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Russian forces, that turned mere separatists into ideologically driven terrorists. Without that understanding, Putin’s new war was bound to make matters even worse.
    He soon began to reveal the sharp tongue and earthy language that became his trademark. Asked about the ferocity of the Russian campaign, he replied, on 24 September: ‘We’ll pursue the terrorists wherever they are. If they’re in an airport we’ll get ’em there. If we catch ’em – excuse the expression – in the toilet ... we’ll wipe ’em out right there, in the outhouse. End of story.’
    Putin’s campaign quickly raised him out of obscurity. But he was not yet the country’s most popular politician. One of his predecessors as prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, had publicly denounced the corruption in Yeltsin’s entourage and declared his intention of running for president. Together with the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, he created a political bloc, Fatherland–All Russia, which looked set to do well in parliamentary elections in December, giving him a springboard for the presidential election scheduled for June.
    It was at this point that Boris Berezovsky stepped in to ensure the victory of the Family’s candidate, Putin. Berezovsky threw the entire weight of his ORT channel behind him, while mounting a sustained smear campaign against Primakov and Luzhkov. He hired a well-known presenter, Sergei Dorenko, who specialised in scandal, sensation and brazenly biased commentary. Berezovsky was delighted to let him take fire at Primakov, who as prime minister had had his companies raided and threatened to jail businessmen like him for economic crimes. Night after night, Russia’s main TV channel harped on about Primakov’s old age and infirmity and Luzhkov’s alleged corruption, while glorifying Putin’s heroics in Chechnya.
    Meanwhile the inner circle – Berezovsky, Yumashev and Tatiana Dyachenko – met secretly at the dacha of Alexander Voloshin, Yeltsin’s chief of staff, to create a political force to support Putin. In September, three months before the Duma election, a new party was born, called Yedinstvo (Unity). It had no roots, no philosophy, practically no policy other than its support for Putin, but it did have the unabashed endorsement of Berezovsky’s ORT and several of his newspapers. On 19 December it won almost twice as many votes as Fatherland–All Russia. The scene was now set for Yeltsin to resign on New Year’s Eve and hand over power to his prime minister and chosen successor.
    The day after the Duma election was ‘Chekists Day’. Continuing a Soviet-era tradition, most professions in Russia have one day in the calendar in their honour, and this was the day of homage to the country’s present and former secret police (originally known as the Cheka). In the morning Putin restored a plaque on the wall of the FSB headquarters, the Lubyanka, in memory of Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief when Putin joined up. The plaque had been removed in the de-Sovietising Yeltsin years. At a gala ball in the evening the prime minister made a speech to his former colleagues, and joked: ‘I want to report that a group of FSB operatives, sent to work undercover in the government, is successfully carrying out the first stage of its mission.’
    The second stage was about to begin. Ten days later, Yeltsin resigned and Putin assumed supreme power in Russia.

 
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COURTING THE WEST
    ‘I want Russia to be part of Europe’
    Russia’s relations with NATO had been frozen ever since the allied bombing of Yugoslavia in March 1999. ‘NATO’s representative in Moscow has been told to pack his bags,’ announced Russia’s foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. ‘There will be no contact with NATO, including its secretary general, until the aggression against Yugoslavia stops.’
    But at the beginning of 2000, shortly after Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia, the telephone rang in the secretary general’s office at NATO headquarters in