The Bear Awakes

Producer: Stephen Rice

We all prayed those days were over.

But Russia is on the prowl again, in an angry mood and still armed to the teeth with a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The bear slumbered for 20 years after the collapse of communism, crippled by its basket-case economy and rampant corruption.

But new-found wealth and a growing sense of pride under Vladimir Putin have fuelled a dangerous new nationalism.

Now the old belligerence is back.

And, as Liam Bartlett reports, suddenly the world is on the brink of a new Cold War.

Full transcript:

LIAM BARTLETT: We're just outside the town of Gori, in the republic of Georgia - the birthplace of Joseph Stalin - and the mood is ugly. You are not supposed to be here. No wonder our interpreter is anxious. Just weeks ago, Georgia was the global flashpoint. The world held its breath as Russia mounted a massive military offensive against this former Soviet republic. Russian troops are still here and still edgy.

TRANSLATOR: He again asks that you switch off the camera and go.

LIAM BARTLETT: Okay.

TRANSLATOR: Otherwise, he will take away this camera from your producers.

LIAM BARTLETT: The invasion was a clear and ominous message to the world - Russia is back in the superpower big-league and its leader, Vladimir Putin, a former a hard man of the KGB, is flexing his muscles.

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI, GEORGIAN PRESIDENT: The wolf has tasted blood and it is not going to stop it. I'm sure it is now on a trail.

LIAM BARTLETT: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has no doubt the bloody invasion of his homeland was just the beginning of this brutal new Russia. What is Mr Putin's next move?

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: Well I think he will not stop.

LIAM BARTLETT: What you mean he's not going to stop? You mean he's going to go through Georgia?

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: He is all about this kind of Imperial bravado, as we have seen. So, I would not be so confident that they wouldn't do other things to other parts of the neighbourhood or even globally and certainly -

LIAM BARTLETT: What, militarily?

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: Well, nothing can be excluded.

LIAM BARTLETT: You think Mr Putin's military actions have a long way to go?

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: Well, I think that this guy will try to be as provocative and as dangerous as he can get.

LIAM BARTLETT: You have got to hand it to Vladimir Putin - he is Russia's most powerful, most ruthless leader since Joseph Stalin. Here, at the Kremlin, Putin and his old comrades at the KGB ruled the country with an iron fist. Communism is dead and buried but so, too, is any real democracy. What has replaced it is a brutal kind of get-rich-quick capitalism where you haven't made it until you can flaunt a $50,000 Rolex. The Russian economy has been booming on the back of record oil and gas prices. Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world. Putin is seen as taking the country from the brink of economic collapse, with a rampant crime rate, to unprecedented prosperity. To Russia's new mega-rich, he is the economic messiah.

VLAD POZNER, MOSCOW TV COMMENTATOR: He is a very tough guy and, I think, at times he is authoritarian and I think to make things happen he has taken decisions that in any country in the world would be called undemocratic.

LIAM BARTLETT: Vlad Pozner is a Moscow TV commentator. Once a mouthpiece for the Soviets, now a cheerleader for the Putin regime.

VLAD POZNER: People should understand that this is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. Just, you know, I think you do yourselves a mis-service by not understanding that.

LIAM BARTLETT: You think Russians associate Putin with power and success?

VLAD POZNER: Absolutely, beyond a question of a doubt, with bringing Russia back on the world stage, with making people say, "Yes, you have to count with Russia, you cannot ignore Russia." What he has done by and large is something the overwhelming majority of Russians really, really support.

LIAM BARTLETT: Emboldened by such widespread support, Putin has built himself an iron-clad political empire. It's been called new-style tsarism, with Putin as the tsar, eliminating anyone who stands in his way. MIKHAIL KASYANOV, RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER: All decisions are made by him.

LIAM BARTLETT: By Mr Putin?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: By Mr Putin and his close friends.

LIAM BARTLETT: He is all-powerful, all dominant?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: Absolutely. There is no doubt about it.

LIAM BARTLETT: Mikhail Kasyanov knows better than anyone the political strong-arm tactics of Vladimir Putin. He was Russia's prime minister for four years until Putin sacked him.

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: That is the descent of vertical of power.

LIAM BARTLETT: Vertical of power? What does that mean? One man at the top?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: It means that there is no separation of powers. There is no independent parliament, there is no independent judiciary, there is no free media and everything is subordinated to the leader of this vertical of power.

LIAM BARTLETT: All roads lead to Mr Putin?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: Yep. Exactly.

LIAM BARTLETT: And Putin has grand imperial plans for all that power. He firmly believes the break-up of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th century and once the former territories back under Russian control. Last month, Georgia's President played right into his hands. Mr President, what possessed you to take on the Russian army?

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: We already had absolute irrefutable evidence there was this large-scale invasion and we had two choices - resist or not to resist. There are many countries have decided in similar circumstances to resist. Nazi Germany has taken half of Europe without firing a single shot.

LIAM BARTLETT: Georgia's internal conflict with South Ossetia provided Putin with grounds to mount an invasion. The response was massive, employing the full force of his military machine. It was the first time Russia had occupied another state since Afghanistan, and a blatant display of strength for the region. With all due respect, you will have to be temporarily insane to take on the Russian army.

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: Look, it's better to die for your country, in your country, than to regret the rest of your life that you didn't at least give it a try it. But even I couldn't expect the level of this invasion, and the level of the brutality.

LIAM BARTLETT: Most of the casualties were civilians, and many of the targets were national treasures. This is your national parliament?

ZORINA ZANAKEVA, SOUTH OSSETIAN RESIDENT: Yeah - it is the building of our parliament.

LIAM BARTLETT: Or was.

ZORINA ZANAKEVA: Yeah - it was.

LIAM BARTLETT: Zorina Zanakeva is a young South Ossetian angry at what the conflict did to her home town.

ZORINA ZANAKEVA: Because it was our main building. You know they bombed the most beautiful buildings and buildings that meant a lot for every South Ossetian.

LIAM BARTLETT: They targeted things that meant the most you?

ZORINA ZANAKEVA: Of course.

LIAM BARTLETT: Everywhere you go, there is evidence of the slaughter. This turret all that remains of a Georgian tank blasted apart. The war lasted just five days, but Putin's troops are still here. Now, the question for Georgia and other vulnerable independent states is not when but if they will leave. Or is this the start of a new Soviet empire? Armoured personnel carriers patrolling the roads, military hardware coming in at the rate of knots. We have been watching this for the past five hours and it's all going south towards the Georgian border - not bad for a country that was supposed to pull out and only leave a small peacekeeping force. If this is a Russian military withdrawal, I would hate to see a build up.

MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI: They not only occupy part of our territory but they're annexing parts of our territory. This looks like very brutal. This looks like the Middle Ages, not like 21st century any more. It is very surreal and it certainly is an unacceptable situation.

LIAM BARTLETT: On the streets of Moscow, too, it is as if Vladimir Putin has turned back the clock. The KGB is gone but he has replaced them with the FSB - a different name, same deadly tactics. The secret police, organised crime and big business are often in bed together and, just like in Stalin's day, dissent is swiftly crushed.

MARINA LITVINENKO: In Russia they don't try - just don't try to change anything and, again, if you are against us, if you try to talk against us, we will kill you.

LIAM BARTLETT: That's the message?

MARINA LITVINENKO: That's the message.

LIAM BARTLETT: From the Kremlin?

MARINA LITVINENKO: Looks like.

LIAM BARTLETT: Marina Litvinenko knows just how deadly the web of corruption can be. Her husband, Alexander, a KGB agent, spoke out against the regime when he was ordered to kill a Jewish billionaire.

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO (TRANSLATION): The deputy head of that department shouted at me because I refused to finish off, as he put it, "the Jew who robbed half the country."

LIAM BARTLETT: Following his revelations, Russian authorities threatened Litvinenko with a series of trumped-up charges, so he fled to Britain under political asylum. But it was no protection. He was lured to a London hotel and poisoned with a cup of tea laced with a deadly radioactive toxin. He died 23 days later.

MARINA LITVINENKO: His last words - he started to feel very bad - and it just started, and after this, after this, Sasha couldn't talk and couldn't say anything to anybody.

LIAM BARTLETT: So his last words to you were?

MARINA LITVINENKO: About how does he love me.

LIAM BARTLETT: This man is the prime suspect - ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi But despite British demands to extradite him, Vladimir Putin said 'no'. Instead, he was feted as the hero, even elected to the Russian Parliament. And a bleak day in Moscow, we tracked down the alleged assassin, safe from the reach of British justice, forever protected by his own government. Sir, can you tell me, why did you murder Alexander Litvinenko?

ANDREI LUGOVOI (TRANSLATION): Interesting approach. This is the first time in my life that the question has been asked this aggressively. You should ask this question to the Prime Minister of the UK and their head of intelligence services of the UK. Why did they kill Mr Litvnenko?

LIAM BARTLETT: Who ordered you to poison him?

ANDREI LUGOVOI: What is this? I expect you're just joking with me.

LIAM BARTLETT: You find that funny?

ANDREI LUGOVOI: I just told you to go and ask the Prime Minister of Britain who killed Litvinenko.

LIAM BARTLETT: Can you tell this man that so far he has blamed the British Government, the British Prime Minister and MI6, but not once in all the questions I asked him, has he said, "I did not kill Mr Litvinenko."

ANDREI LUGOVOI: I am saying it straight to your eyes and I'm going to say it to the people watching. (Speaks Russian.)

LIAM BARTLETT: With enemies and rivals so blatantly dispensed, politicians who take on the Putin regime, like opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov, have to be a fearless breed. You get to sit in your office here and keep an eye on Mr Putin, literally? literally?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: As a joke you can use this, as a joke.

LIAM BARTLETT: But Kasyanov is determined to stand up to Putin's growing power and what seems like a return to the bad old days of the Cold War. People who have been successful in opposition have mysteriously died over the past six years.

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: And?

LIAM BARTLETT: Well, the more successful you are, the more dangerous it will be.

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: Um, I don't want to develop this conversation. Of course that's the problem, that is dangerous, and uh, and...

LIAM BARTLETT: Is your wife and family happy with that?

MIKHAIL KASYANOV: Of course not, but we'd like to live in our country. We would like a country to be a different country. My job is to let those people understand that something could be changed in this country.

LIAM BARTLETT: You are more courageous than I could be, good luck. All the best.