New book by journalist who spent years interviewing dozens of sources reveals a regime where disloyalty is the biggest crime

For many people in the west, Russian politics has become synonymous with the country’s secretive president, Vladimir Putin, who has been known to disappear for weeks without explanation.

But Putin does not work alone. As with most world leaders, he has a network of powerful allies around him – allies who both support and deceive him, according to a new book by the Russian journalist and opposition activist Mikhail Zygar.

The journalist was formerly the editor-and-chief of news network Dozhd (Rain), one of the only independent channels left in Russian media. He has spent years interviewing dozens of sources inside the Kremlin, and his book, All the Kremlin’s Men, paints a convincing portrait of the inside world of Russian politics, a place shrouded in conspiracy where “the biggest crime is being disloyal”.

Disputes over military action in Syria; events in Ukraine and nuclear posturing in the Baltics have left international tensions between Russia and the west at a post–cold war high, but at home Putin’s approval ratings remain strong and he is preparing to run for president again in early 2018.

So how did he get there? And what drives him forward? The Guardian asked Zygar to talk through his key findings from inside the seat of Russia’s power.

The Winter Olympics ad campaign

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Putin watches downhill skiing at the Winter Paralympics in Sochi. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AP

According to one of Zygar’s sources inside the Kremlin, Putin was initially reluctant to support the multibillion-dollar bid to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

To persuade him, his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, is said to have arranged for a pro-Olympics advertising campaign on billboards along the motorway Putin uses to travel into Moscow.

Zygar claims radio ads were also produced, timed for when they knew Putin would be listening to the radio in his car. When Zygar asked Peskov to confirm his part in the ad campaign, the secretary didn’t deny it but said: “Sometimes we have to use tricky methods.”

The president went on to put his full support and $50bn behind the Games.

House of Cards = western politics

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frank Underwood – the typical western politician? Photograph: Allstar/Netflix/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Zygar’s book lists several sources inside the government who say that Putin was so convinced that the backstabbing and politicking of the hit Netflix series House of Cards accurately mirrored western politics that he instructed his colleagues to watch it.

Zygar claims that for Putin, the scheming protagonist Frank Underwood “represents the typical American politician” – which is why he prefers to support figures such as Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi or Donald Trump, who are more “practical” and “cynical”, says Zygar.

Crimea came ‘out of the blue’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crimean people wave a Russian flag as they celebrate Orthodox Christmas in the Black Sea in January. Photograph: Alexander Polegenko/AP

Russia’s decision to illegally annex Crimea, formerly part of Ukraine, was not part of a long-term strategy to “reclaim” the peninsula but was rushed through in three months, the book claims.

“No one was ready for it, nobody expected it, so it was a surprise for the Russian public who previously had no public desire for Crimea ‘coming back home’,” says Zygar.

This is in stark contrast to the short war with Georgia in 2008 over the contested republic of South Ossetia, which was preceded by months of TV programmes warning about Georgia’s aggression, he adds.

Putin’s web of paranoia

Facebook Twitter Pinterest What does Madeleine Albright think of Russia? Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Putin and the men behind him, including the security council head Nikolai Patrushev and intelligence officer Boris Ratnikov, fully believe their own propaganda: that the US is hellbent on destroying Russia, says Zygar.

Zygar points to the time when Patrushev, one of the president’s top advisers, gave an interview to a prominent state newspaper claiming that the US was “jealous of Russia’s great natural resources”. His source? A KGB psychic who claims to have read the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s mind in a trance.

Ukraine will be left ‘frozen’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pro-Russian activists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Photograph: Alexander Khudoteply/AFP/Getty Images

The current goal of foreign policy in Ukraine is to leave everything as it is, according to a source close to Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s main adviser on the country.

Based on the information Zygar collected, he predicts that the east of the country – caught in a tussle between the national army and pro-Russia separatists – will be left in “some sort of frozen conflict” rather than transform or develop economically.

This helps Russia’s cause because “it’s leverage that can be used against Ukraine … It cannot develop its economy. It’s always affected by civil unrest,” Zygar says.

The secret behind that Siberian lake photo

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Third time lucky, claims Zygar. Photograph: RIA Novosti/Reuters

Putin has built a personality cult around his hardman stunts over the past 15 years, the most infamous being him riding a horse topless in Siberia’s Tuva region in 2009 and doing the butterfly in a cold Siberian lake.

Zygar says the idea was to show the Russian public that Putin is “young, energetic and active ... a real man”. What they may not know is that Putin had to swim across the lake three times before the killer shot was nailed, or so the book claims.

How Medvedev was persuaded to step aside



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Corridor of power: Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin after United Russia’s victory in recent parliamentary elections. Photograph: TASS/Barcroft Images

Another reason for Putin’s hardman photoshoot, taken when he was prime minister, was to show that he was different, better and stronger than Dmitry Medvedev, who was president between 2008 and 2012.

According to Zygar’s sources inside the Kremlin, Putin wanted to be president again and convinced Medvedev to step aside in the 2011 elections by warning him that Russia could be a target of a new conspiracy organised by the US.

Putin is quoted in the book as telling Medvedev that the “the situation is hard and we could end up losing the country if leadership isn’t strong enough”. He went on to win the election in 2011 and was inaugurated in May 2012, when Medvedev became prime minister.

The winter of 2011-12

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The opposition protests of 2011-12 ‘shaped Putin’s thinking today’. Photograph: Epsilon/Getty Images

The most important event shaping modern political life in Russia was the staging of opposition protests in winter 2011-12, when thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest against the government.

According to Zygar, this left Putin with one conclusion: that his support base was no longer the middle-class intellectual elite living in the capital, but the working-class heartlands across the country, who were “more conservative, more religious, distrustful of reformers and feel more nostalgia for the Soviet period” – a legacy evident in many of Putin’s subsequent policies.

This article was amended on 19 October. Zygar was the former editor-in-chief not the co-founder of Dozhd and the channel continues to broadcast