Kremlin creature master’s dripped e-mails are expense of go back to political frontline

Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected the email account as a fake, saying Surkov never use email. The hacked emails, however, do not purport to be from Surkovs personal account, but from an account run by an aide. It received messages for Surkov which were presumably then passed on. While “there hasnt” guarantee some of the mails have not been doctored in some manner before release, much of it appears to be genuine. The hackers released photographs of the passports of Surkov and his children, apparently as further proof the hack was real.

Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, said: Its not impossible, but unlikely that Ukrainian hackers would be able to break into Surkovs government email account and download a huge collect of files from 2014. Given that the Americans have been hinting at a response, I cannot help but wonder if this was a US government shot across Putins prows, a warning that it also has the capability to intrude and embarrass and a willingness to use it if Russia persists.

Galeotti said it was possible Ukrainian proxies had been used to cover the tracks. This could explain why the 2014 emails were released alongside what looked like a petroleum forgery, supposedly a current Kremlin plan to destabilise Ukraine.

Surkov is a unique character in Putins Kremlin. Unlike many of the yes men and former security officials who surround the Russian president, he first came to prominence as a marketing man for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who would later be jailed for a decade. In 1999, he moved to the Kremlin. He almost never dedicates interviews, and has been shrouded in mystery over the years.

During Putins first decade, Surkov was known for coordinating the matrix of Russian politics, cultivating fake opposition parties and funding pro-Kremlin youth groups. He personally curated what was allowed on to Russias television screens, and was seen as the architect of post-truth politics where facts are relative, a version of which some have suggested has now taken hold in the west.

In 2011, a Russian photographer released an extraordinary photo essay from Surkovs Kremlin office, exposing that he had portraits of, among others, Che Guevara, Barack Obama and Tupac Shakur. He also had a bank of old-school white telephones with dozens of buttons bearing the surnames of the most powerful people in Russia.

He usually wears a faint, knowing smile and there is just a clue of Mr Bean about his appearance. While he wears sharp suits in the Kremlin, he will occasionally appear on his wifes Instagram feed wearing edgy attires that say contemporary artist more than Kremlin apparatchik.

He likes writing and verse; he guesses in a non-standard route. He has a rounded personality that despite his abstract modes of believing is very capable of tackling serious state tasks, said one source who has worked closely with Surkov.

Surkov is widely believed to be the real author behind the pen name Natan Dubovitsky, who has written a postmodern fiction and a number of short narratives. In March 2014, a short story attributed to Dubovitsky called Without Sky was published, set in an imaginary future where the planet was engulfed in world war five; the first non-linear war.

One passage read: The simple-hearted commanders of the past strove for victory; now, they were not so stupid. Of course, some of them acted like before and tried to retrieve the old worn-out mottoes, like Victory will be ours. Sometimes it worked. But largely, they understood war as a process; part of a process, its most acute phase, but maybe not its most important phase.

Less than a week after the story was published, the annexation of Crimea was completed.

Surkovs initial fall from grace is coming in 2011, when the Russian elite was divided between those who wanted to see the relatively liberal Dmitry Medvedev stay in the Kremlin for a second term, and those who wanted Putin to return. In an uncharacteristic blunder, Surkov backed the wrong horse, and let it be known in elite circles that he was firmly in the camp that wanted to see Medvedev given the chance for another term.

When Putin came back, Surkov was edged out, and after a period as deputy prime minister, seemed to be a spent force. He later returned, but was put in charge of relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Russian protectorates basically annexed from Georgia. It was scarcely a glamour job, and was a spectacular step down from directing the entire Russian domestic political scene.

But as Russia was drawn into a clandestine war in eastern Ukraine, Surkov has gradually risen to a position of prominence again; both his experience in managing relations with the Georgian protectorates and his talent for intrigue and subterfuge made him the perfect person to run the Kremlins relations with the peoples republics that sprang up in eastern Ukraine and were essentially coordinated from Moscow.

Surkov has still not been commented on this weeks hack. When he was put on the US sanctions listing for his role in the Ukraine events back in 2014, he likened it to getting an Oscar for best supporting actor and said it attained him happy. The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock. I dont need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing, he said.

He was also placed on the EU sanctions list, although Time magazine reported he was spotted at an Orthodox monastery in Greece earlier this year, and he then popped up very publicly alongside Putin in Berlin.

I am too odious a person for this brave new world, said Surkov, with characteristic irony and ambiguity, back in 2011 when he was removed from his post in the presidential administration.

Now, it seems he fits right in again.