Kommersant: "Cloak-And-Dagger Biker"
Vladimir Putin was in good condition during his Crimean visit.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin impressed the paper’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov while riding a trike to a motorcycle show in the Crimea and while chatting with journalists about the heroic exploits of intelligence operatives in Foros late in the evening. Vladimir Putin is now in very good condition, which is rather imposing.
In the morning, the bikers were to have gathered in front of the central stage of their retreat near Lake Gasfort, against the backdrop of an ore-processing works whose construction had stopped in the 1990s. Not everyone showed up where they were expected at the right hour. The evening before, they watched a late night bike show with all kinds of stunts and were left with little time for a nap. Some of them sipped beer and tried hard to stand upright in order to meet with the architect of Russia’s state-power hierarchy 60 minutes later but remained prone for the rest of the sundrenched day.
Still others had a good excuse for not attending because they wanted to donate money for a biker injured in a serious road accident a few days earlier. They had lined up in front of a tent to make their donations. It appears that the Surgeon himself will operate on the hapless biker. (Editor’s note: This is an allusion to Moscow's Night Wolves motorcycle club president Alexander “Surgeon” Zaldostanov).
Nevertheless, most of the bikers looked to be in good health and behaved in a generous and even polite manner. I wasn’t surprised because bikers are not what many people think of them. They drank black mint-flavoured tea, which is most popular with bikers when they hit the road, and then waited for the subsequent developments. Putin’s visit did not scare them with its uncertainty. “What’s going to happen?” some asked. “Putin will come and deliver a report,” others replied.
At least 300 bikers waited for Putin near Sevastopol under the scorching sun. There was lots of leather including black-leather pigskin jackets, as well as plenty of human skin, some well tanned. The bikers’ bikini-clad girlfriends also came to listen to the prime minister, wearing no shirt and little else besides their rather revealing swimsuits.
“Oh, look there!” someone exclaimed, and everyone started looking up at the wall of an incomplete building topped with an iron girder, rather than the road. A young man with a backpack was crawling along the top of it, 40 metres off the ground.
“Look, he’s got a parachute on his back. He is going to jump. Police commandos are rushing to catch him, but they won’t make it. Yes, he’d better jump because he is in for trouble if they catch him. It will hurt less, if he jumps,” a nearby biker told me.
I glanced automatically at a possible landing site teeming with people and vehicles. There was one more or less vacant clearing where a Gazel minivan covered with slogans “Yanukovych is our president” was standing. These scathing slogans were primarily directed against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, rather than the young guy.
“At least one of us has made it to the top,” another biker said in a quavering voice.
The young man reached the end of the girder, jutting some two metres above the wall, took out the flag of Moscow with Yury Dolgoruky on it out of the backpack and started fastening it. The only police officer near this climber, who could have yanked him off to avoid hitting the Gazel, hesitated. Obviously, the Sevastopol special-police were not prepared to fight with Moscow Mayor Luzhkov.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s motorcade was approaching the camp. Vladimir Putin led the motorcade on a Harley Davidson Lehman trike, with Russian and Ukrainian flags mounted behind his back. He was dressed in a black shirt, black gloves, a black baseball cap and was wearing black sunglasses. This was an unforgettable sight for all those who saw it.
One could only identify the prime minister from the rest of the motorcade by his long black polished shoes. No one would have noticed if the climber had been pulled off the girder or came crashing through the minivan roof because the bikers were overwhelmed by the prime minister’s arrival. The prime minister charged in followed by proud bikers riding in through a dense cloud of dust.
“Book of Eli,” a 2010 American post-apocalyptic action film featuring similar bands of bikers riding across a shimmering asphalt haze, paled in comparison.
At that moment it looked like the leader of the United Russia party was the president of the Night Wolves riding with the gang, rather than Zaldostanov.
I tried to locate the bikes carrying Boris Gryzlov, Yury Luzhkov, Sergei Shoigu, Oleg Morozov and Andrei Vorobyov because it seemed natural under the circumstances. But it was hard to see anything in the ensuing melee near the stage. Some time later, I was only able to see Kaliningrad Region Governor Georgy Boos and his bike standing separately near Boos’ Mercedes-Benz limousine. Boos himself was sitting inside a blue chemical-toilet cabin.
The prime minister easily hopped off his bike without tripping and bound onto the stage, which looked like a submarine sitting on the Ukrainian plains. “They say bikers often address each other as ‘Brother’,” Putin shouted. “So, let me put it to you straight: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your invitation, brothers.”
“Hey man. You are the man,” everyone around me shouted back.
Vladimir Putin praised the bike for the feeling of freedom it gives its owner.
“Bikes, motorcycles are the most democratic kind of transport. True, there are some advanced pieces of hardware, like the one that I drove here today. Motorcycles are the brashest, fastest and most ostentatious kind of transport. They give their owners that sweet feeling of freedom. It would therefore be no exaggeration to say that the bike is a symbol of freedom,” Putin said.
Putin unexpectedly quoted a line from a song by Oleg Mityayev: “It’s so good that we have all gathered here today.” Although he probably did not think that there was any principled difference between bikers and Mityayev, the bikers might disagree.
“What?” a nearby biker who had just called Putin a man asked in a sullen voice.
“Why? Because you haven’t gathered here at the request of the party or the state,” Putin said. He then paused, probably recalling the Nashi (Ours) youth movement which sometimes benefits United Russia and the government. “Sometimes this is appropriate. You have come here because you are free and because you wanted to be here today,” Putin noted.
At the end of his speech, the prime minister called on the bikers: “Take care of yourselves and your friends. Let’s say ‘No’ to reckless driving. Long live Ukraine! Long live Russia!”
“Long live the motorcycle!” Putin yelled in Ukrainian.
“Maaaan!” the bikers chanted once again.
The prime minister signed autographs for a while, although the bikers lacked pens and paper. When a girl offered her hand, he merely kissed it but did not write on it.
He also declined an offer by a Serbian biker to drink some Rakia, saying bikers only drank mint-flavoured tea on the road and drove off on his trike towards the Sevastopol belt highway. Two kilometers away, he got into a limousine providing him with additional protection, if not freedom. Putin then rode towards the residence of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who had also arrived in the Crimea by that time. Yanukovych put Putin up at state residence No 1 near Foros and stayed at another house nearby. Putin went there saying he wanted to congratulate the Ukrainian president on his 60th birthday.
Journalists who were told that they would be able to meet Putin in an informal setting waited for him near Foros. Five hours later, I began to understand how Mikhail Gorbachev felt when he had to endure a three-day isolation here in August 1991.
The prime minister joined us when it was already dark. Putin discussed how Yanukovych and he had celebrated the Ukrainian leader’s birthday. He said the bilateral talks had proceeded in a friendly atmosphere, and that “the few disagreements” were of a “family-household nature.” (Sometimes such disagreements lead to divorce).
I asked the prime minister whether his statement about the bike as a symbol of freedom and that freedom is the most important value was correct.
“Did I say that?” the prime minister asked with surprise in his voice.
“Yes, you did.”
“Do you regret it?” I wanted to ask but my time was up.
“This means that’s the way it is,” he laughed.
“That’s why I would like to find out whether this applies only to bikers or to all of society,” I asked.
“This applies to every person,” the prime minister even stopped laughing. “I believe this is the most important value for any person, including you and me, any state and any private individual. I think this is a fundamental value of life. In this sense, it obviously applies to bikers, too. I said this without any exaggerations or flattery,” Putin noted.
However, some question remains because Putin said nothing about legal entities.
The prime minister flatly refused to acknowledge that an information war was being fought between Russia and Belarus.
“Are there any casualties? No. what kind of a war is this if it doesn’t produce casualties? Tough-worded publications are often directed against me, the incumbent Russian President and many other national politicians. Do you think this is a war?” Putin proposed replying to tough-worded materials in the same tough manner. That is, supposing that there was no war, he proposed declaring it.
The prime minister laughed hard after being asked whether it was easy to reach an agreement with the current Belarusian leaders.
“Very easy! So easy! We have reached agreements on many issues! In reality, everyone wants to get something cheap from Russia when money and energy-resource delivery volumes are discussed. Irritation sets in when this is not realised. We agree when they tell us that they will pay less this year, but twice as much next year. Then the next year, they ask us to leave everything as it was the year before. I want to repeat that if we have reached a deal and signed a document, then its provisions must be fulfilled. This is the only thing we want,” Putin said.
A Life-.News.ru correspondent asked him to comment on the deportation of Russian spies from the United States.
“Do you plan to meet with them?”
“I have met with them,” he replied.
“Will you tell us anything else?”
“But you are not asking me any more questions,” Putin said, laughing again.
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“About life,” he replied quickly.
“They say you even did Karaoke session with them,” the journalists asked.
“Yes, we did. But we sang to live music,” Putin replied without giving it a second thought, as if the question posed some challenge, and he had accepted the challenge because it would be hard for him not to answer.
“What exactly did you sing?”
“’What Does the Homeland Begin With?’” he replied promptly.
I could not believe myself. I visualised some mirthless intelligence professionals sitting and singing: “What does the homeland begin with? With a picture in your ABC book…”
(Editor’s note: The song What Does the Homeland Begin With?’ was the theme of the 1967 movie Shield and Sword about the work of Soviet secret agents in Nazi Germany during World War II).
At the same time, it was obvious that this was no laughing matter for one of the professionals. As a former intelligence-service operative, Putin realised how agents felt after being exposed through no fault of their own. He wanted to support them, and did that.
“I’m serious. Other songs had a similar content,” he said.
“Did Anna Kushchenko attend the meeting?”
“Who?” Putin asked in dismay.
He was dismayed until he heard her second surname, Chapman.
“She was present. You know, there isn’t much to comment here. Dmitry Medvedev has already said this was the result of treason, and that traitors always meet a bad end. As a rule, they die from either heavy drinking or drug abuse. One of them recently died that way somewhere abroad. Actually, his life was such a waste.
(Editor’s note: This probably implies Sergei Tretyakov from the Foreign Intelligence Service who had defected to the United States in 2000, and who had died suddenly in June 2010.)
“Does this mean that you know the traitors by name?” the journalists asked.
“Sure,” he nodded.
“Do you plan to punish them?”
“I think this is an incorrect question. This cannot be resolved at a news conference. But state agents live according to their own rules. And all secret-service operatives are well aware of the rules,” Putin said, shrugging his shoulders.
In effect, he indicated that retribution was in store for the traitors whose actions had informed the world about the existence of Anna Chapman, the pride of Russia.
“As far as these people [agents] are concerned, I can tell you that each of them has a very difficult destiny. See for yourselves. First, they need to master the foreign language the way they speak Russian. They should think in that language, speak it and carry on their missions for many-many years, without expecting any diplomatic cover and subjecting themselves and their relatives, who don’t know what they are doing, to everyday danger,” the prime minister said without any leading questions because he did not conceal the fact that this subject had touched a sore spot.
And, finally, the prime minister assured us that all the deported agents would receive a respected position, and that they will, doubtless, have a bright and interesting life.
When asked about his vacation plans, the prime minister said he planned to spend several days with President Medvedev.
This information was interesting because Putin had once noted that they planned to meet and agree as to which one of them would run for president in 2012. It would be best if they met somewhere far away from the hustle and bustle of urban life – in the North, as Putin said, or in Russia’s Far East. It appears that the time is ripe for this.
He promised not to hide anything from us after the trip. We don’t have to wait much longer, unless they try to reach an agreement elsewhere during the next vacation.
But an agreement will have to be reached, no matter what. When asked whether the new election race was underway, the prime minister replied that it had begun the moment the previous one had ended. “…because, in my opinion, these so-called campaign and pre-election technologies are not very effective. The people assess specific results and achievements,” he noted.
If the public doesn’t yet understand, the election race involving Putin and others is already in full swing.
Andrei Kolesnikov
