The Daily - The Spy Who Provoked Putin

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

The attack was brazen and exotic, but the target was a low-level former spy. Why did Russia risk so much in the Sergei Skripal case? Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who recently returned from covering this story in Moscow. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. The attack was brazen and exotic. But the target was a low-level spy living in retirement. Why Russia may have risked so much to try to assassinate Sergei Skripal. It's Wednesday, September 12th. On March 4th, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, was found on a park bench,

foaming at the mouth. His daughter Yulia was slumped next to him. The nerve agent used to attack the former double agent and his daughter was developed decades ago in the Soviet Union. Now, investigators have been dealing with this for more than a week, and yet they still don't have a lot of answers as to why a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned and how exactly it happened. Why would Russia potentially target Skripal now after all these years? Why would he be targeted now? Why did they attack these two when they did? Why target Sergei Skripal? And if the attack on Sergei Skripal did come from Russia, why?

Ever since Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in the center of a small English town, we've been struggling with the question of why. Why was this small-time spy who was pardoned long ago, who committed his crimes long ago, targeted with a highly exotic substance that appears to lead straight back to Russia? Michael Schwartz recently returned from reporting in Moscow. What we found as we began pulling back the layers of his life is that this goes back

to the waning days of the Soviet Union and what came afterwards. to the waning days of the Soviet Union and what came afterwards. The red flag came down over the Kremlin tonight as President Gorbachev resigned and brought to an end seven decades of communist rule in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union at this time was essentially dissolving. It was falling in on itself. And Russia had this sprawling network of intelligence agents posted all around the world who suddenly found that they could no longer contact Moscow. The instructions weren't getting through. Their work was suddenly meaningless.

Their salaries began to dry up. And all of a sudden, these people who had been accustomed to living under this rigid system of control from Moscow, where Moscow dictated everything. All of a sudden, they found that Moscow was absent. Moscow was silent. And two of the spies that were trying to come to terms with the new rules of this period were Sergei Skripal, a mid-career officer with the Soviet Military Intelligence Agency, and Vladimir Putin, who was a young KGB operative based in East Germany. Skripal was a colonel in the Russian Military Intelligence Agency

based undercover in Madrid at the Russian embassy as a military attache. And is he important? I wouldn't call him incredibly important. He was a functionary in this intelligence apparatus that the Soviet Union and then Russia had established around the world. And how does Skripal respond to this sudden change in his country's status, the fall of the old Soviet Union? We don't have a lot of details about his mindset during this time, but what we do know is that he immediately sets out to try and make money. He engages in a number of business ventures, and eventually he entertains an offer to become a spy for the British, selling Russia's secrets to the British foreign intelligence agency MI6. So essentially to betray Russia. Correct.

And what motivates him to do that? As best we can tell, the motivation primarily is money. And you have to understand the context of this time. The Soviet Union collapsed. Russia is run by a drunk president surrounded by a gaggle of oligarchs who have sapped up the nation's resources and industries and are enriching themselves to an obscene degree.

And you have intelligence officers who are selling secrets. This is not something that's terribly uncommon at this time. Sounds like a free-for-all. It is a total free-for-all, and Skripal wants a piece of this. Hmm.

for all, and Skripal wants a piece of this. Putin does exactly the opposite. Putin is a mid-career KGB officer in Dresden. He watches as the Berlin Wall falls. The East German government said tonight they were going to make more openings in the wall, at least a dozen more, put bulldozers right through the wall so that more people could cross to the West. He watches as the East German government collapses and he watches as all of the contacts and colleagues he made

while working in East Germany are rounded up. Some of them are arrested. Many of them are exposed. And all the work that he devoted himself to for his entire career suddenly goes up in smoke. He goes back to Russia. He is not being paid. He has very little to show for his career.

But the lesson he took from this era is that traitors are what, in large part, were responsible for the collapse of his country. His country was betrayed by its closest allies. His country was betrayed by its enemy, the West, was embarrassed. And he set about gathering together the strands of the Soviet Union and making a slow rise to power. And at first, he does this in St. Petersburg, where he becomes a deputy for the governor of St. Petersburg. And then Vladimir Putin took the oath of office on Sunday

and became Russia's second democratically elected president. Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia in 2000 and immediately begins to consolidate control. And that is the point in which he takes his vengeance on people like Skripal for betraying their country at its weakest. Many are hoping Putin will meet his promise of fighting crime and corruption. He goes after everyone he thinks has sold Russia out during this time. And there's a special attention paid to traitors.

Russian spies are arrested. They're put on trial. By the Russian government. By the Russian government. And this is also a time that corresponds are arrested, they're put on trial. By the Russian government. By the Russian government. And this is also a time that corresponds with a period when Skripal is probably working most closely with British intelligence to sell off Russian secrets.

And if I'm Skripal and I'm watching Putin begin to so aggressively go after spies who have done what Skripal did, which is betray Russia, I'm getting very nervous. I think that's right. It would have been impossible for him not to know that the mood in the country had changed, that this line of work had become increasingly dangerous for him. So what happens to Skripal? increasingly dangerous for him. So what happens to Skripal?

In 2004, agents with the Federal Security Service counterintelligence unit arrest Skripal. He's put into a van and brought to Moscow's Lefortovo prison, which for years had been the prison in central Moscow where spies were held. The military court has sentenced Skripal to confession of guilt. He's put on trial and convicted of espionage and sentenced to 13 years. Hmm. of espionage and sentenced to 13 years. So basically, he's discovered.

He's found out. Given Putin's outspoken disgust for spies who betray Russia, I have to think that Skripal's life is basically over now. At this point, yes, his arrest and conviction mark the beginning of the slow disintegration of Skripal's family. Skripal is sent to a prison colony far from Moscow. His wife contracts uterine cancer and begins to die. His son quits his job, becomes an alcoholic, and slowly drinks himself to death. And everything that Skripal knew, everything that gave him happiness, suddenly was lost to him.

And then suddenly, something unexpected happened. One day in July 2010, guards came to his cell and told him he was being released. Hmm. Why? Vladimir Putin had changed. Striding into the opulence of the Grand Kremlin Palace, Dmitry Medvedev followed an age-old ritual reborn under Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin had been in power for two terms as president, and constitutionally he had to step down.

He worked out this scheme whereby he traded places with one of his loyal deputies, a man by the name of Dmitry Medvedev. Putin became prime minister and Medvedev became president. But Putin's hand-picked successor showed no sign of being anything but his own man. Medvedev set about reforming the relationship with the West. We have done a lot to build confidence between our countries. We have made steps aimed at establishing a more firm construction of our relations. Barack Obama was president, and he developed a kind of construction of our relations. Barack Obama was president,

and he developed a kind of rapport with Barack Obama. Our countries are more secure and the world is safer when the United States and Russia get on well together. And the Americans had arrested 10 undercover Russian agents who had been operating in the United States for about 10 years. Now we move on to a story of the American suburbs and international intrigue. And both sides, the Obama administration and President Medvedev, decided they wanted to quickly resolve this issue.

And so what they did was they negotiated a swap. The biggest spy swap since the end of the Cold War appears to have taken place in Vienna. Ten people who pleaded guilty of spying for Russia were deported from New York last night. These ten Russian undercover agents would be sent back to Russia in exchange for four inmates who had been arrested for spying against Russia. A short time ago, two planes involved in the swap, one Russian, one American, parked side by side on the tarmac at Vienna airport for about an hour and a half as vehicles shuttled between them. And after his release, Kripal was put onto a U.S. chartered plane on his way to London, toasting his freedom with champagne and whiskey with American agents. He was taken to London and then resettled in a small English town called Salisbury. How does Putin feel about this swap and about people like Skripal

being allowed to leave Russia despite what they've done? Putin is clearly livid about it. He's livid about people who had betrayed the country were getting a free pass. And he envisions this very, very dark future for them. He says in a press conference, quote, they'll have to hide their whole lives with no ability to speak with other people, with their loved ones.

— They'll have to hide their whole lives with no ability to speak with other people, with their loved ones. A person who chooses this fate will regret it a thousand times. You can see it in his facial expressions. His lip is curled and he's angry about this. Does that quote from Putin, Michael, mean that a person like Sergei Skripal, even though he's now technically free, he's been swapped,

does it basically mean that he's now a marked man by Putin's Russia, destined to be hunted down eventually? Or do the rules of a spy swap mean that somehow Skripal is kind of protected from Russia? Perhaps there's like an understanding about all that. Until March 4th, 2018, it was generally accepted that if a spy had been swapped, that was the end of it. The person had been freed, they paid their debt, and these spies were to go off into their retirement, grow vegetables, grill sausages,

and live a quiet life without fear of reprisal. But on March 2nd, two assassins were sent from Moscow to London, where at some point they acquired a bottle of perfume loaded with a military-grade nerve agent. They spent a day staking out Skripal's house in Salisbury and at an appointed time on March 4th went to Sergei Skripal's home and smeared the doorknob outside of his house with this military-grade nerve agent. And the next thing that we know is that witnesses reported seeing two figures slumped on a bench, foaming at the mouth, twitching in the center of historic Salisbury.

And what British authorities believe happened is that at some point that day, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who was there visiting, had touched the doorknob and been exposed to this nerve agent. And it took its effect and nearly killed them if it weren't for the quick actions of British paramedics and medical officials who quickly identified that they were suffering the effects of a nerve agent. identify that they were suffering the effects of a nerve agent. There was a tragic continuation to this story, though. Long after British authorities had declared that all trace of this substance had been cleaned up, a man by the name of Charlie Rowley picked up a perfume bottle that he recovered in some kind of a dumpster, brought it home to his girlfriend,

Dawn Sturgis, and presented it to her as a gift. She then sprayed this substance onto her wrist, and this turned out to be the receptacle that the nerve agent was carried in. Both Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgis became extremely ill, and Don later died from the exposure. And how does the British government respond to this? The United Kingdom will now expel 23 Russian diplomats who have been identified as undeclared intelligence officers. They have just one week to leave. The British government responds by expelling about two dozen Russian diplomats, and by this we mean probably intelligence officers, at least some. But it goes further than that.

France, Germany, Poland, and a host of other EU countries are taking similar action, with a total of 33 Russian diplomats expelled from European Union member states. One by one, the countries of Europe announced that they too were going to expel Russian diplomats in response to this. Ukraine, which is not an EU member, is also taking action. Australia is set to expel two Russian diplomats. Well, the United States is to expel some 60 Russian diplomats. The United States expels 60 diplomats at one time, which is an enormous number.

It is the largest expulsion of diplomats in American history. It also imposes sanctions on the Russian government. So the cost of this attack is incredibly high for Russia. high for Rush Hill. Michael, why take that risk for just one person, one former spy, who from everything you're describing, you know, is a retiree essentially? Yeah, why risk it? It's what wee, essentially. Yeah, why risk it? That's what we've been wrestling with. Why risk the backlash from the world by carrying out something so brazen?

And if Putin is behind this, it just speaks to the ingrained loathing that he has for these traitors, that he's willing to risk all that this costs to go after them. And to what end? There's been speculation, we don't know this for sure, but a message to people of shaky loyalty, his own officers who may be contemplating a similar betrayal, a warning to the West that we can still do what we want.

We can march into your country with this very dangerous substance and carry out an assassination operation against an enemy, and there's nothing you can do about it. If the idea is to send a message, Michael, does Putin's government, in a sense, want the world to know that it carried

out this attack? The more I think about it, Russia could have just as easily sent two men in to kill Skripal with a knife or a gun. Instead, they chose a military-grade nerve agent that inevitably was traced back to the country that made it. Correct. Putin is not a maniac. He understands the limits of his country's power, but he is always probing for ways to project the power that his country has to its maximum effect. Like hacking the U.S. election, which must be another example of this. That's very much an example of this. These are all things that the Russian government under Putin does to project the country's power. Each time he does this, whether it be the election meddling in 2016, whether it be the attack on Sergei Skripal, he learns a little bit more about what the limits are. And he learns what costs are acceptable and what are unacceptable.

You know, we don't know to what extent the sanctions imposed following the election meddling constitute an unacceptable cost for him. And we, it's yet to be seen whether the costs for poisoning Skripal were significant enough to prevent the Russian state, if it was involved in this, from doing something like that in the future. I think in many ways, we've learned that Putin is continuing along the same track that he was on when we met him. The aggrieved mid-career spy fended at Russia's debasement and trying to restore Russia's power and restore a sense of respect in the world for both himself and his country.

I guess at almost any cost. At almost any cost. Michael, thank you very much. You're welcome. British authorities have charged two Russian intelligence officers with the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal. In a speech to Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May said that the suspect's ties to the country's military intelligence unit,

known as the GRU, suggest that the operation had been approved by the highest levels of Russian government. So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, an American-backed military coalition began a final assault on the last territory under ISIS control,

in the region where the terror group was born. The invasion of Hajin in eastern Syria marked the final chapter in a four-year campaign to oust the Islamic State from the land that it seized in Syria and Iraq in 2014, and where it had declared a caliphate from which ISIS had hoped it would take over the world. And... It looks to me and it looks to all of a lot of very talented people that do this for a living, like this is going to be a storm that's going to be a very large one, far larger than we've seen in

perhaps decades. On Tuesday, President Trump warned that Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 storm headed for Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, could be the most dangerous storm to hit those states in more than 25 years. Things can change, but we doubt they will at this stage. It's a pretty late stage. We doubt they're going to be very, very far off course. The governors of all three states have ordered the evacuation of more than one million residents

from coastal areas, fearing that the storm will produce record-setting storm surges and catastrophic flooding. We are in a very deadly and important game of chess with Hurricane Florence. And what we are doing is staying one step ahead. The storm is expected to make landfall on Thursday night. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.