TRIGGERnometry - What Everyone Gets Wrong About Putin

00:00:00.160 I mean, I think what we might be missing is there is a tendency to think of him as this kind of Bond villain.

00:00:05.240 I think what we have to realise is the degree to which he's also a scared and rather limited old man.

00:00:11.500 When even the boss doesn't want to know what's really happening, that's when you are on a path to potential disaster.

00:00:18.360 And this invasion of Ukraine was a classic example.

00:00:20.580 He doesn't think that it's Ukrainians wanting to join the EU and NATO.

00:00:24.320 He thinks it's the EU and NATO wanting to steal Ukraine.

00:00:27.200 It's just the minor point being, it's all nonsense.

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00:00:47.940 Mark Gagliotti, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:50.000 You've talked and written extensively about Russia, Russian history, the security issues to do with that.

00:00:55.960 You're a security consultant in addition to historian.

00:00:58.920 We're going to have a fascinating conversation about one man in particular, which is, of course, Vladimir Putin.

00:01:04.460 I feel like the public interest in the war in Ukraine has died down.

00:01:09.520 And it's something we've covered extensively on the show already.

00:01:12.080 But the one thing I think, even now, even after all the talking that's been done about that, that most people in the West are still not fully across, not still fully informed about is Vladimir Putin, his rise to power, how he fits into the historical context of Russia, the future, of course.

00:01:30.260 But talk to us a little bit about what you think that, you know, I think what we might be missing in relation to Vladimir Putin.

00:01:37.900 I mean, I think what we might be missing is there is a tendency to think of him as this kind of Bond villain who's plotting disaster on all his enemies from a sort of mountain fastness or an extinct volcano or something.

00:01:50.220 I think what we have to realise is the degree to which he's also a scared and rather limited old man who I think has lost a lot of his capacity to really sort of shape the world around him.

00:02:03.060 He's responding.

00:02:03.740 Again, I think, you know, if one thinks of even the invasion of Ukraine, he did it because he was responding to an essentially paranoid fantasy of what he thought was facing Russia and facing his regime.

00:02:17.300 But nonetheless, again, I think we need to get away from this idea that he is this grand geopolitical chess master and that he's controlling the board and that we are just sort of hapless pawns in this game.

00:02:31.300 You know, yes, I'm not saying that we're that great either, but I think that we do ourselves a disservice.

00:02:38.860 That's why you stretch the credibility of your argument, if you were to say that.

00:02:42.300 Yeah, exactly.

00:02:42.920 No, I mean, I think, you know, we should assume that he's every bit as rubbish as we are and not invest him with his power because that's part of his shtick.

00:02:51.280 That's part of his strength is precisely this image that has been built up about him.

00:02:56.520 Do you think that's that's it's interesting because I'm obviously a critic of his, but the one thing I would never criticize is his competence, actually, because I think would it be fair to say that actually it's not that he's necessarily rubbish, but the system that he operates in, the authoritarian top down hierarchy, lots of corruption, lots of things being done without his say so, etc.

00:03:18.780 So maybe that that he himself or would you say that he himself is now at a point where he's not not a very strong and capable leader?

00:03:26.660 I think two things look like like most authoritarian leaders over time, he becomes something of a caricature of himself.

00:03:31.900 Those things which were once strengths when he was sort of a young and vigorous figure of a mere 50 something instead of a 70 something year old, you know, actually now have ossified.

00:03:42.060 And one of the key things is you talk about this system, he's absolutely now kind of encased within it.

00:03:48.940 People tell him lies and he believes them and creates policy based on those lies.

00:03:54.000 But this is a system he built.

00:03:56.200 Remember back in I keep forgetting for 2015 or 2016, sitting down in Moscow with a recently retired Russian spy.

00:04:04.860 And this is even then he said, look, we've learned you do not bring bad news to the czar's table.

00:04:10.080 In other words, you don't try and tell Putin what he doesn't want to hear.

00:04:14.000 If you want to be in the room, if you want to have the influence, you have to be saying the right things.

00:04:18.940 And that is catastrophic.

00:04:20.900 And for a long time, in a way, it didn't really matter too much because the fights Putin was picking were with much weaker enemies.

00:04:29.160 Or there were enough technocrats who did know their job, who instead, in many ways, I think kind of running, running the system regardless of Putin.

00:04:39.160 There's a lot of really able Russians.

00:04:40.820 You know, if one looks, for example, the economy, Elvira Nabyulina, chairwoman of the central bank, absolutely brilliant, has done an amazing job in essentially bypassing a lot of the impact of sanctions.

00:04:52.680 So there are a lot of people like that who, in some ways, were keeping everything working.

00:04:57.120 But the point is when even the boss doesn't want to know what's really happening, that's when you are on a path to potential disaster.

00:05:05.500 And this invasion of Ukraine was a classic example.

00:05:07.520 This idea that they could just roll in, that Ukrainians would think, oh, that's a shame, but we'll accept having a puppet government imposed upon us.

00:05:16.760 There must be any number of people within the top ranks of the Russian state who could have said, Vladimir Vladimirovich, it's not going to be like this.

00:05:26.460 No one did.

00:05:27.700 Either they couldn't or they just didn't dare.

00:05:29.980 So I think we have to realize that on one hand, Putin is a prisoner of his system, but it's a system that he basically has built.

00:05:38.140 And Mark, can we dig into a little bit before Francis, I know he's got lots of questions for you as well.

00:05:43.080 One of the things that I think has been the biggest talking point, particularly in certain sections of the political spectrum, especially the people who describe themselves as anti-war.

00:05:53.220 I mean, there's a lot of quibbles with that label, in my opinion, but nonetheless, who allude to the things that you alluded to right at the beginning, which is the fact that Putin is reacting.

00:06:03.980 Some of them have argued to provocation, most prominently someone like a John Meyersheimer, who would say Vladimir Putin warned consistently that NATO expansion was unacceptable.

00:06:13.960 And he only invaded Ukraine because he feels really threatened.

00:06:19.180 Russia has been invaded time and time again from the West by Napoleon, by Hitler, etc.

00:06:25.660 Russia is very sensitive to the encroachment of NATO on its borders, which it sees as a hostile force.

00:06:31.360 And he warned about it.

00:06:33.940 He said, you know, Ukraine must never join NATO.

00:06:36.520 Ukraine cannot flirt with the idea of asking for nuclear weapons.

00:06:39.380 Because Zelensky and this is their argument, Zelensky and his Western paymasters violated all of that.

00:06:45.760 Putin kept warning and warning and warning.

00:06:47.780 And then eventually he reacted to that provocation.

00:06:51.560 What do you say to that argument?

00:06:53.380 I would say there's some truth in that, but with a massive, massive caveat.

00:06:58.780 I mean, I think that that is precisely the kind of process that went through Putin's head.

00:07:04.080 I think he genuinely has convinced himself.

00:07:06.080 Well, frankly, I think from about 2011, 2012, when there were these massive protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg,

00:07:12.580 which were actually just genuinely a reaction of particularly middle class Russians to a corrupt authoritarian regime.

00:07:19.560 But he convinced himself that this was basically done by the CIA.

00:07:23.620 And God bless him, I think they still think that we really do count.

00:07:28.660 From that point, I think he's pretty much been on war footing.

00:07:31.160 He thinks that the West is coming after him.

00:07:32.860 And therefore, everything gets interpreted through that lens.

00:07:36.080 And instead of seeing Ukraine as having a right to make its own security decisions.

00:07:40.420 Remember, this is a guy who wrote this lengthy, I mean, speaking as a professional historian, painfully ahistorical essay,

00:07:47.980 claiming to prove that Ukraine wasn't a real country all along.

00:07:52.520 You know, from his point of view, this is a territory which is really a kind of semi-detached annex of Russia,

00:07:58.560 which now is being stolen by the West.

00:08:01.980 Because, again, he doesn't think that it's Ukrainians wanting to join the EU and NATO.

00:08:05.900 He thinks it's the EU and NATO wanting to steal Ukraine.

00:08:09.520 And he responded to that.

00:08:10.740 So, yeah, in Putin land, in that little enclosed capsule of his own views,

00:08:16.580 that is how he thought about it.

00:08:18.140 It's just the minor point being it's all nonsense.

00:08:21.820 And that's not really how it is.

00:08:23.480 Well, because, first of all, Ukraine is a country.

00:08:27.540 I mean, there's a certain amount of overplaying of its historical pedigree.

00:08:33.680 I mean, actually, if you look at its history, it's incredibly complex.

00:08:36.980 It doesn't lend itself to a nice, simple answer.

00:08:39.220 But the point is, Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language, they are different things.

00:08:42.620 And they have become different things.

00:08:44.100 I mean, the point is, borders change.

00:08:46.220 Otherwise, you know, my half-Italian nature, you know, I'd be thinking,

00:08:49.180 well, we're still in a Roman property.

00:08:50.840 You know, bow to me, sirs.

00:08:53.680 You know, we have to accept that Ukraine, you know, is a country.

00:08:56.600 It is recognized in international law.

00:08:58.040 And it thinks of itself as a country.

00:09:00.340 And whether or not, historically, one could say,

00:09:02.680 well, the Treaty of Perioslav says that you're part of the Russian Empire.

00:09:08.160 That's history.

00:09:08.760 So that's the first thing.

00:09:09.680 Ukraine is a country.

00:09:11.000 Secondly, absolutely, the Ukrainians have been wanting to join the EU and NATO.

00:09:14.900 The irony is that, actually, until the invasion, EU and NATO did not want Ukraine.

00:09:22.100 I mean, the EU was thinking, this is an economic basket case,

00:09:25.020 that we would end up spending huge amounts of money to try and bring it to our standards.

00:09:29.600 And from NATO's point of view, you know, they likewise,

00:09:33.080 because to let some country into NATO is more or less you're having to say,

00:09:36.800 we will put boots on the ground to defend you in war.

00:09:39.360 And no one really wanted to do that.

00:09:40.500 So when Ukraine was applying along with Georgia, this kind of fudge answer was given,

00:09:46.080 which was, Ukraine will be a member of NATO without saying when.

00:09:51.420 And the trouble is, Putin heard that, and he heard it as some kind of immediate plan,

00:09:56.580 rather than what it really was, was a, go away and don't bother us.

00:10:01.080 We don't want you.

00:10:01.700 So actually, the pressure has been coming from Ukraine.

00:10:04.900 It probably wouldn't have really happened anyway, or certainly not in Putin's lifetime.

00:10:10.460 And, you know, Ukraine's a real country.

00:10:13.220 I could go on and on about all the other ways that Putin is wrong,

00:10:16.340 but nonetheless, it's very clear.

00:10:18.640 Mark, isn't that just what happens to all dictators as they reach the end of their reign?

00:10:23.440 They start to get more paranoid.

00:10:25.300 They start to get more antsy.

00:10:26.700 They're more prone to rash decisions.

00:10:28.280 They're surrounded by yes-men.

00:10:30.680 This is it.

00:10:31.080 Absolutely.

00:10:31.820 I mean, it's your classic trajectory, whether we're talking about Saddam Hussein

00:10:36.080 or whether we're talking about Vladimir Putin or whatever.

00:10:39.980 When you've got no checks and balances, when you've got no people around you,

00:10:44.420 you know, we've got to realise in his earlier years, his first two presidencies,

00:10:47.400 Putin was actually incredibly successful.

00:10:49.260 He was also very lucky.

00:10:50.660 But nonetheless, he was successful.

00:10:52.000 And in part, that was precisely in his circle.

00:10:54.320 He had all kinds of different people, including people who would challenge him.

00:10:57.120 Just to interrupt you there, because there's a lot of people listening to this

00:10:59.860 who are going, well, how was he successful and how was he lucky?

00:11:02.340 So just explain that to us, please.

00:11:04.280 I mean, he was lucky because he happened to come in just at a time

00:11:07.700 when global oil and gas prices were booming.

00:11:10.280 So he basically had a lot of money to play with.

00:11:12.140 And he was successful because actually he ploughed a lot of that money into rebuilding the country

00:11:18.320 after the absolute miserable anarchy of the 1990s, a period where, you know,

00:11:24.240 0.001% of Russians were becoming obscenely rich in the so-called oligarchs,

00:11:29.980 basically by stealing on an industrial scale.

00:11:32.640 And the overwhelming majority of Russians were living in abject poverty.

00:11:36.480 And, I mean, I remember travelling there in those days and you would see outside the metro stations

00:11:42.400 lines of pensioners selling anything they had, you know, one shoe, half-used tube of toothpaste,

00:11:47.720 whatever, because their pensions were worth nothing.

00:11:51.600 And Putin gets, again, I think, you know, he has benefited from it without necessarily being the cause,

00:11:57.400 but nonetheless, he gets the credit for being the person who brought Russia out of this anarchy.

00:12:00.580 So in those first two presidencies, he had enough money that ordinary Russians' quality of life could improve dramatically.

00:12:08.940 He could let the oligarchs and the rest of the elite enrich themselves and build their massive palaces and buy their yachts.

00:12:15.360 He could dump money into the military and build up this war machine that he's now trashed in Ukraine.

00:12:21.040 But, you know, he had the money for everything.

00:12:23.540 And, you know, who wouldn't be successful if basically they have, you know, an unlimited check account?

00:12:30.620 So that being the case, he must be incredibly popular even now with the older generations

00:12:36.240 who must look at the bad old days of the 90s and go, well, he was our saviour.

00:12:42.180 There's an element of truth in that.

00:12:43.420 Look, it's really hard to assess popularity.

00:12:45.700 We have these various opinion polls that give him approval ratings of 80% or whatever.

00:12:49.820 But, you know, let's be honest, someone comes up to you with a clipboard and says,

00:12:52.600 we want to know what you think of Vladimir Putin.

00:12:54.060 You're not necessarily going to sort of say exactly what you think.

00:12:57.120 I think that, yeah, there is still this sense of that he, you know, he became a national figure and an icon almost because of that.

00:13:07.440 But the point is that can coexist with a willingness to see change.

00:13:11.580 The best example I can give you is Winston Churchill.

00:13:14.820 You know, on the one hand, regarded as sort of the paramount war leader who brought Britain through the Second World War.

00:13:22.360 But at the end of the war, there was that sense of, thanks very much.

00:13:25.160 You've done your job.

00:13:26.700 Now we want something else.

00:13:28.020 So we're going to go for a different leadership.

00:13:29.540 So I think that there is this coexisting of almost a sense of they believe that Putin deserves to have statues, but statues while he's in retirement.

00:13:39.780 But that's a very real challenge because Russia is this huge landmass, which has all of these different countries.

00:13:49.560 So we just put it like that or territories, many of them who want to become independent.

00:13:55.700 And you need somebody like Putin to hold that all together, don't you?

00:13:59.480 You can't really have a Keir Starmer figure in charge of Russia.

00:14:03.240 It really wouldn't work.

00:14:04.140 That would be an interesting challenge, wouldn't it?

00:14:07.680 No, I mean, I think there's an element of myth here about the fact that Russia needs a strong man or it falls apart.

00:14:12.860 Most of these regions do not actually want to become independent.

00:14:15.460 And this is it.

00:14:15.920 There's a lot of this myth now.

00:14:17.040 And people have taken this ghastly decolonization language and think, well, now we also have to overlay it onto the Russian Federation.

00:14:25.740 Most of the regions which are notionally non-ethnic Russian, when you actually look at the demographics,

00:14:30.900 because of years, decades and centuries of colonization and migration, actually ethnic Russians are a plurality or a majority.

00:14:42.300 And frankly, look, in my experience, actually, people do in the main regard themselves as Russian.

00:14:49.060 They might grumble about it.

00:14:50.520 They might have their various disputes, except for the North Caucasus.

00:14:54.220 This particular part of southern Russia, which is where the Chechens of great infamy were from and such like, where there really is genuine independence.

00:15:04.040 And quite frankly, this is a region which most Russians will probably quite happily wave goodbye to and offer them independence,

00:15:10.020 because at the moment they end up getting huge amounts of central subsidy and just cause nothing but grief, I think is the general consensus.

00:15:16.880 But apart from that, you know, actually, this is a country which I think can hold together.

00:15:21.820 It does not need a Putin.

00:15:23.960 Sure, there are challenges to a big country, but the days when, you know, you had to rely on the telegraph and the railway are long gone.

00:15:32.420 Yeah, the reality has changed.

00:15:34.360 The psyche, I would put it to you, hasn't quite caught up with it in Russia, certainly in my experience growing up there and speaking with people there now.

00:15:41.220 But coming back to Putin, one of the interesting things you said is he's trashed his war machine in Ukraine,

00:15:50.100 which is an interesting take because, I mean, certainly the Russian military has taken losses.

00:15:56.600 But actually, I think many people would look at what's happened and they certainly wouldn't conclude that either Ukraine or the West have had a win there.

00:16:05.900 Maybe you would argue Putin hasn't either.

00:16:08.000 It's been a bad outcome for all sides, really.

00:16:10.700 Would that be fair to say?

00:16:11.880 Yeah.

00:16:12.120 I mean, look, this is a military machine that he spent, I said, 20 years dumping a huge amount of money in and which actually had gone through quite a process of reform.

00:16:20.880 The irony is that it went through much the same process of reform that most Western armies did.

00:16:26.120 You know, we once upon a time had NATO, which was designed to fight the Soviets.

00:16:29.580 Then Cold War was over, lots of peace dividend, but also increasingly people thought, well, no, what's the threat going to be?

00:16:36.940 It's going to be from people in caves in distant countries.

00:16:39.740 So what we need are smaller, nimble expeditionary forces who can go out there and fight terrorists and such like.

00:16:45.880 We ran down, you know, who needs tanks in that era and so forth?

00:16:49.140 We ran down all our stocks.

00:16:50.220 The interesting thing, and one of these great historic ironies, is that's a similar process to what the Russian military was going through.

00:16:58.160 It wanted the sort of forces who can sort of neatly take Crimea, as they did in 2014, or go and deploy into Syria, as they did in 2015, rather than just simply being a retread of the old Red Army.

00:17:08.060 And that's one of the reasons why, when they went into Ukraine, a country which perversely hadn't reformed its military so much, so it was still more Soviet and still able to actually get a lot of sort of metal on the front line, it hasn't done very well.

00:17:21.620 So sure, I agree with you that we can hardly call what's happening a Ukrainian and Western win at this scale.

00:17:28.080 But nonetheless, in the process, the Russian military has evolved surprisingly well.

00:17:34.900 It is a very Russian way.

00:17:36.320 They adapt.

00:17:37.140 It may not be the best way or the quickest way.

00:17:39.600 It might be a bit ugly, and it'll have been done with a bit of duct tape and some string and such like that.

00:17:44.980 One way or the other, they do adapt.

00:17:47.440 But on the process, look, we are seeing tanks that were built in the 1960s being reconditioned and sent into the battle line because they haven't got enough new ones.

00:17:55.300 We're seeing increasingly an army that is being fought by 40-something-year-old reservists and taking a hell of a lot of casualties.

00:18:00.640 You know, yes, they can cope up to a point and for a certain length of time.

00:18:06.600 But all the fancy high-end kit, the sort of kit you would need if you wanted to, say, roll into NATO, that basically has been burnt through at a horrific rate.

00:18:16.360 And what does all of this mean for Putin?

00:18:20.020 Because there are people who would argue Russia and Putin's position has been strengthened.

00:18:25.480 I would actually argue that post-Prigozhin's mutiny, post him jailing his critics like Strelkov and Kirk and whatever, he's actually got a stronger handle on Russia now than perhaps he did before the war.

00:18:41.660 Would you agree with that?

00:18:42.600 I think it's kind of stronger but brittle.

00:18:44.500 Again, I'm trying to have my cake and eat it.

00:18:45.920 Yes, you seem to be.

00:18:46.580 I'm saying, but what we're seeing is, you might say, whereas once upon a time, you know, certainly the elite went along with Putin because he was good for business, essentially.

00:18:54.340 You could steal at home, spend and bank abroad.

00:18:57.340 You know, everything was fine.

00:18:58.940 Now, for most of them, they're actually quite unhappy with the situation, just as a lot of the ordinary Russians are.

00:19:04.120 But they're more scared.

00:19:05.820 Think about what he did with Prigozhin, this sort of businessman, mercenary leader and so forth.

00:19:11.080 Is he made a deal with Prigozhin and then he broke it.

00:19:14.140 Yeah, and he killed them throughout.

00:19:15.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:15.940 Now, that might seem like no big deal, given that sort of Putin basically breaks international law before breakfast.

00:19:21.360 But this is the first time, as far as I'm concerned, that he broke a deal with an insider, with one of the people in his camp.

00:19:27.560 And so on the one hand, that actually weakens Putin because people don't necessarily feel they can trust him.

00:19:32.500 But on the other hand, given what happened to Prigozhin, there's that sense of, yeah, but I'm not going to be the one to actually challenge.

00:19:38.740 So in some ways, it's more like you're now very antsy around this violent man who's got a gun.

00:19:43.860 So he's stronger.

00:19:46.600 But I think the thing is, it is brittle in the sense of, I think there's fewer people who now feel that they have an active reason to remove, to support Putin.

00:19:55.880 And if you look at what happened in the mutiny, what was really interesting was Prigozhin didn't have that many troops.

00:20:00.420 The point is, he was able to roll them towards Moscow because not many people in security forces joined him, but most of them weren't in that rush to stop him either.

00:20:10.140 They just thought, well, let's just see what happens.

00:20:13.040 And I think that's the situation now.

00:20:15.320 No one's daring to be the first to go after Putin.

00:20:18.040 But if and when something does happen, I think there's a lot of people who, whereas once upon a time they might have felt, look, I'm going to back him, not because I like him, but because it's good for me, who might just think, well, maybe I didn't happen to get a call.

00:20:31.180 And, you know, maybe I'll just wait and see what happens.

00:20:33.340 And Mark, how much do we know?

00:20:35.420 I mean, I think one of the things that people in the West have been absolutely obsessed about since this latest conflict broke out is trying to get some insight into the psychology of Vladimir Putin.

00:20:46.880 Do you have any access to anything in that area?

00:20:50.560 Do we know what he's thinking?

00:20:51.980 Do we know how he is reacting?

00:20:53.880 Is he happy about the way the war is going?

00:20:56.140 Is he annoyed about it?

00:20:57.800 You know, obviously, your argument, which is one that matches very much what I've heard and read and spoke to people about, is he was essentially misled into starting the conflict because he kept being told, oh, we'll just roll in there with a few thousand troops.

00:21:11.420 It'll be easy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:21:14.000 So I imagine he was quite annoyed at that point.

00:21:17.580 Then the war wasn't going very well initially, but then they had a lot of rollbacks, losses, etc.

00:21:23.580 Now they seem to be in charge again.

00:21:25.640 Do we know where his mind is at in any way?

00:21:28.540 Is there any information about that?

00:21:30.760 I mean, this is the thing.

00:21:31.320 That is the blackest of black boxes.

00:21:34.040 I mean, even the intelligence services don't really know what Putin is thinking and what he talks about to the very small, narrow circle of people that he genuinely trusts and talks to.

00:21:44.300 So what we're having to do, it's a little bit like, I mean, I'm sure it's not the same this way.

00:21:47.840 I remember back when I was at school in science experiment, you can't see air molecules, but you can see smoke particles.

00:21:53.880 So you kind of put smoke particles into a little sort of Petri dish and watch them over the microscope.

00:21:58.380 Browning motion, that's called.

00:21:59.540 I still remember it.

00:22:00.460 Thank you.

00:22:01.360 I mean, you know, and you see the smoke particles being knocked around.

00:22:04.580 Well, that's in a way what we have to do with Putin.

00:22:06.740 We can only really see the outcomes.

00:22:08.920 And the interesting things, look, I mean, he clearly, I mean, I don't think he was just misled.

00:22:13.080 I think he actually, he was the driver.

00:22:14.480 He had this idea of Ukraine.

00:22:16.000 Everyone said, absolutely boss, it's going to happen.

00:22:17.960 And then when it happened, it was difficult.

00:22:23.180 But the striking thing is we haven't seen the kind of purges and inquests that you'd imagine.

00:22:31.760 If this was a dictator who thought he'd been let down, you'd think that there'll be people who have been dismissed.

00:22:37.440 We've seen, for example, the operational commanders in the field, you know, individual generals, they get sacked and so forth.

00:22:43.100 But the real key figures, he's kept them.

00:22:47.300 Even, I mean, the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, chief of the general staff, General Gerasimov.

00:22:52.660 These are people who are now unroundly despised by their own soldiers.

00:22:57.460 But nonetheless, they're still there.

00:23:00.260 And I think in part, this is because Putin, frankly, is quite risk averse.

00:23:04.840 He doesn't like reshuffling his top people.

00:23:07.500 At least he knows he can trust these guys because where else have they got to go now?

00:23:10.760 But I think it also says something about the fact that Putin, I think, is aware that things haven't necessarily gone well,

00:23:19.800 but that there is still the chance to pull something, pull a victory out of this, which is true.

00:23:26.540 Yes, not the original victory he had planned, not the all of Ukraine in my sphere of influence.

00:23:31.960 But nonetheless, I think at the moment, he's probably feeling moderately optimistic.

00:23:35.740 Because at present, certainly if you're on looks at this year, the Russians got more ammunition than the West can provide.

00:23:43.540 They have a population that is now pretty much four times Ukraine.

00:23:47.440 So if you have to just simply throw warm bodies into the war, you can.

00:23:51.020 The West is looking pretty divided.

00:23:53.680 And there's a whole bunch of elections coming up, which is going to distract everyone, let alone the whole Trump factor.

00:23:58.900 You know, put all that lot together, and I think that Putin is able to convince himself.

00:24:04.200 I mean, if he rang me up, I'd try to disabuse him.

00:24:07.140 But given that I don't think that's terribly likely, you know, I think he's...

00:24:10.700 Maybe he watches trigonometry.

00:24:12.360 Maybe he does, exactly.

00:24:14.400 In that case, he shouldn't have barred me from Russia.

00:24:18.040 I was in the first list of Brits who were banned, which is probably about the first time I've ever been on a list with Piers Morgan.

00:24:23.320 You know, but the point is, I think Putin is able to convince himself that things are going to get better.

00:24:29.260 So I think that's, again, you know, do we really know?

00:24:31.960 No.

00:24:32.640 But that seems to be the implication just from what he's doing or rather not doing.

00:24:37.200 Isn't that also...

00:24:38.840 There's also a dichotomy there, Mark, isn't there, really?

00:24:41.440 Because he knows that he's going to have to retire soon.

00:24:44.420 The end is coming.

00:24:45.860 So is there not a part of his psyche that's also going, I need to find a way to get out of this?

00:24:51.060 Or is he one of those people, do you think, who's like, no, I'm going to rule for a thousand years?

00:24:55.620 Here's the interesting thing.

00:24:56.680 I mean, again, we don't know, but my suspicion is that before the invasion, he was looking for his exit route.

00:25:04.500 He just seemed palpably bored with the job.

00:25:08.400 I mean, let's be honest, if you put aside a minor detail of a ghastly war being fought, you know,

00:25:12.880 what are the real challenges that the Russian president really ought to be addressing at the moment?

00:25:17.180 It's the pensions gap, it's infrastructure, it's diversifying the economy.

00:25:23.600 These are not the sorts of things that Putin is interested in.

00:25:26.940 I mean, this is why maybe Putin and Rishi Sunak actually should swap.

00:25:32.820 I'll happily send Rishi over there, got no problem with that, mate.

00:25:36.260 But would you accept Putin?

00:25:38.120 That's the question, really.

00:25:38.940 But the point is, you know, these are the things which clearly he wasn't really interested in, you know, and he is getting older.

00:25:47.420 And so my suspicion is that part of the thinking about the Ukraine invasion was, again, he thought it was going to be easy.

00:25:54.260 And then Belarus, the other, the third of the great Slavic nations is already kind of a sort of a vassal state.

00:26:01.680 He would have gathered the Russian lands together, one of the great things that sort of Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great, was sort of famous for.

00:26:09.920 It would have elevated him into the pantheon of Russian state-building heroes and allowed him to step down.

00:26:15.140 Because this is a problem.

00:26:16.140 In an authoritarian regime in which law doesn't matter, to step down is to hand all control of yourself, your future, your family, your fortunes to your successor.

00:26:26.260 So I think maybe he felt this would have made him that successful, that kind of much of a historic figure, that he was pretty much untouchable.

00:26:35.420 Of course, didn't quite work out that way.

00:26:38.720 So I'm not sure if he's really ever going to feel that he can safely step down, because he must know that the temptation for his successors to use him as the scapegoat would be great.

00:26:49.180 And even if they seem loyal today, in Kazakhstan, Central Asian country, another post-Soviet state, right at the beginning of 2022, we had an example of just how you can't trust your successor.

00:27:00.780 You know, again, there they had a very Putin-like figure, Nazarbayev, who stepped down from the presidency.

00:27:06.160 He gave himself a key position as chairman for life of the Defense Council, and he handpicked his successor.

00:27:12.200 Everything seemed fine until the successor decided, clearly, I don't necessarily want to be under Nazarbayev's shadow anymore.

00:27:20.040 So there's a kind of a confused moment, but it's a bit of a coup and a bit of a revolution.

00:27:25.180 And then Nazarbayev steps down from his position of his own accord.

00:27:29.560 You know, you're only president for life or chair for life for a while.

00:27:33.720 So I think from Putin's point of view, this would have probably been quite a cautionary tale that, you know, this is basically the same problem that any mob boss has.

00:27:44.220 That, you know, if you rule by virtue purely of your position, can you ever really safely give up your position?

00:27:51.440 So I'm not sure if Putin will ever feel now that he feels he can safely step down.

00:27:56.080 And, to be fair as well, he's got a lot of enemies, and he's garnered a hell of a lot more since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

00:28:04.580 Yeah, and he's also increased his value as a bargaining chip.

00:28:09.180 I mean, imagine he steps down, he hands power to a successor, and either the successor is toppled in two years' time,

00:28:14.840 or just the successor after a point decides, well, that was nice, but, you know, gratitude only goes so far in politics.

00:28:22.220 I'd like to lift sanctions.

00:28:24.060 Precisely.

00:28:24.500 Why don't I hand Vladimir Putin over in exchange for blah, blah, blah.

00:28:28.140 Exactly.

00:28:28.680 Send him to The Hague, and you can basically write your own meal ticket for that.

00:28:33.400 So, I mean, even if actually that wouldn't happen, you could imagine Putin thinking it would happen, and that's quite a reason not to ever say that.

00:28:40.700 Especially given how paranoid he likely is to be at this point.

00:28:43.900 And you mentioned that, I mean, one of the things that's clearly animating Vladimir Putin, if you listen to his speeches, I've translated a number of them for the public to read.

00:28:51.740 You can see, reading between the lines, that he sees himself as the successor to the great czars of Russia.

00:29:00.260 And by the way, you smirk when I say this, but I have to say, even as someone who really is against many of the things that he's done,

00:29:06.620 you have to acknowledge this is a man who transformed Russia with a lot of luck and good fortune and all of that.

00:29:13.760 But nonetheless, he took over in 1999, he's been in power for 24 years.

00:29:19.740 Russia is a changed country, has become certainly a lot stronger, economically more prosperous during that time.

00:29:25.660 I think he could credibly claim to have made a significant contribution to the history of the country.

00:29:31.020 But he sees himself as one of the true greats, the Peter the Greats, the Catherine the Greats, the Ivans.

00:29:39.520 What, as a historian, would you say his kind of position would be and how he will show up 100 years from now in the history of Russia?

00:29:48.380 I mean, look, I can't help but think he's going to be, firstly, a transitional figure.

00:29:52.120 He's a true Homo Sovieticus.

00:29:53.560 He's one of these guys who has his mindset, not just from his schooling and so forth, but also his kind of formative early career days in, incidentally, the KGB set.

00:30:03.480 And I don't think he ever really came to terms with the end of the Soviet Union and the end of superpower status.

00:30:09.040 And there's a real bitterness there.

00:30:11.300 And it's interesting that almost all the people around him are in a similar social background and a similar age.

00:30:15.880 They're all about 68 to 74 years old.

00:30:17.680 But in terms of who I was going to draw the comparison to, and yes, look, one cannot take away the achievements, particularly of the early Putin years.

00:30:26.160 You know, if he had stepped down after his first two presidencies, something which he appears to have been contemplating when he sort of briefly put in his prime minister, Medvedev, as a sort of placeholder president.

00:30:37.540 I suspect that history will be very, very kind to him.

00:30:41.540 As a man who did a necessary job, he took a country which was facing anarchy, and let's face it, a huge country which is a nuclear power, falling into anarchy is not something any of us want.

00:30:53.000 But he took that and he pushed it into a very sort of much more sort of different way.

00:30:57.920 But the point is he came back.

00:30:59.020 He convinced himself he was essential.

00:31:00.400 And if I was going to draw a historical parallel, it's with Ivan IV, Ivan, so-called the Ivan the Terrible.

00:31:07.180 That's not what actually Russians call him.

00:31:08.820 I keep trying to explain this to people here.

00:31:10.640 Yeah, I mean, Grozny, exactly.

00:31:11.180 It means awesome or fearsome or dread or whatever.

00:31:13.700 But it has that kind of sense of scary but also pretty amazing.

00:31:17.380 Yes.

00:31:17.620 If you call him Ivan the Awesome, he sounds like a surfer.

00:31:21.560 Why don't you – most people have heard the name but don't know the details.

00:31:25.940 All Russians are taught about Ivan the Terrible, so we kind of get it.

00:31:28.780 But why don't you just give people a flavor, first of all, of Ivan the Terrible and then why you think he's in the same.

00:31:33.440 I mean, the thing is, Ivan the Terrible, he comes to power at a point when basically Moscow has already just risen as the dominant power over all the sort of principalities of the Rus.

00:31:44.260 So this is just – again, I'm sorry to interrupt.

00:31:46.160 I just want to give people the context.

00:31:48.180 There was no Russia at the time.

00:31:50.620 There were different duchies, you might call them, or principalities or whatever.

00:31:55.120 And Muscovy, Moscow, was at this point the main one, the dominant one.

00:32:00.500 And Ivan the Terrible comes to power.

00:32:02.240 Yeah.

00:32:02.520 And he comes to power – I mean, actually, he technically comes to power at the age of three.

00:32:06.940 Clearly, this is sort of a regency.

00:32:09.200 And in that regency, frankly, you've got all these different noble families, so-called boyars, competing for power.

00:32:14.240 And Ivan himself actually has a really miserable childhood.

00:32:18.740 But he learns the cutthroat lessons of Muscovite politics well.

00:32:22.840 I think when he's 13, he has his first prince arrested and beaten to death, you know, a little formative moment.

00:32:29.620 But when he actually comes to power, and he's the first czar, in the sense that he's the first person who's actually crowned a czar emperor,

00:32:38.040 it's a point when, in a way, Russia is, as you say, just beginning to happen.

00:32:41.820 And the fascinating thing about Ivan the Terrible is his reign really can divide it into two halves.

00:32:47.600 The first half, he was a state builder.

00:32:49.920 He created all the foundations of a modern Russian state.

00:32:53.940 If you look at the Russian foreign ministry, it dates its own history back to the creation of the ambassador's office under Ivan.

00:33:01.660 Interior ministry routes back to the brigandage office, as it was called.

00:33:05.960 He creates the first Russian standing army, the Streltsi, and so forth.

00:33:09.680 In all of these things, he codifies the laws, etc.

00:33:14.180 He's a real state builder.

00:33:16.180 Then there's a minor point that he seems to go increasingly mad, violently paranoid.

00:33:22.320 For a time, kind of sort of divides the country into two.

00:33:26.540 But basically...

00:33:27.180 Just skipping out with the bit where he killed his only capable son and heir in the fifth of rage, too.

00:33:31.880 Because he killed that, it means that when he dies, the country slides into the so-called time of trouble.

00:33:37.860 But this is the point.

00:33:39.620 It's actually this interesting thing.

00:33:40.900 On the whole, people focus on the sort of mad, bad Ivan of the later half without considering the degree to which actually he was extraordinarily...

00:33:49.880 extraordinarily, in, again, a certain foggish way, a real creator in his first half.

00:33:56.380 That, for me, is a very compelling parallel with Putin.

00:33:59.620 One has to acknowledge all the very positive things that happened on his watch.

00:34:04.860 Not necessarily because he did them himself, but he allowed them to happen.

00:34:08.700 If you're also going to blame him for all the bad things that have happened in the latter part of his reign.

00:34:15.860 And following from that, the period...

00:34:18.720 So, when Ivan the Terrible died, having killed his only capable son and heir,

00:34:24.120 he essentially sparked a period of, I think, several decades, times of trouble,

00:34:30.300 during which Russia experienced, I mean, some of the greatest horrors in its history.

00:34:34.840 Starvation, invasion, you know, endless claims to the throne, fake and true and all of that.

00:34:42.300 And it's one of the fears that actually sits at the very core of the Russian psyche and the Russian mindset,

00:34:48.620 which is the idea we referenced earlier with Francis,

00:34:51.500 which is when you don't have strong leadership, bad things happen.

00:34:55.160 Do you therefore prophesy that at the end of Putin's reign,

00:34:59.540 Russia is going to be thrust into some kind of turmoil of that kind?

00:35:06.560 I don't.

00:35:07.600 The big thing that's different is actually that Russia itself is very different.

00:35:11.380 I mean, Russia is essentially a modern, bureaucratic, institutionalized state

00:35:16.560 that just happens to have a little medieval court perched on top.

00:35:20.800 So there's Putin and his various favorites and such like,

00:35:24.420 and these kind of games of divide and rule that he plays amongst them.

00:35:28.660 But most of Russia actually is just handled by big bureaucracies and often actually surprisingly well.

00:35:35.780 I mean, again, there is this assumption that in Russia everything's corrupt and ramshackle.

00:35:39.840 Well, anyone who's used, for example, the Moscow City website app

00:35:43.320 to actually, you know, pay their bills and whatever else

00:35:46.860 knows that it's miles ahead of anything we've got, let alone, say, the Americans.

00:35:50.800 And I think this is the key difference.

00:35:53.940 There is a framework.

00:35:55.660 There is a structure that holds the country together

00:35:58.340 and a lot of, as I said, smart technocrats within the system

00:36:02.480 for whom that medieval court is a distraction and a problem rather than an inspiration.

00:36:09.460 And so, yes, obviously there may be risks.

00:36:12.000 But to be honest, I think that, yes, Russians are held back by their history

00:36:15.440 and that sense of, oh, my God, what might we face?

00:36:17.920 And a genuine sense that actually when we're divided and when we're weak,

00:36:23.180 we are vulnerable, that the rest of the world, whether it's the West

00:36:26.720 or whether it's the Chinese, which we can't forget, you know, will take advantage of us.

00:36:31.040 But ironically enough, that's also something that one finds in Western circles as well,

00:36:36.460 that sense of we want to push Putin, but do we want to push him a bit too far?

00:36:41.060 You know, what might be the risks?

00:36:42.640 And it's something that Putin himself plays, both in his domestic and his international messaging.

00:36:48.200 And when we talk about Putin and we talk about Russia,

00:36:52.040 we also need to talk about China because they seem very much to be allies.

00:36:58.120 What is Putin's relationship like with Xi Jinping?

00:37:01.480 Are they closely aligned?

00:37:03.060 Is it more a marriage of convenience?

00:37:05.380 Yeah, it's definitely a marriage of convenience.

00:37:08.100 Look, they have certain shared interests,

00:37:10.200 but it's quite interesting that just before the invasion,

00:37:13.060 they got together and there was this announcement that they had a friendship without limits.

00:37:19.160 And then the invasion happens and suddenly the Russians discover that it's a friendship without benefits.

00:37:23.740 In the sense of the Chinese, they're happy to sell dual-use equipment,

00:37:28.980 you know, trucks, for example, which can be used for military purposes,

00:37:31.560 but they can say, no, no, no, it's just civilian or whatever.

00:37:33.720 But, you know, they're not providing weapons,

00:37:35.320 they're not providing kind of heavyweight diplomatic support or whatever.

00:37:38.040 They certainly don't want to jeopardise all this trade with the West.

00:37:42.720 I mean, the West is a vastly more sort of useful partner in that respect.

00:37:46.240 And they're still buying Russian energy,

00:37:49.600 but they know full well that the Russians are desperate to sell,

00:37:52.660 so they are, to be blunt, screwing the Russians over for the best discounts they can possibly get.

00:37:58.120 You know, they're not doing the Russians any real favours.

00:38:00.920 It's more that they have common interests in undermining the West.

00:38:04.380 The Chinese are happy to amplify Russian messaging, for example, in the Global South,

00:38:09.800 about how all this is actually a colonial war and the West are the problems.

00:38:14.600 You know, there are all kind of areas.

00:38:16.060 There's a common interest, frankly, in undermining elements of the world system

00:38:19.780 that they think is designed by the West for the West's interests.

00:38:23.540 And incidentally, they're right.

00:38:25.320 I mean, I don't have a problem with that.

00:38:26.740 But nonetheless, if we're honest, you know, that is the way things are.

00:38:32.940 But from Russia's point of view, I think that there's a lot of Russians

00:38:38.220 who are actually very, in many ways, more worried about China than the West.

00:38:42.500 So Russians basically, I mean, I know how you feel about this,

00:38:45.300 but I think Russians think of themselves as Europeans.

00:38:47.120 Yes.

00:38:47.600 There's none of this nonsense about all Eurasians or whatever.

00:38:50.080 That's kind of fancy philosophy for a handful of, you know, professors.

00:38:54.600 What you're alluding to, Mark, is a lot of Russians, to put it bluntly,

00:38:58.520 don't want to be colonised by the Asiatic horde of China, essentially.

00:39:02.600 That's how they feel about it.

00:39:03.520 Yeah.

00:39:03.780 This isn't politically correct language, but Russians are not that politically correct.

00:39:07.720 No.

00:39:08.280 Oh, it's interesting, actually, that if we're speaking about political incorrectness,

00:39:11.100 a phrase that Leonid Brezhnev had used back in the 1970s has started to kind of crop up again,

00:39:18.220 the fear of the yellowing of the Russian Far East.

00:39:20.720 Yeah.

00:39:21.020 Bless them.

00:39:22.200 People literally say that.

00:39:23.440 By the way, it's not us making this up.

00:39:24.780 This is how people talk in Russia about it.

00:39:27.120 And by the way, just for context, a lot of the Far Eastern regions of Russia

00:39:30.860 are already very heavily Chinese populated.

00:39:34.860 Yeah.

00:39:35.040 And the Russians there are scared about it, which is why when they vote,

00:39:38.720 they vote for the ultra-nationalist liberal democrat.

00:39:41.100 Party, who kind of frankly make even Putin look faintly moderate.

00:39:45.900 So, yeah, I mean, there is a real fear there.

00:39:48.820 I remember before the invasion, talking to – he'd recently retired.

00:39:53.900 He was an army officer.

00:39:55.440 He'd worked in the General Staff's main operations directorate,

00:39:57.800 which is its kind of planning and sort of global modelling sort of unit.

00:40:01.820 And he said, look, in his view, in 20 years' time, Russia will have had a choice.

00:40:05.680 Either it becomes an ally of the West of some kind – he's not talking about joining the EU or anything,

00:40:10.200 which is more or less, you know, will have reached some kind of understanding.

00:40:13.040 Or else Russia will be a vassal of China.

00:40:15.840 As far as he's concerned, you know, it's as simple as that.

00:40:18.640 And frankly, I think this war brings it closer.

00:40:21.000 The thing is, from Putin's point of view, this war is the one that's going to define his political survival,

00:40:26.780 his historical legacy and so forth.

00:40:28.740 So, I don't think he cares.

00:40:30.800 He'll make whatever concessions he needs to China in the interest of winning the war.

00:40:35.000 It's the next political generation, the 50-somethings and the 60-somethings,

00:40:38.860 who are having a – you know, who have a rather different kind of timeframe,

00:40:42.680 who are, I think, quite worried about this, about the fact that already, you know,

00:40:47.820 if you go into the streets of Moscow, increasingly it's Chinese cars that you're seeing everywhere.

00:40:52.240 It's Chinese cell phones that they're using, all that kind of thing.

00:40:55.840 And that sense of you end up creeping bit by bit, becoming dependent on Beijing,

00:41:00.840 without ever planning to do so.

00:41:02.460 But just suddenly you wake up one day, as we were worrying about, you know, with 5G,

00:41:07.340 that all of a sudden you have handed over so many aspects of your economic

00:41:11.800 and sort of infrastructural order to the Chinese that you are now a vassal.

00:41:17.900 So, effectively, what you're saying is that Russia currently is in an incredibly precarious position

00:41:23.940 because they put themselves at odds with the West.

00:41:26.660 They've got these allies who are really not allies by what I term the word allied to mean.

00:41:33.560 You've got this war going on.

00:41:36.240 I mean, where do you go from here long term if you're Russia?

00:41:42.220 Yeah, you see, there's a big question.

00:41:43.620 If you're Russia compared with if you're Putin.

00:41:45.080 I mean, if you're Putin, you're just basically all in.

00:41:48.580 Russia itself, I mean, I'm still unfashionably optimistic about Russia's options, quite frankly.

00:41:56.080 I mean, I think, yes, that we're going through a particular sort of dark time.

00:42:00.640 But, you know, in due course, this war will end.

00:42:03.220 This war will end probably with some kind of political settlement,

00:42:07.840 which will likely leave the Russians in control of some parts of Ukraine.

00:42:11.160 I mean, I can't see the Ukrainians being able to actually push the Russians out completely.

00:42:16.680 And there will, in due course, be a political transfer of power to a new generation.

00:42:21.380 Because that's the one good thing about the fact that all Putin's close people are the same age.

00:42:25.080 It can be very hard to do a lateral succession.

00:42:28.360 You know, and I think, you know, what we will then see is, frankly,

00:42:31.440 Russia wanting to rebuild its connections with the West.

00:42:34.440 And particularly Europe will be almost pathetically glad to take any kind of concession

00:42:40.880 and regard it as proof that, oh, thank God, you know, Russia is coming back

00:42:44.380 because Europe doesn't like conflict.

00:42:46.540 So, I mean, I think there are still escape routes, shall we say, from that dark future.

00:42:51.420 But it all depends on how long.

00:42:54.580 How long does the war go on?

00:42:56.520 You know, how long does Putin remain in power?

00:42:58.800 And these are the big imponderables.

00:43:00.540 And the next generation that you've got, are they looking more liberal?

00:43:06.980 Or is there a broad swathe of candidates who have their own unique outlooks?

00:43:12.860 I really wouldn't say that they look more liberal.

00:43:15.520 But my great faith in them, my great hope, is I put my hope in corruption.

00:43:22.200 I mean, look, I think...

00:43:23.560 You should come to South America, Mark.

00:43:25.200 You can find a penny of it there, mate.

00:43:26.560 Yeah, but the thing is, I mean, what you've got is an elite that is essentially pragmatic

00:43:31.900 and kleptocratic.

00:43:33.520 They love the old order before all this talk of a sort of grand civilizational struggle

00:43:38.440 with the West, where you can steal and then enjoy that.

00:43:42.240 You can buy your iPhones and, you know, and get your Mercedes.

00:43:45.880 And you can go and buy your agreeable penthouse in London and send your kids to an American

00:43:51.240 university and, you know, send your mistress shopping in Milan and all these things.

00:43:56.080 So you get the benefits of the global order while still having your own little sort of

00:44:00.840 piggy bank at home.

00:44:02.880 Now Putin is actually breaking that particular order, that situation, and they're not happy.

00:44:08.420 And it might sound silly to put it in terms of the fact that you can't get spare parts

00:44:11.840 for your BMW.

00:44:13.140 But nonetheless, these things do actually matter that your yacht is impounded in an Italian

00:44:19.020 coastal city or whatever.

00:44:20.960 So I think what this generation will want to do is precisely return to that.

00:44:24.540 And frankly, look, we in the West, we know how to deal with kleptocrats.

00:44:27.360 We do it all the time.

00:44:29.240 You know, we'll be happy to take their money as long as they don't invade places and such

00:44:33.040 like.

00:44:34.000 The thing is, though, that we've seen a pattern which often has replicated itself around the

00:44:40.280 world, which is that once you've stolen everything that's there to be stolen, you want rule of

00:44:46.300 law to fix that.

00:44:48.880 I mean, this is a robber baron era and so forth.

00:44:51.840 Russia is interestingly on the cusp of one of the biggest intergenerational transfers of wealth

00:44:56.100 the world has ever seen.

00:44:57.760 As those people who stole on an industrial scale in the 1990s begin to think about succession,

00:45:02.800 begin to think about how their kids are going to get it.

00:45:04.880 And you need rule of law for that.

00:45:06.320 So I think for their own totally pragmatic reasons, they will probably begin to create

00:45:12.120 more rule of law in Russia.

00:45:14.300 And that's a good thing because you can have rule of law without democracy.

00:45:18.520 You can't have democracy without rule of law.

00:45:20.440 That was a big problem in the 1990s.

00:45:22.600 Russia tried to create democracy, but there was no rule of law.

00:45:25.920 So it just became stolen, essentially.

00:45:27.920 So you might say if the next generation are going to be the pragmatic kleptocrats who bring

00:45:33.180 in a certain degree of rule of law, maybe the generation after that will be the Democrat

00:45:40.740 generation.

00:45:41.800 So it's a long road.

00:45:44.440 And it's not by any means a guaranteed road, but there is that chance.

00:45:49.260 And as I said, it's not because of niceness.

00:45:52.300 It's precisely, actually, that this is in the self-interest of the sub-Putin elite.

00:46:00.480 And one of the things that Vladimir Putin has done as authoritarian leaders not only often

00:46:05.220 do, but you could argue almost have to do, is clear the field of any real competition

00:46:09.900 to him.

00:46:11.460 And so the question, I suppose, a lot of people have been asking who are studying Russia

00:46:16.260 closely is, who is the potential successor?

00:46:19.860 I've heard, you know, when I speak to my contacts in Russia, I hear, oh, the son of this guy

00:46:25.100 who you've never heard of, or this, you know, who are the potential successors?

00:46:31.140 Do we know their names yet?

00:46:32.960 No, it's the honest answer.

00:46:34.060 And again, very much depends on when it happens and how it happens.

00:46:36.840 I mean, if Putin doesn't wake up tomorrow morning, then the prime minister, Mishustin,

00:46:41.920 becomes interim president.

00:46:43.360 Yeah, but he's not.

00:46:44.400 He's not going to, you know.

00:46:45.500 But I mean, this is the thing, you know, so we know what the constitution says, but we don't

00:46:49.300 know what the political underpinnings is.

00:46:51.560 But in some ways, again, that is, and it's really strange to be talking positively and

00:46:56.440 optimistically about the current Russian system.

00:46:58.940 But in some ways, it's a good thing because it means there is no obvious single person

00:47:02.640 who has the power base to be able to succeed Putin.

00:47:07.360 I don't know if you've seen the film, Amanda Iannucci's Death of Stalin.

00:47:10.840 Yes.

00:47:11.100 It's a brilliant film, I think.

00:47:12.960 But in some ways, I think it's very much going to be the same situation, that when Putin

00:47:17.440 goes, you're going to have the great and the good, great and not very good at all, getting

00:47:23.060 together and, you know, behind closed doors trying to work out some kind of a deal.

00:47:27.580 And that's good because that kind of coalition politics tends to kind of bring politics away

00:47:31.140 from the extremes.

00:47:32.200 But I think there is no one person who could just simply stand up and say, I'm the next

00:47:36.320 Putin.

00:47:37.140 So, you know, it may well be a figurehead, someone who is just, you know, again, someone's

00:47:41.560 son, who is really the person who is just reading the scripts that a cabal of people behind

00:47:46.140 him, and normally certainly will be him, sort of reads.

00:47:49.200 Or it may be someone who is some kind of technocrat who can get on well enough with the security

00:47:54.280 apparatus, but on the other hand, can actually manage the country properly.

00:47:59.160 There's a lot of people like that, Moscow mayor, Sabianin, Shustin, or whatever.

00:48:03.100 If you just want someone who's an effective manager who's not going to try and do too

00:48:06.100 much.

00:48:06.760 But the point is, you know, that's today's list.

00:48:10.880 Ask me any year's time and probably it'll be a different list.

00:48:14.180 Has he been cultivating some kind of successor to himself or is that just not on the menu

00:48:18.800 for someone in his position?

00:48:20.040 Again, I think this is the problem.

00:48:21.400 As soon as you try to do anything which implies there may be a vacancy in the future, people

00:48:26.140 start thinking of the vacancy.

00:48:28.420 There are people who say, oh, well, like a former bodyguard of his who became governor

00:48:32.220 of the Tula region, Alexei Dumin, oh, well, this might be a successor.

00:48:37.060 But we've not seen anything to suggest that there's anyone.

00:48:40.720 It may well be that there'll be some, at some point, some sort of ex-bodyguard who suddenly

00:48:45.080 the press is all saying what an amazing guy he is and he's going to meteorically go through

00:48:49.540 the system in a way that Putin did in 1998, 1999.

00:48:54.360 No one was thinking in 1998 that Putin was going to be the next president.

00:48:58.100 Well, no one knew who he was.

00:48:59.320 I was living there at the time and I remember that all the, I was a young boy, but the adults

00:49:03.620 around me going, who?

00:49:05.080 Who's Putin?

00:49:06.440 So you think the same thing is likely to happen?

00:49:09.360 If he starts to think, I need a successor, then I think that's what we'll see.

00:49:14.220 We'll see someone meteorically being sort of hyped as the next guy.

00:49:17.660 But otherwise, no, at the moment, as I said, I think the whole idea of even thinking and

00:49:22.300 talking about a post-Putin Russia is taboo because that sense of once you start, once

00:49:28.640 you almost, you allow people to engage their imagination.

00:49:32.540 Putin's great strength, and I think this is what's going to, what we're going to see

00:49:35.060 in March, he's standing for president, and I'm willing to tip that I think he's going

00:49:39.860 to win.

00:49:42.180 But I think the way this election is already shaping out is likely to be, it's almost as

00:49:46.580 if it's not really a choice.

00:49:47.760 It's going to be like a Soviet election, where you know the result that, you know, you're

00:49:50.860 meant to go in and just simply drop your ballot that already has the Communist Party

00:49:55.040 candidate written on it in the box.

00:49:57.280 It's a civic duty rather than a real chance to actually shape the country because no one

00:50:02.860 must be thinking about alternatives.

00:50:06.220 Mark, do you, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

00:50:11.220 And I know that Putin, as he knows himself, has a lot of enemies.

00:50:16.800 Do you think it's likely that they're going to try and bump him off the longer this goes

00:50:23.360 on, the more unsustainable it becomes, the more the economy goes down the toilet, the more

00:50:27.620 people start to feel the pinch?

00:50:29.220 I mean, no one is ever totally safe.

00:50:33.200 There's always going to be the chance that someone will get through.

00:50:35.820 But it has to be said that there is a massive security structure around Putin.

00:50:41.080 I mean, I remember I, for a while, lived on Kutuzovsky, one of the great big thoroughfares

00:50:45.220 of Moscow, which would be where, you know, his motorcade would go through.

00:50:49.320 And there's relatively rare times when he actually bothered going to the Kremlin.

00:50:53.020 And I mean, they would lock the road down for hours in advance.

00:50:56.800 They would be checking every manhole.

00:50:58.720 There'll be snipers up on every roof.

00:51:00.660 And that's just simply for one journey when you have this massive motorcade of armoured

00:51:05.560 vehicles passing through.

00:51:07.140 So generally, I mean, I think one has to say he is pretty secure.

00:51:10.020 That's never a total guarantee.

00:51:11.480 But it's more that I think that what he has to face is not actually being bumped off necessarily.

00:51:20.500 It's a political coup.

00:51:22.280 It's that the situation reaches such a state that the elite decide, look, this guy's got

00:51:26.860 to go.

00:51:27.800 And they get over their fear.

00:51:30.460 And we're nowhere near that point yet.

00:51:32.420 But they get over their fear and actually start talking amongst each other.

00:51:35.360 And that one day, there he is in his dacha, one of his palaces, and he picks up the phone

00:51:40.880 and there's no dial tone.

00:51:43.180 And he presses whatever button and the people who come in, his security detail, they're there

00:51:48.220 to sort of, for his own safety, move him to me.

00:51:50.920 The sort of thing that happened to Gorbachev in 1991.

00:51:53.580 I think that's the more plausible fear than actually just someone putting a bullet against

00:51:59.920 him.

00:52:00.540 Well, Mark, it's been an absolutely fascinating conversation.

00:52:03.100 We will see how these things play out.

00:52:06.660 And of course, before we let you go, we've got the usual question we finish with and then

00:52:10.160 a bunch of questions from our local supporters.

00:52:12.420 So we'll go there in a second.

00:52:13.680 But first, what is the one thing, perhaps in this context, that we're not talking about

00:52:18.120 that we really should be?

00:52:19.820 Russia after Putin.

00:52:21.460 I mean, I think this is the thing.

00:52:22.400 We are at the moment so understandably obsessed with what we do with Putin.

00:52:26.460 But Putin is going to go.

00:52:28.600 There will be a Russia after Putin.

00:52:30.080 And I think that we're missing a chance to think about how do we reach out to ordinary

00:52:34.300 Russians?

00:52:34.720 How do we undermine Putin's narrative that says the West hates Russians?

00:52:38.440 And actually make it clear that we have a problem with Putin.

00:52:40.660 We have a problem with this war, but not with Russians.

00:52:43.100 That we think Dostoevsky is great.

00:52:44.880 And we think, you know, Swan Lake's the finest bit of music ever.

00:52:47.220 Or whatever we want to say.

00:52:49.520 And I think particularly Britain's missing a trick there.

00:52:51.900 Because there is a lot of Anglophilia amongst Russians.

00:52:56.020 And we should be absolutely playing to that.

00:52:58.520 And it's hard because Putin will try and make it hard.

00:53:00.680 But we need to be getting that so that when Putin does go, actually ordinary Russians are

00:53:05.440 not sort of still imbued with this sense that we just hate them all and want them all to die.

00:53:10.340 That's actually such a good point because I've been very conflicted.

00:53:13.280 I've been obviously a fierce critic of the invasion and all the rest of it.

00:53:16.520 But at the same time, I don't understand how banning Russian composers from things

00:53:21.560 or things of that nature, how that advances the cause in any way.

00:53:25.840 And I've been sort of torn about.

00:53:27.920 Because, yeah, look, if you've got a professional athlete who stands up there and says,

00:53:31.300 oh, you know, I love the invasion, that's maybe a little bit different to somebody

00:53:36.220 who just happens to be Russian or happens to be playing Russian music or Russian literature.

00:53:40.540 And having those things restricted and banned just seems to me like a very counterproductive thing to do.

00:53:44.520 Yeah, it means that we understand Russia less well.

00:53:47.180 We give Putin lots of propaganda advantages.

00:53:50.060 And quite frankly, we also miss a chance to be Machiavellian.

00:53:52.860 I mean, you know, if some highly skilled Russian IT worker wants to come to Britain,

00:53:59.580 I would say absolutely let them.

00:54:01.360 It's someone who will be useful for us and we deprive Putin of him rather than, as is the moment,

00:54:06.600 making it almost impossible for that individual to go to Russia.

00:54:09.320 Actually, a guy stopped me in an airport once who recognized me

00:54:12.400 and he asked me to exchange money for him

00:54:14.500 because apparently you can't exchange money in the UK with a Russian passport.

00:54:18.300 And I'm just going, how does that stop the invasion or the war?

00:54:21.860 And we just seem to go into some kind of virtue signaling spin-off of...

00:54:27.540 I don't understand it.

00:54:29.180 Well, I mean, you said it yourself.

00:54:30.740 It is about virtue signaling.

00:54:32.380 It's about showing that we are tough.

00:54:34.100 And at a time when we know we can't do anything practical, we can do something symbolic.

00:54:39.500 Yeah.

00:54:39.880 And also as well, it's worth bearing in mind that the more you reach out to Russia,

00:54:45.640 the olive branch, especially post-Putin,

00:54:48.820 the less attractive an alliance with China becomes.

00:54:52.040 Absolutely.

00:54:52.800 Yeah, definitely.

00:54:53.480 All right, we've solved it.

00:54:55.140 Nailed it, mate.

00:54:56.000 All right, Mark, stick with us and you guys stick with us

00:54:58.640 because we're heading straight over to Locals for your questions.

00:55:02.560 Is the war in Ukraine proving that the far more expensive complex weapon systems

00:55:07.080 used by the Western NATO aren't as superior as we thought?

00:55:11.020 Are NATO countries misspending on overly expensive weapon systems

00:55:14.580 that can't be mass produced,

00:55:16.380 while Russia is mostly going with quantity over quality?

00:55:18.920 Compliance moves fast and Moody's can help organizations move even faster,

00:55:30.300 leveraging AI to help you gain quicker insights and reduce bottlenecks.

00:55:33.840 Let Moody's help your organization navigate change with confidence.

00:55:36.940 Visit moody's.com slash kyc slash AI dash study to discover how.

TRIGGERnometry - February 18, 2024

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Putin - Historian Mark Galeotti

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