Angry Planet - One Year Reporting in Russia

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Vice News reporter Any Hayward spent the better part of the last year in Russia reporting on the domestic situation there. His work has appeared in various segments on Vice’s website, but he’s got a new documentary coming out on the anniversary of fullscale invasion called Warped by War.Hayward is here to walk us through what he saw, who he talked to, and the unique dangers of reporting in Putin’s Russia as a foreign journalist.The Vice YouTube channel is here. Warped by War will be available there on February 24.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. So what's the poster on your wall, the typewriter with what's going into it? Is that planet? I'm not quite sure this is my partner. So it's like little people hanging on strings. And like, Bulls, you know. Who knows? I mean, it's quite a nice picture, but I think it's... Yeah, little people on strings and bulls.

Into a tightwriter. I think it's a, it's a... I don't know. It's meant to be some... It's a comment on the worlds that we create when we sit down at the typewriter. Exactly. It's an allegory for the writing process. Andy, can you introduce yourself and tell us the title of the documentary that you are here to talk to us about?

Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me on, guys. Yeah, my name's Andy Hayward. I'm a producer and journalist. And for the last two years since Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I've been largely covering Russia, producing work from within Russia for Vice News. That's been short video. And then over the last sort of 12 months, I've been focused on a hour-long special film, which is about 40 minutes, 45 minutes of work. just sort of bringing together a lot of our reporting. And that film's called Warps by War inside Putin's Russia. And that's coming out next month on YouTube on the anniversary of the second anniversary of the war. How long have you been back? The last trip, which for the foreseeable, probably be my last trip to Russia, was in December. That's when we finished our last elements of filming. Gotcha.

Where all did you go in Russia? So big country. Yeah, no, it's huge. I mean, we've had a smaller and smaller footprint. Obviously, when Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal, was arrested, that really did impact the scope and scale of how we were doing our reporting and where we were prepared to go. I mean, a lot of what we covered post-the-invasion was mainly Moscow, St. Petersburg, but we also went to places like Varonis and, you know,

other areas around sort of Moscow really. I mean, part of our way of operating was also that we would try to really do stuff that was in drivable distance of Moscow because of the nature of the situation, particularly post Evans' arrest,

we didn't really want to be in a situation where anyone was asking us what we were doing or where we were or why we were doing it. We just didn't want to even get into a situation where we started having conversations with security officials. So, to prevent or mitigate that, driving's a lot safer. Like if you take a plane, if you take a train in Russia,

you will be flagged on a system as traveling. Like you need to sort of show your passport when you get on even for an internal train. So to get to prevent that, we sort of decided to operate in a way where we drove, which did limit our ability to cover things to a degree. But I think it gets improved our safety. I mean, I would have liked to have gone more places. guests on sort of safety, we thought, you know, you don't want to fly to a region where, you know,

there's a large sort of FSB presence and guests be flagged on the system even, no, however good the, the interviewee would be. I mean, prior to Evan, we were a bit more expansive. We traveled to Dagestan, which is one of the Muslim majority republics in the south, which has supplied a lot, proportionately supplied a lot of the soldiers that are fighting in Ukraine for Russia. you know, and a range of other places across Russia, we could be a bit more, prior to Evan, we were operating with a bit more flexibility because technically our accreditation, which you get from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a journalist, foreign journalists working in Russia, does mean you are free to travel, but the reality was it's not really that simple,

and people can choose to take exception to what you're doing. And then after Evan was arrested, it is very hard to know exactly what the rules were, anymore. And I mean, I think that's part of the point and that's part of where Russia's going. I mean, it was always unpredictable, but I think the unpredictability is increased. The risk that it's not just that you might, that might be wrong. You're not sure if it's wrong or not, but the possibility is if you are stopped doing it or asked about it or they could make an issue out of it. So I think we were just in the mindset where we really wanted to limit our exposure as best we can. We're still trying to get access to people, we're still trying to tell the story.

And that was the sort of balance we were trying to strike, really. Do you have any thoughts about why Russia's letting journalists in at all? Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, it's, I don't think any of the answers, the horses are necessarily good ones. I mean, when it comes to, like, Evan's situation, you do wonder if part of the desire to have some foreign journalists in is to potentially have them there as bargaining chips. They are, citizens that exist within Russia and they can be used if necessary. So I think that's one way you could think they think they could potentially be useful. I mean, they definitely have tried to limit the number of journalists, not necessarily explicitly, but if you drop out the system, lose your

accreditation, because now they used to get accreditation for a year. Now you can only get it for three months at a time. So there's a whole lot more bureaucracy to keep in the system. So they've made it harder to stay in the system, maybe fall out the system, they're then very reluctant to reissue accreditation. So to some degree, they have limited the journalists that are there, may be more like, I don't know, I sometimes think maybe no one has made a clear decision for the MFA, so they're kind of existing on some sense of like, we'll keep accrediting people in the system, but to get a new person, we're going to need some higher degree of sign off than we had previously. But yeah, the one scary thought is that maybe they want some people as sort of

potential bargaining chips. The other four is historically Russia wasn't as fussed about what foreign language media said to them, said about Russia in countries that aren't Russia. So if you're not talking in the Russian language, if you're not criticizing or commenting on the situation in Russia to Russians, they were a bit more laissez-faire about it. They were like, well, you know, And also it fed into how Russia liked to portray itself. It didn't want to say we're an authoritarian regime, but wanted to say, no, we're an open country. Yes, we have different values, but we let your journalists in.

We let you say what you want about us. We're not authoritarian. We're not a dictatorial regime. People generally support Putin. You know, this is the choice of how we live our country and we don't care what you say about us. And that, I think, even up until Evan, was what most of the foreign press working there largely went by because most people, and I mean, you know, after the start of the war,

and quite a lot of people did leave because it was unclear what the new status quo was, but they brought in laws that were basically about it was a crime to discredit the military, but in actuality, discrediting the military means potentially telling the truth about the military, like saying things that the Russian state does not like being said about their military. But so, yeah, I mean, it's hard. to know exactly why they allow journalists to operate. I think a lot of it is, yes, that historic reason about they were kind of, well, we're not actually chucking people out, yet potentially is bargaining chips. But yeah, also potentially there's decisions that haven't been made about it,

and there's people in the system, and yes, like I say, they're losing journalists by attrition. There are some individual examples. People I know who had their accreditation taken away, said, no, we're not issuing it because we don't like specifically what you've done. But it's also, it's very hard to work out because, you know, people have different handlers at the MFA, different people work with different journalists. And, you know, it's not exactly clear. But I think that also creates a kind of fear and an uncertainty. You don't know what the rules are. You don't know what could be a problem, what couldn't. And yeah, so, you know, there is, I'm not sure exactly how many, but there's only a handful of foreign journalists who are,

who are there now sort of Western journalists, obviously I think other countries with more cordial relations with Russia, it's slightly different. And this ambiguity, this fear, this uncertainty permeates everything around this war and around Russian society, or at least that's what it appears from the documentary, right? Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I think that is part of the power of the state that Putin,

has created. It is the fact that you, you don't need to prosecute every person who goes against a law. You just need to have a sense of fear that doing X or doing Y could lead to that. Like the character in the film, Artian Kamarden, he was sort of a low-level activist, generally sort of oppositional to the Kremlin, to Putin's regime. You know, he gets arrested for performing an anti-war poem. It's an anti-war poem. More specifically, it was anti-the-military draft in September, October 2022, where they were drafting young men into the army for forced conscription. It's not a particularly outlandish attack on Putin. It's quite a subtle protest. It was a poetry reading attended by, you know, 20 people at max. Like, this was not a big event. But, you know,

and this is, we need to sort of update the end of the film and we will do, but like now he's been convicted for seven years for that. And that doesn't mean that every person who said something oppositional or critical of the war will have that happen to them. But the fact is it could happen to them. And if you are charged, the likelihood is you will be convicted and you will go to jail and it will be for a disproportionately long time, you know, for more than, you know, I mean, this is the thing.

at the same time as someone like Artim has seven years sentence for a poem, you also have prisoners who were recruited by Wagner, who fought in Ukraine for six months, might have been murderers, might have been rapists, pardoned after six months' service, and now free people back on the street. So, I mean, I don't know, I mean, I'm slightly going off topic there, but I actually think that does also add to the fear, and that also sort of shows, I think, the psychological state Russia is in at the moment.

Like, and the risks, the risks from, yeah, the decisions the state is taking. And at ease with sort of violence as well. I mean, Artem's arrest was a very violent arrest, even by Russian standards, quite violent. Like he was raped, sodomized with a piece of metal. Like, that's quite rare, even by Russian standards. But, you know, you have all these killers, murder is being released back into society. You have a war which has maybe claimed 100,000 Russian servicemen killed, service personnel could be more. So, you know, I mean, some estimate is very hard to know what the tree number is.

Latest US estimate was total casualties could be 300,000. That's killed and injured. It's like there is a lot of trauma. There's a lot of violence. There's a lot of extreme behavior happening in Russia at the moment. And the war is facilitating that and breeding that and creating more of it. And it's, you know, it's a cycle which is, I think, will, you know, get worse as this war continues. I mean, obviously, depends what support Ukraine has and how able they are to continue fighting.

But if the war continues, I think that, that sort of, that violence will continue within Russia too. And that fear will continue because it's all linked together. In that kind of environment, how do you get anyone to talk to you? Yeah, I mean, very, very hard, really. I mean, the fact of some people are still brave, I mean, when it comes to Alexandra and Artium, two of our main characters, Artium, the guy mentioned who's arrested,

Alexandra's his fiancé, and then wife, as the film goes on. I mean, they are people who have an oppositional position and were prepared to talk about it. I mean, also, from our perspective, they don't actually were, Alexandra, who's our main contributor, because our team's obviously detained, she doesn't actually say anything overtly oppositional or criminals. She's not discrediting the military.

She's sticking by the rules in a way. But in her situation, I think by just showing what's happening to her and her partner, you understand the nature of society there. She doesn't need to say anything. You know her partner has done a poem. You can see the poem. You know he's facing potentially his upper limit was 10.5. years he was facing. You see her distress at that. You see the fact that this is a huge,

powerful security state being brought to bear on people with no major profile. They weren't in any way a major threat. So, you know, in their case, they were prepared to speak to us because I think they know their story is important and they live in the activist space. I mean, in other cases, we're talking to pro-Russian people and there are still plenty of people in Russia, the kind of headbangers who are like all for the war or make their money from being for the war who are happy to talk to you. But then, you know, that's also a concern for us because it's like, you know, previously in Russia, we've had interviewees who are pro-war who've called the authorities on us when they didn't like how an interview went. So there's a balance there

about how you handle something like that. But then again, you could argue we're sort of showing a platform and we're giving a platform to these people. I mean, a lot of them were have platforms, but I also think it's very important to show these kind of characters that exist in the Russian, in the case of the film, I'm talking specifically about Stas for Siliab, these are propagandaists we speak to, but these are the kind of pro-war characters that are part of the Russian media ecosystem. And in their case, it was quite hard to find a propagandist who was prepared to talk to us, but also, again, they're kind of unashamed and they're kind of bullsey people who go out and give their opinion. And, you know, a lot of them veer into conspiracy

theorists. I think, you know, they are, like Stass is, you know, I can't think of an exact sort of American equivalent, but, you know, there's sort of elements of a bit, a bit sort of Alex Jonesy about, about a lot of these pundits and the sort of things they go into and the conspiracies they indulge. You're talking about the guy that, the, the one you talk to, the brunette gentleman. Yeah, yeah, he's like the second scene. Yeah, he's, he's arguing with a guy over zoom, a guy who's been, who's in exile because he's facing arrest. He kind of reminds, me of like a Stephen Crowder. Do you know who that is?

It's kind of a low-tier. Yeah, yeah, no. No, I think Stephen Crowder is a pretty good bat. Yeah, it was very, that was one of my favorite bits of the documentaries when you dive, when you talk to him and you kind of dive into their media ecosystem, which I see bits and pieces of, but like kind of getting the full sale of salt that you give us in the dock was really fascinating. Can you talk about the kind of ideology that's being pushed on cable news and how it's different from what's being pushed to the youth culture? Because they are two

different things, right? Yeah. So, I mean, there are two different things, but there's quite a lot of crossover. So someone like Stas, he exists, he has like quite a big online presence and a lot of the funding for things that he's been involved in comes from a push from the Russian state to put funding into into digital media. Because if you look at most polling, and it's always hard to know about polling in Russia exactly, but generally younger people are less supportive of the war. So they seem to be putting more money into the digital space. But someone like Stas, he's actually a sort of protégé of a more famous Russian pundit called Soloviev, who is who is a very famous face on Russian TV for the last sort of 20 years, who has been on all the

traditional state TVs. And he's the person that's kind of Stas's show actually gets shot in the same studio as Sololo. Sorry, I'm the time of time, as Solovio. And he has had Alex Jones on his show as well. And so there is a mix. And in many ways, like, I think where Stass different differs a bit. from the more table audiences. And this is something I would have, you know, if it was an article or something we could have probably got into more,

is he's a self-described like communist. So he basically has this kind of quite contrarian position of like, well, and we talked about Putin and stuff. Like he didn't really criticize him, but he also like he kind of criticizes the capitalism of Russia. And he has like a critique of Russia. So he comes from one, a more unusual place. And he comes from a kind of slightly like questioning, like a conspiratorial

view where it's kind of, you know, yes, but this is a worldwide conspiracy, a capitalist conspiracy. Potentially there's some sort of anti-Semitic elements to what he's saying sometimes. And then, but then he doesn't extend that critique to like Putin being part of that. He sort of incorporates Putin as some sort of pretend, even though Putin's run a sort of crony capitalist system as a sort of bullwalk to further like, um, sort of capitalist takeover and the New World Order and the global elite coming and sort of selling Russia up and sort of, you know, getting rid of its culture, I guess. But he, that idealistic space, we kind of describing the film as What Aboutery, I think,

is a bit more unique to him and maybe that's a bit where the UFO are because the youth are generally a bit more skeptical. I mean, when he had his YouTube channel, he did have about 1.5 million subscribers before it was banned for sort of parroting pro-Russian talking points. So I think that is the angle with him to be a bit more a bit more guest contrarian maybe works. I think if you go for the cable audience,

the more mature audience, most Russians still get their information via television. And like most of sort of America, Europe, it is an aging population, average age is over 40. So most people are still largely TV watches. And that probably has a bit more, it's a more of a traditional storytelling format, as is the same with sort of, you know,

US or UK TV news. But it also, it probably bangs a bit more of a traditional drum when it comes to sort of, you know, the Great Patriotic War, World War II, is very sort of lionized in, in Russia. In nukes. And nukes, yeah.

I mean, sort of threatening nukes. And guess sort of an appeal to sort of Russian might, Russian jingoism. And also the thing that Russian TV does a lot is it also references, you know, I don't know if you, do you want,

you'd be hard pushed to watch it and sort of get a sense of what's going on in Russia because so many of the programs and the discussions start with like, well, we'll play a translated clip of something Joe Biden said, or we'll play a clip from CNN of them talking about Russia, and they will lead in a program or have a proportion of a program dedicated to what's being said on a new, even gets a news bulletin in another country. So it's really quite bizarre in the fact that that's where it's trying to pull people's focus.

I would say, though, when it comes to the youth formula, I don't know, and again, this is something we can't, don't really have the time to get into film, but how effective they are appealing to the youth is kind of debatable. And also the TV audience, there is some polling to suggest that maybe people are somewhat turning off a bit because it's so much noise, it's so much sort of carcophony of like kind of competing narratives and contradictory information that's there to appeal to your emotions and rile you up, that a lot of people, I think, in Russia are just trying to turn it off. I mean, although polling again suggests most Russians do support the war,

I think there is also a lot of apathy within that support. They support it because there really isn't many true alternatives in Russia. There isn't many clear alternative information sources left in Russia. So I think that there is, it's by default to position people adopt, but I think there is a lot of apathy there as well. And that all this screaming and shouting, it does have a dedicated audience and it is very unhinged and very dangerous. And if you joke about nuking a country or at least sort of play with the idea of it on TV,

I think how far down the line does that become a reality? I think if you discuss something like in the case of the clip we have, which is nukeing Britain, but, you know, people have talked about Russians talking about nuking the Baltics or nuking America, you know, like playing around with these ideas in such a frivolous manner, you do wonder at what stage does this become something that's a more acceptable idea? And I mean, from the top down in the Russian system, I mean, part of why Putin launched the invasion, the way he did, was because he was getting high on his own supply about what Ukraine was and what people were thinking in Ukraine. Like, there were clearly people advising him back with

the information that his sort of propaganda networks have put out there, that if you marched on the capital key, it would fall within 24 hours, loads of Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators, and you could establish some proxy, like politician, pro-Russian politician and power there, or you could, you know, put it in a more sort of like a union as Belarusis with Russia. Like, he was buying into the lie of the mythology created in his own system. And I think that that is what's worrying about propaganda. And the Russian approach, I think, is, like, throwing so much at the wall. Let's see what sticks.

Because as Yeraterina Shulman, one of the political scientists we talked to in the piece, so much of what you're getting on Russian media is really contradictory as well. And one day it's this, one day it's that. It's not something to follow. It's just an emotional dump. And they are hoping that some of it sticks. But again, it's like, you know, this is. this is state-funded media.

It's like it's also how many people are truly watching, how many people are really taking it on board and to what degree are they taking it on board? This is all very hard to say. But in a media ecosystem where that is most of what the content is, I think it does seep through to a large number of people, unfortunately. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, if you just imagine like Alex Jones doing your evening news,

I mean, it's just like it's a whole level of crazy that it's hard to see in, you know, the United States. I mean, even if Donald Trump was reading the news, it's hard to know if he could go quite that far. Yeah, they get Steven Segal as well. They've had Stephen Segal on as well at different points. Gerard DeBergue? Does he come on? So, yeah, they, he might have come on, actually. I haven't seen that. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I know he is a citizen as well.

And he has a, he has a, he has a, own subland in Belarus as well. And he's got a, a, a, a Belarusian vodka with his face on it as well. So, you know, maybe soon. I mean to Russian TV's near soon. That's the face that looks like the result of vodka rather than something you could actually use to sell it. Yeah. Dream the vodka, get the look. All right, angry planet listeners, want to pause there for a break.

We'll be right back after that. Yes. All right, angry, plaintiff, listeners, welcome back. So it sounds like there's a certain amount of flexibility, ideologically, as long as you can agree on some certain things. Russian nationalism, Putin good, war good, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty succinct take, actually. I mean, that's, there was a bit more, nuance there and this like like russia has a lot of what are called mill bloggers military bloggers who are sort of independent people who are sort of blogging about the war a lot of them through telegram and it's interesting before the bargain mutiny happened and a very famous one is strelkov who was a kind of paramilitary leader involved in the first incursions into ukraine and the dombas and and Crimea in 2014 um he sort of had set himself up as a military blogger. And he represented a sort of small, but like quite vocal minority of people.

And this is something that our political scientist says in the film, who were kind of pro-war people who then, and were pro-putin, but as the war was executed so badly and the progress wasn't being made, they remained pro-war, but they ceased to be pro-putin. And that's also what kind of pro-gojan ultimately became as well. So, but after pro-gogeon, ultimately became as well. So, but after pro-goeons, failed sort of rebellion, Spelkov, this military blogger was then, is now also arrested and facing charges. So they've tried to sort of stamp that out.

I mean, there's, there is a degree of flexibility. And, you know, there's plenty of times, even though technically you shouldn't say it's a war. You have to say it's a special military operation. Various TV pardinets have set of war at different points. And they're not prosecuted or censured for it. Because, you know, it's in the context of how, they're saying it and some of them flip between

there's this flip between maybe downplaying the war and sort of you know it's the special military operation don't worry about it you know it's handled the Russian military as it handled and also we're at war with all of the west all of NATO the reason we haven't made process as much progress as we'd

hoped is because we're fighting America like so there's there's this kind of sort of double double game again it's contradictory narratives but yeah if you stick to sort of pro war pro Putin you'll get you know you're generally okay, but there are more nuanced opinions in there, but they also then might be contradicted the next day,

because a lot of these shows, they have very long shows. They go out, you know, we've found those clips, but often they are taken out of potentially two-hour, three-hour programs. Some of the, you see as the big roundtable discussions they have, where they have like six panlists and a big jib camera swinging around, those can last like three hours. So there is a lot of stuff being said. So, yes, they,

they will sometimes go off topic or be trying. I feel like it's a bit like kind of awful kind of pro-war stand-ups who are like trying out material sometimes. Like they're, they're just riffing off each other. And sometimes that goes in slightly weird directions. But don't worry, we'll try again next week, you know. I think calling,

I mean, Strelkov certainly is a blogger, but he's so much more. Absolutely fascinating. Yes, he is. Sorry, I probably underselling. I think you're absolutely underselling.

Convicted an absentia of, downing the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was, I think, I can comfortably say, one of the warlords, and was it Dynetsk in the early part of, in the Little Green Men part of the invasion? Consumet Cosplayer, there's lovely photos of him in all sorts of regalia. And yeah, now, like this person that's kind of been a huge part of this conflict for the last 10 years is, now possibly going to jail because he got a little too critical. Yeah. And just kind of to focus on this space a little bit more, there was also, I can't remember his name, but there was the guy who was another one of these telegram-born, very popular

war bloggers who was giving a talk at a cafe that I think was owned by Progosion, if I recall correctly. Somebody came in, gave him a gold medal bust of him. and he thought it was very fancy, and there was explosives in it, and he's dead. So, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the guy who's death, interestingly enough, like a lot of some, like, there's a lot of clown figures in there, right? But there's also these more serious and interesting, uh, uh, thinkers and analysts like Stralcove, like the, the guy whose name escapes me.

No, I just wanted to throw that out there as a bit of context. Yes, yeah. the names escape me as well, but yes, and then also you've got Duganer as well, the daughter of, formerly a more prominent sort of Russian nationalist ideologue, Alexander Dugan as well, who was also blown up in a bomb attack. Some speculate the attempt was on her father's life, not her. But again, yeah, I mean, he's not exactly a military blogger. He's been a around the block for longer than that, but he's in a similar kind of fervent nationalist space and, yes, previously more affiliated like with the Kremlin, but also some degree of

autonomy. I mean, yeah, it's a tricky one because with all those cases, it's unclear exactly what scores, like there's people who want to sell scores or whose interest it is to kill these people, you know, potentially it is, it is Ukraine, potentially it's somewhere in the Russian state. It is really hard to know. Potentially, it's someone else with another interest who knows that it will be blamed on other forces. Like, I mean, I think it is just testament to the kind of,

and I think, again, back to like, sort of Wagner releasing prisoners and stuff, like, like this sort of edge of instability that is entering a lot of Russian society these days. And I do think we'll only get worse as the war goes on. like some very kind of and a lot of the people like involved in Donetsk and there's someone who I've interviewed in a earlier film he was um Alexander Borodai who is one of the leaders of the of the of the breakaway region in the in the early or how in the early phases of its existence um again you know these are people who you know exist on the edge of sort of criminality on some level

have kind of nefarious pasts and, you know, are kind of, you know, they might have put on suits and ties and stuff now, but they come from quite like, like hands-on, like backgrounds where, you know, they're basically people who have gone to sort of instigate war and instability, and now they're sort of back within the Russian system vying for position. So, you know, it's really hard to know all of this stuff. There's so much speculation and it's very hard to really know what the true cause of these things are. But yeah, I do expect we'll probably see more of it. I mean, and also like, I mean, again, with like when you, when you return to like the Wagner mutinyary, it's like you also see the potential for the state to want to have these kind of purges.

Because particularly, and that Putin's done quite a good job and the Kremlin and the people around who have done quite a good job at maintaining stability at the moment. I think, I think it's surpassing expectations and how the country's holding up. But, if things, if this war goes on, if it gets worse, if the economy gets worse for Russia, like there will be more people thinking, well, do I, shall I make an alliance with this person and try and oust this person or jockey for position or, you know, I'm not saying these are going to be, these probably will not be people who are there any better ideologically than Putin, but there's people who will have self-interest and will think maybe can I,

can I benefit from this scenario? And I do expect, like, if this war does go on and it does go, continues to not go well for Russia, then I think we'll probably see more of that sort of thing. Can I chase down a tangent real quick before we move on that's a little bit focused on this? Can you talk about why telegram seems to become so important? And I had a question specifically about the documentary. The footage of Artem's arrest that came from a telegram link, right? Like it.

Yes. Yes. You mean the which bit, the one where he's, he's doing the poem itself, the footage that he got arrested for? No, the actual footage of his arrest that you'll have. I think it's got the 112 superimposed on it, which I believe is a telegram channel. Oh, sorry. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So the 112, yes, that is a telegram channel, which is pro like Kremlin, pro-Russian state affiliated. it's it basically posts a lot of footage of that sort of thing stuff where the only sort of viable or like um the only sort of likely contributor who gave him that footage is someone who's in the russian security services and there's a few of these channels existed there used to be one that or a couple that sort of existed for wagner as well where there'd be the first telegram channel to go to where you'd get like whatever video progoshans doing that week or him

you know, shouting at Garasimov or Shogu or or various other people in the military high command of Russia. There were certain telegrams that Wagner stuff would go on. 1-1-2 is one where a lot of like stuff like that goes on. There's also the footage of Artian performing the anti-war poem. That was probably filmed by a like pro-state provocateur of some description. From the people I spoke to who were there, they said, we didn't recognize who the person filming it was and they have probably gone off their own back to then submit it to the security

services um so there's and there's a lot of that going on and there's and there's different groups i spoken to in the past where it's like do they get a bit of state funding are these people working for the state or are they kind of they get a bit of money here and there but also they are guess people who are very virulently pro pro-prussian state or nationalistic and jingoistic and they and they go around and want to like try and catch people out and hand them over to the security services. So quite a lot of that goes on on Telegram. These channels become platforms of outrage for people with different political opinions. I mean, it's kind of interesting Telegram because it's got a lot of sort of pro-Cremlin stuff, a lot of pro-Kremlin channels, and it's also

got a lot of oppositional channels. And it's interesting. It's not, there's not, doesn't, it hasn't really been a concerted effort to close it down as there has been with, you know, now it's very hard to You can't get Instagram, Twitter, like all the sort of Western platforms are gone in Russia, with the exception of YouTube, because lots of Russians just use it to watch stuff that's non-political. So I think they don't really want to have a backlash by, I guess, taking it down. But Telegram, I don't know. And it was originally the guy who found it, I believe, is Russian.

I think he lives in Dubai now. I would be intrigued personally to know a bit more about what the deal is with it, because it does seem to have both sides operating on it. And a lot of these mill bloggers, they have telegram channels. That's how they communicate. But likewise, a lot of oppositional figures do too. But it is like one of the probably most important apps in sort of the Russian-speaking world in terms of that is where a lot of information and videos is exchanged. And a lot of the channels there, if you want to know what's going on in Russia in a first-hand context, they're the things you want to follow, really.

And the military uses it as well, right? Yeah, yeah, I believe I believe so. I mean, they have there, I think there's the official, there's official channels of like various people who are in the Duma and politicians and tasks, which is like basically sort of Russia's news agency, you know, they all have channels in there. So yeah, it's a strange ecosystem. I do wonder, and I've wondered when I've gone to Russia, do, do, is there any one monitoring of it or, when it comes to telegram or maybe is it harder to find certain stuff than other stuff? Is there some shadow banning? I don't know enough about it. I'd be very intrigued if someone has looked a bit more into it because it is somewhat of an anomaly. I do wonder like, again, with the same case with YouTube, like maybe there is a degree to which this is a very popular and prominent messaging app. We don't want to kind of upset the Apple car or we feel like in that ecosystem.

we have enough pro-Russian voices that it doesn't bother us. Whereas, you know, when it came to like Instagram or Twitter, they were, they were, one, like Western media companies, like on that level, they probably weren't too keen on them. And too, maybe they felt they were, they were hotbeds for like more oppositional voices and beliefs. And also, I mean, I think also part of it was like, and I think this is the scariest thing, like lots of, Russia's a very, I mean, it's a very diverse society. But if you go to the cities like St. Petersburg, Moscow, the big population hubs, you know, it's pretty

cosmopolitan. A lot of young Russians today, you know, they had Instagram accounts that, you know, it's got progressively hard to get working VPN, but people can still do it and be on these things and be connected to the outside world. But I think the scary thing is if you think like in 10 years time,

if you're a Russian child who's now like 8 or 9, you know, 10 years time, if this war is frozen or going on in some form, even five years time, you have had a level of indoctrination that Russia hasn't seen since the sort of Soviet Union, I think. You know, they're launching, they've got patriotic lessons in school now. You are closed off to a lot of these external sources. It is quite as hard to travel places if you're a Russian citizen. And I think the,

the scary thing is like wondering what effect that will have on these younger people in Russia as time goes on. Because at the moment, you know, you still, people remember what life was like before this war, but soon that won't be the case for the youngest in society. I have a question about traveling and what you did. How did people, like, you know, the people running the hotels and any other people,

like, that you ran into, just average people. How did they react to you? I mean, now that we're not really friends. Yeah, a mixed situation, really. I mean, a lot of people are fine, like particularly where I was mainly based, which is Moscow. Like, there are people who have a more liberal outlook. There's plenty of people who, even though they're not expressing kind of those views in a public forum, they're not supportive of the regime.

I mean, I'd say you've probably got a good 15, 20, maybe to some degree, 25% of Russians who are not, who are quite like of the of the mindset that where Russia's gone is not good and they are vaguely sort of oppositional to the status quo currently so and in Moscow those sort of people are easy to find so there's you know there's there's there's there's still friendly a lot of people have left still um I mean also you still get a degree of like curiosity and guest friendliness like Russians that they they you know they they can be very warm and welcoming even even in sort of disagreement. I mean, so, you know, like hotels and stuff where I've stayed and being there.

Like, people are generally quite cordial, not always, but generally, generally they are. Because I think also there's, I think for a lot of sort of Moscovites and people, there's a bit of a mourning about what's happened to their city. Because, you know, before the war, even after the invasion of Crimea, before the full-scale invasion anyway, there was still a lot of people. It was still a cosmopolitan place. There's still lots of Americans, Brits, Europeans, of different, types all in this city and it and you know it was a very cosmopolitan big exciting city with a lot going on and I think

I think there's probably there's a degree of like people in in the in the capital who sort of mourn that like a lot of colors gone out of of the world a lot of the tourists are not there I mean there's still sort of Arab tourists tourists from the from from the far east as well like that so there are there are people but it's it's it's changed as a city so I think people sometimes still just have a sort of curiosity And that doesn't mean they wouldn't necessarily be kind of pro the war, but I think it means they've got other interests as well. And like I say, I do think there's just a lot of Russians that are kind of, would guess kind of like this war to go away.

That's not the same as opposing it, but they're not like, like even the support, like the good, the broad support for the war, it isn't fanatical support. It's support that's out of the idea that if you live in a world in the ecosystem where everything, your personal interests, your job, the risk of going to prison. Everything is pushing you in a direction to believe and accept the status quo, then you will accept the status quo. There are no alternative media outlets in Russia anymore, no independent media. There are no independent politicians that exist. So there's no one there

who's really in the Russian language expressing an alternative opinion. And if no one can express an alternative opinion freely, it's very hard for someone who's got a doubt about how the system's being run or a doubt about Putin or the war, to think that maybe someone else has a doubt and maybe they can discuss these doubts and doubts become different opinions and opinions become action. There's no space for that anymore. But back to your point, yeah, people are, it's a mixed bag. I mean, there's a couple of instances. I've had some degree of, of sort of aggression, but I mean, or sort of animosity. But I mean, generally, we were trying to operate in a way where we kind of avoided getting into those situations as well.

But yeah, it's a strange place to operate, particularly as someone who'd travel there prior to this as well. It's just gone through a transformation. And it's a place where a lot's going on, but in a way, like, less is going on and never before. Like, there is a sense of people keeping their heads down, maybe a slight sense of the city being a bit more, kind of less vibrant of touch underpopulated.

Like it's, I don't know, it's, it's a strange place to be and a strange place to operate. Yeah, but then also, Moscow's like a, still a very diverse place in the sense that there's lots of Central Asians, a lot of sort of the cab drivers, Yandex drivers, the equivalent of like Uber there. You know, they're not, they're not Russian. They come from Central Asia. I mean, interesting. I also noticed there's, there's a lot more African migrants who are doing jobs at the hotel. Like I definitely know it's like like the waiters, the number of African waiters when I'm at the

when I was getting my visa renewed a lot more Africans and at the airport a lot more like Arabs and people from the Middle East as well. Like there was like coming to sort of fill I think gaps in the labor market and jobs as well. I mean also like I think Putin's just signed a bill about

like potentially fast tracking citizenship for foreign nationals who come and serve in the Russian military. Like it's it's a strangely evolving place. And also it's kind of interesting, I find how like Putin, who's based a lot of his appeal on being a kind of a Russian nationalist,

you know, kind of foreign ideas are bad. Foreigners are kind of bad. We're not really into them too much. It's kind of interesting how this war, I think he's actually provoking quite new migrations into Russia as well, which again, it would be interesting to see how that pans out if this war continues and the need for manpower

continues as well in this way. What about the soldiers who survive and come back? What is their mood? What kind of stories are they telling? Yes, obviously in the film we have a guy called Yuri. That's not his real name, but he exactly represents that voice. I mean, he's someone who was injured by Shatman and his head had a concussion. And he's got a stammer from that.

I mean, I think there is a lot of aggrievement. And, you know, there's videos and stuff circulating. on telegram channels which shows that Russian soldiers aren't happy but I think that's one side of the story I think the factors at the moment the Russian

state is paying Russians quite good wages to fight I mean after they tried to sort of conscript people because they needed manpower they've shifted to guess doing like a sort of full court press kind of like recruitment on steroids kind of thing.

Lots of posters, lots of recruitment, trying to get people to sign up voluntarily. And part of how they've done that is they're offering what are very considerably high wages for Russia. So, well, for parts of Russia. You know, I think about maybe a quarter, maybe 20% of Russians still don't have indoor plumbing or indoor toilet. There's a lot of places that are really very poor there.

And they're offering, I think, the equivalent of sort of $2,500. was a month, which is many times more the average wage in some parts of Russia. So I think in certain places like that, there are soldiers who are like seeing it as a good opportunity. But then I also think the reality on the front is there's still probably some degree of incompetence. There's still from the way Russia has been attacking like police like Abdivka more recently or Bachmach historically or a few months ago.

they do throw men at the problem or people at the problem. So, and I think if you have had limited training and you're put into to combat, I think that there is probably a lot of disgruntled men. I mean, it's, you know, it's something that's tricky. Like with a soldier we talked to, that's a snapshot of one thing. And a lot of his experiences more towards the start of the conflict, you would probably get different opinions as it goes on. but I certainly think there is a disregard for life about how Russia uses troops.

And also historically, their approach has always been, and the World War and World War II is so kind of lionized in their culture. And I've had Russian say it to me, they go, you know, they go, the thing that makes us kind of a great country or kind of why we'll win against anyone else is because we will keep going. and also they have the manpower to keep going. I mean, they don't have 190 million people as they did doing the USSR. They maybe have 140, 150 million. But that is a lot of potential people. So, and I do think, and I don't want to make some mass cultural, like, like, I guess, sweeping cultural statement.

But I do think within some elements of Russian culture, and because it's had a political system which has kind of beaten out free thought and free expression of opinion and opposing opinion. And it's called on this history of self-sacrifice for noble causes. I do think there is some sense

in which people don't necessarily speak up about these costs. We obviously have one mother who is speaking out, but even her criticism is not the most full-throated. even though she's lost her own son. But I think there's, and also a lot of these people being recruited come from the poorest, less educated,

less regions with the least agency in Russia. And I think they're kind of a bit condemned to their fate. If you exist in a system where your vote doesn't even really matter, what voice do you have? What do you think your opinion or you protesting as well? And yet loads of Russian, do. There's plenty of footage of soldiers arguing and fighting with commanders

and talking back. But I think unfortunately there's probably a lot of people that have sort of been cowed by the system and been forced into it. I mean, I'll see in the conscription centre. We're talking to Oleg, a young soldier who's going off to war. And

I mean, it's partly because of the camera but it's also quite a Russian response to sort of say, oh well, I assume the right decisions have been made. That's kind of, you know, that's like above my pay grade what you're asking me. And I think that's out there. And I think that's a mindset which until you have sort of more free media, more free discussion, more free expression, it's kind of hard to break. It's, it's, it's, it's as if the, you can talk about the immediate pain,

but any kind of higher level thought about perhaps why that pain is happening. And what the consequences of what the political consequences of it may be is so verboten that you don't even think about it, right? Because you can't express it or talk about it in any kind of public way, because you know what the consequences of that are going to be. I wonder what the long-term effects of that are going to be on, will be on a society and a culture. Well, I think it's, it's been happening for a long time. Like, I think that's what summed up President Putin's time and power. Like his original contract was like, you leave politics to me, I will give you stability and prosperity. You now, after 2013, wages sort of stagnated, you kind of lost

prosperity. Then, I think in the alternative that was he started offering glory. You saw what happened with Crimea. That was very, very popular in Russia. And I think he saw something like that. And I feel like that's the sort of thing that factored into into his decisions about the invasion, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It's a bit like a sort of Roman emperor giving the starving masses, the games. I kind of feel like you can't give them, you can't give them the prosperity, but you can give them other things. You can make them care and feel like they're important, their country is important, and they matter. And I think that's the kind of toxic combination that has been fed to Russia for the last 20 years. It's on one level apathy, don't involve yourself

for politics. This isn't something for you. And the slow sort of removal of rights, which has, you know, really began in the very early days of Putin's time in office and has just got worse and worse as the years has gone on. It has been a slow, you know, sort of training or education to the Russian people, sell them, don't be involved in politics. And a lot of Russian, like, political campaignings and stuff isn't based on, like, necessarily Putin being the best thing ever. It's based on them being the only option. Do you remember, like, do you remember what the 90s were like? They were terrible. Putin came. He solved that. Like, he's, you're with Putin, he's like a sort of stable thing that's been there forever.

Everything outside him is more risky, more dangerous, more unknown. So you stick with him and you keep your head down and you don't engage. So it's not just the fact there's a political price or a personal price to be paid if you do speak out. I also think the whole system for the period of his rule is being geared towards trying to get people to opt out of the system and to offer them. like he offers an ideological smorgas board as well. Like that's the thing that the ideology of present-day Russia is it's like a church I visited. They've got a church on the outskirts of Moscow. It's a church to the armed forces, Russian Orthodox Church, like commission built under Putin's time.

And in there it's a church, but you've got like a hammer and sickle. You've got like paintings to air like mosaics to every war like Russia's been in. you know if they want to have a and that's a czarist war a Soviet war like a like a Putin war like this idea of like bringing all the elements of Russian power you know it can be Catherine the Great it can be Stalin it doesn't matter this is Russian power bring it all together um and trying to I like again it's it's use what works I mean there was talk at one time that they wanted to get Lenin out of of red square uh and I think Putin himself didn't want to Lenin to be moved because he said something along the lines of like, if they take it,

if they took Lenin away, it's like everything that everyone believed was like a lie. And so instead of taking something like that way, it's like just add on other elements. Because all the main messages is Russia is powerful and Putin is powerful. Putin has Russia's best interests and Russia's best interests of being, you know, a belligerent, powerful state which is surrounded by enemies in a hostile world. So I don't know, it's, it's it's it's it's it's a coercive narrative on many levels and it's got parrot and stick to it and it's feeding people's base emotions as well as potentially threatening them if they step out line but it's it it's quite a complex of if contradictory and and uh convoluted sort of ideological

framework that's been built i mean in many ways it's not really an ideology because it's um it doesn't really got any cohesiveness to it and in many ways it's it's a system designed to keep one man in power and to allow for kind of crony capitalism to sort of flourish in Russia as well at the same time, I think. That's the kind of dark note that we like to strike at the end of an episode. Andy, where can people, again, can you remind people where they can find this and what it's called? Yes, it's called Warped by War inside Putin's Russia, and our planned release date on YouTube, the Vice News, YouTube will be on the anniversary of the second anniversary of the war. So February 24th. Do you want me 24th? Yes, 24th. Andy, thank you so much

for coming on to Angry Planet and talking to us about this. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's been great talking with you guys. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell, was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, if you really like us, you can give us $9 a month at AngryPlinetpod.com or AngryPlanet.com.com. It helps us keep doing the show and get you access to the angry Planet Discord, which is up and popping. People are in there where shared memes. I've got an episode schedule in there.

It kind of tells you where I am with any given episode and what's upcoming. Also see kind of like the things I'm reading during the given week. Get some of the older people like Jason and Joseph in there soon. Get some of the discussions going. Aram is in there. He's posting some great memes. So, yeah, it's a great place to be to hang. out. It's finally up. And we've got some bonus stuff coming. It's going to be one this month.

And I've got a bigger project that's going to be coming to subscribers that I'm really, really looking forward to sharing with y'all. It's going to be a little bit. It'll be later this year. I guess my hint as to what it is is that you should really remember the 90s. I should really, really remember the 90s. Anyway, we will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.