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The Kremlin’s Noose: Notes

The Kremlin’s Noose
Notes

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Notes

table of contents
  1. List of Illustrations
  2. List of Abbreviations
  3. Note on Transliteration
  4. Introduction
  5. 1. Offspring of the Soviet System
  6. 2. A Meeting in St. Petersburg
  7. 3. Elections and Beyond
  8. 4. Behind Kremlin Walls
  9. 5. Turmoil
  10. 6. An Heir to the Throne
  11. 7. Putin’s Path to Victory
  12. 8. A Clash of Titans
  13. 9. The Outcast versus the Tyrant
  14. 10. The Kremlin on the Offensive
  15. 11. A Life Falling Apart
  16. 12. Berezovsky’s End
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. Notes
  19. Index

Notes

Introduction

1. Moscow Agence France-Presse, November 15, 2000, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4638.html##4.

2. See, for example, a video of Putin speaking that surfaced on The Independent, March 7, 2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-traitors-kick-bucket-sergei-skripal-latest-video-30-pieces-silver-a8243206.html.

3. Author interview with Marina Litvinenko, April 2014.

4. Alex Goldfarb, “A Russian View of Patriots, Peter Morgan’s Play about Boris Berezovsky,” Guardian, July 15, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/15/patriots-peter-morgan-play-boris-berezovsky-russian-view.

1. Offspring of the Soviet System

1. Petr Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo (Moscow: Corpus (ACT), 2017), 62.

2. Anastasiia Egorova, “Kem i kakim on vse-taki byl?” Novaia gazeta, March 4, 2016, https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2016/03/04/67671-yuliy-dubov-171-za-vsyu-svoyu-zhizn-ne-vstrechal-podobnogo-berezovskomu-a-ya-videl-mnogih-187.

3. Matthew Kaminski, “Viktor Orban: Putin Has No Personality,” Politico, November 23, 2015, https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-putin-has-no-personality/.

4. Masha Gessen, The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012).

5. On Beria’s post-Stalin “liberalization,” See Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

6. A. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich: Oligarkhi s bol’shoi dorogi (Moscow: Lora: 2007), 10.

7. Nataliya Gevorkyan, “Interv’iu s mater’iu Berezovskogo: Ia plakala, kogda on rodilsia,” Vokrug novostei, January 30, 2004, http://www.vokrugnovostei.com/Politika-i-ekonomika/Intervyu-s-materyu-Berezovskogo-Ya-plakala-kogda-on-rodilsya/.

8. Author interview with Elizaveta Berezovskaya, London, October 27, 2022.

9. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 11.

10. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 14–15.

11.Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 140.

12. Boris Berezovsky, Avtoportret, ili zapiski poveshennogo (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2013), 54–55.

13. Berezovsky, Avtoportret, 30–31.

14. Peter Pomerantsev, “Berezovsky’s Last Days,” London Review of Books 35, no. 8 (April 25, 2013), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n08/peter-pomerantsev/diary.

15. Elizaveta Berezovskaya’s interview with Dmitrii Gordon, gordonua.com, June 29, 2018, https://gordonua.com/publications/doch-berezovskogo-mne-kazhetsya-papu-otravili-tak-chtoby-vsem-kazalos-on-v-depressii-a-v-itoge-ubili-chtoby-vse-poverili-v-samoubiystvo-250144.html.

16. Berezovsky, Avtoportret, 31.

17. David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 130–31.

18. Berezovsky, Avtoportret, 31.

19. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 140.

20. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 32.

21. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 69.

22. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 70.

23. Owen Bowcott, “Boris Berezovsky Pays Out £100m in UK’s Biggest Divorce Settlement,” The Guardian, July 22, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/22/boris-berezovsky-divorce-record-payout.

24. Details on Putin’s early years appear in Oleg Blotskii, Vladimir Putin: Istoriia zhizni (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2001). Also see the biography by Steven Lee Myers: The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (New York: Knopf, 2015); and Philip Short, Putin: His Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt, 2022). Short uses many of the sources Myers cites, including Blotskii, but also provides some new details on Putin’s early life.

25. Vladimir Putin, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 17.

26. Putin, First Person, 63.

27. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, 25–26.

28. Putin, First Person, 22–23.

29. Myers, New Tsar, 14.

30. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, 105.

31. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, 68–69.

32. Konstantin Rylev, “‘Zapreshchennye’ fakty o Putine,” Fokus, May 13, 2022, https://focus.ua/world/515409-zapreshchennye-fakty-o-putine-patologicheskaya-zhestokost-agressivnost-svyazi-s-kriminalom. The article cites excerpts from the first edition of Vera Gurevich, Vladimir Putin: Roditeli, druz’ia, uchitelia (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Iuridicheskogo instituta, 2004) that were omitted from later editions because of their negative portrayal of Putin.

33. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, 68.

34. Putin, First Person, 21.

35.Myers, New Tsar, 16.

36. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, 199–202.

37. As quoted in Gessen, Man without a Face, 52.

38. See my study on the KGB: Amy Knight, The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union (Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1988).

39. Putin, First Person, 36.

40. “Cherkesov, Viktor,” Lenta.ru, https://lenta.ru/lib/14169763/full.

41. Amy Knight, Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2017), 44–45.

42. See Irina Stoilova, “Ital’ianskaia gazeta ‘Repubblika’ opublikovala v sredu pervuiu iz serii statei, posviashchennykh proshlomy presidenta Rossii Vladimira Putina,” Radio Svoboda, July 11, 2001, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24223192.html; and Vladimir Usol’tsev, Sosluzhivets: Neizvestnye stranitsy zhizni prezidenta (Moscow: Eksmo, 2004), 186.

43. Myers, New Tsar, 25.

44. Putin biographer Philip Short writes that the KGB in cities such as Leningrad had stopped using overt repression against dissidents by the second half of the 1970s and even permitted samizdat to circulate (Short, Putin, 72–73). While the 1975 Helsinki Accords did result in some temporary moderation of KGB policy toward dissent, overt repression continued. Members of Helsinki monitoring groups were frequently arrested, and Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov was consigned to internal exile in 1980 for his human rights advocacy.

45. Interview with Oleg Kalugin, Radio Svoboda, March 28, 2015, https://www.svoboda.org/a/26920026.html.

46. Interview with Oleg Kalugin by Dmitrii Gordon, May 7, 2015, https://gordonua.com/news/war/eks-nachalnik-putina-kalugin-vse-zayavleniya-o-razmeshchenii-yadernogo-oruzhiya-v-krymu-blef-putin-sam-boitsya-takogo-razvitiya-sobytiy-79494.html.

47. “Head of FSB Defends Purges, Denounces Traitors on Cheka Anniversary,” Moscow Times, December 20, 2017, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/12/20/fsb-chief-defends-purges-denounces-traitors-on-cheka-anniversary-a60002.

48. Catherine Belton, “The Man Who Has Putin’s Ear—and May Want His Job,” Washington Post, July 13, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/nikolai-patrushev-russia-security-council-putin/.

49. Putin, First Person, 59.

50. Interview with Vladimir Usol’tsev, Radio Svoboda, November 11, 2003, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24187711.html.

51. See, for example, Myers, New Tsar, 24–28; and Short, Putin, 71–72. Also see Viktor Rezunkov, “Vladimir Putin: Kak zakalialas’ stal’,” Radio Svoboda, January 8, 2016, https://www.svoboda.org/a/27474231.html.

52. TASS, “Biografiia Vladimira Putina,” October 7, 2021, https://tass.ru/info/12592215?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google.com&utm_referrer=google.com.

53. Filip Kovacevic, “Chekism 101: An Independent Study Plan for a KGB Officer in the 1980s,” Wilson Center blog, November 15, 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/chekism-101-independent-study-plan-kgb-officer-1980s.

54.Quoted in Michael Weiss, “Revealed: The Secret KGB Manual for Recruiting Spies,” Daily Beast, December 27, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-kgb-papers-how-putin-learned-his-spycraft-part-1. Weiss reprodu‑ ces a top-secret manual used by the Andropov Red Banner KGB Institute for its students. For a description of my 1981 encounter with a probable RT officer in Leningrad, see Amy Knight, “The Two Worlds of Vladmir Putin,” Wilson Quarterly 24, no. 2 (2000): 32–41.

55. Oleg Blotskii, Vladimir Putin: Doroga k vlasti (Moscow: Osmos-Press, 2002), 211 (hereafter Doroga k vlasti). In his biography of Putin, German writer Alexander Rahr wrote: “If you ask a KGB officer today how important an agent’s job in Dresden was in 1985, the only answer is a weary smile. No career officer wanted to be sent to Dresden. There was hardly anything to spy on in Dresden as far as the GDR was concerned” (Wladimir Putin: Präsident Russlands—Partner Deutschlands [Munich: Universitas Verlag, 2000], 58–59).

56. Usol’tsev interview. Also see Myers, New Tsar, 39. After entering public life, Putin added to his height by wearing shoe lifts covered by extra-long trousers. See “Putin Makes Effort to Keep His Height Secret from Voters,” Washington Times, March 23, 2000, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2000/mar/23/20000323-011028-2791r/.

57. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 219.

58. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 220.

59. Gessen, Man without a Face, 65.

60. Usol’tsev interview.

61. Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020), 39–42. See also “Bombist” on the website “Putinizm kak on est’,” February 18, 2021, https://putinism.wordpress.com/2021/02/18/bombist/#more-3126.

62. Dmitrii Zapol’skii interview, “Putinizm kak on est’,” January 17, 2020, https://putinism.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/zapolsky/.

63. Mark Galeotti, “Putin’s Declassified KGB Record Shows He Was No High-Flier, but a Solid B,” Moscow Times, November 4, 2019, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/11/04/putins-kgb-declassified-record-show-that-he-was-no-high-flier-but-a-solid-b-a68024.

64. Aleksei Navalny, “Dvorets dlia Putina” (Putin’s Palace), https://palace.navalny.com.

65. L. M. Mlechin, KGB: Predsedateli organov gosbezopasnosti: Rassekrechennie sud’by (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2011), 628.

66. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 260–65. Also see Myers, New Tsar, 50–51, for a slightly different account.

67. Ray Furlong, “Showdown in Dresden: The Stasi Occupation and the Putin Myth,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 2, 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/showdown-in-dresden-the-stasi-occupation-and-the-putin-myth/30302831.html.

68. Berezovskii, Avtoportret, 35.

69. Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism (Orlando: Harcourt, 2000), 55. Klebnikov, who was the editor of Forbes Magazine in Moscow, would be brutally gunned down there in 2004. His killers were never found.

70. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 146.

71. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 93; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 141–45.

72. Yevgenia Albats, “Berezovskii byl chast’iu nashei zhizni: I chast’iu zhizni Putina—tozhe,” Novoe vremia, March 31, 2013, https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/64630/.

73. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 72.

74.Berezovsky, Avtoportret, 75.

2. A Meeting in St. Petersburg

1. See Bill Keller, “Another K.G.B. Officer Is Charging Incompetence and Graft,” New York Times, September 8, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/08/world/another-kgb-officer-is-charging-incompetence-and-graft.html.

2. Putin, First Person, 85.

3. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 280–83.

4. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 273.

5. Rahr, Wladimir Putin, 68. Philip Short theorizes that Putin was called back from Dresden early to perform a special assignment on the orders of KGB Directorate Z chief Filipp Bobkov (Putin, 120–22).

6. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 271–73.

7. Putin, First Person, 88–89. Short (Putin, 135) says that Putin did not start working for Sobchak until October 1990, but most sources say he was an advisor to Sobchak by May or June. See, for example, his biography on zampolit.com: https://zampolit.com/dossier/putin-vladimir-vladimirovich/. Also see Myers, New Tsar, 58–59.

8. Myers, New Tsar, 58.

9. Dmitrii Zapol’skii, Putinburg (Cheltenham, UK: PVL Consulting Ltd., 2019), Kindle ed., 214–15.

10. Gessen, Man without a Face, 97.

11. Putin, First Person, 91–93.

12. Myers, New Tsar, 62–67.

13. Putin, First Person, 94.

14. Chris Hutchins, Putin, with Alexander Korobko (Leicester, UK: Matador, 2012), Kindle ed., chap. 4, loc. 1026.

15. Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 82.

16. As reported in Kommersant vlast’, September 23, 1991, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/909.

17. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 95–97.

18. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 49.

19.Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 98–100.

20. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 59.

21. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 76.

22. Berezovsky interview with Masha Gessen, 2008, published in Republic, March 25, 2013, https://republic.ru/posts/l/923157.

23. Gessen, Man without a Face, 15–16.

24. Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 65.

25. Vladimir Bukovsky, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity, trans. Alyona Kojevnikov, English ed. prepared by Paul Boutin (California: Ninth of November Press, 2019), 59. See my review of Bukovsky’s book: “The Secret Files of the Soviet Union,” New York Review of Books, January 16, 2020.

26. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 12.

27. See the 2018 biographical film about Sobchak created by his daughter, Ksenia Sobchak, and Vera Krichevskaia, Delo Sobchaka (The case of Sobchak), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8342962/.

28. Myers, New Tsar, 77.

29. Putin, First Person, 102.

30. Anastasiia Kirilenko, “Kazhduiu nedeliu Sobchak prinosil v bank portfel’ kesha,” The Insider, March 1, 2017, https://theins.ru/korrupciya/46539.

31. Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 106–25; Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, The Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin (New York: Encounter Books, 2008), 71–82; Robert Coalson, “Marina Salye: The St. Petersburg Lawmaker Who Became Putin’s First Accuser,” RFE/RL, May 19, 2022, https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-corruption-accusation/31855104.html.

32. Oleg Lu’re, “Kolbasa dlia Pitera,” Novaia gazeta, March 13, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3464053.

33. Anastasiia Kirilenko and Iurii Timofeev, “Pochemu Marina Sal’e molchala o Putine 10 let?,” Radio Svoboda, March 2, 2010, https://www.svoboda.org/a/1972366.html.

34. Philip Short claims wrongly that Putin was innocent of wrongdoing in the oil-for-food scandal, which Karen Dawisha documented in Putin’s Kleptocracy. Short says that Dawisha was ill when she wrote her book and that it thus “contains errors which, had she been well, she would certainly not have let pass” (Short, Putin, 729n162). Dawisha died of cancer in 2018, four years after her pathbreaking book was published to great acclaim by scholars and journalists alike. Short apparently did not consult the many Russian-language sources on the oil-for-food scandal that Dawisha drew upon in her exhaustive research.

35. Dmitrii Volchek, “Delo Sobchaka: Zagadki biografii pokrovitelia Putina,” Radio Svoboda, July 9, 2018, https://www.svoboda.org/a/29278219.html; Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 116–17.

36. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, Corporation, 94.

37. Volchek, “Delo Sobchaka”; Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 132–41.

38. Amy Knight, Orders to Kill, 70–74. Kumarin was charged for the murder of Starovoitova after my book was published. For an excellent, detailed biography of Kumarin, see “Putin’s List,” on the Free Russia Forum: https://www.spisok-putina.org/en/personas/barsukov-kumarin-2/.

39.Dozhd’, March 27, 2016, https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/bremja_novostej/lobkov_raskryvaet_sekrety_vzryvchatki-406267/. Dmitrii Zapol’skii learned from a close acquaintance of Kumarin, Irina Iakovleva, the wife of former St. Petersburg governor Vladimir Iakovlev, that Kumarin remained in contact with Putin after his imprisonment. Zapol’skii observed that the contact with Putin has not helped Kumarin much: “At least he is still alive. Not murdered, not poisoned, just locked up. Not in a golden cage, but an ordinary one” (Putinburg, 120).

40. Belton, Putin’s People, 102–3.

41. Dozhd’, August 24, 2017, https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/piterskie/piterskie_otets_i_syn-442938/. Also see Belton, Putin’s People, 98–99.

42. See Mike Eckel, “Navalny Punches Even Higher with New Video Alleging Secret Island Dacha Used by Putin,” RFE/RL, August 30, 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny-putin-island-dacha/28705917.html.

43. Anastasiia Kirilenko, “Konets piterskoi ‘prachechnoi,’” Novoe vremia, April 17, 2018, https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/158697/.

44. Zapol’skii, Putinburg, 437–38, 445.

45. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 351–54.

46. Kylie Mar, “Jane Fonda’s Bizarre Story about Vladimir Putin Once Being Her Travel Guide,” Yahoo.com, September 17, 2020, https://autos.yahoo.com/jane-fondas-bizarre-story-about-vladimir-putin-once-being-her-travel-guide-052904255.html.

47. Putin, First Person, 104.

48. Myers, New Tsar, 89–92; Putin, First Person, 105–10.

49. Guy Chazan and David Crawford, “A Friendship Forged in Spying Pays Dividends in Russia Today,” Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2005, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB110911748114361477.

50. “Circles of Power: Putin’s Secret Friendship with Ex-Stasi Officer,” The Guardian, August 13, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/russia-putin-german-right-hand-man-matthias-warnig.

51.Argumenty i Fakty, March 14, 2002, https://aif.ru/archive/1724337.

52. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 59. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 124.

53. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 137.

54. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 214.

55. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 80; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 215–18.

56. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 88.

57. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 23. Klebnikov says that Berezovsky was accompanied by his wife, Galina, and his two youngest children, but Berezovsky already had a new partner, Elena Gorbunova, at this time.

58. See, for example, Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 89; and the unsigned article “Godfather of the Kremlin?” Forbes, December 30, 1996, https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html?sh=33c65a5f7562. The Forbes article, discussed further in chapter 3, says: “According to Moscow police reports, Berezovsky started his auto dealership in close collaboration with the powerful Chechen criminal gangs. Presumably they provided him with physical protection—a ‘roof,’ as it’s called in Russian slang.”

59.Dmitrii Gordon, Berezovskii i Korzhakov: Kremlevskie tainy (Moscow: Algoritm, 2013), 45.

60. See Gorbunova’s account in Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 133.

61. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 38–39.

62. “Spravka FSB ‘V otnoshenii ChOP ‘Atoll-1,’” Kompromat.ru, June 9, 2000, http://www.compromat.ru/page_9782.htm?c40973262dabf77e303a0bf66332df1fb26801=00c67cf150353ecc8434fd9b30306eb4.

63. Alex Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, with Marina Litvinenko (New York: Free Press, 2007), 54–55.

64. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 149; Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 116–17.

65. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 133.

66. Mikhail Zygar, Vse svobodny: Istoriia o tom, kak v 1996 godu v Rossii zakonchilis’ vybory (Moscow: Al’pina, 2020), Kindle ed., 41–42.

67. Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 340–41. A copy of the membership rules, signed by Yeltsin and the ten other founders of the club, is in the Yeltsin archives: https://yeltsin.ru/archive/paperwork/48914/. Members were allowed to bring wives and children as guests on Sundays.

68. Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata. Posleslovie (Moscow, Detektivpress, 2004). This is the second, revised edition of the original, published in 1997. Korzhakov provided extensive details about Berezovsky in interviews with Klebnikov for the latter’s book but, given Korzhakov’s deep hatred of Berezovsky after the two fell out in 1996, his accounts cannot be taken as reliable.

69. Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 215.

70. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 39–40.

71. Unpublished interview with Berezovsky, in Boris Berezovsky, The Art of the Impossible (Falmouth, MA: Terra-USA, 2006), 1:332–64 (357).

72. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 281–84; Gordon, Berezovskii i Korzhakov, 52–55.

73. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 527–28 (note 26).

74. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 159–69.

75. See “Kollegi Vladislava List’eva napisali imia predpolagaemogo ubiitsy,” Lenta.ru, February 16, 2020. https://lenta.ru/news/2020/02/26/listyev/.

76. Chestnyi Detektiv, interview with Al’bina Nazimova, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWvQNxQtXLA.

3. Elections and Beyond

1. Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, 325–26.

2.Colton, Yeltsin, 291.

3. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 16.

4. Berezovsky interview with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Kommersant, June 17, 1997, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:131–45; Berezovsky, Avtoportret, 41–42. Soros, who would later come to despise Berezovsky, recalled the meeting differently: “I wanted him [Berezovsky] to support Grigory Yavlinsky, whom I considered the only honest reformer among the candidates, but I was naïve. I did not realize to what extent Berezovsky was involved in dirty dealings with Yeltsin’s family” (George Soros, “Who Lost Russia,” New York Review of Books, April 13, 2000.)

5. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 285–93. Gusinsky was even forced to flee with his family to London for a few months.

6. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 64–65.

7. Interview with Gevorkyan, 132.

8. Interview with Gevorkyan, 134; Colton, Yeltsin, 355; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 332–33. Hoffman writes that Gusinsky also spoke.

9. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 333.

10. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 25; Colton, Yeltsin, 356–57; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 336–40.

11. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 348–50; Zygar, Vse svobodny, 204–6.

12. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 222–23. Yeltsin later said: “All the big shots of business were drawn into the election headquarters. They ‘made investments’—some in logistic support, some in conceptual thinking, and some financially” (Midnight Diaries, 26).

13. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 156–57; Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 236–37; Colton, Yeltsin, 360; Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 77–78; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 348.

14. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 80.

15. Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:138.

16. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 209–29.

17. “Aleksei Venediktov o Borise Berezovskom,” Ekho Moskvy, March 24, 2013, https://echo.msk.ru/programs/svoi-glaza/1038068-echo/.

18. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 156.

19. Zygar, Vse svobodny, 429.

20. Zygar, Vse svobodny, 329–30.

21. Film Delo Sobchaka. Interviewed for the film, Putin says: “It was absolutely obvious to me that Western leaders treated him [Sobchak] like a potential successor to Yeltsin.”

22.Film Delo Sobchaka.

23. See Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 323–26. Yeltsin feigned disapproval of the attack against Sobchak by Korzhakov and Skuratov, but he did nothing to stop them. Sobchak himself suggests in his book about the campaign that Yeltsin gave Korzhakov and his men orders to move against him (Diuzhina nozhei v spinu: Pouchitel’naia istoriia o politicheskikh nravakh [Moscow: Vagrius-Petro-News, 1999], 78–81).

24. Mikhail Vil’kobrisskii, Kak delili Rossiiu: Istoriia privatizatsii (St. Petersburg: Piter, 2014), 185. Vil’kobrisskii later emigrated to Israel.

25. Interview with Aleksei Shustov, Radio Svoboda, February 5, 2016, https://www.svoboda.org/a/27534956.html.

26. Film Delo Sobchaka.

27. Putin, First Person, 112–13.

28. Zygar, Vse svobodny, 330.

29. Putin, First Person, 113.

30. The letter is reproduced in Sobchak, Diuzhina nozhei v spinu, 92–93.

31. Zapol’skii, Putinburg, 112.

32. Zapol’skii, Putinburg, 433–45.

33. Belton, Putin’s People, 113.

34. Sobchak, Diuzhina nozhei v spinu, 92.

35. Putin, First Person, 113.

36. Zapol’skii interview with Radio Svoboda, June 5, 2016, https://www.svoboda.org/a/27777165.html.

37. This was noted by Myers, New Tsar, 108.

38. Putin, First Person, 125–28; Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 385–94.

39. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 361. Later in the book (386–87), Putin is quoted as saying that Iakovlev may have wanted him to leave St. Petersburg because his “especially warm relations” with the power organs made Iakovlev uncomfortable.

40. Putin, First Person, 122.

41. “Kudrin rasskazal o druzhbe s Putinym,” Lenta.ru, October 12, 2020, https://lenta.ru/news/2020/10/12/kunrin_putin/.

42.See Navalny, “Dvorets dlia Putina”; David Crawford and Marcus Bensmann, “Putin’s Early Years,” Correctiv, July 30, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20190509203842/https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/the-system-of-putin/2015/07/30/putins-early-years.

43. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, Corporation, 112.

44. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 398–99.

45. Colton, Yeltsin, 327.

46. Zygar, Vse svobodny, 114.

47. Zygar, Vse svobodny, 114.

48. As cited in Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 172.

49. Berezovsky interview with Zavtra, October 29, 2002, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:573–77 (576).

50. “Venediktov o Borise Berezovskom.” Akhmad Kadyrov’s son Ramzan would later become Chechnya’s notoriously ruthless president.

51. Anatolii Kulikov, Tiazhelye zvezdy (Moscow: Voina i mir buks, 2002). Electronic version at https://royallib.com/book/kulikov_anatoliy/tyagelie_zvezdi.html, 105–7.

52. Kulikov, Tiazhelye zvezdy, 105–7; Michael Spector, “The Wars of Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed,” New York Times, October 13, 1996, https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/13/magazine/the-wars-of-aleksandr-ivanovich-lebed.html; Zygar, Vse svobodny, 458–59.

53.Kommersant, October 31, 1996, English translation in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:468–69.

54. Blog of Aleksei [Leonid] D’iachenko Ekho Moskvy, July 2, 2021, http://www.relga.ru/Environ/WebObjects/tgu-www.woa/wa/Main?textid=6680&level1=main&level2=articles.

55. Chrystia Freeland, John Thornhill, and Andrew Gowers, “Moscow’s Group of Seven,” Financial Times, November 1, 1996, https://archive.org/details/FinancialTimes1996UKEnglish/Nov%2001%201996%2C%20Financial%20Times%2C%20%231%2C%20UK%20%28en%29/page/n13/mode/2up.

56. Sergei Lukianov, “The Berezovsky 7: Russia Inc.,” St. Petersburg Times, no. 215–16, November 25–December 25, 1996, https://web.archive.org/web/20000818172446/http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/215-216/bc.html.

57. “Godfather of the Kremlin?,” Forbes. A subcaption reads: “Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two.” Forbes repeated the article’s allegations about Berezovsky after the latter’s death in 2013, adding, wrongly, that the oligarch was the key suspect in the 2004 killing of Klebnikov. See Richard Behar, “Did Boris Berezovsky Kill Himself?,” Forbes, March 24, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-kill-himself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/?sh=5a02f3567295.

58. Christian Caryl, “The Tycoon and the World He Has Made, Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2000, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB96881047497103152.

59. Mrs. Justice Gloster, “Approved Judgment, Berezovsky v. Abramovich,” August 31, 2012, https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/berezovsky-judgment.pdf; Vladislav Dorofeev and Tat’iana Kostyleva, Printsip Abramovicha: Talant delat’ den’gi, (Moscow: Kommersant’, 2009), chap. 2, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1180652.

60. Gloster, “Approved Judgment, Berezovsky v. Abramovich.” Also see “Bitva za ‘Sibneft’,’” FreeLance Bureau, February 18, 2000, http://www.compromat.ru/page_9457.htm.

61. “AvtoVAZbank rasshiriaet svoiu deiatel’nost’ v Moskve,” Kommersant, May 23, 1995, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/109377; Interview with Berezovsky, Kommersant, November 16, 1995, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/121790; Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 170–72.

62.Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 142–43; Berezovsky interview in Kommersant, April 13, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:186–96; Mrs. Justice Rose, “Approved Judgment, PJSC Aeroflot-Russians Airlines v Leeds & Anor (Trustees of the Estate of Boris Berezovsky) & Ors,” July 6, 2018, https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5b443b1f2c94e02f3f9261ce.

63. Glushkov interview in Kommersant, November 23, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:537–46 (542); Hoffman, Oligarchs, 401.

64. Alan Cullison, “A Trio of Wealthy Russians Made an Enemy of Putin: Now They’re All Dead,” Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2018, citing Glushkov’s witness statement in Aeroflot v. Leeds & Anor, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trio-of-wealthy-russians-made-an-enemy-of-putin-now-theyre-all-dead-1539181416.

65. Rose, “Approved Judgment, Aeroflot v. Leeds & Anor”; Iurii Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady: Poslednee delo Genprokurora (Moscow: Litres, 2017), https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=bUthAAAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PT1,159–171.

66. Lilia Shevtsova, “Dilemmas of Post-Communist Russia,” Security Dialogue 28, no. 1 (1997): 83–96.

4. Behind Kremlin Walls

1. Zygar, Vse svobodny, chap. 9, 462.

2. Colton, Yeltsin, 381.

3. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 73.

4. Boris Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria (Moscow: Partizan, 2007), 27.

5. Boris Nemtsov, personal site, “Umer Boris Berezovskii,” http://nemtsov.ru/old/indexc212.html?id=718739.

6. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 399.

7. Elena Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), http://www.belousenko.com/books/kgb/tregubova_bayki.htm, chap. 8.

8. Myers, New Tsar, 112.

9. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 55.

10. Putin, First Person, 87.

11. Published in disserCat, an electronic library of Russian dissertations, https://www.dissercat.com/content/strategicheskoe-planirovanie-vosproizvodstva-mineralno-syrevoi-bazy-regiona-v-usloviyakh-for.

12. Dmitrii Volchek, “Kseroks na dache: Taina fal’shivoi dissertatsii Vladimira Putina,” Radio Svoboda, March 4, 2018, https://www.svoboda.org/a/29076908.html; Anastasiia Kirilenko, “Gorniaki-razboiniki: Kak ‘literaturnyi negr’ Putina i Sechina stal rektorom-milliarderom,” The Insider, August 7, 2017, https://theins.ru/korrupciya/66920.

13. Kirilenko, “Gorniaki-razboiniki.”

14. Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), Kindle ed., chap. 9, loc. 3685–728.

15.Kirilenko, “Gorniaki-razboiniki.”

16. “Putin’s Doctoral Thesis Director Makes Forbes’ Billionaires List,” RFE/RL, April 7, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/litvinenko-billionaire-forbes-putin-thesis/31191104.html.

17. Liza Vel’iaminova, “Rektor-milliarder,” MBX Media, March 29, 2021, https://mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/rektor-milliarder/.

18. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 109.

19. Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002), Kindle ed., chap. 3, loc. 732–36.

20. Berezovsky news conference, May 13, 1997, reported by the Federal News Service, cited in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:504.

21. Reuters, June 13, 1997, https://reliefweb.int/report/russian-federation/russia-chechen-sign-oil-deal-chechnya.

22. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 114–15.

23. Evangelista, Chechen Wars, chap. 3, loc. 746–51.

24. Nemtsov, “Umer Boris Berezovskii.”

25. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 380.

26. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 380–82; “Bor’ba oligarkhov za ‘Sviaz’invest’: Spravka,” RIA Novosti, July 25, 2011, https://ria.ru/20110725/406846261.html.

27. Valentin Iumashev, “Sviaz’invest,” https://nemtsovdoc.ru/life/video-text/26.

28. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 384–86.

29. “Zapis’ telefonnogo razgovora Borisa Berezovskogo s docher’iu El’tsina—Tat’ianoi D’iachenko,” Kompromat.ru, August 1, 1997, http://www.compromat.ru/page_25022.htm.

30. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 24–25.

31. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 24.

32. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 388–89.

33. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 116.

34. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 98.

35.Hoffman, Oligarchs, 393. Also see Nataliia Rostova, “Vtoraia informatsionnaia,” Radio Svoboda, December 2, 2017, https://www.svoboda.org/a/28890678.html.

36. Nemtsov testifying during the London court trial of a defamation lawsuit brought by Berezovsky against Mikhail Fridman, May 22, 2006. See Yuri Felshtinsky’s compilation of the trial transcripts (Verdikt: Boris Berezovskii protiv oligarkhov [Falmouth, MA: Terra-USA, 2008], 356).

37. Sergei Pluzhnikov, “‘Kvartirnoe delo’ Sobchaka,” Sovershenno sekretno, February 4, 1997, http://www.compromat.ru/page_10202.htm; Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, Corporation, 228–31; Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 152–53, 174–76.

38. Pavel Voshchanov, “Ten’ Sobchaka-2,” Novaia gazeta, June 23, 1997, http://www.compromat.ru/page_26663.htm.

39. Sergei Pluzhnikov and Sergei Sokolov, “Ten’ prezidenta,” Freelance Bureau, January 15, 2000, www.compromat.ru/page_9319.htm.

40. Andrei Illarionov, LiveJournal post, June 7, 2019, https://aillarionov.livejournal.com/1128924.html, citing interviews for the film Delo Sobchaka.

41. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 233.

42. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 322.

43. A leaked transcript of the conversation was published by Novaia gazeta on September 29, 1998, at http://www.compromat.ru/page_26662.htm.

44. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 234.

45. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 321.

46. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, Corporation, 231–32; Myers, New Tsar, 117–18; Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 323.

47. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 323. Philip Short, apparently to show that Putin’s motives were innocent, says that the idea that Sobchak was corrupt is implausible, because he didn’t pay for the charter flight to Paris, which was financed by Putin’s friend Gennadii Timchenko (Short, Putin, 752n62). But in Russia at that time, it was not necessary to have money to charter a private plane in order to be corrupt.

48. Illarionov, LiveJournal, June 7, 2019.

49. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 234.

50. Putin, First Person, 117–18.

51. Illarionov, LiveJournal, June 7, 2019.

52. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 402.

53. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 407–9. On September 2, 1998, Berezovsky told Venediktov on Ekho Moskvy: “I designated Kiriyenko’s appointment from the start as an entirely nonsensical move … a person with weight, with authority [was] needed” (Art of the Impossible, 3:272).

54. Andrei Bagrov, “El’tsin ugrozhaet Berezovskomu emigratsiei,” Kommersant, April 15, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3748132.

55.Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 246–47; Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 642–44. Yeltsin recalled that when he told Iumashev about the proposal to appoint Berezovsky, “I have never seen Yumashev so mad.” Iumashev said that Berezovsky never consulted with him about his ambition to become CIS secretary. But Khinshtein claimed that Iumashev engineered Berezovsky’s appointment (Berezovskii i Abramovich, 347).

56. Interview with NTV, June 8, 1998, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:30–36.

57. Berezovsky statement on CIS, Nezavisimaia gazeta, November 13, 1998, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:39–68.

58. “Aleksei Venediktov o Borise Berezovskom.”

59. Berezovsky interview with Aleksei Venediktov, Ekho Moskvy, September 2, 1998, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 3:268–80.

60. Myers, New Tsar, 121; Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 181–82.

61. Putin, First Person, 129.

62. Putin, First Person, 130–32.

63. See Amy Knight, Spies without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (New York: Public Affairs, 2010) on the evolution of the Russian security services after 1991.

64. Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera, chap. 8.

65. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 327.

66. Igor Chernyak: “Once More Kovalev Has Gotten Burnt; Why Did President Give FSB Leader a Dressing Down?,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, July 28, 1998, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/2289.html##5.

67. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, Corporation, 118.

68. Putin, First Person, 133.

69. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 134–35. Berezovsky told Masha Gessen a slightly different version, claiming that he had actually suggested Putin as a candidate for the FSB spot to Iumashev (Gessen, Man without a Face, 18).

70. “Vladimir Putin: U menia bol’shoi opyt raboty v KGB SSSR,” Kommersant, July 30, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3754781.

71. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 328.

72. Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera, chap. 8.

5. Turmoil

1. For an overview of the crisis, see a report from the US Congressional Research Service, “The Russian Financial Crisis of 1998: An Analysis of Trends, Causes, and Implications,” February 18, 1999, https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19990218_98-578_353c595b8980dfeaab66aa782deab2898c3b6889.pdf.

2.Myers, New Tsar, 129.

3. Berezovsky interview with Venediktov, September 1998.

4. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 183–84.

5. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 17.

6. See a report on a meeting of the CIS in late November 1998 at http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/546f5fed71383d537b613592c1397e67.

7. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 144.

8. Putin, First Person, 133.

9. Tatiana Iumasheva, “Kak Primakov pytalsia uvolut’ Putina,” LiveJournal, March 15, 2010, https://t-yumasheva.livejournal.com/19015.html. As cited in Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 186.

10. Iumashev interview with Vladmir Pozner, Vedomosti, November 22, 2019, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2019/11/22/816979-on-videl-cheloveka-prodolzhit. Iumashev told Catherine Belton a similar story (Belton, Putin’s People, 140–41).

11. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 53.

12. For an English translation and analysis of the article, see Andrei Soshnikov and Carl Schreck, “The Brutal Killing of a Reporter Who Probed Putin’s Past,” RFE/RL, June 22, 2022, https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-journalist-killing/31910359.html.

13.Segodnia, August 26, 1998; Moscow Times, August 28, 1998. Domnin held a press conference about the murder, in which he mentioned another Iuridicheskii Peterburg segodnia article, about Kredit Bank and illegal campaign financing, which suggested that Berezovsky owned the bank and thus provided Berezovsky with a motive for going after his paper. But Kommersant reported that Kredit Bank called the newspaper and dismissed the idea of Berezovsky’s ownership as ridiculous (Kommersant, August 26, 1998, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/203983).

14. Apparently because Starovoitova spoke out against antisemitism, Philip Short writes, incorrectly, that she was Jewish (Putin, 265). In fact, she had no Jewish heritage and was a devout believer in the Russian Orthodox faith.

15. Myers, New Tsar, 134; Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 211.

16. “Kto ubil Galinu Starovoitovu? 20 let spustia zakazchika vse eshche ishchut,” The Insider, November 20, 2018, https://theins.ru/obshestvo/128361.

17. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 211.

18. Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 252–56. A full copy is available on the website of Dawisha, which is maintained by the Havighurst Center at Miami University of Ohio: https://www.miamioh.edu/cas/academics/centers/havighurst/additional-resources/putins-russia/index.html.

19. Knight, Orders to Kill, 65–71. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the right-wing LDRP party, was another enemy of Starovoitova whom prosecutors later tried to incriminate.

20. Matthew Evangelista, “An Interview with Galina Starovoitova,” Moscow, November 3, 1998, https://matthewevangelistacom.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/interview-with-galina-starovoytova1.pdf.

21.Komsomol’skaia pravda, November 27–December 4, 1998, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/2497.html##13.

22.Knight, Orders to Kill, 64–67.

23. Daniel Williams, “Russian Aide’s Scars Run Deep,” Washington Post, January 30, 1999, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/01/30/russian-aides-scars-run-deep/2c14e969-9413-4a53-b696-56ce99aafe36/.

24. Knight, Orders to Kill, 68–69.

25. “Kto ubil Galinu Starovoitovu?”

26. “FSB prediavila Barsukovu-Kumarinu ubiistvo Starovoitovoi,” Fontanka.ru, April 7, 2019, https://www.fontanka.ru/2019/04/07/026/.

27. Vitalii Portnikov, “Tak kto zhe ubil Starovoitovu?” Krym.Realii, April 10, 2019, https://ru.krymr.com/a/vitaliy-portnikov-tak-kto-zhe-ubil-starovoytovu/29872089.html.

28. Knight, Orders to Kill, 149–50.

29. Berezovsky witness statement for Britain’s High Court, January 22, 2009, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20160613090305/https:/www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/BER000011wb.pdf.

30. Alexander Litvinenko, LPG: Lubianskaia prestupnaia gruppirovka (New York: Grani, 2002), chap. 6, http://www.compromat.ru/page_12267.htm.

31. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 39–40.

32. Litvinenko, LPG, chap. 6; Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 129–33.

33. Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Boris Abramovich, mne porucheno vas ubit’,” Moskovskii komsomolets, May 22, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/97473.

34. Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:402–5.

35. Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:408–9.

36. Myers, New Tsar, 132.

37. “Nas peredushat, kak shchenkov,” Kommersant, November 18, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3760297.

38. Myers, New Tsar, 133.

39. “Ofitser po vyzovu,” Moskovskii komsomolets, November 20, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/101370. The article was unsigned, but it was clear Khinshtein was the author.

40. Sir Robert Owen, The Litvinenko Inquiry: Report into the Death of Alexander Litvinenko, London, January 2016, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20160613090324/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/report, 21–25.

41. “Vladimir Putin: Vernite ‘zhelzhogo Feliksa’ na ploshchad’—tol’ko potom ne pishchite!,” Izvestiia, December 19, 1998, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3170935.

42.Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 167–68.

43. Khinshtein, “Kolpak dlia prezidenta,” Moskovskii komsomolets, January 20, 1999, http://www.compromat.ru/page_25070.htm.

44. Khinshtein, “Sekretar’ dlinnoe ukho,” Moskovskii komsomolets, February 12, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/103260.

45. See Berezovsky’s interview in Kommersant, April 13, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:186–96 (188).

46. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 179; Kommersant, January 29, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3762994.

47. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 459–60.

48. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 296.

49. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 298.

50. Iurii Skuratov, Variant drakona (Moscow: Detektiv-Press, 2002), 24–26.

51. Skuratov, Variant drakona, 30.

52. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 212. Iumashev assured Yeltsin that he would stay by his side.

53. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 180–86.

54. In a 2019 interview, Iumashev acknowledged that he was the one who passed on the tape to Bordiuzha. See Andrei Mal’gin, “Operatsiia ‘preemnik,’ chast’ 3,” LiveJournal, August 9, 2019, https://avmalgin.livejournal.com/8156562.html. Sergei Pugachev, a wealthy Russian banker who fled Russia in 2008 after falling out with Putin, told author Catherine Belton that he had obtained the tape and given it to Iumashev (Belton, Putin’s People, 127–28). But Pugachev was not mentioned by any of those involved, and he seems to have exaggerated his role in Kremlin affairs during his interviews with Belton.

55. This communication was published in Novaia gazeta, July 9, 1999, http://www.compromat.ru/page_26939.htm. Chaika also reported details on the Aeroflot case.

56. “Privet iz 90-ykh: Siuzhet pro cheloveka, ochen’ pokhozhego na general’nogo prokurora,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqGbV6F5fAw.

57. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 14–16.

58. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 17.

59. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 214–16.

60. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 375–77.

61. Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Karla del’ Ponte: My so Skuratovym khotim vernut’ v Rossiiu prestupnye kapitaly,” Moskovskii komsomolets, March 25, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/104269; Jamestown Foundation, Monitor 5, no. 58 (March 24, 1999), https://jamestown.org/program/borodin-mabetex-chief-deny-charges/.

62.As reported in The Guardian, March 23, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/mar/24/7.

63. NTV, April 1, 1999, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3224.html##3.

64. Nikolai Ul’ianov, “Skuratov otstranen ot dolzhnosti,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, April 3, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/322674; Kommersant, April 3, 1999, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/216188.

65. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 665.

66. Malgin, “Operatsiia ‘Preemnik.’”

67.Kommersant, March 5, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3764809.

68. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 246–47.

69. Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:448–51.

70. As quoted in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:455.

71. ITAR-TASS, April 12, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3238.html##9.

72. As quoted in John Dunlop, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2014), 26.

73. Voloshin biography, Lenta.ru, https://lenta.ru/lib/14160884/full.htm. Also see Voloshin’s interview with Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 255–64.

74. Voloshin biography.

75. Berezovsky interview with Vedomosti, March 24, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:277–83 (279).

76. Vladimir Volkov and Patrick Richter, “What Is behind the Dismissal of Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov,” World Socialist Web Site, May 25, 1999, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/05/prim-m25.html.

77. Gessen, Man without a Face, 18–19.

78. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 164–65.

79. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 365.

80. Iren Pitch (Irene Pietsch), Pikantnaia druzhba: Moia podruga Liudmila Putina, ee sem’ia i drugie tovarishchi (Moscow: Zakharov, 2002), 188, 263. Finnish Ambassador Markus Lyra told Philip Short that, during a conversation he had with Putin in late 1998, Putin said of Berezovsky: “He is the worst criminal you can think of. He’s going to damage Russia and will damage your country too” (Short, Putin, 262).

6. An Heir to the Throne

1.Irina Bobrova, “Tainaia zhizn’ suprugi oligarkha,” Moskovskii komsomolets, February 17, 2005, https://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2005/02/17/199725-taynaya-zhizn-suprugi-oligarha.html.

2. Crawford and Bensmann, “Putin’s Early Years”; Myers, New Tsar, 152.

3. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 350–51.

4. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 28.

5. Hassan Abbas, “Who Exactly Is Sergei Stepashin?” The Jamestown Foundation, Prism 5, no. 10 (May 21, 1999), https://jamestown.org/program/who-exactly-is-sergei-stepashin/.

6. Colton, Yeltsin, 430. Stepashin said this in a 2001 interview with Colton.

7. Elena Dikun, “Primakov Is Shown the Door; Duma Threatened with Dissolution,” The Jamestown Foundation, Prism 5, no. 10 (May 21, 1999), https://jamestown.org/program/primakov-is-shown-the-door-duma-threatened-with-dissolution/.

8. Colton, Yeltsin, 428–29; Vitalii Tsepliaev and Tat’iana Netreba, “Prezident gotov k pokhoronam kommunizma,” Argumenty i Fakty, May 19, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/2555262.

9. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Meeting Report, May 19, 1999, “Chubais on Stepashin and the Irreversibility of Russian Reform,” https://carnegieendowment.org/1999/05/19/chubais-on-stepashin-and-irreversibility-of-russian-reform-event-118.

10. Colton, Yeltsin, 430.

11. See excerpts from a book by journalist Ilia Zhegulev in Meduza, October 20, 2021, https://meduza.io/feature/2021/10/20/pravda-li-chto-v-1999-godu-u-eltsina-ne-bylo-drugih-realnyh-variantov-preemnika-krome-putina. Also see Iumashev’s comments in Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 249–50.

12. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 284–85.

13. Associated Press Newsroom, “Germany: Stepashin Attends G8 Summit Meeting,” June 19, 1999, http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/8634dabe12b4322106a018d0819fd809.

14. Stepashin interview with CBS, July 23, 1999, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stepashin-intrerview-in-full/.

15. “Stepashin Falls Victim to Success of His Economic Policies,” Bloomberg, Moscow, August 9, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3428.html##10.

16. Vasif Guseinov, Ot El’tsina k … ? Voina kompromata (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2000), 59–60.

17. RFE/RL Newsline 4, no. 20, pt. 1, January 28, 2000, https://www.rferl.org/a/1142082.html; Evangelista, Chechen Wars, chap. 3, loc. 838–47.

18. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 35.

19. David Hoffman, “Miscalculations Paved Path to Chechen War,” Washington Post, March 20, 2000, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/03/20/miscalculations-paved-path-to-chechen-war/e675f17a-d286-4b5e-b33a-708d819d43f0/.

20. Emil Souleimanov, “Chechnya, Wahhabism and the Invasion of Dagestan,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 9, no. 4 (December 2005), 48–71, https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria_dec05/Souleimanov.pdf.

21.Floriana Fossato, “Caucasus: Kidnapping of Russian General Presents Complications for Chechen President,” RFE/RL, March 17, 1999, https://www.rferl.org/a/1090815.html.

22. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 186–88; Also see Andrei Illarionov, “Dagestanskaia voina—operatsiia ‘preemnik,’” The Chechen Press, March 13, 2019, https://thechechenpress.com/news/14962-andrej-illarionov-dagestanskaya-vojna-operatsiya-preemnik.html; and a lengthy discussion of Berezovsky’s ties with Chechen extremists in Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 53–65. Dunlop takes a skeptical view of Berezovsky’s version.

23. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 188–89.

24. Putin, First Person, 188.

25. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 66–70; Andrei Piontkovskii, “Rassledovanie: Priznanie oligarkha prokuroru respubliki,” Novaia gazeta, January 21, 2002, https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2002/01/21/15962-priznanie-oligarha-prokuroru-respubliki.

26. Henry E. Hale, “The Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Demokratization 12, no. 2 (2004):169–94, https://demokratizatsiya.pub/archives/12_2_P0LVW06724GL62M9.pdf.

27. Mikhail Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), 8–9.

28. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 294–95.

29. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 295.

30. Melissa Akin and Natalya Shulyakovskaya, “Swiss Tie Kremlin to Money-Laundering,” Moscow Times, July 15, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3394.html##1.

31. As quoted in Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 41.

32. Interview with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Vremia MN, July 13, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:197–213.

33. Timothy Heritage, “Russian Premier Demands End to Media War,” Reuters, July 19, 1999, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3398.html##1.

34. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 362. Also see Celestine Bohlen, “In Russia, a Power Play Acted out on Television,” New York Times, September 5, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/world/in-russia-a-power-play-acted-out-on-television.html.

35. Leonid Berres and Dmitrii Dmitriev, “Ishchut chekisty v biznese zheny moskovskogo mera,” Kommersant, July 20, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3771389.

36. Luzhkov interview by Evgenii Kiselev, July 18, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3399.html##11; Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 45–46. In September, the new FSB chief, Patrushev, would even call Baturina to his office to assure her that the investigation had not been politically motivated.

37. Heritage, “Russian Premier Demands End to Media War.”

38. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 53. For an in-depth analysis of Stepashin’s prime ministership and his relationship with the Family, see Guseinov, Ot El’tsina k … ?.

39. Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Berezovskii—krupnyi khinshchik?” Moskovskii komsomolets, July 16, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/107093.

40.Kommersant, November 25, 1995, as cited in a biography of Chaika on the website Antikompromat, http://anticompromat.panchul.com/chaika/chaikabio.html.

41.Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 412–13, 593–95 (595). Skuratov learned later that Chaika’s official car had been parked outside the Kremlin during the night of April 1–2, when the criminal case against him was drawn up.

42. Biography of Chaika, Meduza, December 25, 2015, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2015/12/25/investigating-russia-s-top-prosecutor.

43. Jo Becker, Adam Goldman, and Matt Apuzzo, “Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’ Donald Trump Jr. Said,” New York Times, July 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-russia-email-clinton.html.

44. Skuratov, Kremlevskie podriady, 479–83.

45. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 174.

46. Interview with Vedomosti, March 24, 2000; in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:277–81 (279).

47. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 252.

48. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 251.

49. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 334; Putin, First Person, 136.

50. “Yeltsin’s Speech Sacking Stepashin, Naming PM,” Reuters, August 9, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3428.html##2. In fact the presidential elections were scheduled for June 2000, not July.

51. As quoted in Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 75.

52. Interview with Ekho Moskvy, June 22, 2001, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:299.

53. ITAR-TASS, “Glavnoe seichas—deistvovat’ v konstitutsionno-pravovom pole,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, August 10, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/1870181.

54. Stepashin speech to the National Press Club, Washington, DC, March 13, 2000, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/russiavotes.pdf.

55. “President’s Games Are Dangerous,” Moscow Times, August 10, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3429.html##13.

56. “‘Who Is Putin?’ How Russia Reacted to Leader’s Rise to Power, 20 Years Ago,” Moscow Times, August 9, 2019, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/09/who-is-putin-how-russia-reacted-to-leaders-rise-power-20-years-ago-a66767.

57. Andrei Shukshin, “Stepashin Warns Russia May Lose Dagestan,” Reuters, August 9, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3428.html##10.

58. Stepashin speech to the National Press Club.

59. Myers, New Tsar, 156; Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 336–37; Evangelista, Chechen Wars, chap. 4, loc. 879–82.

60. “FOM: Presidentskii reiting Putina vysshe, chem u Primakova,” Lenta.ru, October 20, 1999, https://lenta.ru/news/1999/10/20/putin/.

61.Malgin, “Operatsiia ‘Preemnik.’”

62. Associated Press Newsroom, “Russia: The Fatherland-All Russia Alliance,” August 28, 1999, http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/87278aa3eacb32d5d8c17907c95845b4.

63. Guseinov, Ot El’tsina k … ?, 93; Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 171. In October 1999, Luzhkov announced that he would not be a contender for the Russian presidency.

64. Raymond Bonner with Timothy L. O’Brien, “Activity at Bank Raises Suspicions of Russia Mob Tie,” New York Times, August 19, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/19/world/activity-at-bank-raises-suspicions-of-russia-mob-tie.html.

65. Associated Press Newsroom, “Russia: Borodin Answers Swiss Bank Corruption Charges (2),” September 4, 1999, http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/1f246ba83d78263a98d2406b0cf369cb; John Tagliabue, “Swiss Investigate Possible Laundering of Russian Money,” New York Times, September 4, 1999, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/090499russia-launder-swiss.html.

66. “El’tsin—V panike!,” Moskovskii komsomolets, no. 169, September 4, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/108355.

67. Novosti, Izvestiia, no. 165, September 4, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3176994.

68. Elena Trebugova, “Obidno za Rossiiu bol’she ne budet,” Kommersant, September 4, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3773696.

69. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 218–19; Knight, Orders to Kill, 179–99.

70. Knight, Orders to Kill, 81; Nikita Ermakov, “K nam po-nastoiashchemu prishel terrorizm,” Moskovskaia pravda, September 6, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/6691686.

71. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 217–36 (235).

72. After serving in the Leningrad KGB during the 1970s and 1980s, Patrushev was transferred in 1990 to the Karelia region, where he ran the security services there. But a scandal involving smuggling of birch timber got him into hot water, so in 1994 he was moved to Moscow to work under Stepashin, then head of the FSB’s predecessor agency, the FSK. When Putin left his position as head of the GKU in May 1998, Patrushev replaced him and in October moved to the FSB, where he soon became Putin’s first deputy. See https://dossier.center/patrushev/.

73. Rushailo dossier, Kompromat: Arkhivnaia biblioteka, https://kompromat.wiki/Рушайло_Владимир_Борисович; biography of Rushailo, Lenta.ru, https://m.lenta.ru/lib/14159616/full.htm.

74. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 217–36. Dunlop cites direct reports from several Russian journalists.

7. Putin’s Path to Victory

1. Myers, New Tsar, 158; “Oni uzhe zdes’,” Kommersant, September 14, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3774121.

2. The speech was published in Kommersant, September 15, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3774212.

3. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 80–85, 248–51.

4. Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 177.

5. Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Berezovskii slushaet,” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 14, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/108572. Khinshtein followed up the next week with further excerpts from Berezovsky’s talks with Udugov: Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Berezovaia kasha,” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 22, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/108812.

6.Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 189–90.

7.Novye izvestiia, September 17, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:531–32, 3:48–51.

8. Mark Deich, “Portret bez intrigi,” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 18, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/108730.

9. In his March 2000 speech to the National Press Club, mentioned earlier, Stepashin would reveal publicly that the Kremlin began planning a limited military operation in Chechnya, extending only to the Terek River, as far back as March 1999, in order to eliminate terrorist strongholds.

10. Stepashin interview with Svetlana Sorokina, NTV, October 5, 1999, http://tvoygolos.narod.ru/elita/elitatext/1999.10.05.htm.

11. “Russia Sends Ground Troops into Chechnya, Raising Fears,” New York Times, October 1, 1999, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/100199russia-chechnya.html.

12. Vitalii Tret’iakov, “Goniteli sem’i i annibaly ‘otechestva,’” Nezavisimaia gazeta, October 12, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/327784.

13. Aleksandr Lebed interview with Le Figaro, September 29, 1999, http://www.russianseattle.com/news_092899_exo_lebed.htm. Lebed died from injuries sustained in a helicopter crash in April 2002.

14. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 85–90. Dunlop (21–22) also describes earlier warnings, including one from Russian journalist Aleksandr Zhilin, who reported on July 22, 1999, in the newspaper Moskovskaia pravda, that he had received a document from trustworthy Kremlin sources outlining a plan to discredit Moscow Mayor Luzhkov by causing terrorist attacks on government buildings.

15. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 102–5.

16. See, for example, Iurii Kochergin and Leonid Krutakov, “Operatsiia ‘vzorvannyi mir,’” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 24, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/108893.

17. See David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 24–33; Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 167–216; Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror, trans. Geoffrey Andrews (New York: Encounter Books, 2007), 54–99.

18. Lenta.ru, September 24, 1999, https://lenta.ru/news/1999/09/24/patrushev/.

19. Andrei Piontkovskii, “Preredovitsa: Tak ne planiruiut voinu. Tak planiruiut krovavuiu boiniu,” Novaia gazeta, September 27, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3473354.

20. As cited in Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 80.

21. Satter, Darkness at Dawn, 29–32.

22. Amy Knight, “Finally, We Know about the Moscow Bombings,” New York Review of Books, November 22, 2012.

23. Berezovsky interview with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Kommersant, November 27, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:263–73 (264).

24. Iulia Latynina, “Spustia desiat’ let, ili o vzryvakh domov v Moskve,” Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, September 28, 2009, http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9486.

25.La Repubblica, September 15, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3505.html##5.

26.Tony Wesolowsky, “Russia: Financial Scandal Spreading,” RFE/RL, October 15, 1999, https://www.rferl.org/a/1092408.html.

27. “Kompromat po garantii,” Kommersant, October 15, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3776073.

28. Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Sharon LaFraniere, “Yeltsin’s Son-in-law Kept Offshore Accounts, Hill Told,” Washington Post, September 23, 1999, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/09/23/yeltsins-son-in-law-kept-offshore-accounts-hill-told/69a361aa-57ce-4cac-99ab-319c5c068763/.

29. Michael Wines, “Yeltsin Son-in-law at Center of Rich Network of Influence,” New York Times, October 7, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/07/world/yeltsin-son-in-law-at-center-of-rich-network-of-influence.html; Melor Sturua, “U testia za pazukhoi,” Moskovskii komsomolets, October 9, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/109337.

30. Iu. P. Shchekochikhin, “U dochki-dachka? Ne nuzhen nam bereg turetskii,” Novaia gazeta, October 11, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3473431.

31. Leonid Krutakov, “Krakh banditskogo kapitalizma,” Moskovskii komsomolets, October 6, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/109224.

32. Tatiana Iumasheva, LiveJournal, February 6, 2010, https://t-yumasheva.livejournal.com/13320.html.

33. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 252.

34. Iumasheva, LiveJournal.

35. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 192. Also see Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men, 10.

36. NUPI Center for Russian Studies, https://web.archive.org/web/20010702200941/http://www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/polgrupp.exe?Unity. Shoigu’s career would continue to thrive after Putin became president. He became Russian minister of defense in 2012.

37. Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 169.

38. Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men, 11.

39. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 398–99; Aleksandr Cherniak, Kreml’ 90-kh: Favority i zhertvy Borisa El’tsina (Moscow: Algoritm, 2011), 59–62.

40. Myers, New Tsar, 165.

41. Laura Belin, “Russian Media Policy in the First and Second Chechen Campaigns,” paper for the 52nd Conference of the Political Studies Association, Aberdeen, Scotland, April 2002, https://bleedingheartland.com/static/media/2018/12/Belin2002conferencepaper.pdf.

42. Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 174.

43. Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 175, 186.

44. Aleksandr Mel’man, “Kto ostanovit Dorenko?” Moskovskii komsomolets, October 7, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/109285.

45. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 239.

46.“Obychnyi den’ informatsionnoi bitvy: Planerka po telefonu B. Berezovskii—S. Dorenko,” Novaia gazeta, December 16, 1999, http://www.compromat.ru/page_25483.htm. Also see Hoffman, Oligarchs, 467–48.

47. Interfax, April 4, 2000, as cited in Peter Rutland, “Putin’s Path to Power,” Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 4 (2000): 313–54 (326).

48. Nikolai Popov, “Kak nachinalas’ epokha Putina: Obshchestvennoe mnenie 1999–2000 gg.,” Kapital strany, Moscow, 2008, https://kapital-rus.ru/articles/article/kak_nachinalas_epoha_putina_obschestvennoe_mnenie_1999-2000_gg/.

49. Hale, “Origins of United Russia,” 180, citing a November 1999 poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM).

50.Kommersant, November 25, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3779026.

51. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 356.

52.Nalchik, January 18, 2000, in Berezovskii, Art of the Impossible, 1:538.

53. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 6–7.

54. Putin, First Person, 204–5.

55. Masha Gessen, “Putin Himself First,” New Republic, January 17, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4019.html.

56. Oleg Lur’e, “Turover’s List: File on Corrupt Russians Revealed,” Novaia gazeta, December 27, 1999, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4023.html#8; John Tagliabue and Celestine Bohlen, “Accusations of Bribery in the Kremlin Mount Up,” New York Times, September 9, 1999. Turover, interviewed years later by Catherine Belton, said he had been at one point a top KGB foreign intelligence officer, but he offered no proof for his dubious claim. See Belton, Putin’s People, 91–93.

57. Celestine Bohlen, “Yeltsin Resigns: The Overview,” New York Times, January 1, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/01/world/yeltsin-resigns-overview-yeltsin-resigns-naming-putin-acting-president-run-march.html.

58. David Hoffman, “Russia Vote Returns Tycoon to Spotlight,” Washington Post, December 23, 1999, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/23/076r-122399-idx.html.

59. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 341.

60. Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men, 24.

61. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 195.

8. A Clash of Titans

1. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 417.

2. Putin, First Person, 205–6.

3. Blotskii, Doroga k vlasti, 418–20.

4.Celestine Bohlen, “Yeltsin Resigns: The Overview,” New York Times, January 1, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/01/world/yeltsin-resigns-overview-yeltsin-resigns-naming-putin-acting-president-run-march.html.

5. Putin, First Person, 144.

6. Alice Lagnado, “Russia’s First Lady in Waiting,” The Times (UK), January 8, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4019.html#5.

7. According to a January 25, 2000, statement from the Russian Ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs, 1,173 Russian troops had been killed in fighting in the North Caucasus since August 1999, and 7,500 Chechen and foreign militants had been killed since the Russian military began its incursion in late September (RFE/RL Newsline, January 26, 2000, https://www.rferl.org/a/1142080.html).

8. See, for example, Editorial, “Ending the Brutality in Chechnya,” New York Times, December 9, 1999, citing US President Clinton, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/3672.html##8.

9. As reproduced in Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya, intro. Thomas de Waal (London: Harvill Press, 2001), 113–18.

10. Babitsky responding to interviewer Aleksandr Batchan on the program “Liberty Live,” Radio Svoboda, December 24, 1999, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24218403.html.

11. Gessen, Man without a Face, 32–36. Gessen concludes that an exchange of prisoners involving Babitsky and Chechen warlords probably never took place.

12. Putin, First Person, 171.

13. Gessen, Man without a Face, 36.

14. “Dizzy with Success,” Moscow Times, January 18, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4044.html#1.

15. Chubais interview with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Kommersant, November 24, 1999, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3778900.

16. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 62.

17. Roi Medvedev, Vremia Putina (Moscow: Vremia, 2014), 41.

18. Medvedev, Vremia Putina, 41–42.

19. Medvedev, Vremia Putina, 42; Myers, New Tsar, 188.

20. Elena Masiuk, “Liudmila Narusova: Eto moe politicheskoe zaveshchenie,” Novaia gazeta, November 9, 2012, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/28007606. Narusova walked back her statements in a 2019 interview with Philip Short. She still insisted that her husband had not died of a heart attack but said cryptically that his death was “not sensational and not criminal” (Short, Putin, 762–63).

21. Dmitrii Volchek, “‘Delo Sobchaka’: Zagadki biografii pokrovitelia Putina,” Radio Svoboda, June 9, 2018, https://www.svoboda.org/a/29278219.html.

22. Interview with Novyi kompanion, December 21, 1999, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:207–9 (208).

23. ORT, January 22, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4073.html#3.

24.Interview with Vedomosti, March 24, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:543–44.

25. Interview with Kommersant, April 7, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:545–46.

26. “Boris Berezovsky: Puppeteer or Future Victim?” The Economist, March 25–31, 2000, https://www.economist.com/europe/2000/03/23/boris-berezovsky-puppeteer-or-future-victim.

27. Jonathan Steele, “The Ryazan Incident: If the Russian People Can Be Bothered to Vote, They Will Vote for the Man Who Is Being Foisted on Them,” Guardian, March 24, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4196.html##7.

28. Jamestown Foundation Monitor, March 20, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4185.html##1.

29. Bloomberg, April 4, 2000, citing Interfax, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4226.html##8.

30. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 198.

31. Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia (New York: Penguin, 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 9, loc. 4805.

32.Novaia gazeta, May 15, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3464309.

33. Ostrovsky, Invention of Russia, chap. 9, loc. 4826, citing his interview with Dorenko in June 2014.

34. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 483.

35. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 482–85.

36. Nemtsov, Ispoved’ buntaria, 59–60.

37. Irina Nagornykh, “V Rossii nachalas’ perekroika,” Kommersant, May 16, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3696769.

38. For a detailed study of the reforms, see Matthew Hyde, “Putin’s Federal Reforms and Their Implications for Presidential Power in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 53, no. 5 (2001): 719–43.

39.Kommersant, May 31, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 3:293–301.

40. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 204–6. David Hoffman recalled speaking with Berezovsky on May 31 at the LogoVAZ Club and observed that “he seemed frazzled. The serenity I had noticed in March was gone” (Oligarchs, 487).

41. Irina Rinaeva and Marina Ozerova, “Senatorskie poddavki,” Moskovskii komsomolets, June 1, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/71047.

42. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 207–8.

43. “Ocherednaia bor’ba s avtoritarnoi vlast’iu,” Kommersant, July 8, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3700879.

44.Time Europe, July 17, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 3:319–23.

45. Marcel Michelson, “Swiss Court Turns Down Request by Russian Tycoon,” Reuters, July 24, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4420.html##9.

46. Siuzanna Farizova, “Berezovskii ushel iz bol’shoi politiki,” Kommersant, July 17, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3701374.

47. Khinshtein, Berezovskii i Abramovich, 410.

48. Amelia Gentleman, “Putin Picks Off Opponents Who Matter Most, Wages Partial War on Corruption,” Guardian, July 13, 2000, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jul/14/russia.ameliagentleman?CMP=gu_com.

49. Natal’ia Shipitsyna and Aleksei Borisov, “Putin vozvrashchaet stanu v 1929 godu?,” Moskovskii komsomolets, July 13, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/72526.

50. Sabrina Tavernise, “Putin, Exerting His Authority, Meets with Russia’s Tycoons,” New York Times, July 29, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/29/world/putin-exerting-his-authority-meets-with-russia-s-tycoons.html.

51.Izvestiia, July 29, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:225–31 (228).

52. Gregory Feifer, “Berezovsky Starts Opposition Movement,” Moscow Times, August 10, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4449.html##12.

53. For an account of the accident and its aftermath, see Zoltan Barany, “The Tragedy of the Kursk: Crisis Management in Putin’s Russia,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 3 (2004): 476–503.

54. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 209.

55. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 210–11; Hoffman, Oligarchs, 487–88; Berezovsky’s witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, May 31, 2011, published by The Guardian, November 2, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/nov/02/boris-berezovsky-witness-statement-full 71–72. In Avtoportret, Berezovsky wrote: “After the tragedy with the Kursk, my position caused the president to become furious. It was a turning point in my relationship with him” (85).

56. See the discussion of the trial in chapter 11.

57. Hoffman, Oligarchs, 488–89.

58.Vechernyi Tomsk, August 22, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 1:232.

59. “Vstrecha s rodnymi,” Kommersant, August 29, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3201939.

60. “Ot pervogo litsa,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, August 23, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/1816946.

61. “39 Percent of Russians Consider Kursk Sinking Tragic Coincidence—Poll,” Moscow Times, August 24, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4472.html#7.

62. Gloster, “Approved Judgment, Berezovsky v. Abramovich,” 274.

63.Kommersant, September 5, 2000, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 3:61–64.

64.Viktoriia Artiunova and Elena Tregubova, “Negosudarstvennykh aktsii ORT,” Kommersant, September 5, 2000, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/17574.

65. Robert Kaiser, “Vladimir Putin Dishes with the Media,” Washington Post, September 8, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4500.html.

66. Ron Popeski, “Putin Ends U.N. Summit with Frank Interview,” Reuters, September 8, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4500.html.

67. Andrei Piontkovsky, “Season of Discontent,” Russia Journal, September 16, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/1904903.

68. Yevgenia Albats, “Power Play: Berezovsky the Victim of His Own Designs,” Moscow Times, September 7, 2000, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/berezovsky-the-victim-of-his-own-designs.

69. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 113.

70. Sophie Lambroschini, “Journalists Defend Joining Berezovsky’s ORT Trust,” RFE/RL, September 12, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4511.html##4.

71.Novye izvestiia, September 20, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4537.html##11.

72. Interfax, October 16, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4583.html##6.

73. RFE/RL Security Watch, October 23, 2000, https://www.rferl.org/a/1344751.html.

74. The interview was published in English on the president’s website, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/by-date/26.10.2000.

75. Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:530–32.

76. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 232–33.

77. “Zaiavlenie dlia pechati Borisa Berezovskogo,” Kommersant, November 15, 2000, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3709892.

9. The Outcast versus the Tyrant

1. Andrei Gamalov, “Boris Berezovskii: ‘Ia eshche nikogo ne liubil,’” Kar’era, February 5, 2001, http://www.compromat.ru/page_10604.htm; Irina Bobrova, “Tainaia zhizn’ suprugi oligarkha,” Moskovskii komsomolets, February 17, 2005, https://www.compromat.ru/page_16256.htm.

2. Boris Berezovsky witness statement, Guardian, 76–79.

3. Berezovsky witness statement, Guardian, 83.

4. Roman Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, May 30, 2011, Guardian, November 2, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/nov/02/roman-abramovich-witness-statement-full. 59–60

5.Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 24–25.

6. “Does Litvinenko Know Who Is Responsible for Apartment Bombings?,” Jamestown Foundation, November 2, 2000, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4617.html##2; Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 3–19.

7. Knight, Orders to Kill, 151–54; Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 26–30.

8. “Silencing Critics of the Kremlin,” New York Times, January 23, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/opinion/silencing-critics-of-the-kremlin.html.

9. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 123.

10. Putin’s List, Ustinov, database of the Free Russia Forum, https://www.spisok-putina.org/en/personas/ustinov-2/.

11. Putin’s list, Murov, database of the Free Russia Forum, https://www.spisok-putina.org/en/personas/murov-3/; Knight, Orders to Kill, 47–49.

12. As quoted in Giacomo Tognini, “How Rich Is Putin’s Right-hand Man? Inside the Murky Fortune of Igor Sechin, the Darth Vader of the Kremlin,” Fortune, May 2, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/05/02/how-rich-is-putins-right-hand-man-inside-the-murky-fortune-of-igor-sechin-the-darth-vader-of-the-kremlin/?sh=25fcd8195ddc.

13. Yuri Shvets, “Report on Igor Sechin, The Litvinenko Inquiry,” INQ015691, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence.

14. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 305.

15. Richard Sakwa, The Putin Paradox (London: I. B. Tauris, 2020), 35.

16. C-Span, June 17, 2001, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4718091/user-clip-bush-putins-soul.

17. National Public Radio, April 16, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/04/16/1092811802/russia-putin-bush-texas-summit-crawford.

18. Yuri Zarakhovich, “Russians Happy to Follow the Leader,” Time Europe, December 6, 2001, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/5593-14.php.

19. David Hoffman, “Putin Says ‘Why Not?’ to Russia Joining NATO,” Washington Post, March 6, 2000, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/03/06/putin-says-why-not-to-russia-joining-nato/c1973032-c10f-4bff-9174-8cae673790cd/.

20. Sakwa, Putin Paradox, 1.

21. Alan Cowell, “Exiled Russian Oligarch Plots His Comeback,” New York Times, February 18, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/world/exiled-russian-oligarch-plots-his-comeback.html.

22. George Soros, “Who Lost Russia?” New York Review of Books, April 13, 2000.

23. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 248.

24. Cowell, “Exiled Russian Oligarch Plots His Comeback.”

25.Author interview with Gleb Berezovsky, London, October 6, 2022.

26. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 240–41; “Berezovskii potratil na ‘liberal’nuiu’ Rossiiu—ne odin, a piat’ millionov dollarov,” Lenta.ru, October 9, 2002, https://lenta.ru/news/2002/10/09/berezovsky2/.

27. “Otdel’nyi razgovor. FSB vzryvaet Rossiiu,” Novaia gazeta, August 27, 2001, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/3467508.

28. Lev Roitman, “O knige ‘FSB vzryvet Rossiiu’: Fakty ili versii?” Radio Svoboda, June 11, 2002, https://www.svoboda.org/a/24202391.html.

29. News on NTV/RU, December 14, 2001, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:606–8.

30. Guy Chazan, “Berezovsky, His Influence on the Wane, Alleges Putin’s Involvement in Bombings,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2001, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/5604-3.php.

31. Patrick E. Tyler, “Russian Says Kremlin Faked Terror Attacks,” New York Times, February 1, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/world/russian-says-kremlin-faked-terror-attacks.html.

32.Assassination of Russia (Blowing Up Russia), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sx2YmSXDy8.

33. Aleksandr Vasil’ev, “Shou Berezovskogo i ego ‘gadenyshei,’” Moskovskii komsomolets, March 7, 2002, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/114039.

34. Nataliya Gevorkyan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, “Boris Berezovskii organizoval ‘Pokushenie na Rossiiu,’” Kommersant, March 6, 2002, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/4172971.

35. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 250–51.

36. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 258.

37. John Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 161–62.

38. Knight, Orders to Kill, 106–11.

39. Catherine Belton, “Killing Raises Awkward Questions,” Moscow Times, April 21, 2003, Johnson’s Russia List, http://www.russialist.org/archives/7149.htm.

40. “Berezovsky Ally Held over Killing,” BBC News, June 26, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3022446.stm.

41. Knight, Orders to Kill, 106–11; BNK Informatsionnoe Agenstvo, May 13, 2018, https://www.bnkomi.ru/data/news/78720/.

42. Nick Paton Walsh, “Russian MP Shot Dead in Contract Killing,” Guardian, August 21, 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/22/russia.nickpatonwalsh.

43. Knight, Orders to Kill, 113–14.

44. Dunlop, Moscow Bombings, 139; Knight, “Finally, We Know about the Moscow Bombings.”

45.Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:697–762; Zygar, All the President’s Men, 40–41.

46. Berezovsky v. Russian Television and Radio, Royal Courts of Justice, March 10, 2010, https://www.5rb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Berezovsky-v-Russian-Television-and-Radio-No-2-2010-EWHC-476-QB.pdf.

47. David Hearst, “Judge Refuses to Extradite Chechen,” Guardian, November 13, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/nov/14/chechnya.russia.

48. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 299.

49. John Dunlop, The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises: A Critique of Russian Counter-Terrorism (Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2006), 103–57.

50. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 41–42.

51. “Levada Center Polling Data,” Levada.ru, https://www.levada.ru/2022/04/27/odobrenie-institutov-rejtingi-partij-i-politikov-2/.

52. Andrei A. Kovalev, Russia’s Dead End: An Insider’s Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin, trans. Steven I. Levine (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2017), Kindle ed., 269.

53. Committee to Protect Journalists, “Attacks on the Press in 2004—Russia,” https://www.refworld.org/docid/47c566edc.html.

54. “Russian Federation Presidential Election,” March 14, 2004, OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Report, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/7/b/33100.pdf.

55. Richard Sakwa, Putin and the Oligarch: The Khodorkovsky-Yukos Affair (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 38–41 (39).

56. Sakwa, Putin and the Oligarch, 41.

57. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 50.

58. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Nataliya Gevorkyan, Tiur’ma i volia (Moscow: Howard Roark, 2012), Kindle ed., 524–25. See also Sakwa, Putin and the Oligarch, 54–56; and Zygar, All the President’s Men, 51–56. It should be noted that Kondaurov said elsewhere that he had no idea Khodorkovsky was going to give the presentation.

59. Khodorkovsky and Gevorkyan, Tiur’ma i volia, 523–24; Sakwa, Putin and Oligarch, 72–76.

60. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 57–60; Belton, Putin’s People, 232–38.

61. Sakwa, Putin and the Oligarch, 78–81; Khodorkovsky and Gevorkyan, Tiur’ma i volia, 537–39.

62. Khodorkovsky and Gevorkyan, Tiur’ma i volia, 73–76; Sakwa, Putin and the Oligarch, 72–75, 82–84; Belton, Putin’s People, 278–303. Also see Myers, New Tsar, 281–90.

63. Boris Berezovsky, “The West Must Realize That Putin is Becoming a Dictator,” Daily Telegraph, November 6, 2003, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:365–67.

64. Boris Berezovsky, “We Russians Must Remove Putin from Power,” Le Monde, November 17, 2003, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:368–70.

65.See McCain’s speech to the US Congress on November 4, 2003: https://www.aei.org/research-products/speech/senator-mccain-decries-new-authoritarianism-in-russia/.

10. The Kremlin on the Offensive

1. As quoted in Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 335.

2. “Putin’s Way,” PBS Frontline documentary, January 13, 2015, transcript at https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-putins-way/.

3. Nicholas Gordon, “How Rich Is Putin? Mystery of Russian President’s Net Worth Complicates Biden’s Decision to Sanction Him,” Fortune, February 25, 2022, https://fortune.com/2022/02/25/putin-net-worth-wealth-russia-ukraine-invasion-sanctions-biden-us/.

4. Myers, New Tsar, 270–71.

5. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 316.

6. Al-Jazeera, March 15, 2005, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/3/15/berezovsky-puts-ukraine-in-quandary; “Russia’s Citizen K,” Meduza, December 15, 2015, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2015/12/16/russia-s-citizen-k.

7. “Transcript of Berezovsky’s Meeting with the Verhovna Rada Commission, October 11, 2005, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:121–29.

8. Letter to Yulia Timoshenko, May 29, 2005, in Berezovsky, Art of the Impossible, 2:107–10.

9. “The Gongadze Inquiry: An Investigation into the Failure of Legal and Judicial Processes in the Case of Georgy Gongadze,” Report No. 3, September 2007, https://piraniarchive.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/gongadze3.pdf.

10. “Gongadze Inquiry”; “Transcript of Berezovsky’s Meeting with the Verhovna Rada.”

11. See statements by Felshtinsky and Goldfarb on the website fraza.iua, December 6, 2005, https://fraza.com/news/16365-felshtinskiy-melnichenko-vsegda-vel-razgovory-o-bolshih-dengah; https://fraza.com/news/16358-goldfarb-kole-melnichenko-mesto-v-tyurme; and Dmitrii Simakin, Ekaterina Blinova, and Tat’iana Ivzhenko, “Konspirativnyi oblet: Skandal’nyi okhrannik Mel’nichenko vernulsia v Kiev cherez Moskvu, vstretivshis’ neizvestno s kem,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, December 1, 2005, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/8667684.

12. Myers, New Tsar, 277.

13. Claire Bigg, “Was Soviet Collapse Last Century’s Worst Geopolitical Catastrophe?,” RFE/RL, April 29, 2005, https://www.rferl.org/a/1058688.html.

14. Belton, Putin’s People, 256.

15. Marina Volkova, “Liudmila Putina: S trudovym kodeksom u Vladimira Vladimirovicha slozhnosti,” RGRU, June 1, 2005, https://rg.ru/2005/06/01/putina.html.

16. “Key Kremlin Figure ‘Quits,’” BBC News, October 29, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3223847.stm.

17. See my review of Kasyanov’s tell-all book, Bez Putina: Amy Knight, “Forever Putin?,” New York Review of Books, February 11, 2010.

18. Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Sensatsiia: Den vyrozhdeniia Berezovskogo,” Moskovskii komsomolets, January 23, 2006, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/8894102.

19.Berezovsky v. Russian Television, https://www.5rb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Berezovsky-v-Russian-Television-and-Radio-No-2-2010-EWHC-476-QB.pdf. This was not the first time Berezovsky had used the British legal system to defend his name. In 2000, he filed a libel case against Forbes Magazine over an article by Paul Klebnikov that linked him to the Chechen mafia and to the murder of Vladislav Listev. In March 2003, Forbes issued a retraction. Two years later, Berezovsky sued Alfa Bank Chairman Mikhail Fridman for defamation in a London court. After a jury trial in May 2006, the court ruled in Berezovsky’s favor, and Fridman was ordered to pay him 50,000 pounds, along with legal fees. See an archived Forbes editor’s note, March 6, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20050112221325/http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a_7.html; and Al’vina Kharchenko, “Prigovor v chest’ Borisa Berezovskogo,” Kommersant, May 27, 2006, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/9537455.

20. The two interviews are reproduced on the website Kompromat.ru: http://www.compromat.ru/page_18101.htm.

21. As quoted in Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy (New York: St. Martin’s, 2007), 191.

22.BBC News, February 27, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4756880.stm.

23. Gazeta.ru, March 3, 2022, http://www.compromat.ru/page_18320.htm#1.

24.Vremia, March 3, 2006, http://www.vremya.ru/2006/37/51/146770.html.

25. Kompromat.ru, https://www.compromat.ru/page_18282.htm.

26. Andrew E. Kramer, “Russia Forces Tycoon to Sell His Holdings,” New York Times, February 16, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/business/worldbusiness/russia-forces-tycoon-to-sell-his-holdings.html.

27. “Russia: ‘Kommersant’ Purchase Changes Media Landscape,” RFE/RL, September 1, 2006, https://www.rferl.org/a/1071011.html.

28. The decision was published on the website of the law firm Carter-Ruck, which represented Berezovsky: https://www.carter-ruck.com/news/berezovsky-wins-again-on-extradition/.

29. Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 86–91.

30. Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 88.

31. Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 88.

32. Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 54.

33. Owen, Litvinenko Inquiry, 54–60; Knight, Orders to Kill, 158.

34. Alexander Litvinenko at the Frontline Club, October 19, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-feiiuj2I4.

35. Lugovoi witness statement for court case Berezovsky v. Terluk, March 4, 2011, Litvinenko Inquiry Evidence, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence lextranet rerference INQ001788; Knight, Orders to Kill, 158–61.

36. Lugovoi witness statement for Berezovsky v. Terluk, October 26, 2011, Litvinenko Inquiry evidence, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidencelextranetreferenceINQ001842.

37. Glushkov testimony for the Litvinenko Inquiry, February 27, 2015, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/hearings; Shvets testimony for the Litvinenko Inquiry, March 12, 2015, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/hearings.

38. Knight, Orders to Kill, 175–87.

39.Knight, Orders to Kill, 177.

40. Goldfarb, Death of a Dissident, 320–27, 335–38; Knight, Orders to Kill, 172–74; Berezovsky interview with British police, March 30, 2007, Litvinenko Inquiry evidence, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidencelextranetreferenceINQ017595.

41. Knight, Orders to Kill, 182–84; transcript of press conference of Lugovoi and Kovtun, May 31, 2007, Litvinenko Inquiry evidence, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidencelextranetreferenceINQ001907.

42. Myers, New Tsar, 314.

43. Interview with Berezovsky, November 24, 2006, Litvinenko Inquiry evidence, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence lextranet reference INQ002209; Litvinenko Inquiry hearings, testimony of Alex Goldfarb, February 4, 2015, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/hearings.

44. Dmitrii Bykov, “Boris Berezovskii: U Putina bylo tri varianta. On vybral khudshii,” Sobesednik, May 7, 2008, http://www.compromat.ru/page_22683.htm.

45. “Chubais uveren, chto Gaidara khoteli ubit’,” Vesti.ru, November 29, 2006, https://www.vesti.ru/article/2307961.

46. Grani.ru, February 2, 2007, http://www.compromat.ru/page_20146.htm.

47. Yegor Gaidar, “I Was Poisoned and Russia’s Political Enemies Were Surely Behind It,” Financial Times, December 6, 2006, https://www.ft.com/content/aacc818a-855b-11db-b12c-0000779e2340.

48. Andrei Illarionov, “Spetsoperatsiia ‘Otravlenie Gaidara Borisom Berezovskim,’” LiveJournal, April 9, 2019, https://aillarionov.livejournal.com/1114866.html; Gaidar interview with Albats, Ekho Moskvy, June 17, 2007, https://soundstream.media/clip/17-06-2007-19-09-polnyy-al-bats-liberal-nyye-ekonomisty-i-vlast-protivorechiye-ili-neobkhodimost. In 2020, Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko filed a defamation lawsuit against RT television.

49. Illarionov, LiveJournal.

50. Vladimir Shlapentokh, “How Putin’s Russia Embraces Authoritarianism: The Case of Yegor Gaidar,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40, no. 4 (2007): 493–99 (497).

51. Boris Nemtsov, “Zhit’ stalo luchshe, no protivnee,” Vedomosti, July 18, 2007, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/12308262.

52. Knight, Orders to Kill, 257–81.

53. Ian Cobain, Matthew Taylor, and Luke Harding, “I Am Plotting a New Russian Revolution,” Guardian, April 13, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/13/topstories3.russia.

54. “Protiv Berezovskogo vozbuzhdeno delo o zakhvate vlasti,” Gazeta.ru, April 13, 2007, https://www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2007/04/13/n_1057186.shtml.

55. “Boris Berezovsky—Putting One over Putin,” Frontline Club, June 6, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMB2o_rwW3E.

56.BBC News, July 18, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6905271.stm; Alexander Goldfarb witness statement, Litvinenko Inquiry, May 20, 2013, https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidencelextranetreferenceINQ017548.

57. Report by UK Select Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Affairs, November 2007, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmfaff/51/5107.htm.

58. Thom Shanker and Mark Landler, “Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability,” New York Times, February 11, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/europe/11munich.html.

59.See Peter Reddaway, Russia’s Domestic Security Wars: Putin’s Use of Divide and Rule against His Hardline Allies (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

60. Myers, New Tsar, 351.

61. On Medvedev as the Russian president, see the memoirs of former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul: From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Inside Story of Russia and America (Boston: Mariner Books, 2018).

62. Bykov, “Boris Berezovskii.”

63. Sergei Sokolov, “Agenty spetssluzhb—sredi organizatorov ubiistva Anny Politkovskoi,” Novaia gazeta, April 6, 2008, http://www.compromat.ru/page_22494.htm.

64. Knight, Orders to Kill, 132–43 (140). The five killers of Politkovskaya were Chechens, and there is strong reason to believe that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Politkovskaya had accused of being a “Chechen dragon,” organized the killings. But Kadyrov never would have done this on his own initiative, as Philip Short would have us believe (see Short, Putin, 56–57, 70). Kadyrov always took his orders from Putin.

11. A Life Falling Apart

1. Suzanna Andrews, “The Widow and the Oligarchs,” Vanity Fair, September 9, 2009, https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2009/10/oligarchs200910.

2. Vladimir Socor, “Badri Patarkatsishvili: From Russian Businessman to Georgian Presidential Claimant,” Parts 1 and 2, Jamestown Foundation, Eurasian Daily Monitor 4, no. 237, December 21, 2007; Jim Nichol, “Georgia’s January 2008 Presidential Election: Outcome and Implications,” CRS Report for Congress, January 25, 2008, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/RS22794.pdf.

3. Andrews, “Widow and the Oligarchs.”

4. Albats, “Berezovskii byl chast’iu nashei zhizni.”

5. Andrews, “Widow and the Oligarchs”; Irina Khalip, “Voina za nasledstvo oligarkha Patarkatsishvili,” Novaia gazeta, December 9, 2009, http://www.compromat.ru/page_28642.htm.

6. “Berezovskii khochet zabrat’ u vdovy Patarkatsishvili 3 milliard funtov,” Rosbalt.ru, February 8, 2009, https://www.rosbalt.ru/main/2009/02/08/616481.html.

7. Pavel Bandakov, “Berezovskii schitaet, chto Patarkatsishvili mog ego predat’,” BBC News, January 24, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/russian/business/2012/01/120124_berezovsky_badri_court_case.

8. “How British Spin-doctors and Boris Berezovsky Tried to Help Alexander Lukashenko Win over the West,” Meduza, September 10, 2020, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/09/10/guys-get-out?fbclid=IwAR2FV7cv3zwju--tWGbpkdcjiyYkcFwSPF6sunu5lZYqlOYIErbMejmb5cs.

9. Tat’iana Egorova and Mariia Rozhkova, “Berezovskii sobiraetsia v sud,” Vedomosti, July 5, 2005, https://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/articles/2005/07/05/berezovskij-sobiraetsya-v-sud.

10. Sarah Lyall, “A Clash of Titans Exposes Russia’s Seamy Underside,” New York Times, November 9, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/world/europe/berezovsky-v-abramovich-offers-peek-into-post-soviet-russia.html.

11. Masha Gessen, “Comrades-in-Arms,” Vanity Fair, November 13, 2012, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/11/roman-abramovich-boris-berezovsky-feud-russia.

12. Berezovsky witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich.

13. Berezovsky v. Abramovich, Executive Summary of Full Judgment, https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2012/2463(image1).pdf, 14.

14.Lyall, “Clash of Titans.”

15. Pomerantsev, “Berezovsky’s Last Days.”

16. Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 9–18.

17. Berezovsky witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 28.

18. Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 59.

19. Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 95–96.

20. Opus 2 International, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, Day 4, October 6, 2011, transcript, 13–14, https://pravo.ru/store/interdoc/doc/298/Day_4.pdf.

21. Opus 2 International, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, Day 4, 131–32.

22. Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 132–33.

23. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 147.

24. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 147.

25. Berezovsky witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 28.

26. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 244.

27. Transcript of Deripaska testimony, November 18, 2011, https://pravo.ru/store/interdoc/doc/317/Day_29.pdf.

28. Abramovich witness statement, Berezovsky v. Abramovich, 51.

29. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 438.

30. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 448.

31. Luke Harding, “WikiLeaks cables: Dmitry Medvedev ‘Plays Robin to Putin’s Batman,’” Guardian, December 1, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-medvedev-putin-russia.

32. “Putin Announces Presidential Bid, With Medvedev Backing,” RFE/RL, September 24, 2011, https://www.rferl.org/a/medvedev_says_putin_should_be_next_russian_president/24338593.html.

33. As quoted in Andrei Kolesnikov, “Fal’sh-intriga,” Novaia gazeta, September 26, 2011, https://on-demand.eastview.com/browse/doc/26021183.

34.Stephen Blank and Carol Saivetz, “Russia Watches the Arab Spring,” RFE/RL, June 24, 2011, https://www.rferl.org/a/commentary_russia_watches_arab_spring/24245990.html.

35. Levada Center, https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/.

36. James Brooke, “Protests over Russian Elections Spread to More Cities,” Voice of America, December 5, 2011, https://www.voanews.com/a/troops-patrol-moscow-to-prevent-election-protests-135109338/149195.html.

37. Ellen Barry and Michael Schwirtz, “Vast Rally in Moscow Is a Challenge to Putin’s Power,” New York Times, December 24, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/world/europe/tens-of-thousands-of-protesters-gather-in-moscow-russia.html.

38.PBS Frontline, “The Putin Files: Julia Ioffe,” interview, June 2017, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/julia-ioffe/#highlight-2289-2302.

39. Richard Sakwa, “Whatever Happened to the Russian Opposition?” Research Paper, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House, May 2014, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/field/field_document/20140523SakwaFinal.pdf, 5.

40. Sakwa, “Whatever Happened to the Russian Opposition?”

41. Sakwa, “Whatever Happened to the Russian Opposition?”, 12

42. “Otkrytoe pis’mo Berezovskogo Putinu,” Grani.ru, January 17, 2012, https://graniru.org/Politics/Russia/President/m.194904.html#letter.

43. “Genprokuratura nashla ekstremizm v pis’me Berezovskogo,” Grani.ru, May 18, 2012, https://graniru.org/Society/Media/Freepress/m.197815.html.

44. See his LiveJournal blog, April 23, 2012, https://bberezovsky.livejournal.com/2356.html and May 17, 2012, https://bberezovsky.livejournal.com/3012.html.

45. “Protiv Berezovskogo vozbuzhdeny dva ugolovnykh dela,” Grani.ru, May 29, 2012. https://graniru.org/Politics/Russia/m.198037.html#bab.

46. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 334–35.

47. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 490.

48. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 44–45.

49. Gloster, Approved Judgment, 53–54.

50. Gessen, “Comrades-in-Arms.”

51. Author interview with Luke Harding, June 29, 2022.

52. Author interview with Elena Gorbunova, London, October 6, 2022.

53. Author interview with Harding. For an in-depth study of the Russian informal economy, see Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

54.Luke Harding, “Humiliation for Boris Berezovsky in Battle of the Oligarchs,” Guardian, August 31, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/31/humiliation-boris-berezovsky-battle-oligarchs.

55. Zygar, All the President’s Men, 237.

56. Interview with Gorbunova.

57. Harding, “Humiliation for Boris Berezovsky”; John F. Burns and Ravi Somalya, “Russian Tycoon Loses Multibillion-Dollar Case over Oil Fortune to Kremlin Favorite,” New York Times, August 31, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/world/europe/russian-tycoon-loses-5-8-billion-case-against-ex-partner.html.

58. David Leppard, “Berezovsky Cries Foul over £3.5bn Abramovich Trial Judge,” Sunday Times, September 22, 2012, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/berezovsky-cries-foul-over-pound35bn-abramovich-trial-judge-wrgwrp9dbq7.

59. “Aleksei Venediktov o Borise Berezovskom,” Ekho Moskvy, March 24, 2013, https://echo.msk.ru/programs/svoi-glaza/1038068-echo/.

60. Amy Knight, “Putin’s Downhill Race,” New York Review of Books, September 26, 2013.

61. “Russy-2014: Boikott Olimpiada v Sochi!,” https://bberezovsky.livejournal.com/4081.html.

62. Joint Stock Company (Aeroflot-Russian Airlines) v. Berezovsky & Anzor, Judgement, October 30, 2012, https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff75260d03e7f57eab42c.

63. “Sroki s rodiny,” Vremia, June 29, 2009, http://www.vremya.ru/2009/112/46/232127.html.

64. Elena Belova, “Babe—morozhennoe,” Gazeta.ru, January 24, 2013, https://www.gazeta.ru/social/2013/01/24/4938977.shtml; Lewis Smith, “Boris Berezovsky’s Former Girlfriend Claims He Owes Her Millions,” Independent, January 23, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-berezovsky-s-former-girlfriend-claims-he-owes-her-millions-8464108.html.

65. As part of the deal, Berezovsky withdrew his claim against the aluminum tycoon Vasilii Anisimov, relating to a stake Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili had in Anisimov’s company Metalloinvest.

66. “Byvshei zhene Berezovskogo ne khvataet deneg, chtoby platit’ sadovniku,” RAPSI News, April 25, 2016, https://rapsinews.ru/international_news/20160425/275954399.html; “Berezovsky to Sell Warhol Painting to Pay Court Fees,” Moscow Times, March 19, 2013, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2013/03/19/berezovsky-to-sell-warhol-painting-to-pay-court-fees-a22476; Neil Buckley, “Boris Berezovsky: A Death in Exile,” Financial Times, March 29, 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/e472f0d4-985c-11e2-867f-00144feabdc0.

67. Myers, New Tsar, 432.

68. Luke Harding and Alexander Winning, “Vladimir Putin and His Wife Announce Their Separation in TV Interview,” Guardian, June 6, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/vladimir-putin-wife-lyudmila-separation.

12. Berezovsky’s End

1. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 391.

2. Quoted in Luke Harding and Robert Booth, “Berezovsky’s Death Leaves Friends Suspecting Foul Play,” Guardian, March 24, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/24/boris-berezovsky-death-foul-play.

3. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 391–92.

4. Mariia Mishina, “On govoril: ‘Mne ochen’ plokho,’” Novoe vremia, April 1, 2013, https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/64627. Also see Mark Franchetti, “My Tycoon’s Slide into Despair,” Sunday Times, April 21, 2013, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-tycoons-slide-into-despair-6m83hv78b7v.

5.Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 392.

6. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 421.

7. Mariia Timokhova, “Smert’ za zakrytoi dver’iu,” Novoe vremia, March 28, 2014, https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/80941; recording of the public inquest into Berezovsky’s death, March 26–27, 2014, Cotlick testimony. (Note: there is no written transcript of the inquest, and the recording obtained by the author from Elizaveta Berezovskaya was at times unclear, so I also rely on media accounts of the inquest.)

8. Ivan Nechepurenko, “Uncertainty Hangs over Berezovsky’s Estate as New Assets Found,” Moscow Times, August 20, 2013, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2013/08/20/uncertainty-hangs-over-berezovsky-estate-as-new-assets-found-a26931. It does appear that by 2016, with creditors demanding payments, Berezovsky’s estate became, as a British judge put it, “hopelessly insolvent.” See Gorbunova v. Estate of Boris Berezovsky, Judgment, July 22, 2016, https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2016/1829.html#para3.

9. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 421.

10. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 393.

11. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 376.

12. Dmitrii Bykov, “Iulii Dubov: Borisa Berezovskogo ubivali trinadtsat’ let,” Sobesednik, May 7, 2013, https://sobesednik.ru/dmitriy-bykov/20130507-yulii-dubov-borisa-berezovskogo-ubivali-trinadtsat-let.

13. Luke Harding, “Boris Berezovsky and the Dangers of Being a Russian Exile in the UK,” Guardian, March 25, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/25/boris-berezovsky-russian-exile-uk.

14. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 376; author interview with Gorbunova.

15. Mishina, “On govoril: ‘Mne ochen’ plokho.’”

16. Author interview with Iulii Dubov, London, October 7, 2022.

17. Yevgenia Albats, “Zhertvoprinoshenie,” Novoe vremia, April 1, 2013, https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/64622.

18. Howard Amos, “Boris Berezovsky Was ‘in Talks over Return to Russia,’” Guardian, March 24, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/24/boris-berezovsky-talks-return-russia.

19. Avi Navama, witness statement to police, March 25, 2013, provided, along with his witness statement on March 28, 2013, to the author by a Berezovsky family member; recording of Berezovsky inquest, Navama testimony.

20. Albats, “Zhertvoprinoshenie.”

21. Navama witness statement, March 28, 2013; Albats, “Zhertvoprinoshenie”; Mark Franchetti, “The Last Days of an Oligarch,” Sunday Times, August 8, 2015, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-last-days-of-an-oligarch-p3jbqgr6crt.

22. Navama witness statement, March 28, 2013.

23. Navama witness statement, March 25, 2013.

24. Ilia Zhegulev, “Poslednee interv’iu Borisa Berezovskogo: ‘Ia ne vizhu smysla zhizni,’” Forbes, March 23, 2013, https://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya/obshchestvo/236176-poslednee-intervyu-borisa-berezovskogo-ya-ne-vizhu-smysla-zhizni.

25.Author interview with Gleb Berezovsky.

26. Mishina, “On govoril: ‘Mne ochen’ plokho.’”

27. Franchetti, “Last Days of an Oligarch.”

28. Brinkmann was well known in Britain. His analysis showing that Italian banker Roberto Calvi was murdered in London in 1982 had caused an initial verdict of suicide to be overturned.

29. Mariia Timokhova, “Smert’ za zakrytoi dver’iu”; Alexis Flynn, “Berezovsky Death Remains Unexplained,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/expert-says-berezovsky-likely-strangled-1395939091; recording of Berezovsky inquest, Brinkman testimony.

30. Timokhova, “Smert’ za zakrytoi dver’iu”; Alex Spence, “‘Broken’ Boris Berezovsky Talked of Killing Himself after Losing Abramovich Lawsuit,” Times, March 26, 2014, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/broken-boris-berezovsky-talked-of-killing-himself-after-losing-abramovich-lawsuit-hgzvvd58gc7.

31. Navama, witness statement, March 25, 2013.

32. Claire Duffin, “Oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s Death: The Unanswered Questions,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 27, 2014, https://www.smh.com.au/world/oligarch-boris-berezovskys-death-the-unanswered-questions-20140327-zqng2.html.

33. Berezovskaya interview with Dmitrii Gordon.

34. Author interview with Elizaveta Berezovskaya, London, October 7, 2022.

35. Author interview with Gleb Berezovsky.

36. Author interview with Akhmed Zakaev, London, October 8, 2022.

37. Author interview with Iulii Dubov; author’s FaceTime interview with Michael Cotlick, November 22, 2022.

38. Mishina, “On govoril: ‘Mne ochen’ plokho.’”

39. “Oligarch Berezovsky ‘a Broken Man,’” Belfast Telegraph, March 26, 2014, https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/oligarch-berezovsky-a-broken-man-30125952.html. Cotlick confirmed his conviction that Berezovsky’s death was a suicide in his interview with this author. Cotlick claimed that the members of the Berezovsky family refused to accept that Berezovsky died from suicide because they felt guilt that they did not take care of him when he was depressed. Cotlick cut off all ties with the family after Berezovsky died.

40. Timokhova, “Smert’ za zakrytoi dver’iu”; recording of Berezovsky inquest, testimony of Saeed Islam.

41. Ian Cobain, “Boris Berezovsky Inquest Returns Open Verdict on Death,” Guardian, March 27, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/boris-berezovsky-inquest-open-verdict-death.

42. Flynn, “Berezovsky Death Remains Unexplained.”

43. Ian Cobain et al., “Berezovsky Found Dead at His Berkshire Home,” Guardian, March 23, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/23/boris-berezovsky-found-dead-berkshire-home.

44. Viktor Telegin, LiveJournal, March 24, 2013, https://dr-ionych.livejournal.com/23130.html.

45. Wikinews, https://ru.wikinews.org/wiki/Виктор_Телегин_(dr-ionych):_Письмо_Бориса_Березовского_к_Владимиру_Путину.

46.Bezformata, St. Petersburg, April 3, 2013, https://sanktpeterburg.bezformata.com/listnews/pismo-berezovskogo-putinu-opublikovannoe/10638681/.

47. Irina Reznik and Timofei Dziadko, “Pis’mo Berezovskogo Putinu peredal Abramovich,” Vedomosti, April 3, 2013, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2013/04/03/pismo_berezovskogo_putinu_peredal_abramovich.

48. Harding, “Berezovsky and the Dangers of Being a Russian Exile.”

49. Pomerantsev, “Berezovsky’s Last Days.”

50.Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, April 25, 2013, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/17976.

51. Vladimir Pastukhov, “Pis’mo nedrugu,” Polit.ru, March 25, 2013, https://polit.ru/articles/strana/pismo-nedrugu-2013-03-25/.

52. Knight, Orders to Kill, 213.

53. Jane Croft, “Open Verdict Fails to Dispel Mystery over Death of Berezovsky,” Financial Times, March 27, 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/061639fe-b5de-11e3-b40e-00144feabdc0.

54. Bykov, “Iulii Dubov: Borisa Berezovskogo ubivali trinadtsat’ let.”

55. Knight, Orders to Kill, 245.

56.Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, April 25, 2013.

57. Alexandra Ma, “‘Traitors Will Kick the Bucket’—Watch Vladimir Putin’s Chilling Warning to Spies Who Betray Russia,” Business Insider, March 7, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-threatened-russian-traitors-the-year-sergei-skripal-went-to-uk-2018-3.

58. Amy Knight, Putin’s Killers: The Kremlin and the Art of Political Assassination (London: Biteback Publishing, 2019), 320. This book, published in the UK, is an updated paperback edition of Orders to Kill.

59. Luke Harding, “Murder of Kremlin Critic in London ‘Was Made to Look Like Suicide,’” Guardian, April 9, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/09/murder-kremlin-critic-london-made-look-like-suicide-nikolai-glushkov.

60. Harding, “Boris Berezovsky and the Dangers of Being a Russian Exile.”

61. Luke Harding, “Murdered Russian Exile Survived Earlier Poison Attempt, Police Believe,” Guardian, September 7, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/07/murdered-russian-exile-nikolai-glushkov-poisoning-attempt-bristol.

62. Rose, “Approved Judgment, Aeroflot v. Leeds & Anor & Ors.”

63.Life and Death of Once Most Powerful Russian Boris Berezovsky, https://documentary.net/video/life-death-of-once-most-powerful-russian-boris-berezovsky/.

64. According to Iulii Dubov, Aven had a personal reason for writing the book: “He was jealous of Boris, because Boris had always been in the limelight, overshadowing Aven with his outsized presence, huge energy, and magnetic personality. This was an opportunity for Aven to get back at him” (author interview with Dubov).

65. See my review of the book: “Friends and Enemies,” Times Literary Supplement, March 23, 2018, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/friends-enemies-boris-berezovsky/.

66. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 19–23.

67. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 57, 192.

68. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 121.

69. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 91.

70. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 274.

71. Aven, Vremia Berezovskogo, 359, 408, 422.

72. “Iz nepravdy kazhdogo mozhno slozhil pravdivuiu kartinu,” Kommersant, February 3, 2018, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3539844.

73. Lozhak’s commentary and the trailer for the series, “Berezovskii—eto kto,” appeared on the Russian media site Meduza, February 22, 2018, https://meduza.io/feature/2018/02/22/berezovskiy-eto-kto-veb-serial-andreya-loshaka.

74. Anna Politkovskaya, Putin’s Russia, trans. Arch Tait (London: Harvill Press, 2004), 270–73.

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