How Putin Came to Power

The Unknown Story

This piece went out to paid subscribers (thank you all!) a few days ago. But today is Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday, so I’m marking the occasion by making the story of one of the most important days in his life available to everyone (including him.)

Given the world’s understandable obsession with Putin, and the many myths that have grown up around him, it is worth relating the real story of how he came to power. The crucial moment was in August, 1999, when an ailing Boris Yeltsin promoted Putin, then head of the FSB intelligence service, to be Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. From this position, as expected, he ascended to the Presidency when Yeltsin resigned the following December. But why did Yeltsin pick him? The real story has never been told before.

It has been commonly reported that Putin’s selection followed a carefully considered discussion among Yeltsin’s inner circle. Valentin Yumashev, for example, a former journalist and close aide to Yeltsin, gave this seemingly authoritative account to the BBC in 2019:

"Yeltsin had several candidates [for Prime Minister] in mind, like Boris Nemtsov, Sergei Stepashin and Nikolai Aksenenko. Yeltsin and I talked a lot about possible successors. At one point we discussed Putin.

"Yeltsin asked me: 'What do you think about Putin?' I think he's a superb candidate, I replied. I think you should consider him. It's clear from the way he does his job that he's ready for more difficult tasks."

But that’s not what happened at all. The choice of Putin was an emergency last minute surprise.

Yeltsin had in fact settled on Nikolai Aksenenko, a veteran railroad executive recently promoted to be first deputy prime minister. He had gone so far as to send formal notification of the decision to the Speaker of the Parliament., Gennady Seleznev.

But then he got a phone call from his daughter and trusted adviser, Tatiana Borisovna Dyachenko. According to sources with unimpeachable knowledge of the conversation, which was less secure than the Kremlin might have believed, it went like this:

“You simply cannot make Aksenenko prime minister,” said Tatiana urgently.

“It’s too late,” said Yeltsin. “I’ve already told the Parliament that Aksenenko will be prime minister.”

“I don’t care” said Tatiana urgently. “We can’t have him. He’s under the control of Berezovsky,* and he won’t protect us when you’re gone,”s he explained.

“Well, OK,” said Yeltsin reluctantly. “But I have to pick someone.”

“What about Vladimir Putin?”

“Who?”

So much for the notion that the installation of Putin was a long-planed affair. There remained the problem of Yeltsin’s prior official notification of Aksenenko to the Duma, solved when a phone was brought to the befuddled president, who did as instructed, calling Seleznev and telling him the previous call had been a “mistake” and that Putin was his nominee.

Berezovsky, realizing that he had been outmanoeuvred and that his power was slipping, attempted to retrieve the situation by putting out the word that Putin had been his idea all along. But it did him little good.

The rest is history. Putin became prime minister, then acting president in December 1999, before being elected president in 2000.

Tatiana’s faith that a grateful Putin would protect her and the enormous family fortune proved fully justified. She and her money were left unmolested even while Putin set to work eliminating the power of the oligarchy, though she took the precaution of adopting Austrian citizenship in 2009. Berezovsky on the other hand fled the country to escape arrest, as eventually did Aksenenko, who died in Switzerland in 2005. Granted political asylum in Britain, Berezovsky spent large sums financing political opposition to Putin inside Russia. In 2012 he sued his former business associate, Roman Abramovich, who he claimed had defrauded him.

I can exclusively report that Abramovich wanted to settle by paying off Berezovsky with a few hundred million dollars, but Putin vetoed this., explaining “Berezovsky mustn’t get that money. He is financing all the opposition to me in Russia, You have to fight the case.” Abramovich accordingly fought the case and won. Berezovsky, bankrupted by legal bills, was found dead at his country house in Berkshire the following year, having apparently hung himself, though the coroner recorded an open verdict.

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