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Stunning article about Putin and Skripal
Excellent in-depth reporting, which also serves as a snapshot of Soviet/post-Soviet history.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/world/europe/sergei-skripal-russian-spy-poisoning.html?
some excerpts below, but really worth reading in full.
This is how British officials now describe Mr. Skripal, a Russian intelligence officer they recruited as a spy in the mid-1990s. When the Russians caught Mr. Skripal, they saw him that way, too, granting him a reduced sentence. So did the Americans: The intelligence chief who orchestrated his release to the West in 2010 had never heard of him when he was included in a spy swap with Moscow.
But Mr. Skripal was significant in the eyes of one man — Vladimir V. Putin, an intelligence officer of the same age and training. The two men had dedicated their lives to an intelligence war between the Soviet Union and the West. When that war was suspended, both struggled to adapt. One rose, and one fell. While Mr. Skripal was trying to reinvent himself, Mr. Putin and his allies, former intelligence officers, were gathering together the strands of the old Soviet system. Gaining power, Mr. Putin began settling scores, reserving special hatred for those who had betrayed the intelligence tribe when it was most vulnerable.
. . .
It is unclear if Mr. Putin played a role in the poisoning of Mr. Skripal, who survived and has gone into hiding. But dozens of interviews conducted in Britain, Russia, Spain, Estonia, the United States and the Czech Republic, as well as a review of Russian court documents, show how their lives intersected at key moments. In 2010, when Mr. Skripal and three other convicted spies were released to the West, Mr. Putin had been watching from the sidelines with mounting fury. Asked to comment on the freed spies, Mr. Putin publicly daydreamed about their death. It hardly mattered that Mr. Skripal was a little fish.
. . .
In the late 1990s, Sergei Skripal returned from Madrid, where he was posted undercover in the office of the Russian military attaché. Russia was in disarray. Coal miners, soldiers and doctors had not been paid in months. . . Oleg B. Ivanov, who worked with him in the Moscow regional governor’s office, recalled him as a man struggling to keep up with changes in the country, more “Death of a Salesman” than John le Carré. He lived in a shabby housing block in a field of identical housing blocks, drove a rattletrap Niva and told endless stories about his days as a paratrooper.
. . . .
Vladimir V. Putin, another midcareer intelligence officer, was living through the same loss of status. In 1990, he was sent home early from his post at K.G.B. headquarters in Dresden. His salary had not been paid in three months and he had nowhere to live — so many spies were returning that the government could not house them. He arrived home with nothing to show for his years abroad but some hard currency and a 20-year-old washing machine, a goodbye gift from a neighbor in East Germany. The unraveling had felt personal for Mr. Putin, who was unable to protect all his German contacts from exposure. One day Mr. Putin pleaded with the Soviet military command to defend the K.G.B. headquarters, which was surrounded by German protesters eager to seize files. In a panic, they were stuffing them into a furnace. . .
But Mr. Skripal was significant in the eyes of one man — Vladimir V. Putin, an intelligence officer of the same age and training. The two men had dedicated their lives to an intelligence war between the Soviet Union and the West. When that war was suspended, both struggled to adapt. One rose, and one fell. While Mr. Skripal was trying to reinvent himself, Mr. Putin and his allies, former intelligence officers, were gathering together the strands of the old Soviet system. Gaining power, Mr. Putin began settling scores, reserving special hatred for those who had betrayed the intelligence tribe when it was most vulnerable.
. . .
It is unclear if Mr. Putin played a role in the poisoning of Mr. Skripal, who survived and has gone into hiding. But dozens of interviews conducted in Britain, Russia, Spain, Estonia, the United States and the Czech Republic, as well as a review of Russian court documents, show how their lives intersected at key moments. In 2010, when Mr. Skripal and three other convicted spies were released to the West, Mr. Putin had been watching from the sidelines with mounting fury. Asked to comment on the freed spies, Mr. Putin publicly daydreamed about their death. It hardly mattered that Mr. Skripal was a little fish.
. . .
In the late 1990s, Sergei Skripal returned from Madrid, where he was posted undercover in the office of the Russian military attaché. Russia was in disarray. Coal miners, soldiers and doctors had not been paid in months. . . Oleg B. Ivanov, who worked with him in the Moscow regional governor’s office, recalled him as a man struggling to keep up with changes in the country, more “Death of a Salesman” than John le Carré. He lived in a shabby housing block in a field of identical housing blocks, drove a rattletrap Niva and told endless stories about his days as a paratrooper.
. . . .
Vladimir V. Putin, another midcareer intelligence officer, was living through the same loss of status. In 1990, he was sent home early from his post at K.G.B. headquarters in Dresden. His salary had not been paid in three months and he had nowhere to live — so many spies were returning that the government could not house them. He arrived home with nothing to show for his years abroad but some hard currency and a 20-year-old washing machine, a goodbye gift from a neighbor in East Germany. The unraveling had felt personal for Mr. Putin, who was unable to protect all his German contacts from exposure. One day Mr. Putin pleaded with the Soviet military command to defend the K.G.B. headquarters, which was surrounded by German protesters eager to seize files. In a panic, they were stuffing them into a furnace. . .
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