TOP
Strobe Talbott
Chapters
The FRONTLINE Interviews
Strobe Talbott
Deputy Secretary of State, 1994-2001
Strobe Talbott served in the U.S. Department of State from 1993 to 2001, first as the special adviser to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, then as Deputy Secretary of State. Prior to his work in government, Talbott was a reporter for TIME magazine for 21 years, covering Eastern Europe and Washington. He is president of the Brookings Institution.
This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Michael Kirk conducted on June 20, 2017. It has been edited in parts for clarity and length.
This interview appears in:
Text Interview:
Highlight text to share it
Putin's Political Rise
… All right, here we go.Take me to the first time you remember meeting Putin.Was it Kosovo?
How about if I start with when I first heard about him?
Even better.
In January of 1996, President Clinton made a trip all the way from Tokyo to St. Petersburg.He went to St. Petersburg in large measure because he wanted to meet the mayor of the city, [Anatoly] Sobchak.Sobchak came out in the middle of the night to welcome him and basically shepherded him for a day or so around St. Petersburg.While President Clinton enjoyed the interaction with Sobchak, he was very frustrated by the trip.The reason he was frustrated by the one-day trip to St. Petersburg was because he couldn’t get out of the car.The car would never slow down so he could wave to the people who were all delighted to see him.
At the end of the trip, he got back on Air Force One, and he was kind of ripped, said, “That’s one of the worst stops I've ever had, because I like to mix with the people.”In fact, I even remember there was a meal in a dungeon-like restaurant, with no windows and all that kind of thing.He was basically kept away from the people.
Our ambassador at the time, Jim Collins, said: “Well, I think I know who’s responsible for this.It’s the deputy mayor, somebody named Putin.”That’s the first time I ever heard the name, I think.
<v Michael Kirk> [When was the] first time you ever met him in person that you remember?
I believe I met him first when he was the national security adviser to President Yeltsin.I may have seen him on a couple of occasions, but the one that I'm going to recall was seared in my memory, because it came at a moment of a really quite dangerous crisis between the U.S. and Russia.At the end of the Kosovo War, a war that Russia and the person of Yeltsin and his former Prime Minister [Viktor] Chernomyrdin played a big role in stopping, they were a big help in getting the Serbian dictator [Slobodan] Milosevic to throw in the towel.It was a partnership for peace between the United States and Russia.
But then something happened.There was virtually a mutiny in the military high command back in Moscow.Boris Yeltsin was nowhere to be found.He was <i>hors de combat </i>["outside the fight"]<i>.</i>A unit of Russian soldiers left Bosnia, went through Serbia into Kosovo, and hunkered down outside the airport outside of Pristina, which is the capital of Kosovo.[They] basically said: “We’re here. We got here first. We’re not moving.”
NATO, with whom the Russians were partnering up until then, was very concerned about this, because they were about to come into Kosovo themselves to basically occupy the situation until it was smooth.Well, it wasn’t going to be smooth if there was going to be a clash between a very, very small Russian unit and the Western alliance.
I had been in Moscow [and] was on a small plane heading back, thinking everything was fine, when we got word of this.I had the plane turn around, went back to Moscow, and tried to get high-level meetings with, if possible, with Boris Yeltsin himself.But he was not available.[I] spent quite a bit of time with Igor Ivanov, who was the foreign minister.Then, finally, the closest I could get to the Kremlin itself was to sit down with Putin.
I can remember the meeting because of the chill in the air, if I can put it that way.Substantively, I had a feeling that he did not know exactly what was happening in the Defense Ministry, whether this really was an act of insubordination and how it was going to turn out.It was pretty clear to me that he was holding his cards very close to his vest, probably including in his internal conversations with comrades, but certainly with me.In other words, he basically stonewalled throughout the meeting.
One other thing that was a little bit weird was that, at the beginning of the meeting, he made a completely gratuitous reference to a Russian poet of the early 19th century that I had written a dissertation about at Oxford.This didn’t have a whole lot to do with what we were there to talk about.What it did convey, of course, is that he had really studied my dossier.
This is a former KGB man.
Absolutely.
And that’s one of the ways you can always tell, how they go to work on you and go to school on you.What was his aspect?
Cool, cool, cool.I don’t think, in any of the meetings that I ever had with him, I ever heard him raise his voice.He could be—I wouldn’t say friendly, but he could certainly have an affect of being respectful.He was a good listener; that was clear.He was used to listening to what the person on the other side of the table says and what he can draw away from that.Very, very careful not to either offend or calm a foreign visitor, particularly under a strain like the one that we were dealing with.
Did you ever see the two of them together in that time period, Yeltsin and Putin?
I think so.When Yeltsin was in the room, he did not often call for his subordinates to say anything.He was in every way a big man and monopolized at least his end of the table.I saw Yeltsin several times with Secretary [Madeleine] Albright.I was the note taker for virtually all of the one-on-one meetings that President Clinton had with Yeltsin.I think Putin may have come into a couple of those meetings, very deferential, small of stature, as opposed to Yeltsin, who was a big man, and not somebody of a great many words.If he was asked a question by his boss, he answered it.Seemed very confident, but not eager to put himself forward.
So that when he becomes Prime Minister, it’s clear that he’s on an upward trajectory.Why?
What was it about him?Yeah, or what was it?What was the word? Were you guys paying sort of attention to Kremlinology?Were you watching it closely and seeing this guy rise?What was the word on why he was rising?… There was a revolving door, if I can put it that way, around the prime minister’s office.Some people felt that Putin was the last man standing, as it were, for the prime ministership, who would then become the acting president when, to the surprise of the world, Yeltsin said he was going to be stepping down and turning the presidency on an interim basis over to his prime minister.
I think it was, in other words, it was like the Coke bottle spinning and spinning and spinning and then, all of a sudden, pointing it to this guy.I think it was more than that.He, first of all, had already developed very strong ties with the other power ministries, as they were called, both the military and the intelligence services and so forth and so on.It was also, I think, and I'm very sad to say this, because while Boris Yeltsin was a flawed human being and a flawed political leader, in many ways he was a courageous man, and he was a transformative figure.He had the best wishes for his people.
But I do think that one reason he put his finger on Putin as his successor was that he was convinced, no doubt because he had been convinced by Putin, that after Yeltsin stepped down and went into a retirement, he and his family would be untouchable.There would not be any recriminations.A lot of people would probably have liked to have punished Yeltsin in various ways.Putin, I think, almost certainly made clear that he would be quite careful to make sure that Yeltsin lived out his life, and his family was not touched.
When he becomes—he gains a tremendous amount of fame when he responds forcefully to the apartment bombings in Moscow.We’re not investigating whether or not he had a hand in it, but we are interested in his forceful response as a way of identifying characteristics inside of him.What was the meaning—what did you take from the way he—if you even ever heard of it, the way he responded to the apartment bombings? …
I don’t know.But I think perhaps, for your purposes, it would also be useful to talk a little bit about Chechnya.
Yeah.
Boris Yeltsin was sideswiped by the upheaval in Chechnya.He kept trying to push it away, and then he sent Russian troops in.That was in the First Chechen War.But then, when Putin was on the rise, and I think this was when he was national security adviser and then prime minister, he really took on that portfolio.It was scorched earth.This is not somebody who deals lightly with enemies.
That was not only sort of in his background, but it was also part of what could have already, in his mind, have been a campaign to get the top job, because there was—and there's a rationale for that.Russia and Russians were so shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union and felt so vulnerable to not just real enemies like Islamic extremists within the borders of the Russian Federation, which is what Chechnya was really all about, in many ways, but they were also feeling threatened and victimized by the West, which is a whole other story.My own view is that they were paranoids who did not have enemies in the West, but did have the paranoia for it.I think that Putin was gathering evidence, or making evidence, that he would be a very, very strong and tough protector of Russian security.
When Boris Yeltsin hands him the presidency, —we’ve talked to some people who said that the word about Putin was that he was a democrat, that he was a new-generation democrat, to be sure, but [that's] not the man we’ve come to know.Was that the way you and the president remember him at that moment?
I could be guilty, but not intentionally guilty, of 20/20 hindsight.I would say that most of us in the American government and our allied friends were skeptical about what Putin really was.One of the lines was, “He is what he was.”What he was, of course, was not just a KGB officer of middle rank, lieutenant colonel, but a good deal of his KGB work was in counterespionage, which is different from espionage.Spies go out and look for real facts.Counterspies are a little different.They regard it almost as a professional need to be paranoid.They're not going to get in trouble if they have suspicions about somebody that turn out to be wrong, but if they have suspicions about somebody that turn out to be right, they're doing their job.So there was that.
We’ll go to the question of whether he was seen or, in fact, was a liberal in some way.St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, was one of the most open cities in Russia.Mayor Sobchak was regarded as very much a liberal, could have even one day been head of the country or that kind of thing.He relied very much on Putin as deputy mayor.Putin had a law degree from St. Petersburg University.He was known to be totally loyal to Sobchak.All of that muddied the picture a little bit.
Those of us who had a chance to talk to him and to be interrogated by him, which is what it often felt like, we were wondering if he wasn’t behaving and creating a reputation that suited his ambitions at the time, but that the real Putin would come out.
When Boris Yeltsin decides to give it up that night, that New Year’s Eve, did you and the president know that was going to happen?
No.
And how did you hear?
I might check in <i>The Russia Hand</i>.I'm quite sure it caught us completely by surprise.There were a number—after the fact, we deduced a number of reasons for why Yeltsin did it.One is that his health was very bad.He was exhausted.He wanted to make sure that he put his own man in place for the good of the country, but also for the good of himself and the Yeltsin family.It would have been easier to do if Vladimir Putin were in the next actual election, was running as the acting president.It would give him a big leg up, which of course it did.It made a certain degree of sense after it was done.But I don’t think anybody on our side really saw it coming. …1
1
There's a story that people have told us—I know I've read, and maybe in something you’ve written—that the president warns Boris Yeltsin.
… In the late spring of 2000, President Clinton wanted to make one last visit to Russia.It wasn’t just for sentimental reasons, although there was one sentimental reason.We had some serious issues to talk over with the Russians, including, by the way, what is always a problem in the world, and that is North Korea and their nuclear ambitions and so forth and so on.But he wanted to get a little bit of feel.He had met Putin on several occasions, but he wanted to meet him in the Kremlin as president, and he wanted to go out and see his friend Boris.
He took Sandy Berger and a number of us—Sandy Berger was the national security adviser—and a couple of other of his staff.We spent, I would say, an hour and a half [with him].… There was a lot of reminiscing about good things we have done together, Boris and Bill.
Very near the end, Clinton got quite sober and looked hard into Yeltsin’s eyes and said: “You know, I'm a little bit concerned about this young man that you have turned over the presidency to.I just have a feeling that, unlike you, he doesn’t have democracy in his heart.What has made you such a great person”—this is all paraphrase, obviously—“Boris, is that you have democracy in your heart.”He reached over and poked him in his heart, which, by the way, was not in good shape, as we know.
I will never forget the expression that came over Yeltsin.He didn’t bridle; he didn’t throw it aside.He was quite pensive about it and said something that was a little bit defensive, something to the effect of, “Well, I’ll keep an eye on him,” or, “Don’t worry; I’ll still be here.”
I think it really shook Yeltsin a bit.I can say, not with any attribution to any sources, that I am convinced that before Boris Yeltsin died, he told intimates that it was a great mistake for him to have selected Putin as his successor.
When did that become apparent, Mr. Talbott?
I'm not going to say.Not too long ago. Not too long ago.
Putin's Vision for Russia in his First Term
Putin becomes president.… How was it with Bill Clinton and Mr. Putin at the very beginning?
I would say courteous and wary on both sides.To speculate on why each had that kind of symmetry of wariness—in Putin’s case, I'm quite sure, like so many Russians, that he felt Russia was being taken for granted, if not worse, victimized, humiliated.… So he was not happy about what happened starting under Gorbachev, a name that might come up in the story that you're telling. I think it’s quite an important—I think if there had been no Gorbachev, there would be no Putin.I mean, there would be a Putin, but we’d never have heard of him.
In a strange way, and of course without any intention, the Gorbachev phenomenon eventually, through a kind of chain reaction of successions, brought Putin into the Kremlin.Gorbachev was a great promoter of Sobchak.Sobchak was a promoter of Putin, and promoted him to go to Moscow and work for Yeltsin, and Yeltsin made Putin president of Russia.It’s a strange daisy chain.
It’s also got an irony or a paradox to it as well.He did not like what happened to his country.He, I'm sure, puts great blame on Gorbachev and the reformers of the late ’80s, great blame on the man who made him president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, for acquiescing in the expansion of NATO, which was an issue that always comes up, partnering with NATO to end the Balkan War, and most of all, the loss of the Soviet Empire itself.All of these things he felt, as he has said, was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century.Yet, because of what he calls that, he ends up being the head of the country.
There's a quote where President Clinton says, “We’re going to miss Yeltsin.”Remember the quote?
Yeah, several times. …After we said our goodbyes, and Boris Yeltsin and certainly his wife and at least his daughter and maybe a couple of other relatives waved us off, we all scrunched into a big limousine to head off to the airport and get back on Air Force One.… Before he begins to go into his relaxed, “I'm on my way home” mood, he said, “I think we’re going to miss old Boris.”
What did he mean?
Hmm?
What did he mean by that?
He meant, first of all, old Boris had made some big, hard decisions that Bill Clinton, to this day, believes made the world a safer place.I'm quite certain, given what he had already divined about Putin, that Putin could be trouble down the road.
Putin Consolidates Power in his Second Term
Can I ask you what you—when he gave the speech in Munich in 2007, what did you think that was?Was that a departure from something or a manifestation of something you had already figured was coming?
No, it was a head-snapper.It was a head-snapper. …
… what do you mean by that?
My head snapped.You know, it was—it was so searing and blunt and—and I felt this was the real guy. …
Putin Asserts Himself on the World Stage in his Third Term
So in ’07 he does the Munich speech, and in ’14 he does that in March, he does that speech as the Ukraine is happening, and Crimea has been taken, post-Sochi.… Do you remember it?
I can't recite it, but sure, of course I remember it.I'm trying to be honest with myself and therefore with you on how surprised I was on the Crimea thing.There had been scenarios drawn up here, that is to say in the U.S. and in Europe, for a grab for Crimea, but the conventional wisdom among the people who were gaming it was that it wouldn’t happen.I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin knew that that was the assessment.So he surprised them.Of course, it was hugely popular.
His popularity in his country is amazing.
Yeah.I don’t know how much time we have.And I don’t want to—you're the conductor, and I'm just—
But I'm—
There is one set of issues that I'm sure you're talking to others about and I’d like to have in on, and that is the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era, if you can call it that, the anomaly, and the Putin era is what we’re going to be living with for the next decades, or much of the rest of the century.Or is it the other way around?
Tell me.
… You can certainly guess what I hope.My hope is not just hopeful thinking.There is a little bit of objective reason for believing that Putinism—and it’s quite extraordinary when a leader becomes an “ism”—that it will fail.I'm going to squeeze it down to oversimplicity.
So much of what Putin is doing as the supreme leader of Russia is atavistic.It’s a throwback to a system, a set of behaviors, a means of controlling society, a means of bullying and in some cases expanding into the borderlands and so forth and so on, that one has to objectively say: “Wait a minute.They tried that already, and it didn’t work.”The Soviet Union had a lifespan that the Bible tells us we as individual mortal beings can have, 70 years.And it died. It died.It was killed by a lot of the pathologies—authoritarianism, revanchism, the big lie, the iron fist, and an inability or a refusal to modernize the society and economy.Whoever said it, if anybody said it, if insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, even though it’s failed, it’s insane, or at least it won't work for very long.
Latest Interviews
Latest Interviews
Policies
Teacher Center
Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation
Koo and Patricia Yuen
FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
