The Moth

Summary

Throughline (NPR) – "The Moth" (March 14, 2019)

Episode Summary

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of Throughline explores the rise of Vladimir Putin, decoding the myths, maneuvers, and power plays that transformed him from an obscure KGB officer into the central figure of modern Russia. By traveling through key moments in recent Russian history, hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei trace how Putin’s identity, cultivated both by spectacle and secrecy, is intertwined with Russia’s trajectory out of the Soviet collapse and into its current centralized, authoritarian state.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mob Boss Persona – Putin’s Public Spectacle (00:17–04:12)

• Opening Scene (00:17): Rund narrates a 2009 meeting where Putin humiliates Russian oligarchs, dramatizing dominance by making billionaire Oleg Deripaska re-sign a contract in front of the press, then demands his pen back—a calculated show of authority.
  • "Putin, whose voice we’re hearing, is sitting at the head of a long, rectangular conference table...guys in suits are sitting around that table hanging on his every word.” (Rund Abdelfatah, 00:17)
• Public Image Construction: Discussion on how Putin orchestrates these events to cast himself as both ruthless mob boss and national protector; references to his shirtless horseback rides and televised feats to build the image of an untouchable leader. (03:04–03:18)

2. Putin’s Origins – KGB Roots & Early Political Climb (Part 1: "The Great Escape", 05:18–16:38)

• Junior KGB Officer in Dresden (05:30): Edward Lucas (former Economist bureau chief) notes Putin’s inconspicuous KGB career, mostly as a counterintelligence officer, not a dramatic spy.
  • “He was always the guy at the reception in the corner, often silent, not drinking ... we called him the ghost because he was always present but never really visible.” (Andrew Meyer, 10:37)
• Soviet Collapse (06:40–07:10): The USSR's chaotic transition enables corruption and powerful oligarchs to flourish, leaving career officers like Putin adrift.
• Political Break in St. Petersburg (08:29–09:55):
  • Putin, an advisor to mayor Anatoly Sobchak, distinguishes himself as a loyal, disciplined operator, quietly observing and maneuvering in the shadows.
• Loyalty and Sobchak’s Escape (13:09–14:02):
  • Putin orchestrates Sobchak’s daring escape from Russia to Paris—a demonstration of loyalty and clandestine skills, landing Putin on Yeltsin’s radar.

3. Luck, Loyalty, and Opportunism – Putin’s Unexpected Rise (16:08–18:10)

• Yeltsin’s Struggles Lead to Putin’s Promotion:
  • Yeltsin, facing political threats and personal criminal concerns, taps Putin for positions in Moscow, eventually making him FSB chief, then prime minister in 1999.
  • “In a way, he was just kind of in the right place at the right time. It doesn’t even feel like he’s a main character in his own story at this point.” (Ramtin Arablouei, 15:35)

4. Power by Crisis – Bombings and Chechnya (Part 2: "Putin Wags the Dog", 18:10–28:54)

• 1999 Bombings & Conspiracy Allegations:
  • A series of deadly apartment bombings rock Moscow; the Russian government blames Chechen terrorists, sparking the second Chechen war and a rally-around-the-flag moment.
• Contested Narrative:
  • Historian Yuri Velstinski and FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko allege the bombings were an FSB operation staged to justify war and push Putin’s ascendancy.
  • “Litvinenko told me ... I should not have any doubt that if this order would be given, then of course, you know, they will do it, because that’s what they do.” (Yuri Velstinski, 25:55)
• Impact: The crisis boosts Putin’s popularity, allowing him to be elected president in 2000.

5. The TV Makeover – Controlling the Narrative (30:14–33:10)

• Creation of the Putin Persona:
  • As president, Putin orchestrates a media blitz to cast himself as Russia’s savior—ruthless yet charismatic, calculatedly drawing on mafia and action-hero imagery.
  • “It was really by creating him into this sort of macho superhero on television and launching a small, very, very deadly war in Chechnya. He went from being ‘the Moth’...to being, kind of, you know, a mixture of Donald Trump and Sly Stallone and all of them rolled into one.” (Peter Pomerantsev, 31:27)
• Stagecraft in Government:
  • Regular televised scenes of Putin berating officials mimic mafia drama—at once performative, intimidating, and resonant with a population disillusioned by the chaos of the 1990s.

6. Why Putin Resonates – Russian Public Perception (33:27–35:48)

• Deep Need for Stability:
  • Journalist Margarita Simonyan (RT editor-in-chief) gives voice to the deep Russian yearning for stability after the “horrible” 1990s; Putin’s leadership, she contends, returned order, security, and basic prosperity.
  • “It would be an extremely difficult task to find a single person who lived worse before Putin than now. Very difficult.” (Margarita Simonyan, 35:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The “Ghost” at Receptions:
  “We called him the ghost because he was always present but never really visible.”
  — Andrew Meyer, 10:37

• Putin’s Luck and Accidents of History:
  “In a way, he was just kind of in the right place at the right time. It doesn’t even feel like he’s a main character in his own story at this point.”
  — Ramtin Arablouei, 15:35

• The “Rodent-like” First Impression:
  “I also told Madeleine Albright after the meeting that he seemed to me a little rodent-like, you know, a small animal with a big nervous beating heart.”
  — Steve Sestanovich, 21:52

• Bombings as Turning Point (FSB Insider Testimony):
  “Litvinenko told me ... I should not have any doubt that if this order would be given, then of course, you know, they will do it, because that’s what they do.”
  — Yuri Velstinski, 25:55

• Making a President on TV:
  “It was really by creating him into this sort of macho superhero on television and launching a small, very, very deadly war in Chechnya.”
  — Peter Pomerantsev, 31:27

• Why Russians Revere Putin:
  “People around started, first of all, they stopped being hungry. Then they stopped having one pair of shoes for both my sister and me, you know, and my mom ... It all seemed magic.”
  — Margarita Simonyan, 34:02

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:17 – 01:49: Putin humiliates oligarchs, sets the tone of rule-by-spectacle.
• 05:18 – 16:38: Putin’s KGB career, the post-Soviet transition, and his St. Petersburg apprenticeship under Sobchak.
• 13:09 – 14:02: Putin orchestrates Sobchak’s escape—proving loyalty.
• 18:10 – 20:02: Yeltsin’s decline, Putin’s chance at power.
• 22:09 – 27:23: The 1999 apartment bombings, conspiracy theories, and the pivotal Chechen war.
• 31:11 – 33:10: Putin’s media strategy and transformation into a "superhero" leader.
• 34:02 – 35:48: Russian popular sentiment—how Putin’s rule delivered stability after hardship.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Episode Message: Putin’s grip on Russia is the result of both fortune and ruthless calculation—aided by personal loyalty, manufactured crises, and the deft manipulation of public image.
• Enduring Insights: The longing for stability and dignity after the chaos of the 1990s made Putin’s model of strongman rule appealing to many Russians, even as his ascent is littered with intrigue, conspiracy, and spectacle.

By teasing apart these layers, Throughline reveals how Putin’s story is not just about raw power, but about the stories a nation tells itself to endure, recover, and justify what comes next.

Transcript

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

you back to 2009 for a minute. To a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and a bunch of wealthy Russian factory owners. Now, just imagine the scene. Putin, whose voice we're hearing, is sitting at the head of a long, rectangular conference table. He's got on jeans and a windbreaker, and guys in suits are sitting around that table hanging on his every word. And the Russian press is there to capture it all.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Putin is asking the group, why haven't you fixed this labor dispute yet? You were running around, and I quote, like cockroaches before I came.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And it's no accident that he's dragging them through the mud in front of the Russian press. This is a publicity stunt.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So after scolding them like children, Putin makes them all sign a contract ordering them to reopen their factories.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And he picks out one particular factory owner who, again, no accident, is a prominent Russian billionaire whose name, by the way, has come up several times in the Mueller investigation. Oleg Deripowska.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Did everyone sign this? Deripowska, have you signed? Yes, I have signed.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Still, Putin makes Deripowska get up out of his seat, walk all the way around the table and sign the contract again. And as Deripowska walks away, Putin says,

[Ramtin Arablouei]

give me back my pen, and makes

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Deripowska walk all the way back over to hand it to him. Russia has taken on a larger role on the world, what America is officially

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calling a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Vladimir Putin is preparing to extend his powerful grip into a third decade. He's already Russia's longest serving leader since

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

You're listening to Throughline from npr, where

[Ramtin Arablouei]

we go back in time to understand

[Rund Abdelfatah]

the present foreign hey, I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei. And on this episode, decoding the power of Vladimir Putin.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

So that video we opened with, it, honestly felt like I was watching a scene from a mobster movie.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Yeah, I mean, Putin pretty much cast himself as a mob boss in that meeting. Like, he's, he's really trying hard to portray himself as a tough guy.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

So that got us thinking, how did Russia come to be run by this guy, Vladimir Putin?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Today, when you say Russia, you might as well be saying, saying Putin, because he's been running the country for nearly 20 years.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And on the one hand, you have this over the top image of Putin, the mob boss, the guy who rides shirtless on horseback or scuba dives for

[Ramtin Arablouei]

ancient treasures that, of course, he always finds. And all of this is designed to make him seem unstoppable, like some kind

[Rund Abdelfatah]

of James Bond, you know, strong and suave and, dare I say it, even sexy.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Okay, but this is Putin on display, right? It's him posing. But then there's this other side of Putin as the protector Russia, the person who's restored Russia's standing in the world, the puppet master who invades countries and kills dissidents.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

So these images of Putin that we see, how do they come to be and how do they help him maintain power?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

To answer those questions, we have to understand how he became the person we see today.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Kind of like a ghost of Christmas past for Vladimir Putin.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Exactly.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

There's an international escape in St. Petersburg, a bombing conspiracy, and a reality TV makeover.

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Part one, the Great Escape.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

We're going to start the story where Vladimir Putin's career began in the Soviet

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Union's notorious intelligence service, the kgb.

[Edward Lucas]

Putin started off as a rather junior and probably not very successful KGB officer.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Edward Lucas. He worked for the Economist and was their Moscow bureau chief from 1998 to 2002.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So Putin, fresh out of law school, was recruited to join the KGB way back in 1975.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Not a lot is known about that time in his life, but what we do know is that in 1985, he was assigned to a post in a city in East Germany called Dresden, which

[Edward Lucas]

was a bit of a Backwater.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And that meant he was too far from the capital, Berlin, to experience all the exciting spy games that were playing out there during the height of the Cold War.

[Edward Lucas]

And it's not clear that he ever ran any agents or conducted any real espionage operations under some suggestion that his main job was to be in counterintelligence. His job was checking up on other people, which is a sort of necessary but often rather unpopular job in intelligence agencies.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Putin spent five years in Dresden and a total of 16 years in the KGB, all the while slowly working his way up the ladder, doing the jobs necessary to get ahead. But then, in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail

[Peter Pomerantsev]

Gorbachev has been removed from an hour from house arrest.

[Edward Lucas]

After the failure of the August couple

[Yuri Velstinski]

never recovered his army, Slavic Republics announced they are forming a separate commonwealth of independent states, Russia.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The world came crashing down around him. Just months after an attempted coup, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his position as President of the Soviet Union, effectively bringing it to an end.

[Edward Lucas]

It was as if a tide rushed down the beach and you could then see the kind of stony outcrops of real power.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Suddenly, the country went from having a centralized communist economy to something that was more privatized.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

It was a wildly unstable time for everyone in Russia. A free market emerged that was poorly managed and a breeding ground for corruption.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Mobsters and other criminals took advantage of the instability and Russia's massive wealth was picked off by a few at the top.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Amid all that, a new leader came to power in Russia. His name, Boris Yeltsin.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

He tried to stabilize the Russian economy, but his methods were pretty shady. Yeltsin's government more or less acted like the Mafia. You do me a favor, I owe you, return a favor later, et cetera, you know, good old fashioned corruption.

[Steve Sestanovich]

Increasingly in the 90s, there was a picture of Russian politics as a kind of Byzantine court, with all of these people with their new fortunes trying to get favors and influence decision making by the immediate circle around Yeltsin.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Steve Sestanovich. He's a professor at Columbia University and was a top official in the US State Department during the Clinton administration.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Now, I'm sure you're wondering where Putin ended up in all this chaos. And the truth is it left him sort of disoriented. He'd been forced to move back to Russia with his young family after the Berlin Wall fell. His job with the KGB no longer existed because the KGB no longer existed. It went down with the Soviet Union. So his career plans were completely derailed. Eventually, though, Putin caught a break. He got A job in his hometown, St. Petersburg, as an advisor to one of his former law professors and mentors, Anatoly Sobchak. By that point, Sobchak had left the university to become mayor of St. Petersburg. And Sobchak, deciding to take a chance on Putin, appointed him deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. This was Putin's training ground. It's where he learned how to play the game of Russian politics. And he made it very clear he had higher ambitions than just running things behind the scenes in St. Petersburg.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is a clip from the 1992 documentary that Putin commissioned about himself. It's called Power. And in this scene, Putin is driving, his eyes visible in the rearview mirror. Snow covered trees pass by outside of his window. And then he makes a bold admission that he was formerly a member of the kgb, which wasn't very popular for a lot of people at the time. It was kind of a symbol of Russia's dark past.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

But for Sobchak, that was exactly why he wanted Putin on his team.

[Andrew Meyer]

There are photographs, there are reminiscences, recollections of people who say that Putin had the desk right in front of Sobchak. And so Sobchak, I think it's pretty clear, wanted him there in a position of kind of a minder, gatekeeper, monitoring, keeping an eye on who was coming in, who was going out. There were a lot of skills that Putin's particular resume offered to Sobchak at

[Rund Abdelfatah]

the time, skills like being a stealthy observer operating in the shadows. Andrew Meyer told us a story about Putin that he heard from an American diplomat back when Meyer was Moscow correspondent for Time magazine in the 1990s.

[Andrew Meyer]

He was always the guy at the reception in the corner, often silent, not drinking. He's famous for not drinking and taking note, observing. And he said we called him the ghost because he was always present but never really visible.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Now, to really understand Putin's rise to power, we have to understand the dynamics between his boss, Sobchak, and Yeltsin, who, remember, at this time, is the president of Russia.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

It's a dramatic tale of two rivals who couldn't have been more different.

[Andrew Meyer]

Yeltsin was kind of the big, bearish, often clownish buffoon who would love to obviously drink shots with you and was the king of bluster. Sobchak was everything, the opposite, very measured and someone really that the west, and especially government officials, lawyers, business people, could appreciate.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Yeltsin began to feel threatened by Sobchak, who wasn't the yes man he wanted. Plus, Yeltsin worried that Sobchak was becoming a potential opposition candidate who might mess up his chances for reelection.

[Andrew Meyer]

And the Sobchuck Yeltsin relationship bloomed into an outright rivalry to test Sobchak's loyalty.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Yeltsin summoned him to his office to ask him about re election.

[Andrew Meyer]

And he very simply says, you know, what do you think? Do you think I should run? And Sobchak, of course, gives the wrong answer.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

What does he say?

[Andrew Meyer]

That I'm not sure that this is time you should think about, you know, taking it easy. Maybe it's time to step down. Maybe it's time to think about your health. Maybe it's time to think about your family. And those, those were the last words that Yeltsin wanted to hear.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Sobchuk had failed the test. And at that point, Yeltsin basically declared war on him.

[Andrew Meyer]

It began with legal cases. It began with a lot of yellow journalism. He became a victim of tabloid, highly sensationalist charges flew almost daily. It was a drip, drip, drip torture on Sobchak.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Sobchak's name was mired in months of scandal. His reputation was in tatters. And so when it came to his reelection bid for mayor of St. Petersburg, he lost.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Humiliated. And facing a bunch of criminal investigations that may or may not have been politically motivated and could land him in prison, Sobchak was in serious trouble. But then one day, in the middle of all this chaos, Sobchak, a man forbidden from leaving the country, shows up in Paris.

[Andrew Meyer]

In those days, this was not something easy to pull off. That a man who was officially wanted by Russian intelligence, Russian law enforcement, his own political rivals, that he could just end up in Paris.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

But Sobchak had someone with special skills on his side.

[Andrew Meyer]

Putin orchestrated this sort of fantastic escape. He hired, or arranged to hire, through an intermediary, a private jet from Finland, brings it across into Russian airspace, gets Sobchak on the plane, somehow they get across to Paris. And it's only then, when Sobchak lands in Paris, that the world finds out

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Putin had basically done the impossible and in the process, proved just how clever and loyal he could be.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And this event landed Putin on Yeltsin's radar. Eventually, Yeltsin became so impressed with Putin that he gave him a position in his government.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

But wait, this is kind of strange, right? Like, why would Yeltsin choose to hire the guy who was his rival, Sobchak's protege?

[Andrew Meyer]

Well, there were a couple of things. I mean, one is it didn't matter that Yeltsin was behind the campaign to doom him. The fact that Putin came sort of riding in on the white horse to rescue him is what resonated loudest in Yeltsin's mind.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Did he think, maybe he'll do this for me one day? Because, you know, Yeltsin's government was super corrupt and he was quickly making enemies, losing popularity. Yeah.

[Andrew Meyer]

There's no question that everyone at the time remembering the Sobchak rescue. And at the same time, Yeltsin not only physically infirm, but all kinds of legal questions surrounding his own regime. The threat not just of kind of a legal nightmare haunting Yeltsin, but even maybe something worse, something like a coup against him. Clearly, the premium was on loyalty, and Putin was the man who had that greatest experience showing loyalty.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I want to stop here for a second, Ramtin.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Yeah.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Because this whole Sobchak episode and everything that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it kind of feels like Putin was on the receiving end of all of it. Like that he was riding the wave and happened to end up on top.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Yeah. And in a way, he was just kind of in the right place at the right time. I mean, it doesn't even feel like he's a main character in his own story at this point.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Yeah, he's like an accident of history or something. His former mentor happened to become the mayor of St. Petersburg. He happened to appoint him deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. And ironically, when Sobchak fled, Yeltsin took an interest in him.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And he's lucky that Yeltsin even reacted that way. In fact, things keep getting better for Putin. Not long after Putin makes it to Moscow, he's appointed the head of the new intelligence service in Russia, the fsb,

[Rund Abdelfatah]

also known as Federal Naya Slujba Bezopasnosti Rosyevskoy federatsy. How do you do?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Honestly, not that bad. But I wouldn't say great either. You know what I mean? I would say I practice maybe average,

[Rund Abdelfatah]

more than I'd like to admit. Anyway, the FSB's role, well, it's not all that different from the KGB, which, remember, Putin had been a part of for a long time. So he was returning to very familiar territory.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And as the head of the fsb, Putin began his stunning ascent to power.

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

Part 2 Putin wags the dog the year is 1999. Boris Yeltsin has been ruling over Russia for the last seven years or so, but his health is failing. He's just barely won re election, recently faced impeachment, and he's alienated his parliament and government. He realizes he can't hold on to power for long, but he also knows just how much his government has stolen from the Russian people. Russia's President Yeltsin has done it again,

[Margarita Simonyan]

sacking his entire government and plunging his country into crisis.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And he's worried that the next president will try to hold him and his quote, unquote family accountable. So he needs to find a successor who he can trust.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And who better than a guy who just a few years earlier took extreme measures to cover up for his boss.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And so Yeltsin picks Putin out of relative obscurity to be Russia's next prime minister, hoping that if all goes according

[Ramtin Arablouei]

to plan, and that's a big if,

[Rund Abdelfatah]

he might become the next president.

[Edward Lucas]

Putin was really, I think, the last desperate throw of the dice by the Yeltsin family because they were facing impeachment. The Duma, the Russian parliament, was really fed up with the way the country had been run and the corruption of the Yeltsin inner circle.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Again, Edward Lucas.

[Edward Lucas]

So they were really going after him and they tasted blood already. And so I think what happened was that the Yeltsin family turned to Putin as a former KGB guy and said, can you fix this?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But they still had a problem. Russia was a democracy, and so Putin had to be legitimately elected as president. And at that point, pretty much no one inside Russia or outside Russia saw him as a potential world leader. I mean, people in the US State Department could barely believe he had even been chosen as prime minister in the first place.

[Steve Sestanovich]

I remember getting a call in the early morning from the State Department telling me that this had been President Yeltsin's choice. And you know, I laughed out loud. The idea that this seeming nobody could be appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Federation was astonishing to me and my colleagues. But one thing we were pretty sure of was this guy wasn't going to last.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

At this point. That skepticism made sense for outsiders. Putin's rise came out of nowhere and it didn't seem like he'd last. Steve Sasanovich told us about the first time he met Putin when he was working in the State Department during the Clinton years.

[Steve Sestanovich]

He was then very new on the job. He was very unsure of himself. Hesitant, but ingratiating. He obviously wanted to make a good impression on the President of the United States. He was clearly very conscious of being not only a newcomer to high politics, but much shorter than Bill Clinton. And you could tell just the physical presence of Clinton made him somewhat uncomfortable.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And what did Clinton think of him?

[Steve Sestanovich]

I mean, Clinton afterwards said he liked him. He said, he's so Russian. I remember being a little surprised by this because I could tell what Putin was trying to do was not seem Russian, he was trying to seem German, competent, impressive, professional. In contrast to Yeltsin, whom Clinton was used to dealing with. I also told Madeleine Albright after the meeting that he seemed to me a little rodent, like, you know, a small animal with a big nervous beating heart. But you know, the next time we

[Rund Abdelfatah]

saw him, the next time they saw him, well, we'll get to that.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Let's just say he doesn't seem rodent, like for long.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

See, the thing that most people didn't realize at the time was that Yeltsin and Putin were willing to do anything to get him elected.

[Margarita Simonyan]

It's a devastating scene. The whole midsection of the building is gone. All that's left of some apartments are

[Rund Abdelfatah]

decorative rugs on the ground.

[Yuri Velstinski]

There has been much speculation that the

[Ramtin Arablouei]

explosion was not an accident. Searching for all the suspects,

[Rund Abdelfatah]

a series of bombs go off in apartment buildings across Moscow.

[Yuri Velstinski]

Then there was an apartment bombings in couple other cities. But of course Moscow was the most important one because 200 plus people were

[Rund Abdelfatah]

killed and more than a were injured.

[Yuri Velstinski]

Yes, hi, this is Yuri Velstinski. I'm a historian. I was born in Russia, moved to

[Rund Abdelfatah]

the United States and Yuri was immediately suspicious of the Russian government's explanation about who was behind the bombings.

[Yuri Velstinski]

Now, the government claimed that this was done by Chechen terrorists. What was very easy for people to believe because.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Because it wouldn't have been the first time. Just a few years earlier, Chechens declared independence and Russia invaded Chechnya in response in what became the first Chechen war. The result, hundreds of thousands of Chechens were either killed or left displaced.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But after the 1999 bombings take place, it wasn't as easy to blame the Chechens. Because something strange happens in a town

[Yuri Velstinski]

not far from Moscow. Terrorists were arrested when they were trying to put explosives into the basement of one of the apartment houses. And this was immediately broadcasted by all major news stations in Russia. And when militia tried to investigate who those people are, they found out that they are officers of the fsb. And at that moment, the central FSB office in Moscow made a statement that those people were not terrorists. And indeed this was an exercise conducted by the government at the Same time, day 23rd of September, the Russian government started to bomb Grozny and actually started. The second Chechen was the same day.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And at that point Yuri had seen enough, so he hopped on a plane to Russia to start investigating in person.

[Yuri Velstinski]

Well, first of all, not a single person knew about this. I've done this completely alone, in absolute secrecy. And I met many different people. Some of them happened to be former KGB officers.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

He started to suspect that something big was going on, that maybe Yeltsin and Putin saw political opportunity in all this. His theory was that Yeltsin, Putin and the FSB were all conspiring to get Putin elected by manufacturing a war. Because remember, it was going to be really difficult to get Putin elected. And so they needed a way to make him look heroic and presidential. So Yuri thought that it was the FSB who planted the bombs in those apartment buildings, and that Yeltsin and Putin used the fallout as an excuse to start a second war with the Chechens.

[Yuri Velstinski]

And when I had general picture of what's going on, I approached the only person from the FSB whom I knew

[Rund Abdelfatah]

and whom I trusted, Alexander Litvinenko, who was a high ranking FS USB officer, a real insider.

[Yuri Velstinski]

I asked him one question, whether this is possible, that in September of 99 a group of officers would receive this order to blow up buildings and whether they would do this. And Litvinenko told me that of course that, I mean, I should not have any doubt that if this order would be given, then of course, you know, they will do it, because that's what they do.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Quick side note, Litvinenko was already in trouble with the government because a year before he met Yuri, he and some other FSB officers went public with some damaging information about The FSB information that revealed deep corruption. As a result, he was arrested and later released.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And this was all when Putin was still the head of the fsb. See, the security services in Russia were a tight knit group that did not tolerate dissent. And Litvyenko was clearly fed up enough so that he was willing to put himself and his family in danger to help prove what Yuri suspected, that Putin and the FSB were behind the apartment bombings.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

So the stakes were high for Litvinenko. And Yuri knew it.

[Yuri Velstinski]

And at that point I told him, well, would you consider escaping from Russia?

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Levinenko agreed.

[Yuri Velstinski]

So I picked him up when he crossed the border to Georgia. The moment I picked him up from Georgia and knew that he's all right. His family flew from Moscow to Malaga. I met them at Malaga, move them from Malaga to Turkey, move Litvinenko from Georgia to Turkey, and on 1st of November, one month later, he landed in London. And exactly six years later, on 1st of November 2006, he was poisoned.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Radiation poisoning, to be exact. It wasn't the first time the FSB had poison dissidents, even if they were living abroad. Yuri eventually concluded that the FSB had perpetrated more than one terror attack in Russia under Vladimir Putin's direct orders. All of this is detailed in the book he co authored with Litvinenko called Blowing Up Russia.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And we should be clear there are some experts who dispute some of the specifics of Putin's alleged role in the bombings. But what's also true is that Putin has never denied any of the claims in the book. And the fact remains that in the spring of 2000, Putin was elected to his first term as President of Russia.

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

Go hard like Vladimir Putin.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I go hard like Vladimir Putin. Go hard like Vladimir Putin.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

So this is a real song by a rap duo called amg. And they're not who you might think of when you hear the words Russian nationalist. Two expats from Zimbabwe and Kenya who moved to Moscow to study medicine in the early 2000s. And the music video is the best part. It features a bunch of slow mo videos with Putin coming out of SUVs,

[Ramtin Arablouei]

walking down a hallway full of armed

[Rund Abdelfatah]

guards, shaking hands with people.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

There are tanks rolling down the street, things on fire, soldiers in combat.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

It makes Putin look like a real tough guy.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And that perception is everything to Putin. So it's no surprise that when he got real power, he set out to get rid of any doubts he was fit to rule. No one would think of him as rodent, like, anymore.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

The first thing that Vladimir Putin does when he sort of takes power in 1999, 2000, is take control of TV.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Peter Pomerintsev. He's a Russian born British journalist who actually has a pretty unique perspective. He worked as a TV producer in Russia in the 2000s.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

And it was really by creating him into this sort of macho superhero on television and launching a small, very, very deadly war in Chechnya. He went from being the Moth, which apparently was his nickname in the security services, to being kind of, you know, a mixture of Donald Trump and Sly Stallone and all of them rolled into one.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And his assertions of power through stage TV scenes and those over the top pictures we mentioned earlier, well, they began at home.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

So there would be bizarre scenes once a week where he would sort of confront his own government saying, you're doing a really bad job. You know, he would kind of act the gangster boss in these scenes. You know, he would sit at the end of a long table like Lucy Liu in what's it called again, Kill Bill. Don Colleone in Godfather. And he sits at the end and

[Edward Lucas]

Putin sits at the end.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

It's a long table saying, hey, you know, I see you've got problem with, you know, with your ambulances, you know, we can find another governor.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Or I see you've got an unresolved labor dispute. Remember that Story about the pen we opened with, that's basically what Putin was doing there, flexing his muscles.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

And a lot of people say Putin is a Mafia don. I mean, sort of, he knows how to work with the mafia, but it's much more a case of him imitating that behavior because Russians respect gangsters, because gangsters had been, you know, the heroes of the 1990s. They're the ones with the money and the women.

[Andrew Meyer]

It's pretty extraordinary. I mean, to me, just as with my reporter's eye and ear, how he's grown over these years.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Again, Andrew Meyer, from, you know, a

[Andrew Meyer]

middling former lieutenant colonel in the KGB to the man atop the Kremlin for all these years. It's an extraordinary evolution.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And that's exactly the point. Putin's rise was epic. He went from a nobody in the early 1990s to the country's president by the end of the decade. And he has a story that may be embellished in the media. I mean, he controls it, but still, it's astonishing. And it's a story that resonates with a lot of Russians.

[Margarita Simonyan]

I have a phone, it's right here, which I use whenever I have to discuss something that is needed, what is called a secure line.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Margarita Simonyan. She's the editor in chief at rt, which is an English language news channel that's funded by the Russian government, and it's seen by many as just a propaganda machine for the Kremlin. She was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition a couple years ago.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In that clip you just heard, she was talking about a special phone line in her office that connects her directly to the Kremlin. And then she went on to describe why so many Russians revere Putin, to

[Margarita Simonyan]

understand Russia's fascination about Putin. And I think this is something that is completely not being understood in the west and in the mainstream media. And the reason why it's not being understood is because people didn't live here through the 90s. All of the people I knew wanted to leave because we saw our country as something horrible falling apart that will only continue to fall apart. And then came Putin, and he stopped all that. And we saw it in our lives. People around started, first of all, they stopped being hungry. Then they stopped having one pair of shoes for both my sister and me, you know, and my mom. So for three of us, one pair of normal shoes, it all seemed magic. And when I'm saying I want to underline this, it would be an extremely difficult task to find a single person who lived worse before Putin than now. Very difficult.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I'm Rund Abdelfatah, and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The show was produced by Rund and I.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Our team includes Jamie York, Jordana Hochman, Lawrence Wu, Noor Wazwas, yo, yo, yo, Michelle, Lance N're.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And a special thanks to Allison McAdam,

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Jeff Rogers and Jane Gilvin. Original music was produced by the fine folks at Drop Electric.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If you like something you heard or you have an idea, please write [e-mail] or hit us up on Twitter prthroughline.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Hope you enjoyed the show.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

What's the coda again?

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