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Former member of the KGB, journalist and specialist in international relations, Sergueï Jirnov has just published two books: ‘L’Engrenage’ about the war in Ukraine and ‘L’Eclaireur’, a biography in which he explains since his recruitment by the Soviet secret services until his exile in France. During his career, he crossed paths with the Kremlin’s strongman, Vladimir Putin, on several occasions.
Jirnov remembers very well the first time he saw Putin. It was the year 1980 and the Olympic Games were being held in Moscow. He was then a student at the Institute of International Relations and volunteered to work at a telephone information center. “I had a conversation with a French man for two hours and for my management and the Russian secret services that was very suspicious. They suspected that he was a dissident or a spy for the French. So they called me in,” explains Jirnov.
“I met a short man in a gray suit who showed me the red KGB card that read ‘Captain Vladimir Putin.’ At that time he was insignificant, he was nobody. He asked me to follow him to the KGB headquarters, in Lubyanka Square (Moscow) and there he interrogated me for two hours”, he says.
For Jirnov, Putin was not a good spy. In fact, he didn’t get to be. “He spent nine years in the KGB political police and in counter espionage. In 1984, the same year as me, he entered the Andropov Institute, the academy that trained spies. He dreamed of being a spy, but he never was, because the instructors at that institute thought he was dangerous, uncontrollable,” he clarifies.
Although Putin could not realize his dream of being a spy like Jirnov, he has been running Russia for 20 years. “The key is that he corresponded to the image of the president that the Russian people had been waiting for 30 years. Someone young, new. Putin does not like to speak in public, but he does it well, he does not read on paper, he also played his image as a KGB man, because he was the least corrupt state institute than the others, ”says Jirnov.
Putin cannot win this war with conventional weapons
We have been at war for 100 days in Ukraine. Analysts agree that Putin thought, when he invaded the country, that his “special operation” was going to be quick. For the former spy and political analyst, Putin lost this war in February. “Things did not turn out the way Putin thought. Everyone said that the Russian army is the second most powerful in the world, but in reality we saw that it is not. Ukraine is supported by the West and receives billions of dollars in military, financial and humanitarian aid. Putin cannot win against a people of 45 million people who defend the country from him”, he analyzes.
Jirnov believes that Putin can drop an atomic bomb because “he cannot win this war with conventional weapons.” “I don’t think he will drop a bomb on Paris or Washington, but he will drop a bomb on Ukraine. He can do what the Americans did in 1945 against the Japanese, two atomic bombings and thus end the war”, he assures.
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