The treacherous path He was a KGB agent at the height of the Cold War, the CEO of Russia’s biggest ever company, and a confidante of Vladimir Putin. On the eve of Russia’s general election, Vladimir Yakunin shines a spotlight on the inner workings of Russian power and the shadowy history of a nation misunderstood. Words: Joseph Bullmore Photography: Jonathan Mortimer Vladimir Yakunin is photographed at Mark’s Club, Mayfair, as his two advisors (with two phones apiece) wait in the wings. GENTLEMAN’S JOURNAL FEATURES 71 minorities; the state of the Russian econ- omy; the mysterious deaths of opponents in the West such as Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko; the creeping influ- “In the dark ence of jettisoned oligarchs in Fleet Street, Mayfair and Westminster. All these, Yakunin believes, could be illuminated, even fleeting- ly, by a clearer discourse and his own candid reflections. The businessman has even set up years in which a think tank in Berlin called the Dialogue of Civilizations that hopes to bridge the chasm between Western and Russian beliefs. But, within just a few pages of the memoir and a few minutes of our meeting, I detect another their country reason for this sudden openness — a kind of personal therapy. “For many years I carried a double or may- be triple burden, because I had to fulfil many was demolished... jobs at the same time,” says Yakunin, describ- The two Vladimirs: Yakunin and Putin meet at Moscow's Rizhsky rail terminal ing his life in New York as an intelligence agent with the KGB. “I had my obligations, which also consumed a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of constant pressure. You were almost everybody always looking behind your back — not only figuratively speaking, but literally speaking.” have been told that when I am nervous height of their far-reaching power. In fact, hen I ask him to describe the day-to- or tense, my lips begin to twitch,” says Yakunin is the first from Putin’s inner circle W day life of a Cold War intelligence in Russia had I Vladimir Yakunin. “I have started to to break rank in this way. There is very little agent Vladimir tells me that this is a confi- make some effort to eliminate these move- to gain and everything to lose. Why, I ask, him, dence he cannot breach. “This is not my sto- ments. In my life, it is not useful to show your has he decided to commit this world to paper? ry to tell. Everything which I was doing as weakness in this way.” This is a peculiarly “There is so much misunderstanding an intelligence officer belongs to the state. Russian kind of understatement. Vladimir between Russia and the West,” Yakunin tells It does not belong to me.” The book main- done something Yakunin has lived several lives, often at the me. “Perhaps if I could tell my own personal tains that general rule, but is peppered with same time: as a KGB intelligence officer at the observations from an autobiographical point incredible details of the more mundane height of the Cold War; a Soviet diplomat on of view I might clarify some of this misinfor- — and human — aspects of the job. “When a covert mission to the USA; a contemporary mation.” Again, a levelled understatement. one arrives as a secret-services agent in the and advisor to President Vladimir Putin; the On the eve of the Second World War, Winston country, one quickly enters into an unspoken that one could CEO of Russia’s biggest company. And each Churchill described Russia as “a riddle, arrangement with the other side — a prick- life has required him to suppress weakness ly kind of modus vivendi,” he writes, before at every twist and turn. But half an hour lat- going on to describe how some agents and er, as our photographer leans in for a portrait counteragents saw so much of each other at Mark’s Club in Mayfair, Yakunin’s bottom “We had been stuffed that a respect bordering on friendship often judge as immoral” lip begins almost imperceptibly to ripple and materialised between them. “If you noticed a full of ideology, like geese fidget. “I find it an odd thing having my photo couple of men on the other side on your tail, taken,” he says. “Forgive me.” being fattened for you did not make any effort to lose them. We This is the remarkable candour of the foie gras, and for a long behaved in such a way that we never unnec- man who has broken rank with the estab- time I swallowed it whole” essarily humiliated them.” Sometimes, agents lished omertà of the Putin regime to tell his would throw birthday cards into the windows story in an astonishing new memoir. It’s a of counteragents that they had been stalking, story that has been pegged neatly to the for- or Russian servicemen would be approached tunes of modern Russia over the past half- wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. in a restaurant and told that they could relax century — the childhood in Leningrad (now Today, as Vladimir Putin seeks a fifth term for an hour as the CIA man was off to lunch St Petersburg); the technical, pragmatic edu- as president in this month’s general election, with his wife. “Listen, of course this is not bal- cation at the city’s Mechanical Institute; the the country is better described as a confusion, let. This is risky business,” says Yakunin. “But years of compulsory service in the Soviet trapped behind a firewall, cloaked in a con- you have to remember that the other man, he Army; the recruitment by the KGB and the spiracy theory. is not just an officer. He is a human being also.” induction into the inner circles of Russia’s Putin’s administration is pockmarked by But something hardened inside Yakunin in high command; the wealth, power and access supposed connivance, and question marks those years of duplicity and subterfuge. “We after national service; the second act and sec- hang over almost every aspect of the modern had been stuffed full of ideology, like geese ond life in the West. It is deeply unusual for regime: the Kremlin’s alleged interference being fattened for foie gras, and for a long time those who have walked the corridors of the in Western elections; Russia’s manipulation I swallowed it whole,” he says. By his early for- Kremlin to open up in this manner, much less of social media; the dramatic annexation ties, the acute stress and pressure meant he had when their contemporaries remain at the very of Crimea; the controversial treatment of the health of a man in his sixties. The book is › GENTLEMAN’S JOURNAL FEATURES 73 punctuated with unexpected, almost throw- selves. He does not.” The admission seems at Why are people so fiercely attached to these away asides, which reveal this heart of dark- odds with Putin’s steely, unflinching persona theories, then, if there’s nothing in them? ness in the Russian character at large. “In the in both Russian and Western propaganda. “I “Maybe this is due to the fact that people have dark years in which their country was demol- hope if he reads it he will not be disturbed or a desire to simplify the system they cannot ished... almost everybody in Russia had done angry,” Yakunin says. “I suppose he is follow- understand. This is the setback of modern something that one could judge as immoral”. ing the formula that a man should live like political reporting and processes.” This is the main lesson of the memoir: that every day is his last, yet also like he has an Yakunin does admit, however, that this you cannot understand the Russian charac- eternity left.” kind of inner-circle chumocracy was preva- ter unless you understand the institutions More surprising still is Yakunin’s estima- lent in the years preceding Putin’s reign. He and landscapes that shaped it. The KGB, he tion that Putin never had any real ambitions describes the 1990s as a time of opportun- believes, is fundamental to comprehending towards high office, and is not, in essence, a ism, banditry and pillaging; of “black-clad the generation that grew up in the final days career politician. As Boris Yeltsin began to men wielding Kalashnikovs guarding the of the USSR. Yakunin’s accounts reveal an flounder and stall, the cabal around the age- entrances” to Moscow’s finest restaurants; of agency that rewarded blind adherence to the ing president looked for a new host for their warring between private militias. “Between nation and unquestioning belief in the col- ambitions. They approached Putin, Yakunin 1996 and 2000, the group of oligarchs known lective. “It was made clear to us that we were tells me, as much for his obscurity as for his as the Semibankirschina (the seven bankers) never supposed to ask what kind of salary we intelligence and KGB training. “I am positive possessed a significant proportion of Russian might receive,” he says. (Later, we learn that that for him to accept this proposal, it was a finances,” he writes, and that “46 per cent of he made less than “a garbage collector at the very difficult decision,” Yakunin says. “He the nation’s economy was concentrated in the New York Department of Sanitation” when he knew that it would be his last days to be a reg- hands of just eight families”, each of whom was working in America; his sons slept on old ular human being, in terms of free expression had come to prominence thanks to their close gun boxes instead of beds.) Indeed, Yakunin’s ties to Yeltsin.