Originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur
MOSCOW - The master of the Kremlin had disappeared. For ten days, Vladimir Putin didn't offer a single sign of life to his people. He was nowhere to be seen on television, nor heard on the radio. Usually omnipresent, he canceled all the appointments on his agenda. He didn't even attend, like he does every year, the annual meeting of alumni of the KGB, where he began his career. Between March 6 and 16 - a political eternity - the Russians didn't know what happened to the Russian president. Or if he was even still alive.
In Moscow, political life came to a halt as the whole of Russia held its collective breath. From Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, the public absence was perhaps the clearest sign that the functioning of this massive country relies on just one man only: a former 62-year-old spy, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, aka "VVP."
Who is this enigmatic head of state, considered by many to be the most powerful leader in the world? Where does he come from and what does he want? How does he manage his country? To give a clearer portrayal of this disturbing figure, L'Obs asked men and women who knew Putin at different moments of his life - including those who know him now. They talk about the searing career of this small lieutenant colonel who became czar: his psychology, his fascination for television, his techniques for having the upper hand on anyone he is speaking to ...
The first witness sees him almost every day. He's a journalist who has been accredited for a long time at the Kremlin, and who like others wishes to remain anonymous. He says Putin's disappearance was one of those manipulations of public opinion only he knows how to execute, and which, this time, almost went wrong. He says that when he saw Putin again, on March 16, his right cheekbone was "particularly swollen."
"He obviously went through a new Botox injection. Don't forget his almost official mistress, the former gymnast Alina Kabaeva, is a lot younger than him ... In my opinion, after the murder of Boris Nemtsov, he took advantage of this surgical operation to disappear and distract public opinion," the source says. "But, when rumors of a military coup became insistent, the president's entourage thought it was best to put an end to the masquerade, that he could lose control of the people."
After that, Putin decided to be more omnipresent than ever. "Since March 16, we've been receiving his updated agenda twice a day on our smartphones!" the journalist says.
TV obsession
Putin is obsessed with the media, especially television. "On his desk, there are no pens, only a remote control," Boris Nemtsov told L'Obs a few years ago.
Sergey Dorenko is a famous television host who used to be very close to the president, to whom he owes much. In 2000, Dorenko was one of the main contributors to his presidential victory, tarnishing the image of Putin's opponent on a nightly basis.
"Putin often told me, ‘Sergey, if you don't talk about this information, it doesn't exist,'" Dorenko recalls. "For him, the only power is television. He decides the programs, chooses the hosts. He summons the heads of networks in his dachas over any little thing. That's how he runs the country."
The czar of Great Russia has always built everything around the small screen. His political career started with a show that he himself ordered. That was 23 years ago. In 1992, Igor Shadkhan was a famous producer in Saint Petersburg: "One day, I got a phone call from city hall," the 75-year-old man remembers, speaking in his office located next to the Neva, where several photographs signed by the Russian president hang on the walls. "I was offered to make a film on a certain Putin. ‘Who's that? - a close associate of the mayor,'" he was told. He went to see him.
The 39-year-old deputy mayor mentioned the rumor about him: that he allegedly worked for the KGB.
"He told me, ‘Well, it's true! And I want to confirm the rumor in my own way, in a documentary you'll make.' He chose me because I'd hosted a very popular show. He recruited me to make him seem kind."
This is how the two men wound up producing, in 1992, the first film on Putin, called Clast ("Power"), in which he reveals he was indeed an intelligence officer in East Germany, but that he had "since then resigned from the KGB."
"The film was paid for by the former bank of the Communist party of the city, Rossiya, where one of his close friends worked, Yuri Kovaltchuk," the producer says.
A few years later, Kovaltchuk would become a billionaire and owner of Rossiya, which is now considered as the personal bank for Putin and his oligarch friends. As such, the bank has since been sanctioned by the U.S. following the annexation of Crimea.
A dazzling rise
Putin's dazzling rise can be explained by his exceptional ability to make himself indispensable and remain secret.
