What Putin’s really like in private
A new scandalous film featuring Vladimir Putin just came out in the U.S., showing a controversial image of the war criminal. We spoke to someone who met him after Putin’s first defeat in Ukraine.
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When policemen stopped his car near the city of Ternopil, they recognized Oleh Rybachuk without even asking for his passport.
This was the 2010s, the era of Putin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych, when the police had a good memory for faces.
“What are you doing?” they asked about his current occupation.
“I’m fighting against the criminal [Yanukovych] regime,” Oleh replied.
One of the officers let out a stifled laugh and asked, “So what have you been doing before?”
“I was part of such a regime,” he said, implying his Soviet past.
“Godspeed,” the police sighed, letting him go.
Once a USSR customs officer, Oleh became a Secretary of State to President Yushchenko in 2005 and then later a prominent civil activist.
His disgust towards Russia hasn’t waned over the years, but an invitation to the Kremlin to meet Putin might have added a new edge to it.
Historians, analysts, and even fiction writers have always been trying to get into criminals’ heads and reveal what pushed them to commit atrocities. A better understanding of evil is vital to protect lives from future crimes. On the other hand, it has a hidden temptation to exaggerate the villain’s grandeur and complexity, which eventually leads us to dig deeper and look for the traits we might be able to sympathize with.
On May 15, Vladimir Putin appeared on U.S. screens in the new film The Wizard of the Kremlin, directed by a French, British, and American crew led by Olivier Assayas. After the premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in August 2025, the movie received controversial reviews. Ukrainian critics are accusing it of romanticizing Russia and a lack of empathy for Ukrainians, as Putin’s humanized portrayal during the active war is a sensitive topic.
Intended to tell the story of how Vladimir Putin rose to power, the film once again shifts attention to the authoritarian regime and portrays its current leader as a reserved, cunning, unmistakable strategist who thinks through his every step. With scenes of Putin doing sports and eating simple meals, you’ll get just what Russian propaganda wants you to see.
Russia and other authoritarian regimes skillfully blur the line between strength and evil. For centuries, this move has been sustaining predatory states and keeping their leaders in power. The picture is usually much simpler, though. If one commits crimes, he is a criminal, and sometimes it’s all we need to understand.
Growing up in a family of “dissenters,” Oleh never dreamt of a political career. Rather than spend decades waiting for a Communist Party mandate and, to him, dubious privileges it could have granted, he chose to become a military interpreter.
In 1975, thanks to his brilliant knowledge of English and the goodwill of his examiner, Oleh enrolled in the Romano-Germanic faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University.
It was one of the most prestigious educational institutions in Ukraine, open mostly for wealthy and powerful ‘nomenklatura,’ closely linked to communist authorities. Together with other students, exclusively sons of Communist Party officials, KGB officers, and ‘red directors,’ he entered a completely new reality, learning about market economies and listening to forbidden BBC radio broadcasts.
Little did he know that his university circle would lead him to the Kremlin.
In 1992, after years of working at the Kyiv customs office and in India as an interpreter for the Ministry of Coal Industry, Oleh got a position at the National Bank. There, he formed a strong bond with its head, Viktor Yushchenko. Following Yushchenko into government, parliament, and the presidential administration, Oleh unexpectedly entered politics himself in 2002 as a deputy in the Our Ukraine bloc, and began engaging with Russian officials.
2004 became a major setback for Russia and for Vladimir Putin personally. Moscow had hoped power in Ukraine would pass to its preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, keeping the country within Russia’s sphere of influence. Instead, allegations of election fraud sparked mass protests led by opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, culminating in the Orange Revolution and the eventual rise of a pro-Western government.
Months before the protests, Russia faced a clash between the top national security institutions, which were trying to convince Putin to work with either the Yanukovych or the Yushchenko party.
This is when Oleh’s former university classmate, who joined the KGB after graduation, introduced him to the heads of the security service of Gazprom and NTV, Russia’s leading TV channel.
Shortly after, Oleh started flying to Moscow regularly to meet different people from Putin’s orbit, including his sports coaches, classmates, and oligarchs. For the following month and a half, they tried to portray him as a different, new leader and a “nice bloke” who didn’t want to rule forever. On leisurely strolls and over hearty dinners, these people tried their best to impress Oleh and erase any idea of President Putin being “a monster and a KGBist.”
In 2005, when protests succeeded and Yushchenko came to power, Russia offered to sell Ukraine cheap gas via the intermediary company RosUkrEnergo. At first, Oleh discussed the issue with Dmitriy Medvedev, then the head of Putin’s presidential administration.
It was something Oleh still cannot forget.
Contrary to the advice of ‘old’ Ukrainian politicians, he refused a pompous arrival and flew to meet Medvedev on a commercial flight. At the airport, Oleh was stunned by a delegation of FSB veterans waiting to lead him to an armored car. They told him that Vladimir Putin, as a former head of Russia’s Security Service, ‘valued’ them and considered Security Workers’ Day on December 20, also dubbed ‘Chekist Day,’ one of the most important holidays of the year. As the car moved along Moscow streets, the FSB officers made Oleh an outrageous proposal. They offered to establish a cutting-edge intelligence center in Ukraine in exchange for infiltrating their person into President Yushchenko’s office.
“I still don’t get what they were counting on,” Oleh said. “But this episode says a lot about the way they see us. They think they can treat us like this — like some barbarians.”
In October 2005, Oleh got invited to the Kremlin, where he expected additional pressure.
As he was strolling through Red Square a few hours before his evening flight home, Dmitriy Medvedev called Oleh out of the blue to say that Putin was expecting him in two hours at the Kremlin. Unlike visits by any Russian politicians to Ukraine, when they were surrounded by a buzzing swarm of Ukrainian oligarchs competing for their attention, this invitation came through an informal phone call. What Russian elites expected from Ukraine was full obedience.
When Oleh arrived, Medvedev led him through the Kremlin’s dark corridors, full of guards. On their way past Putin’s study, he discovered that the room once belonged to Joseph Stalin.
Finally, the two entered what Oleh called a “tea room.” The tea, indeed, was steaming on a little table surrounded by three armchairs. Right after everyone took their seats, Medvedev became another silent piece of furniture, while Putin turned to Oleh and asked:
“Selling your motherland, aren’t you?”
That was a blatant verbal attack, something that a former KGB agent would do to pull the rug out from under your feet. Luckily, Oleh quickly figured out that Putin meant Kryvorizhstal, one of the largest steel plants in Ukraine. Re-privatizing the state company was one of Yushchenko’s election pledges.
“Yes, I am, but it’ll be very expensive,” Oleh replied immediately, keeping his composure.
At some point, they were laughing about Viktor Yanukovych. The conversation went smoothly, and Putin looked fairly laid-back until Oleh tried to explain what launched the Orange Revolution.
Closely watching the protests on the Maidan, Putin witnessed his first defeat in Ukraine — the one he had no power to avert. At the height of the revolution, in December 2004, he urged the Ukrainian president to use force and crack down on the protesters. Leonid Kuchma flatly refused, saying he would never, even if he could.
Oleh remembers the scene well:
“As soon as I began telling [Putin] the truth, his facial expression changed completely. He grabbed my arm… and said, ‘Oleh, stop it, I can see you’re a smart lad. I know who was funding it all, where the money was coming from, how much, and who Soros and Americans paid. That’s it!’”
The meeting ended with Putin’s ultimatum: if Ukraine didn’t sign the RosUkrEnergo agreement, Russia would cut off its gas supplies.
Evidently trained to ‘read’ people, the president of Russia also knows how to pressure and manipulate them. As Oleh watched him go from his relaxed, approachable self to angry and demanding in the blink of an eye, the impression Putin worked so hard to create fell apart.
Oleh thinks his remarks about the Orange Revolution might have ruined the day, but Putin’s failure to understand what democracy was has saved Ukraine. His decisions to occupy Crimea in 2014, invade Donbas, and launch a full-scale war in 2022 stem from his expectations that guns always win and democracy can be bought and sold.
“He can’t grasp — he hates — and he is afraid of what today’s Ukraine is,” Oleh summarized.
Putin, with his extensive background in the security service, zero democratic elections on the record, and a habit of following Stalin’s footsteps on the way to his desk, surely is a creation of the world’s largest authoritarian system. On the other hand, this “little grey man,” Oleh says, can proudly call modern Russia, constantly dwelling on its Soviet past and making up enemies to defeat, his own brainchild.
Still, what was born during Putin’s reign won’t necessarily die with him.
“We mustn’t deceive ourselves into believing that after Putin’s death, Russia will change... 70 percent of Russian officials have close ties to the KGB, FSB, and oligarchs. This is not democratic state material,” Oleh believes. “Russia can only be stopped by force.”
In his opinion, Russia’s collapse is inevitable, but the West shouldn’t be afraid of it — the debris of Russia will not be as deadly for Europe as the debris of Shahed drones is now for Ukraine.
Kateryna Antonenko contributed to the reporting.
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NEWS OF THE DAY:
By Oleksandra Poda
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
205 UKRAINIAN POWS AND 528 BODIES OF FALLEN DEFENDERS RETURN HOME: On May 15, Russia and Ukraine swapped 205 prisoners of war each, as part of the three-day ceasefire agreement brokered by Trump. The released service members range in age from 21 to 62 and include soldiers, sergeants, and officers from the Ground Forces, Navy, Air Assault Forces, and defenders of Mariupol, Azovstal, and multiple front-line regions. Separately, Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the return of 528 bodies of fallen defenders as part of repatriation measures. The remains will undergo expert examination and identification.
Zelenskyy thanked the US and UAE for their mediation.
Ukraine has recovered approximately 18,500 bodies of its service members since February 24, 2022.
RUSSIAN MISSILES THAT KILLED 24 IN KYIV CONTAINED WESTERN COMPONENTS: Ukrainian sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk said fragments of Russian Kh-101 cruise missiles used in the May 14 strike on Kyiv, which killed 24 people including three children, revealed that the weapons were manufactured in 2026 with Western-made components.
According to Ukrainian officials, the missiles contained parts from major U.S. and European companies.
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE HAS COORDINATES AND SATELLITE IMAGES OF KYIV’S POLITICAL AND MILITARY SITES: Ukrainian intelligence obtained documents detailing Russian plans for new strikes on almost 2 dozen Ukraine’s decision-making centers. The materials included coordinates and satellite images of political and military sites in Kyiv, including the President’s Office and the state residence in Koncha Zaspa.
ZELENSKYY: RUSSIA MAY ATTACK UKRAINE OR NATO FROM BELARUS: On May 15, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine has obtained intel that Russian officials and Lukashenko held meetings, which aimed to persuade the Belarusian leader to support Russian operations militarily. According to Zelenskyy, Russia is considering attacking NATO territory or potentially Ukraine in the Chernihiv-Kyiv direction from Belarusian territory.
On Wednesday, Lukashenko announced new rotational mobilization of certain military units and military training protocols for the Belarusian military, the move was intended to “prepare them for war”. Zelenskyy instructed Ukrainian forces to strengthen forces in the north of the country near Belarus. Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, all sharing borders with Belarus, are particularly at risk. Both Lithuania and Latvia have reinforced their frontiers in response.
CAT OF CONFLICT:
Bibchik the cat cheers for Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Oleksandra
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It's so wild to hear Putin using the "Soros funds the protesters" line that US right-wing conspiracy theorists use!
Excellent article revealing insights into Putin's madness and hatred of Ukraine and their fight for freedom! THANK YOU!