Korzhakov confided that Yeltsin offered him to kill Khasbulatov and Rutsky

He said that the first president of Russia was psychopathic and suicidal, admitted that Yeltsin offered to "finish off" Khasbulatov and Rutskoy and beat his wife Naina. Korzhakov also revealed the circumstances of Boris Berezovsky's death.

About Yeltsin's tendency to suicide

He was generally suicidal. It's the character, the psyche. Let's say you can't make me hang myself or shoot myself. And he could go crazy, and shoot himself, and lock himself up. He didn't hang himself, but he shot himself. Yeltsin once decided to make another scene when under [Viktor] Ilyushin, [Mikhail] Barsukov and in front of me, he took out a gun and kept pretending that he would shoot himself. He didn't pull the trigger because, as I understood it, he didn't even know how to use it. He had a different reason every time... That's his psychopathy.

About resentment against Yeltsin

I was actually offended by only one Yeltsin. It was he who chose, it was he who chose either me, or Chubais, or Berezovsky, whoever... This is him together, together with his family. I would regret the years that were spent on this man, and, in general, no one expected such betrayal from him. Even my wife then, Irina Semyonovna, said that when she saw this smile of Judas when he announced my resignation, she realized that we would never deal with this family.

And even when he died and a lot of people called me, "how is it necessary, forgive him, go", I said, "No." For me, he died and what is his, to forgive is not to forgive. It is well said about this that I have forgiven, but in fact hardly anyone forgives, especially betrayal. In fact, we were impaled for betrayal.

About how Yeltsin beat his wife Naina

Berezovsky, he had an influence on Tanya completely, and Tanya had an influence on Yeltsin, because he no longer trusted anyone. He could send Naina whenever he wanted, give her in the eye... A couple of times I gave her so much that she wore dark glasses for two weeks.

About how Yeltsin wanted to eliminate Khasbulatov and Rutsky

Everyone has already forgotten about the events of 1993, and then Russia was on the threshold, 50-50: either we go back to the USSR, or we go forward. No one knew which way, but something had to be done...And Yeltsin asked me to create a mini-KGB type of security Service on the basis of our Security Service, so that there would be a reliable service that he would trust and to which he could assign various tasks, including not very convenient ones. As, for example, he told me that it would be better if I killed Khasbulatov and Rutskoy. I really had the pistol off the safety and the cartridge in the chamber, my hand in my pocket, the pistol was ready to put them on the spot in my pocket. But it was impossible to do this because they were surrounded by deputies. There would not have been these courts later. He wanted so much to cum, and that was it.

About Yeltsin's unwillingness to participate in the 1996 elections

He talked about it every day... I finally told him, "Whatever decision you make, that's what will happen..." And in general I was against it, because I saw who we were choosing. He had already had five heart attacks by this time. Five heart attacks! Where are you going?

But this family... They wanted [Boris] Nemtsov and [Gennady] Burbulis there, they thought who to make a successor. At one time, even when the vice president was chosen, they thought who to do. As for Nemtsov, it was generally Burbulis' idea that it was necessary to raise young politicians in advance so that there would be heirs.

That he became "his own" for Yeltsin in "someone else's Moscow"

He began to treat me very well after he began to assign me a lot of such work... Moscow was a stranger to him, and everything was alien to him, this whole hill he came to, they were all traitors to him. And it was necessary to have their own people... So I probably approached him as my own person.

When he began to instruct me to pick up the points that he needed, where there was disorder, and so that we would arrive there unexpectedly for the Moscow leadership, which is below him, and then he would have something to sort out, yes, I did it. I picked up stores for him, picked up points for him, told him, answered frankly that I didn't like it. He said that he had fixed everything there in Sverdlovsk, everything was fine with him, everything was fine, there was no corruption, so people lived very well, life was worse in Moscow.

About removal from office

I brought him [Yeltsin] the next documents with proof that the election headquarters is being stolen. And he was not in the mood and said: "Well, why are you always telling me this shit, my God? Catch the hand of these thieves who are stealing there!" I received the task. On the same night, we installed a camera in the office of (Deputy Finance Minister — RTVI) Herman Kuznetsov. The next day Evstafyev and Lisovsky came to him — as I later called them, "sherpas" from Chubais. They took 538 thousand, Kuznetsov gave them, and got caught at the exit with this money. We held them until almost 4 a.m., interrogated them. Interrogated officially. The security service of the president had no right to deal with the investigation, so Trofimov, the deputy director of the FSB for the investigation, immediately arrived. He supervised the investigation, all this was carried out under the camera.

After all this was documented, they tried to call Yeltsin all night, but they did raise it, although I did not advise it. Tanka (Boris Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana Yumasheva — RTVI note) especially... And so he doesn't sleep a damn thing, he must be woken up necessarily and interrupted sleep, at a time when he is already all sick, in heart attacks? She woke him up anyway. Then Yeltsin assembled the Security Council. Before the Security Council, he had Chubais, I was told that even [deputy head of the All-Russian Presidential Election Headquarters Sergey] Filatov visited him. Chubais gave him an ultimatum — so they say, I do not know if it was or was not — that "if you do not remove [Korzhakov from office], then we will lay everything out, and everyone will know where the money comes from, where everything comes from." I never in my life thought that the man with whom we were together, together against the whole USSR, and he betrayed me after that... And when he announced that he was filming me, he smiled. My wife said that it was Judas's smile when he said that "I made the decision that I was removing Soskovets, Barsukov (paused, smiled and said) and Korzhakov from office."

On June 19, 1996, by order of Alexander Korzhakov and Mikhail Barsukov, SBP officers detained members of Yeltsin's campaign headquarters Arkady Evstafyev and Sergei Lisovsky at the exit of the Government House with $500 thousand in cash in a cardboard box from under Xerox paper. Journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov said on NTV that the detention of Lisovsky and Evstafyev "is provocative", and "the country is on the verge of a political catastrophe." The next day, Anatoly Chubais called the actions of the SBP "the final stage of a long and difficult struggle between the part of the Yeltsin administration that worked to win the democratic elections and the part that proposed a forceful change of power." On June 20, 1996, Yeltsin dismissed Korzhakov, as well as FSB Director Mikhail Barsukov and First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets.

About how he and Yeltsin swore on blood

We fraternized with him twice. In Yakutia, when we were on a candidate's trip to the presidency, it was 57 degrees below zero, the mayor of Yakutsk Borodin invited to the bath. It's so cold outside — it's a pleasure to go to the sauna. In the bathhouse, he was presented with a Yakut knife. And he was a fan of making such jokes that, thank God, he did not stab someone sharply, but only slash with a knife, but with the back side. A person thinks that they want to cut him, gets scared, especially he liked to scare women like that. When they gave it to him, I was sitting next to him, and the first thing he did was slash me with the back side. I didn't move. And he said to me, "Well, aren't you afraid?" I say, "I'm not afraid." Then he took me for real... Until now, his cut remained. Naturally, the blood spurted out like a fountain.

And he had to somehow portray himself, and we were not alone with him, we were decent there: both our Moscow delegation and the mayor, who presented the knife. It was necessary to show himself somehow, he says: "Let's fraternize then, since there is blood. Cut me now! Cut me! Now we will fraternize with blood." We haven't been so close with him yet, well, since he decided so — okay, good. Then a couple of years later he forgot that he was fraternizing, and suddenly in the presidential club, he was already "warm", he had a knife in his hands: "Let's fraternize." "Yes," I say, "you cut me." — "No, let's do it again!" — "Well, let's do it again." Because he drunkenly even forgot that we fraternized with him, and fraternizing twice is already... Maybe that's why he betrayed me, that twice is no longer fraternization.

About readiness to go to prison after dismissal

Everyone thinks, "Yeltsin and Korzhakov were close." On June 20, 1996, our paths parted. And the fact that he is credited with what he did wrong for Russia — it was mostly after June 20, 1996. I had nothing to do with it anymore. Moreover, they really wanted to put me in jail, and [Boris Yeltsin's daughter] Tanya, and [Anatoly] Chubais, their team with [Boris] Berezovsky, but failed. Six criminal cases were opened against me, I went everywhere on these cases as a suspect. But they couldn't catch me anywhere, arrest me, and therefore, just in case, I always had a bag with things for the pre-trial detention center in my car.

About the death of Boris Berezovsky

He died by himself. When the program was on channel two after his death, I just asked: "Show a close-up of all his recent photos". One photo was with his last mistress, there is a 15- or 16-year-old girl, standing with her in an embrace. And so: "Big face," I say, —show it." This is 2-3 days before death. And when his face was shown, I say: "Look at him, he has the seal of death on his face! He's done everything, his heart is barely pumping blood to his face, look." Indeed, and this was confirmed by everyone who was sitting there in the studio.

He just died himself from the fact that such experiences: so to lose to the man he created, [Roman] Abramovich, whom he made, molded, made a billionaire. In the first protocol of inspection of the scene there were no towels, no scarves, no ropes where the curtain hangs over the bathroom. For some reason, all this appeared later both through the press and through his ex-wife allegedly. But in fact there was nothing: a security officer broke down the door, and he's lying around, and that's it.