TRIGGERnometry - BONUS LIVE SPECIAL: Russia-Ukraine War Update | Moscow Coup Explained

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Join us for a special *recorded live* episode with Konstantin and Francis in a discussion about the latest news coming out of Moscow. Is this a turning point in Russia's 16-month-long, all-out conflict in Ukraine and does this pose a potential threat to Vladimir Putin's hold on the presidency? Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to a very special. live episode of Trigonometry, where we're going to be examining and analyzing everything that is happening in Russia at the moment. We will also be taking your questions as well. So if you've got questions, send us a super chat, send us a PayPal, and in the second half of the interview, we'll be feeding your questions to Constantine and we'll be discussing them. So that is your chance to ask constant questions all about what is happening. But I'm Francis. Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. That was smooth, mate. Yeah. Your intro sounded like it was a little bit of slow motion. But anyway, here we are. Yeah, indeed. We should probably announce that actually,

I mean, if people were tuning in to find out about the terrible emergency coup, as we speak, the guy who's orchestrating the coups just said he's turning his troops around. So you can switch off, basically. But seriously, though, if you want to understand what's happening, that's what we were going to talk about. Absolutely. That is what we were going to talk about, because I think, I think a lot of people are kind of sitting at home. They woke up a few hours ago. They have no clue what's happened. They don't know who the Wagner group is.

They don't know who Yefgeny Procortion is. So let's start with that. Who is Yefgeny Procortion? Well, we should start with Wagner, Wagner, whatever you pronounce it. So they are a private military company, basically, a mercenary group that Putin has been funding for a long time in order to participate in conflicts and train troops and so on,

around the world so that Russia could do things in places like Syria and various countries in Africa without actually that being attributable to the Russian military. And so they've been operating, as I say, in various different parts of the world, but most prominently in Syria where they actually, I did a whole tweet series about this today, they actually at one point found themselves in direct confrontation with American forces and took very heavy casualties in that battle. But basically, put very simply, they're a private mercenary company that's been fighting in different places around the world. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in March of last year or February of last year, in February of last year,

they were one of the key units that did a lot of the fighting on the front lines. And they, because they're very well funded and they're very well trained and very experienced, they were actually one of the units that had some of the biggest successes. while most of the Russian military actually really, really struggled and was forced to see territory that initially occupied back to the Ukrainians, the Wagner Group is one of the units that's been very successful for a number of reasons. One of them is they're not subject to various rules of war and regulations. And so they've been able to use very brutal tactics. So the other we'll get back to that in a second, but the other reason is they had

for a long time, they were able to recruit convict. And you've gained in Progogsion, who's the head of this group, he is actually an ex-convict himself. So he would go to these penal colonies all over Russia and to prisons all over Russia. And he would say, well, you are here for murder or you were here for assault or whatever. You've got another 10 years on your sentence.

Why don't you come and do six months with me? You'll be paid, you'll be well trained, much better trained than if you were in the regular army, but much better equipped. And if you do six months with me, you can go home and you get a pardon. So your sentence is completely commuted as a result, which obviously, as you can imagine,

to some prisoners that would have been quite appealing. And they did that for a long time. And what they did with the units is basically they use style and tactics. So if you retreat, they just shoot you. And he told people when he was recruiting them at the prison. He would be like, no retreat. If you retreat, we're going to show you. And they do this.

They're one of the things they're known for, is they execute defectors or anyone who surrenders and then says anything bad about them by smashing their head in with a sledgehammer live on camera. And they published several of these episodes. So very brutal, very professional. And they were fighting over this city in eastern Ukraine, quite a small city actually called Bachman for about eight months, which was longer than the Battle of Stalingrad. And a few weeks ago, they managed to force the Ukrainians out.

They took very heavy casualties in this process and inflicted very heavy casualties on the Ukrainian army at the same time. And having finished this, they basically needed to go back away from the front lines for rest and recovery and, you know, to replenish their losses, retrain their units and so on. But in the background of all of this, one of the things that has been happening is, obviously, Pregozhen and Wagner, they are a unit that is essentially. Essentially, you could almost argue independent of the Russian military. And this is a problem from the perspective of the Russian Ministry of Defense because it's not a unit that's under their control.

And increasingly, Pregozhen started criticizing very publicly the Russian Minister of Defense Shoygo and the head of the general staff, Gerasimov. And so they've been in this battle of words for many, many months. Pregozen accused them of not providing enough ammunition, of using poor tactics, of being and competent and all of this stuff in public, in Russia. You know, this isn't like the UK where you can criticize the head of the army or the military and that's kind of people, people give you a pat on the back for that. It's really completely unheard of in Russia, particularly from someone from another branch

of the fighting in the same war. And this conflict was amplifying and amplifying and amplifying to the point where Progogion once did recorded this video in front of like the corpses of his soldiers saying, These men have died because of the incompetence of the Ministry of Defense, screaming, give me ammunition, give me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so when they were pulling back, remember after I said after they took back,

Matt, this is according to prognosis anyway. As they were moving back to positions in the rear, the road that they were using was mined. There were mines on the road in territory controlled by Russia. And when they sent in disposal engine, bone disposal engineers to deal with it, they came under fire from the Russian side. And what they then did is they basically responded to the fire, encircled the units that were firing on them.

And what they found is it was a unit of the Russian military. They arrested or detained, not arrested, they detained the colonel who was in charge of it, beat him up, clearly tortured and whatever and put him on camera. And he refused to say why he gave the order to attack Wagner. he just said, oh, I have a deep personal antipathy towards you, but he wouldn't explain who gave him the order, if anybody. So then they went back into the rear after all of this. So a lot of people saw this as an escalation of the conflict

between the Ministry of Defense and Wagner. And yesterday, Pregogsian claimed that Russian military had dropped bombs on his units in Russian territory, a Russian control territory. And he was like, okay, this is enough. We are now going to deal with Shoygo, the defense minister and Gerasim of the head of the basically a mutiny. It wasn't actually a coup. A coup would be him trying to take over the presidency. That may be what was happening.

But it was actually more he at least was claiming what this was about was throwing off the defense minister and the head of the army. Although if you think about it, if you're President Putin and I'm the head of the army, and someone wants to overthrow me, you've appointed me. So at the very, very least, you're massively undermining my authority. Anyway, so they got their columns together, and they started basically marching on Moscow. They captured a major city called Rostov-on-Don, and then they started going towards Moscow, avoiding major cities, avoiding firefights. There were whole units of Russian military soldiers who laid down their arms and didn't want to interfere in that fight.

And a few minutes ago, we heard from Pregojan himself that he basically said, well, the reason we did this, he's changed the explanation. The original explanation was they attacked us. Then he said, they wanted to disband my unit. They wanted to disband Wagner. So we went on what he called a march for justice towards Moscow. They got to about probably within about 150 to 200 kilometers. So they'd already reached the Moscow region, Moscow Oblast is called. And they were basically heading there.

And in the last few minutes, they've said that they're pulling back and going back to where they were stationed. Now, given that in the meantime, what had happened is the mayor of Moscow suspended any movements in Moscow, called it a non-working day, basically everybody stayed at home. And Putin went on TV and said, this is treason, this is mutiny. These people will be punished, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. this doesn't end here because if you've taken up arms essentially against your country, particularly in Russia, this is this is going to, it'll either end very quickly, if you know what I mean, or this will run in terms of its repercussions. I mean, one of the things obviously it shows is that Putin's authority is weakening. It doesn't mean he's not in charge. You know, people will say I'm being biased against Putin. I mean, no, an armed mutiny in Russia. is a sign of the fact of the fact that the president's authority is in question.

Another thing that we should say as well is, Progoshin is not the only one in essentially with a private army in Russia. There's also Ramzan Khadir of the leader of Chechnya. Now, he is loyal to Putin at the moment, but he has said he has somewhere between 20 and 70,000 troops, including reservists, depending how you count it, who are loyal entirely to him. And while they're formally, Chechen is obviously part of the Russian Federation, you know, the people who live there are their own ethnicity, they're Muslim rather than Orthodox Christian, they have a very strong local identity.

So in the event that things kick off, I mean, my point is there's other players that could get involved in this situation. And Putin has been building up the National Guard under one of his loyalists. So there's several essentially private armies in addition to the Ministry of Defense that could potential in a situation like this been vying for leadership. And, you know, the Chechens, for example, they said, well, we're going to go and stop progoshin because they hate him and Wagner for many reasons. They've been in the pissing match for the last many months.

Okay, well, let's say the Chechens get to Moscow. Let's say they chase off progosion. Well, if Putin needs them, why do they need Putin? Right. So this had the potential to be a very dangerous situation and still does because we don't know if it's actually been resolved. I mean, privately, I did. say to you this morning that i didn't think this would end up in a you know in a nova throughout the

government or anything it may do still nobody really knows but that's kind of the background to where we are and one of the questions i really want to ask is i find it bizarre that somebody who is as power hungry as Putin who is an authoritarian why does he have private armies working for him well why doesn't he have the russian army uh because he can't fund the russian well one of the of the reasons I explained to you, which is he needed them for operations that he couldn't do with the full weight of the Russian state behind it. So if you need somewhere to go, I mean, the Americans had, I don't know if you remember this scandal. There was a scandal in Iraq when some people from a company called Blackwater, they killed civilians in Iraq and there was a big scandal. The guy

had to sell this company. They changed the name, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But basically a lot of big countries around the world have been experimenting with this model where you have armed mercenaries that are acting under your direct control, but they're not directly attributable to your, to you. So for example, I'm not saying this is exactly why Putin would have wanted it, but remember at the beginning I mentioned how, so to give you a very brief rundown, in Syria, the Americans and the Russians actually coordinated their movement, even though they were on the opposite sides of that war because Russia backed Assad and obviously the Americans didn't. But the last thing they wanted was for like Americans accidentally to be fighting Russians

and before you know you're in World War III. Okay. Yeah. So in this battle that I told you about, I wish I could remember the name now, but I did a series of tweets in which I mentioned it today. The Americans said, we're about to engage this Syrian unit. Are there any Russian soldiers attached to it? And the Russians were like, no. And Americans were cool. so we'll take care of it then. And they killed somewhere, I think, between two and 400 Wagner mercenaries because the Russians basically said, well, these are not our guys, right? So that's obviously the downside of plausible deniability of these people being attached to the Russian

military. But essentially, what it allows you to do is act in ways around the world that you couldn't act as a state because it would be too much of a transgression for you to do so, or there would be too much bad press or bad publicity. So that's one reason. The other reason is what I was saying to you is, if you have a bunch of various private armies emerging in the country, you're not necessarily going to be able to rely on the Russian military. What if the Russian military becomes mutinous for

some reason? You want a force or a set of forces in Putin's case that you control, that you can use to defend yourself to assert your authority and so on. And Progogsian was known as Putin's chef. He was actually a guy who owned restaurants. Like he's very closely connected with Putin apparently until recently so don't know what's going on there nobody does and the third thing is i mean this is an elite unit they're much better trained much more disciplined much better equipped than the regular Russian army are they better paid as well and they're better paid yeah because that was a that was one of the criticisms with the Russian armies that the pay was awful they weren't properly trained they didn't have the right ammunition they didn't have the but terribly funded so that being the

case, he's obviously got many legitimate grievances against the Russian army, against the Russian government. But this looks like an act of lunacy, doesn't it, on his behalf? Well, I mean, you say legitimate. Nobody knows whether they're really legitimate grievances, because both, I mean, this is also true of the Ukrainian army, but the Russian army has had problems with ammunition supplies all over the place. So it's not like necessarily they were being targeted. although they may have been some of that going on as well. So we don't know whether his grievance is legitimate or not. But I mean, obviously you cannot have 25,000 men marching on Moscow.

And by the way, this is unconfirmed, but I've heard a lot of very credible reports that the column that was heading towards Moscow was repeatedly attacked by helicopters and several of them were shot down. Really? They shot allegedly, we don't know for certain yet, but allegedly they shot down several Russian army helicopters, which are, you know, to say nothing of the fact that they killed Russian airmen. They also shot down, you know, equipment worth tens of millions of dollars. So the, I mean, obviously none of us knows how this is going to go. I would be very surprised if he gets away with this. And what has Putin's reaction been to this? Well, the only thing we know, and this is the thing for months as this slanging match was going on,

between the MOD, the Russian MOD and Wagner. He hadn't said anything. And in fact, in one of Prigosin's statements where he was talking about Gerasimov and Shoygo, the defense minister and head of the general staff, he actually said something about how, well, maybe grandpa's lost the plot. Right. And he then took it back and said, I wasn't really talking about Putin and blah, blah, blah. But he was starting to sort of get ahead of himself, maybe.

is the right phrase. But doesn't that show that this war has destroyed Putin's credibility, if you've got people being openly mutinous, people openly mocking Putin, people openly criticizing the Ministry of Defense. I mean, well, you and I are both NATO shields, so we would say that. But objectively speaking, I do think it's fair to say, I say this with British understatement and sarcasm.

I think it is fair to say that, that when you've got a large military unit rising up and marching on your own capital, it's probably fair to say that you may have less control over the armed forces in the country than you had before. Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. And so has Putin not come out? Has he made any kind of statement? He made one statement. So the only time that he's commented on it was today when he basically did a short seven-minute video in which he said, these people are traitors, they're going to be punished. I call on the Russian forces to, you know, I call on everybody to avoid bloodshed,

but these people will be dealt with, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the fact that the mayor of Moscow, you know, basically put the city into lockdown shows you that they weren't messing around. This was serious. They were, they were very close. They were coming. And yeah, I mean, this is a big problem for Putin. And one of the things that we're going to find out now is, you know these 25,000 mercenaries, they are loyal to progosin. They are loyal to him. He built this cult of, you know, looking after his soldiers and arguably, certainly does it a lot better than Russian generals in the army who are incompetent, many of them.

So they're loyal to him. And, you know, if you take out progosin, what are they going to do? They might just be like, well, okay, we don't have a leader anymore. We've got to quit. Or they might really rebel. you don't know. But on the other hand, for Putin, I mean, he has to do something. And I would have, I mean, I will tell you honestly, if I were him, I would have prognosion arrested and executed. That's what you have to do if you want to stay in power.

That's what would happen. So it just remains to be seen how this one plays out. But can he actually arrest progarsion? If he has got this crack elite team of over 20,000 men, who marched on Moscow, shot down helicopters. Allegedly. Allegedly, right? Allegedly. Yeah.

How's he going to arrest him? Well, that remains to be seen. I mean, one of the obvious ways you do it is you fly him in somewhere from negotiations or, you know, whatever, whether that would work or not. But you've got to understand this is not a sustainable situation. No. Right. You can't have that.

I mean, we couldn't have that at trigonometry, two people being like, you know what, we're going to sabotage everything you guys are doing. like we wouldn't tolerate that. You can't tolerate this, particularly when it's armed mutiny. And you can't give people, let people get away with it. One of the reasons is it encourages other people to do it. Yeah. And so what effect has that had on the war with Ukraine? Well, so if this had carried on, the effect would have been is obviously it probably would have, first of all, it's a massive distraction. So that means the Ukrainians would have the opportunity to do things. But also, if it really carried it.

on. I mean, all of Russia's combat-ready units are essentially in Ukraine or on the border with Ukraine getting ready to get involved. So they would have to pull some of them back, and that obviously opens up gaps. The Ukrainian counter-offensive hasn't really gone very well at all. They haven't committed the majority of the troops yet to the counter-offensive that everyone's been talking about, but the efforts they have made, which has kind of been more reconnaissance in force than actual full-scale attacks, haven't gone well at all. So this may have been the opportunity the Ukrainians needed. The fact that it's been shut down within the space of a day means that the Ukrainians haven't

had the opportunity to really take advantage of this so far as we know. But the average Russian must look at Putin now and he must be diminished in their eyes significantly. So the one thing you should know about Russia is actually I met somebody when I was in America who helped Boris Yelton design his campaign slogans. And he said, we did all the polling, and the campaign slogan we came up with was strong leader for a strong Russia. That's the mentality.

The moment you're not a strong leader, you know, people, I'm not saying it's over. I'm not saying people are going to rise up and overthrow you, but, yeah, you lose a lot of credibility. This is not that Putin any good at all, which is why I suspect he may end up doing something very harsh in response. do you think that what we're seeing and look predictions are always terrible and in many ways probably not the fairest of questions do you think we're seeing the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin here? No, I certainly wouldn't want to say that and I actually don't think necessarily no I wouldn't want to say either way because I just don't think we know.

Really? I don't I think there is no evidence right now to suggest it's the beginning of the end. It could be but it may well look if he comes out tomorrow, you know, arrest progussian hasn't executed or whatever you know maybe makes changes in terms of the way the army's managed and all of this other stuff he may well be able to to recover his situation and actually come back from this stronger that's also a possibility uh or may go the other way we genuinely don't know and how is progouss seen in russia is he seen as a hero somebody who it depends by whom it's like saying you know how is donald trump seen in america well half the country

thinks he's a legend and half the country he hates him. Yeah. You know, with Progossin, it's very difficult to say what on balance people think about him. One of the things that he has achieved is because his unit has been one of the very few that has actually done well in the fighting, that has made forward progress where other units have failed and stalled, et cetera. And he's been very good at building up and cultivating this image of this successful military leader, even though he's actually a commander at all.

kind of more like the PR head of the unit. He has cultivated this sense of like being a strong leader and being successful and being one of the few people we Russians can rely on to go and win in Ukraine. So from that perspective, there will certainly be people who like him. There will obviously be people who are not happy because, you know, he is organizing an armed mutiny in the middle of a war that Russia, while not overwhelmingly, you know, the Russian perspective of what's happening in Ukraine is it's it's you know we're not losing but we're not winning either which is not what we were told what happened we were told you know our tanks would roll into Kiev very quickly this is an easy thing it was more of a military operation is now a full-blown

war in which Russia has had to give seed territory that it's taken over significant chunks of territory including there near Harkiv in the north there near Kiev in the center there in near Husson and Husson itself in the south which Russia had to abandon. So in Russia, you know, the war is seen as not going great. And there's a very sort of TV propagandists who were very bullish at the beginning. They're now all talking about, you know, why isn't it going as well as it could? Well, it's the evil NATO giving them weapons and blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's the tone of the conversation. So against that backdrop, Progogion is one of the few successful military commanders, as people would see him in the conflict.

He gets a lot of credibility, yeah. And do you think because Russia is one of those that is very large and there's a very credible argument that could be made that you need a strong man like Putin in order to hold this enormous country together. Otherwise, it simply won't work. Do you think there are people like the Chechens looking at this and going, this may be our moment to have a goal? I think the Chechens at this moment based on what I've seen are loyal to Putin. It doesn't mean that they are permanently loyal to Putin, but they clearly haven't seen this as a as their moment to jump. at the moment. We just remains to be seen. You've got to remember this is a lot of people have actually been predicting this would happen. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, one of them is a guy called Igor Strelkoff, who is actually one of the paramilitaries who fought for the rebels in 2014. He's very anti-Ukrainian. He says Ukraine shouldn't exist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's what,

there's a growing actually movement in Russia of people who are anti- Putin because they see him as weak. who are anti the military because they see them as weak. They don't see them as hard enough. They don't see them as, you know, they say we need a full mobilization. They say we need to call it a war. We need to put Russia on a wartime footing. And what they've been talking about, and this is, you know, one of the reasons that people in Russia crave a strong leader is Russian history.

I've talked about this to a few people privately. So there's a time in Russian history called Times of Trouble. In Russian we call Sumota. And what happened was this is the period of Ivan the Terrible, who if you remember, he's known really for two things. He, well, he was, he expanded Russia or what it was at the time. But what he also did is he killed his elder son in a fit of rage. And his next son, who was very weak and probably, you know, mentally disabled. And essentially he ended up with no air.

And the times of trouble is the period after that during which there is like half the population dies in famine, the Poles invade, the Lithuanians invade, there's a series of false pretenders to the throne, they get overthrown, and the whole land basically is ravished by one ill after another for decades, on decades, on decades. It's a terrible time in Russian history. And what Russians learn, and this is something that we learn in school from a young age, What Russians learned in that time is when you don't have a strong leader, bad things happen. Terrible, terrible, terrible things happen.

And the reason that people have been predicting that this sort of thing would start to happen is it's actually what happened in 1917 in the Russian Revolution. Because Russia was fighting in World War I. All of the combat ready units were on the front lines, whereas in the rear, there was a lot of social discord and social instability, which was then used to distinguish. stabilize the army and you ended up with the government being overthrown and the regime change that happened. So people have been saying like we're heading towards Smuta and that's always the big fear in Russia. So the difference is that a lot of people thought that what it would take is for a big setback in Ukraine to happen before people started having a go, if you like. So Progossin may have jumped the gun hand. Yeah, indeed he might. I find it very interesting because

obviously I read British publications and my Russian isn't that good. But one of the... How good is it? Not the best, mate. But one of the things that I find actually deeply unhelpful is when people look at Russia through a British or a European lens and it's not helpful because I don't think people understand this. They perceive the world in a very different way.

So take the example of democracy with Boris Yeltsin. Explain to us, what does democracy, for example, mean to a right? Well, so I've said this many times. Russia's never had democracy. Yeah. And the only experience Russia had with democracy was the period between 1991 when Boris Yelten comes to power, the Soviet Union collapses, and 1999 when Vladimir Putin comes to power.

In which point, you know, you have elections, but you don't have democracy because, you know, elections aren't democracy. Democracy is the ability to change who leads your country by the vote of the people. if you clean out all your potential opponents, rig elections to some extent, etc. It's not a democracy. And Russian people don't want it. When I say that, people think I'm sort of slagging off. No, Russian people don't want democracy.

Because the only experience of democracy is eight years in which you had inflation at points of 84%. It's probably the same we've got here at the moment, mate. Yeah. You know, a financial crisis. You had a situation where Cheshire Russian terrorists drove into Russia. I mean, this is going to sound quite familiar to what's happening now, but they drove

into Russia in two buses, captured a hospital in one of the bordering towns, heard it about a thousand people in there, held them hostage, killed some of them, and they essentially got the Russian state to negotiate with them and give them concessions. That's how embarrassing that was. Imagine you were the Soviet Union, one of the two superpowers in the world, and now you're negotiating with some Chechen warlord. Wow. Right. So that was humiliating.

You had terrorist attacks. You had incredible instability in terms of employment and jobs. And we've talked about this before. But people who, you know, you could have been a respectable scientist yesterday. And today you're selling your belongings in the street. And the people who actually are in charge of your country now are criminals who've seized control of the. the public assets and they're selling them off and they're driving around in Mercedes and limos while you are starving. There were two wars in Chechnya, etc., etc. So it was a terrible period of chaos

for Russians. And if that's what you thought democracy meant, why would you want it? Absolutely. And looking at what happened at the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people didn't predict that it was going to win so quickly. And a lot of people say it's because we didn't really understand what was going on in the Soviet Union and obviously the policy of secrecy, etc. Do you think that's the case now that actually that it could be nearer the end than we think because we simply don't know enough about what's going on in Russia? Well, I don't think it's that we don't know enough about what's going to Russia, although I think that's certainly true. I think it's more that we can't predict the future even if we

know a lot about what's going on Russia, right? I mean, look at the last few years in this country or the West, have we been able to predict much of what's going on there? Anton, by the way, I'm just worried that if we've got like loads of superchats building up, and then questions on locals as well, which if you are a local supporter, make sure you head over there because we'll do those questions first. I'm just wary of are we going to have enough time to handle all of them. So just give us a shout when you think. Yeah.

We've got a manageable amount. We've got a manageable amount. So if you've got questions, guys, send them in either on locals or in the super chat here. Okay, so there have been also a lot of people in the British press and very educated people, may I say, who are celebrating this fact and going, this is the end of Putin. This is brilliant, excellent stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think that's unwise. Why? Well, Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons. Okay.

And chaos in a nuclear state is not necessarily a good thing, again, to say with some British understatement. I mean, I don't think we were, I mean, Ramzan Kadirov doesn't strike me as a particularly responsible leader. So if he was to get involved and end up in control of one of the largest nuclear, can you just clarify who is that? He's the leader of Chesh. Of course. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Progossin, I mean, who knows how sensible he is. I don't think he's, he's as crazy and he seems quite a smart operator. But my point is you don't want people in nuclear country fighting over the, the, the, the, the, nuclear suitcase, the nuclear launch code. You know what I mean? You don't want armed struggle over that, not least because you don't know exactly, you know, who's going to control which silo at what time, who's going to use it against who, right? Because if you are, you know, some kind of warlord and your life's on the line, well, maybe, you know, maybe this is a card that you're going to use

in one way or another. So I think that I very much understand, and to a large extent, share people's animosity towards Putin, particularly after the invasion of Ukraine, in which the Russian forces have done some awful, awful things. And the invasion itself is obviously awful. But I don't necessarily think that encouraging chaos on Russia is a great thing. You mentioned earlier about Russia disintegrating. I'm not convinced that, I mean, look, Russia disintegrating would not be a good thing. I'm also not necessarily convinced that there's that many parts of Russia that would

want to split off. I mean, you're looking at Chechnya, Dagestan, it's probably about it, to be honest. I mean, Belarus would fall away and be kind of less under Russia's control. But I don't see like individual Russian regions being like, yeah, we've got a national identity. We want to split off. But nonetheless, chaos in a country like that and a power struggle in a country like that is probably not what anybody wants. So what do you think, how are the US and the UK and the West going to be looking at this. Would they see it as a positive move? No, I don't think they would. I think we just talked about it. I think the instability in a nuclear country is their number one issue. Yeah. Because that's, you know, if that goes in a

bad way, that's a potentially terrible situation, potentially ending all life on earth situation. So I think that would be their first concern is how do you make sure there's security and stability for that? And then beyond that, I mean, who knows exactly what they're thinking? I do think they'd like to get rid of Putin, but, and I've talked about this before, you know, I keep making this point to people, you know, when the conflict first erupted or when Russia first invaded Ukraine, people are like, well, why don't we just take out Putin? And I'm like, well, who do you think is going to come to power when you do that? You think Nick Clegg is waiting in the wings?

You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not really like that. So I think the forces that are currently vying for power on Russia, I actually not necessarily all that much better than Putin. So I think from a Western perspective, you just have to be careful on way and see. So the forces are vine. Is there somebody who has seen as a legitimate alternative to Putin? No. And the reason for that is, is he spent the last, so he came to power in 1999, he spent the last 24 years making sure there was no one. So if you were somebody

of a different mindset to him who wanted to challenge what he was doing, you were either exiled, poisoned or put in prison, that happened to literally everybody who at any point attempted to organize a resistance of any kind to his, even politically. So whether that's Gary Kasparov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Mikhail Kovsky, Navalny of course, Alexei Navalny, all of them have very quickly found themselves in one of those, in one of those categories, exiled, poisoned or imprisoned. So there isn't anybody, other than these warlords, essentially, who are now vying for power in Russia. Well, so at the moment, we really don't know what is going to be happening.

No. And I was going to suggest, do you want to maybe read a few of the locals' comments? Okay. Because we've got them. And in the meantime, it gives me a chance to just catch up and see what else is going on. Okay. So I can update people as well. Okay.

So please remember to send in your phone now. Superchat, send in your questions, send in your PayPal's. And if you join locals, that means that we will look at your questions first. By the way, Francis, would you like to know how many people are watching? How many? 10,000 people. Okay. Watching live.

Wow. So, thank you for tuning in, all 10,000 of you. Right. Anton, please send them through to me. And then we can have a look at them. Yep. So first one, it's from Sheila Powell. What I want to know is, who are these people, who is funding them? How does this affect you?

Well, I think we've covered most of that. We covered most of that. The interesting question in there, Sheila, is who is funding them? Because up until this point, it was very clear that Frigosin and Wagner were funded by Putin, one way or another. But in this instance, it would seem like he's got support. And there may be some kind of shadow player behind the scenes who is orchestrating all of this. And that really is the interesting thing to explore. I know that a lot of conspiracy people are going to say, it's a CIA.

It's not the CIA, I don't think. So, Jim White, very good question. Does Progorgian have proper allies in Moscow? He will do, yeah, yeah. Well, until recently, Putin was one of them, so this doesn't make a lot of sense. Darius says, what were the different military organizations in Russia do, i.e. the FSB, the National Guard, etc., and how many organizations are there? Well, there's loads.

The FSB is the successor to the KGB, so they're the secret police, basically. the National Guard, their job is riot and protest suppression. And then you've got all kinds of other special units for rapid response to this, policing, etc. Crash Carstar says, What do you make of the latest reports that Belarusian president Lukashenko has just held talks with Progorgian and the advance toward Moscow is now halted? Well, we talked about this right at the beginning. So the advance towards now, toward Moscow is halted because Progossin has come

and said it's halted. Whether Lukashenko had anything to do with that, I don't know. Earlier, I read the prognosian said that they held talks, but nothing came of it. Yeah. So we don't know why exactly they decided to pull back. The Lory Assert, hasn't Putin just successfully flushed out all the disloyal elements in his military? No. No, he hasn't at all. Progogsion has been the head of it and Wagner has been open about it, but no, he hasn't. And I think actually what you'll probably probably find is unless he is very, very harsh with this mutiny, he will have created more

potential mutinies in the future. Elisa Bucket, hello, Eliza. Is Brigosian mad or so does he have support in high places, which we've already covered, but let's talk about him as a character. What do we know about his character? Well, he's very outspoken. He's very controversial. He's basically like me if I had an army man. No, I mean, he's, he does his business and public. And is he mad? I mean, look, if you look at history, history is always made by people making crazy moves. 99% of them end up dead.

Yeah. Right. The 1% actually end up succeeding. So there is a very long and storied history of people attempting to overthrow governments and failing, which is what he's done here. Okay. So Norfolk boy says, the 1991 coup against Gorbachev came from inside the government and it led to the end of the Communist Party.

But then they had Boris Yeltsin. Is the situation now similar? And if not, why not? Well, one of the things that Gorbache have failed to do is really crack down. He didn't want to spill blood. And that's why they essentially broke up the Soviet Union. Whether Putin is of the same mindset, I don't think so. And so I look, nobody knows he's getting old.

Nobody, you know, there's rumors about his health, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows the truth. I would be, I mean, it's possible, but I would be surprised if the pushback on this is not very hard. Well, it has to be, doesn't it? Because otherwise he doesn't, I mean, it's hard to see how he survives this, right? Yeah. So Gab de Schiff says this move from Wagner looks very ad hoc. And regardless of the personal losses, is there a possibility that money is also playing a role here?

After all, they're soldiers for hire. You know, it's interesting because they are soldiers for hire. But one of the things that's very clear is they have very high internal unit morale. Like they're all backing him and they have done throughout the conflict. I think one way or another, he somehow created some kind of ideological unity within his organization where he enjoys a lot of personal loyalty from his troops. Well, I mean, that makes... It's definitely not about money.

Yeah. It's definitely... Like, I mean, if he stops paying them, I think some loyalty might be lost. But they're not doing this for money. Right. I mean, it makes sense because if you think about it to a lot of these guys, Progorgian gave them a second chance. if you've been sentenced to 20 years in a Russian Joe, I mean, there's no guarantees you're going to make it out of that.

And if you do, you're not going to come out better. And also, they are well-fed, well-trained, well-equipped, well-armed. He goes out and advocates for them, whereas a lot of Russian conscripts get thrown into the meat grinder with very little. They get treated very badly. They have leaders that don't give a shit about them. This is what they say when you read the report. So from that perspective,

of, I mean, someone who actually looks after you and wants you to survive a war, you'd sort of feel like they're on your team. You know what I mean? And I think that would probably engender a lot of personal loyalty. Yeah. And obviously a unit that has a lot of personal loyalty that has shared valued, share ideals, shared ideals, and respects and loves their leader, which they appear to do. I mean, and they're going up against a military who are divided, who don't believe probably

and have lost a lot of faith in what they're doing. I mean, you're looking at it and going, there's only going to be one winner, surely. I mean, that is worrying for Putin. So, Anton, if you can send us some superchats through, please, and we can start looking at those. But these are the questions that you have? That's all the locals questions.

Well, guys, head on over to locals if you're a local supporter and ask your questions there if you want them to be asked as a priority. But in the meantime, we can do some superchats as well. Yeah. Anton, are you going to put them up on this? We don't up there? We put them on the screen for everybody. Well, let's try.

I don't know if I'll be able to see. So maybe I will log into... Yeah, Francis can log into the stream. So this is from Nathan Woodard. That much I can see. Yeah. And so Nathan Woodard, hello, brother. Hope you're good.

He said, here's $369 and $69 for the greatest show on earth. I've just got two rack of ribs for $2.99 pounds. And I'm passing the savings onto you. I tried to buy some Russian dressing for my side salad, but they don't sell it here anymore. So I made it from scratch. Keep it up and stay hard. Well, Nathan, can I just say, I'm so terribly sorry the war has really, really affected you this badly. It's terrible, obviously, we can all agree on that.

Okay, so let's go to, we have got AI who has asked a question. Why did Putin, oh, so I think it says out, why did Putin not see this coming and act faster? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. One of the things, if you remember, we talked about it is, is like, he has, at least publicly, said nothing about it and clearly not cracked down on it privately either. So we've got to a situation where he's basically allowed this to happen. It's like you're a teacher, so you watch two kids fighting and you don't get involved.

Eventually it's going to escalate. And now, like, one of them is turned around and started running at the teacher, basically, because he didn't get involved at the time. So who knows why, but the question Russians will be asking is, has he lost his power? Has he lost the authority? Has he lost the ability to get people to calm down and focus on the objective, which for Russia is winning the war? So you could argue that in this sense, this entire problem stems from Putin's weakness in order to not dealing with progiorgio like he should have done. Well, you could argue that, but we obviously don't know what's going on behind the scenes, right?

like we have no idea why he's chosen to make the decisions that he made. So is a weakness or is there some other thing going on that remains to be seen. And I guess we'll see that when the response to this happens. This is the real interesting thing here is how does Putin deal with this? Because on the one hand, he has to assert his authority. On the other hand, you made the point. You know, how do you deal with someone who's got an army of 25,000 very well-armed men? And I suppose the way you deal with it is, you know, what happened yesterday and today

is they started marching on Moscow and the Russian military was underprepared. But the Russian military is much bigger than Wagner. So if they concentrated all their efforts on dealing with that, they probably could put them in a position where they could either get slaughtered or surrender. And at that point, I suppose a lot of them would surrender. But it's also as well, can they really do that when they're fighting a war on the other front. Which makes us very interesting about Ukraine because one of the potential place for Putin here is, look, we've conquered some territory in Ukraine, actually more than we

said we were trying to. We've inflicted heavy casualties on the Ukrainians. I mean, forget about Russian casualties for a moment, but we've done that. We've made it clear to NATO and the West that we're not messing about here. We need to be taken seriously. Let's negotiate some kind of settlement where we get some land. I can, if I'm Putin, I can. If I'm Putin, I can walk away with that egg on my face and I can deal with this stuff internally and make sure that I'm fully in control of the country. That is a potential outcome of this and in my opinion that would be the best outcome here for everybody. So this is from Bukka says and they say, do you guys think that flip of $6 billion from Pentagon for war in Ukraine may be laid down

on Wagner account wink wink? So there's the CIA question. Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. So there we go. Loads of people were saying this online before even any information to come out because some people like to think that the Americans are behind everything and the CIA is behind everything. But yeah, I'm really not convinced. Okay. So Estraal Kab, UK asked if another bout of anti-Lukashenko protests broke out in Belarus, would Putin have spare capacity to cross them? I think he probably would. I also think Belarus probably has the capacity to not least because in a war situation, I think there would be a lot less restrained in the way

that they crushed them. I think a protest now would get put down very, very brutally. Okay. Harry Palms says, if our species is to move forward, we need to put war and armed conflict behind us. Love the show. It's always nice to have people who smoke weed watching the show, Harry. I mean, who can disagree with that? Yeah, that is true. But then, you know, we've talked about this before in the context of war. I mean, it's... It's a terrible thing to say, but it is true. We are bands of chimps. Yeah.

And chimps go to war. Yeah. And that's what we are. And, you know, if you look at human history, I mean, you travel to any country. You look at the monuments. You look at the museums. What are they all about? Trans.

Ankenenov. You're such an idiot. Who can take Putin's place? Well, we've talked about this already. Yeah. So we really don't know. Actually, what's interesting is the defense minister Shoygoo, he was mooted as being a potential replacement.

But he's been very badly discredited by this war. So right now, it's very, very difficult to see any clear and obvious candidate. Putin has been grooming a lot of younger potential future leaders. They have some kind of leadership institute and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But right now, I don't see it. But then again, in fairness to Putin, when he was promoted, to be prime minister and then was essentially given the presidency. Nobody had heard of him either.

So who knows? So, yeah, so there is that traditions, isn't there, in Russia, of people coming from nowhere. Tradition is probably overstating it. But, yeah, it has happened. It has happened indeed. Joseph Yassin has asked the question that is absolutely ridiculous, referencing not only Prince Harry and Megan, but also Dylan Mulvaney. So we're not going to, it's not raw, Joseph.

It's good to know people are paying attention and really. appreciating the sense of the moment. Yeah, absolutely. And taking it seriously. Okay, so Laura Smart has also sent me through some superchats. So we, in case that we... Some local questions or super chats? So they are superchats at the moment.

So let's just get these. I need to log in. Tim Bucks in the meantime says Dylan Mulvaney should be next Russian president. Dylan Mulvaney should be next Russian president. I'm not your buddy guy with the five Canadian dollar says, can you imagine the egg on she's face when trying to convince people to switch off the petrodollars to their brick stability. Well, this is, you know, a lot of people who hate the West, including people in the West,

they like to talk about how, you know, the West is over and everybody's switching to this and that and the dealer dollarization. I mean, it is a potential threat, but you've got to, I think people always massively overestimated the ability of the Russian state to really effectively challenge, challenge the American dominance. Yeah. in my opinion. So, okay.

So it says, I'm not your... So we read the I'm not your buddy guy. Yeah, I've just read that one. Yeah, that one. Okay, Holby Camelton says, Putin just interviewed, and when he asked about pro gorgia, he said, get the belt.

Thanks, Colby. The Master of TREC says, could Medvedev take over, or is he very much out? So Edwedev, Medvedev, has been out of the team for a long time. he's not really taken seriously. He had a shot at the presidency for one term.

He wasn't viewed as a strong leader. And he still has a role. And he's been given various prominent roles, but he hasn't been taken seriously for a long time. Everybody jokes about him being an alcoholic. Some of the stuff that he's been saying seem quite the range lately. So, yeah, I don't think he's a credible alternative at all. Okay.

So David Cott asks a question. you're essentially asking about what is the outcome you're going to for all of us to be and again what do you think of a progoshin stopping before Moscow I mean it looks it looks rash to put it mildly to stop or to go well to go and then to stop well actually you make a very good point and I've been thinking about this right if you make that play yeah and then you stop

what's the best scenario? I mean, you're the very, very, very least going to prison, surely. Yeah. He can't be, he can't believe that he's just going to get away with this. Can he? Will this? I mean, you wonder what it was, he must, it must be an emotional reaction. It can't have been that he thought about this logically.

Well, look, his play was, you know, I'm going to go on Moscow and I'm going to get what I want, right? Yeah. Now, if you make that play, you, there are only, I mean, as far as I can see, there are only two outcomes there, right? Yeah. Either you win or you lose. What he's done now is he's aborted the play and he's still going to lose. I mean, Putin has said on national television, the people who have done this are going to be punished. Progogsion is the face of this thing.

What, Putin is not going to punish him now? I mean, I don't see that. I could be wrong. no one can predict the future, I don't see that. And if Putin does that, then his presidency is really on the way, you know, that might well be the beginning or the end then. Yeah, so, I mean, that is an existential crisis for him. Well, that is the end.

You said, Jamie O'Keeves asked actually a very good question. He says, Constantine, when you say Russians don't want democracy, does that include their millennials and Gen Z who are becoming increasingly liberal? They are becoming increasingly liberal. It's a good question, James. but more than half of even young people in Russia support Putin or did at least until recently. So, I mean, look, young people in any country are always going to be, you know, anti the establishment to some extent and whatever. It doesn't mean that by the time they grow up to be 40 that they don't change their opinion.

So it really depends. People in Russia don't really understand what democracy is. And so how can they want something they've never really experienced properly? I think if, let's say Russia was to win the war in Ukraine, Putin was to stabilize the country, the economy was booming as it was, you know, during the period over which Putin really gained a lot of his popularity and support, I think young Russians would be very happy and comfortable with him. The issue now is he's not doing as well.

There's a mutiny against him. The war in Ukraine is going badly. The economy is not going well. He's invited all these sanctions upon Russia, which are affecting. young people in particular up to things silly things like they can't buy video games on steam you know all the way through to bigger issues that they're having so of course this would have affected his popularity with the people who already didn't like him but you got to remember a lot of the people fighting and dying for russia in ukraine are young russians some of him really

believe in all of this stuff so um i think i think the majority of russians still don't want democracy. They may want a change of leader, though, or they may want to change of the regime at some point, depending on how this plays out of time. Finzi says, is there ever a world where the Western Russia can get along? In other words, is there ever a world where the ideals of the West can coexist with Russian ideas? Well, it's a long, I mean, it depends what time period you're looking at. I mean, if you're looking over a thousand years, if we're all still here, who knows? In the immediate term, I don't think so.

I mean, Russia has moved since the 90s in a much more anti-Western direction. Well, part of it is definitely anti-Western, but part of it is it's, you know, Putin always talks about this. Russia, he argues, and many people in Russia would argue, it's its own civilization. And so, you know, are the Indians and the Chinese ever going to get along? Well, the neighbors are probably not. You know what I mean? The two neighboring civilizations.

And the, you know, the West, why do we call it the West? It's because it's the successor to the Western Roman Empire. The East, Russia, sees itself as the successor to the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire. And that split happened over history for a reason. And these societies have very different values. They look at the world in a very different way. They look at religion. They have different ways of looking at religion.

and they have different ways of looking at the role of the individual, the value of human life, you know, all sorts of different things. Now, whether there's going to be a convergence, I mean, right now, it's kind of hard to see. Yeah. Amy Vow says, do you have any idea of who Putin would want to replace him when he dies or gets taken out? So does he have a successor? Or do you think he doesn't care about what happens when he's gone? No, Putin 100% cares about what happens when he's gone. He sees himself, as a steward of Russia and a huge historical figure, which by the way, even as a critic of his, you have to say he undeniably is. He's been in power for 24 years. He's changed Russia

in dramatic and profound ways. He certainly made it stronger, at least until recently. And so he wants to hand that on and for someone else to steward the nation into the future. he has been, as I said, building up younger leaders in different institutions and organizations and whatever, trying to bring different people through. He is looking for a successor. Right now, it's hard to see who that is. Okay. So Nathan asked, Nathan Woodard asks, can you imagine and describe a plausible and bright future for

Russia moving forward from this moment in history? Well, bright is a subjective word, right? I mean, there are a lot of people in Russia whose subjective brightness would be that they take over all Ukraine, find some way to get NATO to give up the Baltics and Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic and Russia integrates them into its sphere influence. To a lot of people in Russia, that would be a very, very bright future. So it really, really depends on what you mean by a bright future. From my perspective, I think the big misunderstanding between Russia and the West is

Russia believes that everything the West does is designed to punish and impede Russia's expansion and development. And that is true to the extent that the West doesn't want Russia expanding militarily into areas that are not currently within its sphere of influence. But the ordinary Russians' understanding of what people in the West want, like this idea that people in London are walking around desperate to pin Russia in its, most people in the West, as you well know, don't care about Russia. Most of them, even though it's very big, couldn't find it on the map, right?

It's not the ambition of the Western powers to really attack Russia or take really aggressive actions against it. And because of that misunderstanding, I think we're both mutually suspicious of each other. So if there is a way to bring us back from that brink and to get people on both countries to understand that despite the current tensions,

Actually, Russians, I mean, Russia feels like its security is better and sure by being bigger. But Russia isn't a country that's, you know, trying to take over the world. I mean, under Putin, it sometimes feels like that. Or Russian people certainly don't want that. And likewise in the West, we don't really want that either. So can you get to a point where we got to, actually, towards the end of the Soviet Union, where there was a lot more mutual trust than there was? That, to me, would be the brightest outcome from the whole world.

for people in both countries to be represented by leaders who are actually trying to strike the right balance between healthy competition and collaboration. And by the way, I mean, if you look at it in terms of resources, you know, Russia has a lot of the stuff that we need and we have all the stuff the Russia needs. You know, they have the grain, the wheat, the fertilizer, the oil, the gas, the timber, and we have technology and all of that other stuff.

And if that trade could be done in a way that these conflicts didn't happen, I think that would be a really bright outcome. But what that requires is a little bit of flex on both sides. Yeah. So Solvei Mike on local says the BBC reported Putin, inverted commas, fled to St. Petersburg. This seems very unputin-like, thought. No, this seems very Putin-like. He's got bunkers all over the country.

St. Petersburg is where he's from, where his power base is. and if troops are marching on Moscow, you don't necessarily want to be there. Now, we don't know if it's true. I haven't read any confirmed reports that's happened. I read some unconfirmed reports that's happened, but we don't know if that's true. But it's totally not out of the realms of the possible. Yeah. Okay.

So, Steve, this was on local. Steve Bocciani says, did Wagner theoretically have the forces and hardware to realistically take on Moscow today? or was this always some kind of attention-seeking gesture we've returned to base part of the plan all along? I don't think so. And the reason I think they were a genuine threat is this. Wagner is one of the best-trained, best-equipped,

best-funded, most experienced units in the entire Russian armed forces. Moscow doesn't have 25,000 soldiers of equivalent strength defending it, right? They've got some national guardsmen, But they don't have proper combat-ready troops. And by the way, people go, you know, prognosin, these columns will just get attacked. Wagner has its own Air Force. They have helicopters.

They have planes. They have tanks. They have anti-aircraft missiles and anti-aircraft systems. They have – it's an army. It's not just like some guys with rifles. So, yeah, I mean, they – I personally, in my sense was that they were a genuine threat. And I didn't – I don't think this was part of the plan. Not least because, as I say, I would be extraordinarily surprised if prognosin doesn't end up being punished for this very severely.

I mean, well, he has to be. So this is from Jonathan King, Super Chat 10 pound. If Putin is ousted and it creates a power vacuum, do you think Western nations could be drawn into a civil conflict by proxy or otherwise to ensure a stable nuclear power? We talked about this earlier. I mean, in that situation, someone is going to have to get control of the nuclear launch. coach cards, right? And yeah, that would not be a good scenario. Yep, indeed. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, they parachute in Gary Kasparov back him militarily and let him take control. Not a good outcome. So this is from the charmingly named Dogface Pepe soldier. And he says, if I were all

called correctly, and I admit, I might not be, cruise chef wasn't taken very seriously. until he was. Yeah, I mean, look, in Russia, the way it works is once you become leader, people take you seriously, right? They have to. You know, it's a Tsarist system, really. In Russia, people, this is perhaps a kind of putting too fine a point on it, but if you're a leader, you're sort of seen as anointed by God to be leader.

And if you're a bad leader, well, we just have to endure you. And if you're a good leader, that's great. We got lucky. It's kind of like that. So once you become leader, people will tolerate. you one way or another. Russians have a lot of patience with their leaders, not even if they don't like them and don't agree with them. Trust, no one says, can Russia ever stop seizing other people's territory by force? Can they never be content with what they already have?

Well, I'd say it's a somewhat loaded question. But look, from what Joseph Stalin wanted to do in World War II and prior to World War II, you know, the Soviet Union was very clear. It sought hegemony of the European continent. From a Russian perspective, they would like to have what the Americans have in the United States, which is complete control over their continent. Right. So the United States controls the United States. Canada is obviously a friendly neighbor.

And Mexico is, you know, going to do what the Americans want them to do, you know, in terms of geopolitics, right? So they have complete control of their continent. The problem for Russia, as Russia would see it geopolitically, is they have to, they have a bunch of countries on their border that are not only hostile to them, but are backed by the world superpower. So from a Russian perspective, Russian security looks like Russia having strong alliances or neutrality from Vladivostok to Paris, basically, or to the English channel, at the very

least. And I have a couple of pieces on my substack about Alexander Dugan, who's a Russian philosopher, talking about this very thing. But for Russia to be secure, Russia needs a germany of Eurasia. There's a movement in Russia called Neo-Eurasianist, and this is really what they're talking about. Right.

So I suppose the answer to the question is probably not. Baby Blue Sky says, Western media focusing on Russian, what is Ukraine's next move? Possibly, what could their next move be? Well, as we talked about earlier, right, if this is over now, it doesn't really change the situation.

on the ground in Ukraine, other than maybe if Putin punishes progoshin, then he's lost one of his most effective units. But it doesn't change the entire conflict too much. If this goes on and on and there's a real power struggle and they're having to pull troops from the, you know, if troops are demoralized and they're like, well, why are we fighting when they're fighting behind us? There's no united rear behind us. Then it gives Ukraine an opportunity to mount the counter offensive that they've been trying to mount. Doink, what a name, says, is it possible that Progorgian and by extension Wagner defects, is there any way to escape punishment now that they've stopped the mutiny?

Defects to whom? To Ukraine? Well, defecs to, I imagine the West is what they're implying. No, I don't think so. Whether he can avoid punishment, you know, you and I've been talking about it for the last hour and a bit. But no, there's no one he can defect too. I mean, I can't see, you know, Russian soldiers who've been talking about defending Russia

this entire time going and fighting for Ukraine. No, I don't see that happening. Right. So this is from SEC 50. Oh, sorry, free trade. My apology says, I can hear the pro-Russian factions of the Western right wing backpedaling already. We never supported Putin.

Epic gas lighting. Well, I actually think what will happen is both sides in the debate are going to say the same thing, which is I told you so, because everybody is going to. going to interpret this. You know, the pro-Russian people in the West, they're going to say, well, the West caused this and now, look, we've got potential instability, blah, blah, blah, because that's their narrative. And people who think this is Russia's fault are going to think or Vladimir Putin made a bad mistake, which in my opinion he did. And Harry Palm says, hypothetically, Russia withdrawals or loses Ukraine. NATO enters Ukraine.

USA installs missiles in Ukraine thoughts. And he says, oh, by the way, I don't smoke weed, thank you very much. Go Trump. There's a whole mixed bag of messages in there. Yeah. Go Trump. I don't smoke weed. And what was that original question? So the original question is, do you think he put the case that Russia will withdraw from Ukraine, Ukraine will then become part of NATO,

Russia, US will then put their missiles in Ukraine? Well, as you well know, I have said from literally day one, the best solution here is not the, look, it's not the best solution. because if you're Ukrainian, it's not the best solution for you, and if you're Russian, it's not the best solution for you. But from a neutral perspective, the best way to end this war is for Ukraine to make some small territorial concessions, for Ukraine to accept that Crimea isn't coming back into the fold of Ukraine. And in exchange for Ukraine to get long-term security, and there's only one way to give

them that, which is NATO. Now, would if I were advising people, would I want them to then put U.S. missiles in Ukraine? No. No, I think that, you know, NATO membership would be about protecting Ukraine. It's not about, you know, putting its missiles, U.S. missiles or U.S. defensive missiles, because they're actually in effect the same thing from a geopolitical, from a game theory perspective. Because if you and I have a gun pointed at each other each, you know, an offensive missile is like a gun, but a defensive missile system is like the ability to switch your gun off.

It's the same thing, right, effectively. I can shoot you without being shot back. So, yeah, I hope that isn't what the US does because that would just be aggravating the situation necessarily. But I personally think that the solution long term is for Ukraine to be part of NATO because otherwise, this is what I keep saying to people. We'll be back here again in a few years because that's what happened in 2014, right? Russia bit of chunks of Ukraine.

Nobody did anything, so they came back for more. The only way this ends in the long run is for Ukraine to secure its future. that is membership of an alliance that's going to give it safety. Andrew Broughton says, do you think this situation could bring an end to the war in Ukraine? And if it did, how does the West build rebuild relations with Russia? Well, because it ended as quickly as it did, I don't know the impact that it's going to make on the war in Ukraine. So far, it doesn't seem like it's made any sort of decisive impact. And then how do we rebuild relations?

Well, that really depends on how the Ukraine conflict is actually resolved. Yeah. Okay. Juan Felipe, Ola, says, how would this attempted coup affect Russia's internal order? Well, so far it doesn't seem to have had too much of an impact. So we just don't know because it ended as quickly as it did. Cool. Maria says a lot of talk about the possibility

this apparent coup might have been a smoke screen to redirect attention away from something. Not sure I believe this, but any idea. what this something could be. Well, I don't believe it, so I therefore don't have any idea of that thing could be. Yeah. Please remember to keep on sending the super checks. Well, Francis, why don't we do?

I think we've almost there, to be honest, in terms of we've done over an hour. So why don't we do another 10 minutes? Yep. If you want to ask any questions, send in locals message it. Post on locals, there's a post for that there if you're a supporter. And if you're not, you probably should be if you enjoy the show. There's 10,000 of you at least 10% of you, like 1,000 should be on locals. I would say, in fact, 100% of you should be.

10,000 people head on over to locals right now. Or send the super chat here, and we'll do about 10 more minutes of your questions. Yeah, absolutely. So, Giff Broad says, and this is his super chat or their super chat, rumors are spreading amongst Russian law enforcement organs that Shoygoo has allegedly been detained. How would weak would Putin look if this is true? Very, very weak. I mean, you should have seen my face when you read that out.

I don't believe that for a second. I mean, if that turns out to be true, then pretty. Raghosun has got his way. And that means he did a deal with Putin to pull back in order to get Shai Gu arrested. I haven't, I'm not, I'm just checking all the different channels and information that I usually check. I haven't heard anything about that whatsoever. But again, think about this, that would be a massive undermining of Putin's authority. I don't think that's true, though, personally. Marko Akabich, who is a real fan of the show and a great supporter, love to you, Marco says, been a while, wouldn't it be surprised.

surprise if Putin tries to make himself emperor after this. Palpatin style. He did run, though. People will not forget that. Emperor after this, I think he's a lot more worried about just staying where he is, to be honest with you, Marco. But thank you for the super chat and thank you for being a lot of support over. I appreciate it. Atheoferci 3.0 says the hall outside Moscow is the Plamberry Group and see who inside Moscow will either step aside or join the rebels. It is not over. Well, there you go. I guess we'll rank here tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Someone's a fan of the Wagner group.

So, locals, this is from our locals, and this is Dibbonism, or Dibbin says, does Kekh in the collapse of the Kakova Dam was incompetence or malice? Well, he was blown up, so he wasn't incompetence. Yeah. A friend of mine who dabbles in stocks bought a lot of agricultural stocks, expecting wheat prices to jump up in a few years. Okay. Yeah.

Well, you know, like they say, when there's blood on the streets, buying diamonds. Yeah. Okay, so... I totally missed my job. You're reading. Ambience World says, my question is for Constantine, have you lost any friends, family or friends in the war? I haven't lost any family or friends,

but many of my friends have lost family and friends, yeah. Gordon Lizzie says, how much should Putin now worry about Russian nationalists becoming the biggest threat to his continued control over the Russian state? Well, I don't know who he means by Russian nationalists. exactly. I mean, Putin's a Russian nationalist, isn't he? Russia is very complicated. Russia's not a nation. Russia is an empire. And so Russia has some

nationalists in it, but they're not really a prominent force in Russia, not least because so many units that have been fighting in the war are not ethnic Russians. So I don't see Russian nationalists as very strong. It doesn't mean that they couldn't emerge a strong nationalist movement, but there isn't one at the moment. Yeah. Okay. So. It's funny, mate. I love the comments just from randomers.

It's literally like one person saying Russia's over, cry about it, KK. And then someone else says, I'm massively biased against Russia. I suppose we're striking the right balance. We are striking the right balance. Andy Vogel, Vogley, ask a very good question. Who benefits the most from Putin's unseating? What are the chances the wealthy oligarchs of our assets frozens are in frozen? Well, the people who are least happy about this conflict are the oligarchs.

They had nothing to gain and everything to lose. So I have no doubt that Progogian will be in contact with some of them, for sure. And a lot of them will want this war to end one way or another as quickly as possible. So that will definitely be a part of it. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting because Yovgeny Kregorjan is going to have to do some kind of public announcement as to what's happened and his reasoning and his thinking behind it, behind this. well, mutiny. Surely he's going to have to make a public statement.

Putin? No, Yevgeny Pogosha. Well, he has said he's pulling back this troops. He doesn't want to spill blood, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what he said so far. And I guess we'll just have to wait and see how that looks. Yeah, but you do think that it's going to be, he's got to give some explanation as to his actions. He can't just do this and not explain why, surely.

Well, he explained why. He said our unit was about to be disbanded. So we had a march for justice towards Moscow. And then we realized blood would be spilled. We decided not to spill blood. March for justice. I mean, that's a way of putting it. Okay.

Cannon said, hi, Constantine. I read some tweets earlier, which seemed to suggest that China may be tempted to claim some territory in eastern Russia. In the event that this rebellion turned out to be successful, I can't see how that would happen, given that both countries have nuclear weapons. Well, the way it would happen is if Russia started to disintegrate and there was nobody fully in charge of those nuclear weapons, that would be the time for China to strike.

I don't think China would necessarily want to do that, but China has territorial claims in Russia's far east, for sure. And that's one of the fears in Russia. If Russia gets too weak, Chinese will take advantage, which they may or may not do. Right. So what do you mean by that? They have claims in the Far East. Well, there are territories of Russia that China would like to have under its control. They have, as a result of actually a lot of migration, high Chinese populations. There's some historical stuff that I'm not an expert on. They also have claims against certain territories in the Russia's far east.

So they may well, in fact, I'm revealing my historical ignorance, but I think during World War II, Russia, the Soviet Union, may have occupied parts of what was then China. I don't remember very well, and I could be wrong about that. So just pass on that one. Okay, I think that is pretty much it. All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us.

Make sure you subscribe and smash the like button on this before you leave. Well done for hosting this, Francis. And thank you for being with us. We will see you very soon with more brilliant interviews as always and our raw shows as well. Take care and we'll see you on locals. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount.

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