daughters. Other Soviet spies reportedly did not defend his work, but this young agent simply left the newspaper.

However, a former British Financial Times and now Reuters-based journalist Catherine Belton, who is considered an investigative journalist, has decided to deepen and resist the start of Putin’s career, recounting the book on the traces of the KGB in the recent history of Russia.

The book’s title is eloquent: “Putin’s people: how the KGB withdrew Russia and then targeted the West.”

C. Belton specializes in finance, especially the stolen billions that sneakily run offshore. But with the addition of an impressive array of Kremlin sources to the money, John Le Carre’s testimony, worthy of fact, came out of the testimonies of diplomats, explorers, prosecutors, gangsters and oligarchs.

Maneuvers in Dresden

Let’s go back to Dresden and, at the same time, as C. Belton suggests, forget the lukewarm official version of how Putin did nothing impressive there. On the contrary, what Russia is doing has essentially been what it is doing now: seeking to destabilize the West.

C. Belton was hooked on the East German secret police certificate “Stasi” discovered in 2018 with a photo of V. Putin. Many Stasi documents have survived, and KGB documents containing information on Putin have been destroyed or are kept under nine locks in Moscow.

Of course, this certificate allowed V. Putin free access to the Stasi buildings: the KGB agents were basically German chiefs. Apparently, the current Russian president was responsible for cooperation between the Stasi and the KGB.

Dresden, for its part, was considered an important base for KGB operations in the West, including mortals. According to Belton sources, Putin contributed much to such conspiracies.

It has long been known that the Soviet Politburo, in the fight against capitalism, financed radical terrorist groups in the Middle East, South America, Africa, but also in Western Europe.

Moscow actively supported the far left Red Army faction, which carried out a series of attacks in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, killing a total of 34 people.

And Belton found a former member of this radical movement who remembered secretly traveling to East Berlin. From there he was taken to Dresden, where he met a “friend Putin” and another KGB agent.

Moscow actively supported the far left Red Army faction.

The KGB provided the Red Army faction with both weapons and money, and also recommended possible targets. One of these may have been Alfred Herrhausen, the head of the Deutsche Bank, who was exploited on the way to work in 1989.

Former terrorist C. Belton says: “Moscow’s goal was to wreak havoc in the West.” Russia is doing the same now, only in digital spaces, and Putin appears to have carried out those “active measures”.

Russian supervisors

This story is just one of many, and all of them, who constantly tell about Putin’s rise and the enormous corruption that surrounds him, have their hair fluttering.

As already mentioned, there are many books on the subject, but Belton offers the reader perhaps the most complete and compelling story, based on dozens of conversations with oligarchs (both loyal to Putin and those who have already left Russia), Kremlin officials. , former KGB operatives, Swiss and Russian bankers.

Again, remember that the KGB actively used special funds and cover-up campaigns to fund communist parties in the West. And Putin, apparently as soon as he returned from Dresden to Saint Petersburg, embarked on a similar money laundering.

After working for Saint Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Putin worked with gangsters who controlled the port and the city’s oil refinery. He received bribes and pumped money from the oil-for-food plans.

During Boris Yeltsin’s reign, the security forces grew steadily until they finally convinced the President, almost certainly by blackmail, to begin preparing the ground for the heir. Of course, it was V. Putin and his KGB friends.

The corruption model began to expand immediately. Yeltsin-era officials and, yes, the oligarchs were expelled, and those who did not want to lose large companies were told: Russia needs to regain imperial power, so they must help us.

True, as C. Belton writes, the hook is that Putin and his allies were convinced that state power was directly related to the state of their personal property. By declaring themselves “state supervisors,” the Putinists took over the most important and lucrative areas.

Of particular interest is the section in which Belton names Putin’s treasurers. One of them is the grandson of White Guard aristocrat Jean Goutchkov, who previously worked for HSBC and belongs to a well-developed international network of regime servants working in Moscow since the Soviet era.

Next up is oil magnate Gennady Timchenko, one of Putin’s closest friends, though he himself denies it. C. Belton also pays attention to the Panama Papers scandal and Sergei Roldugin.

Is it possible to buy everything?

Putin and his comrades in Saint Petersburg rule Russia divided into criminal clans under a tsar.

There is, for example, a common source of money: “obscia,” which is used both for projects that interest the state and for personal expressions of vanity; for example, a magnificent billion-dollar palace built specifically for Putin on the Black Sea coast.

Source C. Belton revealed that the administrators who were responsible for the construction of the palace for V. Putin called the Russian president by his nicknames: “Mikhail Ivanovich”, “Papa” and “First number”. Sometimes they just pointed a finger at the ceiling, as if the ruler was looking at them from above.

It is true that the people of Putin also describe in detail how special funds are used for political purposes: for example, elections can be manipulated or operations can be carried out abroad.

And Putin does not save resources for the poisoning of western democracies. By squandering funds through sting operations to deny everything, the regime buys influential Western politicians and funds far-right parties across Europe.

The Kensington neighborhood has been bought by the Kremlin barons, and the oligarchs, who simply portray themselves as independent of the Putin regime, whose weapons are infinitely long, are generously funding the ruling Conservative Party.

There is also a full section devoted to dealing with the relations of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, with Russian gangsters (many of whom were affiliated with the KGB and are affiliated with the Russian Federal Security Service). According to C. Belton, Putin, full of anger, uses capitalism as a way to deal with the hated West.

C. Belton is British, so of course what is happening to her is what is happening to her in London. According to the author of the book, the British political and business class is proving to be very honorable: British gentlemen are happy to accept invitations to the boards of directors of Russian state corporations, and the London Stock Exchange is home to the same suspicious companies.

The Kensington neighborhood has been bought by the Kremlin barons, and the oligarchs, who simply portray themselves as independent of the Putin regime, whose weapons are infinitely long, are generously funding the ruling Conservative Party.

The author’s analysis is ruthless and compelling. She writes about injections of Russia’s dirty money like a virus, and Roman Abramovich and his investments in the London soccer club Chelsea are also hampered: V. Putin has ordered R. Abramovich to buy the latter.

The book is full of impressive stories about the Dubrovka theater hostage drama, when none other than Putin’s trustee Igor Sechin ordered the use of poisonous chemical gases and killed at least 115 hostages.

However, the most interesting thing about this great study is the regime’s flirtation with the West, which perhaps only now is waking up, if it wakes up.

Former kebeist, the former Russian railway chief Vladimir Yakunin, speaking to the author, rejoices in Brexit, Trump, the collapse of the liberal world order. And all this, according to C. Belton, is possible because business and money are more important to the West than morality.

Putin believes and believes that anything can be bought. So far, this hypothesis appears to be correct.