Dictator Putin’s True Relationship With His Family

“Love and friendship are quickly destroyed, but fear is long-lasting,” said former Soviet dictator Stalin.

These were the words of Stalin, the dictator of the former Soviet Union. Seventy years after his death, that maxim has been handed down to Russian President Vladimir Putin (69). Who is this dictator who has thrown the world into turmoil? Let us trace the source of Putin’s power, which led to the invasion of Ukraine, and the portrait of his unknown family.

 

Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the former Soviet Union in 1952. His father, Vladimir Spiridonovich, was a devoted Communist Party member, and his mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a factory worker. They lived in a shared apartment and life was tough. It was at the age of 16 that he had the encounter that would define the rest of his life.

Putin, who had a passion for spy movies, visited a branch of the KGB, the former Soviet Union’s secret police, and asked how he could get a job, and an official advised him, “If you can do these four things, you will be called. The staff advised him not to contact the KGB, to be loyal to the Communist Party, to major in law at university, and to achieve success in sports. Putin faithfully followed his teachings and accepted the invitation when he was a senior in college.

 

In 1975, Putin joined the KGB. It was in 1980, while undergoing rigorous training, that he met Lyudmila, 64, a flight attendant who would later become his wife.

They met through a friend at a theater in their hometown of Leningrad. They married three years later and had their first daughter, Mariya (37), in 1985 and a second daughter, Katerina (35), in 1986.

In 1985, Putin was stationed in Dresden, East Germany, as a KGB officer. He infiltrated the “Stasi,” an intelligence organization, and was engaged in political-related espionage activities. In 1990, Putin returned home and retired from the KGB and entered the world of politics.

“His mentor from college, Anatoly Sobchak (deceased), was mayor of St. Petersburg, and through his arrangement, Putin became deputy mayor. However, Sobchak lost the ’96 mayoral election, and Vladimir Yakovlev, 77, who had served as deputy mayor with Putin, became mayor. He invited Putin work for him, but Putin refused, thinking it would be a betrayal. His loyalty to his boss was appreciated, and he was approached by the presidential administration,” said Yoshinori Kitano, an analyst of international relations.

Putin was heavily favored by the late Boris Yeltsin, who was president at the time, and was appointed head of the FSB in 1998 and prime minister in 1999. He rose through the ranks at an unprecedented pace.

During his tenure as director of the FSB, he met Boris Berezovsky (deceased) of the oligarchs, a newly emerged conglomerate with the greatest political influence. He was looking for a puppet president to succeed the seriously ill Yeltsin in order to protect his assets. Putin was chosen because of his reputation for loyalty and lack of ambition.

After becoming president in 2000, Putin began to reveal his true nature. He strengthened his information control, emphasizing the use of “siloviki,” people from the military and intelligence organizations. He purged the oligarchs who had grown up during the previous administration, including his benefactor Berezovsky, as well as politicians who had close ties to them, and favored only those factions that had pledged loyalty to him. With the information possessed by the Siloviki and the capital of the oligarchs, Putin used fear as the source of his power and created a dictatorship.

The Mastermind Behind Putin’s Manipulation

Putin has been obsessed with power since 2012, when he began his third term. Behind the scenes, he was in contact with a historian with dangerous ideas. Professor Itsuro Nakamura of Tsukuba Gakuin University, who is an expert on Russian politics, explains.

 

Vladimir Medinsky, 51, is a presidential aide who says that Russia should create a “civilization of hell”. His ideas can be summarized as follows. (1) Russia does not need intelligence as long as it has power, (2) fear is what makes human beings grow, and (3) great power does not turn the earth into a paradise but into a hell. The third is the idea that Russia was once ruled by Mongols and other “barbaric” equestrian tribes, and that the brutality of these tribes and were combined to create the Russia of today. He believes that this brutality is what makes Russia what it is today. In fact, he became a close ally of Russia in 2013, and the following year Russia annexed Crimea. The recent invasion of Ukraine was also influenced by Medinsky’s ideas.

For Putin, his family had become a “distraction”. In 2013, he divorced his wife, Lyudmila. She moved to France and has not been seen since. His two daughters are also used as tools to hide his wealth.

 

“When they divorced, the daughters were given a huge amount of assets,” he said. The names of the assets were transferred to people around the daughters and their husbands. Putin is building a family-centered conglomerate. The Western countries decided that economic sanctions would not be effective unless they targeted them, so they decided to freeze the assets of the two daughters. However, many of their assets are deposited in banks in ‘offshore’ countries, which are not subject to sanctions, so the effect will be limited. (Journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka) 

Is no one going to be able to stop Putin from running amok?

From the May 20-27, 2022 issue of FRIDAY