Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Russia has glittering towers and a jet set elite,
Speaker 1: but grinding rural poverty too. It has one of the
Speaker 1: world's great literary traditions, but throws dissenters in jail for
Speaker 1: a blog post. Russia's the size of Spain economically speaking,
Speaker 1: but is an aggressive research and actor on the world
Speaker 1: stage now in defense not of communism but of tyrants
Speaker 1: and theocrats. Who is Vladimir Putin the man who created
Speaker 1: this new world power through force of will? My guest today,
Speaker 1: Putin's foremost biographer, Stephen Lee Myers, begins to unravel that
Speaker 1: question in his book The news Are. Myers is a
Speaker 1: longtime correspondent for The New York Times, first at Moscow,
Speaker 1: now in Beijing, and he's met Putin more than once.
Speaker 1: When I shook his hand, I felt this immense coldness
Speaker 1: and determination. It wasn't scary, he wasn't mean or anything,
Speaker 1: but it was just we were there to do business.
Speaker 1: The news Are tells the complicated history of a man
Speaker 1: who values stability above all else, who truly believes, along
Speaker 1: with his constituents, that he quote got Russia up off
Speaker 1: her knees. He's created that impression in part by dedicating
Speaker 1: a higher and higher percent of g d P to
Speaker 1: military It was that money that allowed Putin in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen to invade Crimea, re drawing the borders of
Speaker 1: Europe by violence for the first time since World War Two.
Speaker 1: In his Wall Street Journal review of the book, Stephen
Speaker 1: Cotkin describes the man who emerges from Myers pages as
Speaker 1: a quote snarling stuntman, playing global poker with a wretched hand,
Speaker 1: and presiding over a country in decline. I put those
Speaker 1: words to Myers because that's not a full picture of
Speaker 1: the Putin you read about in the news are. I
Speaker 1: think you can come away from what I wrote and
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that Kotkin did. I think you
Speaker 1: can read it, uh and see Putin as a sympathetic figure.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't disagree with some of what he said, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't agree with all of it either, because it's
Speaker 1: it always seems like it's about to teeter and fall apart,
Speaker 1: like Putin can't just keep this going, you know, And
Speaker 1: after the events with Ukraine, when we put on all
Speaker 1: these sanctions, and sanctions really hurt and people are like,
Speaker 1: he won't survive. One of the wheels are going to fall,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and and yet there's a certain resilience. UM.
Speaker 1: And Stephen Cottin I respect him mentally, UM, but you know,
Speaker 1: people see Putin in different ways. He's almost like a
Speaker 1: or shark test of of your views of the world
Speaker 1: of Russia itself, US Russian relations and so forth. When
Speaker 1: you went to the Moscow to start the job there
Speaker 1: without a job you wanted, it is and but it's
Speaker 1: not something that I expected or I worked for. I
Speaker 1: didn't study Russian history or language happen. You know. I
Speaker 1: covered the Pentagon for a number of years in Washington,
Speaker 1: and this was in the nineties, and you know, the
Speaker 1: Pentagon was busy though it was before the um the
Speaker 1: War on Terror era, and the Pentagon correspondent did a
Speaker 1: lot of the reporting on arms control, which for the
Speaker 1: Soviet period was the big story really and so I
Speaker 1: think there was a bit of a Cold War hangover
Speaker 1: that people who covered the Pentagon understood arms control, so
Speaker 1: they went to Moscow as their next posting or their
Speaker 1: first posting. You know. Bill Keller was executive editor of
Speaker 1: The Times. He followed that path. Michael Gordon h great
Speaker 1: correspondent now with the Wall Street Journal. He did that,
Speaker 1: So it was it was something. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of beaten well, well beaten path. So I followed along
Speaker 1: with it though at that time, UM I went and
Speaker 1: it was the beginning of the Bush administration. UM. This
Speaker 1: was a new era, and Bush talked about trying to
Speaker 1: establish a new relationship with Russia that would get beyond
Speaker 1: the Cold War. UM for something happened, right, Oh, lots happened,
Speaker 1: but the but in the beginning, at least, if you remember,
Speaker 1: UM uh Putin reached out to Bush and vice first
Speaker 1: to call him. He made the first phone call, first
Speaker 1: foreign leader. He didn't get through that night, by the way,
Speaker 1: but the next morning UM Bush didn't call him back.
Speaker 1: And Putin authorized an immense amount of cooperation with the
Speaker 1: United States at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: intelligence sharing, UM in a very concrete way. I think
Speaker 1: at that moment there was a feeling that we had
Speaker 1: innered this common cause with Russia. UM. In those months
Speaker 1: right after the Nini have an attack. When when you
Speaker 1: arrived there to do the job, it's what year you
Speaker 1: begin in? What year I was I was studying Russian
Speaker 1: when nine eleven happened. In preparation for the job exactly,
Speaker 1: I was still in d C when the attacks happened,
Speaker 1: and I went back to work that day in the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: which I had left a few months before to art
Speaker 1: my studies and went to Afghanistan and then came back
Speaker 1: picked up my studies and then in summer of two
Speaker 1: thousand and two started in Moscow. What would you describe
Speaker 1: was the relationship between the US and the Russians done?
Speaker 1: UM was just the period as well when Putin it
Speaker 1: was like some comment he made about, uh, you know what,
Speaker 1: however you want to describe it of Russia potentially entering NATO.
Speaker 1: He was asked and in a television interview, I believe
Speaker 1: it was BBC uh and attend it was. It was
Speaker 1: even earlier. It was. It was when he first emerged
Speaker 1: on the scene as Prime Minister and then president elect,
Speaker 1: and he said that it was something that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: rule out. It's hard to think back at that period
Speaker 1: when I think Putin was looking towards the United States
Speaker 1: and NATO, UM the West generally UM for a different
Speaker 1: kind of arrangement, a new UM, a new security infrastructure
Speaker 1: or architecture, and um, there were you know, people will
Speaker 1: say that there were missed opportunities on both sides in
Speaker 1: that case. Um. So when you got there, how would
Speaker 1: you describe the US Russian relations? They were still that point,
Speaker 1: fairly good and there was quite a bit of cooperation.
Speaker 1: Putin came to the ranch in Crawford, Texas, if you remember,
Speaker 1: you know, appeared with Bush at the high school there.
Speaker 1: So I do think that there was still a fair
Speaker 1: bit of goodwill. Even there were a lot of business
Speaker 1: deals starting. There was a lot of American companies eagerly
Speaker 1: investing in the oil and gas industry in Russia. UH.
Speaker 1: And so it seemed like there was a lot of potential, yeah, potential, um.
Speaker 1: And then what happened is the Bush administration was very
Speaker 1: eager to build missile defenses. This has always been a
Speaker 1: Republican pipe drain, going back to Reagan and Star Wars. So,
Speaker 1: with very little notice, after all of US help that
Speaker 1: Russia had given to the United States in Afghanistan, Bush
Speaker 1: announced that we were going to pull out of the
Speaker 1: Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty UH and gave Putin notice only
Speaker 1: a few days before he went ahead and did it. Publicly,
Speaker 1: and that really embittered Putin and gave him pause about
Speaker 1: what is really the American intentions here? You know, act
Speaker 1: nice bushes chummy, but you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, the US sees itself as the hedge them on,
Speaker 1: and it's is really going to control the world. And
Speaker 1: and um and from there, shortly after, if you remember,
Speaker 1: they went into the build up to the war in Iraq, Um,
Speaker 1: which Russia was very much opposed to. The idea of
Speaker 1: overthrowing another country by military force is something that he fears,
Speaker 1: and so he was pushing back hard against that. I
Speaker 1: remember when we had an interview with The New York
Speaker 1: Times had an interview with him in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: a few months after the invasion. He talked about the
Speaker 1: consequences and how we didn't foresee how bad this was
Speaker 1: going to go, and he was largely right. Well, when
Speaker 1: you arrive at a job like that, I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: briefed about how to go about that job, who are
Speaker 1: your contacts? And it might not be as much as
Speaker 1: you would think. Um. They did give me the time
Speaker 1: off to study. That time was shortened because of nine
Speaker 1: eleven and um and the work I did in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: But um, beyond that, it's it's more of a collegial process.
Speaker 1: I mean, I turned to the correspondence who'd been there
Speaker 1: before and asked them for advice. Um, there were um
Speaker 1: different you know, different ones said different things. They said,
Speaker 1: you should know this person, you should eat at this restaurant.
Speaker 1: The best advice I got was from Joe Lalibeld, who
Speaker 1: was the executive editor at the time, who told me
Speaker 1: not to bother reading the books by journalists. He said,
Speaker 1: read the literature, Understand the books that people are going
Speaker 1: to be referring to. That putting himself refers to a lot.
Speaker 1: It's great advice and I'm doing that now in China
Speaker 1: reading the novels. And when you were there, did you
Speaker 1: feel that you were being watched or you were being
Speaker 1: so I remember when the bureau manager I asked her
Speaker 1: this question and she said, they don't come around anymore.
Speaker 1: First of all, when the Soviet Union collapse, so did
Speaker 1: the KGB, and then it was disbanded, and then it
Speaker 1: was reconstituted in different forms. Um. But under putting it's
Speaker 1: clearless security services under new names have've reasserted their primacy,
Speaker 1: whether or not we were tapped. I mean, I assume yes, um,
Speaker 1: But I also don't think they really cared that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, they could, they could read every thing we did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't they like in the old days where they
Speaker 1: were pleasing you know, which dissidents were talking to the
Speaker 1: foreign media um, which by the way they do in
Speaker 1: China now they watched that very closely. Who's quoted, um.
Speaker 1: But towards the end, you know again when I win,
Speaker 1: it was a hopeful period um, and it Russia seemed
Speaker 1: like it was opening up. There were their debates in parliament,
Speaker 1: they were going on UM. As a reporter, it felt
Speaker 1: wide open um. And there was obviously the war in
Speaker 1: Czech new which is extremely controversial and it's very sensitive.
Speaker 1: There were restrictions on reporting there and so forth, but
Speaker 1: it didn't feel oppressive the way it did in the
Speaker 1: Soviet times and now where it seems to be much
Speaker 1: more hostile environment to work in. You read a little
Speaker 1: bit about Putin and not a great student, poor family. Uh,
Speaker 1: how does he get that job? What happens in that
Speaker 1: country that he rises to this position. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: he wasn't he wasn't a poor student. He seemed in
Speaker 1: fact to be quite smart and quite clever. He is. Um,
Speaker 1: but you can go to the best schools. Well yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean he was not part of the elite. Um.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about him. His parents, um, were survivors
Speaker 1: of the Siege of Leningrad during World War Two. He
Speaker 1: grew up in a city that was still living with
Speaker 1: the effects of that, the damage literally from it. His
Speaker 1: father worked in a train factory and his mother held
Speaker 1: odd jobs. They were good Soviet citizens, um, but they weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, any part of the intelligencia. He grew up
Speaker 1: in a pretty typical Soviet experience. It was poverty by
Speaker 1: our standards even then in the in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties when he was young, not somebody you would see
Speaker 1: a you know, at the honest that was going to
Speaker 1: be primed for this job. He did sort of find
Speaker 1: a purpose in school through the martial arts. You know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to take up judo and to stick with
Speaker 1: the judos. Then he was a young teenager, um and
Speaker 1: uh uh so he would have been like our equivalent
Speaker 1: of junior high school or middle school. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: he took he took that quite seriously. So when he
Speaker 1: put his mind to something he could do, and discipline
Speaker 1: is what he shows when he's committed to something. There
Speaker 1: was versed a book and then a movie that came
Speaker 1: out that inspired him to join the KGB. It's called
Speaker 1: The Sword in the Shield and it's a pretty propagandistic
Speaker 1: novel about a spy who infiltrates the Nazi army and
Speaker 1: rises through the ranks from a pretty low position and
Speaker 1: helps win the war. Was serialized on tv UM and
Speaker 1: this enchanted Putin as he tells it, and he um
Speaker 1: tells the story of wanting to volunteer even when he
Speaker 1: was um still a teenager. And then you know, the
Speaker 1: KGB doesn't take volunteers. They they come and volunteer you
Speaker 1: and Um. You know, there's obviously a screening process to
Speaker 1: work in the intelligence agencies. But he understood that he
Speaker 1: had to show some discipline and he got into university,
Speaker 1: and he got into Leningrad State University, which was a
Speaker 1: prestigious school, maybe not the top one. He didn't go
Speaker 1: to Moscow. But what did he study law? Do they
Speaker 1: have a similar system when he got a law degree
Speaker 1: and became an attorney. It's more you study law and
Speaker 1: you become a police officer or or you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a court officer or something like that. It's not a
Speaker 1: law degree that you do after you complete your undergraduate program,
Speaker 1: so assist in there is a little bit different. But
Speaker 1: the but you know, he studied that with the goal
Speaker 1: in mind of joining the security services, and when he
Speaker 1: was in his fourth year, they came to him and
Speaker 1: and said, yes, are you interested, and so he um,
Speaker 1: he signed up. Then what happens he spends how many
Speaker 1: years in the intelligence services there from nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety or ninety one. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: gray area about when he finally resigned, UM several years. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was fifteen years UM of his early life. And
Speaker 1: when you researched that, what kind of work was he doing?
Speaker 1: I mean he worked at home for the first part
Speaker 1: for ten years. He claims counter intelligence, you know, chasing
Speaker 1: foreign spies. He claims he never worked for the domestic KGB,
Speaker 1: which was oppressing its own people. He held kind of
Speaker 1: bureaucratic jobs, mostly in learning grand and then after a
Speaker 1: number of years he was finally assigned to the advanced
Speaker 1: training courses that would put you into the pipeline to
Speaker 1: go overseas. But he got into a fight this first
Speaker 1: year that he was in this program, and this is
Speaker 1: the finishing school when you when you're a spy. Is
Speaker 1: fascinating that Soviet spies could be tripped up on basic
Speaker 1: things like not knowing what a mortgage was because there
Speaker 1: was no such thing. And so, I mean, we've all
Speaker 1: seen the Americans. Now you have to really be immersed
Speaker 1: in the culture to pass. Putin had studied German when
Speaker 1: he was younger, so when he went to the school,
Speaker 1: the assumption was he would be in you know, Berlin
Speaker 1: or Bond or he would get one of the premier assignments.
Speaker 1: But because he washed out early after one year, he
Speaker 1: ends up in East Germany, which was an ally of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and he wasn't even in the East
Speaker 1: German capital, East Berlin. He was sent to Dresden, which
Speaker 1: was kind of seen as an outpost. It was a
Speaker 1: small office engaged mostly in cooperating with the Stazi, the
Speaker 1: East German secret police. It was really just pushing papers
Speaker 1: and reports back to Moscow. It wasn't a glamorous spying
Speaker 1: job at all, and he wasn't even undercover, which is
Speaker 1: you know, like the movie that inspired him. You know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing any James vonn stuff. As as he
Speaker 1: put in himself once, how would you describe his political assent?
Speaker 1: I mean he gets to become prime minister first, does
Speaker 1: he have some other office before prime minister? So what
Speaker 1: happened is when the Soviet Union fell apart. He was
Speaker 1: in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came down, and
Speaker 1: this was a very serious experience for him because he
Speaker 1: watched the Warsaw Pact nations crumble top of their communist
Speaker 1: regimes and then lurch into the West. Um He, like
Speaker 1: many others, then retreated back to the Soviet Union out
Speaker 1: of work essentially, and the Soviet Army. To remember, there
Speaker 1: are hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in East Germany.
Speaker 1: They all had to go back um through at the time.
Speaker 1: Yes he did. He was married before he went, which
Speaker 1: was a requirement of being a spy, of working for
Speaker 1: the KGB, I should say, overseas, you had to be married.
Speaker 1: They didn't want single officers who could be tempted into
Speaker 1: UH liaisons by other agency exactly. So his second daughter
Speaker 1: and was born in East Germany, so they were quite young,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing comes poppling down and he has
Speaker 1: to go back to UM to Russia. He goes back
Speaker 1: to Leningrad at the time and took a KGB job
Speaker 1: at the university, overseeing students and foreigners who came to
Speaker 1: the university. You know, not it might be a comfortable job,
Speaker 1: but it certainly wasn't a prestigious one. He was at
Speaker 1: this point only a lieutenant colonel. He hadn't advanced very
Speaker 1: far in rank. He he just in It's throughout his
Speaker 1: career he didn't seem to show a great deal of ambition.
Speaker 1: Going back to your question earlier, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that he wasn't smart or wasn't capable of but he
Speaker 1: just didn't seem to have a burning drive UM to
Speaker 1: move up and UM. At some point through his job
Speaker 1: at the university, he comes in contact with a man
Speaker 1: who was one of the leaders in the democratic movement
Speaker 1: and in Russia when the Soviet Union still existed, a
Speaker 1: guy named Ana Totally Solbcheck, who eventually became the governor
Speaker 1: of St. Petersburg and then after the collapse of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, served for six years until and Putin served
Speaker 1: as his deputy. And that's where he began to get
Speaker 1: political experience. I mean, he wasn't a politician by nature,
Speaker 1: he never has been. But he worked as a very
Speaker 1: efficient bureaucrat essentially for subject he was in because of
Speaker 1: his German and his experience in East Germany. He was
Speaker 1: the liaison for the city and trying to get new
Speaker 1: investments to come in. I mean, you remember the communist
Speaker 1: system collapsed and you know, Russia had nothing. They didn't
Speaker 1: have banks, they didn't know how to do basic stuff.
Speaker 1: It was it was you know, he was put in
Speaker 1: charge essentially of attracting foreign business to St. Petersburg, and
Speaker 1: well apparently he did, and some people he did. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a tough time and there were
Speaker 1: there were assassinations, there were there. There there was a
Speaker 1: lot of um, you know, mafia type activity. Lot what
Speaker 1: years were this, This is in the early nineties. A
Speaker 1: friend of mine, an actress, she was gonna be starting
Speaker 1: some kind of business over there. They were there because
Speaker 1: of that opening, because that cleaving of that of that
Speaker 1: economy and that market. And my friend was gonna head
Speaker 1: over there and over like a skincare line for runching
Speaker 1: women's who was a Hollywood actress, and we we we
Speaker 1: I helped her, and we reached out to different people
Speaker 1: who knew the business realities over there, and they all said,
Speaker 1: don't do it. And they said, because they said, you know,
Speaker 1: half of the products you're going to send over there
Speaker 1: and more we're going to fall off a truck. And
Speaker 1: they said, and transactions and credit cards and money and
Speaker 1: all that. They said, it's a nightmare over there at
Speaker 1: the beginning. And it certainly was a nightmare in the beginning.
Speaker 1: It was interesting is how many came UM and big
Speaker 1: companies UM they want to spend the way doctor and
Speaker 1: gamble was there and and uh, you know otis elevator.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was this real heady period when they
Speaker 1: made this trand edition and became a capitalist country. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it was painful for a lot of Russians involved,
Speaker 1: and the system was certainly not well equipped for it.
Speaker 1: And it was exploited by UM, by corrupt actors both
Speaker 1: in government UM and and in the private sector, and
Speaker 1: the criminality that you know is always lurking around. That said,
Speaker 1: a lot of people became quite wealthy UM and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who were willing to take that
Speaker 1: plunge became quite rich. He become quite wealthy. That's an
Speaker 1: interesting story and it's key to the question about him
Speaker 1: and even today. Um. Early on, he was known for
Speaker 1: not taking bribes. He was seen as an enforcer who
Speaker 1: was very loyal to the city. He was the guy
Speaker 1: you went to to get things done, and so people
Speaker 1: that knew him got things done if you could get
Speaker 1: to him, you know, it helped you succeed. You know.
Speaker 1: Did people give them gifts? I'm sure things like that happened.
Speaker 1: He acquired apartment as part of his job, which is
Speaker 1: a kind of you know what it is that perruption
Speaker 1: or is he as a perk, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: part of his salary. And you know, then he acquired
Speaker 1: some other land, perhaps that was loaned to him from
Speaker 1: people who were he was helping out. Um. But those
Speaker 1: people who suggest that Putin has stolen billions, I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't hesitate to you with the word of the
Speaker 1: b billions of dollars from the Russian treasury over the
Speaker 1: last several years of its economic ascension. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's true? The I don't doubt um at all that
Speaker 1: people around him, including people related to him, became very
Speaker 1: wealthy because of their access to the decision making in
Speaker 1: in contracts. Um, you know, is he is he lopping
Speaker 1: tw off every contract that's signed by the government and
Speaker 1: putting it in in a bank in in Switzerland or
Speaker 1: somewhere else. No, I don't think so. I think it's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. And you know, there's the famous
Speaker 1: stories that came out of the Panama Papers of his
Speaker 1: childhood friend who I interviewed, um, whose name was on
Speaker 1: offshore companies worth billions of dollars. And I had a
Speaker 1: chance before the Panama Papers came out to interview him,
Speaker 1: and I was struck because I was writing about a
Speaker 1: bank that's run by a bunch of people again very
Speaker 1: close to Putin, that's become now one of the largest
Speaker 1: banks and in Russia, and it's an operating banks. It's
Speaker 1: it's not a fake, it's not an off shore. I
Speaker 1: mean they're they they were a wealthy you know asset
Speaker 1: now and his childhood friend has three percent share um
Speaker 1: and three point six and at the time I remember
Speaker 1: looking it up and it was more or less worth
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars. And he's a cellist, very accomplished,
Speaker 1: the musician and um and he um, No, he's I
Speaker 1: mean he's traveled the world. He's also the godfather of
Speaker 1: Putin's oldest daughter, and now he runs a conservatory in
Speaker 1: music school in Petersburg that's in this beautifully renovated imperial
Speaker 1: palace in the city. So I asked him, like, how
Speaker 1: did you end up with the shares in this bank? Um?
Speaker 1: And I was working on a separate story on that,
Speaker 1: but I also wanted to know for for the book.
Speaker 1: And you know, he he seemed quite absent minded about
Speaker 1: it or active that he was. He's he said, oh,
Speaker 1: it was a complicated business. It was involved a lot
Speaker 1: of lawyers. And it's like he didn't quite no. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I would remember how I bought shares that
Speaker 1: were worth three hundred million dollars. But then it turned
Speaker 1: out we learned in the Panama papers that there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other off shores that we didn't know
Speaker 1: about that were similar things. And so is that just
Speaker 1: because you know, they all had the same accountant and
Speaker 1: they got great deals on these investments. Is he holding
Speaker 1: it for Putin? That's certainly the implication that people like him,
Speaker 1: if not him, Um, you know, hold assets for Putin
Speaker 1: or his or his family. And you know, Putin each
Speaker 1: year under Russian law, has to declare his income and
Speaker 1: it's quite modest. I've heard people say he doesn't need
Speaker 1: a lot of money. I mean, he has the assets
Speaker 1: of the state, and you know, he has several homes
Speaker 1: he can live in, and you know, he declares a
Speaker 1: couple of apartments, including the one that he acquired when
Speaker 1: he was deputy mayor at Dacha near Finland. But you know,
Speaker 1: claims to have a pretty um modest lifestyle. Yeah, Now
Speaker 1: when you're there, what is the lifestyle for you? Are
Speaker 1: you married and you have kids? Did you raise your
Speaker 1: kids over there? I was there with my with my
Speaker 1: family the first time I went for five years, and
Speaker 1: I had been to Russia before I moved there. But
Speaker 1: the uh, the breadlines and the shortages in um in supermarkets,
Speaker 1: you know, could I get fresh tomatoes? I mean, these
Speaker 1: are the things I was thinking when I was contemplating
Speaker 1: moving there. And the fact is is that you could
Speaker 1: by then. And that was two thousand and two, so
Speaker 1: the you know, the Russia still has a lot of
Speaker 1: dire poverty, especially outside of the city's um, but the
Speaker 1: the cities have really become transformed and they've really become capitalistic.
Speaker 1: And I was just in Moscow last for the World
Speaker 1: Cup last summer um and which was a dream of
Speaker 1: mine to see the world up um uh and to
Speaker 1: see it in Moscow, and and the city is just
Speaker 1: was glistening. Um and it's probably in its thousand year
Speaker 1: history never been a better place to live than it
Speaker 1: is right now. When you got sent on the job,
Speaker 1: did you take your wife to like her favorite restaurant
Speaker 1: and you said, honey, we're going to Moscow. The I
Speaker 1: think that was it was um, it was an adventure,
Speaker 1: you know, to be honest, they were signed, they were
Speaker 1: and the for my kids it's they're really their first memories.
Speaker 1: And um, you know they learned some Russian. Um. I
Speaker 1: didn't put them in a Russian school. I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: that far. But it's made my two daughters very internationally minded.
Speaker 1: I think when you left after seven years, whose decision
Speaker 1: was that? Well, first I went for five years the
Speaker 1: first time, and then I went back. Actually when I
Speaker 1: was starting to write the book, I was almost about
Speaker 1: halfway through the book when they had an opening that
Speaker 1: they had, uh, they just needed somebody to fill in
Speaker 1: for a while, and so it was I was free,
Speaker 1: and it was an obvious choice for me to go.
Speaker 1: So that's when I went back and I was there
Speaker 1: almost two years that time. But then but then when
Speaker 1: you stopped it, were't there. That was your decision. Just
Speaker 1: want to do it anymore? UM, you know, we rotate
Speaker 1: and we uh you know, the foreign posts don't last forever,
Speaker 1: so you usually go um for the times three to
Speaker 1: three to five years, UM, depending on on the location,
Speaker 1: on your expertise, you know, availability of other places. UM.
Speaker 1: I quite liked it. I would have happily stayed. And
Speaker 1: UM you know, at one point they decided they extended
Speaker 1: me from four years to fifth year, and I said yes,
Speaker 1: And then um, you know, they've found a new correspondent
Speaker 1: to come and it was my time to um to
Speaker 1: rotate out and at which point I went back to
Speaker 1: Washington and covered the end of the Bush at Ministry.
Speaker 1: In the way the Trump supporters, who, regardless of what
Speaker 1: has revealed in the news about his behavior and his dealings,
Speaker 1: they view that it's an expression of love for their country,
Speaker 1: even to stand by the president and so forth, do
Speaker 1: they have that over there as well? Does he enjoy
Speaker 1: some popularity among some critical mass of people that he
Speaker 1: has um An enormous base of popularity. UM. And there
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons for that. Um. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people saw him as a dynamic,
Speaker 1: young leader. UM. If you remember, Yelson was quite sick
Speaker 1: and and uh drunk uh at the end of his presidency. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Gorbachev, who was a younger leader, was seen
Speaker 1: as ineffective and left so Union follow fall Apart. Before that,
Speaker 1: there was a string of leaders who you know, died
Speaker 1: after a few months in office. Regnev was there forever.
Speaker 1: And then here's this young guy, UM who comes in.
Speaker 1: He's quite dynamic, he's quite decisive and forceful. Women found
Speaker 1: him attractive, UM, and you know he played that up.
Speaker 1: He was the macho guy. He wasn't a drinker. You know,
Speaker 1: he'd fly on airplanes, he went skiing. You know, he's
Speaker 1: a sportsman. UM. That from the very beginning, you saw that, Um,
Speaker 1: that that media portrayal of him. I mean, even before
Speaker 1: it became a propaganda campaign. He was ready to deal.
Speaker 1: But he was also acting force forcefully because at at
Speaker 1: the time the war in Chechnia had erupted again, and
Speaker 1: erupted with his rise to the Prime minister, Prime Minister's office,
Speaker 1: which led some people to see that the war somehow
Speaker 1: was linked to his rise, or even orchestrated in order
Speaker 1: to let him rise. UM. But he responded quite forcefully,
Speaker 1: and the first Chechen War in the nineties had ended
Speaker 1: more or less in in a technically a ceasefire, but
Speaker 1: it was a humiliating defeat for the Russians. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, Chechnya descended into a kind of lawlessness, and UM,
Speaker 1: you know, he intervened and said, we're not going to
Speaker 1: tolerate this, We're not going to tolerate Chechen independence and uh,
Speaker 1: interviewing quite forcefully, bloodily. A lot of fighters were killed,
Speaker 1: but so we're a lot of civilians, um, and indiscriminate
Speaker 1: bombing of the capital there. But the Russian people, I
Speaker 1: think most people in the political elite and feared having
Speaker 1: another civil war. Um. But he said, no, we're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna not only have one, we're gonna fight it
Speaker 1: hard and we're gonna win it. And that proved to
Speaker 1: be popular to people. And then he rode on top
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, in his early years of office
Speaker 1: and the oil boom where prices rose, Um, he did
Speaker 1: a lot of macroeconomic things correctly, people will say, built
Speaker 1: up reserves of the state, and and that minimized some
Speaker 1: of the you know cut harsh cuts and swings and
Speaker 1: services and stuff. You know, the economy picked up and
Speaker 1: then became quite wealthy, and then people started to float
Speaker 1: up as well, and you know, the middle middle class,
Speaker 1: consumer class, UM began to grow. I mean it was
Speaker 1: there before, but the nineties were so chaotic with the
Speaker 1: instability in the in the ruble and so the black
Speaker 1: market and nobody trusted rubles. Everybody used dollars, you know.
Speaker 1: And and he he revived the economy in a way.
Speaker 1: UM that built him, UM, a huge foundation I think,
Speaker 1: to rule on even when things went badly. And you know,
Speaker 1: he he continues to rely on that and part of
Speaker 1: the propaganda that he has and and the propaganda machine
Speaker 1: is really strong now. They will constantly remind Russians, don't
Speaker 1: forget how bad it was in the nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: And don't forget we have enemies all around us, and
Speaker 1: you know NATO is going to come and take our
Speaker 1: freedoms away. They're trying to chew off a piece of
Speaker 1: our country. He once said, UM, he never quite says
Speaker 1: who they is, but you know, it's the outsiders, it's
Speaker 1: the West, it's foreigners. How dangerous do you think is
Speaker 1: the military threat from the Russians and meeting their immediate
Speaker 1: area in terms of UH. This concept of Rusky near
Speaker 1: that all Russian speaking territories should be part of Russian
Speaker 1: I think that's his active agenda. Now. I don't think
Speaker 1: that he intends to incorporate all Russian speaking areas back
Speaker 1: into the Russian Federation, but I do think he wants
Speaker 1: to assert a special right to influence or have influence
Speaker 1: over those regions. And that's particularly true with Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: Russian military, like the country itself, always flat on its
Speaker 1: back for a lot of years and um and it's
Speaker 1: it's made progress and becoming a more modern force again.
Speaker 1: And they've obviously kept up the strategic arsenal they had
Speaker 1: from the Soviet times. That makes Russia a potential military
Speaker 1: rival or threat at least UM. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they've fallen way behind the American military, but nonetheless they're
Speaker 1: they're um still a capable fighting force. I think that
Speaker 1: there's an enormous UH potential for a clash. There was
Speaker 1: a conflict in Syria where we were bombing Russian mercenaries
Speaker 1: and and bombed them pretty badly. They lost by some accounts, uh,
Speaker 1: several hundred people, which of course had to be hushed up.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think Putin is smart to not
Speaker 1: want to have this go into a hot conflict. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one's going to win that. And and one of
Speaker 1: one of my old friends, who was a diplomat for
Speaker 1: many years on the Russia desk in the State Department,
Speaker 1: UM said, you know, we avoided war with the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union for decades, we can do it again, Um with Russia.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a very wise point. Um. He's
Speaker 1: shown now with intervening in Syria that he's willing to
Speaker 1: project force beyond the borders, which they hadn't done in
Speaker 1: a long time, with the exception of Georgia, and people
Speaker 1: rally behind that. And you know, there are people definitely
Speaker 1: who look at him and they see the corruption in
Speaker 1: the system. They feel it day to day. Um, they're
Speaker 1: but people I think support him. And you know that
Speaker 1: goes up and down over the over the years. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that it's eight percent um, which has
Speaker 1: been reported to be at some point. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: when you get that phone call from a polster saying,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you support the president. I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that anybody says no. Um. But nonetheless, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that the popularity is is quite genuine. And then
Speaker 1: when I was doing the book, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: try to show how that was that it wasn't uh,
Speaker 1: it isn't just fakes. He does people who want ability
Speaker 1: like anywhere else. Yeah, and there are also people who
Speaker 1: are invested in this system. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: his close friends and acquaintances from when he was young,
Speaker 1: his judo partners are now two of the richest men
Speaker 1: in Russia. So you know, the system that he's built
Speaker 1: on a certain level is functioning. Um. I always joked
Speaker 1: that Putin always wins. That's Putin biographer and New York
Speaker 1: Times reporter Stephen Lee Myers. Meyer's old job as Moscow
Speaker 1: correspondent was once held by New Yorker editor in chief
Speaker 1: David Remnick, who arrived in right before the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: began falling apart. Food shops said really attractive things like bread,
Speaker 1: That's what the shop would say, and there was no
Speaker 1: bread in it or PRODUCTI meaning groceries, and there were
Speaker 1: none of those either. It was really stark. I loved it.
Speaker 1: People wanted to talk to us for the first time
Speaker 1: in decades, us being the tribe of Jerenalists, they wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to. Hear more from New Yorker editor David Remnick.
Speaker 1: Check out our archive that Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Stephen Lee Myers wrote the definitive Putin biography, The news
Speaker 1: are Putin's presidency was teed up by Boris Yelson post
Speaker 1: Soviet Russia's first leader. Yelson was coming to the end
Speaker 1: of his second term. Um when he was looking around
Speaker 1: for somebody he could hand pick. But when he picked
Speaker 1: Putin the first time, UM, that election was open. I
Speaker 1: mean Putin only one of the vote, and you know
Speaker 1: it wasn't a slam dunk. And since then Putin made
Speaker 1: sure that the ways elections are managed, Um, there's no
Speaker 1: uncertainty in the voting. He stripped them of the competitive
Speaker 1: uncertainty that makes them truly democrat either in terms of
Speaker 1: who can run and then the actual voting itself. Because
Speaker 1: transitions in Russia have never gone well even during the Empire,
Speaker 1: it was always tumultuous. Now in this country, you turn
Speaker 1: around one day and Vladimir Putin is working on behalf
Speaker 1: of Trump again. These are my words, and my kind
Speaker 1: of glib way of framing this is that Putin is
Speaker 1: the president of the Luxe campaign manager. Correct. During the
Speaker 1: age summer of sixteen, I was back in Washington. At
Speaker 1: that point I had finished the book, the book could
Speaker 1: be come out, and partly because of my expertise in Russia,
Speaker 1: they asked me to help in the coverage of what
Speaker 1: seemed to be abundant ties between the exactly and and
Speaker 1: UM and Russia, and so we worked vigorously on that.
Speaker 1: I wrote several stories that summer about his odd personal
Speaker 1: affection towards Putin, who at that point he had never met,
Speaker 1: so it was a virtual affection. And uh I was
Speaker 1: involved in the reporting on Paul Manafort and his ties
Speaker 1: to the Ukrainian president, and also that one of the
Speaker 1: older guards through that that he had done business with them,
Speaker 1: And with my colleague Eric Lich, we worked vigorously on
Speaker 1: what appeared to be some kind of communication system with
Speaker 1: a bank from Russia and the Trump organization. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of pieces out there, and we worked very
Speaker 1: hard to confirm them all. And I can say now,
Speaker 1: I guess we were quite familiar with the dossier and
Speaker 1: its various forms as it was being circulated around Washington,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't want to get too much
Speaker 1: into the sourcing on all this, but we worked very
Speaker 1: hard and this ended up becoming a story which unfortunately
Speaker 1: had a headline that said almost the opposite of what
Speaker 1: the story said, And if I remember exactly right, it
Speaker 1: was FBI sees no Trump ties to Russia, um, when
Speaker 1: in fact, the whole summer of our reporting was showing
Speaker 1: that they were all kind of connections. We just hadn't
Speaker 1: pieced them together yet. And that's, you know, that's what's
Speaker 1: going on right now. And I think even now there
Speaker 1: are people still trying to figure out what they all
Speaker 1: the connections add up to. So so for me to
Speaker 1: get this right, you were saying it wasn't necessarily electing
Speaker 1: Trump specifically, but disrupting the US electoral process. People still
Speaker 1: debate this, and honestly debate this. Was there an elaborate
Speaker 1: campaign or instruction or operation with a code name UM
Speaker 1: to elect Donald Trump? Um? Uh? And there are people
Speaker 1: who think that, and there are people both in this
Speaker 1: country and in in Russia especially, who think that's ludicrous, UM,
Speaker 1: that there's there's no way that they could have done that. UM. Which,
Speaker 1: of course then your conspiracy minded people will tell you, well,
Speaker 1: that's because they're so good at it. Um. But others
Speaker 1: will tell you the FSB is just really not that good.
Speaker 1: Look at the assassination, the poisoning in London recently with
Speaker 1: Scripple and the uh you know that was the g
Speaker 1: r U, the military intelligence agency, and it was just
Speaker 1: completely botched, almost amateurishly botched. So there are skeptics of
Speaker 1: the view that Trump has been installed like a Manchurian candidate.
Speaker 1: And and honestly I will say I don't see the
Speaker 1: evidence for that yet. UM. But what is clear, and
Speaker 1: there's been some good reporting done on this. Then Putin
Speaker 1: had a personal disdain for Hillary tan and blamed her
Speaker 1: for the protests that erupted in Moscow when he did
Speaker 1: this announcement that he was coming back as president and
Speaker 1: the elections the parliamentary and then presidential elections around that time. UM.
Speaker 1: And I was covering Hillary as Secretary of Status coming
Speaker 1: in State department at the time. UM. It's conceivable there
Speaker 1: was a secret US plan to overthrow Russia that I
Speaker 1: didn't come across um, But I'm pretty confident that they
Speaker 1: weren't actually orchestrating the protests in the street. They were
Speaker 1: pretty genuine expressions of the unhappiness in the Russian electorate,
Speaker 1: especially in the elite in the cities, the hipsters, you know,
Speaker 1: the young people today in Russia who are quite dynamic.
Speaker 1: And Putin blamed her for this, and he blamed her
Speaker 1: for the Panama papers that that was meant to embarrass
Speaker 1: him after the events in in Ukraine. But another thing
Speaker 1: you read is Putin did all he could to help
Speaker 1: Trump in exchange for the elimination of these sanctions. Do
Speaker 1: you think there's some veracity to that. I don't think
Speaker 1: you're going to find a quid pro crow on that.
Speaker 1: I will tell you that it was absolutely the number
Speaker 1: one um issue for the Russian ambassador of the United States.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely not surprising that that would have been the
Speaker 1: thing that he His first task was to get these
Speaker 1: sanctions lifted because they're hurting the Russian It dried up
Speaker 1: the capital. I mean, it's it's almost the secondary effect
Speaker 1: of it. Banks overseas. We're no longer willing to underwrite
Speaker 1: Russian investments in dollars. So it really constrained the economy
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and the economy went into
Speaker 1: negative growth for a few quarters and it's slowly coming
Speaker 1: out of it. But it's involved having to been a
Speaker 1: lot more money internally, but also finding new access to capital,
Speaker 1: which they've done through China and some internally as well.
Speaker 1: But they pinch and people, and in Russia especially the
Speaker 1: elite love to come to New York, they love to
Speaker 1: party in in in London and other European capitals. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't want to live behind an iron curtain again
Speaker 1: inside of of Russia. And so these sanctions, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones against people close to him, the Judo partners
Speaker 1: that I mentioned already, they're sanctioned under these They can't
Speaker 1: you know, do business now with the United States or
Speaker 1: with the United States affiliated companies, and you know it
Speaker 1: can you can see how it stings. He was surprised
Speaker 1: by the extent of the sanctions that were imposed after CRIMEA,
Speaker 1: and he was surprised by the unanimity that they hadn't
Speaker 1: in with the Europeans and Japan by the way, I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't just a solely US operation to punish them,
Speaker 1: and so it's been a priority of THEIRS to get
Speaker 1: these lifted. And they clearly wanted outreach. And you know,
Speaker 1: if they followed the election the way we all did,
Speaker 1: and they saw Trump, you know, praising UM Putin and
Speaker 1: UM eager, it seemed to make a deal. And Mike Flynn,
Speaker 1: who was the first National Security Advisor, had already had
Speaker 1: some contacts with Russians as well, so it was obvious
Speaker 1: that they would have reached out to him to see
Speaker 1: what kind of can we move quickly on getting these
Speaker 1: sanctions lifted? What could it take? Did they do everything
Speaker 1: they could to elect Trump so that they could lift
Speaker 1: these sanctions? I think it is more of an indirect
Speaker 1: um uh consequence of it as as the intent. I
Speaker 1: think the original intent, and I was told this on
Speaker 1: good authority. At least, the perception of some people was
Speaker 1: that Putin wanted to embarrass the United States up through
Speaker 1: the summer they like everybody else in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think I believe Trump had no chance of winning,
Speaker 1: and they saw that UM under Clinton there was not
Speaker 1: going to be any chance of an improvement in relations,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure was true. I think she might
Speaker 1: have been more pragmatic in dealing with him once in office,
Speaker 1: but they clearly wanted to harm her as much as
Speaker 1: they can. And when you look at what the operation
Speaker 1: has involved, the hacking, really um, the leaks to wiki leaks,
Speaker 1: the you know, the the emails, um, embarrassing stuff about
Speaker 1: Sanders or about Clinton. Um. You know what is it
Speaker 1: all add up to, you know? And and it's it's
Speaker 1: really meant to discredit democracy itself as system tweet accounts
Speaker 1: and Facebook accounts and all. This is new only because
Speaker 1: it's social media. They did this in the sixties. If
Speaker 1: you go back and look at the propaganda they put
Speaker 1: out during the Vietnas wars. Um, it was leaflets, it
Speaker 1: was books, it was posters. They supported civil rights organizations
Speaker 1: that were challenging the government, anti war movement, um exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, what they were doing is essentially an
Speaker 1: old playbook on Facebook. And one of the things I've
Speaker 1: wrestled with is that they were pushing on an open
Speaker 1: door right. If they created these fake websites to push
Speaker 1: fake news, you know, they they found a receptive audience
Speaker 1: to it. Um and a lot of those repostings things
Speaker 1: going viral. We're done on American soil. They muscle was there.
Speaker 1: They just gave it a steroid and they were sort
Speaker 1: of you know, they were exploiting the existing divisions that
Speaker 1: are out there, and I think they did it quite effectively.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much they relish this victory of theirs,
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure it turned out quite the way
Speaker 1: they imagine. One of the political advisors, very close to
Speaker 1: the Kremlin, just the other day was talking about the
Speaker 1: supremacy of the Russian system, you know, why it's a
Speaker 1: better form of government than you know, liberal democracies of
Speaker 1: the West, trying to pretend that it was a purer
Speaker 1: form of democracy because it wasn't cynical, which is ridiculous
Speaker 1: because there's no political leader more cynical than Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, this idea that we have this veneer of
Speaker 1: we're all equal, you know, and and all every vote counts,
Speaker 1: and you know, our system is full of checks and balances,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is the model that everybody should adopt,
Speaker 1: you know, and they hate that, and to the extent
Speaker 1: that they can show that, No, it's actually ugly, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's big business running things invested interests,
Speaker 1: and there are the seething racial tensions, and you know,
Speaker 1: the systems rigged against people like Bernie. They play on class.
Speaker 1: And then going back to your question about like what
Speaker 1: the intent was, I think that was the intent. It
Speaker 1: was to show that democracy isn't some um shining wiz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as flawed as any other system. So who are
Speaker 1: you Americans to tell us, um, that our system is wrong?
Speaker 1: And and you know, I think there was a sense
Speaker 1: of personal vengeance in it because of the way, in
Speaker 1: his view, Clinton and the United States, the abomb administration
Speaker 1: Um broadly you know, discredited his triumphant return to the presidency.
Speaker 1: It was personal, I think, Um, interesting, it's Obama taunting
Speaker 1: Trump at the White House correspondence to their leverages his presidency,
Speaker 1: and it's Obama taunting putin the leverages putin aid Trump.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you in the way, you know,
Speaker 1: leaders in this country often model themselves after someone else.
Speaker 1: They'll say someone's a candidate Democrat or a reagular Republican
Speaker 1: and what have you. And Russian history, did put model
Speaker 1: himself after anybody? As far as you can say, that's
Speaker 1: an excellent question. People will say, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: new Stalin. Um. There will some will say he's, you know,
Speaker 1: a new Gorbachev because he's reform minded and drop of
Speaker 1: I mean, people have made comparisons. The one obvious one,
Speaker 1: and it was the reason I titled the book the
Speaker 1: way I did is he's clearly reaching back to some
Speaker 1: sort of imperial greatness. Um. You know, people say Old
Speaker 1: Putin is trying to recreate Communism as Soviet Union. He's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's been saying that for years. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: he obviously sees and saw the failures of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Assistant and of Communism. But what he wants to recreate
Speaker 1: is a sense of greatness of his country, pride in
Speaker 1: his country, which when he was a young boy was
Speaker 1: putting a man in space, the first country to put
Speaker 1: a man in space. Um. It was defeating the Nazis
Speaker 1: uh in World War two. Um And that resonates in
Speaker 1: Russia much more than World War two does in our
Speaker 1: country for the obvious reason have been lost, the scale
Speaker 1: of lost twenty seven million people, um. And and the
Speaker 1: destruction on the homeland um uh in a way that
Speaker 1: we didn't experience except for Pearl Harbor. But you know,
Speaker 1: I I often think that he's not modeling himself to
Speaker 1: be uh Peter the Great or you know, Czar Nicholas. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think he he looks at history as a
Speaker 1: sort of Schmoorgas board, you know, a buffet where he
Speaker 1: will dabble a little bit that depending on his mood.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, uh what his taste is that in
Speaker 1: any given day, what the situation is. So he might
Speaker 1: need a little Soviet nostalgia, which you whip up with
Speaker 1: the war in particular, maybe a little bit of the
Speaker 1: imperial greatness, the restoration of the church, you know, Russia's
Speaker 1: exceptional place in world history as the Third Rome. He
Speaker 1: professes to be a believer and practices, though somewhat loosely,
Speaker 1: it seems, but he wants to be seen as a
Speaker 1: religious believer. He wants to be a tough guy and um,
Speaker 1: you know with the military greatness, you know, which can
Speaker 1: evoke you know, Borodino in War of eighteen twelve or
Speaker 1: World War two. So he picks and chooses as as
Speaker 1: is necessary. But the combination is what makes him so intriguing,
Speaker 1: because I think that there's this cartoon version of Putin
Speaker 1: as the super villain, but in fact it's a more
Speaker 1: complicated history there. And I think that he believes that
Speaker 1: he's created this um, this new Russia. They really came
Speaker 1: out of this, you know, horrible experience. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: what he called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the collapse of the Soviet Union. They always say Russia
Speaker 1: is up off her knees. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: sense that she was down and and he's made her
Speaker 1: great again, make Russia great again, exactly. And it's the
Speaker 1: same when you're looking at at a rising China and
Speaker 1: a more aggressive um, you know, a country that's willing
Speaker 1: to project power. How do you deal with that? My
Speaker 1: mistaken that China is more anxious to protect their power
Speaker 1: than the Russian. Uh No, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the Chinese are are very
Speaker 1: anxious to project power in the areas that really matter
Speaker 1: to them, which is Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Speaker 1: Though they have opened a base in Jubouti, their first
Speaker 1: overseas base, and you know that, I know that the
Speaker 1: United States has now under the Trump administration, declared both
Speaker 1: of these as potential rivals. If you were president, which
Speaker 1: one would you be more worried about. There's no question
Speaker 1: that the biggest challenge for the United States now is China.
Speaker 1: It's the economic challenge, it's the military challenge, it's the
Speaker 1: trade challenge. I mean, it's it's the issues that you're
Speaker 1: seeing this this administration deal with, and and Obama administration
Speaker 1: with dealing with it as well, and whoever comes next
Speaker 1: going to be dealing with it because China is a
Speaker 1: country that really firmly believes in it's just any and um.
Speaker 1: And it's a system that is even more authoritarian than
Speaker 1: Russia is, and more efficiently authoritarian than RUSSI is, and
Speaker 1: that makes them more powerful. Their economy is working better.
Speaker 1: I was just up on the border on both sides
Speaker 1: of Russia and China looking at the trade, and it's
Speaker 1: staggering to see the differences, um on the Chinese side
Speaker 1: versus the Russian I mean, it's Russian Siberia, so it's
Speaker 1: always been a forgotten region. But in er Kutsk, for example,
Speaker 1: now you see signs in Chinese. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: Chinese trade. There's a lot of timber coming in from
Speaker 1: Russia and natural resources UM, and the Chinese market is
Speaker 1: just so big that it's devouring these resources and they're
Speaker 1: happy to have them. And you know, in the old
Speaker 1: days and the Chinese used to sing these songs about
Speaker 1: the big brother if the Soviet Union helping the little brother,
Speaker 1: and the roles are reverse me And you know, Russia
Speaker 1: and Putin are now a junior partner to China, and
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a very hard pill for them to swallow.
Speaker 1: I think, when did you get the call that you
Speaker 1: were going to Beijing? Uh? They asked me actually right
Speaker 1: before the election, um and um. And you're still there
Speaker 1: now And I'm still here. Yeah, I've been in almost
Speaker 1: two years now. They put you in the bubble and
Speaker 1: want you to learn from Chinese. I did try to
Speaker 1: learn Chinese, and I'm still trying and I will be
Speaker 1: trying for many years to come. And what's the difference
Speaker 1: in terms of the bureau and the work that's there.
Speaker 1: Beijing now is much bigger. Uh, it's our biggest foreign
Speaker 1: bureau outside of the two editing hubs in London and
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. Um. There are seven of US correspondence in
Speaker 1: in Beijing, two more in Shanghai three and uh Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: And how's the job different for you. People ask me
Speaker 1: this and I'll say again that China is a much
Speaker 1: more authoritarian place in terms of politics. There is no
Speaker 1: opposition person. You can go talk to um who will
Speaker 1: tell you, oh, yeah, the president's wrong, that was a
Speaker 1: terrible decision, or we should be doing this. I'm not
Speaker 1: even talking about people trying to overthrow the government, but
Speaker 1: just people who will disagree. So you have this almost
Speaker 1: conformity in the in the system, and people are very
Speaker 1: afraid to speak out against that, even on seemingly non
Speaker 1: controversial issues and demographic issues, environmental issues, you know, not
Speaker 1: the core center. I mean like Tibet or Taiwan, Tianamen Square,
Speaker 1: those are the three t s they say you're never
Speaker 1: supposed to talk about. They're heavily censored. You know, we
Speaker 1: have to work with virtual private networks even to get
Speaker 1: on the Internet in New York. Times has banned there,
Speaker 1: but so is Gmail, Facebook. I mean, the things that
Speaker 1: we all rely on for communicating and for work. And
Speaker 1: you know, I was detained when I went to a
Speaker 1: Tibetan region of Sichuan and and basically driven by the
Speaker 1: police out of the area and then put on a
Speaker 1: plane back to the regional capital because they just didn't
Speaker 1: want me there. And this happens to everybody. It wasn't
Speaker 1: unique UM. And you know there are regions we can't
Speaker 1: go to. Tibet, the sin jong Um region, which we
Speaker 1: still can go to, is heavily police now UM almost
Speaker 1: uh totalitarian like surveillance UM. And in Russia you can
Speaker 1: still talk to people who tell you Putin's crazy, he's
Speaker 1: driving us into the ground. You know, I was in
Speaker 1: er Kutsk in October on a trip up to Lake
Speaker 1: by Call and I just happened to walk by the
Speaker 1: headquarters of this opposition anti corruption UM fighter UM name
Speaker 1: Alexei Navalney, who was a very impressive figure, and it's
Speaker 1: just almost daily bashing the government for its corruption. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's been sentenced to short terms in jail.
Speaker 1: His brother got a three year sentence in jail, but
Speaker 1: he's still speaking out. He still holds rallies and his
Speaker 1: campaign office can openly exist in this provincial town in Siberia.
Speaker 1: Inconceivable in China that somebody could exist again as even
Speaker 1: as loyal opposition. I remember reading an article where they
Speaker 1: talked about the high speed train being built there and
Speaker 1: they told these people. You know, here's the timeline, and
Speaker 1: you've got to build this train over this enormous breadth
Speaker 1: of space. And the men that were charged with this
Speaker 1: contracting they did it. They did exactly what they were
Speaker 1: asked to do, and they did it on time, and
Speaker 1: they did it on budget. They were really kind of
Speaker 1: emphasizing another Chinese discipline that way. And then there was
Speaker 1: a derailment of the trains soon thereafter. Some people were
Speaker 1: killed and they took a couple of the engineers and
Speaker 1: they executed them. That people did that. I thought, let's
Speaker 1: bring those guys over to the m t A. They
Speaker 1: will get some results here on the second have of
Speaker 1: the subway. I hope it doesn't take that extreme to
Speaker 1: get these subways to work or Amtrak to be more efficient.
Speaker 1: You know that the Chinese system works that way, and
Speaker 1: it's it does make it incredibly efficient. They don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about even economic things um that would stymy us.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you see this incredible network being built,
Speaker 1: their new airports, even small towns. This town on the
Speaker 1: border I went to had a really glistening new airport
Speaker 1: town of three thousand people. The high speed trains are
Speaker 1: great there Um, there has been. There was that one
Speaker 1: really terrible accident, but by and large, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an economy that's booming, and that's what that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's imposing such a threat. I mean, Moscow is
Speaker 1: glistening as a city, Um, you know, but the rest
Speaker 1: of the rest of the of Russia is still struggling
Speaker 1: in a way that China you can feel it eaping forward.
Speaker 1: That was New York Times Beijing correspondent and biographer of
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin, Stephen Lee Myers. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you
Speaker 1: were listening to Here's the thing, m