[ speaking foreign language ] in late 2011, rebellion arrived in moscow. chants of russia without putin rang out. [ chanting ] tens of thousands gathered not far from the kremlin. russia s largest since the fall of the soviet union. all of us were very optimistic. we were absolutely sure that we are witnessing the last days for putin, months of president biden. putin had not feared being ousted by the west, but now he saw something even worse his own people trying to throw hem out.
It s a moment of high drama. russia reeling over putin s sudden ascendens. a lot of things happened quitly. outside the has of the kremlin, many know nothing about him. at theal started just hours earlier. suddenly yeltsin appeared on television. boris yeltsin, the first president of democratic russia, abruptly resigned. a surprise announcement that yeltsin is resigning as president, turning over power to his prime minister, vladimir putin. it was clear yeltsin had been struggling. drinking he s barely being propped up, and physically propped up. he disappears for weeks at a time. he s obviously had heart
Ed capital of the old russian empire. he grew up in the city s darkest corners. he s a kid from the projects, a scrappy kid from the street. he lived in a single large room, a community apartment. he basically lived in the courtyard of a crumby building with rats. he was the only surviving child. his parents were in the working middle class, worked all the time. he often got into fights. he took up judo. he was small, short, and wanted some advantage off the bigger,
The soviet union, ukraine mattered the most. the loss putin never got over, also the czar s empire. because it had belonged to russia for 300 years. putin s brutal assault on ukraine may be the fulfillment of his greatest dream. the world sees an unprovoked bloodbath. putin sees a chance to restore the core of the russian empire. i think down deep in putin, there is this sense of extraordinary humiliation over the collapse of the soviet union, because it was that just the soviet union. it was the russian empire. he has seen the collapse of
2009. i was with a small group of editors who were granted an hour of time off the record with the russian president. he was almost an hour and a half late, which is very unusual in davos, because things usually run with swiss punctuality, but i real somewhere this was one of putin s power moves, to establish the difference. he s shortish, medium built, with fairly nonsdript features. he seemed to be annoyed, and began by mocking an editor. from the size of his ring, again, putin seemed to enjoy putting others in discomfort, at some kind of disadvantage. he came across as intelligent, extremely well briefed, and deeply aggrieved. he began a litany of complaints