The Kremlin’s reporter

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1:16Estás escuchando The Fifth Floor. The Fifth Floor, ¿idí o nos? ¿Vísim le calo? Tomiha ektai The Fifth Floor, Farnak Amidi Sobat. This is The Fifth Floor, at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farhanak Amidi.

1:42Russian President Vladimir Putin is known to be an elusive leader. Getting access to him is incredibly difficult, especially for a journalist. There is only one journalist who seems to have real and regular access to Putin, and it is through his reporting that many people around the world learn about the Russian leader. He is called Pavel Zarubin, and he is known for his unique access to Putin and his extremely flattering coverage. Elizaveta Fort of BBC Russian has been looking into the Kremlin's favorite reporter and joins me today to tell me more about him. Lisa, as always, welcome to the fifth floor.

2:26Hi, thank you for having me. Lisa, Pavel Zarubin, he first came to people's attention on a TV program or a segment called Moscow Kremlin Putin. When did that happen? So the show first aired in the autumn of 2018, seven years ago, And it was a period when Russian leader of Lebanon Putin's approval rating was plummeting, most of all because of a highly unpopular move to raise the age of retirement. There were protests across the country and people were really unhappy with this decision. And by that time, Russian state TV had really pretty much become what it is now with the endless stream of political talk shows praising the Russian government and Putin and censoring any unappealing information.

3:19But the Kremlin and the management of Russia One channel, the biggest state-run channel in Russia, came up with this idea of the show that was going to be completely focused on the Russian president and what he was up to. And Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most prominent TV personalities in Russia and the face of modern Russian propaganda, was commissioned to host the show. But he still needed someone who was going to work on the ground and follow Putin everywhere like a shadow. And this role was given to Pavel Zarubin, who back then was not a very famous reporter from Putin's presidential pool.

4:00Alisa, when you talk about the Kremlin pool, what does that exactly mean? There's a group of journalists accredited by the Kremlin who are covering Putin's events, who are following him, flying with him on foreign trips, who go with him to sometimes maybe even to his plane, etc, etc. Essentially, reporters who are focused on covering the Kremlin. For preparation for this interview, I was looking at some of the clips from Zadubin's program, And you see a lot of videos of Putin doing different stuff with men surrounding him and a camera following him. But what kind of topics does this program Moscow Kremlin Putin cover?

4:47So the best way to describe this show would be to call it Putin's diary or vlog for the sake of our younger listeners. And essentially, the show guides us through all the events that Putin has had during the week. And all of that we see through very keen Zorubin Zeiss, who seems to admire Putin as much as it's humanly possible. What stands out is his attention to every tiny little detail of the Kremlin protocol and Putin's life. Zarubin will show his viewers the inside of Putin's limo. He will describe the furniture in estate halls or the color of the files on Putin's desk. He notices things that other people probably won't even pay attention to, like a black cat not daring to cross Putin's way or, I don't know, selection of snacks for journalists at the Anchorage military base where Putin met Donald Trump last August.

5:46And then, of course, everything that has to do with Putin himself, Russian president catching a pencil or fixing a watch strip while listening to speeches. That's all very important if you Pavel Zarubin. And of course, every once in a while, Zarubin will talk to Putin himself or other officials and no other journalist in Russia can even dream of this level of access. It's completely unprecedented. But of course, he's always very complimentary, never asks any tough questions. And critics, of course, have long mocked him, his tone, comparing his extremely softball style to that of North Korean media.

6:23What I find particularly important here is that by flattering Putin, by focusing on all these tiny little details, Rubin leads his audience from the questions that are really important. What are Putin's policies? Why is he doing what he's doing or how the decisions are made, etc. So all these events that he's covering are just a background that is there for Putin to shine. And everything else, the meaning of it, it's just not important. So it basically gives an illusion to people that they know everything about the president. But do you really? Precisely. Precisely. So how did Zarubin get into journalism?

7:08And was he always this kind of journalist? No, he wasn't. And I think through his career path, you can essentially see the history of Russian journalism, or at least TV journalism, of the last 25 years. Because Zarubin was born in the Republic of Bashkartostan, which borders Kazakhstan, in a tiny town, into a family of metal workers. And he wanted to become a journalist and went to university in Yekaterinburg, which is the fourth largest city in Russia. And back then in the early 2000s, when he started, Russia still had a very competitive, interesting TV market where newsrooms still enjoyed relative freedoms.

7:48And journalists could speak the truth about what was happening in the country. And his colleagues and friends from this time remember him as a very serious and driven journalist. One of them told us that he didn't speak, but rather delivered a speech every time and that he would operate other reporters at parties if he believed that their work was biased. And another colleague remembers his support for NTV, which was the biggest independent television station that came under new management during Putin's first term as president. A very important event in modern Russian history. And journalists at NTV pushed back against the pro-Kremlin takeover.

8:30And colleagues all over across Russia, including in Yekterenburg, where Zorobin lived, organized actions in their support. And one day a collective of Yekaterinburg journalists, whom Zarubin knew personally, decided to drop their support for NTV. And Zarubin cried when he heard about this, according to one former colleague. This is how much he believed in values. He was essentially a young idealist. But in 2003, he arrived in Moscow as an intern for VKDRK, this big state-run media company, after winning a media award. And colleagues there describe him as very diligent, but non-confrontational, differential to editors, traits that would later take him to the top and that were necessary for young journalists to stay in Moscow.

9:22And very soon after his arrival, he joined the Kremlin pool because he wanted to cover those topics, to talk to officials. And he never left. And pressure on the media has been rising all over through his career. And he seems to have made peace with it. He was going to play by the rules, not defy his editors or indeed the Kremlin, and eventually turn into one of the most famous journalists. And you talked about the Kremlin pool. You actually spoke to some of the people who worked with him while he was in the Kremlin pool of journalists, the journalists that covered presidential events. What did he tell you about him when he was in that pool?

10:02if I'm completely honest no one could remember a single remarkable fact about him at least before he started hosting this show because now obviously everyone follows him and quotes him all the time in his show because of this unprecedented access that he has people remember him as someone who was very polite didn't talk much about anything other than his work always in a suit kind inventive when it came to formats or, again, attention to details. That was a trade that he always had as a journalist. And it is important for a TV journalist to be able to notice all those little things. Didn't drink during work trips, which is rare in our line of work, I guess, for many journalists.

10:45But essentially not the brightest or the most interesting journalist. And one of the journalists said that in those years, Zarubin didn't necessarily like Putin as much as he clearly does. Now, for example, joke about Putin's famous lateness as they waited for him for yet another stretch of several hours. But at the same time, there came a period, a time around 2011, when Putin started his third term, when people noticed that it was expected of journalists, especially people who worked for state-run media, not just to cover stories, but to defend Russian national interests, to act like they're soldiers.

11:28And Zarubin clearly obliged. And it was in 2015 that he's made a name for himself and actually started getting attention. And that was because he seemed to get into altercations with high profile people. Can you tell us about those a little? Yes, I think that was the first time that people actually heard his name. Still, he wasn't very famous, but there were two important episodes in his career. So in 2015, at the Minsk talks between Vladimir Putin and Poroshenko and Angela Merkel, it was a very high profile meeting, very important. The war in Ukraine just started there and they tried to negotiate some kind of solution.

12:12So he was there as part of Putin's presidential pool. And at some point, he started shouting at Petro Poroshenko, who was back then Ukrainian president, asking him about bombing civilians and kids. And he was actually escorted out of the event. And some colleagues who saw that thought that was unusual because Russian journalists wouldn't usually even people who worked back then at state run TV stations. They wouldn't shout questions at officials. They wouldn't try to send out like that. That was something new. But he did it. And the next year, in 2016, Lithuania expelled him and his crew after they tried to enter a big Russian opposition forum without accreditation.

12:56And Zarubin's group there got into a spat with a chess player and famous Russian opposition figure Garry Kasparov. And obviously for his editors and probably the Kremlin officials, that looked like a demonstration of loyalty. And loyalty is a very important trait if you want to succeed in the Russian system. And it was during the pandemic that he seemed to parachute into this first position journalist for Putin. What happened back then? So during the pandemic, getting to Putin just became more and more difficult because people around him really wanted to keep him from getting infected. Putin was obsessed with this.

13:40And by that time, he already became a person who wasn't especially keen to talk to journalists. But COVID essentially put a wall between him and the press. And Zarubin essentially went into a lockdown. It would spell months self-isolating just to be able to follow Vladimir Putin, which cemented his position as the only journalist who has this constant access to Vladimir Putin. Another show of loyalty, basically. Essentially, essentially, yes. I wonder how his family took it because he's married, he has two kids. But yes, he decided to again, spend weeks and months self-isolating, just to be able to do his show, Moscow Kremlin Putin.

14:26And it does seem like he has a quite a friendly and close relationship with Putin. Do we know anything about that? Putin definitely knows his name. Sometimes he makes little jokes about him. He addresses Zarubin using his nickname, Pasha, which essentially shows you that Putin treats him not as a serious reporter or journalist, but rather his employee in a way. And actually, many other journalists also essentially describe him as just another person working for the Kremlin press service. Some of them are really annoyed because they have to check his Telegram channel, which, by the way, has more than 500 ,000 followers.

15:10And everyone, including myself, because I cover those stories, will follow it because he's the only one who has this access. And every once in a while, he will publish those clips of him talking to important officials or showing, I don't know, American envoy Stiff Whitcoff arriving in Moscow. Those are all very important stories. And he's the only one there on the ground to cover them. And as I said, Putin definitely, they chat sometime, Putin laughs. And I guess for many people in the system, that's a sign that Putin actually likes him. And it is important. But this is not a typical relationship between a newsmaker and a reporter where there's some respect, there are boundaries, and everyone understands that reporter is there to ask those tough questions, to speak truth to power.

16:01Zarubin is not there for that. And Putin knows that. And essentially, you can see it. There was an interesting episode in May, when Rubin filmed this documentary for the 25th anniversary of when Putin first came to power, and Putin invited him to his flat in the Kremlin, and hosted him there and offered him a glass of kefir and some honey. And it looked slightly awkward, if I'm completely honest.

16:33Sarubin's there. He's just, he looks like a student who's like scared, but also is in awe of this professor or teacher of his, which is, again, like kindly unusual when you think about the typical relationship between politicians and journalists, but this is the place that Zarubin holds in the system right now. And Zarubin has also had a front row seat in some huge geopolitical moments. He was present whilst Putin was meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and was reporting. At first, I thought maybe he was reporting from the table of negotiations, but he was actually reporting from under the table?

17:16Almost from under the table. There's a little clip of him whispering because the talks, they've already started. So he's whispering from the foot of the table saying that this is a very important moment, everyone's following it. The negotiations started and then, as expected, there will be a big number of important documents. He is in the room when the talks have already started And we can only imagine how did the Russian delegation explain this to their North Korean counterparts? Like, why is this person in the room? What is his role? But yes, he's present at all those very important events. He went with Putin to China.

17:57He had this really long four-day visit to China this September. And of course, he covered the summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska in great many details. So, yes, he's always there with Vladimir Putin, even if sometimes it requires whispering into his like tiny little mic from the foot of the negotiating table. Lisa, do you think that Zerubin's unique access could translate into influence, actual influence in policies? I guess not influence in policies, but again, he's already a very influential figure in the Russian media. He has 500 ,000 people following his Telegram channel. But we know for a fact that some officials, for instance, the governor of his home region of Bashkartostan, they're in touch with him all the time.

18:50They know that he is very close to Putin. And for those people, just this close proximity is already important. Of course, Zerubin is not influential when you compare him to some Russian oligarchs or top officials who see Putin all the time and talk to them and discuss policies. And I think if you need to compare him to someone in Putin's circles, you would think of drivers, aides, people helping him with the schedule. This is his role. But still, he is very close to Putin. And when you know someone who's that close and you can call this person and just ask this, like, how's boss today? What is his mood?

19:27What's he's up to? That's already very important and gives you a certain degree of influence without any doubts. That was Lisa Ford of BBC Russian. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. We focus on the part of the Internet that most people don't know about. It's called the dark web. Undercover in the furthest corners of the dark web. US special agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse. Move in now. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web follows their shocking investigations. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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20:45This is The Fifth Floor and I'm Farah Naikamidi. Sana Mir is one of the most famous cricketers in Pakistan. She captained the Pakistani team 137 times and played for her country 226 times. And she's recently been inducted into the International Cricket Council's Hall of Fame. But despite this huge success in her sport, being a woman in cricket in Pakistan isn't always easy. Nazish Faiz of BBC Urdu recently interviewed her and Nazish joins me now. So Nazish, before we start talking about our cricket star, Sanomir, from what I gather, you are a cricket fan and you also play cricket. When I was little, I really loved to play cricket and other sports.

21:34And in my school, college and in university, I played cricket, football, then basketball. But when my mother saw that my colours started fading, she said, no, you cannot play this. Being a girl in Pakistan, no. Full stop. I couldn't pursue it. So I started watching the female cricketers around the world. And then I saw the female cricketer, a very well-known tsunami. She was captain of Pakistan team back then. Women's cricket in Pakistan, if I say, grown significantly. although it started with many challenges like limited resources and social barriers. Just the way I told you that my mother said, no, you cannot pursue this game because it's not good for girls.

22:16But the Pakistani team has gradually gained recognition both nationally and internationally. And today when we see more young girls aspiring to play cricket professionally and Pakistan Cricket Board also have started investing more in women's cricket. However, there's still a long way to go to achieve equal sport and visibility as compared to men's cricket. So tell us about Sana Mir. What is her background and what is her story? How did she get into cricket? Let me tell you, Sana grew up in Aptabad, which is a north side of Islamabad. She started playing cricket informally with boys in her neighborhood streets from a very young age.

22:57She showed great enthusiasm and talent for the game, even though cricket was not commonly played by girls there. But she showed that passion to her parents, to her siblings. Her mother initially wanted her to just focus on her studies and did not support her playing cricket, which was literally heartbroken for Sana as well. But despite this, she continued to pursue sports, playing various games, just like me, during her college years. But she said that one day her mother bought her a brochure announcing trials for Pakistan women cricket team and encouraged her to try out because it was for women.

23:31And there was a mindset that if there's a girls team, you can play it. So that's how it started. And from there, her professional cricket career begins. Did you watch her matches? And how was she to watch? Is she exciting to watch? Yes, absolutely. I watched her quite a bit. So Sana Amir played for Pakistan national team for around 15 years. She was not only a brilliant all-rounder, but the first Pakistani woman to be ranked as a number one baller in the ICC bowling ranking, which was a huge achievement. Her bowling was particularly strong, often turning matches into Pakistan favorite. So watching her captain the team with confidence and calm was like inspiring.

24:12And her passion and grit made her very exciting to watch. I don't really know much about cricket, but for instance, with women's football, a few years ago, I don't know, 10 years ago, everybody was, ah, who watches women's football? But nowadays, you see even men watch it and stadiums get filled with fans. What about women's cricket? Are men watching it as well? the mindset has started changing in Pakistan. It was a time when there was no female crowd in cricket matches, even its male matches. I cannot say it's completely changed, but it's changing. And these are the, Sana Meaz is setting an example.

24:47Her achievement is, it's like inspiring, kind of inspiration for other women. So yes, we can say that there are a lot of men sitting in the program and talking about the female cricketers, how they are playing, how they are doing, how they're doing the bowling, how they're doing the batting. So yeah, the mindset is quite changing now. and these shows are like example of these. And of course, we talked about her as an accomplished athlete, but she's always been vocal about how attitudes towards women in sports need to change as well. I think Sana Mir has a very bold personality. She spoke openly about social pressure around women athletes and the pressure they face not only in Pakistan but around the world.

25:31For example, she highlighted how advertisements sometimes send problematic messages. She once mentioned a hair removal cream and where a girl was excluded from playing basketball just because she had hair on her arms, suggesting that women need to change their appearance to be accepted. So Sana argued instead that confidence and talent should matter, not confirming to such beauty standard. I was interviewing her. she told me that in our matches, we didn't focus on our appearance, how we are looking, that we should have a certain kind of hair, we should have certain kind of color. She said we just focused on our game.

26:06And that's something that I want to tell every woman, that your appearance doesn't define you. It's your passion, your career, your achievements are something that defines you. Absolutely. And she retired in 2020. But recently, she was inducted into the International Cricket Council's Hall of Fame. Tell me about this. How big of a deal is this? This is an incredible big deal, I think. So for both for Sana Amir personally and for the women's cricket in Pakistan and being inducted into International Institute of Cricket's Hall of Fame is one of the highest honors a cricketer can receive globally.

26:42And being a woman, this honor not only celebrates her exceptional career, but I think her achievement also shines a spotlight on women's cricket in Pakistan, encouraging more sport and recognition of female athletes. I think it's a powerful symbol that Pakistan women can reach the highest level of sporting excellence and can be celebrated worldwide. Her induction serves as an inspiration for young girls across the country to dream big and pursue cricket professionally. And she said not only in the field of cricket, it's the inspiration for every girl who is sitting in the house that whatever they are dreaming of, they can do it.

27:19She is an example for every woman out there in Pakistan and around the world. As you mentioned, you were able to interview Sanomir for BBC Urdu. Nazesh, tell me, how was it like for you to interview this cricket star? And did you fangirl her? Absolutely, I was fangirling. Just growing up, seeing her journey being a cricketer. And that was an incredible feeling to interview that person you've been watching for quite a long time. And interviewing Sana was inspiring and insightful, actually. She was very candid about her journey, especially the challenges she faced. Also, she mentioned that there has been significant progress, but there are challenges that still exist.