Vladimir Putin's response to the challenge thrown down to him at the press conference was cautious. Caution is in his nature, but on this occasion caution was dictated also by the precariousness of his own position. On 17 November 1998 he had been FSB director for less than four months. He was still feeling his way, testing his support and seeking alliances to consolidate his power base. He was undoubtedly moving to lessen his dependence on Boris Berezovsky – to escape from the stranglehold he knew the oligarch was trying to exert on him – but he still could not be sure that he was strong enough to cast him off altogether. And maybe he would need Berezovsky in the future…
As a result, Putin's public statements were neutral and very carefully balanced. The accusations about the plot to kill Berezovsky and all the other alleged crimes had been referred to the military prosecutor, he said, and no one would be protected by his rank. But at the same time he complained that Berezovsky was trying to bring ‘a certain pressure’ on the investigation by going public, which was not helpful. There was just one flash of temper. In a televised interview on the affair Putin showed his patience was wearing thin: he called on Berezovsky to ‘do his job’ and suggested he should not be poking his nose into other people's affairs. But he was quick to add, ‘I have known Boris Berezovsky for many years and I respect him.’
An FSB spokesman, Colonel Alexander Zdanovich, was less diplomatic, accusing ‘all parties’ of trying to use the FSB for their own aims. ‘We've never been in anybody's pocket and we never will be,’ he said. The alleged assassination order was dismissed with a formulation worthy of George Orwell: an illegal FSB order was impossible, said the spokesman, and if there were one, no one would obey it!
For Litvinenko and his colleagues the period immediately after the press conference was filled with fear and apprehension. Berezovsky had told them he would be doing his best to protect them but that he couldn't guarantee they wouldn't be arrested. Marina says it was a time of silent terror, with the constant threat of danger hanging over them. Sasha told her she must prepare for the worst: ‘They could easily throw me in jail or kill me in some alleyway.’ Marina pleaded, ‘Sasha, how can you say these things?’ but he was determined to look the truth in the face: ‘Marina, I am telling you what might happen; you have to deal with this,’ and he expressed no regrets about what he had done. Marina says they knew their phones were being tapped and that the authorities were carrying out surveillance on them. But a day went by and Sasha was not arrested. Then another… and another… Marina was beginning to hope the worst was over.
In the Kremlin, however, there was no talk of forgiveness. Putin had been infuriated by the press conference and knew he was being set up. He sensed Berezovsky was trying to back him into a corner and was determined to resist at all costs. But Putin also knew he could not move immediately to attack Litvinenko and his protector however much he might have wished to. For one thing, the accusations against the FSB had struck a chord with the public and had received much approval in the media. For another, Putin knew Berezovsky was still a powerful figure; a frontal assault on him now would be a dangerous, possibly fatal mistake. Indeed, Berezovsky showed his power two days later by getting Boris Yeltsin – the president was still very much under Berezovsky's spell – to ring Putin and instruct him to take Litvinenko's accusations seriously. The FSB director was ordered to send the case to the procurator and submit a report on the whole affair by 20 December.
Putin went through the motions of investigating Litvinenko's allegations, even inviting Berezovsky to take part in the process. Today, Berezovsky is scornful of the conclusions that investigation reached and believes there was never any real attempt to find the truth.
And what is important is that these officers… repeated absolutely the same things that they had told me. And after that, with them, I went to the deputy head of the presidential administration and they opened a case against the FSB people. And there was an absolutely strange result: the result was that we got a paper [acknowledging] that it really was commanded to kill me by this general… but that actually it was just a joke! And it was this official paper that I used in this country when I was asking for political asylum. And, as I understand, the judge in London was absolutely shocked when he saw this paper saying that it was commanded to kill Boris Berezovsky but it ‘was just a joke’.
At the same time as he was stringing Berezovsky along with the pretence of an official investigation, Putin was taking more serious steps behind the scenes. His real priority was to discredit the oligarch and his whistle-blowers, and to do that he had to undermine the solidarity of the URPO officers who had appeared at the press conference, to divide the group and isolate its leaders. In the days after 17 November all of them were interviewed by interrogators from the FSB's Internal Affairs Directorate, the USB, ostensibly with the aim of collecting information about the illegal activities they had identified and announced to the world so that the matter could be properly investigated by the military prosecutor. But the actual purpose of the interviews was more sinister. Several if not all of the rebel officers were quizzed at length about their motives in going public. Some were threatened, others offered inducements. The goal as far as the interrogators were concerned was to see who might be persuaded to back down, who might change sides, who might come back to the FSB fold and who might be willing to work as a double agent, informing on the dangerous Berezovsky. Putin was desperate to infiltrate the Berezovsky-Litvinenko operation. He knew a showdown was looming and he wanted to have his spies in place before it was too late.
For the five URPO officers who had appeared with Litvinenko before the media the USB interrogations were immensely difficult. It was made forcefully clear to them that they had transgressed against the code of the FSB and that their behaviour had brought shame on the service and the motherland. The displeasure of their superiors who had been implicated in the allegations they had made was unmistakable, and they were left in no doubt that their careers were at an end. Under the strain of questioning they began to regret the decision to speak out with Litvinenko and several of them blamed him for tricking or bullying them into taking part. Some told the investigators that Berezovsky and Litvinenko had manipulated them into appearing at the press conference. The USB then offered the officers a choice: they could wave goodbye to their careers and face the prospect of prison, or they could recant and agree to work against the ‘traitors’ who had led them astray.
The question of exactly which of Litvinenko's comrades succumbed to Putin's blandishments has remained a subject of controversy, but it is crucial to understanding the future relationship between Litvinenko and the FSB. It is a vital piece of information for anyone seeking to unravel the events which were to lead to his death.
Marina Litvinenko claims that at least one of the men was already working as a double agent for the Kremlin even before 17 November. ‘You know, Shebalin was the man who went into that press conference as a provocateur working for the FSB…’ Yuri Felshtinsky concurs: ‘Shebalin really did return to the FSB. He was a colonel and he came back to work for the FSB.’ In addition, Felshtinsky has strong suspicions about another member of the group, Andrei Ponkin. Felshtinsky was sitting close to the podium at the press conference and says he observed the men's behaviour. ‘Ponkin officially did not go back to work for the FSB again. But I think he was actually working for the FSB the whole time, right through the episode of the press conference. At the press conference his behaviour was strange – he was trying to be close to Litvinenko; he was calling Litvinenko's name very often – and later we thought that at times he was trying to control Litvinenko, to spy on him, to know where he is and who he is meeting and so on.’
Felshtinsky believes the threats and inducements of the Internal Affairs interrogators achieved their aim with three of Litvinenko's supposed allies – Shebalin, Ponkin and Gusak. He believes that all three of these men ‘came back’ into the FSB fold and later took roles of varying importance in Putin's war against Berezovsky and Litvinenko.
Yes. You have to remember: there are several levels of ‘coming back’ to the FSB. Overall, there is a saying that no one leaves the FSB and it is true, unfortunately. So it's not a question of whether they went back; it's just a question of what level they went back at. What do they do for them? Are they an active officer, in the reserve, used as agents for occasional operations? Here are different levels of involvement and we outsiders do not know even what the difference is.
Berezovsky concurs that the hold of the FSB over its former employees is unbreakable: ‘I just want to tell you my experience with people from this organization. To understand them, you need to know that there is an entrance to the club of the KGB, but there is no exit from this club. And they make sure that people must never step out of that club. It is the unwritten rule
For the future of Sasha Litvinenko, the unwritten rule of FSB loyalty would be of crucial importance: of the men who stood by his side to denounce the FSB, more than one repented. From that day on they would have every incentive to silence the increasingly irritating voice of the man who they claimed had tricked them into putting their lives and careers on the line. They would have reason to take an active part in a campaign that was ultimately to have fatal consequences.