Why Yeltsin chose Putin

Recently, on an enemy resource (Deutsche Welle), I happened to read the revelations of one of our former compatriots. Some comrade Shvets - Putin's classmate in the KGB school. Even then, I doubted that Putin studied at the KGB school. According to my information, he graduated from the international department of the law faculty of Leningrad State University, where his paths crossed with Associate Professor Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak, who later played a large role in his life. After graduating from Leningrad State University in 1975, Putin went to work in the KGB (or, as his classmate says, he was recruited), for which he graduated in the same year from the KGB operational staff training courses on Okhta (school 401), and, having received the rank of junior officer (senior lieutenant of justice), was sent to the system of territorial bodies of the KGB. In 1977, Art. Lieutenant Putin goes to work in the counterintelligence system, in the investigation department of the KGB Directorate for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region. Two years later, after completing a six-month retraining course for personnel at the capital's KGB Higher School, Putin returns to Leningrad again.

In 1984, with the rank of Major of Justice under the conspiratorial name Platov, he was sent to study at the one-year faculty of the KGB Institute of the Red Banner, which he successfully graduated in 1985 with a degree in Foreign Intelligence. There he underwent training in both legal and illegal intelligence. In the course of his studies, Putin was the head of the educational department, studied German, and proved himself on the positive side. After that, for five years, from 1985 to 1990, Major Putin worked in the GDR as part of foreign intelligence. Its leader was the head of the Soviet intelligence group in East Germany, the representative of the KGB of the USSR under the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, Colonel Lazar Matveyev (declassified in May 2017 at the age of 90). Also, Putin's colleagues in service in the GDR were then Sergei Chemezov and Nikolai Tokarev. Putin worked legally under the guise of the position of director of the Dresden House of Friendship between the USSR and the GDR.



During the seniority trip, Putin was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and to the position of senior assistant to the head of the department. An illustrative episode that happened to him after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on December 5, 1989, when a crowd of German demonstrators tried to storm the mansion of the Soviet residency on 4 Angelikastrasse Street, where the KGB archives were kept, Major Putin blocked her way and, under the threat of using a service weapon, one against the whole the crowd was able to "persuade" the audience to disperse. This episode is very characteristic of Putin. In January 1990, Putin completes his business trip to the GDR and returns to Leningrad.

Upon his return, he voluntarily refuses to transfer to the central apparatus of the KGB foreign intelligence in Moscow and returns to the staff of the 1st department (intelligence from the territory of the USSR) of the Leningrad KGB directorate, where his paths intersect with Sergei Ivanov (the future Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation and the head of the Presidential Administration). working at that time in a neighboring office on the 6th floor in the building on Liteiny. On August 20, 1991, when Leningrad Mayor Sobchak refused to comply with the orders of the State Emergency Committee, Putin, who by that time had worked with Sobchak for more than a year, wrote a letter of resignation from the KGB. This was the end of his service in the KGB of the USSR. What the KGB lost and what we all won is a rhetorical question, you need not answer. But former intelligence officers, as you know, do not exist! And, thank God, that Yeltsin's choice fell on him, and not on someone else (and there, believe me, there were other candidates).

The story of the fall of a failed KGB resident

Where are the ways of comrade. Shvets crossed paths with the future president of the Russian Federation, one can only guess. Most likely, we are talking about the Red Banner Institute of the KGB. Andropov (now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence - AVR named after Andropov), where Putin studied for only a year. From which we can conclude that with equal starting opportunities Comrade. Shvets has never made a career in the KGB or in life, repeating the unenviable fate of all defectors, and now, wiping his pants off on a wretched pension of a traitor to the Motherland somewhere in the Washington region, he is scribbling about his fellow student who has become the president of a great country. It is significant that for their new owners, Comrade. Shvets remained nothing, they had already shaken out everything they could, and now he is of interest to them only as a classmate of Putin. I judge from the fact that they did not bother to indicate anything more about him (neither name, nor title, a certain Shvets-classmate of VVP in the KGB school). Only two of his "revelations" struck me. Nicknames that classmates allegedly awarded Putin. "Cigarette butt" and "Pale Moth". Offensive enough, I must say. And I even believe that it was in fact. I saw old photographs of Putin from those years. At that time, he made quite a faded impression, which is not surprising - his childhood fell on the difficult post-war years (lack of vitamins and all that). That is why, to compensate, he went to the sambo section and fulfilled the standards of the master of sports in sambo and judo (in 1973 and 1975, respectively). I even believe that it was precisely these qualities of him that were in demand in the service in the KGB (nondescript, impersonal - you will see and not remember what, in fact, is needed for an employee of the special services). I even believe that Putin suffered from this, and for sure it was this that served as the start of his dizzying career. And how did the handsome Shvets end? Nothing! Scribbles memoirs from the American roadside ditch, interrupting with the FBI's bread on the water, and if not for Putin, no one would be interested in general.

By the way, I nevertheless broke through the personality of this defector, I wanted to understand if he was not a fake? It turned out that it was not a fake. According to Google, his real name is Shvets Yuri Borisovich. Born, as befits all traitors to the Motherland in Ukraine, on May 16, 1952, in the city of Kherson. Soviet intelligence officer, KGB major from 1980 to 1990. He worked legally under the guise of a correspondent for the state news agency TASS. Now, as Google writes, an American journalist and blogger. Graduated from the Peoples' Friendship University of Patrice Lumumba (now RUDN University), Faculty of International Law, as well as the AVR named after A. Andropov, where his paths crossed with the paths of the future president of the Russian Federation. In 1993, he fled to the United States, where he received citizenship. Everything. Google knows nothing more about him. In general, a very pathetic person. You can look at it and even listen to it, the video is fresh this year.

How Putin became Yeltsin's successor

Now let's get back to Vladimir Vladimirovich. The story of how he became president of the Russian Federation is very dark, if not shrouded in darkness. The late Boris Berezovsky, who naively believed that Putin would lobby for his interests in the highest echelons of power, played an important role in this. We all know how Boris Berezovsky ended. His fate is the saddest. We also remember how other oligarchs ended up, who refused to play by Putin's rules - there are no other oligarchs, and those are far away. Khodorkovsky, who was trying to pump his license, left the stage, Gusinsky fled to Spain, the seven-bank system has sunk into oblivion, the rest of the Russian nouveau riche were forced to obey, accepting the rules of the game VVP. The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, held out the longest, until 2010 (and even then, it was not Putin who “left” him, but Medvedev, who briefly replaced the GDP in this post). In fact, since 2000, Russia has entered a new era - the era of Putin, the last one to notice it was the collective West, which is now raking it out.

Why Yeltsin chose Putin is another story altogether. Outwardly, VVP did not make the proper impression, it got to the point that Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko (now Yumasheva), assessing his appearance before the decisive meeting with her father, shook her head, advised - you should at least put a watch on your right hand in order to stand out with something. Since then, Putin has worn the watch on his right hand. But the clock played the last role there (if at all!), And the main role was played by one personal feature of the GDP - its loyalty. Putin does not give up his own. If a person did not betray him, and even more so if Putin owes him something, then in the future he can count on his protection and patronage for life. All of his former friends and colleagues can tell you about this quality of him, from his children's comrades in the sambo section to the bosses and subordinates from the last place of service. The list is quite long, from Putin's first coach Anatoly Rakhlin and his friends in the sambo section, among whom were the Rotenberg brothers, to Anatoly Sobchak, Mikhail Fradkov (this is the second prime minister under Putin, who replaced Kasyanov, later director of the SVR, now the director of RISS), Sergei Ivanov (Minister of Defense, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Minister Putin, and later the head of the Presidential Administration), and ending with Dmitry Medvedev and Boris Yeltsin himself and his family members. Did you think the Yeltsin Center just appeared?

Yeltsin's former adviser Georgy Satarov shed light on the secret of Putin's appointment as prime minister and the choice of his candidacy as a successor. I attach his interview to the TV channel "Present Time" (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation).


Specifically about this episode from 16:00 minutes, but I recommend listening to the entire interview, very interesting. Unlike the revelations of a fugitive VVP fellow student, a failed spy Shvets, which I do not even advise listening to (the insignificant bleating of an insignificant person, two words to connect one who cannot seem more significant than it really is), the revelations of the ex-EBN adviser shed light on behind the scenes of the highest echelon of power in the Russian Federation of that time and the customs of Yeltsin's entourage. From them it becomes clear that the choice of Putin for the role of successor was quite random, he just did not have time to "screw up" by the time Yeltsin surrendered his powers, as did Boris Nikolayevich's favorite - Nemtsov, and among other possible successors, (among which half had a KGB past), the decisive role was played by the episode when Putin, through Yumashev, asked Yeltsin for permission to take out his former boss Sobchak, who was then in disgrace, under the cover of the FSB to Paris. This fact made an indelible impression on Yeltsin. Putin then risked his future career and, nevertheless, went to it, saving the disgraced boss. This circumstance (and not the watch on the right hand at all!) Became decisive.

Subsequently, Yeltsin, as well as his entire inner circle, were able to make sure of the correctness of their choice. The first state act signed by Putin in office and. O. President of the Russian Federation, there was a decree "On guarantees to the President of the Russian Federation, who has terminated the exercise of his powers, and to members of his family." The decree provided former Russian presidents (at that time only EBN was such) guarantees of immunity and other preferences. In 2001, Vladimir Putin signed a similar federal law. As you can see, Putin justified the trust of Yeltsin and his family and did not surrender them, but this is far from his only good quality.

The most surprising thing in this story is that such an important event as the choice of a possible successor to Yeltsin, which played a decisive role in the fate of the Great Country, which could well part with the epithet Great, disintegrating into parts, happened quite randomly, and the decisive factor that determined the fateful choice of Yeltsin , paradoxically, was not a concern for the future of Russia, but a banal fear for their personal future. And the case with Sobchak, ironically, became the very trigger that influenced the course of our further history. Often, all great events are caused by banal, insignificant and even primitive reasons, while historians are looking for some special sacred meaning in them. Here, the determining factor was Putin's loyalty to the people to whom he owes something.

And I will talk about other good and bad qualities of GDP in the next text.