RISING through the ranks of Russia’s elite and consolidating his power, Vladimir Putin weaponised sex and secrets to crush his political opponents.
The former KGB officer used underhanded espionage tactics to disgrace his enemies – a spying strategy called kompromat, experts told The Sun.
Putin has been at the top of power in Russia for more than 25 years[/caption]
He was propelled there in part by this sex tape – featuring his rival Yuri Skuratov[/caption]
Russia has released sex tapes on their enemies to destroy their lives and careers[/caption]
Putins’ enemy Mikhail Kasyanov was exposed in a sex tape in 2016[/caption]
The term, which translates roughly to “compromising material”, refers to damaging information obtained by a perpetrator to discredit or blackmail a victim.
These slanderous details can include “debt, sexual activity, gambling habits, drinking or anything else,” former British intelligence officer Philip Ingram told The Sun.
But the Kremlin also uses kompromat for control – only trusting those with “blotted copy books” and therefore “guaranteed loyalty”, Russian espionage expert Mark Harrison said.
He explained: “If I know, and you know, that you have some dirty secret in your past, you will always be loyal to me… because I can destroy you.”
Geopolitics expert Anthony Glees identified both uses of kompramat, before explaining how Putin has used the practice to “elbow out of the way those who could have been his rivals”.
The technique dates back to the 1930s under Joseph Stalin’s Soviet secret police – but the most notorious example unfolded in 1999 at the hands of tyrant-to-be Putin.
Once head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), a calculating Putin used a raunchy tape to curry favour with the then Russian President, Boris Yeltsin.
One of Yeltsin’s most prominent opponents – top prosecutor Yuri Skuratov – was probing the former president and his oligarch pals for corruption.
But one day, Skuratov’s efforts were suddenly torpedoed when a video tape emerged showing what appeared to be him in bed with two women – neither of which was his wife.
The grainy clip, titled Three in a Bed, was somehow leaked to state TV before it was broadcast to the masses.
The day after it aired, Putin appeared at a press conference, making it clear to everyone that Skuratov was the man in the video.
According to the book Putin’s People, former oligarch Sergei Pugachev said: “Putin spoke very coolly. He looked like a hero on TV.
“I thought, he looks good… We’ll make him president.”
Just months after the leak, Yeltsin – seemingly struck by Putin’s clever character assassination – named the promising Russian pawn Prime Minister.
And at the start of the new millennium, he was crowned President.
This instance of public shaming and was “what the Russians call black PR (public relations)”, Harrison said.
And Putin would have used it to “denigrate and undermine” his opposition.
Who is the real Vladimir Putin?
By Henry Holloway, Deputy Foreign Editor
VLADIMIR Putin was born to a poor family in Leningrad in the hardship of the post war Soviet Union living under the ruthless Joseph Stalin.
He was the third child of his parents Vladimir and Maria, who lost their two other children during World War 2.
His dad was a soldier, his mum was a factory worker and Putin, according to his teachers, was an unremarkable little boy who felt like he had something to prove.
Growing up, Vlad would take up martial arts and is said to have had a change in his character aged 11 – becoming antisocial and increasingly driven.
He would join the KGB in 1975 and work various jobs in the spy agency – including as an undercover agent – before turning to politics after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Vlad would quickly rise to power – and soon was the right-hand man of the president, Boris Yeltsin, before taking over from him on New Year’s Eve 1999 to lead Russia into the new Millenium.
And ever since Vlad has been at the top table, with four terms as President and one stint at Prime Minister.
Initially appearing to cosy up to the West, Putin shocked the world when he invaded Georgia in 2008 and again when he annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Belligerent and aggressive, Vlad was a man who openly viewed the collapse of the tyrannical Soviet Union – responsible for the deaths of up to 20million people – as a tragedy and who wanted to make Russia great again.
Putin became increasingly insular and unpredictable – being accused of interfering with Western politics, killing his enemies abroad, and propping up a ragtag group of rogue states in a tinpot empire.
And it has all culminated with the invasion of Ukraine – something which may be the final chapter of Vlad’s bloody and brutal story.
Meanwhile, Ingram said: “Putin relishes in good old fashioned intelligence techniques, and therefore he will relish in the use of kompromat as a way of control.”
“It’s standard playbook stuff from a human intelligence perspective.”
The deceptive method also “discredits politicians and the democratic political process in general, displaying them as corrupt”, Glees said.
“Sex, first and foremost, and money – these are the things that Putin has used to have power over people,” he explained.
Kompromat has since become “bread and butter stuff” for Putin’s Russia, with examples unfolding in and outside of its borders.
In 2010, a part-time model called Mumu was known to become intimate with opposition figures and journalists before luring them to her flat.
Videos of her with taking part in sexual activities or drug-related antics with them were then posted online.
And in 2016, state-run TV aired footage of opposition leader and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in bed with his personal assistant.
The sleaze crippled Kasyanov’s political campaign, and came just five months before Russian parliamentary elections.
Russian intelligence services have an “eagle eye” for figures like Kasyanov who are “on the way up”, according to Glees.
“If you identify people who are on the way up, then you can
disable them and get rid of them without necessarily having to kill them,” he said.
Outside of Russia, Turkey’s opposition has accused Putin of interfering with elections by spreading deepfakes and conspiracies of a sex tape involving presidential candidate Muharrem İnce in 2023.
Putin was an unremarkable but driven young man who loved martial arts[/caption]
He set about cultivating an image as the world’s tough guy – including hilarious photo ops[/caption]
Meanwhile, a British diplomat in Yekaterinburg was forced to resign in 2009 after footage of him allegedly showed an encounter with two prostitutes.
Ingram explained: “The ultimate bits of kompromat are where people are deliberately set up.
“When individuals that are on the target list visit Russia… it’s not unusual that hotel rooms are bugged with video cameras and audio recording devices.”
By the time Putin was using kompromat to destroy his enemies in Russia, he was already “at home with this kind of operation”, Harrison said.
The KGB officer had used frequently the ploy outside of Russia when working in East Germany to destroy political opponents.
Harrison also explained how the spying technique changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eventual rise of Putin.
He revealed how Soviet kompromat was more secretive – with elites using “dirt” they had on figures to blackmail and then promote them into positions of influence.
“People were promoted despite the fact that they had blotted their copy books… because it meant that they could be guaranteed loyal,” Harrison said.
“There’s what is released, and there’s what is held back… and what is held back is a very powerful threat.”
But he explained that after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, “secrecy kind of broke down”.
He said: “Everything could be published, so instead, a new use was found for kompromat, which was to publish dirty information.
“Every time a sex tape is released, someone is prosecuted for tax avoidance… it’s also warning to everyone in Putin’s circle – this can happen to you.”
Harrison also suggested the Kremlin‘s kompromat would “continue to be one of the fundamental mechanisms for a long time to come”.
The practice has already been part of Russian political life for the last 100 years, he added.
As Putin continues to solidify power, he has a “number of levers to exploit in order to get rid of potential opponents”, Glees added.
He said: “Certainly kompromat will be high on the list.”
And he attributed Putin’s shameless shady tactics to the tyrant’s “unslakeable thirst for power in Russia”.
