The Duran Podcast - Vladimir Putin's election victory

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Vladimir Putin's election victory

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the elections in Russia yesterday. Historic turnout. Putin won with about 85 or 87% of the vote. Predictably, the collective West leadership and the collective West media, they're freaking out. Sham elections. These are fake elections. But here's my take on it. And let me know if I'm correct in how I'm assessing this.

These were not sham or fake elections. And they weren't sham or fake elections if you go by the polling data from Collective West sources, which consistently over the past couple of years have put Putin's polling numbers, his approval ratings, at about 80 to 85 percent. Not Russian companies or polling data. Collective West, or at least Collective West endorsed polling. polling institutions have consistently put Putin's approval rating at anywhere between 80 to 85%. So to me, this result falls exactly in line with Putin's approval numbers as put out there by collective West institutions. Am I seeing this correctly? Why would they call us a sham? You're seeing this absolutely correctly.

I mean, there is nothing about this vote that I have seen that leads me to think that what we're seeing is not an accurate reflection of the Russian mood, of the Russian public mood at the present time. Now, clearly, this was, in some respects, a different, well, in many respects, a different election from other elections that we have seen in the sense that the other candidates who were there, Haritona for the communist Slootky for the liberal democrats, this new ban,

I don't know very much about Davonov or something, whatever he named his name is. I mean, they weren't really campaigning because this election was an election held at a time when Russia is, and so the overwhelming Russians, majority of Russians believe, in an existential conflict with the West,

which is playing out in a proxy war in Ukraine and in an economic war that the West has waged through all the sanctions that it has imposed on Russia. So in that respect, this election is, if you like, a kind of referendum on Putin's leadership and on the course he has taken over the course of this conflict. And of course that has undoubtedly, increase the turnout because people wanted to come out and shows that, you know, they support what Putin is doing at this time. And they see that, in effect, as a vote of support for their own country and for their army that is fighting in Ukraine. And that's pushed up the turnout. And it's also pushed up the approval rating. So it is a different election. But that doesn't

mean that this is a manipulated or rigged result in any meaningful way. It is a product of the present conditions that are taking place in Russia. Now, the reaction of the West, having said all of that, is not only, you know, predictable, it is predictable but extreme. And you can't help but feel that behind it all, there is real anger that after all that has happened, after the war that was started where they were expecting, you know, last year that Russia was going to lose, incredible that seems, after the economic war, which they were expecting was going to lead to a Russian economic collapse. After all of these things, not only is Russia standing strong, both economically and militarily.

But Putin, the man they wanted to push out of power is still there stronger than ever. So you see the anger. Everything has gone completely contrary to what they expected. And the frustration and the anger is boiling over. And that's, I suspect, much of the explanation for a lot of the commentary that you seeing coming out of the West over the last a few hours. So I see it exactly the way the way you see it. The entire project Ukraine was about regime change in Russia.

And now you have Putin in office for another six years. Do you think that the collective West, through their anger that they're displaying now with these election results, do you think they're finally going to. accept the fact that they have to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for six years? Are they going to finally accept this reality? And it is a reality. Maybe a month ago, they could have still held on to the hope Putin's going to somehow he's going to leave. But this drives home the reality that Putin is going to be president for six years. Can they finally accept this?

Right. Now, I get to come to two comments that have been made about this whole issue. and the first is from Putin himself. He gave this extraordinary interview to Svjakey Siliyov, the Russian journalist. And he had this to say about the plans of the Western powers of the start of the war. It's been completely overlooked, but he said that they wanted, they were looking when they started the war to essentially carry out a regime. change in Russia. And he said this very straightforwardly and very openly in a way that I've never seen him done at any time in the past. He actually says that when the West arranged for the war in Ukraine to start, he there were lots of people in the West who got very excited and said, this is our

opportunity to finish off Russia once and for all. And they're now very angry when they've discovered that it has turned out differently. So that's what he said. And here are his exact words. After our attempts to stop the war unleashed by the West in Ukraine in 2014, by force failed, Western elites, blinded by their Russophobia, were delighted. They even rejoiced because they believed that now they would finish us off under this barrage of sanctions. Practically a sanctions war declared against us. With the help of Western weapons and war through Ukrainian nationalists, they, they,

they would finish off Russia. Hence their slogan, inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. So you see, even Putin can see that this is all about ultimately generating a crisis in Russia, finishing it off as a geopolitical competitor, arranging regime change in Russia. Now, the other article, which I'm not going to read from, because I scarcely ever like to read things from the economists, when it concedes exactly the point that you have just made, that in fact, Putin is there to stay. The West has to just accept the fact.

They're furious about it. The economist is seething about the fact that Putin is there to stay. They're saying that, you know, the Russian people will pay a terrible price to this. Their economy will stagnate. Their population will fall. But it also goes on to say that Putin will remain in power. and Russia must now be seen as a dangerous adversary and competitive for the future. So you're right.

You're right about both a regime change point, or at least Putin clearly thinks that you're right. And the economist, which I believe is very close to the thinking of the US and British political leadership and even the neocon establishment makes exactly the same point as you. They will have to accept the fact that Putin is there to stay. They don't like it. They're furious about it. In a sense, they're trying to delegitimize him. But they've tried everything and it has failed.

Okay, so what happens now going forward? Putin's going to be an office for many years. And this is going to be, I imagine this is going to be his last term. as Russian president. What's, what's going to happen now in the next, in the next year? And then even the next six years. And I imagine Putin is going to place a great deal of focus on the Russian economy, but also on his, on his succession to power. I mean, who's going to come next after Putin? What does the political landscape look like? Something that, that Angela Merkel did not do very well. People forget that Angela Merkel was in power for, what was it, 16 years

or 12, I don't know, long time. She was in power for a long time. And she completely messed up the political landscape in Germany. And now we see the results of that. How do you think Putin is going to handle everything going forward? Well, I think the first thing to say is that because of the constitutional changes that were made in 2020, he can in theory seek a further term after the this one that he's just won. So he could be there for 12 years. I'm not saying he will be, but he's got that theoretical option. And you can perhaps see some logic to this

because he announced a few, about a week, 10 days ago, when he addressed the Russian Parliament, an extremely ambitious six-year programme, which is going to take him through the present term. By the way, he pointed out that in most respects, the program that he announced before the previous presidential election in 2018 has been surpassed. Politicians always say that.

But the next one, a very ambitious program indeed over the next six years, economic social program. I think that what he might do, and I'm not saying this is his plan, I think that it could be that he will want to see this program through. he will certainly want to see the war and its consequences through and sort it out and then perhaps he might decide to stand for a second for the next further term and groom a successor during that period i mean that's occurred to me as one possible way forward but i have absolutely no doubt whatever he decides to do, that he is going to start choosing his successor, promoting him, bringing him forward and preparing the ground for the time when he leaves the sea. This is a man who is extremely concerned, not so much about his reputation,

but as he says many times about his legacy, he wants to leave to whoever comes beyond him a stable, economically strong, geopolitically strong position in Russia. It's important to remember where he started in 1999 when Yelsen appointed him, acting prime minister, an utterly disastrous situation. So he wants to make sure that what he leaves to his successor is strong, stable, successful. That's his legacy now. But he also wants to make sure that his legacy is protected. and that he will make sure that whoever succeeds him is somebody who has the ability to consolidate

and build on what he has left. And you're absolutely right. Merkel did not grow her successor. None of the other leaders of the Soviet Union did either, by the way. I mean, that's a thing also to remember. Stalin in 1948 had decided on his successor, who was a man called Andre Zadanov, but Zedanov died, and then the whole succession issue was never resolved. And Brezhnev didn't really plan for his succession. And the result was political chaos,

as we remember, the whole perestroika affair. And so Putin will not want that. he will want to make sure that there's that the Russian people are presented with someone who is, you know, able to consolidate and continue what Putin has created. And a political system, which he will want to see as politically stable as well. And I think here we have to come back to the issue of democracy. whether Putin envisages Russia's future as that of the democracy. And I think he does, actually, despite what everybody says.

So he wants a political successor who he can present to the Russian people, who is able to take things forward, but do so, moreover, in a more open political landscape, a more democratic, a more, let's say democratic, a more competitive political landscape than the one that exists at the moment. I would say that one of his major concerns is the constant foreign meddling inside of Russia. And even when you go back in history, I think that's been one of the defining factors of of Russian history over the last century is the constant foreign intervention into Russia. And I think that Putin is very aware of that.

So I imagine he wants to create a political system that is based on transparency and on a level of democracy. Though in today's world, I think it's difficult to define what democracy is, it's definitely not coming on to the collective West. but he is very concerned of the foreign intervention, whether it's NGOs, academic institutions sponsored by the Collective West or the media or anything else. How do you think that's going to play into his presidency going forward? How is he going to deal with the foreign intervention that the Collective West is known for?

That they're very keen on injecting inside of Russia. This is what they've been doing inside of Russia for many. This is absolutely going. It goes back to well before the First World War and during the First World War and then during the latest Soviet period and then throughout the time since the fall of the Soviet Union. And of course in the 90s, Britain at the United States, especially the United States, basically ran Russia for a time and did so disastrously. And this is a fact people never want to be.

reminded of in the West. And then after Putin came in, they were meddling and interfering constantly and doing everything, possibly good to destabilize and remove him. And they did, they started doing that, contrary to what many people think, I remember this well. They started doing that literally from the moment when he first was appointed by Yelsin acting crime minister. I mean, there were already hit pieces being published about Putin in the autumn of 1999. as I well remember. I remember reading them and being astonished. So, of course, he's aware of this.

And of course, he's very concerned about this. I think at some fundamental level, he, I think nonetheless thinks that the way to guard against this problem is to develop a strong Russian political system that is transparent and democratic and functions with the consent of the people through an informed democracy. Remember, he also remembers the late Soviet period where the government basically controlled everything.

The country was a genuine authoritarian state. The media was censored. There was enormous controls. And what that eventually led to was a disconnection between the rulers and the people they ruled. So he doesn't want that to happen again. So he wants a more open political system because he sees that that is more stable. But he also understands that it has to be conducted with a well-informed, well-educated public

and one where the antibodies, the political antibodies are strong enough to resist this endless interference. by the West. He talks about that again, also a lot, incidentally, in that interview with Sergei Kisilyov. And this is a difficult thing to work through, except of course that I think it is correct to say that most Russians now have figured it out. The experience of the 1990s is not one which Russians are going to forget in a hurry. And of course, the political system, is there to remind them of it all the time. The other thing I would say is that, of course, with the economy grown,

with the economic situation now very stable, with the geopolitical situation, changing all the time, Western power visibly in decline, he probably does calculate and say to himself, well, you know, we have to keep a sort of tight grip. But gradually, this challenge and things, the West is going to fade and that will

mean that we can start to release that grip and become more that which we basically want to be. By the way, you touch on a point which I have made many times though I'm I suspect I'm all but I'm alone in doing so

which is that Western interference this constant meddling by the West which is described by the West as democracy promotion does not actually promote democracy in Russia. It does the opposite. It does the opposite because if it succeeds, what it does is impose on Russia a pro-Western government, which does exactly what the West wants, which loses support in the country. That is what happened with the provisional government that appeared in

Russia briefly in 1917, and it appeared in the 1990s, in both cases, with disastrous consequences. And at all other times, it prevents the political system from becoming open and fully stabilising. Because Russian leaders say to themselves, if we open the doors, if we relax at all, then the West will come and interfere in our affairs, and what we will get is chaos, and most Russians agree. So, you know, to give a good example, I think that the Soviet system, this is again my own view, which as I said you won't find pretty much anybody said, but my own view is that the Soviet system was prolonged at least 30 years beyond its natural life in the form that it was largely because of the constant pressure and interference by the West.

Containment, as it is called, which became a whole better, not just trying to restrict the Soviet Union to its geopolitical space, but also to interfere within the Soviet Union itself, something which George Kennan, the so-called designer of containment, always opposed. Anyway, containment, in my opinion, did not. facilitate the development of the Russian political system. It impeded it. But I don't want to press that because that is my own personal view. And I haven't seen anybody else who agrees with

beyond this. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense. A final question from a geopolitical strategic point of view, I imagine Putin also has to safeguard Russia's security, that being its western borders. Absolutely. And so Belarus, Kaliningrad, and of course Ukraine. And now you have

Finland as well, which is a NATO country right on its borders, but this is going to be of immense importance to Putin. And if I were to guess, he would make sure that at least Ukraine, at the very

least Ukraine on the southern underbelly of Russia is no threat to Russia. Oh, absolutely. This is an overriding priority. And of course, Ukraine is the big one. I mean, Finland is a nuisance and the Baltic states are certain nuisance. But it's Ukraine that really is the issue. If Ukraine is sorted out, then a lot of other things on the Western border fall into place. But he's got to do that. And I think that is he's overriding geostrategic priority at the moment. But he has other ones too. I mean, one of the great achievements of the Putin period is that he's forged all these close relationships with all these other countries. He's been lucky in one respect because over the period that he has been president, we have seen

the multipolar system emerge. We've seen the rising powers, China, India, Indonesia, with which he has excellent relations. Brazil, which he had good relations with, both under, Bolsonaro and Lula, lots of other countries, good relations with the African states. He's forged all very close, stable relations with all of these countries. One of the things he will want to do is he'll want to consolidate these relationships with all of these countries and make sure that when he leaves these strategic partnerships, are so well established that they become unbreakable. And the reason, again, is that, of course, in the past,

there have been leaders in Russia that have fallen for the lure of the West. He actually uses the expression that the West trying to lure Russia. And he doesn't want to see that happen again. I mean, he saw what happened when that was attempted before. He doesn't want to see that happen again. and leaders around the world in these rising countries see that also. And that is why overwhelmingly they support and are very happy about Putin's re-election. They're very happy to see him there.

Now, we have actually actual evidence of this because a few days ago, the Western powers, the Western countries, released a statement basically criticizing the Russian elections, saying they weren't free or fair and open, casting doubt on their legitimacy, claiming that they violated international law because they were held in Crimea and Lugansk and Hursk and Saborosje and all of that. Now, Dmitri Poliansky, who is the deputy ambassador of Russia of the Security Council, UN Security Council. It's a very, very important to open that.

Anyway, he has said that the West has spent the last couple of weeks aren't twisting to try to get countries in the global south or the global

majority to sign up and agreed to this statement. And they refused in every case, the Western emissaries had the door slammed in their face. So the result was that the only countries that ended up signing the statement are the 56 states that formed the collective West. None of the global majority countries, not China, not India, not Turkey,

not the African states, the Latin American states, the big ones, all of those. None of them agreed to sign it. And Voliansky made the point that that meant that more, than two-thirds of the nations that are represented in the UN General Assembly, basically rejected this statement and are happy about the way in which the elections took place in Russia. And anyway, consider those elections to be Russia's business. So Putin will want to consolidate those friendships and those relationships because he comes to see them as absolutely critical for Russia's future and not just for Russia's, you know, geopolitical

future, but also for its security and prosperity. It anchors Russia in a world system that is no longer dominated by the West. Well put. All right, the durand. Dotlocos.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, butchuttelegram, Rock Finn and Twitter X. And go to the Duran shop. 15% of all t-shirts. Take care.