The FRONTLINE Interviews
Alexander Mikhailov
Former KGB officer
Alexander Mikhailov is a retired major-general with Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the legendary Soviet spy agency, the KGB.
This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Michael Kirk conducted on July 12, 2017. It has been translated from Russian and edited in parts for clarity and length.
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Vladimir Putin's Early Life
The KGB, at the end of the Soviet Union, Putin is in Dresden.What is happening with the KGB mindset at that moment?
… By 1985, the country had a lot of expectations, because the whole country wanted some changes.We couldn’t live like that any longer.[Yuri] Andropov said before his death that we have to realize in what country we are living now, what we’re building, what values we have, what economy we have and what future we have.
This was the key phrase which required rethinking a lot of aspects in how not only the country acted, but how the KGB acted, because you cannot live any longer in the paradigm of the permanent struggle, ideological struggle, which didn’t have any pluralism of opinion, which didn’t have any alternative ideas, we couldn’t do that any longer.Any system which is not making any progress, which is not evolving, will actually end up with no future.
In 1985, perestroika started.It was not only about the ideological or economic future, but also the special services, too.We had to realize who our partners were, who are our friends, who we can negotiate with, who we have to fight against, and who we can work together with.In a way, after 1985, a very difficult process started related to rethinking, the revisiting of many processes which we had before, considering the fact that the KGB first and foremost was an analytical system, a think tank, [whose] objective was mainly not only to do just the counterintelligence but also to develop our own technologies, our own methods of how the country should develop, and the methods to develop the international relations.
Naturally, some processes took place inside, because within the KGB, by 1990, there were two generations of people, people who came to KGB before perestroika and who came after perestroika.Certainly the young people, the youth that realized that we have to look at the world differently, with more open eyes, say that you have to get rid of different phobias and fears, which were typical of KGB, not just of KGB, because KGB was an executive body, but mainly phobias in the party organs, party bodies, which developed the whole philosophy, the ideology of the country.We had to find out how to get rid of phobias. We had to determine what we have to protect and what we do not have to protect.
… In August 1991, it was obvious that the country was split in to two parts.Within those three days, the people who served for the KGB, they lived actually three lives: before Aug. 19, from Aug. 19 through 21, and the third life started on Aug. 22. …A lot of people just left the KGB, because they could not come to terms with a lot of things.There is such a concept as an orthodox world outlook, when actually people live in kind of stereotypes which are not evolving, and in the KGB there also were such people who could not change their attitude toward the processes which were taking place, so they began to leave.For every officer, there was a dilemma: either to leave or stay in the KGB. …
Putin's Political Rise
For somebody like Mr. Putin, out of work, back to St. Petersburg or Leningrad—it takes him a few years to get to Moscow.Tell me his mindset, what he would have been thinking of, what he would have tried to do.What was the goal for someone like Mr. Putin?
I do think that, in that period of time, Putin did not perceive him[self] as a future president of the Russian Federation.1Certainly he had the same problems as any person who was an officer would have.Our main objective, at that time, was to avoid the total dismantling of the state structure.Wherever we would work, people who would be working as low-ranking officers or a chairman of the KGB or the Federal Security Service, a person would always think about how you preserve, how you keep, and then how you strengthen that system.
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Putin, wherever he may work, in his subconscious he had this particular thought: to avoid dismantling, to avoid destruction, to avoid elimination of what has been set up by our predecessors.That’s why actions, such as the Immortal Regiment [an annual march begun in 2012 to honor those killed in World War II] connected with the fact that that we have preserved a lot.2Before those who perished in World War II, we demonstrated that we preserved a lot.Yes, we lost a lot, but we still managed to keep a lot. We kept the country that our predecessors, our fathers protected.
2
In the period of time that we are discussing, Putin followed the same rationale as our officers. It couldn’t be otherwise.Wherever you work, whether you are working in the central office of the KGB or you are performing other state or public functions, the main idea was to keep, to retain, to strengthen and to avoid dismantling.And then you develop.
So he kept the logic, and he kept the rules, and it was, once a KGB mindset—in a positive way—always a KGB mindset?
… When we talk about how Putin felt at that time, I just think that everybody thought the same way—we should enter the world space; Russia should become an independent, a strong power that is ready to cooperate with everyone, regarding no one country as an enemy but protecting its own interests.If someone tries to attack our interests and attacks our ideology, our interests rest on our values. So if anyone tries to launch an attack against our mindset, certainly we will not accept those attacks.
Everything is very logical.Let me get back to what I started with.KGB, first and foremost, was an informational and analytical structure, a think tank. Its main goal was not to do any harm to the country, without allowing any conflicts with other countries. This is the key theme.
Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term
So that when Putin becomes president of a country that’s in some peril at the time, were you happy that a former KGB officer was now president of Russia?
… When Mr. Putin came to power, certainly, a lot of people had very serious doubts, because in the heads of many of our citizens, the stereotype of a KGB officer emerged immediately, regardless of the fact that KGB was home to the people most prepared to taking public solutions or decisions.Then Mr. Putin was blamed for surrounding himself with the KGB officers or former KGB officers. But what is wrong with that?
KGB is not running industry, is not dealing with any economic problems. But it is organizing certain processes, political processes, economic processes, from the standpoint of how to avoid losses and how to avoid negative repercussions or ramifications for the country.And that’s normal.We very often confuse the notions, and KGB officer would not only be very knowledgeable, but he would be highly disciplined.He can very clearly correct and creatively solve problems.Of course the people who surround Mr. Putin, these are the people from that cohort. They may solve problems that many people would just refuse to solve.But there was such a principle in the KGB. Those who want to work, they look for opportunities. Those who don’t want to work, they look for excuses.
And this is actually the key origin for Putin’s presidency and his policy.He makes people do what is in the best for the interest of the country.Sometime after, we felt that we are lacking intrigues.We are lacking some turmoils absent ours, because Mr. Putin realized very well, you should not interfere with person’s processes when he is doing something.And actually you should not change the ministers because there is nobody to choose from. The person who is occupying a position has to grasp this position, to learn it. He has to perform his duties and his functions thoroughly.
There was no personnel reshuffling under Putin. He does not say goodbye to people very easily, because working with the people is the most difficult.This is where you have to be very plodding, patient, attentive, where you have to control those people. And if something awful happens, only then you replace them.You should not actually bother people.The previous president actually didn’t give any official any chance to start doing something.He would appoint them, then would replace them, announce a successor; then sometimes, if actually Yeltsin was not in the mood, would fire a person.When Putin came to power, he brought more stability.
You should not change the heads of the secret services or special services every now and then, especially in a difficult circumstance.You remember the year 2000, the second war in Chechnya.If you replace generals or fire them for every failure, for every mistake, then you should forget about a victory.Putin is patient enough; he’s wise enough.And I would even say that this reinforced concrete strength in how he thinks about what he is doing.He actually doesn’t jump at the conclusions. His decisions are well thought out.He sets up a structure, gives time for it to strengthen, to develop, to evolve, supports this structure for a long time.When he realizes that he made a mistake, or the move was not right actually, then he would liquidate such a structure.This is what happened to the Federal Migration Service or the Federal Drug Control Service. Yes, he set up a service, it works, then there is no need for that, and he would eliminate that.
There is a very good pragmatic approach to solving a lot of problems.It is important that in contrast to many politicians, he is not too verbose.In 2014, I paid attention, everyone actually took a wait-and-see approach.The people were afraid not of Mr. Putin speaking, but were afraid of Mr. Putin keeping silent, being silent, because this is what shocked many politicians, because he does not speak in vain.He weighs his words very accurately.He weighs his actions, his business, and only afterward he makes decisions. …
Putin Consolidates Power in his Second Term
So what does the Munich speech mean to you that Putin gives?3What is he saying? What is he declaring?
3
He says, “Guys, let us be friends.”We have such a cartoon, actually: “Let us be friends.”We are not Colossus on the feet of clay.We know that we can live without any assistance from the West.Once in 1970s there was a problem when Germany all of a sudden stopped supplying OCG pipes to us.We were building pipelines.So actually in a year’s time, we started manufacturing OCG tubes three times better than Germans did.This was not a problem then; it is not a problem now.
What’s the purpose of the sanctions, which is a hot topic for the West.Sanctions are aimed against the household, the everyday-life mindset of people.But we have not become a consumer society as it is. We have other values, you see.If we do not have <i>jamon</i> [ham] from Spain, then we can survive, because we first learned about it 20 years ago.We have more nutritional food, and you cannot scare us with anything.
… Our people may adapt for a lot of situations very easily, so Putin says: “Let us be friends. No one would benefit from sanctions and confrontations.”Only those who impose the sanctions, who introduce the sanctions, actually would mostly lose from that. …
It’s interesting that you think of it as the Munich speech as a handout to the West and saying, “Let’s all work together.”We’ve talked to so many people from the United States State Department who were in the audience, who said their jaws dropped; their heads snapped back.They thought it was a declaration of war from Putin. How do you explain that?
The difference in the perception is as follows: We are brought up following different standards.The standards in the United States are set by Hollywood.In Russia we have our own movie company, and our cartoons have always been very kind and humane.When we say, “Let us be friends,” you cannot perceive it as a threat.And certainly, if the guys from the State Department want their money to benefit from confrontation, if these guys want to benefit from the development of new types of arms, if these guys want when all of a sudden we say, “Let us be friends,” they would feel that we are just stealing something from them, that they're losing ground, that there are no reasons for more military spending, these are different approaches, you see.
Putin Returns to the Presidency, Sparking Protests and a Crackdown
When you look as a former KGB leader at the protests in 2011-2012, as the switch has happened with [Dmitry] Medvedev, and Putin is about to be re-elected, what did you see happening?Why were those protests happening?
… Let us remember the ’14 Ukraine Maidan.I always look at Maidan as an event that brought together a lot of very decent people, a great deal of decent people who just got tired of bribes, of corrupted judges, of the corrupted police.Certainly they protested against that, and one had to hear them. But at the same time and [in] the same crowd, you would find marginal, declassed people actually who are protesting just for the sake of protest, who live by that.There were a lot of people who pursued certain political objectives. They wanted to actually come to power in the wake of this protest, and this is what they managed to do.
… When we start analyzing these things, we may realize that, along with the real protest, there is a big deal of the so-called people who are attracted by the scandal.This is a group of people that organized the protest showing the whole crowd as the crowd of rebels, but they were just a lot of people.There is an effect of the crowd, the crowd effect. I studied this phenomenon very well, and I know that there is actually a point until which a person keeps his human face.If he crosses this boundary in a crowd, he becomes part of the crowd. Then he can’t understand what happened to him.Talking about protests, these are not the protests in the pure sense, because other protests are based on some economic causes or some issues which could be addressed.Certainly people can protest and say, “Let us not elect Putin.” OK, let them protest.
Of course they say that they were protesting because they witnessed on the Web and from cell phones pictures of carousels, of voting fraud in the Duma election, apparently incredible voter fraud, and that that’s what, in the end, brought everybody out onto the streets.
Well, let’s start with saying that many people who came in the streets were the ones in the regions where there are no carousels.No one said that big number of criminal cases were started and that people are prosecuted criminally.But we are talking about those who executed that, let alone the fact that the big number of bureaucrats who organized the elections, they actually suspended for different reasons, and to the effect that this information was disclosed, was published on the social media, is very efficient from the standpoint of how you run the process.
I am not interested in any carousels.I'm not interested in the rigging of the elections.I hate the officials who actually are organizing that.If you read my blog on Facebook, you would understand that.But this process is related to some specific people who are setting up this system.This is not the president who is setting up this corrupted system; this is not the prime minister.
There is a very local political establishment that tries to guess the sentiments of the president.But the president is not interested in the corrupted elections and the rigged elections.Even if we take the error margin in the vote counting, still this margin would be much below the threshold, which would allow the president still stay in power.The same is true of the State Duma deputies.
Let me be frank: I am absolutely negative about certain initiatives proposed by the State Duma deputies, but my goal is to improve the situation.I do not try to take certain position or take certain office.But many people who brought the people to the streets, who organized the protests, their main objective was to actually reap the benefits at the expense of the protesters.Most of the people, as I said, couldn’t in their previous life, when they held certain high-ranking offices, they could actually implement certain functions, could do something.But they failed to do that, and the loss of power causes withdrawal like a drug addict, even worse than the loss of a drug to an addicted person. …
Intervention in the U.S. Election
Talk to me a little bit about the allegation made by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies in the United States that President Putin initiated an attack, a cyberattack, on the United States election and that there was fake news and troll factories and all of it.How does that sound to you when that allegation is made?
I think it is a good script for a Hollywood movie.Let’s start from the main importancy.First of all, we realize very well that Russia and the United States, to a certain extent, are not in equal conditions, not in equal situations, meaning that we have good experts who are keen on multimedia, who are good technicians.But in order to confirm what the National Security Agency or CIA alleged, they have to present some document, some instruction, proving that.4WikiLeaks, for instance, publishes a lot of cables regarding National Security Agency and CIA.I would like to see at least one document proving that, apart from the words, which NSA or CIA allege.This is number one.
4
Second thing, as a representative of certain multimedia technologies here should realize, that at the moment, the global Web, World Wide Web, has a lot of opportunities to influence different processes.But at the same time, those who try to influence those processes, they will be anonymous all the time.If we assume that a graduate from some American college or some IT graduate would try to penetrate somewhere through the Russian websites or portals, actually this is not proven yet.
I would like to find those trolls, because if they were found, if they were identified, if we knew them by names, then we could not only stage the wars related to the American elections, but we could actually manage the American missiles.We could run the American flights.We could switch, actually, the rails when the American trains go.That’s why, when cyberattacks actually are mentioned, and probably you’ll not believe me, but I may sincerely tell you when I was deputy chairman of the Federal Drug Control Service, I was in charge of the IT and technological processes, everything related to software, to hardware, the equipment.I may tell you that although our technological capacity was huge, still the public structures did not master those technologies as efficiently as NSA or CIA.
… And until we get a document, lay our hands on a document signed and sealed, probably some cables intercepted or the phone conversation, and when the politicians, Russian politicians weren't telling the other that: “Why don’t you do anything about the American elections? Influence the vote counting there.”Present it to us. We are ready to consider.
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