If you put these people in the United States and check what theyve done, theyre criminals. Narrator tonight on frontline. Instead of seeing russia as a democracy in the process of failing, we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding. Narrator putins way. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontline is provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the Park Foundation dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. triumphant marching band music narrator in the spring of 2012, Vladimir Vladimirovich putin entered the kremlin to start his third term as president of russia. It had been a remarkable ascent in just over 20 years, a journey from unemployed spy to modernday czar. Lieutenant colonel andrei zykov has watched that climb to power. A former Police Investigator who once wanted to arrest putin, he says his rise has come at great cost. speaking russian translated well, of course there has always been corruption in russia, but building it into such a meticulous system was something only mr. Putin has managed to do. Could putin be held criminally responsible based on the evidence that has already been gathered . Absolutely, yes. Narrator in 2010, zykov laid out evidence he had gathered from an investigation of putins early years in City Government in st. Petersburg. He posted it on youtube. Mysteriously, there have been efforts to delete it from the web, but not before it was downloaded by russia expert and author karen dawisha. And in its essence, what did that series that he posted what was the summation of it . The summation of it was a detailed account of the criminal activities that he feels putin was involved in abuse of power, abuse of his official position involvement in relations with organized crime, knowledge about Money Laundering i mean, a whole range of economic crimes. Narrator dawisha says that zykovs charges are part of a larger culture of corruption in putins russia. She has been gathering extensive documentation for a new book on what she calls putins kleptocracy and how he and his circle have shaped the country. I started thinking, instead of seeing russia as a democracy in the process of failing, we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding, that they are not actually incapable of being democrats. They dont want to be democrats. What about that . Lets work on that thesis. And if thats correct, when did that start . And thats what took me to the 90s, because they were stealing from the very beginning. crowd chanting narrator in 1990, the old soviet system was collapsing but what exactly would replace it wasnt clear. The uncertainty had a whole nation on edge. Among them was a young kgb officer named Vladimir Putin. Hed returned to his hometown of st. Petersburg from his posting in dresden, east germany, and he was looking for work. He would eventually find it at st. Petersburgs city hall. His former law professor Anatoly Sobchak had just been elected mayor. Sobchaks widow, ludmila narusava, remembers her husbands response when his former student insisted on telling him that hed been working for the kgb. translated my husband was shocked by the candor and asked what his job was and he said he had worked in the german democratic republic in east germany, and he said well, i just happen to be looking for people that know europe, that know the languages in order to work on foreign economic relations. They wouldnt have hired an idiot to work in reconnaissance, so i hope you can manage it. Go work. And it needs to be said that according to my husband, he never regretted it. Narrator putin would soon be deputy mayor of the city and crucially, chair of the committee on foreign economic relations. He was the linchpin. He controlled which Foreign Companies could register their offices and receive offices. After all, remember, all this property was soviet property. The soviet union hadnt fallen yet. So how was a Company Going to get access to property to set up a branch in st. Petersburg . Putin would have to assign it. Narrator even as his star rose, there was an early example of his ambition. He commissioned a documentary about himself. It was called power, made by igor shadkhan. translated putin had an agenda. He wanted to admit that he had been a kgb agent in foreign reconnaissance. Narrator for putin, it was an effective way to out himself as a former member of the reviled kgb. But for mayor sobchak, putins past would prove useful. After all, he was running a city with a notorious criminal history, and according to prominent political analyst stanislav belkovsky, he needed someone who could work in its shadows. St. Petersburg, called the bandit capital of russia gangster capital of russia at that moment, and the Mayors Office should communicate with those groups in some way. But of course Anatoly Sobchak could not be involved in such contacts, and it was Vladimir Putin who was in charge. speaking russian translated when i arrived for the shoot, his entire lobby was full of foreigners these included finnish, germans, and there was some agreement they were all coming to. Now, the agreement for the most part was about food aid for st. Petersburg. Narrator putin had his work cut out for him. The collapse of the soviet union brought terrible Food Shortages to st. Petersburg. The agricultural system was in chaos and there was little foreign currency to buy food from abroad. To fill the shelves, a program was devised. Companies would be allocated raw materials, like oil and minerals, to be sold abroad, and the money was then used to buy food. In his film, the deputy mayor assured hungry residents food was on its way. Narrator the trouble was most of the promised food never arrived. Despair turned to anger, and then protests. A city councilor named marina salye was charged with investigating what had happened. Salye would eventually leave politics disillusioned and retreat to the countryside. But she kept all her documents. She says they show what went wrong in st. Petersburg in the 90s and who she believes was to blame. speaking russian translated so without going into all the details ill tell you from this document, signed by putin, all 124 million disappeared without a trace. Without a trace. Because from this list of materials that i have listed not a single gram of food came. And what happened was, um flybynight companies were set up, many of his friends who are still around today were behind those companies, the goods went out, and incomplete or no shipments came back. So millions, millions were made just in that episode alone. Narrator in the end, the st. Petersburg City Council Approved salyes recommendation to turn the case over to the prosecutors. translated we concluded that putin and his assistant should be fired. Narrator mrs. Sobchak dismisses the investigation as a political vendetta against her husband. translated i understand that all of the investigations that were being undertaken by the deputies were complete rubbish. It was just a way to somehow influence my husband to get rid of putin. Narrator but sobchak protected his deputy. The case of the missing food would never be prosecuted, and putin would deny the charges and blamed the companies and other bureaucrats. A sixhour drive west of st. Petersburg is the ancient svyatagorsky monastery. Andrei zykov says he comes here often to find peace. He is haunted by case 144 128. It was an investigation into a Construction Company called twentieth trust, which had been registered by putins economic relations committee. Lieutenant colonel zykov was the top federal investigator in st. Petersburg and became convinced that crimes had been committed. translated so two and a half billion rubles were transferred to the companys account. The way it worked was the funds were supposed to be used for specific building projects but ended up being used for completely different purposes. Narrator the investigation tracked how the city paid twentieth trust to do work how the work was never done, and how much of the money disappeared. In one case, according to zykov, money was siphoned off by putin and his friends to build vacation villas in spain. translated it was theft. Sobchak and putin should have been jailed and would be in jail, undoubtedly, putin probably first and foremost, as the greatest number of documents and orders were signed by him. Narrator but putin didnt go to jail. He went to moscow. By 1996, hed begun his rise in the kremlin and was soon in a position to help his mentor. Back in st. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak had a problem. Hed just lost the election and was the subject of yet another corruption investigation. translated in 1996 when sobchak stopped being mayor, as is often the case in the russian elite, a lot of people immediately turned their backs on him. Vladimir putin was nearly the only one that didnt do that. Narrator this time, sobchak was questioned by prosecutors. But suddenly, he had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital. translated so when my husband had the heart attack and it was hard to get him treatment because people were calling the chief cardiologist of the city who was treating him, telling him, dont treat sobchak, let him die, thats when i decided to take him overseas for treatment. Narrator it was an orchestrated escape. Sobchak took off on a National Holiday weekend aboard a private plane apparently arranged by Vladimir Putin. Weeks later, he showed up in paris looking surprisingly healthy. translated Vladimir Putin helped me organize that, risking everything. Narrator back in the kremlin, putins loyalty to sobchak had been duly noted. By 1999, an ailing Boris Yeltsin was nearing the end of his presidency and looking for a savior himself. His administration was the focus of a massive corruption investigation. Having parceled out much of russias wealth to a band of oligarchs and allowed aides and family members to enrich themselves in the process, there was fear in the yeltsin camp about what might happen if his successor proved less than understanding. Hed already hired and fired four Prime Ministers before anointing Vladimir Putin. Well, i think what they saw in him was that he had protected sobchak, and as they said, he didnt give up sobchak and hes not gonna give us up. How vulnerable were they at the time . Very vulnerable. Narrator but there was a problem. Putin was a faceless bureaucrat unknown to the public who would have to win an election if he was to become president of the country and protector of the yeltsin family. As in st. Petersburg an instant biography was commissioned. Natalia gervokyan was on the writing team. She now lives in paris. What was the narrative that they wanted out . Just everything, i mean where he comes from, who is he why he was in kgb. That was the main thing about him, hes the kgb man. Thats all. So they wanted to present him that he is a normal human being, he has parents, he has a biography. Narrator his biography tells of an only child who grew up in a poor quarter of st. Petersburg, an unusual boy who at age 16 went to the local kgb office and asked to join up. He was told to come back later. Seven years later he did with a law degree, and after kgb training was assigned his post in east germany. Once and always kgb. Can you explain to a western audience, what does that mean . They are the people who prefer to operate in shadow. They are the people which are. Like state is first and people are second. All those kind of things he has in him, and he cannot. I dont think he can change it you know . Its unchangeable. Narrator he was so much the kgb man, he would take a turn as head of its Successor Agency the fsb, in the year before he became Prime Minister. Then, one month into his new job, in the fall of 1999, this. Bombs obliterated four Apartment Buildings in moscow and other cities, all blown up at night while people slept. Hundreds died. This was russias 9 11. Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky has written a book on the apartment bombings. We have to understand that the whole country is very nervous. The feeling is that every several days or, like, once a week, a building is going to be blown up. Narrator all of a sudden a Prime Minister few russians had heard about was everywhere swearing revenge. Narrator putin would point to rebels in chechnya, where a separatist movement was holding ground. The russian officials said that there was a chechen trail in the apartment bombings. Not proof of chechen involvement; a chechen trail. It wasnt clear what that meant. But it was used in order to justify a new invasion of chechnya. explosions narrator and putins invasion would be brutal. people crying narrator the man who waged it was a new national hero. He quickly became the most popular politician in russia even though before the apartment bombings, he was believed to have had no chance to succeed yeltsin as president. They needed a set of situations in which they could postpone the elections entirely and make it more difficult for the opposition to focus on unimportant things like the corruption of the yeltsin family. The irony is that this was precisely how the first chechen war was started. The first chechen war was started and provoked in 95 in order to have a situation that would allow the government to cancel elections or to postpone elections, claiming that you cannot have them during the war time. And absolutely the same was done in 99. So there was a real yeltsin interest in this. But there also was a putin interest, because he wanted to be president. applause narrator and it worked. Three months into a new millennium, russia had a new president. He seemed a modern man, a man for the future, a future all russians hoped would be better than the past. But 15 years later, shadows from the past haunt this place. Its a memorial to those who died in those apartment bombings. Since that day, books, newspaper reports and documentaries have all raised disturbing questions about what really happened here, who was really responsible. Among the questioners Mikhail Trepashkin, who spent two years trying to investigate the crime on behalf of one of the families. A former kgb officer himself and a lawyer, trepashkin was always dubious about the official story the chechen connection. His doubts only grew when his former colleagues in the Security Services reacted to his investigation. translated they were telling me, dont dig into it otherwise you will get imprisoned yourself, and then specifically, they were telling me in a straightforward way, just leave it if you dont want to have trouble, and i was saying that, well, im the former investigator and i have experience and i can help. I can run my own investigation. Narrator but there would be many obstacles placed in the way of an investigation. The russian government destroyed all the evidence in the case of the earlier bombings. No sooner had the bombings taken place than bulldozers showed up to remove the rubble including human remains. And in that case they destroyed the crime scene. Narrator but the troubling questions about the bombings were really fueled by what happened here a few days later in a town outside moscow called ryazan. A fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of an Apartment Building in ryazan by watchful inhabitants of that building and that bomb was defused. And the people who had placed that bomb in the basement turned out to be not chechen terrorists. They turned out to be agents of the fsb, the Russian Security service. Narrator tests showed that the bags contained an exclusive military explosive called hexagon. The detonator too was military. I think that the evidence that there was an fsb operation to place explosives in the Apartment Building in ryazan is incontrovertible. Narrator at the time, the fsb claimed the ryazan operation was part of a training exercise. But the broader conclusion that Security Services could have killed their own people in the other apartments was dismissed by the government. In his biography, putin called it utter nonsense, totally insane. No chechens were ever charged. Others arrested were convicted in secret trials, and still others in trials tainted by allegations of forced confessions. But all along, its been disturbingly dangerous to investigate too closely. The people who tried to investigate the apartment bombings in many cases ended up dead. Yuri shchekochikhin, Sergei YushenkovAlexander Litvinenko anna politkovskaya. Narrator sergei markov is a political analyst and often speaks for Vladimir Putin. There have been a number of credible investigations that have concluded that this was the work of the fsb and could not have happened without the knowledge of mr. Putin. It was no one credible investigation which shows that it had been done by fsb all this propagandistic, quasiinvestigation just using tricks and so on. I already heard about this story about the fsb exploded the building and moscow maybe hundreds of times, and all these people free . Nobodys in jail. Dont become a victim of propaganda. Its very dangerous also. There were three attempts in the russi