Russian to the Core

By Romesh Ratnesar And Paul Quinn-Judge

As they watched the horror at a Moscow theater unfold live on television last month, some Russians must have wondered what exactly their President, Vladimir Putin, was doing. During the three days that Chechen rebels held more than 800 people hostage in the Theater Center on Dubrovka, the Kremlin released only a few, silent images of Putin, in his office talking with aides--prompting one exasperated news presenter to bring on a lip-reader to try to work out what Putin was saying. The President's website reported that he was "immediately" informed of the hostage situation at 11:10 p.m. on Oct. 23, though the terrorists had seized the theater two hours earlier. In Putin's address to the nation after Russia's Spetsnaz commando forces mounted the rescue operation, the Russian leader issued one terse statement of regret: "We could not save everyone. Forgive us." Yet even as he sought to remain coolly remote to the public, in private Putin exulted. Aides say that after the standoff ended the President invited the commandos to the Kremlin for a closed-door celebration.

But for Putin, as much as for those who coordinated the operation using a sedative gas that killed 117 hostages, the taste of triumph is quickly dissipating. Putin's approval ratings soared to 85% in the immediate aftermath of the standoff, as grieving Russians cheered the President's vow to hunt down terrorists "wherever they may be located." But Putin's government was also forced last week to confront questions about the Kremlin's Soviet-style stonewalling on the nature of the gas and the failure of the Russian authorities to prepare doctors for treating the poisoned. After four days of silence, Russian Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko acknowledged that the gas was based on derivatives of fentanyl, a common medical anesthetic, but he insisted it was not known to be fatal.

Putin's role in the decision to use the gas is still a mystery. When asked by TIME where Putin worked during the hostage crisis, a top aide said merely that "the President was constantly in Moscow." Government officials say Vladimir Pronichev, deputy chief of Russia's intelligence agency and head of the emergency staff charged with handling the crisis, gave the orders to the Spetsnaz to pump gas through the theater vents and seize the hall. During the standoff, Putin, according to members of the emergency staff, stayed in touch with Pronichev through a senior aide on Chechen affairs, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, and was given the broad outline of the rescue plans. But government sources say it is unlikely the security chiefs received Putin's approval to use gas on the theater. They didn't need it. "If the commanders had said, 'We are going to use "special means,"'" says an official close to Putin, referring to the use of gas, "he would have said O.K. He thinks like these people. He trusts them completely."

But outside the Kremlin, the second-guessing came fast. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow told reporters on Oct. 29 that "perhaps with a little more information, at least a few more of the hostages may have survived." A Moscow doctor says the government has refused to admit that dozens of hospitalized victims remain unconscious and that most are unlikely to recover without significant brain damage.

A case can be made that Putin had little choice but to use overwhelming force against terrorists who had wired the theater with explosives and threatened to bring the house down. But the ruthless rescue mission and the government's haphazard handling of the crisis were in many respects the product of Putin's personality and leadership style and reveal some of the chronic weaknesses of his presidency. While known as a control freak, Putin still lacks confidence in his authority over the Russian bureaucracy; he delegates operational decision making to top aides, especially on security issues. Though by nature a pragmatic politician with little ideological drive, Putin is obsessed with defending the power and prestige of the Russian state--a fixation that is now likely to drag Russia deeper into a costly war against Chechen separatists. "Putin has emerged as a victor, but he is also trapped," says Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. "He needs to go on having victories [but] a debacle instead of a victory next time may totally wipe him out as a leader."

Putin's reluctance to take on the security apparatus has delayed reforms in that sector and encouraged its bureaucracy to cover up mistakes, like the disastrous effort to rescue the Kursk submarine in 2000. Though many fewer people died at the Moscow theater than in the U.S. on Sept. 11, a Bush Administration official contends that for sheer incompetence "this was a worse intelligence failure than the one we experienced on 9/11. The plot leaders in Moscow were already known. The Russians claim these people came all the way from Chechnya. How could the security services not have been watching them?" He adds, "Heads should roll."

Don't count on it. Those who know Putin say the former KGB man shrinks from taking on the country's entrenched political interests. Putin last year long hesitated to fire a well-connected Cabinet minister accused of corruption. "What if he says no?" a close aide to the President said, explaining his hesitation. Rather than fix things, Putin has preferred to intimidate media outlets in an effort to quash negative coverage of the government. The Kremlin threatened last week to shut down NTV, a television network that occasionally shows flashes of independence despite being owned by the state-controlled natural-gas monopoly. The Kremlin's anger was sparked by two NTV journalists whose coverage had deviated from the official line. In the Russian heartland, most viewers already receive nothing but pro-government broadcasts. Says analyst Ryabov: "In the provinces they only have the victorious images on their TV screens to watch, and they rally to embrace the idea of a strong country emerging from the ashes once again."

Putin is already using that resurgent nationalism to build support for a new offensive in Chechnya. He rose to power in 1999 on the strength of a pledge to "rub out" the Chechen terrorists. "He has strong feelings about Chechnya," says a senior State Department official. "We just say the word, and he hits the roof." The Bush Administration says it supports a political solution to the conflict, but Washington hasn't pushed Putin to compromise--in part because he equates the Russian struggle against Chechen rebels with the Administration's war against al-Qaeda.

But Putin's war is going nowhere. Russian soldiers in Chechnya have killed more than 13,000 Chechen rebels since 1999, but the brutality of the army's tactics has spawned new, more fanatical fighters faster than it has eliminated the old ones. Before the hostage siege, 57% of the public supported talks with the rebels; last week that number had slipped, but not by much, to 44%. Even without a broad mandate, Putin is likely to exploit the terrorist threat to renew the military campaign and crush the Chechen leaders he loathes. In Copenhagen last week, Danish authorities acting at Russia's behest arrested Akhmed Zakayev, the relatively moderate representative of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Zakayev has signaled a willingness to rein in Chechen extremists in exchange for a peace deal. But by associating even moderates like Zakayev with terrorists, Putin hopes to muzzle talk of any Russian accommodation with the rebels.

Stunned more by the audacity of the terrorists than by the government's bumbling, many Russians found themselves responding last week to Putin's hard-line rhetoric in much the same way that Americans rallied behind Bush's. And yet the terrorists' success in staging their assault in the center of Moscow also showed how ill equipped Putin's government is to deal with the Chechen rebellion.

For now, says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Strategic Studies Center, based in Moscow, Putin "has acquired the image of a strong and resolute leader--but only for a limited period of time." Russians are still waiting for Putin to prove he can deliver more than tough talk. --With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow and Massimo Calabresi/Washington

With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow and Massimo Calabresi/Washington