SO WHO DOES Putin turn to when the world turns on him? While his spokesmen were busy dealing with the response to the Klebnikov matter, Putin is understood to have paid a visit to the Sretensky Monastery.
Until the late 14th century the land on which the monastery was built had been known as Kuchkovo Field. In 1378, the last of the Velyaminov military leaders was executed there and shortly afterwards the ancient church named after the Blessed Mary of Egypt was built. The monastery was founded in 1395, by order of Great Prince Vasily Dmitrievich, son of Dmitri Donskoi, who also built the church of the Vladimir Mother of God in memory of the salvation of Moscow from Tamerlane’s attack on the day when the miracle-working icon, the Vladimir Mother of God was brought from Vladimir to Moscow.
It is traditionally believed that the estates of the semi-legendary Lord Kuchka and Kuchkovo Field were both in the region of Lubyanka Street; in the 12th to 14th centuries the road from Kiev and Smolensk ran through here on its way to Vladimir on the Klyazma river, Great Rostov and other cities. By this road, in 1382, Dmitri Donskoi travelled to mobilise his forces against Tokhtamysh – the prominent Khan of the White Horde, forcing the Khan to withdraw from Moscow after destroying the city. During the Tamerlane invasion, which in 1395 reached the city of Yelets, this road was used to take the Vladimir Mother of God icon, from Vladimir to the Kremlin, where it was met by the Muscovites at the place where the Sretensky Gates now stand. At the place where the icon was met, a church was built, and then the Sretensky Monastery, the cathedral of which stands there to this day.
It was in the adjacent cellars of the Lubyanka, the home of the NKVD (later the KGB and FSB), that thousands of priests and laymen were executed. It is believed that Putin, while working as an agent in the famous Lubyanka offices, just next door, approached the head of the Monastery, Father Tikhon, and the unlikely pair soon became friends.
Archimandrite Tikhon – the honorary title that the revered clergyman would go on to inherit – started out in life as a scriptwriter. Born Georgii Aleksandrovich Shevkunov in 1958, he graduated from the screenwriting department of the All Russian Institute of Cinematography. Father Tikhon was the spiritual son of Father Ioann (Krestyankin), one of the most influential religious figures of the last 100 years – a man who attributed his survival of the brutal Soviet regime, during which time he had been imprisoned and persecuted, to his enduring faith. Father Tikhon had met his mentor – a man long-recognised as one of Russia’s true prophets – when he joined the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery as a novice; little did either man know at that time the level of influence the young clergymen would go on to have. ‘Putin’s confessor’ first rose to prominence in 1990 when, as an ideological activist of the conservative wing of the Russian Orthodox Church, he used his significant skills as a writer to compose the article Church and State, in which he openly expressed exceedingly controversial views on democracy. He wrote: ‘A democratic state will inevitably attempt to weaken this country’s most influential Church by bringing the ancient tactic of “divide and conquer” into play’. Not a view that many of Putin’s fellow leaders would share or wish him to pay much attention to, alhough Tikhon is not entirely alone in his thoughts. Here in Britain, Father Stephen Platt, an Oxford-based Orthodox theologian, agrees: ‘We live in a society, which, in spiritual terms, many would think has lost its way. Officially, Britain is still a Christian country. The bishops of the Church of England, for instance, still sit in the House of Lords. Although the Queen remains head of the Church of England, it is debatable how much impact that has on the life of the average Briton. Muslims, who are not afraid to shout about their faith, consequently have the loudest voice in religious terms.’
In 2008 Father Tikhon went on to establish himself as one of Russia’s most erudite figures with his controversial film The Fall Of The Empire – The Lessons of Byzantium, an ominous essay about the necessity of a huge country such as Russia avoiding a repeat internal dilution of power.
PUTIN IS UNDERSTOOD to have met, and became friends with, Father Tikhon after his wife’s road accident in 1993, which caused him to rethink his life. Such was the monk’s power of spiritual healing by that time – at least in the minds of his adoring public – that many believed Archimandrite Tikhon would succeed Alexei II as Patriarch of All Russia, although in fact this was not possible under the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church, since he is not even a bishop. However both men had made tremendous contributions to the cause of uniting the two Orthodox churches. Putin claims to have had no involvement in the choice of Alexei II’s successor, Patriarch Kirill, but Kirill has expressed confidence in Father Tikhon by allocating him considerable responsibilities: he is head of the Sretensky Stavropignalny Monastery, Executive Secretary of the Patriarchal Cultural Council, Rector of the Sretensky Spiritual Seminar and co-Chairman of the Church Social Council for Protection from the Alcohol Threat.
Father Tikhon is not short of well-placed friends. Among his parishioners is Lieutenant-General Nikolay Leonov – who served in the KGB from 1958 to 1991 and during the 60s and 70s worked in the First Central Management Unit as its deputy head, at some point alongside Putin. Today Father Tikhon and Leonov are both members of the editorial board of the magazine Russky Dom. Leonov was also a political commentator on a television programme of the same name which used to be broadcast on the Moskoviya channel. Indeed, he was believed to be the guiding light behind both the magazine and the TV show.
The individual many consider to be Putin’s spiritual adviser also has some interesting views on censorship: ‘Censorship is a normal political tool in any normal society that should uproot all forms of extremism. Personally I am in favour of it both in the religious and the secular spheres. Sooner or later society will come to the sober realisation that state censorship is absolutely necessary. Let us recall how, in his youth, Pushkin railed against censorship and could hardly write “censor” without rhyming it with “fool”, although later he supported censorship.’ However, the religious leader’s conclusion owes something to poetic licence: he based it on Pushkin’s letter to Yazykov (November 1826), in which Pushkin described the Tsar being his ‘censor’ as of ‘great benefit’ (albeit Pushkin chafed against Tsar Nicholas’ censorship, especially in his diaries and letters to his wife).
So it comes as no surprise to learn that the first to congratulate Putin on becoming President was none other than Father Tikhon, who rejoiced in his predecessor’s exit and condemned the ‘era of Yeltsinism’.
ALTHOUGH HE HAS never sought outrightly to exploit whatever relationship he has with Putin, Father Tikhon let his guard slip somewhat in an interview with Profile magazine when he declared: ‘I have with much interest learned from quite a number of articles about my special closeness to the President, about my supposed influence on him, about my participation in solving of Church and even state problems. Based on these newspaper “facts”, analysts in their turn make conceptions, global prognoses and so on and so forth. What can be said about that? First of all, in social and political circles there is an unshakeable conviction that somebody directs the President of Russia. Unfortunately it has been that way for the last 15 years. Parties of influence changed, but it wasn’t particularly difficult to determine them. However, something different takes place today. Both those who for many years controlled the former presidents, and those who have served their interests (not forgetting their own) hectically look for and cannot find the source of influence on Putin. Who controls him? The oligarchs? No. His family? No. The military? The FSB? No. The West, the international circles, the media? It’s a pity, but “no” too. It turns out to be Father Tikhon, your humble servant. But in reality Putin is independent, and that quality is getting strengthened to the joy of many, and to the panic of a few. God willing, this President will be “managed” only by God, his conscience, his love for Russia and common sense.’
Father Tikhon went on to answer a question about whether or not the state was using the Church for its own purpose in pursuing the war in Chechnya. ‘Orthodoxy implies non-resistance to evil,’ Tikhon replied, ‘the idea that the Church appeals for docility to evil is absolutely false. In reality there is nothing more alien to Orthodox Christianity than the assertion that one shouldn’t oppose evil. As for Chechnya, Russia has forgone a lot. When it consented to sign the Agreement of Khasaviurt it was the same attempt to pay off as in the time of Dmitry Donskoi. The invasion of Dagestan by Chechen rebels in November 1999 forced Russia to unsheathe its sword again. Love your enemies, beat the enemies of your Fatherland, treat God’s enemies with disdain.’
When Father Tikhon was asked if it was true that ‘because you are the keeper of many state secrets you have [for example] an armoured executive class Audi-8 at your command,’ he replied: ‘Once we took humanitarian aid to Grozny and the rebels pursued us for several hours; and in spite of the fact that we had an entire military detachment with us, they would have caught us if it wasn’t for God’s help. In Moscow I have a seven-year-old Audi-6, which is consecrated and, therefore, spiritually armoured.’
Some might accuse Father Tikhon of being indiscreet for even discussing a spiritual ward, especially when that ward is the country’s leader. It is known that when they are together he is required to discuss all matters (the monk probably knows more about what goes on in Putin’s life than anybody save Igor Sechin). He says that work is part and parcel of his confessees’ personality: ‘Putin sets a very important example for all of us and for Russia in general by being the first true Christian head of state since the last tsar, Nicholas II’. Orthodox leaders regarded Boris Yeltsin as an atheist. He hardly ever set foot in the small private chapel next to the presidential office, whereas Putin prays there on a daily basis – no mean feat for a man who served so long in the KGB, a body dedicated to atheistic state ideology.
Never one to shy away from controversy, Father Tikhon spoke out in favour of Putin’s decision to go to war against Islamic extremism in the northern Caucasus, suggesting that Western society was weak and decadent, especially in Europe, and not up to taking on the challenge presented by an ‘aggressive’ Islamic culture ‘bent on world domination’.
‘Russia,’ he concluded, ‘has no allies but its weakened army and weakened navy.’
LYUDMILA PUTINA’S near-death car crash in 1993 gave her too a newfound yearning for religious succour, which she rarely voices: ‘I don’t like to talk about my faith in public,’ she says. ‘It is a very personal thing, but I do believe faith can unite people. I believe that to achieve the harmonious and bright future that we all dream of, humanity must unite under one faith. Or at least we must respect the existence of other faiths without war or spite. Russian Orthodoxy advocates first and foremost love and tolerance of your fellow man.’
WHEN PUTIN was presented with this 10-week-old tiger cub, he took it home to Novo-Ogaryovo but, knowing that soon it would grow up, he handed it over to visiting journalists, who presented it to Moscow Zoo.
PUTIN IS CLEARLY drawn to actors (his favourite was the late Austrian-born star, Romy Schneider), theatre (he likes the Sovremennik) and ballet, so it comes as no surprise to learn that another friend is Nikita Mikhalkov, who is also Russia’s leading film director. Putin is fascinated by the stories Mikhalkov can tell him of the distinguished artistic family he was born into. His great-grandfather was the imperial governor of Yarolslavl; his father, Sergei Mikhalkov, is best known as a writer of children’s literature – although he also wrote lyrics to both the Soviet and Russian national anthems. Nikita’s mother, the poet Natalia Konchalovskaya, was the daughter of the avant-garde artist Pyotr Konchalovsky and grand-daughter of another outstanding painter, Vasily Surikov. Nikita’s older brother is also a filmmaker, Andrei Konchalovsky, primarily known for his collaboration with Andrei Tarkovsky and his own Hollywood action movies including Runaway Train.
‘Vladimir doesn’t exactly sit at the feet of Mikhalkov, but he listens in silence when the director launches into stories about the adventures of his career,’ says someone who has spent time in the company of both men. ‘It’s been quite an illustrious career too. Mikhalkov made that film Dark Eyes starring Marcello Mastroianni as an old man who tells the story of a romance he had when he was younger. He is also internationally known for Close to Eden and Burnt by the Sun. Mikhalkov himself appeared as Tsar Alexander III in his 1998 epic, The Barber of Siberia. Putin’s seen all of his films; he loves movies, especially Westerns – he’s a big cowboy fan.’
Mikhalkov, who also arranges private parties at his villa, where Putin is ‘able to let his hair down’, rarely speaks publicly about the President, although in 2005 he expressed his fear that Russia might be in for ‘instability’ if Putin failed to run for a third term in 2008. ‘Playing heads-or-tails with a country such as Russia every four years – who’s going to get it? – means experiments that can end up in catastrophe for us,’ he said.
ROMAN ABRAMOVICH certainly doesn’t have it all his own way when it comes to bending the leader’s ear. While he is regarded in Kremlin circles as a man Putin can do (commercial) business through, Abramovich is never quite at ease around him and, as far as one can judge, it is fellow oligarch Oleg Deripaska whose company Putin is least averse to.
Deripaska, 16 years Putin’s junior, is the oligarch who knows best how to enjoy himself. A former student at Moscow State University, he built his fortune in aluminium after watching how others made their money during a spell as a broker on the Stock Exchange. He and Abramovich – once bitter rivals – cornered almost all of Russia’s aluminium market in 2000, by which time Deripaska had seen something his partner had never witnessed – a tragic loss of life in the pursuit of personal fortunes: more than a hundred executives were murdered in the aluminium wars. He himself received a number of death threats and narrowly survived an assassination attempt when a grenade was launched at him.
Deripaska became a member of the Family by marrying Polina Yumasheva, the daughter of Boris Yeltsin’s son-in-law and former Chief of Staff, Valentin Yumashev. He had no difficulty adhering to Putin’s decree that the oligarchs should keep their noses out of politics – his only interest in whoever was occupying the Kremlin was in getting government approval for his various dealings. Putin also regards Deripaska as something of an international ambassador: he looks approvingly on how the oligarch has ingratiated himself in London society, forming a close friendship with Lord (Peter) Mandelson, regarded by many as Britain’s Sechin, and another with financier Nat Rothschild (a member of the UK’s leading banking family), who helped him to secure a visa to the US, where he had previously been banned for several years amid allegations that he had links with organised crime.
From the President’s point of view, however, the oligarch serves another useful purpose. One Kremlin observer told me: ‘Putin gets Deripaska to keep an eye on Abramovich, and Abramovich to watch over Deripaska. Vladimir is very careful whom he trusts.’
However, Deripaska learned the hard way that Putin is no pushover when he attempted to lay off workers at a factory he owned in Pikalyovo, northern Russia, despite the fact that the government had given him substantial subsidies to safeguard their jobs. Putin was in St Petersburg, preparing for the arrival of world business leaders attending an economic summit in the city, when he heard that the workers had blocked a motorway to protest. They had not received their wages and their families were going hungry.
Ordering Deripaska to meet him at the factory, Putin set off in a people transporter for the 150-mile trip to Pikalyovo. Dressed in jeans, an open-neck sports shirt and a nylon anorak he stormed into the building, to which the media had also been hurriedly summoned. Facing the oligarch across a table in front of the assembled workers, he demanded to know why everyone had been running around ‘like cockroaches’ just before he arrived. ‘Why was no one capable of making decisions?’ he demanded before ordering Deripaska to explain to their audience why they had not been paid the money already provided by the state. Finally he threw a pen across the desk at his humiliated skiing partner and, before making an abrupt exit and returning to St Petersburg, ordered him to sign a contract which would resolve the dispute to the workers’ satisfaction.
Says the businessman friend of Putin’s who briefed me about Deripaska’s activities: ‘I wasn’t there, I watched it on television. It was magic stuff. A lot of people thought the whole thing had been stage-managed for the benefit of the TV audience but I know when he’s angry, and he was fuming. Deripaska deserved that dressing-down and he knew it.’
THE ONE MAN who can draw Putin out of his shell and get him to party is Italy’s boastful, lady-loving former leader Silvio Berlusconi. He is not just the politician who is top of Putin’s ‘most popular’ list. The pair travel thousands of miles to attend each other’s birthday celebrations and Vladimir so much admires the Italian’s lifestyle that he even has Silvio’s tailor copy his suits for him. Even the whiff of scandal which blew east over Russia’s leader from the hotspots of Italy failed to dent their relationship.
ALL’S WELL that ends well: Once Putin had reached agreement with Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma about Russian pipelines that run through his country, he took him and visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to dinner at St Petersburg’s most favoured restaurant, the Podvorye, to celebrate the deal.
Despite the scandals which abound about Berlusconi’s estate, Putin has visited Villa Certosa on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where guests at parties usually include a bevy of attractive girls. In 2008 the Italian leader said he had flown in a troupe of dancers from Rome to entertain Putin, who is 16 years his junior. In October 2009 Berlusconi cancelled a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Rome, scheduled to discuss the Middle East peace process, and instead turned up in St Petersburg ‘bearing fine wines’ for Putin and a determination to join in the Russian leader’s birthday celebrations, despite rising speculation at home that he was putting their special relationship ahead of his country’s interests. The official line delivered by Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov was that Berlusconi’s surprise trip was ‘a private visit but with working content’ that would include talks on energy. Peskov denied that Berlusconi would be attending a party at a villa on Lake Valdai, south of St. Petersburg. Mindful, however, of the possibility that they might be photographed out and about together, Peskov added: ‘I can’t exclude that they will be celebrating his birthday. However, it’s not the main reason for the visit.’
But it was the ‘Putin’s bed’ story in July 2009 that caused the greatest amusement to readers of tabloid newspapers.
A party girl, Patrizia D’Addario, who took a tape recorder along when she – allegedly – enjoyed a night with Berlusconi at his residence in Rome, says she has a recording of the Italian Prime Minister calling to her from the shower to wait for him in Putin’s bed, ‘the one with the curtains’. The Russian Prime Minister’s office was obliged to deny that Mr Putin had ever given Mr Berlusconi a bed.
It is not only Berlusconi’s womanising behaviour which poses a threat to Putin’s no-nonsense reuation. His attempts to speak for the Russian leader can be less than helpful. As the former European Commissioner Chris Patten reflects on one summit meeting: ‘Prime Minister Berlusconi went a step further and acted, in his own words, as President Putin’s defence attorney at a toe-curlingly embarrassing press conference, giving him extravagant cover on Chechnya, the Yukos affair and media freedom.’
What actually happened was that at a press conference in Rome a reporter from the French newspaper Le Monde had asked Putin about the rule of law in Russia – a hot topic at the time because of concern within the EU and elsewhere over the arrest of Khodorkovsky and the alleged abuses of human rights in Chechnya.
Before Putin could utter a word, Berlusconi grabbed the microphone and began a somewhat confusing rant: ‘In Chechnya, there has been terrorist activity that has produced many attacks against Russian citizens and there has never been an equivalent response from the Russian Federation’. And as regards the arrested Russian tycoon, the Italian tycoon, who has himself faced numerous charges over his media business dealings, said he had direct knowledge of ‘specific violations’ of Russian law by the oil giant Yukos under Khodorkosvky and he knew personally ‘that within the Russian Federation there’s now a desire for transparency, correctness and the fight against corruption’ .
Putin nodded affirmatively, but the look on his face said it all: he didn’t need an impromptu attorney; he was perfectly capable of defending himself. When he finally got the microphone from Berlusconi’s clutches he told the Le Monde reporter who had asked the question: ‘It is my understanding that you are assigned that task and you have to fulfil that task’. In other words, the journalist was only doing his job.
Realising that Putin had provided an excellent answer to Le Monde, Berlusconi did his best to defuse the situation by saying he would request only one euro ‘for acting as your attorney’.
When he was America’s president, George W. Bush tried to use the Putin-Berlusconi alliance to his own advantage. In January 2003 he summoned the Italian leader to Washington and, in a meeting at the Oval office, asked him to use his influence on Putin to get his support for a United Nations Security Council resolution for the invasion of Iraq, which Bush and Blair had already decided would begin a few weeks later. Berlusconi flew to Moscow for a meeting with Putin on 3 February, but was told that partying was one thing, politics was another.
Putin wasn’t going to be lectured by Bush on how to behave in the international arena. Rather than risk irritating his pal by pushing the matter, Berlusconi ditched the requests he had received in Washington and the two men went out to dine at the Italian restaurant both men favour, Trattoria, on Leninsky Prospect, where the management proudly displays a photograph of its most distinguished client.
Despite political differences, Putin and Berlusconi remain close friends. The former loves his Italian counterpart’s sometimes macabre sense of humour. Says one of my Kremlin sources: ‘Mr Berlusconi has a fund of jokes and can always make Mr Putin laugh when the going gets tough’.
BEFORE BERLUSCONI took his crown, Putin’s favourite foreign politician was the lover of Kristal champagne and Cohiba Havana cigars Gerhard Schroeder. Putin was impressed by the German Chancellor’s £5,000 Brioni suits, but that was before Berlusconi came along with his own sharp tastes. Not that Russian-Italian relations are confined to fashion: Russia is probably the only European country in which Gianni Rodari, PUTIN Federico Fellini, Sophia Loren, Toto Cutugno and Adriano Celentano (and for the greatest lovers of literature, include Dante Alighieri) are not some sort of ‘exotic foreigners’, known only by the well-informed, but are considered as much their own as many other Russian and European cultural figures.
Back then Putin was sufficiently close to the Schroeders for the two families to spend the Orthodox Christmas together in 2001, and after a night at the Bolshoi he took them on a sleigh ride through the streets of Moscow. He even arranged for them to adopt a child from an orphanage in St Petersburg. But Schroeder lost his shine when Angela Merkel seized the chancellorship and Putin offered him a highly paid job – as chairman of Nord Stream, a gas pipeline between their two countries.
The deal also cost Schroeder popularity in his homeland since as Chancellor he had long championed the cause of Putin-controlled Nord Stream and his government guaranteed to pay up to a billion Euros if Gazprom, the Russian gas supplier, defaulted on a loan connected to the deal. ‘By taking this job, Schroeder has made himself a salesman for Putin’s politics,’ said Reinhard Bütikofer, a leader of Germany’s Greens. Schroeder brushed off the criticism as ‘a lot of nonsense’; reportedly suggesting he might sue one German tabloid for allegedly overstating the salary Putin secured for him.
Schroeder did not sue. And a good job too: Putin would not have approved of his name being dragged into a high-level court action involving his relationship with the ex-Chancellor. In any event Schroeder was by now an employee, and as Lord Browne says: ‘If you can be hired then you most definitely will not be as respected as you were in your former role. Their attitude is “If we hire you, we own you”.’ But whatever the attitude, Russia has always been a favourite foreign employer for Germans – there have been 2,400,000 of them registered in Russia since 1913. Gerhard Schroeder reinstated the trend, following in the footsteps of many world-famous Russlanddeutsche, including Alexander Benkendorf, Heinrich Schliemann and Otto Schmidt.
But the man who is probably Putin’s closest personal friend is Arkady Rotenberg, the man he met at the Trud athletic club and who became his favourite judo sparring partner when both were teenagers. Like Putin, Rotenberg and his brother Boris have come a long way since their impoverished days in Baskov Lane. Today the brothers have earned their places in the Forbes list of Russia’s richest people, with an estimated worth of $700 million each, thanks largely to their deals with Gazprom. In addition to the SMP bank, they also own Stroygazmontazh, which is one of the largest suppliers of gas to the largely state-owned company and regularly produces 17% of all the gas extracted in the world. In 2009 alone Stroygazmontazh won 19 Gazprom tenders. It did not require tenders to secure contracts to build pipelines for Gazprom to supply gas to Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and another to Vladivostok, host of the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Despite official denials, Arkady Rotenberg remains in close touch with Russia’s leader, but declares that ‘knowing high government officials has never hurt anyone in our country, but it has by no means helped everyone. For me it’s unacceptable to use such connections.’
PUTIN and Patriarch Kirill light candles at the Holy Saviour’s Icon in the Valaam Monastery.