Putin’s People. Catherine Belton

corruption at the top of the Kremlin. He said it had been launched illegally – and the Moscow military prosecutors’ office, called in to investigate, agreed. The Federation Council rejected his resignation again in a second vote, even after the criminal case had been launched. Voloshin, the recently-appointed chief of staff, gave a disastrous speech, stumbling and stammering over his lines as he was heckled by senators. The Kremlin’s loss for a second time was heralded in all the newspapers the next day as signalling the end of Yeltsin’s power. ‘Today, April 21 1999, presidential power in Russia collapsed,’ said one leading governor.[79]

      Primakov and his coalition of the Communist-led Duma and regional governors in the Federation Council – as well as the KGB men propelling the Mabetex case – looked to have the Family on the rails. But at some point, it seems they went too far. Pugachev said he tried to frighten Luzhkov and Primakov into backing down with threats that they’d be charged with sponsoring a state coup, while agreeing with Yumashev that he could offer Luzhkov the prime ministership just in case.[80] But Pugachev’s manoeuvrings would never have amounted to anything had not Yeltsin returned to the political scene and roared.

      For months Yeltsin had been in and out of hospital, further weakening his position in relation to Primakov, who in his absence was seen to have taken over the reins of power. But by April he’d gathered his strength for a final showdown. Just three days before the Duma was scheduled to begin impeachment hearings, Yeltsin, with an animal-like instinct for survival and a penchant for dramatic political gambits, decided it was time to act. He called Primakov to the Kremlin and told him he was fired. He was to be replaced by Sergei Stepashin, the interior minister, who’d been a close Yeltsin ally since the early days of the democratic movement and had served as one of the earliest heads of the FSB. Though the media had long speculated that Yeltsin might make such a move, it still came as a shock. Yeltsin had waited till the final moment. ‘He understood that if he waited three more days it could be too late,’ said Pugachev.[81] ‘The Duma was absolutely unprepared,’ said Yumashev. ‘Many of our colleagues in the Kremlin considered it was suicide, that we would turn the Duma even more against us. But in fact the opposite happened. We showed all the strength of Yeltsin. He was absolutely calmly firing such a powerful force as Primakov, and the Duma was cowed by this show of strength.’[82] There was nothing Primakov could do, and his dismissal took the wind out of the Duma’s sails.[83] Amid fears that Yeltsin could dissolve parliament, the impeachment vote collapsed just days later.

      The KGB’s Plan A had failed. ‘Primakov should have been president in this scheme,’ sighed Turover. ‘During the second Federation Council vote on Skuratov, he was meant to stand up and say, “The president is a thief.” He was meant to present the evidence. It would have been enough. The impeachment hearings had already been scheduled. It would have been enough for him to stand up and say, “I have the legitimate power to end all this.” He had all the proof. But he didn’t have the balls. At the last moment, he lost his nerve.’[84]

      Though Skuratov insisted that he had never been playing a political game, that he was just seeking to bring an end to corrupt dealings in the Kremlin, he also understood all too well that Primakov could have finished Yeltsin’s rule: ‘There were two centres of power then. On the one hand there was the legislative power – the Federation Council and the government of Russia, led by Primakov and the Moscow mayor’s office. And then there was Yeltsin at the top of power, and the Family on the other side. And of course, if the Federation Council and Primakov had agreed and put on the pressure, the Family would have crawled away. Everyone would have supported Primakov. The secret services would have supported him. The Family would have scuttled away like cockroaches. And Yeltsin, due to health reasons, would have transferred the presidential powers to Primakov, and the country would have been different. But Primakov … he is a very careful person. Perhaps he was not decisive enough. He did not fight for the country to the end.’[85]

       Plan B

      Yevgeny Primakov had always been a man of consensus, a consummate diplomat who did not like to rock the boat. Already in his seventieth year, he stepped for a while into the shadows, appearing to concede a temporary defeat. Yeltsin’s Kremlin, it seemed, had won breathing space.

      But if Primakov had been the KGB’s Plan A to take back power, another opportunity was lying in wait. Whether by coincidence or by design, a combination of legal threats, fears, rivalries and pure political calculation came together, and led to the takeover of Russia by a far more ruthless generation of KGB men. The Family had been stuck in the mindset that Primakov could only be replaced by someone from the security services. ‘After Primakov, it was not possible to appoint a liberal,’ said Yumashev. ‘It had to be someone that the Duma – and society – would see as a strong figure, like Stepashin, who was a general.’

      But Sergei Stepashin was probably the most liberal of all the leaders of the Russian security services – he’d even joined the progressive Yabloko Duma political party. Despite a background serving in the interior ministry in Soviet times, he was a historian by training, and had long been close to Yeltsin. They’d been working together ever since Yeltsin entrusted him to lead a federal investigation into the KGB’s role in the failed August coup. Yet for Yumashev and Pugachev, Stepashin had never been more than an interim candidate. Stepashin, Pugachev said, was vyaly – the Russian word for weak. He did not believe Stepashin was decisive enough to take the actions necessary to protect them: ‘It seemed to me he was someone who would make compromises with the Communists.’[86] Yumashev said that he too began to entertain doubts about Stepashin. They were jealous of Stepashin’s close relationship with Anatoly Chubais, the former Kremlin chief of staff and privatisation tsar who’d long been their rival for Yeltsin’s affections. Until late June, part of the Yeltsin Family had been toying with the idea of another candidate, Nikolai Aksyonenko, the railways minister, who they believed would more strongly defend their interests. But Yeltsin soon took a strong dislike to him.[87]

      In the background, said Pugachev, he’d long been advancing his own candidate, the man he believed to be the safest, most loyal pair of hands. He was backing Vladimir Putin, who he’d first seen as a potential successor when he handled the tape of Skuratov with the prostitutes so coolly. They’d first met briefly in St Petersburg in the early nineties, and had got to know each other better when Putin was appointed as Borodin’s deputy in the Kremlin property department. There, they’d worked together every day, said Pugachev. Pugachev’s Mezhprombank was involved in raising funds for the foreign property department Putin headed (though Pugachev declined to specify exactly what the bank did).[88] From his office in a small room of the former Central Committee’s headquarters on Old Square, Putin was tasked with rooting through the vast foreign holdings Russia had inherited on the Soviet Union’s collapse. There were the palatial buildings of the special trade representative offices through which the lifeblood of the USSR’s export-based economy had run. There were the embassies and the strategic military bases, the arms depots and the secret safe houses of the KGB. Many of these holdings had been looted in the chaos of the collapse by the KGB and organised crime. They were meant to be on the balance sheet of the ministry of foreign affairs, but no accounting had ever been done. Putin’s job was to bring these properties back onto the books, but it’s not clear if he ever succeeded in doing so. The foreign property department was at the heart of the strategic interests of the KGB, and while Pugachev claimed that Putin had no inkling of the slush-fund machinations through Mabetex, or MES, the oil trader granted billions of dollars in export deals, it’s far from clear whether that could have been the case.

      They’d stayed close as Putin continued his dizzying rise through the Kremlin, first as head of the Control Department, and then when he was anointed head of the FSB in July 1998. All the while, said Pugachev, Putin had been his protégé. His charm lay in the fact that he knew him as someone he could give orders to: ‘He was as obedient as a dog.’[89]

      Initially, Yumashev claimed, he’d ‘had no idea about Putin’ as a candidate, and had pushed Aksyonenko instead.[90] But he had always been aware of Putin’s abilities. As Kremlin chief of staff, he’d overseen and approved each of the key moments of Putin’s rise, and they’d forged a close relationship. By March 1997 Putin was a deputy head of the Kremlin administration.