00:00:35.260It is great to have you. I'll call you Mara because that's the short version of your name.
00:00:39.120But listen, before we get started, I just wanted to say for anyone who doesn't know who you are,
00:00:42.700we'll ask you to tell everybody your background.
00:00:45.200I listened to a lecture that you gave about Russian culture, history and attitudes that's on YouTube.
00:00:51.800And it was the best thing as a Russian whose father used to work in the Russian government.
00:00:57.260Everything you said was entirely true.
00:01:00.060It was just, I've never seen anything this good.
00:01:02.200And the moment I watched, I said to Francis, we've got to get this guy on because he's so good.
00:01:06.680So just for people watching this who don't know who you are, can't wait to have this conversation.
00:01:11.540But before we do, tell everybody your background.
00:01:13.780Who are you? What has been your journey through life?
00:01:16.260How come you know so much about Russia, Russian culture, Russian history, etc.?
00:01:19.840Ah, okay. Okay. So I was born quite a long time ago.
00:01:24.920And when it became time to be, because in Finland we have an obligatory conscript service.
00:01:31.120I went to the airborne rangers. I served as an airborne ranger as a conscript.
00:01:35.680And I was, my plan was to become a history teacher.
00:01:40.200But when I went to the conscript service and I was teached how to jump with the parachute in the night, at the night, how to break the railroads and blow up the bridges.
00:01:54.300And then I applied to the cadet academy and I went to the cadet academy and I forget the history.
00:01:59.380And then when I graduated from cadet academy because I'm quite small, they put me to the armored brigade because in that time we have Soviet tanks, T-55, BMP-1.
00:02:17.280And then in 1988 I was recruited to military intelligence because of my knowledge of my languages, language skills.
00:02:25.600And then from 1988 until 2017 I served in our military intelligence from lieutenant to colonel.
00:02:36.720And during that trip I mainly worked in Finland, but I was one year in Bosnia as a Finnish contingent commander because I was in that age in the beginning of 2000 that I had to have the commanding post to be promoted lieutenant colonel.
00:02:52.600So I was one year in Bosnia as a colonel, so I was one year in Bosnia as a contingent commander.
00:02:56.780I served three years as a defense attache in Poland and Ukraine and that's it.
00:03:05.320So, and I retired in the end of 2017 as a colonel and I started in the beginning of 2018 as a university teacher in Jyväskylä, quite difficult to pronounce, Jyväskylä University.
00:03:20.420And I teach here now intelligence analysis and also hybrid threats.
00:03:28.300So that's in a nutshell what I have done.
00:03:33.100And Mara, it always seems to me that the best way to start an interview is to go very broad.
00:03:39.800And it seems to me that one of the great arrogances about the West is that we think everybody thinks like us.
00:03:47.160And we think that the whole world shares the same mentality.
00:03:50.980But it's proven time and time again, particularly in this case, the Russians and Russia doesn't think like us.
00:03:59.440So let's just look at the big differences between the West and the Russian mentality.
00:04:09.560Now, let's say let's let's approach that question in that way that, OK, when I was little and I was sending to Leningrad, Leningrad to study Russian language.
00:04:22.220I was there and I make friends with the Russians and I was thinking why they are why they see the world from the very different angle than I do.
00:04:34.680And I was wondering why, why, why, why?
00:04:36.060And it was bothering me and it was bothering me and I understood that, OK, there is something why they are thinking different way.
00:04:46.180And not until I start my PhD in 2017 and I found a theory of strategic culture, which are American theory of international politics.
00:05:00.140And it was like, you know, I in that moment when I found that theory of strategic culture, I realized that, OK, that's the theory by which I can explain why the Russians are doing the different things in a different way than we are.
00:05:19.100So so what but the question, what are the biggest differences?
00:05:50.280So we have get used that, OK, we can we can change our leaders and so on.
00:05:54.900But the Russians, they have they don't have had a system that they can choose their leaders because they had first they have charge, then they have the Communist Party.
00:06:04.480And now when when they have Putin, they have had not real possibilities to have elections and choose the leaders.
00:06:13.740So I think I think the first thing is the relationship between the power and the people.
00:06:20.500So second difference from what I think is that I speak at the behalf of Finns or Europeans, we have.
00:06:31.780Finland is like a country of of of of of when you speak about legacy.
00:06:40.640And we are a country, rule, rule of law, rule of law country.
00:06:48.440It means that we have laws which protect us from from the authorities that they can't behave as they want.
00:06:59.300They had to, you know, behave with us in a way that they they they they protect us.
00:07:04.940They they they they behave decently when they are working with us and we know what we can do, what what is lawful, what is unlawful and what is the punishment if we break the law.
00:07:18.140But I think that Russia is rule by law, it means that they have laws, but the meaning of the laws is that the leaders can rule the people, rule the system by legislation.
00:07:37.100So they have laws, but they have laws, but they can, for example, if we think about the Internet, Russian segment of Internet.
00:07:45.600They have a lot of laws which limit the users possibilities, you know, to find the information and so on and so on.
00:07:55.940They say that, OK, this is for they protect people from pornography or from the things which can can help you to make suicide, for example, or they say that, OK, they protect people against extremism.
00:08:14.620But what what they do, they can they can they can close down, for example, opposite pages, now only pages, for those pages, you know, saying, OK, this is extremist.
00:08:26.660And it's it's it's from the point of view, it's it's legal because it's it's it's rule by law country.
00:08:52.500And I think also the attitude against the attitude to violence, for example, because they have they have long, long tradition of state terror, for example.
00:09:07.420Even the great even the great even the great established the original system, which means that that the leader can use violence against the people who are around him.
00:09:21.520And to the normal people, very flexible.
00:09:25.240So there is no there is no legal limitations to that, how he can use his his power, for example, our president cannot send our special service people to some other country to poison a person.
00:09:46.900So I mean that the approach to the use of violence, it's different than we have, than they have.
00:09:55.140So I think those those are the three things which came to my mind immediately.
00:09:59.560And in your lecture, you talk a lot about history.
00:10:03.180And one of the things I loved about it was very nonjudgmental.
00:10:05.880You describe how Russians think without saying they are worse than us or better than us or we are better and they're worse or anything like that, which I thought was easier to hear for people.
00:10:15.680So, um, and yes, I'm sorry, because I like, you know, I, I, I master in arts in Russian language and literature.
00:10:25.740I like, I like the language, it's the language of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Wisotsky.
00:10:48.840And, and so talking about the leadership, one of the things you point out is that, is that because of Russian history, whether it was the Mongol occupation being occupied by the Mongols for 150 years, or some of the Tsars that came afterwards or the communist regimes, uh, after that, uh, Russia has always had
00:11:07.340a strong leader and, uh, one of the things I always tell people in the West that they don't understand is, uh, Stalin, who killed 20 million or more of his own people, has a 70% approval rating in Russia today.
00:11:42.020They, in, in, in, in end of 16th century, for example, they had times of trouble when they didn't have a strong leader.
00:11:50.320The Poles attack and there was, you know, internal revolts and things like that.
00:11:55.840People, a lot of people get killed and there was no good, good coordination of, of leadership and so on.
00:12:05.460So in that time, Russians realized that it's better to have a, a strong leader than a chaos and, you know, the, the, the, the Poles attacking and things like that.
00:12:17.620And, and, and second time they realized that when Yeltsin became power and became that, that democracy or how to say it is, it is not a democracy in that point of view.
00:12:29.840From our point of view, it's like a, let's say criminal democracy or, or something like that.
00:12:35.680So the Russians prefer strong leader because they, the strong leader can have a stability.
00:13:04.680And so you really do not need somebody who's that strong to hold all those different places together, all those, all that vast amounts of land together.
00:13:14.820Because if you have someone who perhaps is more liberal, more democratic, then what you're going to get is infighting.
00:13:21.420People want breakaway group, breakaway republics, et cetera.
00:13:42.300And what a lot of people in the West don't realize is Russians' attitudes to democracy and what Russians think of when they think about democracy.
00:13:49.660Can you talk a little bit about what the 90s meant for, for Russian mentality and why Vladimir Putin ended up being who he is?
00:13:59.660Oh, it started well, became, you know, the, I think it started during, during Carpaccio, Perestroika and, and, and Glasnost and things like that.
00:14:08.840People were, I, I was 1986 in, in, in Leningrad and it was time when the Perestroika started and Glasnost started.
00:14:16.120People were quite, you know, that people were quite, you know, enthusiastic that, okay, now something better will come.
00:14:21.960They believed that, okay, now the life will be better.
00:14:24.720And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and people lost everything what they had.
00:14:49.040And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that was the time when the people get the impression that this is democracy.
00:15:07.740This is democracy and then, and then, then in, in the new year, 1999, 2000, became a strong leader.
00:15:30.160It means that the new president had a lot of economic power, you know, people somehow connected the economical growth with the president who, in fact, had nothing to do with the oil price.
00:15:49.840But anyhow, it, it happened in that way that the oil price went up and somebody, somebody people told that, okay, this is because Putin is now president.
00:15:57.720And our life is getting better and better and better.
00:16:01.020But Mahra, he has been in some ways quite a good president.
00:16:05.800Most Western countries are in horrendous amounts of debt.
00:16:09.000As far as I know, Russia is in no debt or very little debt at the moment.
00:17:04.480It goes, if you read Mark Kaleotis' book about mafia, it explains a lot how it works.
00:17:14.080It works in that way that if you achieve some position in administration, you have right to saw, they say saw, one part of the state money to yourself.
00:17:30.660So you can steal one part of the government money to yourself.
00:17:37.160And if you are in a low level in administration or system, you can steal small portion.
00:17:44.660When you get upper, you can steal more and more and more.
00:17:48.240And when you get high, you can steal tens of millions of dollars in a year.
00:18:15.960And of course, we in the West are hypocritical, particularly in London, because the moment all of this corrupt money flooded into the city of London, under Blair's government, we went right ahead.
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00:20:09.140We're even going to get Francis on it. You might learn English.
00:20:28.620Colonel, one of the things particularly you talked about in your lecture as well is why Russia, at a sort of instinctive level, is very fearful of invasion, Western expansion.
00:20:43.600It's fearful of, it perceives itself as being surrounded and under threat.
00:20:50.800Because I think as we move the conversation into the current situation, that will help us understand some of the thinking behind the actions.
00:20:58.580Oh, you mentioned about the huge, it's a huge country.
00:21:03.640It means that they have a lot of borders and a lot of different invaders have attacked Russia.
00:21:12.200Mongols came, they were there 200 years.
00:21:15.380Then came Swedes, Swedes and Finns, because we have always been with Swedes.
00:21:22.520Wherever they go, we go up with them, because we were part of Sweden 700 years.
00:21:28.540They used to use Finns, you know, for the military purposes.
00:21:31.900We have a saying that the brave, brave Swedish king fight until the last Finn.
00:22:30.860There is no, you know, rivers, a little bit of rivers, but there is no real obstacles like mountains or seas or whatever.
00:22:39.260So it's easy to attack by horses, by tanks and whatever you use when you attack.
00:22:44.540So it has created a feel of being attacked, like they called, or somebody called it, Barbarossa syndrome.
00:22:56.280You know, it means that when the Nazis attacked 1941 to Russia, it was called Operation Barbarossa.
00:23:03.800So they called that Russians have a Barbarossa syndrome.
00:23:06.960It means that somebody will make a surprise attack again to Russia.
00:23:11.820And you also explained that it benefits the leader of the country to create this perception of threat because then he can unite the people and say only a strong leader like me can protect you.
00:23:28.640So, yes, yes, let's say that way, that 30% is family stories, narratives, 70% is leadership is telling, okay, okay, that NATO is planning to attack us again, or the west is planning to attack us again.
00:23:46.520So it's like, how do you say it in English, you are collecting under the flag, around the flag pool, or how do you say it in English?
00:23:54.440Clock to the banner, if you have a clock to the banner.
00:23:57.060Yeah, so it's all the leaders all around are using that also in Russia.
00:24:02.720Isn't it also a problem as well that essentially Putin is surrounded by yes-men?
00:24:12.340You're not going to have somebody who disagrees with Putin or stands up to him, because if you do that, you're...
00:24:22.120You know, at old time, they have a system called boyars, who were noble people who were surrounding the char, and there was, you know, the administrative boyars, there was military boyars, and they were serving the char, and char was giving them, you know, the land and money for the good service.
00:24:46.340But if he suspected that you are not behaving well, or if he suspected that you are planning a coup, for example, or the revolt or whatever, you might lose your head.
00:24:59.840As I told you about even the terrible, he created the system called Oprich, and it's like a KGB, a KGB of 16th century.
00:25:12.160And he used that KGB, very, very flexible, and that time they lost their head.
00:25:21.640And in Stalin time, yes, also there was neck shots and things like that.
00:25:27.140Nowadays, you will be transferred to the, you will be head of the railway administration or the governor of Kaliningrad, but they don't shoot any more people.
00:25:39.740But anyhow, if the char is not satisfied for your services, as a boyar, you will be transferred to the lower post.
00:25:48.880Ivanov, for example, is taking care of the, I don't remember, he is now in a position where he takes care of environment, and he used to be in a very high position.
00:26:00.280I love shopping for new jackets and boots this season, and when I do, I always make sure I get cash back with Rakuten.
00:26:43.960I mean, will any general go to Putin and go, look, I think we've made a mistake here because we've got massive amounts of casualties.
00:26:51.240And in this part of the country, the Ukrainians are winning.
00:26:54.260Yeah, I think because I teach intelligence in university.
00:26:59.820And the task of intelligence is to provide objective information to decision making.
00:27:06.860So intelligence is providing objective information to decision makers.
00:27:14.100And then we have decision makers who make decisions based on the information given by intelligence and given by other people, like operative people and so on.
00:27:26.060But in Russia, the problem is that it's mixed because around Putin, there is Naryshkin and Bortnikov, who are Intel guys.
00:27:40.220They are those guys who are also making the decisions.
00:27:44.380So the idea of use of intelligence doesn't work there because the intelligence doesn't provide objective information to the decision makers because part of the decision makers are Intel people.
00:28:01.600Do you understand what I'm trying to explain?
00:28:13.740But there, Intel guys are decision makers.
00:28:17.000So it twist that decision making process, as you say, that it might cause that they are yes men.
00:28:26.040And when the subordinators who are providing the information, making the reports or making the collection, they know what the boss want to hear.
00:28:35.900I mean, not the highest boss, but their boss, Bortnikov or Naryshkin, they make the reports according to the expected vices of the boss of that particular service.
00:29:44.060And in best case, it should cause wisdom in the head of the decision maker.
00:29:49.480From data to wisdom, it's quite challenging job, but it works if you are objective, honest and so on.
00:30:00.120But if you have three services as they have, you know, foreign service, foreign intel, FSB and military intelligence, you have three services who are competing.
00:30:13.760Who are competing for the resources and the money, for example.
00:30:23.980So they think that, okay, my boss wants to hear this kind of reporting.
00:30:30.200So they provide probably a wrong reporting because they think that, okay, if I tell bad news, he don't like me, I will not get resources.
00:30:39.640And that's why it might, as Stalin did, of course, he didn't believe the intel, which was provided by Richard Sorge.
00:30:50.080Richard Sorge was the best, best operative, operative officer in Tokyo.
00:30:58.680He sent it that, okay, the Germans will attack in the mid of June 1941.
00:31:04.700Stalin didn't believe that because he has his own ideas.
00:31:10.240He has his own indicators, which he was following.
00:31:14.480And other people were telling, you know, that no, the Germans will not attack because they know that Stalin want to hear that, okay, the Germans will not attack.
00:31:22.420This is the same system in now, I think.
00:31:24.760But Putin didn't believe those who told that, okay, we should not attack Ukraine.
00:31:32.580He believed those guys who said, okay, we can attack Ukraine because it goes easy as it went in 2014 in Crimea, for example.
00:31:40.920I haven't been there, but I have analyzed that that might be one reason why this all happened.
00:31:47.840Well, Colonel, this is the question that I think a lot of people suddenly wanted to know the answer to.
00:31:52.320Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine?
00:31:55.900Some people say, as we talked about earlier, that it's the threat of NATO expansion.