The American Foreign Policy magazine published a presentation of a new book detailing the emergence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, how the former Russian intelligence service (KGB) was formed, how Putin and intelligence controlled Russia, and how they deceived the West.
In a presentation written by journalist and analyst Howard Amos to the book written by American journalist Catherine Belton, few people told the story of the formation of the "KGB" of Putin and modern Russia, and how this apparatus regained the Russian state and conquered the West.
Amos pointed out at the beginning of his presentation that the best phrase he heard in describing Putin was said by a former Soviet dissident, a friend of his father, who got to know Putin closely and worked with him in the "KGB" during the rule of the Soviet state, and the phrase is "Putin can not bend, but it can be broken ".
A spy as long as he is alive
He said that Putin was raised during his youthful days and before he entered the political battle and engaged in the amazing process of his emergence of the presidency at the hands of the "KGB", and that his past in this apparatus means that he will be characterized by the mentality of the spy as long as he is alive.
And in the book called "Putin's Men ... How did Russian intelligence recover Russia and then take over the West?" Amos says that Beltone argues that Putin has never backed away from his mission to restore Soviet intelligence authority and power, which seemed to be only historically inherent to the Soviet state.
The author traced Putin's and his comrades ’path from mid-level spies in the 1980s to the 1990s, and their access to the top of Russian politics and business, explaining that they had formed a system that used the rules laid down by the KGB to maintain the iron fist of power and deal with Hundreds of billions of dollars in global financial systems, spreading Russian influence deeper into the West.
Corona threatens Putin's future
The author moved on to talk about the spread of the "Covid 19" pandemic, saying that it is an appropriate moment to look at Putin and his regime, noting that this pandemic caused economic difficulties and uncertainty, which pushed Putin's assessments to the lowest level in two decades, which created one of the biggest crises In his presidency and raised questions about his political future.
To understand Putin's work, Pelton advises going to Dresden in East Germany, where Putin was appointed as a foreign intelligence officer in 1985.
Although most accounts of this period about Putin's life did not say more than that he learned the German language and drinking beer, Pelton paints a completely different picture, and says that he worked in managing agents, recruitment, and theft of technology, and even in managing left-wing terrorist groups that carried out assassinations on the side. The other from the Iron Curtain "Berlin Wall".
At the same time, Putin was aware of the measures the Soviet secret services had taken to maintain their influence in the event of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which was expected by some far-sighted officers.
Generally speaking, this meant creating large funds with “trusted suppliers” and “friendly companies” and drawing up sophisticated smuggling schemes and agent networks abroad.
Beltone asserts that what Putin and the KGB had been doing in the 1980s was "a blueprint for everything that was to come."
Trump at the spy nets of Russia
In a striking link, Pelton says that the continued influence and influence of Soviet intelligence may have been his signals for decades, but that it did not attract the attention of the majority in the West until 2016 with evidence that Moscow interfered in favor of US President Donald Trump in the then US presidential election.
Beltone deeply delved into the world of itinerant brokers and proxies in the post-Soviet state who surrounded Trump long before his bid to compete for the presidency, and they identified their connections to Russian intelligence, and how they used these intelligence tactics to connect the future president to a network of financial obligations.
Beltone wrote that Trump's business was initially nothing more than a convenient way to transfer money to the United States, and said that she tracked his contacts with figures such as construction tycoon Agas Agalarov, veteran smuggler Shalva Chigirinsky, and oil trader Tamir Sapir who all worked in the shadows between The Russian security services and the general public have revealed to them that these relations have gradually deepened, indicating that at some point Trump has become a "political opportunity."
Putin's men
Amos says that Pelton's book not only deals with the Russian spy world, but - as its title suggests - focuses mainly on businessmen and powerful officials at the heart of the Kremlin and what they do with their vast wealth and strong influence, adding that it is not strange that almost all Pelton characters have backgrounds in Working with the KGB.
But Pelton goes further and explains how those billionaires seen as more independent are closely related to the Kremlin.
She talked about how Mikhail Friedman and Piotr Avene, who are "alpha banks", employed Putin's acquaintances with spies in East Germany previously, and how Putin advised billionaire Roman Abramovich to buy the London football club "Chelsea" in 2003, and how the relationship of these Business in the Russian state was exposed during the outbreak of the "Covid 19" pandemic, as the authorities began relying on these rich people to save tens of millions of dollars in order to enhance the capacity of the health care system.
The collapse and the rise of Putin were planned by the Russian intelligence services
The central matter in Belton’s depiction of Putin’s Russia was the overwhelming influence of Russian intelligence and spy agencies in Russia after the Soviet Union, as it shows that the collapse of the Soviet Union is an “internal business” by Soviet intelligence officials, and Putin's ascension to the presidency is a carefully planned process of "KGB", and in both cases these were complex political operations that involved more than just the machinations of a gang of spies.
Pelton also used anonymous sources and circumstantial evidence to give new credibility to some of the darker rumors in post-Soviet Russia, such as that Putin was involved in the killing of his 1990s president Anatoly Sobchak, and that his ally Nikolai Patrushev had organized a "terrorist" siege of one of Moscow's theaters in 2002 who was killed It has at least 170 people to cover Putin and "link him to the presidency."
She said that there is no reason to doubt the cruelty of the officers who worked in the "KGB", and that corruption, incompetence and reliance on shells are sometimes also aspects of Russian policy.
Manipulation of the economic system
Another urgent matter is Pelton's exposure to how Putin's regime manipulated the economic system to raise personal fortunes for his inner circle, create secret funds for "war funds" and finance influence-building operations abroad.
Through numerous conversations with bankers and sources from within the Kremlin and ex-spies, Putin's men demonstrate how the Russian leader’s partners gradually took over the Russian economy by stripping their state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom, earning energy exports, and setting up giant financial companies, Like Sugas Insurance Company and the Bank of Russia, which are closely controlled by those with close ties to the Kremlin.
Pelton argues convincingly that this process was instigated by many in the West who believed that integrating Russia into global financial markets would merge it with the West after the end of communism, and instead the foreign listing of Russian companies and denial by lawyers, financiers and Western officials simply enriched those close to Putin, It cemented a copy of state capitalism, and in the end it impeded the country's economic development.
Pelton wrote that Putin's men had accurately calculated that money for the West would be above all other concerns.
Undermining Western institutions
As Russia's relations with the West collapsed in the wake of Moscow's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, Putin's grip on the Russian economy had tightened and the West lost its opportunity to shape its regime.
Beltone quoted a banker as saying that it was Putin's money, "When he came to power, he started saying that he was no more than a tenant manager, but then he became the controlling shareholder in all of Russia."
Some of this money funded a luxurious life for Putin and his closest allies, but according to Pelton, a significant portion of it was also diverted abroad - hidden from democratic oversight - to undermine institutions in the West, from US elections to voting on Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2016 and the weakening of political parties in Europe .
According to Beltone, Putin's men have $ 800 billion hidden in foreign bank accounts.