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to controlling the other three. The lesson stemmed from the public outcry over the botched rescue of the crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank after an explosion during a training exercise in the Barents Sea in August 2000. Instead of taking names in the military or cleaning out our Augean bureaucracy, Putin went after the free press.
    Media outlets were taken over by forces friendly to Putin and his closest associates. The owner of NTV, Vladimir Gusinsky, spent three days in jail in June 2000 and was forced to give up his company. In fact, in what would become a typical “negotiating method” of the day, he was forced to sign over his company before being allowed to leave jail. He fled to Israel while his channel was appropriated and absorbed into the Kremlin’s portfolio in April 2001, and today, ironically, NTV is probably the dirtiest of the official propaganda stations against some very tough competition in that field. This “soft censorship” was accompanied by the more conventional kind, with its lists of non grata names and verboten topics. Media power was centralized in the same fashion as political power, and with the same purpose: looting the country without causing a popular revolt.
    The corruption of the Yeltsin era is burned into Russia’s collective memory only because we learned about it in the press at the time. In the 1990s, the competing oligarchs waged war against one another in their media outlets. It was not a fight fought fairly or decently, but a preponderance of facts came to light and thousands of honest journalists worked to bring the truth to the Russian public. Under Putin, the only light came from the endless stream of glowing articles about him and his administration.
    In the typical pattern, the Western response to these bold steps toward despotism was limited to press releases expressing concern while business went on as usual. Putin was welcomed as a full member of the G7, which is supposed to represent great industrial democracies. For those who excuse the invitation due to Russia’s size and influence, note that China is not a member. Russia’s inclusion was a reward for democratic reforms and it should have been rescinded as soon as Putin rolled back those reforms. It says a great deal that Russia’s membership was not revoked until Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in March 2014.
    Putin’s strong opportunistic instincts led him to make perhaps the most important phone call of his life on September 11, 2001. He was the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush and offer full support after the terror attacks. By so doing he earned the sympathetic Bush’s trust and the benefit of the doubt for seven long years. (This must have changed when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, but that itself was a reflection of how much Putin had grown in ambition and confidence during Bush’s term.) Putin succeeded in portraying Russia as a US ally—in Afghanistan in particular—while actively working against US and European interests elsewhere.
    Bush 43’s ability to stand up to Putin’s many transgressions was further constrained by a chance comment several months earlier when the two men first met, in Slovenia on June 16, 2001. It was after that meeting that Bush uttered this famous evaluation: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” After that comment, Bush couldn’t take Putin to task without admitting a serious misjudgment of his character; and admitting mistakes was never Bush’s strongest suit. To be fair, Bush and the United States had a new set of top priorities after 9/11. But it is still a little surprising in hindsight that an administration with experienced Cold Warriors like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Soviet/Russia expert Condoleezza Rice completely failed to put any pressure on Putin.
    As the saying goes, however, as bad as things get