The FRONTLINE Interviews:

The Putin Files

Our Sources. On the Record. At Your Fingertips.

Vladimir Putin photo by Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

FRONTLINE spent months reporting for the documentary Putin's Revenge, speaking with the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, diplomats, journalists, scholars and political insiders from Russia and the United States. In all, 56 sources spoke to us on camera. Now, in the inaugural installment of our Transparency Project, we're publishing the complete collection of these extended conversations. In "The Putin Files," explore the interviews using interactive features that enable you to navigate by theme or person, select and share any excerpt on social media, and dig deeper into annotated content about this still unfolding history.
About this project

Highlights

“The Russians have to be sitting back and looking at what they did and saying to themselves, 'This was pretty effective.'”

Jeh Johnson

Secretary of Homeland Security, 2013-17

“They just thought they were going to bloody Clinton’s nose; they didn’t expect to break her neck. They didn’t expect Trump to win.”

Julia Ioffe

The Atlantic

“I remember being on the schoolyards of New Jersey, when I grew up, and bullies try to intimidate, and they keep moving forward unless they get their nose bloodied a little bit.”

John Brennan

CIA Director, 2013-17

“He successfully calculated that the hammer would not come down on him in a critically painful way if he did things deniably, stealthily, if he probed and if he boiled the frog hotter and hotter...”

Victoria Nuland

U.S. ambassador to NATO, 2005-08

“I've seen a lot of bad stuff in my 50-plus years in intelligence—that really shook me, because of what this represented as an attempt to undermine the very pillars of our democracy.”

James Clapper

Director of National Intelligence, 2010-17

“He’s a professional liar. To lie is what he was taught in the Intelligence School.”

Yevgenia Albats

Russian journalist

Themes

Vladimir Putin's Early Life
Putin's Political Rise
Putin’s Vision for Russia in his First Term
Putin Consolidates Power in his Second Term
Putin Tests the Waters in Estonia and Georgia
The Reset and Arab Spring: Putin as Prime Minister
Putin Returns to the Presidency, Sparking Protests and a Crackdown
Putin Asserts Himself on the World Stage in his Third Term
Putin and Hybrid Warfare
Intervention in the U.S. Election
The U.S. Response to Russian Measures
Putin and Trump

Interviews

Yevgenia Albats
Russian journalist

Video
Daniel Baer
U.S. ambassador, OSCE, 2013-17

Text
Peter Baker
The New York Times

Video
John Beyrle
U.S. ambassador to Russia, 2008-12

Video
Antony Blinken
Obama adviser, 2009-15

Video
Irina Borogan
Co-author, "The Red Web"

Text
John Brennan
CIA Director, 2013-17

Video
William Burns
U.S. ambassador to Russia, 2005-08

Video
Massimo Calabresi
Time

Text
James Clapper
Director of National Intelligence, 2010-17

Video
James Collins
U.S. ambassador to Russia, 1997-2001

Text
Robert Costa
The Washington Post

Text
Michael Crowley
Politico

Text
Tikhon Dzyadko
Russian journalist

Text
Evelyn Farkas
Defense Department, 2009-15

Video
Jon Finer
Obama adviser, 2009-13

Video
Daniel Fried
National Security Council, 2001-05

Video
Masha Gessen
Author, "The Man Without a Face"

Video
Susan Glasser
Co-author, "Kremlin Rising"

Video
Sebastian Gorka
Deputy Assistant to the President, 2017

Text
Thomas Graham
National Security Council, 2002-07

Text
Lev Gudkov
Russian sociologist

Text
Gennady Gudkov
Opposition politician

Text
Stephen Hadley
National Security Adviser, 2005-09

Text
David Hoffman
The Washington Post

Video
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
President of Estonia, 2006-16

Text
Julia Ioffe
The Atlantic

Video
Jeh Johnson
Secretary of Homeland Security, 2013-17

Video
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Opposition politician

Video
Andrei Klimov
Russian Senate

Text
Masha Lipman
Russian journalist

Video
Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker

Video
Michael McFaul
U.S. ambassador to Russia, 2012-14

Video
Molly McKew
Adviser to former president of Georgia

Text
Alexander Mikhailov
Former KGB officer

Text
Greg Miller
The Washington Post

Text
Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post

Text
Victoria Nuland
U.S. ambassador to NATO, 2005-08

Video
Evan Osnos
The New Yorker

Text
Timothy O’Brien
Executive editor, Bloomberg View

Text
Gleb Pavlovsky
Former adviser to Vladimir Putin

Video
Nikolay Petrov
Russian political scientist

Text
Steven Pifer
U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, 1998-2000

Text
John Podesta
Clinton campaign chairman

Video
Vladimir Ryzhkov
Opposition politician

Video
David Sanger
The New York Times

Video
Adam Schiff
D-Calif.

Text
Ekaterina Schulmann
Russian political scientist

Video
Andrei Soldatov
Co-author, "The Red Web"

Video
Jake Sullivan
Chief policy adviser, Clinton campaign

Video
Strobe Talbott
Deputy Secretary of State, 1994-2001

Video
Celeste Wallander
Obama administration, 2009-17

Video
Ben Wittes
Editor-in-chief, Lawfare

Text
Jon Wolfsthal
Obama adviser, 2014-17

Video
Joshua Yaffa
The New Yorker

Video
Mikhail Zygar
Author, "All the Kremlin’s Men"

Video

Interviews for this series were conducted by Michael Kirk, Jim Gilmore, Mike Wiser and David Hoffman of the Kirk Documentary Group and edited for the web by Phil Bennett, Jason Breslow and Callie Wiser.

Design and build for "The Putin Files" by Chris Amico, Ly Chheng and Dan Nolan with assistance from Kimberly Patch. Video editing by Chad Ervin. Copy editing by Julie Wolf. Translations by Tatyana Gassel-Vozlinskaya.

Additional assistance from Dale Cohen, Miles Alvord, Kenzie Audette, Priyanka Boghani, Nicole Einbinder, Anna Kaul, Leila Miller, Lisa Palone and Brenna Verre.

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