- So I'll pass it to you.
Downloaded from YTS.MX
["Blueberry Hill" playing]
[gentle piano music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
- ♪ I found my thrill ♪
- This clip from 2010 has gone viral.
- Oh, my God, his face.
- ♪ On Blueberry Hill ♪
narrator: As Putin woos a star-studded crowd
in St. Petersburg, the West seems oblivious
to the true nature of this soulless dictator
who will go on to sacrifice
hundreds of thousands of lives.
What were we thinking?
What was he thinking?
- It was all about how your ego is feeling.
And that just gets in the way. It blinds everything.
- As a psychopath, Putin's illness leads him
to lack any normal human emotion.
- He was always rejected. Okay.
If they don't want me, then I will do it my own way.
narrator: To understand what drives the most dangerous man
on the planet, we're looking into Putin's mindset
with a different lens.
- He was always a shadow. He is a shadow man.
And suddenly, you became a leader of this country.
narrator: We will hear from the women
closest to the fabulously wealthy men
who were in Putin's inner circle--
the oligarchs.
- They were all obsessed with the yachts, with private jets.
- It was not about quality.
It was all about price.
- And they'd go, oh, you're from Russia.
Putin. Yay!
And you'd go, what are you talking about?
narrator: It's a story about the men
who put Putin in power, the ones who stood up to him
and paid the ultimate price.
[dramatic music]
These are women who dare to speak out.
- I know I will not be going back home anytime soon.
narrator: They saw through it all from the inside.
- That type of character,
they can absolutely lash out when they feel cornered.
- I think he became really crazy.
It did not happen just now.
He just destroyed Russia.
- He has a mission. This is clear.
- A person who is really ill doesn't really
care about what happens next.
♪ ♪
[pensive music]
narrator: London, England--
home to more oligarchs per square mile
than anywhere outside of Russia.
- So we're in Eaton Square now,
which is sometimes wittily known as Red Square.
And Londongrad or Moscow on Thames
because this is where the Russians started
flocking to in the early 2000s probably.
narrator: English-born Countess Alexandra Tolstoy,
descended from Russia's most famous writer Leo Tolstoy,
has lived the fairy tale lifestyle
as the partner of one of those oligarch elites.
- We're now approaching Hanover Lodge,
which is the most beautiful John Nash building,
Regent's Park.
Andrey Goncharenko bought this in 2012.
At the time, it was
the most expensive property, 120 million.
It's funny, Russians-- they've chosen
very specific areas like Chelsea,
Regent's Park, Highgate.
But I suppose it's a sign of a newly developing elite
that they have to follow each other.
You know, it's very much about prestige.
narrator: Alexandra first met Russian oligarch
Sergei Pugachev in 2006.
"Forbes" magazine estimated Sergei's net worth
to be over $2 billion.
- The oligarch lifestyle, it was everything
you probably expect it to be.
It's private jets.
It's Rolls Royces, chauffeurs, chefs.
We had an amazing yacht, which was a Palmer Johnson,
which is this very sort of sporty
James Bond-type yacht.
It was all beautifully decorated
by this amazing decorator, full of art deco antiques.
And all these toys--
jet skis and stuff like that.
They all loved to holiday in exactly the same places--
it's the South of France, it's Saint-Tropez,
it's St. Barts.
They're obsessed with Courchevel and skiing.
And it's all about show.
Someone said to him, do you want to go
to St. Barts for New Year? And he said yes.
We stayed in the Eden Roc Hotel,
which is a very glamorous hotel.
So Sergei always traveled with a bodyguard and a doctor.
And wherever we were, they were two meters
behind us following us.
narrator: A hotel room wasn't enough for Sergei.
The couple went shopping and ended up
in a realtor's office.
- And within half an hour,
he'd chosen the biggest house on the island.
I think it was 35 million euros or something.
narrator: Alexandra quickly learned that Sergei
had the ear of the most powerful man in Russia--
Vladimir Putin.
- They spent hours talking to each other every day.
And obviously, yeah, he had chosen Sergei
as a particular confidant.
narrator: Her relationship with Sergei
has given her extraordinary insight
into the ultra-elite world of the oligarchs who made Putin.
- Sergei was like a microcosm of Putin.
I mean, he had had far too much power even, you know,
not of a country, but of his world.
Wealth for him was extremely important
because it was a way to be powerful,
to control other people.
narrator: Today, Alexandra is bravely
speaking out about Putin and those in his orbit.
But she is not alone.
Another woman well connected to the community
of billionaires who have fled Putin's Russia
and made London home is Tatiana Fokina.
One of them is her partner, Evgeny Chichvarkin,
once worth over $1.5 billion.
Together, they now own and run Mayfair's
most exclusive wine shop down the road
from the world-famous Ritz Hotel.
It's a far cry from their humble beginnings
in mother Russia.
- From a human perspective, we need--
we need to understand that we all came from a country
that had nothing. We had nothing.
We were wearing the same clothes.
I had maybe two dresses.
I had no toys.
And after that, imagine you get access to everything.
And it's really tempting.
And you want everything.
narrator: But not all the Russian billionaires
in London had to flee here
to save their lives and fortunes.
Some, like Roman Abramovich, one of Russia's richest men,
were here by choice.
Rumored to be once worth $23 billion,
he remains in Putin's good graces,
even serving as his back channel in peace talks
with the Ukrainian government.
- He now has all these different properties in London,
a beautiful Chateau in the South of France.
I think he's got three yachts.
[seagulls cawing]
So now we're drawing up to the famous
Chelsea Football Club,
which was bought in 2003
for 233 million by Abramovich.
[announcer shouting indistinctly]
[cheers and applause]
narrator: Abramovich buys his way
into the heart of British society
by acquiring one of the country's most
prestigious football clubs.
- I suppose Chelsea Football Club
was the first huge Western asset
to be bought by a Russian.
I don't think it was controversial at the time,
particularly, as he invested so much money in it.
He bought these amazing players.
[cheering]
Every Russian I knew, they wanted to go
and sit in the box at Chelsea and watch a match.
That was their sort of-- the most glamorous thing
you could do in London.
narrator: Unlike some fellow oligarchs
who keep a lower profile,
Abramovich has a taste for entertaining
and likes to be surrounded by celebrities.
- He had these famous New Year's Eve parties.
I once went out with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher on a plane.
They were coming into a party.
And, yes, I met him.
Wearing a very casual shirt, looking like
he was trying to be a bit of a raver.
It was funny, actually.
And the Black Eyed Peas were there.
I just remember very sweaty.
And I did think, "God, it's funny."
You're a--you know, he was an orphan in Siberia.
narrator: But how did Abramovich
and the select group of oligarchs
who were responsible for Putin's rise to power
make their fortunes in the first place?
[inquisitive music]
♪ ♪
The oligarchs, like everyone in 1980 Soviet Russia,
struggled to get by.
Tatiana Fokina remembers.
- I was born in Leningrad in 1987.
So the union collapsed when I was four.
And I still remember really Soviet times,
virtually having no food,
and queues for food for five hours,
and, you know, literally eating potatoes
for weeks and weeks and weeks when I was little.
narrator: After decades of prioritizing military spending
at the expense of civilian society,
President Mikhail Gorbachev understood
that an arms race with the United States
was not winnable.
- Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.
[cheers and applause]
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
[cheers and applause]
narrator: Suddenly, in November 1989,
the Berlin Wall fell.
And from Moscow to East Berlin,
a new era would begin.
♪ ♪
Vladimir Putin was a 37-year-old officer
in the Soviet spy agency the KGB,
based in Dresden, East Germany,
when the Soviet Union collapsed.
A phone call from an old friend brought him back
to his hometown of Leningrad, whose pre-Soviet name,
St. Petersburg, was then restored.
For him, free market capitalism
had meant a loss of status.
But his fortunes were about to change dramatically.
Ksenia Sobchak was just a child
when her father, Anatoly Sobchak,
became the first elected mayor of St. Petersburg in 1991.
- He was one of the main democrats of a new Russia.
He worked shoulder to shoulder with Boris Yeltsin.
So in the years when my father was active in politics,
I was around 11 years old.
narrator: Ksenia observed her father's political career
from an early age.
She recalls how he threw an old friend a lifeline.
- Putin was a guy whom he met in university.
And he did some work for him,
and he liked the way he did it.
He always said about Putin as being
very efficient and very responsible
for what he was doing.
narrator: As deputy mayor,
Putin quickly impressed his mentor,
easing a citywide food crisis
by trading Russian minerals overseas to countries
that sent back potatoes.
- I understand why my father respected him so much.
Being in the limelight, doing political,
you know, work, being a mayor, which is a quite public thing.
You always have this guy who doesn't want any light on him,
but he was ready to work hard.
I would never believe if someone
would say this guy would be ruling Russia
for more than 20 years.
I would never ever believe.
narrator: Some city officials suspected Putin
was also selling food on the black market
and pocketing the money,
exploiting a new era of entrepreneurship.
- The '90s years in Russia
were the only years when there was real freedom
and a lot of possibilities.
- There was a time of unique opportunities
that presented themselves when the Union collapsed.
And, you know, things were for grabs.
And did everyone have the courage, the skill,
the intelligence, you know, the social skills
to make profit of it?
No, because in Soviet times,
you know, there was no business.
You didn't have that business initiative.
narrator: Tatiana's future partner, Evgeny Chichvarkin,
was a natural entrepreneur.
- First steps in business,
I just rent one square meter, put newspaper,
and bring everything what I have at home--
my old clothes and some food, chocolate, cognac.
I sell more than half of that.
I asked my father to give me $5,000--
that probably everything that he had.
And he trust me, and he gave me,
and I return it in 23 days back.
There was great time.
narrator: Alexandra's partner, Sergei Pugachev,
also seized every opportunity he could find.
- I think in the '90s,
it was a bit like sort of cowboy world.
They were just taking insane, very dangerous risks.
But obviously, they did pay off.
And it was all about bluffing, really,
and you had to convince people.
And people wanted to be--
feel they were with the powerful--
but, you know, it's a bit like in the jungle where
you want to be with the lion.
You don't want to be with the lizard.
Which was almost a badge of honor
because it was-- you were enterprising.
He said he had a jeans line where
he was making fake Levis,
and then he had one of these car factories.
He went and bought slightly damaged parts
and then would assemble them on a line
and sell the cars for cheaper.
He then set up a bank.
And his was the biggest private bank,
I think, at the time.
[people shouting]
narrator: Without the iron fist
of the Soviet police state,
the early 1990s were a time of lawlessness and anarchy.
Boris Yeltsin grappled with widespread unemployment,
faltering state industries, and food shortages.
As his popularity waned,
Yeltsin's solution was to transfer
massive state-owned industries like banking and gas
into the hands of select businessmen,
who would then loan the government
the funds it needed to keep running.
At that time, American-born financier Bill Browder
was investing heavily in Russia.
- I started investing in 1993
at the beginning of the Russian privatization program.
At the time, during the Yeltsin era,
the oligarchs were people who were
not just immensely wealthy but immensely powerful.
In order to get reelected in 1996,
he allowed 22 oligarchs to steal 40% of the country.
The government borrowed money from the oligarchs,
and the oligarchs asked for collateral.
And so the government then handed over
all the crown jewels,
and then the government conveniently defaulted
at the end of the loans.
And these oligarchs then became immensely wealthier
through owning the most prized crown jewels of the country.
[suspenseful music]
narrator: Overnight, millionaires
became billionaires, and a new political class was born--
the oligarchs.
- And in return, they used their resources,
their media, and everything else
to make sure that he was president.
But in doing so, he also gave up
a huge amount of power and sovereignty
to these 22 oligarchs.
- The oligarchs in the original
and the true sense of words, they were not just
super rich, you know.
They were not businessmen who made
good business decision or, like, a dodgy deal
here and there.
They had political power.
And this is a crucial key element to being an oligarch.
narrator: Yeltsin put his political prospects
in the hands of Sergei Pugachev,
Alexandra's future partner.
- In 1996, he ran Yeltsin's election campaign.
And he brought in these American campaign managers,
which was quite controversial.
And it was the first time where they sort of worked
on someone's public image.
And it did work.
[upbeat folk music playing]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
narrator: After their man won, many oligarchs
took office as senators.
- The money that they continued to steal
led to a terrible social crisis in Russia
where they were rich,
and everybody else was destitute.
Nurses became prostitutes.
Professors became taxi drivers.
And art museums sold the paintings off the walls
in order to survive.
It was a terrible time.
[apprehensive music]
narrator: The all-powerful oligarchs were now
like mafia bosses working with criminals,
ignoring a legal system that had evolved little
since Soviet times,
and turning Russia into fiefdoms
of organized crime.
Whilst Yeltsin turned a blind eye,
Russia's security service, the FSB,
take matters into their own hands.
One up-and-coming intelligence officer at the FSB,
formerly the KGB, targeting criminal gangs,
is Alexander Litvinenko.
His family and friends called him Sasha.
He's tasked with leading a secret intelligence unit,
one of whose missions is to keep oligarchs in line
who'd become too independent, too powerful.
- These people who had money became politician.
And they tried to get this at top level
and be elected to Russian parliament.
narrator: Sasha soon discovers the FSB itself
is involved in this web of crime.
- He realized organized crime now
very linked to security service,
to politician, and to big money.
And this is--his was the first concerning
something is going wrong.
They received more and more order what doesn't look legal.
What does it mean? They need to kidnap people.
They need to even maybe kill.
narrator: The man at the top of Sasha's hit list
is Boris Berezovsky, a media baron
and owner of Russia's biggest TV channel.
As Russia's most influential oligarch,
Berezovsky is an obvious target.
He's already survived one attempt
on his life two years earlier.
narrator: Berezovsky's driver had been decapitated.
♪ ♪
narrator: Instead of carrying out the order
to assassinate Berezovsky,
Sasha decides to warn the oligarch.
- Sasha came to Boris Berezovsky to say,
"I was asked to kill you."
♪ ♪
narrator: Boris Berezovsky assumes
the order came from Yeltsin.
He tells Sasha to inform the newly-appointed
head of the FSB, Vladimir Putin,
a man Berezovsky trusts and recommended for the job,
that his agents are being used for political assassinations.
- Boris Berezovsky believed
they have a good friendship with Putin.
But that was not true.
And when my husband Sasha met Vladimir Putin,
Putin didn't say nothing.
I think Sasha was not really impressed
of Vladimir Putin as a person.
narrator: Sasha's next step is extraordinary.
With other FSB whistleblowers, he holds a press conference.
It's broadcast by Berezovsky's own network.
Sasha reveals not only the plot to assassinate
Boris Berezovsky but also shocking corruption
inside the FSB.
- I was really nervous
when Sasha said they're going publicly
for this press conference.
I said, why you need to be so public in saying this?
But he said, don't worry.
He felt Boris Berezovsky has a lot of power.
And he felt his support and a lot of support
from other business in Russia.
Other guys were wearing glasses,
and one was in a balaclava.
narrator: Sasha chooses not to cover his face.
- [speaking Russian]
- I was really shocked.
And I asked him, what is next after this?
He said, "Mm, I might be arrested,
or I might be killed."
[gunshots]
narrator: Immediately fired from the FSB by Putin himself,
Sasha is arrested on trumped-up charges
of beating up a suspect.
He spends nine months in prison.
[sirens blaring]
[upbeat marching band music playing]
By 1999, Yeltsin is deeply unpopular,
and his behavior becoming erratic.
In ill health and fearful of being prosecuted
for corruption, his days in the presidency
are numbered.
Sergei Pugachev is one one of the oligarchs
plotting to find Yeltsin's replacement.
He has someone in mind that he thinks
would be perfect for the job,
someone who would be deferential.
- Sergei definitely always got to be number one in the room.
So he would never ever have chosen
someone who he thought could ever vaguely compete with him.
They thought they had this very malleable pawn
who would fulfill all these instructions.
narrator: Boris Berezovsky recalls
how he supported Putin when he first became president.
- Definitely I support Putin. I support Putin.
And I trust that Putin took this position
as a successor of Yeltsin.
Yes, as a successor.
What it means, that he's supposed to continue reform.
- I would in this respect agree with Berezovsky
that in this way, he has honesty
and decency to has his clear way of how things should be.
And no one can take him out of this road he chooses.
narrator: At first, Putin acts just like
the drab bureaucrat the oligarchs expected.
[apprehensive music]
- After the Yeltsin era, I and everybody else
was just desperate for somebody normal.
And here comes along this guy.
He's got this blank face, not charismatic at all.
But he spoke English, didn't drink.
And so I sort of placed him in the category
of boring functionary, but it's what Russia needed.
And I had no idea the evil that lurked just underneath.
narrator: Sergei told Alexandra
how Putin reacted to the opulent halls of the Kremlin.
- Putin grew up in a communal flat,
which is really the most humble way
you could possibly grow up. It's a shared kitchen.
It's a shared bathroom with other families.
To have then gone to be living in this sort of semi-palace,
apparently he was just like a child in a sweet shop.
He was just so excited and couldn't even really hide it.
narrator: The oligarchs were confident they'd found the man
to do their bidding and sold their pick
to the ailing alcoholic president.
On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigns.
- [speaking Russian]
- In a nationwide television address,
the ailing 68-year-old Yeltsin said
his life's work is finished.
"Russia will never return to its Communist past," he said.
Yeltsin then handed power and Russia's nuclear suitcase
to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Putin, a 47-year-old former KGB spy,
will be Russia's acting president until elections
are held in three months.
[lively fanfare]
narrator: President Putin's first official move
is to grant Yeltsin immunity from prosecution
on corruption charges.
- In 2000, when Putin became president,
he looked young, promising, healthy, and so on.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Here is a young, effective president
with good health, very open to the world,
very open to America and Europe.
- The vast majority of people--
and this is-- this completely makes sense.
He was a breath of fresh air because
he spoke foreign languages, he was young,
energetic, sporty.
As much as we hate him now, you have to give it to him.
He is very charismatic.
Really, he can be very charming still even.
♪ ♪
narrator: Just four months into his presidency,
Putin invites Russia's most powerful oligarchs
to a meeting behind closed doors at the Kremlin
and offers them a deal.
Do what I say, and you can keep your wealth.
Stand against me, and I will take everything.
Tatiana's future partner, at the time
the youngest multi-millionaire in Russia,
had been paying close attention.
- Putin said, that's the rules.
You can do everything, make as much money as you want.
But don't go to politics.
And everybody said yes.
Yes, sir.
At that time, I thought,
"If I will be just trading phones,
"and I've been not involved in politics,
nothing will happen with me."
That was my thought.
narrator: The oligarchs still believe Putin
is their puppet president.
Yet in public statements, Putin denounces the oligarchs
for their greed.
- [speaking Russian]
- In Russia, people hate rich people.
Most of the people hate oligarchs.
They think all the money that have oligarchs,
they only come from, you know, stealing.
narrator: One oligarch in particular
believes Putin means what he says about
reducing the oligarchs' power.
narrator: Other oligarchs believe the president
can be managed, even though some suspect
he is jealous of their lifestyle.
- Sergei told me funny stories like even about--
because he's quite small, Putin.
He told me once he was swimming.
Sergei was swimming in a swimming pool.
And Putin was standing at the end.
And he said, "Look at you with your long arms."
I think he probably felt very frustrated
that the oligarchs were living these crazy, glamorous lives.
Putin would much prefer to have been an oligarch
than to have been the president.
narrator: Another person who has no illusions about Putin
is FSB whistleblower Sasha Litvinenko,
released from jail after nine months.
- He really worried about us, his family,
when he decide to escape from Russia.
This was not only because he would be arrested
again and put to jail.
He knew they might do something against us.
narrator: Sasha sends Marina and their young son Anatoly
on holiday to Spain.
She doesn't yet realize her husband
is plotting their escape from Putin's Russia.
- When I was in Spain with Anatoly,
Sasha first time started to talk about
maybe we're not going back to Russia.
And when he started this, I was immediately disagree.
I said, no way. No way I leave my parents.
I leave everything.
narrator: Reluctantly, Sasha gives in,
saying they will return to Moscow after the holiday.
But then he gets a call from Berezovsky.
- Boris Berezovsky called him and just said,
"Sasha, don't do this.
Your life will be in danger."
narrator: Instead of flying home,
the Litvinenkos board a flight to London.
- First of all, I had not only a suitcase.
I had my husband and my son with me--
Anatoly, who was just six years old.
We left everything behind--
our friends, our families, our job, all.
But we had to do this for him, for our son,
because he will be a freedom person.
He will live in a freedom country.
♪ ♪
narrator: At the start of his presidency,
the world had high hopes for Putin
that he might lean in to democratic rule,
a 21st century man ready to reform
a corrupt and inefficient system.
- And I looked the man in the eye.
I found him to be very straightforward
and trustworthy.
narrator: But as the first year of Putin's rule
comes to a close, Russian journalists
are rocked by a string of unexplained murders.
Investigative reporters brutally eliminated,
the suspected killers with ties
to the security services.
The message was received loud and clear.
[tense music]
There were limits to press freedom.
Putin's Russia was not the West.
In August, Putin travels to Murmansk
to meet the grief-stricken families
of sailors who had drowned
when the submarine "Kursk" sank.
In a six hour conference, they unleash their anger
on Putin's officials.
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: For weeks, Boris Berezovsky's ORT network
broadcasts wall-to-wall coverage
of Putin's public humiliation,
sharply criticizing the president's handling
of the crisis.
A few months later, Putin gets his revenge.
Facing charges of fraud and embezzlement,
Berezovsky is forced to sell his media empire
and flee to London,
realizing he has no future in Russia.
[suspenseful music]
At first, the other oligarchs believed
that if they stay out of the public eye
and build their fortunes in dull industries
like banking and oil, Putin will leave them alone.
But in 2003, they learn a lesson
that no one would ever forget
when the richest man in Russia,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, challenges Putin
at a Kremlin summit.
- [speaking Russian]
- I remember the meeting
when Khodorkovsky expressed his concerns over corruption.
And it sort of made your blood go cold
just because you knew it was not going to end well.
There was that famous footage and how Putin looks.
And then, you know, shortly after, he got arrested.
And he was an absolute hero
because it took so much courage
just to say those words.
And, you know, and he had things to lose.
narrator: Khodorkovsky breaks the oligarch code
by involving himself in politics,
for which he is destroyed.
The state seizes much of his estimated $15 billion fortune
and sentences him to nine years in prison for fraud.
- Khodorkovsky started being politically active,
and that was why he went to prison,
and that when Russia started to change dramatically.
- And at that point, the other oligarchs
came to Putin and said, "What do we have to do
so we don't go to jail?"
And Putin said, 50%.
And at that moment, Putin became
the richest man in the world.
narrator: While Putin privately demands
half their wealth,
publicly, he continues to threaten the oligarchs,
knowing ordinary Russians feel little sympathy for them.
- [speaking Russian]
- Ordinary Russians, they live
a completely different life, and we can't imagine.
You know, they have the toilet outside.
They literally think about getting food on the table.
This is the level of their concerns.
So people saw that as, yeah, they stole all our money.
They got punished, and that serves them right,
and I'm poor, and they're rich.
I think they saw this as
a demonstration of strength from Putin.
narrator: Oleg Deripaska was one oligarch
who prospered in the first years of Putin's regime,
becoming Russia's richest man.
narrator: Deripaska owns several sectors
of Russian industry, employing thousands.
When he tries to close a cement factory
and fire its workers, it is an opportunity
for Putin to step in
and posture as a man of the people.
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: Deripaska abandons his plans
and keeps the plant running.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
narrator: The oligarchs now understand
they have underestimated Putin all along.
Unlike Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky,
Deripaska had done nothing to embarrass or upstage Putin.
It is now clear to everyone money does not equal power.
With his friend and ally oligarch Boris Berezovsky
already ensconced in London,
the Litvinenko family now arrives.
They hope Berezovsky will help them
as they build new lives in a foreign country.
- Sasha and Boris Berezovsky been
the most different people you can imagine.
And many people been surprised what might be between of them.
But it was really a friendship.
narrator: But Sasha cannot stay quiet
when another good friend of his,
journalist Anna Politkovskaya,
is murdered after criticizing Putin's war in Chechnya.
♪ ♪
- When Anna was killed 7th of October,
Sasha was devastated because he felt
it something he didn't prevent.
narrator: After Anna's murder,
Sasha is invited to speak to journalists
at a gathering in London.
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: Just days after he accuses Putin
of Anna's murder, Sasha falls gravely ill.
- I thought it might be just some kind
of digestion problem or anything.
But sickness was so powerful and so unusual.
And Sasha immediately suspected something wrong.
His immune system dropped almost to zero.
And doctors and hospital didn't know why.
narrator: Sasha told hospital doctors
he suspected foul play.
- I'm a Russian, I'm former security service,
and I have a very powerful enemy.
narrator: For nearly two weeks,
they try to diagnose the cause of Sasha's sickness
until finally, a blood test revealed he'd been poisoned.
- And his blood was checked
for poisoning first time.
And it was a trace of thallium.
narrator: The Litvinenko case would be a warning
to all Putin's enemies
who thought they'd be safe in England.
Paying close attention is the oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
- He asked Boris to come to see him.
Berezovsky, I saw he was really, really nervous about.
And Sasha say, "Boris, you promise
"if something happen to me,
"you will never leave Marina and my family
without attention."
And, of course, for Boris, it wasn't
even a question to discuss.
But he had two days to talk to police.
He gave a lot of evidence,
even if it was very difficult to talk.
And they told me, we definitely will do everything
to investigate this case.
- We're sorry to announce that Alexander Litvinenko died
at University College Hospital
at 9:21 on the 23rd of November 2006.
And the matter is now an ongoing investigation
being dealt with by detectives from New Scotland Yard.
narrator: From his deathbed, Sasha had helped police solve
his own murder, pointing the finger
at two Russian associates, both ex-KGB,
who he said had spiked his green tea
with radioactive polonium-210,
a claim the Russian government denies.
- For me, it looks they didn't expect
polonium would be discovered
because it's radioactive material.
You can't buy.
You can't just select it.
You can't take it from nowhere, just from nuclear reactor.
narrator: In 2006, at the time of Litvinenko's death,
Alexandra Tolstoy was traveling in Russia
with little knowledge of Putin's world.
She was a young woman having an adventure living abroad.
- I was doing these different jobs,
and I taught English just occasionally,
and a friend of mine said to me,
"Oh, my boss wants to have English conversation lessons."
And I said, yeah, sure. I'll do that.
But he was so reserved and silent
and sort of seemed to be watching me.
I was flailing around like, what should I--and I said,
should we talk about Putin?
And he said, no politics. No politics.
And then I went home, and I Googled him.
And I went--I remember going bright red.
You know, I thought, this is awful.
I had no idea, and he was a senator.
And he was already nicknamed Putin's banker.
narrator: The next time Alexandra crossed paths
with Putin's banker would be two years later
and in very different circumstances.
- I was working for something called
the Laureus Sports Awards in St. Petersburg.
And I was asked to invite people who would spend
10,000 euros on a ticket.
I suddenly remembered him,
and then when I met him at the sports awards,
I walked up to him, and I said, do you remember me?
Hello.
And he looked at me and went, oh, my goodness.
You've made my evening.
I'm so happy you're here.
I've thought about you every day since those lessons,
and I was completely staggered because at the lessons,
he'd looked so serious.
So I sat next to him at dinner,
and Sergei just clung to me, I remember,
and I felt--it was very exciting to feel
that looked after.
And in my life, I'd never felt like that and protected.
And then Sergei really pursued me, I suppose.
The event went over two days. There was a dinner.
And then the next day, there was this big ceremony
and then the sort of after party,
and he just was with me all the time.
narrator: Sergei's friend, the president of Russia,
is guest of honor.
- Putin gave a little talk at the ceremony.
I just remember his body language.
He's quite small.
There's a lot of sort of strutting,
you know, really trying to pick himself up.
At the end of the dinner, suddenly, we all stood up,
and then Putin marched out with this great phalanx
of bodyguards around him.
And as he did, I was standing at Sergei,
and I saw Sergei go like that,
and he, like, caught their eyes,
and he sort of bowed.
It was quite a kind of almost feudal thing, you know.
He sort of bowed slightly to him.
narrator: Alexandra says Sergei felt like
his relationship with Putin was special,
and he was stunned when the president demanded
a cut of his business.
- He owned a huge property on Red Square,
which was half the length of Red Square.
And he was meant to make it into a very luxurious hotel.
And it was worth-- I don't know--3 billion.
He got some very famous Belgian architects
who came and made a whole plan of how to develop it
into a luxury hotel.
And it would've been the most amazing location.
narrator: But Alexandra says Putin made Sergei
an offer he couldn't refuse.
- Putin said, look, it's opposite the Kremlin,
so I have to see what the plan is for this hotel.
And so Putin came. He showed him the plan.
And he says that during the meeting, Putin's face changed,
and suddenly, he realized, oh, my gosh.
He's so jealous.
Weeks later, these guards were moved in,
and the property was seized.
And that was the first time that
he'd had to hand something over.
And he told Sergei, you're gonna be compensated,
and he never was compensated.
Sergei told me, "Because I don't give him money,
I'm being punished."
By this point, Putin had gone power hungry and crazy, really.
- There's no difference between Russian organized crime
and the Russian government.
The Russian government is effectively
an organized crime organization,
and Vladimir Putin is the mafia boss.
narrator: In 2009, Bill Browder discovers
what the oligarchs had already learned the hard way--
that no matter how sizable your financial resources,
you can never win against someone
who has a government agencies under his control.
- Sergei Magnitsky, my lawyer, my Russian lawyer,
uncovered a $230 million government corruption scheme.
And he believed that there was a rule of law in Russia.
And he believed that even though there
was corruption in the system that the law
would eventually prevail.
And he thought that Putin was a patriot and a nationalist.
And I never believed any of those things,
and I asked Sergei to leave after he uncovered
this $230 million scheme, to come to London at my expense
and stay here under my protection.
But Sergei was a patriot and an idealist,
and he stayed in Russia.
And he was subsequently arrested,
tortured, and killed.
That weighs very heavily on me,
and I do regret that I didn't try harder to get him out.
narrator: After refusing to cut Putin in
on his hotel project,
Alexandra says Sergei Pugachev falls out of favor.
- At the end of 2010,
we'd gone together to St. Barts over New Year.
And then I stayed on with the children.
narrator: It is when she is online
looking for mentions about Sergei
that Alexandra learned some bad news.
- Every day, I would type in Sergei's name
to see what was going-- you know, what he was doing
or whatever.
And it came up saying he'd been demoted as a senator.
narrator: The meaning of his demotion
is immediately clear to her:
Sergei has been expelled from the inner circle.
- I was terrified because I knew
that it meant he'd no longer have diplomatic immunity.
I knew that, you know,
he'd been losing all these assets.
I didn't care about the money,
but I was so frightened for him
because there have been so many stories.
I just--he could be arrested.
narrator: Alexandra now fears for Sergei's life
and what it would mean for her and their three children.
- I remember calling him. He didn't answer the phone,
and I was calling and calling.
And then about a few hours later,
Sergei called me and said, "Hello, I'm in France."
And I was so relieved because, you know, he was alive,
and he was--and then he never went back to Russia.
♪ ♪
narrator: In building his cell phone empire,
tycoon Evgeny Chichvarkin
was never part of the inner circle.
In fact, he did everything he could
to fly under Putin's radar.
But that was impossible.
- One of Putin's general of FSB came into warehouse
and just took the assets
for 36 million of mobile phones
and said, "We have to have a share."
We said no.
They said, yes, you will.
We said no.
And then Putin said, go ahead.
Bam.
narrator: In 2008, Evgeny is charged
with a slew of financial crimes.
The Putin regime would get its share of his assets,
or he would go to prison.
- In a few days, five people was in the prison.
There was open criminal case against me.
- I think that was an incredibly stressful time.
His children never went to school without a bodyguard.
- My head of security came to me
and said, "I know from the head of the prison
"there's the special luxury room is waiting
for you from the next Tuesday."
Said, thank you so much.
I'm going to airport.
Enough is enough.
- Fortunately, he had a UK visa.
So he just, you know, boarded the next plane
and came to London.
He managed to take most of his family with him
and at least a part of what he's earned.
narrator: One family member Evgeny had to leave
was his 59-year-old mother.
Four months later, he makes the tough decision
not to return to Russia for her 60th birthday,
convinced Putin's agents have laid a trap for him.
- My mother was found dead next day after her 60th birthday,
and the police said it's accident.
- The theory is that she was killed to make him come back
so they could capture him.
He hasn't been to Russia ever since.
narrator: Evgeny embarks on a new life,
building a business in fine wines.
- And that's how we met-- at a job interview,
and he asked, do you drink wine?
I was like, look, you know, I enjoy good food.
I'm sure I will enjoy good wine,
and this all sounds very interesting.
- When we start to work, I believe that with this lady,
we can do everything now.
- It's natural when you work very closely with someone,
you get to know them.
Then you fall in love and--
yeah.
It's the law of attraction, something like that.
♪ ♪
narrator: By 2010, Tatiana and Alexandra
are both living in London just a few miles apart.
Yet they've never met until now.
- Yeah, so for my experience, from what I saw of Sergei,
there were two types of successful people in Russia.
There were the oligarchs, who Sergei--
he was like a deal breaker.
- Yeah, I think it's, you know--
there are businessmen like Evgeny.
But that's very different to wanting to be in power.
Whenever you make a contract with the devil,
there will be consequences.
You know, if you deal with the dark side,
it will come to haunt you later.
narrator: Alexandra and Sergei are no longer a couple,
but during the ten years she spent with him,
he painted a vivid portrait of his onetime friend
Vladimir Putin.
- He was the first person who took Putin
to see where he would live.
And he said Putin was literally like a child in a sweet shop,
just amazed by the sort of lavishness of it.
- He never gets to actually live in those villas,
use those yachts.
You know, he is stuck in Russia.
- Sergei was a bit like a microcosm of this.
He had an amazing yacht.
We had the best house on St. Barts.
We had, you know, planes and whatever we wanted.
He never used them.
All he wanted to do was lie in bed
and watch the Weather Channel.
- Putin--because he came from a very--
- Humble. - Very humble family.
And I think that's a big part in understanding who he is
and what he's doing.
- For me, Sergei, his behavior, everything
just seems to mirror Putin.
And from my experience, he trusts nobody.
- I actually don't think there was a safe way of,
you know, staying really wealthy in Russia
because inevitably, someone will be
coming knocking on your door.
narrator: And that was certainly what Russian banker
German Gorbuntsov believed when he fled Russia
after discovering his business partners
were allegedly defrauding him.
Gorbuntsov was due to give evidence
against two other former partners
in a meeting with Russian investigators.
But it never took place.
A security camera outside his home
captured what happened next.
♪ ♪
[gunshots]
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: Gorbuntsov had built up a fortune
worth over $1 billion,
and at one time owned Russia's Spartak hockey team
and a Le Mans race car.
He believes the hit was ordered
by his business partners
who had boasted of their ties to the FSB,
the chain of command going right up to the Kremlin.
- It's kind of like "The Sopranos."
You have the Philadelphia mafia,
the New Jersey mafia, the Brooklyn mafia.
Each of them have their own areas
for committing extortion, prostitution,
drug dealing, et cetera.
They get their money, and then they've got to
divert a bunch of that money right up to the mafia boss.
And if anyone stands in their way,
then they can use the FSB,
which is the Russian security services,
to have people arrested,
to have people killed, et cetera.
narrator: Exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky
knew he was never truly safe from Putin's long reach.
Here's how he put it to British journalists in 2012.
narrator: His remarks were eerily prophetic.
The following year,
seven years after his friend Sasha Litvinenko's poisoning,
Berezovsky is found dead from apparent suicide
at his mansion just outside of London.
Official report stated he had hung himself in his bathroom.
- When I received this news, I was really shocked.
Very, very devastating.
And I never believed he committed suicide.
Never.
- I do remember very clearly when Berezovsky died.
I was sitting on the sofa with Sergei,
and we were watching the news, and it came up,
and Sergei immediately said that was not suicide.
- The circumstances of his death
are still mysterious and would lead me
to believe based on what I've read, he was murdered.
narrator: Sergei Pugachev always suspected
that Putin was not finished with him either.
His partner Alexandra is the first
to bring him some bad news.
- A friend of mine works in political intelligence,
and she had come to me and said, look,
I've got to warn you, there's a search
going out on Sergei's assets.
True enough, there was a worldwide freezing order,
and they froze all his assets.
narrator: Putin's regime charges Sergei
with embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars
from his Russian bank.
Alexandra tries to help, making an introduction
to a top British lawyer.
- They said, "You're about to get a freezing order,
and we can help you."
We can make your assets less visible, and blah blah blah.
And I realized Sergei is so chaotic,
his personality makes it absolutely impossible.
He can't listen to anyone.
So for him, he would say to me often,
who the hell is a lawyer?
They haven't made as much money as I have.
They're nobody.
It was just appalling.
He thought he could just bulldoze his way
and bully his way through everything.
narrator: Instead of taking legal advice,
Sergei decided to escape to France.
- You know, you can't do that.
You've been told not to leave the country.
And I said, well, I just tell you one thing.
If he does that, I am not following.
I never ever will follow him.
He just had a tantrum and said, that's it.
And he ran away to France.
About two weeks later,
the bodyguard knocked on the door.
I said, Denise, what are you doing here?
Where is Sergei? What's going on?
And he wouldn't look at me.
He walked around the house like this robot picking up
every single personal belonging of Sergei's--all his papers,
absolutely every sock, every--absolutely everything,
cleaning the house of it.
Put it all in a van and drove off without literally
addressing one word to me.
narrator: Next come British officials
from the Crown Prosecution Service.
- Yeah, that is horrific.
I was going to church with my children.
And there was banging on the door,
and it was a lawyer with a search warrant.
So they went round, got my iPad,
got my laptop, my phone,
downloaded literally every message
I'd ever written to anybody.
narrator: Sergei is found in contempt
when he fails to appear in the British court.
In absentia, he is sentenced to two years in prison.
Alexandra cuts ties with Sergei.
Their three children now live with her permanently
in London.
♪ ♪
Are there other sides to the iron willed ruler of Russia?
Vladimir Putin the man, the human being?
Family friend Ksenia Sobchak
has had a glimpse of the human side of Putin.
- He always calls on the day-- when my father passed away,
he calls to my mother and says his condolences.
So he never forgets to do that.
And I know that he loved my father sincerely very much.
These are things that are very hard to fake.
narrator: In 2013, during an intermission
at the Moscow Ballet,
Putin broke some news to the public,
giving the world a rare look into his private life.
- [speaking Russian]
- He just-- very off the cuff
and apparently spontaneous,
but nothing is spontaneous in the KGB
or let alone in Russian television.
So I don't think it really was.
But he said, "We're getting divorced,"
and we've just never really heard about her since.
- [speaking Russian]
- Sergei used to tell me
that actually she was more intelligent than him
and more charismatic,
and in private, she would really
humiliate him and sort of laugh at him.
And she was from a more sophisticated family.
He was from a very, very poor, very humble family.
And I think she came from a,
you know, more well-off family.
And so then the boot was on the other foot.
So I think maybe there was an element of revenge.
narrator: The presidential divorce isn't a huge surprise
to the Russian public,
for whom it was common knowledge
that Putin had a mistress.
Alexandra remembers when she first saw her.
- It was a very big event. All the oligarchs were there.
And then we were just sort of standing around,
and I saw a little gathering,
and I looked over,
and there was a girl in a kind of Grecian white dress--
yeah, that dress a bit like Marilyn Monroe famously wore--
sort of twirling around.
And it was eye catching 'cause it was quite extraordinary
that--obviously the attention that she wanted
and that she had this group of people watching her.
And I turned to Sergei, and it was just--
I said, oh, my gosh.
I taught that girl English. It's Alina.
And I hadn't seen her since,
and it was just--seemed such a funny coincidence.
But what struck me most was that
she had put on so much weight,
and she's obviously a very, very famous--
well, very famous in Russia--sportswoman.
So I said to Sergei, oh, my goodness.
But she's-- poor thing, she's so fat
compared to what she was.
And he said, oh, well, she's pregnant.
And she is Putin's girlfriend.
narrator: Even after his divorce,
Putin keeps his life with Alina Kabaeva
out of the public eye.
- The weird thing is, you think,
why don't you now live with Alina Kabaeva officially?
She was a gymnast.
She's like a real Soviet heroine,
which really fits with the whole propaganda
Soviet angle now.
And that's quite a mystery,
but I can only guess that he's just such
an egomaniac that he doesn't literally want
anyone distracting from him.
I don't know.
narrator: To observers, Putin appears
more isolated than ever.
- This is--you know, this is a very lonely existence.
And, you know, you should be surrounded
by your grandchildren and love and family.
He completely alienated everyone because he is--
you know, he was always paranoid.
But now I think there are so--
there are millions of people across the globe who wish him--
- Dead. - Dead.
- I know this, his nickname
the other KGB officers gave him--
the moth.
That's important.
At night, in silent, in dark, nicknames in Russia so strong.
It's like a bullet.
narrator: Until his war on Ukraine,
most countries understood Putin not just
as a ruthless dictator but also as a leader
in control of vast energy resources,
someone you had to do business with.
Here he is in 2018 at an opening ceremony
for the World Cup being hosted by Russia.
- This is the face of Russia.
This is the face of the Russia that we love.
And thank you most importantly as well, President Putin.
[speaks Russian] For your commitment,
for your dedication, for your passion.
Without you, all this would not have been possible.
I'm sure about that.
So thank you. Congratulations.
We did a good job together as well.
[applause]
- Putin has done a very good job
over the last 22 years
of only committing crimes that were plausibly deniable.
Creating this ambiguity, he was able to feed
into the apologists and the appeasers around the world
and give them enough ammunition to say
we don't know for sure whether--
who shot down MH17.
We don't know for sure who killed
Alexander Litvinenko, even though everybody
knew for sure.
But in doing so, it allowed business to carry on.
narrator: And Bill Browder has had a personal reminder
from Vladimir Putin himself that the Russian ruler
never forgives or forgets.
- In early July 2018,
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met
in the first organized summit in Helsinki.
And it was just after the Robert Mueller investigation
had indicted 12 Russian GRU officers
for interfering in the U.S. elections,
and at the press conference, one of the journalists
raised his hand and asked Putin--
- And will you consider extraditing
the 12 Russian officials that were indicted
last week by a U.S. grand jury?
- And Putin said yes.
- [speaking Russian] - Then we would expect
that the Americans would reciprocate Mr. Browder
in this particular case.
Business associates of Mr. Browder
have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia.
They never paid any taxes neither in Russia
nor in the United States.
- And then the question was asked
of Trump, what do you think?
- I think that's an incredible offer, okay?
- Thank you.
- Now, it's one thing for Putin to go after me.
He has been publicly naming me.
He's been chasing me with death threats,
kidnapping threats, arrest warrants.
And I'd grown used to that.
But to have the president of the United States,
the most powerful man in the free world,
ready to hand me over to Putin
to effectively be killed, that was a shock.
narrator: German Gorbuntsov, who survived
being gunned down, is another victim of the regime
still looking over his shoulder.
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: But Evgeny Chichvarkin
is decidedly not afraid.
In fact, he has spoken out in support
of Russia's jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
- What's happened to him few times
is absolutely unacceptable.
It's a crime.
I think he have to be on election list,
and Putin have to be in the prison.
- Alexei Navalny is a friend.
And when he got poisoned, you know,
everyone was in shock.
But, you know, when someone you've--
I don't know-- went for dinner with
is there unconscious, in coma, his wife absolutely distraught.
narrator: Tatiana knows the couple's support for Navalny
comes at a steep personal cost.
- I kept going back to Russia
up until autumn 2021.
People kept telling me, you're crazy.
This is crazy. Stop doing this.
And Evgeny was really worried.
And I used to take our daughter with me
because for me, it was very important for her
to see St. Petersburg to know what our heritage is.
These are normal things.
I should be able to do this with my daughter.
Going to Russia now would be suicide for me
because I will-- the plane will land,
and then they will just show me all the various things
I've said and say,
"According to the new law of Russian Federation,
"blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
you are going to prison for 20 years."
narrator: Another brave voice, but this one still based
in Russia, is Ksenia Sobchak,
daughter of Putin's political mentor,
who today is carefully critical of the regime.
- Maybe I'm not in prison because, you know,
everyone knows that he had some links with my father.
I'm just trying to be not too much aggressive
because, of course, I'm afraid.
I have a son.
I don't want to go to prison.
narrator: Putin's war on Ukraine
has triggered punishing American and British sanctions
against his inner circle,
forcing some oligarchs to return home
or relocate to countries ready to welcome them--
or at least their money.
- Yeah, okay, so we've just driven past, actually,
two houses that belonged to Abramovich's ex-wife,
and just by chance, I once went to look at them to rent them.
And actually, where we lived in Chelsea,
he and his third wife Dasha had bought another
massive property on the river.
And now we are approaching.
But I suppose this one was, like,
his gem in the crown in Kensington Palace Gardens,
which will be very near Kensington Palace.
I think it's worth 200 million.
But I suppose for the last few years,
he has not been able to spend any time here anyway
because he couldn't get a visa.
And now it's been sanctioned,
and he can't--cleaners can't even go in.
It can't be maintained.
It must be just standing completely empty.
♪ ♪
narrator: The sanctions have made
for a tricky moment of reckoning
for Russia's business and oligarch elite.
They must ask if their loyalty to Putin
is worth losing part or all of their fortunes.
And the stakes could not be higher.
Reports say that since January 2022,
as many as six prominent Russian businessmen
mysteriously decided to commit suicide,
even killing their families first.
- It looks to me like
since the sanctions were imposed on Russia,
the pie has shrunk.
And so now you have a bunch of people fighting over
a smaller amount of money.
And whenever there is limited resources
and very powerful people,
people start getting killed.
- [speaking Russian]
narrator: Tatiana believes what motivates Putin
is his almost mystical attachment to the notion
of eternal mother Russia.
- In Russia, there are so few things
that are left to be proud of, to be honest,
for everyday Russians.
And the sheer size of the country is one of them.
We live in the biggest country in the world.
The sheer size really, really matters,
and for Putin as well.
And I think at one point, he got himself convinced
that it is his mission.
He wants to go down in history as Vladimir,
the person who brought the Russian soils,
territories all together.
This is what he wants kids to learn
at school when he's gone.
- He has a mission. This is clear.
He is not about buying a golden palace.
He's about a mission of another world order.
narrator: For Alexandra, the Russia Putin craves
is a dark reminder of the world witnessed
by her ancestor, Leo Tolstoy.
- So I love this quote by Tolstoy,
but it's haunting, really.
Navalny quoted it recently I think from prison.
He wrote, "The villains who robbed the people
"gathered together, recruited soldiers and judges
to guard their orgy, and are feasting."
- People are very quick to judge the Russians
who still live in Russia and are not doing anything now.
I don't think any of us sitting here warm and fed
have the moral right to say, "You need to speak up,"
because the minute they speak up,
they get put into Russian prison.
- In Putin's mentality,
that all people around him enemies,
all countries around Russia enemies.
And he's poor little guy in the circle
of many circles of enemies.
It's a big psychiatry problem.
- I think Putin is ill,
but not in the way that most people think Putin is ill.
Putin is mentally ill.
But he's been mentally ill as a psychopath since,
you know, childhood.
Putin's illness leads him to lack any empathy,
lack any--a conscience,
lack any normal human emotion when it comes
to the fate of other people.
And that will lead him to all sorts of terrible crimes.
- There are rumors that he is ill.
And if those rumors--
and I think they're likely to be true.
And if they are true, that is--
for me, that makes me really frightened
because a person who is really ill
doesn't really care about what happens next.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
When he got away with starting the conflict in the Ukraine,
that set a precedent.
And unfortunately, we're living the consequences.
[rumbling]
♪ ♪
Having the Ukraine that was really desperate
to be part of Europe, go its own way,
be more democratic, be more prosperous,
not depend on Russia--
he just could not let it happen.
The propaganda is still telling people in Russia
that Ukraine wants to be a part of Russia.
- He looks much, much more angry, I would say.
He looks really unpredictable now.
And he's been in power far too long.
He's gone--it's just completely gone to his head.
- Like a cancer, it's getting worse and worse.
Less and less freedom, more and more paranoia.
We are halfway to North Korea.
- I don't think that Putin is ever gonna back down
because he can't.
And I don't think the Ukrainians are gonna
allow Russia to take their territory
because how can they justify that
after the atrocities committed?
And so I imagine that this is going to be an ongoing war.
- Every day, I'm thinking about this.
It goes circles and circles.
I see no positive ending.
Families are ruined. People are killed.
There will be no forgiveness in any way.
It will be a point of hatred for years and years.
♪ ♪
- What we all feel is shame.
He is a tyrant.
But still, we are human.
And this is why we feel profound guilt
for something we did not commit
and we were not a part of.
♪ ♪
I want to still be proud to be Russian.
But at this moment in time, it's impossible.
When we wake up, and we look at the news on our phones,
we just want to see one news--
that he's not--no longer
at least the president of Russia.
♪ ♪