What Putin is like in person, according to the former Ambassador to Russia

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Very few Americans have sat down one-on-one across a table from Vladimir Putin. Even fewer have negotiated with the Kremlin on behalf of, first, a Republican president and then, in short order, his Democratic successor. Our next guest has.

John Sullivan served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2019 to 2022, appointed by then-President Trump, asked to stay on in the job by President Biden. He writes about it in "Midnight In Moscow: A Memoir From The Front Lines Of Russia's War Against The West." When I spoke with Ambassador Sullivan, I asked, does Putin's image of a ruthless but effective ex-KGB thug - does that square with reality?

JOHN SULLIVAN: Yes, but he doesn't give that appearance in person. He wants to strike a pose of such strength and confidence that he doesn't have to bluster. As I write in the book, he talks in a soft voice, but he makes it clear that he's in charge. He shows up late. He talks about what he wants to talk about.

KELLY: He kept you waiting, right?

SULLIVAN: Yeah. He keeps everybody waiting, even the pope, so I'm in good...

KELLY: (Laughter) You're in good company.

SULLIVAN: ...Company. Yes. But he - you know, and he's got this famous swagger that he walks with his right hand close to his hip, and it doesn't move while his left arm swings. And the story that is told in Russia and that I'm sure he likes is that it's his KGB training to have his hand close to his sidearm on his hip. He gives the impression of being a gangster, but a classy gangster. It's sort of a Michael Corleone, speaking in soft tones in the shadows, doesn't have to move fast for anybody. He's in charge.

KELLY: You say that the key to understanding him is realizing how very proud he is to call himself a Chekist. Can you briefly explain what that means?

SULLIVAN: So the Cheka was the secret police founded at the start of the Russian Revolution by Lenin. And the founder himself, Felix Dzerzhinsky, became the notorious enforcers of Lenin and the revolution as the secret police. They traced their lineage back to Ivan the Terrible's day, when the Oprichnik were Ivan the Terrible's bodyguards, and they rode big, black horses and wore black leather coats.

And the Cheka and Chekists to this day are identified with wearing black leather coats like the KGB did. So the Cheka lasted for, I believe, four years, five years. It had multiple successors thereafter - NKVD, KGB, and then the KGB is split into the FSB and SVR. Putin is raised in that culture. He is of the KGB. He identifies as a Chekist. And he famously says, there is no such thing as a former KGB man. Once you're in, you're in.

KELLY: It's a lifer. You're a lifer.

SULLIVAN: It's a lifer.

KELLY: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: And that's definitely his view.

KELLY: Tell the story - I'm thinking you had to deal with all kinds of challenges from, you know, tensions between the Kremlin and the White House down to just ordinary life in Russia. Tell the story of trying to buy an iPad in Moscow...

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

KELLY: ...And what you took from it.

SULLIVAN: So I had an old iPad that I brought with me from the United States when I arrived as ambassador, and it was my link to back home. I did Zoom calls with my family from the iPad. But it was old, and it conked out, and I needed a new iPad. And I spoke to the security folks at the embassy, and it was going to take months for me - this is during the pandemic - to get an iPad shipped to me in Moscow. So my alternative was to go to an electronic store in Moscow and buy an Apple iPad.

Now, everyone knew - I knew - that as soon as I bought that iPad, that it would be penetrated by the security services, so I could never, for example, ever bring it to the embassy. I would only use it the way I had used my old iPad. So I went to the electronic store on a Saturday morning unannounced, and my bodyguards came in and translated for me. And there were big stacks of exactly the type of iPad I wanted. And I walked over to a stack. I pointed at the stack, and I pointed at the iPad that I wanted. Because I had body guards and I needed translation and my face as the ambassador...

KELLY: They saw you coming, is what you're telling us. Yeah.

SULLIVAN: They saw me coming. But they had to do a little bit of a scramble 'cause they didn't want to just give me the iPad. So the clerk said, we'll take it, and you can pick it up tomorrow. And there were other people who were coming into the store, taking iPads from the same stack, going to the checkout line, paying for them and walking out. I said, no, thanks. I'll just take this right now. I'll pay for it, and I'll be on my way. They said, sorry, this isn't ready for you.

KELLY: (Laughter).

SULLIVAN: And I immediately knew - it didn't take a sleuth to figure out what was going on - that they needed to make certain arrangements for my iPad. They said, you'll wait very little time. So rather than fight, I just realized what was going on, and I said, OK. And I went back to the embassy and told our security folks, and everyone just sort of chuckled.

What - my reaction, though, was I would have thought that they had more sophisticated ways to access my iPad rather than such a blunt, no, pardon us while we load - well, what me mean...

KELLY: While we rewire this completely.

SULLIVAN: And they should have had a better way of accessing my laptop than just being so blunt about it. But they don't care. They are dedicated. They - the Russian government, the FSB and their counterintelligence section that smothers the U.S. Embassy, they have thousands, approaching 10,000 officers - somewhere between 7- and 10,000 officers whose sole job is to smother the U.S. Embassy in Moscow - follow every person, diplomat, family member, spouse, young child, who leaves the compound. And getting access to my iPad was part of that mission.

KELLY: When you did wrap up your service, you wanted to write a cable back to Washington, kind of taking stock of what you had experienced and what you learned. And you lay out a bunch of observations. I want to focus you on one - that the strategy for the U.S. has to be a form of 21st century containment of Russian aggression. Practically speaking, what does that actually look like?

SULLIVAN: Here's what I'd say. We need to have not just a strategy for the Russian war in Ukraine, but for Russia and its aggression. And it needs to be baked into our budgeting, our strategic planning. We're spending a trillion dollars a year almost to defend the United States, and it is emphatically the case that stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine is vital to the defense of the United States. And I mention in the book, you know, we tried ignoring huge land wars in Europe twice in the 20th century. Both times we failed. We cannot ignore Russian aggression because it will not stop.

KELLY: John Sullivan. His new memoir is titled "Midnight In Moscow." Ambassador, thank you.

SULLIVAN: Thank you - my pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.