Pugachev also claims to have played a significant role in getting Putin into the Kremlin political structure, but both Lynch and Sakwa state in their respective biographies of Putin that liberal economist Alexei Kudrin played the major role in facilitating Putin's move into the Kremlin power structure. Neither biographer mentions Pugachev as being influential in this way.
Another claim made by Pugachev in the book stood out to this writer as false. Pugachev admitted that he met Putin only briefly during the early 1990s in St. Petersburg and got to know him better around June of 1996 when Putin started working in the property department of the Kremlin. By his own account, Pugachev really took note of Putin when he held a press briefing in 1999 after a sex tape was released showing then-prosecutor general Yury Skuratov in a hotel room with prostitutes. It was at this point that Pugachev says he decided he should support Putin to become president (p. 137). Pugachev claims that he "introduced Putin to the Church" (p. 258) and encouraged Putin to follow Orthodoxy but Putin used it cynically. This claim is contradicted by U.S. diplomat John Evans, who served as Consul General in St. Petersburg from 1994-1997 and saw Putin attending church services during this time when he was deputy mayor - before Pugachev claims to have had any meaningful relationship with Putin. Evans confirmed in a personal communication that he saw Putin at public services for Easter in April of 1996, "It was entirely mainstream to attend church in those days."
It should also be noted that several of Pugachev's claims are undermined by former Yeltsin chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev, who is also quoted frequently in the book. It's unclear if a discerning reader is supposed to ultimately believe Pugachev or just be plain confused about why he's being given such a platform to bang on about KGB plots and everyone else's corruption.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another '90s-era oligarch who ran Yukos Oil, is also a significant named source. He too fled into the open arms of the west, playing the victim card, although he is anything but. At the time of Khodorkovsky's arrest at Novosibirsk Airport in October 2003, he had succeeded in buying a huge number of votes in the Duma four weeks prior to elections. Having control of Russia's legislature would have allowed him to alter laws whereby he could effectively seize control of Russian oil and gas deposits and pipelines. Furthermore, he could have legislation passed that would position him for the Russian presidency.
Additionally, Khodorkovsky was colluding with powerful players in the United States to sell a stake ranging from 25 to 40 percent in Yukos to ExxonMobil and/or Chevron, giving the United States major influence over decisions relating to Russian fossil-fuel resources, the engine of the country's economic growth and recovery. The final details of the sale were set to be ironed out when Putin intervened.
Belton doesn't mention Khodorkovsky's attempt to buy his way into political power and characterizes his desire to sell a major stake of Yukos to western oil companies as benign. While admitting that Khodorkovsky is not an angel, Belton speaks admiringly of him most of the time.
Sergei Kolesnikov, whose big claim to fame was a 2010 accusation that Putin was having an ostentatious palace on the Black Sea coast built for him, is a major source for the chapter on Bank Rossiya and various financial schemes meant to implicate Putin. He alleges that Bank Rossiya had been used as a source of corrupt funding by KGB operatives in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s and has since served as a "slush fund" for Putin (p. 310).
Kolesnikov admits there are no documents or papers to show Putin's financial connection to Bank Rossiya or any of the shady ventures he's accusing him of because "Putin was a person who was taught specially not to leave any trace" (p. 320). Thus, Putin's KGB background is a convenient excuse and explanation for everything, including lack of evidence to support accusations of wrongdoing against him.
Interestingly, Kolesnikov told Masha Gessen in a 2011 interview that he thought Russia would either collapse or experience a revolution in the near future. It's 2020 and presumably Kolesnikov is still waiting around for his prediction to come true.
Former KGB officer, Yury Shvets, is a source for a lot of Belton's KGB-organized crime money-laundering allegations in the early chapters. He also claims Trump had been recruited - perhaps unwittingly - by the KGB as early as 1987 (p. 477). Shvets also worked with Alexander Litvinenko and served as a major source for Luke Harding's reporting on the Litvinenko-poisoning saga. He has a habit of making dramatic claims that garner media attention but are never really substantiated.
Logical Inconsistencies and Credibility Gaps
In the latter days of the Cold War, Belton admits that the KGB was actively seeking to end the decades-long standoff with the west, but we're supposed to believe that the same KGB players simultaneously devised a plot to destroy the west in perpetuity because they refused to relinquish their Cold War hatred of the west. This incongruity is never explained.
In chapters 4-5, Belton leaves the reader with another complete head-scratcher by stating that getting Yevgeny Primakov to rule Russia after Yeltsin was the original Plan A for these KGB heavies. But later, we're supposed to believe that they executed a false-flag attack via the Moscow apartment bombings in order to advance Putin over his two main competitors for the presidency, one of whom would have admittedly been... Primakov.
Another logical inconsistency involves how certain actions taken by Putin would seem to reveal his character and several of these revelations are anathema to the whole premise that Putin has an irredeemable and sinister KGB mentality. Yumashev claims to have trusted Putin due to his defense of Sobchak in November 1997, which required him - at great personal and professional risk - to spirit Sobchak out of the country to avoid arrest by the security services who'd fabricated a case against him in order to undermine his re-election campaign as St. Petersburg mayor (p. 139). Another incident relayed by Yumashev that instilled trust in Putin involved Putin personally warning him in late 1998 that Primakov had asked him to wiretap Duma opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky, which Putin would not do (p. 140). How do these examples of Putin's refusal to goosestep with certain plans by members of the security services jibe with the assertion that Putin was part of a long-term KGB plot to take power and undermine established democracy everywhere?
Distortions and Lies of Omission
Belton's tome is also riddled with distortions and significant omissions. For example, the "democratic freedoms" of the Yeltsin era are ballyhooed throughout the book, but Belton never mentions the standoff between Yeltsin and the Duma in 1993 that led to the killing of hundreds, the wounding of hundreds more and destruction of the parliament building. Yeltsin's orders for Russian troops to fire on their own people and destroy the building that housed another branch of government doesn't sound like something that should happen in a free and democratic country.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
