And from those particular perspectives, as well as generally, I read your book with mounting horror. I also went through your 59 names of Trump-Russia contacts: About half of them are Jewish and about a dozen of them have Israeli citizenship or Israeli connections. So I want to ask you: And what does it mean for democracy, for the rule of law in Israel, for Russian penetration in Israel? I try to explain how this came about, going back to the Jackson-Vanik amendment [which ultimately helped pressure the Soviet Union into allowing mass Jewish emigration some 30 years ago]: How, in a way, the unintentional consequence of that was that Russia opened the doors to the gulag, and many criminals who were not Jewish identified as Jewish as a way of getting out of the Soviet Union.
I also think the prevalence of Jews in the Russian mafia — some of it is exaggerated; some of them, including Sergei Mikhailov, are not really Jewish. He at times identifies as Jewish to get [an Israeli] passport — this is a matter of history. On some level I think some of them are simply a product of the Russian gulag.
And I think Putin has cultivated that, in a way, through his relationship with Chabad [the Hasidic movement]. In the wider context of the Russian efforts you describe to subvert democracy, h ow worried should we be in Israel? You should be worried. I have some Israeli friends. Obviously I was aware in broad terms… [but]I have not dug deep into the Israeli angle.
For example we have virtually no regulation of our real estate industry, and that allows massive money laundering through luxury condos, which is a key part of this. I want to give you a few names from your book: Roman Abramovich just took Israeli citizenship, and instantly became the richest person in Israel. Lev Leviev is a very big wig here. Netanyahu and his wife had dinner a few weeks ago with Mikhail Chernoy. Netanyahu has visited Putin how many times this year? What is shocking from an American perspective is, essentially, it feels like the entire government is for sale, that Trump is becoming in effect another Russian oligarch.
One of the big big issues here is the amount of flight capital. That means you have to launder money on a massive level, and that requires real estate. And it happened that both Abramovich and Leviev have very close ties to Trump. So it becomes a very powerful channel in a way. I thought that seemed crazy, because Trump is the most undisciplined guy in the world to dabble in espionage.
But I later realized, as I did my research, that [the real estate firm] Bayrock was based there. I name all these Russians, and a lot of them are tied up with the Russian mafia, and they were living in Trump Tower — in the home of the man who is now president of the United States! Basically, on some level, the Russian mafia, their base of operations, was in Trump Tower on and off for many many years. He needs to consolidate his power among the oligarchs.
He wants them to report to him. He wants to know where their money is going. And one way of knowing it is, if you look at Bayrock, just think of what material they have, what intelligence they have.
They know that hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian flight capital went to real estate development for various Trump projects. They know that hundreds and hundreds of condos, multi-million dollar condos, are being sold to oligarchs.
Russia under Vladimir Putin
I never thought of Panama as a country where Russians would go, and yet at the Panama Trump Tower, about a third of the people who bought condos there are Russians. The claim is made in your book that Russia has meddled in the internal affairs of 27 countries since Is Israel one of those? Do you think Russia has been meddling in the internal affairs of Israel? It certainly would not surprise me.
My basic rule is following the money. I started way back, actually in the 70s. You have this reference to Putin coming into Syria, this diabolical plan to back Assad. I could never understand why Russia would be hitting civilians in Syria. I cannot say that he deliberately hit all of the civilians for that reason. But after the refugee [outflux] began, it was clear that he began emboldening and fueling right-wing anti-immigrant populist movements all over Europe and in the United States.
For the first time, he also held a meeting with President Obama for two years to discuss the situation in Syria and Ukraine , but in the outcome of the negotiations and despite the persistence of deep contradictions the experts saw a faint hope for a compromise and the warming of relations between the two countries. Russian politician Boris Nemtsov and commentator Kara-Murza define Putinism in Russia as "a one party system , censorship , a puppet parliament , ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy , in particular in relation to business".
Russia's nascent middle class showed few signs of political activism under the regime as Masha Lipman reported: In December , the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman VCIOM categorized the Putin regime as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy " which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism and statism in ideology".
In August , The Economist wrote about the virtual demise of both Russian and Soviet intelligentsia in post-Soviet Russia and noted: In early February , Aleksander Auzan , an economist and board member at a research institute set up by Dmitry Medvedev , said that in the Putin system "there is not a relationship between the authorities and the people through Parliament or through nonprofit organizations or other structures.
The relationship to the people is basically through television. And under the conditions of the crisis, that can no longer work". About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma in late January , when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia.
Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country". It is claimed that Putin models himself on the Tsar Peter the Great , whose reign is reminiscent of a Russian imperial greatness which the Kremlin is keen to promote.
A presidential commission asked Putin in to grant the request of one of Nicholas II 's last surviving relatives to rehabilitate the House of Romanov. An alliance has been forged between the Church and the Kremlin since Putin became President of the Russian Federation. An adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church , Putin has allowed the regaining by the Orthodox Church of much of the importance that the Church had enjoyed in the Russian Empire and has won the enthusiastic support of its religious leaders.
The first politically controversial step made by Putin, then the FSB Director, was restoring in June a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov on the facade of the building, where the KGB had been headquartered. In late , Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma to use the Soviet anthem as Russia's national anthem. The Duma voted in favor. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself".
In September , Putin was quoted as saying: It was heroic and constructive, and it was also tragic. But it is a page that has been turned. It's over, the boat has sailed. Now we need to think about the present and the future of our peoples". In February , Putin said: I think the ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the citizens in the post-Soviet space, the CIS countries, have gained nothing from it. On the contrary, people have been faced with a host of problems.
For example, Nursultan Nazarbayev was categorically opposed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and he said so openly proposing various formulas for preserving the state within the common borders. But, I repeat, all that is in the past. Today we should look at the situation in which we live. One cannot keep looking back and fretting about it: And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people". In August , The Economist claimed: A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was 'an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society'".
Putin has said that Joseph Stalin 's legacy cannot be judged in black and white in In November, , International Herald Tribune stated:. The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governance of the country. In seeking to restore Russia's standing, Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system's horrors.
As a result, throughout Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off-limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Putin is a former KGB agent who headed the agency's successor, the FSB, in the late s. In August , he rejected Vladimir Zhirinovsky 's proposal to return the Imperial flag and anthem.
Shortly after the Beslan terror act in September , Putin enhanced a Kremlin-sponsored program aimed at "improving Russia's image" abroad. One of the major projects of the program was the creation in of Russia Today —a rolling English-language TV news channel providing hour news coverage, modeled on CNN. Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin said in August in the context of the Russia-Georgia conflict: We find it very difficult to squeeze our opinion into the pages of their newspapers". William Dunbar, who was reporting then for Russia Today from Georgia , said he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia on 9 August and had to resign over what he claimed was biased coverage by the outlet.
The public relations efforts notwithstanding, according to an opinion poll released in February by the BBC World Service Russia's image around the world had taken a dramatic dive in In June , Vedomosti reported that the Kremlin had been intensifying its official lobbying activities in the United States since , among other things hiring such companies as Hannaford Enterprises and Ketchum. The power-switching operation between Putin and Medvedev was widely seen as a pro forma action after the constitution did not allow Putin to be reelected for a third term in the presidential election.
Both scholars and the Russian population disagree on whether the "Putin-Medvedev tandemocracy" represented the paramount leadership of Putin, with Medvedev being just a mascot, or if the power was shared.
Putin, power and poison: Russia’s elite FSB spy club - BBC News
In June , the BBC noted that a year after Putin took office, the Russian media had been reflecting on what some saw as a growing personality cult around him: Russia's TV-6 television had shown a vast choice of portraits of Putin on sale at a shopping mall in an underground passage near Moscow's Park of Culture. In October , some scenes at the United Russia congress caused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko , who was allied to Russia within the " Union State ", to recall the Soviet times, complete with the official adoration towards the Communist Party leader and talking to Russia's regional press representatives he said that in Russia Putin's personality cult was being created.
In , the Paris -based AFP reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which despite being required by the constitution to leave office Putin was widely expected to find some way to retain power as his personality cult was gathering pace.
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After Medvedev was elected President in March , United States government -funded Radio Liberty reported that during his eight-year presidency Putin had managed to build a personality cult around himself similar to those created by Soviet leaders. Although there had not been giant statues of Putin put up across the country like those of Stalin before , he had the honor of being the only Russian leader to have had a pop song written about him: According to some scholars, [] [] Russia under Putin has been transformed into an " FSB state".
The former Securitate Lieutenant General and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa said in his interview for conservative FrontPage Magazine in that "former KGB officers are running" Russia and that FSB, which he called "the KGB successor" had the right to monitor the population electronically, control political process, search private property, cooperate with employees of the federal government, create front enterprises , investigate cases and run its own prisons. In , political scientist Julie Anderson wrote: Its closest partners are organized criminals. In a world marked by a globalized economy and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous".
Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky compared the takeover of the Russian state by the siloviki to an imaginary scenario of the Gestapo coming to power in Germany after World War II. He pointed out a fundamental difference between the secret police and ordinary political parties , even totalitarian ones, such as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , i.
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Russia's secret police organizations are wont to employ the so-called active measures and extrajudicial killings , hence they killed Alexander Litvinenko and directed Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in Russia to frighten the civilian population and achieve their political objectives, according to Felstinsky.
Not even fascist Italy , Nazi Germany , or the Soviet Union — all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia — were as top-heavy with intelligence talent. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies.
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It is therefore unsurprising that Putin's Russia has become an assassination -happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture — all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB — are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin's FSB state". One of the leading members of Putin's ruling elite, Nikolai Patrushev , Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation August —May and subsequently Secretary of the Security Council of Russia , was known for his propagation of the idea of "chekists" as "neo-aristocrats" Russian: A report by Andrew C.
Kuchins in November said: During the Soviet period, the Communist Party provided the glue holding the system together. During the s, there was no central organizing institution or ideology. This is a special kind of brotherhood, a mafia-like culture in which only a few can be trusted.
The working culture is secretive and nontransparent". In , Russia's political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky called Putinism "the highest and culminating stage of bandit capitalism in Russia". Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors.
The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. That is literally all they are interested in".
Putin, power and poison: Russia’s elite FSB spy club
Such views were shared by politologist Julie Anderson who said the same person can be a Russian intelligence officer, an organized criminal and a businessman, [] who quoted the former CIA Director James Woolsey as saying: I have often illustrated this point with the following hypothetical: He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover.
He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement". According to the political scientist Dmitri Glinsky, "[t]he idea of Russia, Inc.
In April , Putin himself expressed extreme irritation about the de facto privatization of the customs sphere, where smart officials and entrepreneurs "merged in ecstasy". On 29 February , Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev claimed that Prime Minister Putin's strategy for economic recovery was based on cronyism and was fueling corruption and also said: There are lots of words, but the system doesn't work". Though his name does not appear in any of the records, the data shows how deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage made members of his close circle fabulously wealthy.
Political scientist Irina Pavlova said that chekists were not merely a corporation of people united to expropriate financial assets as they had long-standing political objectives of transforming Moscow to the Third Rome and an ideology of "containing" the United States. Putinism is a form of national socialism without the demonic element of its pioneer ".
According to Dmitri Trenin , Head of the Carnegie Moscow Center , the then Russia was one of the least ideological countries around the world: It is not surprising then that the worldview of Russian elites is focused on financial interests. Their practical deeds in fact declare In capital we trust". Trenin described Russia's elite involved in the process of policy-making as people who largely owned the country. Most of them were not public politicians, but the majority were bureaucratic capitalists.
According to Trenin, "having survived in a ruthless domestic business and political environment, Russian leaders are well adjusted to rough competition and will take that mindset to the world stage". However, Trenin called Russian-Western relations, from Moscow's perspective, "competitive, but not antagonistic". He said that "Russia does not crave world domination, and its leaders do not dream of restoring the Soviet Union. They plan to rebuild Russia as a great power with a global reach, organized as a supercorporation". According to Trenin, Russians "no longer recognize U. He said that "from the Russian perspective, there is no absolute freedom anywhere in the world, no perfect democracy, and no government that does not lie to its people.
In essence, all are equal by virtue of sharing the same imperfections. Some are more powerful than others, however, and that is what really counts". In May , The Guardian wrote: In February , Arnold Beichman , a conservative research fellow at the Hoover Institution , wrote in The Washington Times that "Putinism in the 21st century has become as significant a watchword as Stalinism was in the 20th".
Also in , Lionel Beehner, formerly a senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations , maintained that on Putin's watch nostalgia for Stalin had grown even among young Russians and Russians' neo-Stalinism manifesting itself in several ways. In February , responding to a listener's assertion that "Putin had steered the country to Stalinism" and "all entrepreneurs" were being jailed in Russia, the Russian opposition radio host Yevgeniya Albats said: She went on to say that if citizens of the country would not be critical of what was occurring around them, referring to the "orchestrated, or genuine" calls for the " tsar to stay on", that "could blaze the trail for very ugly things and a very tough regime in our country".
Putin has said that Stalin's legacy cannot be judged in black and white in This 3-part ideology must be understood in the context of the history of Russia and of Putin himself. When Putin began his political career the Soviet Union was unable to effectively collect taxes or provide services, in part, due to inadequate governmental control of the empire.
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