September, 1998: Kremlin Insider Predicts ‘Massive Unrest’ to Journalist

Elena Tregubova with Tales of a Kremlin Digger. [Source: Publicity photo]According to journalist Elena Tregubova, Valentin Yumashev, the head of Russia’s Presidential Administration, tells her that secret police reports indicate that the country is on the verge of widespread unrest. In her 2003 book, Tales of a Kremlin Digger, which recounts her years as a member of the Kremlin press pool with access to top officials, Yumashev says to her off-the-record: “The fact is that we have received secret information from the special services that the country finds itself on the eve of mass rebellions, in essence on the verge of revolution… Believe me, the information concerns… secret reports that have been made to the president!” But Tregubova says that when she later discussed this information with Vladimir Putin, the then-head of the FSB (Russia’s intelligence agency), he denies it. “Yumashev could not have imagined that a mere three months later the existence of such ‘secret information’ would be categorically denied in a confidential chat with me by future president of Russia Putin, heading at that period of crisis the chief special service of the country.” According to Russia scholar John Dunlop, Yumashev’s claims suggest that he and other Kremlin figures were already thinking of a destabilization plan. Yumashev’s warning “sounds like advanced advertising for the ‘Storm in Moscow’ scenario”, writes Dunlop (see July 22, 1999). [Dunlop, 10/5/2004, pp. 16 ] Tregubova’s book, which has not been translated in English, is notorious for a scene in which Putin seems to try to seduce her during lunch at an expensive restaurant. (“I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to recruit me, or chat me up.”) Trebugova will loose her job shortly after the book is published. In 2004, a small bomb will explode near her apartment building as she is about to take a taxi. Unhurt but frightened, she will seek political asylum in Britain in 2007. [New York Times, 2/3/2004; Radio Free Europe, 4/8/2008]