"Russia is a country that leads you to conspiracy"

You cannot understand the rise of Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine without going back to August 1999 when “Boris Yeltsin pulled that pimp out of the hat” and named him prime minister and, five months later, president. Anna Bosch, ex-TVE correspondent in Moscow (1998-2000), starts with this idea in her book The Year Putin Came (Waterfall), where she portrays a frustrated society, which associates the arrival of the long-awaited freedom with the shortages brought by the end of the USSR.

When Putin, a former secret agent, comes to power, a wave of attacks begins.

In September 1999 there is a series of attacks that the Kremlin attributes to Chechen terrorists but that most analysts question at least or directly support conspiracy theses that point to the secret services. Putin had the excuse to launch the second war in Chechnya, which from the first hours of his presidency he used as an image campaign.

Did Putin think he could do to Ukraine what he has done to Chechnya?

In Mariupol, Putin has done the same as with Grozny: razed it to rebuild it later. Putin’s first trip to Ukraine was to walk around the new blocks of buildings he is building in Mariupol. But Ukraine in 2022 is not Chechnya in 2000. The first surprise for Putin was that (Volodimir) Zelensky did not flee. Ukrainians began to value their president whom they saw as a mere actor. Putin not only did not get Zelensky out of the way, but also strengthened him and made him a true leader.

How does Putin manage to placate opposition to the war?

If you ask a Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian, Estonian or Lithuanian, that is, citizens of countries that have been under Russian orbit, they will tell you that it is because the Russians are complicit. Because they share Putin’s idea of ​​an imperial Russia.

Russia has just sentenced opposition member Vladimir Kará-Murzá to 25 years in prison. A message to the dissidence?

Kará-Murzá and his group of dissidents say the Russians have to rise up. That only they can end the condemnation of the vertical power that persecutes them, be it the Czar, the Soviet Union or Putin. What’s happening? The majority of Russians only receive disinformation from the Kremlin because the big mass media are mere speakers of power. And then there is a third part that is afraid and cowardly. It is also necessary to reflect here in Spain that being citizens of a country where the dictator died in bed, it is difficult to demand an act of courage from the Russians.

What emotions did living in Russia provoke in you?

Fear and the feeling of insecurity. Once inside, anything can happen to you. The consequences are not going to be following your western logic. For many years when you were detained you couldn’t leave the country. When the punishment is not to go out, the system already tells you everything.

And then there is what you call the “corruption trap”.

Russia has a legal system that the state knows you can’t function with. The rules themselves force you to transgress them in your day to day and the State turns a blind eye until it has something against you. There are no corrupt characters, the system itself is corrupt. Everything goes with small infractions and bribes.

You assure that you witnessed the contempt of power for people’s lives.

Life in Russia is worth nothing, it is worth to the extent that you have power. (Alexéi) Navalni one of these days is going to die in jail. They say that he is poisoned. As a correspondent in London, he had to live the death of dissidents who died strangely poisoned by radioactivity. They are mere cannon fodder. The concept of citizen does not exist. Russians grow up with the certainty that to confront power is to bang your head against a wall.

Is there a regime of suspicion?

It is a country where you easily fall for conspiracy theories. The official version they give you doesn’t add up. It leads you to paranoia and conspiracy. Now, for example, I have been told that friends of mine are police informants. Who do I trust? I have friends who are paranoid about their relationships. When we talk on the phone they speak to me in code. They reproduce fear and paranoia, like in the worst times of the USSR, pre-Gorbachev, when anyone could rat you out or invent a reason to do so.