The Daily - Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2018

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, facing no real challenger, has been elected to a fourth term, drawing support from more than three-quarters of voters. How is the most powerful man in Russia staying that way? Guest: Steven Lee Myers, a former Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times who covered Mr. Putin’s rise to power and who is the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” 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, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been elected to a fourth term with no real challenger and with support from more than three-quarters of Russian voters. How the most powerful man in Russia holds on to power. It's Tuesday, March 20th. From ABC, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Reporting tonight from Berlin.

From the Berlin Wall specifically. Take a look at them. They've been there since last night. So it's the fall of 1989 and Europe is still divided in the Cold War, East and West. Occasionally they shout, Die Mauer muss weg, the wall must go. But that's about to end. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. They're bringing down the wall, piece by piece, officials and ordinary citizens. And in November, the Berlin Wall comes down. Tonight, citizens from both Germanies are singing and dancing on the wall itself.

But some of the celebrants appear to have gone too far. East Germany, East Germany, East Germany! As the euphoria spread, the protest spread with it. Tonight, the people had their revenge. The people in East Germany were protesting the lack of freedom. They wanted to have what the West had, personal freedom. It was economic freedom. East Germany was such a stifling place.

As they gained momentum, they sort of gained confidence. And on the night of December 5th, almost a month after the wall comes down, a group of people decided that they would turn their attention to the KGB. You know, they were throwing off this Soviet-imposed system and saw the KGB as part of the enforcement. Stephen Lehmayers covered Putin's rise as Moscow bureau chief for The Times. And it was at this moment that Vladimir Putin was serving as an officer in KGB, East Germany, for five years.

And he watched all of this unfold. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside of this villa where Putin had worked. And Putin was there. He was the deputy at the time. And he didn't know what to do. At that point, I think there were four officers there with him. They probably would have been easily overwhelmed. And he couldn't find his boss. He didn't have orders. He kept calling for reinforcements to ask for direction what to do,

how to stop these protests, whether to stop these protests. And the officer on the phone told Putin that Moscow was silent. And it was a devastating moment for Putin because he felt like the country that he served had no answer. It was a sign of weakness for him, that they were unable to act at this moment of great danger. And the protesters were outside his building at this point, and he had to decide what to do. And without orders, he went out and he bluffed. He said that he was an officer of the Soviet Union

and that this was a diplomatic compound and that if they tried to enter, the guards would open fire. And that was persuasive to the crowd. So the bluff worked? It did. And for Putin, it was a really important moment in life. The takeaway for Putin, I think, has been that you have to show strength and you have to show resolve. Even if there's not necessarily something to back that up, the perception of strength is as important as the strength itself. How do you think the young Vladimir Putin got this idea? Where does his story start?

He was born in 1952 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. He lived in a communal apartment with a bathroom down the hall. It was infested with rats. But nonetheless, he grew up with a very romantic notion of the Soviet Union as a great power. The Second World War broke out in 1939. And in 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. At that point, the city was still very much like the country, rebuilding from the devastation of the war. The destruction was enormous. But the war gave people a renewed spirit of patriotism and unity. They had defeated Nazi Germany, so for many people in the Soviet Union, it became a great source of pride. When peace came, the Soviet Union emerged as the strongest nation in Europe.

And then there was a sense of rejuvenation, I think, that the Soviet Union was beginning to achieve its promises. We in the West had expected that the United States would be the first to launch a satellite. Well, now the Russians have done it. They've done it first, and they've done it with complete success. It put a satellite in space and then a man in space. As a teenager, there was a movie that came out called The Sword and the Shield, and he was absolutely enchanted by this movie. It was a story of an agent from the Soviet Union who spoke German and who managed to infiltrate the Nazi army.

And Putin was so enchanted with this, as he tells the story, that he went immediately the next day to try to volunteer for the KGB. That was the kind of romantic young man he was. And they, of course, didn't take him. They don't accept walk-ons in the KGB. But nonetheless, I think the seed was planted, and he went off to university. And while he was in university, he was then approached by the KGB, which is how it works. And he signed up. In 1983, he's given a chance to go to the KGB finishing school that prepared agents to go abroad.

And instead of getting a dream assignment to West Germany or Austria or Switzerland, he ends up in East Germany in Dresden, a kind of outpost. So not a glamorous position. Yeah. It's happened. It's official. Germany is now one country of 80 million people. You know, when the East Germany fell and the Soviet Union began to pull out its agents like him. Unlike the Western allies who leave to a fanfare next week, the departure of the Russian troops will be low key.

They may have liberated Berlin from the Nazis, but for 50 years they also surrounded the city with communism. When Putin comes home, there's a sense of embarrassment. The country is in chaos. Putin can't really find much of a job because lots of KGB officers were coming home all of a sudden from all over the world. And he has to move back with his wife and now two daughters into the apartment of his parents. He's 37 years old, and this country that he believes in, that he served as an officer of, is in complete chaos. So the image Putin had of his country is gone. The country now kind of has its tail between its legs.

The Soviet ideology that he had so bought into seems dead at this point. Yeah, that's right. St. Petersburg, a city once famous for its 18th century elegance and culture, is now a victim of its recent past and the transition to a new order. The Soviet communist experiment is failing at this point.

Today, it's the scene for some of the most disturbing social problems to be found in Russia. And what happens is Boris Yeltsin emerges as the first president of a new Russia. It's a sight that both excites and frightens those in the Soviet Union. For the first time in 70 years, the Soviet leadership was allowing multi-candidate elections for a powerful body. And Sets about transforming it into a democratic and capitalist country. And he did so in what is sometimes referred to as shock therapy. We need millions of property owners and not just a few millionaires.

All Russian citizens, workers, pensioners, and small children will be given privatization vouchers worth 10,000 rubles. What you had is this very abrupt transition from an economy where everything was planned for you, even where you worked, to one where you were on your own, and you had to find your own job, and you had to find your own ways to get money, and for a lot of people it was a tremendously difficult transition. As the economic crisis deepens, so the number of the destitute and desperate pouring into the capital has steadily increased. A lot of people, frankly, starved. Hundreds of thousands more are fleeing from the ethnic unrest in various former Soviet republics. Many arrive at the train stations and never leave. People who had connections, you know, they were able to thrive in this system.

And so from this, you had the so-called oligarchs who amassed these tremendous fortunes by taking over state enterprises, especially oil and minerals and things like that. But many others suffered through this transition. It was a very difficult time in the 90s. It was a very violent time. And, you know, Boris Yeltsin, who was in his heart a Democrat and wanted to make this transition, was also a weak leader in many ways.

And he was overwhelmed by the influence of these oligarchs. And himself was known for heavy drinking and was ill as well. And, you know, it made him a very ineffectual leader, especially towards the end of the 90s. So where is Putin in all of this? So when Putin comes back from East Germany, he eventually leaves the KGB. He joins the democratic government and rises through the ranks there. And in 96, he moves to Moscow and begins to make his way into and up the Yeltsin presidential administration.

Eventually, he gets a job because of his background in the KGB, leading the new successor agency of the KGB, which is called the Federal Security Service, the FSB. And Putin takes over this job at a time when Yeltsin's facing great political peril. There's an investigation into corruption that's inching closer and closer to him and his family. And then one night, late at night on TV, a video appears, and it shows the investigator

who is leading the charge against Yeltsin having sex with a woman who's not his wife. By all accounts, the source of the tape was Vladimir Putin, and it helps bring down the chief investigator, and it was seen by Yeltsin as a tremendous act of loyalty. So what happens to Putin after that? It's not long after this that Yeltsin reshuffles his government again, and this time he turns to Putin to be his new prime minister.

Boris Yeltsin overnight told the Russian people he's resigning and that Mr. Putin, the prime minister, has all the powers. Today, on New Year's Eve, I, like you, with my family and friends, was going to hear the words of the Russian president, Boris Nikolayevich. And what happens when Putin gets into office as president? I think Putin understood early on that the most important thing he could do was create a new narrative for people to feel pride again in the country. the country. The first order of business is to reassert the control of the state, the power and authority

of the government. And then he also imposed control over the media. TV channel about voting on the day of the election of the President of Russia. He saw from the very beginning that especially television was important to not only his own power, projecting this image of himself as a strong leader, but also of the country. And it was very powerful. And from this, you saw the creation of this image of Putin as the young, fit president doing judo, riding horseback, diving and flying, in some ways crude propaganda. But it was very powerful. So that image we all have of Putin shirtless, barrel-chested on a horse, that was very much by design, a projection of strength and pride. Yeah. People wanted a savior who could let them feel good again about their country and

what they stood for and what they believed in. The amazing thing is that this worked. After years of the embarrassments of Yeltsin and the chaos of the 90s, people were really attracted to this new leader. People wrote songs about him. There was one pop hit called Такова Как Путин, A Man Like Putin, who would be a good boyfriend, a good husband, you know, somebody who didn't beat her, somebody who didn't drink. And it was genuine, I think. Some of this, of course, is generated by loyalists and the media, but I think people really responded

positively to this new image of Russia embodied by Putin himself. So he succeeded in reshaping the narrative inside of Russia by projecting this image of a strong man and leader. And he begins to do the same thing on the international stage. Putin has increasingly put himself at odds with the international community, particularly the United States, by pushing the limits of what he can get away with. You saw that when he annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Violence in eastern Ukraine today as pro-Russia demonstrators stormed the Ukrainian security building. Fears are now growing for a large-scale Russian invasion. When he intervened in Syria a year later.

Russia's deployment of troops and equipment outside its own borders now in Syria is the largest since the end of the Cold War. The United States and Russia are on opposite sides of Syria's war, make no mistake. And then the biggest example came with the American election in 2016. Did Russia meddle in the 2016 elections? Russia did meddle in the election. That's according to top officials in the CIA, FBI, and NSA. It is an unprecedented response to Russia's suspected cyber attack on our country. Today, President Obama made good on that promise to retaliate,

targeting Russia's top intelligence agencies with sanctions. Sanctions on Russia would come in response to Russian meddling in the election. And what is he signaling, Putin, in this latest and arguably biggest provocation by meddling in the U.S. elections? I think he's signaling that he can act wherever he wants, including in the United States, with impunity. Is this also about portraying the West as an adversary to Russians? I think it's all about portraying the West as an adversary. The extent that Putin can create the image for Russian people of an enemy at the gates, a sense of being under siege, it emboldens him, it builds his support. And even

when the United States reacts with more sanctions or more criticism, it just reinforces the idea. So he's created a cycle where the provocation makes him popular, and then the U.S. counter response makes him even more popular. Yeah, it's like it proves his point to the Russian people. Of course, they hammer that idea home. They're hearing that Vladimir Putin is protecting them from enemies abroad. And the main enemy, of course, being the United States, that the West generally are trying to keep Russia weak. It seems like what you're saying is that a central component of Putin's strategy

is that the West is Russia's enemy, and that that's the reason why Russia needs a strong leader, that that's why they need Putin. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's almost as if without Putin, the country would be overrun by the forces of the West. So I'm wondering then, could Putin have accumulated as much power as he has without having cast the West as the enemy? That's a great question, and it's hard to answer.

I think in the end, if it hadn't been the U.S., he would have found another enemy. Because I think it's become essential to the image, to the political model that he's created, that only a strong leader can govern Russia at this point, that only a strong leader stands between the country and chaos. Do you think that Russia meddling in the U.S. election and the success of that is the ultimate realization of the story from East Germany that you told us at the beginning of our conversation? story from East Germany that you told us at the beginning of our conversation. Is this another example of Putin showing that if you're bold enough and if you display enough resolve, it's possible to have an outsized impact with arguably minimal effort? I think Putin is saying very

clearly that he will do whatever it takes to protect Russian interests, even if that means standing up to the United States directly. You know, Russia remains a superpower, a nuclear power, and they even talk now about new weapons that they're developing. The question we have to answer is, is he prepared to use them? And we just don't know that. Stephen, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. On Sunday, in Russia's presidential election, Vladimir Putin won 76% of the vote, despite barely bothering to campaign, except to stress that Russia is under siege and he is the man to keep it safe by projecting power beyond its borders. To emphasize

that point, election day was moved to March 18th, the fourth anniversary of Russia's seizure of Crimea. the fourth anniversary of Russia's seizure of Crimea. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Joe DiGenova is a former U.S. attorney in D.C. and he joins us tonight. Joe, thanks a lot for coming on. My pleasure.

The Times reports that President Trump has decided to hire a longtime Washington lawyer, Joseph DeGeneva, who has pushed the theory in interviews that the Russia investigation was concocted by FBI agents who wanted to prevent Trump from becoming president. Make no mistake about it. A group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime. DeGeneva is not expected to take a lead role on the president's legal team, but will serve as a more aggressive and outspoken figure at a time when Trump is openly attacking special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. What would be the motive for that? The motive

would be that they didn't like Donald Trump, they didn't think he was fit to be president, and they were going to do everything within their power to exonerate Hillary Clinton, and if she lost, to frame Donald Trump with a false crime because they didn't think he should be president. And. Based on the preliminary review that we have done at this time,

we have seen similarities in the device that exploded here last night and the other three devices that have exploded in Austin starting on March 2nd. Police in Austin say that four explosions from packages left across the city over the past month appear to be the work of a serial bomber who is showing increasing sophistication. The latest attack was set off by a tripwire on a residential street. The previous three bombings all involved packages

dropped at people's homes. So far, the bombings have killed two people and injured four more. These events in Austin have garnered worldwide attention, and we assure you that we are listening. At a news conference before Sunday's explosion, Austin police made a rare public appeal for those responsible for the bombings to contact the police and explain their motives. for the bombings, to contact the police and explain their motives. We want to understand what brought you to this point, and we want to listen to you. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.