Vladislav Surkov was the mysterious Kremlin puppet master who wrote rock lyrics and loved Tupac Shakur yet was simultaneously the chief architect of Vladimir Putin’s system of “managed democracy”.

Now, after some time on the sidelines, Surkov is well and truly back in the thick of Kremlin intrigue after a cache of emails purporting to show his office coordinating affairs in separatist east Ukraine was leaked online.



Sanctioned and thus banned from travel to the EU for his role in the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy, the 52-year-old Surkov nevertheless popped up at recent four-way negotiations in Berlin over Ukraine, sitting at the round table next to Putin, and just one seat across from Angela Merkel. It was a very visible signal of Surkov’s importance to the Kremlin’s controversial Ukraine policy.

Several sources have told the Guardian that Surkov has on occasion made secret trips to Donetsk, technically still part of Ukraine, to bring local separatist politicians into line and tell them what is expected of them if they are to continue to receive Russian funding and support. More regularly, emissaries from east Ukraine come to Moscow to meet with Surkov.



On Tuesday, a giant cache of emails purporting to be from Surkov’s office, some of which allude to his role in managing Russia’s relations with the separatist entities in east Ukraine, was leaked by a Ukrainian outfit calling themselves the CyberJunta. The Kremlin has suggested the leak is a fake, though at least part of it appears to be real. It is possible that going after Surkov is the first salvo in what the CIA promised would be “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia” in the wake of alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic party’s computer networks.



Vladimir Putin and Vladislav Surkov. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AP

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed the email account as a fake, saying Surkov never used email. The hacked emails, however, do not purport to be from Surkov’s personal account, but from an account run by an aide. It received messages for Surkov which were presumably then passed on. While there is no guarantee some of the mails have not been doctored in some way before release, much of it appears to be genuine. The hackers released photographs of the passports of Surkov and his children, apparently as further proof the hack was real.



Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, said: “It’s not impossible, but unlikely that Ukrainian hackers would be able to break into Surkov’s government email account and download a huge collection of files from 2014. Given that the Americans have been hinting at a response, I cannot help but wonder if this was a US government shot across Putin’s bows, a warning that it also has the capability to intrude and embarrass and a willingness to use it if Russia persists.”



Galeotti said it was possible Ukrainian proxies had been used to cover the tracks. This could explain why the 2014 emails were released alongside what looked like a crude forgery, supposedly a current Kremlin plan to destabilise Ukraine.

Surkov is a unique character in Putin’s Kremlin. Unlike many of the yes men and former security officials who surround the Russian president, he first came to prominence as a marketing man for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who would later be jailed for a decade. In 1999, he moved to the Kremlin. He almost never gives interviews, and has been shrouded in mystery over the years.

During Putin’s first decade, Surkov was known for coordinating the “matrix” of Russian politics, cultivating fake opposition parties and funding pro-Kremlin youth groups. He personally curated what was allowed on to Russia’s television screens, and was seen as the architect of “post-truth politics” where facts are relative, a version of which some have suggested has now taken hold in the west.

In 2011, a Russian photographer released an extraordinary photo essay from Surkov’s Kremlin office, revealing that he had portraits of, among others, Che Guevara, Barack Obama and Tupac Shakur. He also had a bank of old-school white telephones with dozens of buttons bearing the surnames of the most powerful people in Russia.

He usually wears a faint, knowing smile and there is just a hint of Mr Bean about his appearance. While he wears sharp suits in the Kremlin, he will occasionally appear on his wife’s Instagram feed wearing edgy outfits that say “contemporary artist” more than “Kremlin apparatchik”.

“He likes writing and poetry; he thinks in a non-standard way. He has a rounded personality that despite his abstract modes of thinking is very capable of tackling serious state tasks,” said one source who has worked closely with Surkov.

Surkov is widely believed to be the real author behind the pen name Natan Dubovitsky, who has written a postmodern novel and a number of short stories. In March 2014, a short story attributed to Dubovitsky called Without Sky was published, set in an imaginary future where the planet was engulfed in “world war five; the first non-linear war”.

One passage read: “The simple-hearted commanders of the past strove for victory; now, they were not so stupid. Of course, some of them acted like before and tried to retrieve the old worn-out slogans, like ‘Victory will be ours’. Sometimes it worked. But mostly, they understood war as a process; part of a process, its most acute phase, but maybe not its most important phase.”

Less than a week after the story was published, the annexation of Crimea was completed.

Surkov’s initial fall from grace came back in 2011, when the Russian elite was split between those who wanted to see the relatively liberal Dmitry Medvedev stay in the Kremlin for a second term, and those who wanted Putin to return. In an uncharacteristic misstep, Surkov backed the wrong horse, and let it be known in elite circles that he was firmly in the camp that wanted to see Medvedev given the chance for another term.

When Putin came back, Surkov was edged out, and after a period as deputy prime minister, seemed to be a spent force. He later returned, but was put in charge of relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Russian protectorates essentially annexed from Georgia. It was hardly a glamour job, and was a spectacular step down from directing the entire Russian domestic political scene.

But as Russia was drawn into a clandestine war in east Ukraine, Surkov has gradually risen to a position of prominence again; both his experience in managing relations with the Georgian protectorates and his talent for intrigue and subterfuge made him the perfect person to run the Kremlin’s relations with the “people’s republics” that sprang up in east Ukraine and were essentially coordinated from Moscow.

Surkov has not yet commented on this week’s hack. When he was put on the US sanctions list for his role in the Ukraine events back in 2014, he likened it to “getting an Oscar for best supporting actor” and said it made him happy. “The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing,” he said.



He was also placed on the EU sanctions list, although Time magazine reported he was spotted at an Orthodox monastery in Greece earlier this year, and he then popped up very publicly alongside Putin in Berlin.

“I am too odious a person for this brave new world,” said Surkov, with characteristic irony and ambiguity, back in 2011 when he was removed from his post in the presidential administration.



Now, it seems he fits right in again.