Putin Welcomes Kissinger: ‘Old Friends’ to Talk Shop

Just before the turn of the millennium, a flint-eyed professional spy gave a hesitant performance on Russian TV. Clearly more accustomed to life in the shadows, his gaze flickered nervously as a brusque female interviewer stated: “The President sees you as his successor.”
Vladimir Putin bashfully replied: “If the President said so, it would be ungracious to disagree.” A few weeks later, this relatively obscure figure was catapulted into the Russian presidency after Boris Yeltsin’s shambolic rule.
This sequence, drawing a vivid contrast between the unassuming early Putin and the Tsar-like figure we see today, provided a striking opening for Putin, Russia and the West, a new BBC Two documentary on Russia’s leader. This four-part series could serve as “Exhibit A” for the theory that nothing beats real life when it comes to drama and intrigue. It tells how Putin achieved political dominance by guile, ruthlessness and icy resolve.


Mr. Peskov said Mr. Kissinger requested the meeting in late November or early December. The two men are “old friends” who have met 8 or 10 times over the years, once dining at Mr. Kissinger’s home in New York, he said. Mr. Peskov said Mr. Putin was interested in Mr. Kissinger’s counsel about domestic politics, among other subjects.


“He values everyone’s point of view, and especially such a wise man as Henry Kissinger,” Mr. Peskov said.


The meeting comes six weeks before Russia’s presidential election and amid accusations that the United States was behind a series of street protests that began after Dec. 4 parliamentary elections that were widely dismissed as fraudulent.


On Tuesday, a report on state-controlled television accused the new American ambassador, Michael A. McFaul, of working to provoke revolution. Russian camera crews had followed human rights activists and opposition politicians invited to the American Embassy for meetings with Mr. McFaul and a visiting deputy secretary of state, and the images were broadcast on the evening news.


The episode “clearly does require mature adults to have a serious conversation so that this incident does not interfere with foreign policy priorities,” said Dimitri K. Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, a policy research group based in Washington. “Whatever was planned when this meeting was originally requested and approved, what happened this Tuesday makes it particularly important.”


On Thursday, Mr. Kissinger met with Mr. McFaul, the ambassador wrote on his blog. The former secretary of state, he added, “is back in Moscow to continue the kind of strategic dialogue with the Russian government that is so important to our partnership.”


Mr. Putin has cited Mr. Kissinger as a trusted foreign policy adviser. In the book “First Person,” Mr. Putin admiringly recalled a conversation in the early 1990s when, as an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin was asked to pick up Mr. Kissinger at the airport.


Mr. Kissinger made a strong impression by saying that he, too, had gotten his start in intelligence, and that he felt Mikhail S. Gorbachev had been too hasty in withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern Europe.