Pod Save the World - Understanding Putin

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Ben does a deep dive on President Vladimir Putin’s history and how he has arrived on the brink of war with Ukraine with help from Putin expert and special Reuters correspondent Catherine Belton, and Russian journalist and activist Zhanna Nemtsova. Where to Donate:Baby to Baby, an LA non profit that provides children living in poverty with diapers, clothing, and basic living necessities.Star Legacy Foundation, a non profit organization dedicated to reducing pregnancy loss and neonatal death.Baby Quest Grants, a non profit providing fertility grants to those who can’t afford costly procedures like IVF and egg freezing.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to POTSafe the World. I'm Ben Rhodes, and I am very sad that I'm not joined as always by one of my best friends and my co-host and the founder of this entire enterprise, not just this podcast, but Crooked Media. Tommy, for those of you don't know by now who haven't seen his post on Instagram or listened to Pod Save America, he's just been going through an unspeakable tragedy. Tommy and his wife Hannah just a few days ago lost their baby daughter at 24 weeks, got to hold her. I encourage you to look at Tommy's Instagram post, which was incredibly courageous of them to share that story and that information because they know it's something that other people go through that people don't always talk about. And as Tommy references in one of his posts, it's all the more tragic for them because this is, They've had miscarriages before. They've been really battling to reach the point where they were so close. And all I can say is that, you know, one of the reasons I love doing this particular show is you get a sense that, you know, there's a community around it.

And we joke about it sometimes, the world though community, but I've met people around the world. who listened to this podcast. And that's a reflection really of Tommy's personality more than mine. He's such an open and inclusive person, as you guys hear every week. Not just kind of funny, not just entertaining, but genuinely searching, genuinely curious, genuinely interested in the underdog. And I just want to say that I've gotten messages, and I know Tommy's gotten a lot from people who listen to this show, who are worried about him and Hannah, who care about them,

who just want to let them know that you're thinking of them. And I want to thank you all on his behalf for those messages. I know they mean a lot to them. It's helped them through this terrible time. It's lifted them up. And I know how much it means to him to do this show. So thank you for that. And I know the time. Tommy and Hannah also have encouraged people who want to do something, and this is another thing that Tommy's always done, encourage people to do something. There's several organizations that they would point you to if you want to make a relevant donation for people who've dealt with similar issues as they're dealing with now.

Baby to Baby, which is a nonprofit here in Los Angeles that helps provide children living in poverty with diapers and clothes and other necessities. the Star Legacy Foundation, which is a nonprofit, dedicated to reducing pregnancy loss and neonatal death, and Baby Quest grants, which is a nonprofit, providing fertility grants to those who can't afford costly procedures like IVF and egg freezing. So check out those organizations. We've got them up on social media channels. I think Tommy is going to take a little time away, as he should. We'll have some guest hosts.

We'll do some different things in the coming weeks and look forward to that and obviously to when Tommy can get back in the chair. Today, we are going to hear from two really extraordinary guests. Catherine Belton, who's really the leading investigative journalist who's looked into who Vladimir Putin is, who his circle is, how he came to power, how he sustains power, starts in the KGB days and takes us up to the present. And then John Namsova, those of you who read, my book after the fall know that Jonna was a character in that book. Her father, Boris Nemtsov,

was once the deputy prime minister of Russia, a leading opponent, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who was assassinated in the shadow of the Kremlin. And Jana has been an activist and a journalist herself. And so Janna can give us a perspective of Russian and how of Russians looked at Putin, how are Russians looking at the situation in Ukraine today. So today's an opportunity to come to go deep on this question of who is Putin? What is he thinking? What is this all about? And hopefully from that, we could discern something about where this is going. I'm just going to touch a bit on the context and the news. I will say we'll cover these stories going forward. There's some very positive signals coming out of the administration about the likelihood of potentially reaching

an Iran deal 2.0. So we're watching that, but the signals are good thus far. And I think the ball appears to be in the Iranian court. It feels like the U.S. has made a very credible offer and they're close. So that's good. Boris Johnson doesn't continue to party, but we'll be watching that because the initial report about his partying came out and it was about as bad as you think. So he's currently trying to weather the storm in part by trying to be as tough a guy as he can on Ukraine. But it may have been one party too many for Boris. The latest on Ukraine to just set this up. Today, Vladimir Putin made his first comments about his standoff over Ukraine in more than a month. Putin's been kind of oddly absent. He was appearing after a meeting

with fellow autocrat, Victor Orban. A big surprise there that that would be his buddy from Europe that he wants to hang out with these days. Victor Orban, Freshoff, hanging out with Tucker Carlson, who did a few more shows in Budapest. Putin said that the U.S. and its allies have ignored Russia's top security demands, referencing the written responses that Russia received from the United States a few days ago. And so fairly negative Putin-esque response dismissive. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, who's a pretty reliable mouthpiece for Putin, so therefore, window into how they're at least trying to buy for time, told reporters that Russian officials are still drafting their formal response to the American formal response, and that it's aimed

to de-escalating the Ukraine crisis and that they'd be ready to deliver those responses as soon as Mr. Putin sees fit. So Chloe Ball is still in Putin's court. The Russians simultaneously saying that their demands for NATO to pull back from Eastern Europe and to never entertain the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, those demands have obviously not been met, but you see Putin and the Russian government leaving itself a little wiggle room to continue negotiating and potentially take a path of de-escalation. President Zelensky of Ukraine has been a bit all over the map. We saw him downplaying the threat of an invasion a few days ago. Just today, he said, though in warning about what the war would be, this is not going to be a war between Ukraine and

Russia. This is going to be a European war, a fully-fledged war. That is, if Russia invades his country. So you see him, once again, trying to broaden this beyond it just being a matter for Ukraine and it being a matter for the West and the entire world, really. You know, it's interesting. I probed some friends in Ukraine about this question of why the Ukrainian political leadership fuels, or at least has been saying, that they're less concerned about an actual invasion. And is that just trying to project calm, trying to not freak people out, trying to not tank the economy? And I got a sincere answer back from people that I know are kind of close to the Zelensky Circle, too. And their basic take was that they really don't think that Putin's intention has been to invade Ukraine all along, that what they read is Putin was seeking to build up these troops to get the West to back down and agree to his demands.

And they think that to some extent that's still his hope and his play rather than wanting to fully invade the country. and that maybe if he does something, it would be the more kind of small-scale invasion or incursion, as President Biden said in that press conference, that kind of bites off another chunk of eastern Ukraine or tries to solidify the status quo where Russia has Crimea and these kind of two breakaway chunks of eastern Ukraine that the Russians have been messing around in, but that they don't go further. And in a way, I obviously hope that it's the case that there's not an invasion. One of the reasons why that might be the case is that, you know, one thing you'll hear from our guest today, too, it's quite possible that Vladimir Putin has gotten himself into a position

where he could bite off more than he can chew. He could overreach in ways that could be incredibly damaging to him. And I'd just point out a few. The first is when Putin did this play back in 2014 and annexed Crimea, again, he didn't move masses of Russian military force into Crimea, and in some ways he didn't have to. There is a fairly large pro-Russian population in Crimea. There is a Russian-speaking majority in Crimea. And therefore, a mix of propaganda and influence operations in Russian special forces could, in a fairly pain-free way, pull off that invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea without a lot of blowback in Russia. It was a little tougher when Russia began to move some special forces into eastern Ukraine, and Putin, we had indications

in the Obama years, would try to cover up when Russians were killed in that conflict. He didn't want it to be known back home. But the scale of suffering and loss of life was not enormous in that case. Whereas if he does what is most worrying and invades Ukraine, he's going to be in a very different set of places than Crimea. He's going to clearly face resistance, resistance from a Ukrainian military that has seven years of low-grade conflict with Russia under its belt, that has received a lot of weapons from not just the United States, but other countries. And so he could be facing a very close. costly military intervention, which can turn very unpopular very quickly in countries like

even Russia. That's part of what brought the Soviet Union down, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, and the toll that took. So that's the first point is that the military conflict itself, if he does invade Ukraine, could be much bloodier and more costly. I think the second is the Russian economy isn't exactly going gangbusters. as it is, the combination of Putin's own kind of kleptocratic model, coupled with the sanctions that they faced after the 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea, they've taken a real toll on Russia, their capacity to access certain technologies, their capacity, in some cases, to access certain funds that have been frozen. You see growth and wages down. You see a real

hit that has already impacted standards of living in Russia and the economic outlook in Russia. And if the sanctions that have been discussed, if even a portion of the sanctions, frankly, that have been discussed by the Biden administration go into effect and the Russian banking sector is hit. And suddenly they can't access big chunks of their own money. And suddenly they can't access technologies that keep their economy running. He's going to be in a really difficult circumstance. And as we'll hear today in our interview, you know, part of what's kept them in power is things need to be just good enough for the broad populace that unrest can be kept in check. And you've seen pockets of unrest, frankly, because of the economic circumstances.

And you saw Navalny really getting traction with the anti-corruption message. But things have to be just good enough that that can be kept under wraps. But also, there needs to be enough of a pie to take care of this inner circle that he's created of billionaires and security types and creeps and goons that he depends upon. And that pie is already been shrinking. And if that pie basically goes away because Putin puts all of his chips onto the table on a bet in Ukraine, you could start to see real tensions in the broader public and within the inner circle even.

And so this mixture of the military cost and geopolitical costs that could come with in and the economic costs that could put at risk his whole model could lead to a situation where the kind of Ponzi scheme that he's built, an economy that's really, you know, thrives on oil and gas and theft at the top and spreading enough crumbs around, you know, this could really boomerang on him. And I think that's part of what they're considering in the Kremlin. Now, as you'll also hear today, it may just be that the, one kernel of actual ideology in the Putin regime and machinery has been the combination of wanting to push back on the West and push back on NATO and to restore a lost greatness from the Soviet

Union. And Ukraine would be the exact place to do that. It is the biggest former Soviet Republic. It is the buffer between Russia and NATO. It is historical. historically, the neighboring state that has some overlapping cultural and linguistic ties, not in the whole country, but in parts of it. So it may be that Putin will weigh those risks and he'll take the gamble anyway. And he may think, well, I've gambled before in the past and it's paid off. But this is something to watch. And really, I think what Putin has to be assessing now is what's more dangerous to me, Vladimir Putin. Is it going into Ukraine and maybe getting the short-term glory that would come with conquering another chunk of a neighboring

country, is that more dangerous, though, because of the consequences it may invite on me? Or is it more dangerous for me to have built up this massive military force and then to climb down, which goes against everything that he's sought to portray himself as over the years? The strongman, the guy who sets up hockey games where he can score 15 goals. because people are too afraid to get in the way of his shots. We don't know, and only he knows. But thankfully today, we're going to hear from two people who, from a personal standpoint, in John's case and a reporting standpoint, in Catherine's case,

they really know as much as any other two people I could think of to talk about this subject of who is Putin and what does he want. Joining me now is Catherine Belton, who is a special correspondent for Reuters. and she's also the author of the book Putin's People, how the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West. And before we start, Catherine, I just want to say, there have been a lot of good books written about Putin. I've never read one that is as detailed, as specific,

and as persuasive in telling the story of how we got Vladimir, Putin. And I should also add, like, as someone who loves John Le Carre, there are vignettes of writing in there that feel like they could have been lifted out of the very best Le Carre. So your book was extraordinarily helpful to me as I was finishing my book, which has a big section on Putin. And I want to recommend everybody pick up your book if they want to know more. But thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. That's really kind of you to say. I spent a great deal of time writing it. And it's obviously the highest honor to be compared in any way to John Le Carrey.

But probably those moments where the ones that wrote themselves, because there were certainly a lot of strange and wonderful things that occurred along the way reporting it. Yeah, I know. I mean, there's some amazing characters, and I try to get to a little bit of that along the way. I wanted to start with, you know, getting at this question of how did we get Vladimir Putin? and you, I think, make a very persuasive case, fact-based case that essentially it arose out of the nature of the KGB that he was a part of as a young man in Dresden serving in the KGB at the dusk of the Soviet Union.

And I was wondering if you could just explain to listeners what the KGB was up to in terms of things like money laundering and kind of hacking into capitalism. What skills did Putin in his circle acquire as the Soviet Union was falling apart that they then kind of took with them into the power grab that they made at the end of the 90s? Yeah, I think, yeah, if you look more closely at what he was up to in Dresden, you can start to see a kind of clear model for how his regime is operated today. Putin in Dresden was actually already involved in active measures against the West. it seems. He was the main liaison officer between the KGB and the Stasi. And one former Stasi officer who defected to the West has told about how Putin in those days he was trying to acquire poisonous materials from a professor and was trying to do so by planting compromising material on him.

We don't know whether he acquired this poisonous material was meant to be a type that never left any trace. but the Stasi officer has told of this operation. Putin was also involved in attempts to smuggle technology from the West, to smuggle stolen technology from the West. He was working closely with a guy called Matthias Varneg, who we all know nowadays as the chairman of Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline into Germany. He's a very close crony of Putin indeed.

And back in the day in Dresden, they were working closely together Varnege was running a cell for disguised as a business consultancy where he was entrapping Westerners into sort of handing over technology to him. And so there are the kind of curious instances. You know, Putin then is also said to have been handling a notorious neo-Nazi who stoked the rise of the far right later on in the Eastern Germany. But so Putin was there at a time when, you know, the Soviet Union couldn't compete directly, militarily or economically with the West.

But what they were very, very good at doing was active measures, which were these kind of covert ops to undermine and so disunity in the West. And we see Putin reverting to these tactics today. And it was a time when they also made wide use of front companies. And it was a time what Putin was there, it was already. quite clear that there was going to have to be some change, that the communist regime couldn't survive, that the planned economies just weren't working against the West, that they were really lagging far behind. So they knew the writing was on the wall and they knew things were

going to have to change. But they also wanted to preserve their intelligence networks. So at the time Putin was in Dresden, there was a notorious Stasi agent named Martin Schlaf, who had been given the contract to create a build a hard disk plant in Turingen nearby. He was given hundreds of millions of Deutschmarks by the German, East German government to build this plant. And yet the components never arrived for this plant. You know, the plant was never finished. And instead, the hundreds of millions of Deutschmachs were siphoned off into a kind of

whirl of front companies in Singapore, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. which, you know, were staffed by Stasi agents. And then when the Berlin Wall fell, Schlaf continued to become kind of a major businessman and his companies were staffed with the Dresden's Stasi guys, including the head of the Dresden Foreign Intelligence Unit. And then he went on to become very powerful within Russia's Gazprom empire abroad. So you can see this continuing policy. So Putin was sort of dabbling in these tax.

back then, and that was an era when the KGB used front companies known as friendly firms to fund their covert operations in the West. They use it to funnel money so that they could conduct influence operations and to, you know, fund allied political parties so disinformation so that they win elections or try to win elections in places like Italy in the 40s and so on. And they were also trying to forget. meant unrest in the third world and so unrest there so is to kind of destabilize the West. So his whole mentality is steeped in this great game with the West, where the West is the main

adversary. And to compete with it, you undermine it rather than build something constructive of your own. Yeah. But interestingly, right, they kind of hack capitalism because they kind of unregulated, unbridled form of post- Cold War capitalism mixed with their capacity to launder money and their capacity to kind of obviously then take over the organs of the Russian economy. It basically arms the KGB with not only a state, but with the wealth that can be afforded from running world companies, right? Yeah. I'm curious that, like, so, you know, you, know, you

trace, you really, you know, get into how this circle of people around Putin from the KGB ascends to this position where they're controlling both political power and economic power in Russia. How have you seen, you know, in broad strokes, the evolution of this system that he's built, this kind of kleptocratic cabal that he sits on top of, how is that evolved in the 20 years that he's been the dominant figure in Russia. What's the same and what's different about it today from when he first walked into the Kremlin? I guess when he first came to power, many Russians, like many in the West were really hopeful that Putin was actually a liberal that he would sort of continue the legacy of Boris Yeltsin and move Russia along market lines

that he would integrate Russia with the West. And I guess that was the great. the great mistake of, you know, of the Yeltsin family who brought him to power and of the West who's kind of helped him along the way. You know, Putin's a bit of, he's a chameleon, and he, in those days, he probably soaked up as much of his surroundings as he reflected them back. So the Yeltsin family were convinced that he was one of them, that he was a liberal, that he would sort of continue their legacy. And, you know, he's very good at pretending to do that. And, you know, Indeed, in the first few years in office, he was, you know, he was conducting market reforms. He was doing all these sort of sweeping tax cuts, privatizing land and so on.

And even talking about Russia one day joining NATO, which is very strange to think of now. But I guess at the same time, you know, he was surrounded by this cabal of KGB men that he brought with him to power. most of them were sort of Leningrad, San Petersburg KGB. And in a way, the cabal of KGB that he brought with him to power are much more ruthless, perhaps, than sort of the KGB guys from Moscow, the KGB guys from San Petersburg, where they, you know, it was Russia's second city. So they had a kind of chip on their shoulder. And I was told by one former Moscow senior KGB officer that just made them more ruthless,

that they would stop at nothing to acquire power. and this former KGB guy had worked with Putin for a few years in San Petersburg, but in the end he stepped away because he just saw really just how kind of power hungry they were and how they were willing to work closely with organized crime, anything to obtain control of the city's cash flows. So, you know, I think at some point it seems it's a bit of a gradual development, but quite fast Putin grew disappointed. in the West, he grew disappointed in this espousal of liberal values. I think, you know, one key

moment, I guess, is, you know, after he's allowing the U.S. sort of routes through Central Asia to wage war in Afghanistan, you know, the U.S. still goes ahead and unilaterally withdraws from their anti-ballistic missile treaty. That was another disappointment. And I guess there was just always this deep-seated paranoia, the Nijer, the Nijerk. reactions of the KDB guys who, when you see NATO expanding eastwards closer to your borders, that you just believe that the West is out to weaken and encircle Russia. And I think another shock moment for him, of course, was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, you know, when this pro-Western revolution toppled, came to power and toppled the guy

that they were backing and got rid of Yanukovych. I think he truly believed that this is some kind of Western-funded revolution that was aimed at encircling Russia and not just actually a real expression of people's free will and a real pro-democracy movement. And it's just this ingrained KGB mindset that just takes over his thinking. And all the while he's surrounded by these KGB guys from St. Petersburg and the most hawkish of all, and Nikolai Patrushchev, who was the head of the FSB at the time and is now the powerful Security Council chief, who is always a bit more senior than Putin. He's a few years older than him, and he moved to Moscow much earlier on. He's quite senior in Moscow, FSB from like 94 onwards,

and this is the guy who is seen really as the chief ideologue of Russia trying to use capitalism against the West as a tool to undermine the West once. one state acquired control of the cash flows at home. Yeah, no, I remember we went to Moscow in 2009, and Obama did his summit with Medvedev, and Medvedev was putting on this good face to the West and the world, and probably in part because, you know, the financial crisis happened. So they were not in a position to be as adversarial. But after the official meetings, Obama had to go out to Putin's,

DACA and spent several hours there, which, by the way, made him late for some engagements with Medvedev, but Putin didn't seem to care that he was making the president late for the meeting with the president. And all he did is give him the bill of goods about, I wanted to, you know, I wanted a new relationship with the West and here's what I got. And ABM tree and Orange Revolution and NATO enlargement and, you know, some of it was what aboutism, but some of it was clearly something he believed. And obviously, Ukraine becomes central to that. In the Obama years, we have the annexation of Crimea. I wanted to ask you, I was thinking about this, you know, in the sense, you know, you could say, well, Putin has what he needs. He's probably one of

the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest men in the world. He has the levers of power in Russia. He has established himself as this figure on the world's scene who has to be reckoned with. So why do you think we are where we are? Why this constant escalation in Ukraine? Why the constant drumbeat in Russian media about NATO, is it necessary for him to kind of maintain this machinery of security and kleptocracy that he's built? Do you see this as something that shores him up politically or do you see it as ideological in terms of? wanting to maybe even reunify Ukraine with Russia? What do you think is the motivating factor at this point? Yeah, I'm afraid it is, in a way, it's ideological, but only in the terms of great power

games and kind of zero-some thinking that, you know, he, I think he spied an opportunity. I think he thought that the West was going to react weekly. I mean, obviously, the Biden administration has come to power to emit a deeply divided country following Donald Trump's presidency. The U.S. has all kinds of problems now, and he watched the Biden administration withdraw from Afghanistan, and perhaps he just spied opportunity. But it's kind of a crazy gambit to sort of, you know, build up such a true presence on the border of Ukraine and essentially almost try to frighten in the West into making these security concerns. sessions into redrawing the post-cold world security order.

But I know from my conversations with some of his former KDB allies that all they have wanted almost since, like, he came to power, is a new Yalta. They want to redraw the post-Cold War security map. And they've kind of seized a moment. And I think some of it, though, as well, it kind of smacks a bit to me of desperation, because I think in a way as well, he's been so long in power now. In some ways, it's a bit like they've kind of run out of road because, you know, it's almost like they need this constant confrontation with the West in order to shore up their own

power at home. Because I guess their only model of managing the economy is to take control of cash flows, which means there's no investment, there's just stagnation, there's no competitiveness in the economy at all because everyone's frightened about the FSB turning up the next day and taking over companies and so on. So there's been no economic growth incomes are now 10% lower than they were eight years ago. And he again, I think you can see this kind of their paranoia has been growing the longer they've been in power. In a sense, because, you know, they've accumulated so much of that it's impossible to hand it over.

So there's no secure way to make a transfer of power. And in the meantime, you know, they were watching the uprising in Belarus where this apolitical population suddenly shed its fear of the security services and stood up against Lukashenko. They had so you could see the clear paranoia in how they handled Navalny just so ruthlessly with the Novichok. So I think this is, they thought,

was the opportunity to turn the tables, they always see the West's hand in everything. Do you think there's a risk of overreach here in the sense that, you know, as you said, the pie's gotten smaller over the years as they've dealt with sanctions and economic stagnation. And, you know, unlike Crimea, where you did have a kind of, you know, largely pro-Russian, or at least Russian-speaking population, if he goes all the way to Ukraine, he's going to to be in, you know, he's going to be facing a resistance that he didn't in 2014. I mean, you know, do you think that some of the people in his circle might be worried that, hey, are we actually about to, for the first time, really bite off more than we can chew?

Well, I think you can see quite clearly that he, I think he has miscalculated. I think he expected the West to come up with concessions much quicker. And I think he probably has been taken aback by the degree of unity in the West and the shop. on the sanctions and you can see that. So last week he was just last week, he was meeting with the Italian business leaders. This week he's supposedly meeting with the German ones and it almost looks a bit desperate.

And then now today he's accusing the US of trying to trap him into war and with the sole aim of containing Russia so that they're trying to drag Russia into a war so that can then slap these incredibly harsh sanctions on him. And that's just absurd. I mean, how can you be trapped into a war when you put your own kind of hundreds of, 100,000 troops on the border?

So, you know, I think there is a sense now that they want to step back. But it's very difficult to tell whether that was the game all along. There was one kind of mid-level Kremlin official that I spoke to this week. And he's just trying to say, well, you know, we were just raising the stakes so that the West would take us seriously. and begin to talk to us as equals and begin this security dialogue. So maybe that's all he wants and we'll see this quiet withdrawal. But the problem is we know that just how skilled they are at kind of operating so disruptively and kind of unexpectedly.

So, you know, obviously the sanctions that the U.S. have proposed, you know, they could be devastating for the Russian economy. This huge war chest that they've said. supposedly built up the $630 billion in hard currency reserves could be very quickly eaten up, you know, if the U.S. goes ahead and designates Russian state banks because they'll have to use it all to bail them out. So I think he has faced a much stiffer response and maybe now he's going to have to have some kind of controlled withdrawal or maybe he just thinks the West actually you won't go ahead. I guess everyone's, it's like it is a game of poker because each side

thinks the other is maybe bluffing. So it's really difficult to tell. Yeah. No, I mean, unfortunately for the people of Ukraine, they're just sitting there in the middle of the table to extend the metaphor. I wanted to ask you about on sanctions, you know, so much of your book, some of the more powerful vignettes take place in London because you have, you know, some oligarchs and former Putin associates had to flee there. Others who are still, you know, in the power circle in Russia just have lavish residences there. There's, you know, they're supported by everything from PR firms to private intelligence networks that are there. What about, I mean, we talked about sanctions as it relates to things like banks and the Russian

economy writ large. You've followed the money. I mean, one of the things I wish we had done more of frankly in the Obama years and is really go after the individual wealth of this network of people around Putin. And you've heard talk about even sanctioning Putin himself. But what do you think the capacity is if London and Washington truly wanted to go after the wealth of Putin's people, to use the title of your book, do you think that that's possible? Do you think they've built guard rails around that? I think it could that such tactics. can be incredibly disruptive and you can see that in the sharp reaction of the Kremlin to the announcement yesterday that the US and the UK were going to be working in lockstep on targeting

some of these individuals that the UK was now going to broaden its ability to sanction those not just directly involved in activities in Ukraine but those who were closely linked with the Kremlin or may be engaged in broader geopoliticals, strategic operations. And obviously, this is the key. And I think it was Joe Biden was probably the first to point out how the oligarchs, some of them, once believed to be independent Yeltsin-era billionaires have essentially become tools and agents of the Kremlin because, you know, the Putin's security guys, their control of the economy is such that they can put anyone in jail. So if you're a Russian billionaire, you owe your entire fortune to staying in the good books of the Kremlin.

So one of them told me, he said if I get a call from the Kremlin saying I could spend $2 billion or $3 billion on this or that strategic project, I can't refuse, you have to comply. Piotta Avern of Alpha Bank has essentially said the same to Robert Mueller during the FBI investigation into the election interference. And he basically told Mueller that, yeah, I get directors from Putin. And if I don't follow them, there are consequences. So we can see.

So it's become a real problem for London because obviously London really opened its arms to all this capital for, you know, for the past 20 years. And everyone in the West seemed to believe that the more integrated Russian capital, capital was into Western systems, the more Russia would have to behave like the West that it would have to follow, the Western rules-based order. But unfortunately, the opposite kind of happened because these guys were bringing all the cash in and then it's kind of corrupting our system because they could throw so much more money around

than the normal UK kind of lawyers or bankers or politicians that could ever normally see. So it became a really, really corrosive process. And I think the UK was really kind of lagging behind and recognizing that many of these businesses, aren't kind of independent in the Western sense that they don't always act purely out of self-interest as you would expect a Western businessman to do. But the very fact that most of their businesses are still in Russia means that they're

beholden to the Kremlin, that they might be following orders, that there could be an agenda and all the soft power that they've now acquired in London. I mean, we had a report by the UK's Parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee, which was essentially pointing out, one, that Russian business is now really closely entwined with the Russian state and with the Russian security services. And it was also pointing out that these guys have such deeply entrenched interest now in London. It's almost impossible to entangle. So the announcement yesterday that the UK would start to go after some of these guys,

I think, you know, if they are sanctioned, if, I mean, obviously there has to be, pretty drastic. Well, there has to be an invasion for that to go ahead. But it would be really disruptive and damaging to them because they spent the last 20 years building influence networks, you know, where they're sort of accepted people. They have these armies of lawyers and reputation managers and bankers and some of them are football clubs, which has given them also a great deal of soft power and influence. There are English lords on their boards, which again gives them further access to

political power and some of them are like Russian emigrays who may still have business interests back in the motherland and so are therefore also vulnerable to Kremlin orders and yet they're making massive donations to UK political powers and it's given them a real kind of to foothold in our establishment and within our system so yeah if that if that changes I think it would really hit them one last question I wanted to ask you is just you know in writing your book, you know, one of the things that these KGB guys do, you know, is obviously intimidate, threaten, harass, blackmail. You know, I know you faced a winding road. What are there episode, is there an episode or two that stands out of, of, of the ways in which

they tried to influence you or intimidate you while, while you were reporting this that stick out to you? You know, I kept quite a low profile when I was writing it and I spent so long working on it. I think everyone forgot that I was ever going to produce anything. So, you know, I tried not to attract too much attention. There was one instance, maybe in Switzerland, where some people were a bit worried about what I was looking into and were pretty threatening. But, you know, I think they soon realized that that could backfire. So it wasn't anything serious. I think the bigger threats have come since publication of,

And they came pretty thick and fast last year. And we're still trying to understand what was the cause of them. We received a barrage of legal complaints, first from Raman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, and then from the two billionaires of Alpha Group, Mikhail Friedman and Piotta Avin, and then followed pretty swiftly by Rosneff, the Kremlin oil champion. And we still don't know what's behind it. Is it a coincidence that all these legal... claims came two months after Alexei Navalny waved my book in the air and quotes from it.

Did that bring it to the Kremlin's attention in a way, perhaps, that it hadn't done so before? We don't know. But certainly that, you know, that's threatening for anyone because in London, in the UK, unfortunately, sort of fighting any defamation case, no matter how well-sourced you believe your kind of words to be and sort of thorough the reporting. you know, fighting any such case, it costs millions and millions of pounds. And when you've got like four of these guys lined up against you, it's really quite tough.

But I was very lucky because my publisher, Harper Collins, you know, they were pretty determined and stood by me. Yeah, well, credit to Harper Collins and you for sticking with the story and the facts. I imagine that that's not easy. But thanks so much for helping us understand some of this. and for all the work you're doing. And people should obviously check out the book. Putin's people follow you. You're on Twitter and your reporting is in Reuters.

So thanks for everything you're doing. Catherine, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thanks a lot for having me on. Joining me now is the Russian journalist and activist, Jana Nemtsova, who is the founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, which she founded in 2015 after her father was assassinated near the Kremlin. And she's also the author for those of you who speak Russian, currently only in Russian, of the book My Father's Daughter, that tells her story.

Thanks so much for joining us, Shana. Well, thank you for having me today. Well, I was really eager to talk to you today to step back. Obviously, we'll talk about what's happening in and around Ukraine. But, you know, you and I have gotten to know each other. You know, we spoke from my book. And not only do you have this extraordinary perspective of, you know, of being your father's daughter, but also a career as a journalist yourself. And I thought we could

just start by going back. And I wanted to ask you, what are your first memories of Vladimir Putin when he came on the political scene and kind of ascended after your father's time as deputy prime minister for Boris Yelts in the 90s? What were your impressions of Putin then? Well, first of all, I was 16 years old when Putin came to power in Russia and now I'm 37. So you have to understand that Putin has been ruled in our country for over two decades. Oh, well, he got elected on my birthday. So he got elected in 2000 on the 26th of March. And I basically celebrated my birthday and I didn't follow politics that closely, but I have some vague recollections of Vladimir Putin back then. So the thing is that I totally agree with my father when he said just after Putin's

victory, he said like, well, we do not know whom we've just elected. He's like a cat and a sack. He doesn't have any program. We don't know what. he will do in the future. And I think that I had more or less the same impression. So he basically didn't come up with any program. And he was pretty harsh. And he started his political, I mean, he started his political career long ago. But he was not known to the general public when he became the prime minister of Russia.

And then he started this military operation in Dagestan and then in Chichina following the explosions of the apartment buildings in Moscow. And he was a hard line and that's what I could sense back then. And so I basically did not vote because I was only 16 years old. But when I had the right to vote, I have never, ever voted for Vladimir Putin. Never. Yeah. Going ahead to when Putin returns to the presidency in 2012 and then in that time between his return to the presidency and the annexation of Crimea, it seems like, you know,

my experience in the White House and then in talking to you, you know, Putin escalated, you know, both his authoritarianism at home and obviously his, uh, uh, uh, foreign policy abroad. You know, I remember in talking to you, this is the period of time when your father starts to get detained more frequently in Russia, the time when he's much more aggressive in supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria. And that kind of leads us up to the period when he goes into Crimea. I mean, what was your sense of this return of Putin to the presidency? And how did you see the connection between the ways in which he was becoming even more repressive at home and also beginning to take this more assertive foreign policy approach with the West?

Well, first of all, I was not caught by surprise when I learned that Putin would run for his third term in the office. So it was very clear for me that he would stay in point. power for as long as possible. And I didn't have any illusions, you know, like many others. Many others had illusions probably also in the White House or elsewhere that you had a lot of hopes that President Medvedev could change the course and could be a more democratic leader, which did not happen in reality. So it was pretty much. much clear that it was not a real transit of power because when Medvedev was president of Russia, Putin was the prime minister. And all key decisions, according to many experts, were taken,

not in the Kremlin, but in our White House, which is the seat of the Russian government. So I, but what touched me really strongly was, of course, the annexation of Crimea. And I personally did not expect that to happen. It was a huge blow. And I understood back then that Vladimir Putin crossed a red line and he, I understood that he would never stop. And that was the point when I asked my father for a meeting. And I wanted, though, I mean, I was not an experienced politician, but I wanted to warn him about extreme risks he would be facing in the future. And he said, like, oh, you know, I do understand all the things. I will tell you when it's actually dangerous. Now, it's not that dangerous. You're exaggerating. Because I was,

I was absolutely shocked with this decision. I was absolutely shocked by the reaction of the Russian public. Because, I mean, the overwhelming majority of Russians supported the annexation of Crimea. It was this what is called, it was this patriotic euphoria, and I witnessed it with my own eyes. And people, so it was a very toxic environment also at my workplace. because I was among the few who I was against the annexation of Crimea and I understood that the consequences would be really great for a country and for our national economy.

But people did not listen to each other. They didn't want to tolerate other opinions. They were very much inspired by this action of Putin, both not only those people who had supported, Putin before, but also those people who hadn't been his supporters. And there was one story which I find really impressive. So my father has a brother and he had his birthday in 2014, somewhere in the summer. And we came to his birthday party. And my father, of course, was against the annexation of Crimea. But all those people who gathered there who basically

shared my father's political views, they started to argue with him and he couldn't convince him. He couldn't convince them that it had been a wrong decision. Why do you think so many Russians, including Russians, who might not, you know, have always loved Putin, why do you think there was such support for the annexation of Crimea? I think it's not something that is specific to Russia, but I think in many countries, you can find the same stories. So it's a big victory with no costs. And people tend to support when a country expands its territory and its influence. And it was a sweeping military operation

with no casualties. And of course, people supported that. And also it was like, I don't know, something, it has to do with your emotions. So it inspired people because Russia, everybody knew back then and everybody knows that Russia is not the best performing country in the world, right, in terms of its economy and its social sphere,

et cetera. And it was a source of incredible pride. So it had to do with emotions back then. Now, you cannot feel that. There are no, there was pedratic feelings right now. You cannot sense them in Russia. Yeah, no, and I want to get to that. Just before we do, the last thing about this spirit, obviously is your father was organizing some of the opposition and some protests against not just Crimea, but the war in the Donbos in eastern Ukraine, at the time that he was assassinated. How do you see the link between what was happening in Ukraine and what happened to your father? Of course, there is an obvious link because you have to understand when Putin annexated Crimea year, his rate of approval was extremely high. It was like over 80%. And of course, because of this

incredible support, he could do whatever he wanted to do. At least he thought that he could do whatever he wanted to do. And I think that that was one of the factors why my father was assassinated this annexation of Crimea and the military operation in East Ukraine. Of course, these two events were obviously interconnected. And if you can analyze the following events inside Russia. So the Russian opposition after the annexation of Crimea, members of the Russian opposition were having really hard time, and they now do have hard times. The regime, since then the regime has become much more coercive and much more repressive towards any members of their position,

but not only, it's not only about opposition politicians. It's about a lot of people who think differently, who do not hold, who do not hold the official line, who do not share those perceptions of the Kremlin. So, I mean, journalists, activists, lawyers. So almost everybody who is outspoken Russia is now under extreme pressure. And it's not, once again, it's a. a typical authoritarian regime which we have in Russia. Nothing new about that.

You can look at other countries and you will see more or less the same partners everywhere in the world. Yeah. Well, and you know, so you were obviously, like you said, we're a financial journalist. You know, skipping from 2014 to today, what has been the impact on the Russian economy of all the sanctions that were imposed after crisis? and after the invasion of eastern Ukraine. What impact does that have on the economy in Russia? So you have to differentiate between short-term effects and long-term effects.

So back in 2014, when I was still a stock market commentator and the sanctions were imposed, I was like shocked, of course. It obviously hurt our economy tremendously, not only, those sanctions which were imposed by Europe and the United States, but also we, I mean, the political leadership of Russia imposed its own counter-sanctions. And so they banned food imports and things like that. And so the immediate effect was incredible inflation, a lot of uncertainty. like a fall in stock market prices, et cetera, et cetera. But our economy, so our economy managed to adapt to this new environment.

So, and now those negative effects have been largely mitigated. but what is so what what what what but still sanctions play a role and negative role and of course our economy is currently stagnating we do not see any substantial growth in our economy any prospects and that's a big problem and I think those sanctions of course contribute to our technological that we lack behind other countries in terms of

technological development. Yeah. So looking at things today, the big question, you know, there's over 120,000 Russian troops now encircling Ukraine from Russia and Belarus. What do you

think Putin is doing and why do you think he's doing it? Oh, I cannot treat Putin's mind. I think nobody even President Biden can do that. So there are a handful of theories. And I spent like a couple of days reading all those different theories about Putin and what is on his mind, but nobody knows because I mean, prediction is a fraud business. at the same time. So what I think that so the situation is very difficult for Vladimir Putin right now because he has to decide

what to do next either to start a full-scale military operation. It might be a land operation in Ukraine or to withdraw. I think that the latter is at least probable. I know that the whole world is preoccupied, especially political leaders, are preoccupied

with what's going on between Russia and Ukraine. In Russia, people, the general public, they are not interested in all foreign affairs at all. And at the same time, what they think, according to the most recent polls, Russians think that the USA is the country to blame for this escalation. They think that the U.S. is forcing Russia into a war. Is that because of the Russian media, you know, that Putin control so much? Absolutely. People just do not want to dig deep. into this matter to find out what is right and what is wrong. And in this case, because there is no

interest in foreign affairs and in particular in Ukraine, people are tired of this topic. And of course, they tend to believe to what the Russian propaganda is saying. Yeah. And what do you think, do you think that this if he if he were to move into ukraine with a military operation do you think that the the support among the russian people would be the same as it was in crimea particularly if it if it ends up being a more costly war because the ukrainians fight back i mean how how would you anticipate the russian reaction to a more difficult conflict and more sanctions and all the consequences it could come from a war in Ukraine. So the rate of approval of Putin right now is stable.

He has not profited from the current escalation inside the country at all from the political point of view. People, Russians, many Russians are afraid. they have a lot of fears of a full-scale war, but they think that Russia can hardly avoid it. So they tend to reconcile with the fact that Russia will be at war with Ukraine. But they do not think that it is a war with Ukraine.

They think that it's a proxy war between Russia and the United States of America. in Ukraine. And Ukraine is regarded as a marionette in this situation. Well, I think that unlike, so this war we are talking right now, this probable war, I hope we can still avoid that scenario, but this probable war won't be widely supported in Russia because it involves a lot of costs, a lot of economic costs, a lot of social costs. And there are very, very, are a lot of variables which are still unknown. So it's not like a sweeping military operation like it was in Crimea.

It won't be that way. And even the Russian political leadership cannot predict some of the factors. And that's why probably they're reluctant to launch a land operation in Ukraine. And also you have to understand one thing. In Crimea, there was a lot of local support. for the annexation of Crimea, inside Crimea. Large majority Russian-speaking population in Crimea, much more historical ties, right?

And in Donbass, the same. Yeah. But in the rest of Ukraine, the situation is different. Local people will not support Russia, and they do not support pudding. So they tend to have a good attitude towards Russia, Russians, but not towards the Russian political leadership. And it means that there might be a lot of resistance inside the country. So it's quite a risky business.

And it might be a fatal mistake to start a full-scale military operation in Ukraine. And I hope that Russian senior defense authorities or offices do understand those risks, that they cannot calculate right now at all. And I'm not speaking about all other, like, external factors, like sanctions, acid freezing, et cetera, et cetera. What do you think about those? I mean, do you think those will have a big impact on Russia? The types of sanctions have been talked about, cutting off access to technologies,

sanctioning banks. Do you think that that can impact Putin's thinking? I think that the probability, so there are different types of sanctions and the most impactful ones, the most negative ones for the Russian economy, maybe those sanctions imposed on Russian banks. And the idea is to isolate our bank system from the rest, from the global banking system. which is, of course, something really dangerous and it will have an immediate negative impact on the Russian economy. Well, I think that another dangerous thing, not for all Russians, but for the Russian elites, are, of course, individual sanctions. So they have been widely debated recently.

And so our elites are deeply integrated into the global world, into the Western world. They have bank accounts. They have businesses in the West. They have children who live and study in the West. And of course, that is extremely painful. And Vladimir Putin, his position seems to be really. strong, but he has to balance different interests and to please the elites and the general public. And those two goals, you know, those are too competitive goals. It's quite difficult. He has a lot of

challenges. And of course, he depends on his elites a lot. And he does want to do something that can profoundly hurt his elites. And you obviously know, Alexei Navajo. And many opposition figures, we've seen, you know, actions taken in recent months, not only to poison Navalny and throw him in prison, but to kind of break up and eliminate, liquidate his network, as well as organizations like Memorial, a leading civil society organization. What do you hear from the people you know in Russian opposition circles about how they are doing and how they're looking at things? Well, first of all, lots of people fled Russia. I mean, not a lot of people, but more than 1,000 people, 1,500 people, according to some estimates, fled Russia last year. And those are active people, those are opposition activists, lawyers, and journalists. Well, I don't think that they're overly optimistic about the first.

prospects of Russia, they do not expect something to change for the better in the foreseeable future. And they are in a very difficult situation right now because they had to flee Russia. They are now based in different post-Soviet republics because you can, because of the ongoing pandemic, they can't obtain visas to enter the European Union. and so they have to start to build new lives, which is very difficult. So I think that it's psychologically, it's extremely difficult for many people. And most of them are sober thinkers and they understand that the regime is very flexible,

it's very adaptive and our society is very apathetic and you cannot see any drivers inside the society and also you can look at other autocracies across the world. For example, Iran has been living under severe sanctions for many years and its regime is still stable. unfortunately. So nobody right now expects any changes for the better. And this situation is pretty, it's pretty grim. What do you think your father would say if he was here today in watching all this? Probably the same thing he said. Well, my father was a political visionary. That's why he said everything long ago about the prospects of this regime. So in 2008 and eight he took part in a conference in Italy.

And there is still a video you can find it on YouTube, unfortunately only in Russian, but he predicted, he was good at predictions, by the way, and he predicted that the current political line chosen by Vladimir Putin would lead exactly to those consequences which we are witnessing right now.

Isolation, bad relationships with our neighbors, bad relationship with the West, stagnation in economy. So I think that he understood very early what the consequences would be for Russia. And he also understood that it would be a long fight for Russia. for any change to happen in Russia. He used to say, like, you know, that it is not a sprint we are involved in. It's a marathon. And we have to live long in Russia to see any change.

So I think so within a decade, we can see something happening. I'm not very optimistic. I'm sorry. No, we'll see well. In any case, stay safe and stay well. And thanks so much for talking with us today. Thank you. Okay, thank you to Catherine Belton and John and I'msova, our two guests today. Thank you for going on this deep dive into the past and present of Vladimir Putin with us. Again, I want to express on behalf of this entire community of people who work on this podcast and listen to this podcast and have been guests on this podcast. I've heard from a lot of people who have been guests how much we're thinking of Tommy and Hannah right now. And again, you can look to those organizations if you want to make a donation in support of a cause.

that I know would mean a lot to Tommy and Hena. But with that, we will see you guys, or I will see you guys certainly next week. I'm sure we'll have more to unpack, and thanks for listening. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mute. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.