TRIGGERnometry - What Everyone Gets Wrong About Putin - Historian Mark Galeotti

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

Mark Galeotti is a British historian, lecturer and writer on transnational crime and Russian security affairs. He is an intelligence consultant to various governments and well-known international bodies. He is an honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and an associate fellow in Euro-Atlantic geopolitics at the Council on Geostrategy. His books include, We Need To Talk About Putin, Russian Political War, The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia, and A Short History of Russia - available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084HN5TSB/ SPONSOR: https://GETSUPERBEETS.aCOM Use Promo Code: TRIG to get a free 30-day supply + 15% off your first order We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist 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

I mean, I think what we might be missing is there is a tendency to think of him as this kind of Bond villain. I think that we have to realize is the degree to which he's also a scared and rather limited old man. When even the boss doesn't want to know what's really happening, that's when you are on a path to potential disaster. And this invasion of Ukraine is a classic example. He doesn't think that it's Ukrainian wanting to join the EU and NATO. He thinks it's the EU and NATO wanting to steal Ukraine. It's just the minor point being it's all nonsense. Mark Galeotti, welcome to Trigonometry.

You've talked and written extensively about Russia, Russian history, the security issues to do with that. You're a security consultant. In addition to historian, we're going to have a fascinating conversation about one man in particular, which is, of course, Vladimir Putin. I feel like the public interest in the war in Ukraine has died down, and it's something we've covered extensively on the show already. But the one thing I think, even now, even after all the talking that's been done about that, that most people in the West are still not fully across, not still fully informed about, is Vladimir Putin, his rise to power, how he fits into the historical context of Russia,

the future, of course. Talk to us a little bit about what you think that, you know, I think what we might be missing in relation to Vladimir Putin. I mean, I think what we might be missing is there is a tendency to think of him as this kind Bond villain who's plotting disaster on all his enemies from a sort of a mountain fastness or a extinct volcano or something. I think what we have to realize is the degree to which he's also a scared and rather limited old man who I think has lost a lot of his capacity to really sort of shape

the world around him. He's responding. Again, I think, you know, if one thinks of even the invasion of Ukraine, he did it because he was responding to an essentially paranoid fantasy of what he thought was facing Russia and facing his regime. But nonetheless, again, I think we need to get away from this idea that he is this grand geopolitical chess master and that he's controlling the board and that we are just sort of hapless pawns in this game.

Yes, I'm not saying that we're that great either. But I think that we do ourselves. That's the credibility of your argument, yeah, if you were to do to say that. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I think, you know, we should assume that he's every bit as rubbish as we are and not invest him with his power, because that's part of his schick. That's part of his strength is precisely this image that has been built up about him. Do you think that's, that's, it's interesting because I'm obviously a critic of his,

but the one thing I would never criticize is his competence, actually, because I think, would it be fair to say that actually it's not that he's necessarily rubbish but the system that he operates in the authoritarian top-down hierarchy lots of corruption, lots of things being done without his say-so, etc. It's maybe that he himself

or would you say that he himself is now at a point where he's not a very strong and capable leader? I think most authoritarian leaders over time he becomes something of a caricature of himself. Those things which were once strengths when he was sort of a young

and vigorous figure of a mere 50-something instead of a 70-something-year-old actually now have ossified. And one of the key things is you talk about this system. He's absolutely now kind of encased within it. People tell him lies and he believes them

and creates policy based on those lies. But this is a system he built. Remember back in, I keep forgetting for 2015 or 2016, sitting down in Moscow with a recently retired Russian spy And this is even then, he said, look, we've learned you do not bring bad news to the Tsar's table. In other words, you don't try and tell Putin what he doesn't want to hear.

If you want to be in the room, if you want to have the influence, you have to be saying the right things. And that is catastrophic. And for a long time, in a way, it didn't really matter too much because the fights Putin was picking were with much weaker enemies. Or there were enough technocrats who did know their job. who instead, in many ways, I think, kind of running the system regardless of Putin. There's a lot of really able Russians. You know, if one looks, for example, the economy, Lirrna-Bulina, chairwoman of the Central Bank, absolutely brilliant, has done an amazing job in essentially bypassing a lot of the impact of sanctions.

So there are a lot of people like that who in some ways were keeping everything working. But the point is when even the boss doesn't want to know what's really happening, That's when you are on a path to potential disaster. And this invasion of Ukraine is a classic example. This idea that they could just roll in that Ukrainians would think, oh, that's a shame. But we'll accept having a puppet government imposed upon us. There must be any number of people within the top ranks of the Russian state who could have said, Vladimir, it's not going to be like this.

No one did. Either they couldn't or they just didn't dare. And so I think we have to realize that on one hand Putin is prisoner of his system, but it's a system that he basically has built. And Mark, can we dig into a little bit before Francis, I know he's got lots of questions for you as well. One of the things that I think has been the biggest talking point, particularly in certain sections of the political spectrum, especially the people who describe themselves as anti-war. I mean, there's a lot of quibbles with that label, in my opinion, but nonetheless, who allude to the things that you alluded to, the right of the beginning, which is the fact that Putin is reacting, some of them have argued to provocation, most prominently someone like a John Meashimer, who would say Vladimir Putin warned consistently

that NATO expansion was unacceptable and he only invaded Ukraine because he feels really threatened. Russia has been invaded time and time again from the West by Napoleon, by Hitler, etc. Russia is very sensitive to the encroachment of NATO on its borders, which it sees as a hostile force. And he warned about it. He said, you know, Ukraine must never join NATO. Ukraine cannot flirt with the idea of asking for nuclear weapons. Zelensky and his is their argument. Zelensky and his Western paymasters violated all of that. Putin kept warning and warning and warning and then eventually he reacted to that provocation. What do you say to that argument? I would say there's some truth in that, but with a massive, massive

caveat. I mean, I think that that is precisely the kind of process that went through Putin's head. I think he genuinely has convinced himself. Frankly, I think from about 2011, 2012, when there were these massive protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which were actually just genuinely a reaction of particularly middle-class Russians to a corrupt authoritarian regime. But he convinced himself that this was basically done by the CIA. And God bless it, Midi-Six. They still think that we really do count. From that point, I think he's pretty much been on war footing. He thinks that the West is coming after him.

And therefore, everything gets interpreted through that lens. And instead of seeing Ukraine as having a right to make its own security decisions, remember, this is a guy who wrote this lengthy, I mean, speaking as a professional historian, painfully a historical essay, claiming to prove that Ukraine wasn't a real country all along. From his point of view, this is a territory, which is really a kind of semi-detain. annex of Russia, which now is being stolen by the West. Because again, he doesn't think that it's Ukrainian wanting to join the EU and NATO. He thinks it's the EU and NATO wanting to steal Ukraine.

And he responded to that. So yeah, in Putin land, in that little enclosed capsule of his own views, that is how he thought about it. It's just the minor point being it's all nonsense. Why is it not really how it is? Well, because, first of all, Ukraine is a country. I mean, there's a certain amount of overplaying its historic pedigree. I mean, actually, if you look at its history, it's part of it.

It's incredibly complex. It doesn't lend itself to a nice, simple answer. The point is Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language, they are different things. And they have become different things. I mean, the point is borders change. Otherwise, you know, my half Italian nature, you know, I'd be thinking, well, we're still in a Roman property, you know, bow to me, sirs. You know, we have to accept that Ukraine, you know, is a country.

recognized an international law, and it thinks of itself as a country. And whether or not, historically, one could say, well, the Treaty of Peria Slav says that you're part of the Russian empire, that's history. So that's the first thing. Ukraine is a country. Secondly, absolutely, the Ukrainians have been wanting to join the EU and NATO. The irony is that actually until the invasion, EU and NATO did not want Ukraine. I mean, the EU was thinking, this is an economic basket case that we would end up spending huge amounts of money to try and bring it to our standards. And from NATO's point of view, they likewise, because to let someone a country into NATO is more or less you're having to say, we will put boots on the ground to defend you in war.

And then we really wanted to do that. So when Ukraine was applying along with Georgia, this kind of fudge answer was given, which was Ukraine will be a member of NATO without saying when. And the trouble is, for Putin heard that, and he heard it as some kind of immediate plan, rather than what it really was, was a, go away and don't bother us. We don't want you. So actually, the pressure has been coming from Ukraine. It probably wouldn't have really happened anyway, or certainly not in Putin's lifetime.

And, you know, Ukraine's a real country. I could go on and on about all the other ways that Putin is wrong, but nonetheless, it's fairly clear. Mark, isn't that just what happens to all dictators as they reach the end of their reign? They start to get more paranoid. They start to get more anti. They're more prone to rash decisions. They're surrounded by yes men. This is it.

Absolutely. I mean, it's your classic trajectory. Whether we're talking about Saddam Hussein or whether we're talking about Vladimir Putin or whatever, when you've got no checks and balances, when you've got no people around you, you know, we've got to realize in his earlier years, his first two presidencies, Putin was actually incredibly successful. He was also very lucky, but nonetheless he was successful. And in part, that was precisely in his circle. He had all kinds of different people, including people who would challenge him. Just to interrupt you there, because there's a lot of people who are listening to this

who are going, well, how was he successful and how was he lucky? So just explain us that to what please. Sure. I mean, he was lucky because he happened to come in just at a time when global oil and gas prices were booming. So he basically had a lot of money to play with. And he was successful because actually he plowed a lot of that money into rebuilding the country after the absolute miserable anarchy of the 1990s, a period where, you know, 0.0-0-whatever 1% of Russians were becoming obscenely rich in the so-called oligarchs, basically by stealing on an industrial scale, and the overwhelming majority of Russians were living in abject poverty. And, I mean, I remember traveling there in those days, and you would see outside the metro

stations, lines of pensioners, selling. anything they had, you know, one shoe, half used tube of toothpaste, whatever, because their pensions were worth nothing. And Putin gets, again, I think, you know, he has benefited from it without necessarily being the cause. But otherwise, he gets the credit to being the person who brought Russia out of this anarchy. So in those first two presidencies, he had enough money that ordinary Russians' quality of life could improve dramatically. He could let the oligarchs and the rest of the elite enrich themselves and build their massive palaces and, buy their yachts. He could dump money into the military and build up this war machine that he's now

trashed in Ukraine. But, you know, he had the money for everything. And, you know, who wouldn't be successful if basically they have, you know, an unlimited check account? So that being the case, he must be incredibly popular even now with the older generations who must look at the bad old days of the 90s and go, well, he was our saviour. There's an element of truth in that. Look, it's really, really hard to assess popularity. We have these various opinion polls that give him approval ratings of 80% or whatever. But let's be honest, someone comes up to you with a clipboard and says, we want to know what you think of Vladimir Putin. You're not necessarily going to sort of say exactly what do you think. I think that, yeah, there is still this sense of that he,

you know, he became a national figure and an icon almost because of that. But the point is that can coexist with a willingness to see change. The best example I can give you is Winston Churchill. On the one hand, regarded as the sort of the paramount war leader who brought Britain through the Second World War. But at the end of the war, there was that sense of, thanks very much, you've done your job, now we want something else, so we're going to go for a different leadership. So I think that there is this coexisting of almost a sense of they believe that Putin deserves to have statues, but statues while he's in retirement. But that's a very real challenge because Russia is this huge landmass which has all of these different countries

who would just put it like that or territories, many of them who want to become independent and you need somebody like Putin to hold that all together, don't you? You can't really have a Kirstama figure in charge of Russia. It really wouldn't work. That would be an interesting challenge, isn't it? No, I mean, I think there's an element of myth here about the fact that Russia needs a strong manner, it's all thoughts apart. Most of these regions do not actually want to become independent. And this is it. There's a lot of this myth now, and people have taken this ghastly decolonization language

and think, well, now we also have to overlay it onto the Russian Federation. Most of the regions which are notionally non-ethnic Russian, when you actually look at the demographics, because of years, decades, centuries of colonization and migration, actually ethnic Russians are a plurality or a majority. And frankly, look, in my experience, actually, people do in the main regard themselves as Russian. They might grumble about it. They might have their various disputes.

Except for the North Caucasus, this one particular part of southern Russia, which is where the Chechens of great infamy, were from and such like, where there really is genuine independence. And quite frankly, this is a region which most Russians were probably quite happily waved goodbye to. and offer them independence, because at the moment, they end up with getting huge amounts of central subsidy

and just cause nothing but grief, I think, is the general consensus. But apart from that, actually, this is a country which I think can hold together. It does not need a Putin. Sure, there are challenges to a big country, but the days when, you know, you had to rely on the telegraph and the railway are long gone. Yeah, the reality has changed. The psyche, I would put it to, hasn't quite caught up with it in Russia. certainly my experience, grown up there and speaking with people there now. But coming back to Putin, one of the interesting things you said is he's trashed his

war machine in Ukraine, which is an interesting take because, I mean, certainly the Russian military has taken losses. But actually, I think many people would look at what's happened. And they certainly wouldn't conclude that either Ukraine or the West have had a win there. Maybe you would argue Putin hasn't either. It's been a bad outcome for all sides, really. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, I mean, look, this is a military machine that he spent, I said, 20 years dumping

a huge amount of money in, and which actually had gone through quite a process of reform. The irony is that it went through much the same process of reform that most Western armies did. We once upon a time had NATO, which was designed to fight the Soviets. Then Cold War was over, lots of peace dividend, but also increasingly people thought, well, no, what's the threat's going to be? It's going to be from people in caves. in distant countries.

So what we need are smaller, nimble, expeditionary forces who can go out there and fight terrorists and such like. We ran down, you know, who needs tanks in that era and so forth? We ran down all our stocks. The interesting thing, and one of these great historic irony is, is that's a similar process to what the Russian military was going through. It wanted the sort of forces who can sort of neatly take Crimea, as they did in 2014, or go and deploy into Syria, as they did in 2015, rather than just simply being a retread

of the old Red Army. And that's one of the reasons why when they went into Ukraine, a country which perversely hadn't reformed its military so much, so it was still more Soviet and still able to actually get a lot of sort of metal on the front line. It hasn't done very well. So sure, I agree with you that we can hardly call what's happening a Ukrainian and Western win at this scale. But nonetheless, in the process, the Russian military has evolved surprisingly well.

It is a very Russian way. They adapt. It may not be the best way. or the quickest way, it might be a bit ugly and it'll have been done with a bit of duct tape and some string and such like, but one way or the other they do adapt. But on the process, look, we're seeing tanks that were built in the 1960s being reconditioned and sent into the battle line because they haven't got enough new ones. We're seeing increasingly an army that is been fought by 40-something-year-old reservists and

taking a hell of a lot of casualties. You know, yes, they can cope up to a point and for a certain length of time, but all the fancy high-end kit, the sort of kick you would need if you wanted to say roll into NATO, that basically has been burnt through at a horrific rate. And what does all of this mean for Putin? Because there are people who would argue Russia and Putin's position has been strengthened. I would actually argue that post-Pregosian's mutiny, post-him jailing his critics like Strelkov and Kyrgyz and whatever.

he's actually got a stronger handle on Russia now than perhaps he did before the war. Would you agree with that? I think it's kind of stronger but brittle. Again, I'm trying to have my cake in it. I'm saying, but what we're saying is, you might say, whereas once upon a time, you know, certainly the elite went along with Putin because he was good for business, essentially. You could steal at home, spend and bank abroad. You know, everything was fine.

Now, for most of them, they're actually quite unhappy with the situation, just as a lot of the ordinary Russians are. But they're more scared. Think about what he did with progogin, this sort of businessman, mercenary leader and so forth, is he made a deal with progogyn and then he broke it. Yeah, and he killed him straight. Yeah, exactly. Now, that might seem like no big deal, given that sort of Putin basically breaks international law before breakfast. But this is the first time, as far as I'm concerned, that he broke a deal with an insider,

with one of the people in his camp. And so on the one hand, that actually weakens Putin because people don't necessarily feel they can trust him. But on the other hand, given what happened to progogian, there's that saying, of, yeah, but I'm not going to be the one to actually challenge. So in some way it's more like you're now very antsy around this violent man who's got a gun. So he's stronger, but I think the thing is it is brittle in the sense of, I think there's fewer people who now feel that they have an active reason to support Putin. And if you look at what happened in the mutiny, what was really interesting was, Pregojin

didn't have that many troops. No. The point is he was able to roll them towards Moscow because not many of the people. people in the security forces joined him, but most of them weren't in that rush to stop him either. They just thought, I'll just see what happens. And I think that's the situation now. No one's daring to be the first to go after Putin. But if and when something does happen, I think there's a lot of people who, whereas once upon

a time they might have felt, look, I'm going to back him, not because I like him, but because it's good for me, who might just think, well, maybe I didn't happen to get a call. And, you know, maybe I'll just wait and see what happens. Mark, how much do we know? I mean, I think one of the things that people in the West have been absolutely obsessed about since this latest conflict broke out is trying to get some insight into the psychology of Vladimir Putin. Do you have any access to anything in that area?

Do we know what he's thinking? Do we know how he's reacting? Is he happy about the way the war is going? Is he annoyed about it? You know, obviously your argument, which is one that matches very much what I've heard and read and spoke to people about is he was essentially misled into starting the conflict because he kept

being told, oh, we'll just roll in there with a few thousand troops, it'll be easy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I imagine he was quite annoyed at that point. Then the war wasn't going very, it went well initially, but then they had a lot of rollbacks, losses, etc. Now they seem to be

in charge again. Do we know where his mind is at in any way? Is there any information about that? I mean, this is the thing. That is the blackest of black boxes. I mean, even the intelligence services don't really know what Putin is thinking and what he talks about to the very small, narrow circle of people that he genuinely trusts and talks to. So what we're having to do, it's a little bit like, I mean, I'm sure it's not the same this way. I remember back when I was at school in science experiment, you can't see air molecules,

but you can see smoke particles. So you kind of put smoke particles into a little sort of petri dish and watch them over the microscope. Brown emotion, that's called. There you go. Thank you. I mean, you know, And you see that the smoke particles being knocked around. Well, that's, in a way, what we have to do with Putin. We can only really see the outcomes. And the interesting things, look, I mean, he clearly, I mean, I don't think he was just misled. I think he actually, he was the driver. He had this idea of Ukraine.

Everyone said, absolutely boss. It's going to happen. And then, so when it happened, it was difficult. But the striking thing is we haven't seen the kind of purges and inquests that you'd imagine. If this was a dictator who thought he'd been let down, you'd think that there'll be people who have been dismissed. We've seen, for example, the operational commanders in the field, you know, individual generals, they get sacked and so forth.

But the real key figures, he's kept them. Even, I mean, the defence minister, Sered de Suryhue, Chief of the General Staff, General Gerasimov, these are people who are now unroundly despised by their own soldiers. But nonetheless, they're still there. And I think in part this is because Putin frankly is quite risk-averse. He doesn't like reshuffling his top people. At least he knows he can trust these guys because where else are they got to go now. But I think it also says something about the fact that Putin, I think, is aware that things

haven't necessarily gone well, but that there is still the chance to pull a pull of victory out of this, which is true. Yes, not the original victory he had planned, not the all of Ukraine. in my sphere of influence. But nonetheless, I think at the moment, he's probably feeling moderately optimistic. Because at present, certainly if you're on looks at this year, the Russians got more ammunition than the West can provide.

They have a population that is now pretty much four times Ukraine. So if you have to just simply throw warm bodies into the war, you can. The West is looking pretty divided. And there's a whole bunch of elections coming up, which is going to distract everyone, let alone the whole Trump factor. You know, put all that lot together. And I think that Putin is able to convince himself. I mean, if he rang me up, I tried to disabuse him.

But given that I think that's terribly likely, you know, I think he was. Maybe he watches trigonometry. Maybe he does, exactly. In that case, in that case, he shouldn't have barred me from Russia. I was in the first list of Brits who were banned, which is probably about the first time I've ever been on a list with Piers Morgan. You know, but the point is I think Putin is able to convince himself that things are going to get better. So I think that's, again, do we really know? No. But that seems to be the implication just from what he's doing or rather not doing. Isn't that also, there's also a dichotomy there, Mark, isn't there? Really? Because he knows that he's going to have to retire soon. The end is coming. So is there not a part of his psyche that's also going, I need to find a way to get out of this? Or is he one of those people, do you think, who's like, no, I'm going to rule for a thousand years?

Here's the interesting thing. I mean, again, we don't know, but my suspicion is that before the invasion, he was looking for his exit route. He just seemed palpably bored with the job. I mean, let's be honest, if you put aside a minor detail of a ghastly war being fought, you know, what are the real challenges that the Russian president really ought to be addressing at the moment? It's the pensions gap. It's infrastructure. It's diversifying the economy.

these are not the sort of things that Putin is interested in. I mean, this is why maybe Putin and Rishi Sunak actually should swap. I'll happily send Rishu over there. I've got no problem with that, mate. But would you accept Putin? That's a question, really. But the point is, you know, these are the things which clearly he wasn't really interested in. You know, and he is getting older.

And so my suspicion is that part of the thinking about the Ukraine invasion was, again, He thought it was going to be easy. And then Belarus, the other, the third of the great Slavic nations, is already kind of a vassal state. He would have gathered the Russian lands together. One of the great things that sort of Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great, was sort of famous for, it would have elevated him into the pantheon of Russian state-building heroes and allowed him to step down.

Because this is a problem. In an authoritarian regime, which law doesn't matter, to step down is to hand all control of yourself, your future, your family, your fortunes to your successor. So I think maybe he felt this would have made him that successful, that kind of much of a historic figure, that he was pretty much untouchable. Of course, didn't quite work out that way. So I'm not sure if he's really ever going to feel that he can safely step down, because he must know that the temptation for his successors to use him as the scapegoat would be great.

And even if they seem loyal today, in Kazakhstan, Central Asian country, another post-Soviet state, right at the beginning of 2022, we had an example of just how you can't trust your successor. Again, there they had a very Putin-like figure Nazarbayev who stepped down from the presidency. He gave himself a key position as chairman for life of the defense counsel, and he handpicked his successor. Everything seemed fine until the successor decided clearly, I don't necessarily want to be under Nazarbayev's shadow anymore. so there's a kind of a confused moment

that's a bit of a coup and a bit of a revolution and then Nazarbayev steps down from his position of his own accord. You know, you're only president for life or chair for life for a while. So I think from Putin's point of view, this would have probably been quite a cautionary tale that, you know, this is basically the same problem

than any mob boss has. That, you know, if you rule by virtue purely of your position, can you ever really safely give up your position? So I'm not sure if Putin will ever feel now that he feels he can safely step down. And to be fair as well, he's got a lot of enemies and he's garnered a hell of a lot more since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Yeah, and he's also increased his value as a bargaining chip. I mean, imagine he steps down, he hands power to a successor and either the successor is toppled in two years' time or just the successor after a point decides, Well, that was nice, but, you know, gratitude only goes so far in politics. I'd like to lift sanctions. Precisely. Why don't I hand Vladimir Putin over in exchange for blah, blah, blah?

Exactly. Send him to the Hague. Yeah. And you can basically write your own meal ticket for that. So, I mean, even if actually that wouldn't happen, you could imagine Putin thinking it would happen. And that's quite a reason not to ever... Especially given how paranoid he likely is to be at this point. And you mentioned that, I mean, one of the things that's clearly animating,

Vladimir Putin. If you listen to his speeches, I've translated a number of them for the public to read. You can see reading between the lines that he sees themselves as the successor to the great czars of Russia. And by the way, you smirk when I say this, but I have to say, even as someone who really is against many of the things that he's done, you have to acknowledge this is a man who transformed Russia with a lot of luck and good fortune and all of that. but nonetheless he took over in 1999. He's been in power for 24 years. Russia is a changed country.

He has become certainly a lot stronger, economically more prosperous during that time. I think he could credibly claim to have made a significant contribution to the history of the country. But he sees himself as one of the true greats, the Peter, the Greats, the Catherine, the Greats, the Ivans.

What, as a historian, would you say his kind of position would be and how he will show up, you know, 100 years from now in the history of Russia. I mean, look, I can't help but think he's going to be a, firstly, a transitional figure. He's a true Homo-Sovieticus. He's one of these guys who, you know, has his mindset from not just from his schooling and so forth, but also his kind of formative early career days in, incidentally, the KGB set. And I don't think he ever really came to terms with the end of the Soviet Union and the end

of superpower status. And there's a real bitterness there. And it's interesting that almost all the people around him are in a similar social background and a similar age. They're all about 68 to 74 years old. But in terms of who I was going to draw the comparison to, and yes, look, one cannot take away the achievements, particularly of the early Putin years. You know, if he had stepped down after his first two presidencies, something which he appears to have been contemplating when he sort of briefly put in his prime minister Medvedev as a sort of placeholder president, I suspect that history will be very, very kind. to him. As a man who did a necessary job, he took a country which was in facing anarchy, and let's face it, a huge country which is a nuclear power falling into anarchy. It's not something

any of us want. But he took that and he pushed it into a very sort of much more sort of different way. But the point is he came back, he convinced himself he was essential. And if I was going to draw a historical parallel, it's with Ivan the fourth, Ivan, so-called the Ivan the terrible. That's not what actually Russians call them. I keep trying to explain this to people here. Exactly. It means awesome or fearsome or dread or whatever. But it has that kind of sense of scary but also pretty amazing. Yes. Trouble is if you call him Ivan the Awesome, he sounds like a surfer.

Why don't you, most people have heard the name but don't know the details. All Russians are taught about Ivan the Terrible, so we kind of get it. But why don't you just give people a flavor, first of all, of Ivan the Terrible and then why you think he's in the same? I mean, the thing is Ivan the Terrible, he comes to power at a point when basically Moscow has already just risen as the dominant power over all. the sort of principalities of of the russ. So this is just, again, I'm sorry to interrupt, I just want to give people the context. There was no Russia at the time.

There were different duchies, you might call them, or principalities or whatever. And Moscovy, Moscow was at this point the main one, the dominant one. Yeah. And Ivan the Terrible comes to power. Yeah, and he comes to power. I mean, actually, he technically comes to power

at the age of three. Clearly, this is sort of a regency. And in that regency, frankly, You've got all these different noble families, the so-called boyars competing for power. And Ivan himself actually has a really miserable childhood. But he learns, say, the cutthroat lessons of Muscovite politics. Well, I think when he's 13, he has his first prince arrested and beaten to death.

You know, a little formative moment. But when he actually comes to power, and he's the first Tsar, in the sense of he's the first person who's actually crowned a Tsar emperor, It is a point when in a way Russia is, as you say, just beginning to happen. And the fascinating thing about Ivan the Terrible is his reign really can divide it into two halves. The first half, he was a state builder. He created all the foundations of the modern Russian state. If you look at the Russian Foreign Ministry, it dates its own history back to the creation of the ambassador's office under Ivan.

Interior Ministry routes back to the Brigandage office, as it was called. He creates the first Russian standing army, the Strelsy. And so forth, in all of these things, he codifies the laws, etc. He's a real state builder. Then there's a minor point that he seems to go increasingly mad, violently paranoid. For a time, kind of sort of divides the country into two. But basically... Just skipping up with a bit where he killed his only capable son and heir in a fit of a race too.

Because he killed, he killed that, it means that when he dies, the country slides into the so-called time of travel. But this is the point. It's actually this interesting thing. On the whole, people focus on the sort of mad, bad, Ivan of a later half without considering the degree to which actually he was an extraordinarily, in again, a certain fuggish way, a real creator in his first half. That, for me, is a very compelling parallel with Putin.

One has to acknowledge all the very positive things that happened on his watch. Not necessarily because he did them himself, but he allowed them to happen. If you're also going to blame him for all the bad things that have happened in the latter part of his reign. And following from that, the period, so when Ivan the Terrible died, having killed his only capable son and heir, he essentially sparked a period of, I think, several decades times of trouble, during which Russia experienced, I mean, some of the greatest horrors in its history, starvation, invasion, you know, endless claims to the throne, fake and true and all of that. And it's one of the fears that actually sits at the very core of the Russian psyche and the Russian mindset, which is the idea we referenced earlier with Francis, which is when you don't have strong leadership, bad things happen. do you therefore prophesy that at the end of Putin's reign,

Russia is going to be thrust into some kind of turmoil of that kind? I don't. The big thing that's different is actually that Russia itself is very different. I mean, Russia is essentially a modern, bureaucratic, institutionalized state that just happens to have a little medieval court perched on top. So there's Putin and his various favorites and such like and these kind of games of divide and rule that he plays amongst them. But most of Russia actually is just handled by big bureaucracies and the sort of,

and often actually surprisingly well. I mean, again, there is this assumption that in Russia everything's corrupt and ramshackle. Well, anyone who's used, for example, the Moscow City website app to actually, you know, pay their bills and whatever else, knows that it's miles ahead of anything we've got, let alone say the Americans. And I think this is the key difference. There is a framework. There is a structure that holds the country together

and a lot of, as I said, smart technocrats within the system for whom that medieval court is a distraction and a problem rather than an inspiration. And so, yes, obviously there may be risks. But to be honest, I think that, yes, Russians are held back by their history and that sense of, oh, my God, what might we face? And a genuine sense that actually when we're divided and when we're weak, we are vulnerable,

that the rest of the world, whether it's the West or whether it's the Chinese, which we can't forget, you know, we'll take advantage of us. But ironically enough, that's also something that one finds in Western circles as well, that sense of we want to push Putin, but do we want to push him a bit too far? You know, what might be the risks? And it's something that Putin himself plays, both in his domestic and his international messaging. And when we talk about Putin and we talk about Russia. We also need to talk about China because they seem very much to be allies. What is Putin's relationship like with Xi Jinping? Are they closely aligned? Is it more a marriage of convenience? Yeah, it's definitely a marriage of convenience. Look, they have certain shared interests,

but it's quite interesting that just before the invasion, they got together and there was this announcement that they had a friendship without limits. And then the invasion happens, and suddenly the Russians discover that it's a friendship without benefits. In the sense of the Chinese, they're happy to sell dual-use equipment, trucks, for example, which can be used for military purposes, but they can say, no, no, no, it's a civilian or whatever. But they're not providing weapons. They're not providing kind of heavyweight diplomatic support or whatever.

They certainly don't want to jeopardize all this trade with the West. I mean, the West is a vastly more sort of useful partner in that respect. And they're still buying Russian energy, but they know, well that the Russians are desperate to sell, so they are, to be blunt, screwing the Russians over for the best discounts they can possibly get. You know, they're not doing the Russians any real favours. It's more that they have common interests in undermining the West. The Chinese are happy to amplify Russian messaging, for example, in the global South,

about how all this is actually a colonial war and the West are the problems. You know, there are all kind of areas. There's a common interest, frankly, in undermining elements of the world system that they think is designed by the West for the West's interests. And incidentally, they're right. I mean, I don't have a problem with that. But nonetheless, if we're honest, that is the way things are. But from Russia's point of view, I think that there's a lot of Russians who are actually

very, who in many ways more worried about China than the West. So Russians basically, I mean, I know how you feel about this, but I think Russians think themselves as Europeans. Yes. There's none of this nonsense about all Eurasians or whatever. That's kind of fancy philosophy for a handful of professors. What you're alluding to, Mark, is a lot of Russians, to put it bluntly, don't want to be colonized by the Asiatic Horde of China, essentially.

That's how they feel about it. This isn't politically correct language, but Russians are not that politically correct. No. It's interesting, actually, that if we're speaking about political incorrectness, a phrase that Leoni Brezhnev had used back in the 1970s has started to kind of crop up, again, the fear of the yellowing of the Russian far east. Yeah, bless them. People literally say that.

By the way, it's not us making this up. This is how people talk in Russia about it. And by the way, just for context, a lot of the far eastern regions of Russia are already very heavily Chinese populated. Yeah, and the Russians there are scared about it, which is why when they vote, they vote for the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democrat Party

who kind of frankly make even Putin faintly moderate. So, yeah, I mean, that there is a real fear there. I remember before the invasion, talking to, he'd recently retired, he was an army officer, he'd worked in the General Staff's main operations director, which is its kind of planning and sort of global modeling sort of unit. And he said, look, in his view, in 20 years' time, Russia will have had a choice. Either it becomes an ally of the West of some kind.

He's not talking about joining the EU or anything, but just more or less, you know, will have reached some kind of understanding, or else Russia will be a vassal of China. As far as he's concerned, you know, it's as simple as that. And frankly, I think this war brings it closer. The thing is, from Putin's point of view, this war is the one that's going to define his political survival, his historical legacy and so forth. So I don't think he cares. He'll make whatever concessions he needs to China in the interests of winning the war.

It's the next political generation, the 50-somethings and the 60-somethings, who are having a, you know, who have a rather different kind of time frame, who are, I think, quite worried about this, about the fact that already, you know, if you go into the streets of Moscow, increasingly it's Chinese cars that you're seeing everywhere. It's Chinese cell phones that they're using, all that kind of thing, in that sense of you end up creeping bit by bit, becoming dependent on Beijing, without ever planning to do so, but just suddenly you wake up one day, as we were worrying about, you know, with 5G, that all of a sudden you have handed over so many aspects of your economic and

sort of infrastructural order to the Chinese that you are now a vassal. So effectively, what you're saying is that Russia currently is in an incredibly precarious position because they put themselves at odds with the West. They've got these allies who are really not allies by what I term the word allied to mean. You've got this war going on. I mean, where do you go from here long term if you're Russia? Yeah, you see, there's a big question. If you're Russia compared with if you're Putin.

Yeah. I mean, if you're Putin, you're just basically all in. Russia itself, I mean, I'm still unfashionably optimistic about Russia's options, quite frankly. I mean, I think, yes, that we're going through a particular sort of dark time. But in due course, this war will end. This war will end probably with some kind of political settlement, which will likely leave the Russians in control of some parts of Ukraine. I can't see the Ukraine's being able to actually push the Russians out completely. and there will in due course be a political transfer of power to a new generation

because that's one good thing about the fact that all Putin's close people are the same age can be very hard to do a lateral succession. And I think what we will then see is frankly Russia wanting to rebuild its connections with the West and particularly Europe will be almost pathetically glad to take any kind of concession and regarded as proof that, oh, thank God, Russia is coming back because Europe doesn't like conflict. So, I mean, I think there are still escape routes, shall we say, from that dark future. But it all depends on how long, how long does the war go on?

You know, how long does Putin remain in power? And these are the big imponderables. And the next generation that you've got, are they looking more liberal or is there a broad swath of candidates who have their own unique outlooks? I really wouldn't say that they look more liberal. my great faith in them, my great hope is I put my hope in corruption. I mean, look, I think... You should come to South American, Mark.

You'd fight a penny of it there, mate. Yeah, but the thing is, I mean, what you've got is, is an elite that it's essentially pragmatic and kleptocratic. They love the old order before all this talk of a sort of grand civilizational struggle with the West, where you can steal and then enjoy that. You can buy your iPhones and get your Mercedes. and you can go and buy your agreeable pet house in London and send your kids to an American university

and send your mistress shopping in Milan and all these things. So you get the benefits of the global order while still having your own little piggy bank at home. Now Putin is actually breaking that particular order, that situation, and they're not happy. And it might sound silly to put it in terms of the fact that you can't get spare parts for your BMW. But nonetheless, these things do actually matter.

that the your yacht is impounded in an Italian coastal city or whatever. So I think what this generation will want to do is precisely return to that. And frankly, look, we in the West, we know how to deal with kleptocrats. We do it all the time. You know, we'll be happy to take their money as long as they don't invade places and such like. The thing is, though, that we've seen a pattern which often has replicated itself around the world, which is that once you've stolen everything that's there to be stolen, you want rule of law to fix that.

This is a robber baron era and so forth. Russia is interestingly on the cusp of one of the biggest intergenerational transfers of wealth the world has ever seen. Those people who stole on an industrial scale in the 1990s begin to think about succession, begin to think about how their kids are going to get it. And you need rule of law for that. So I think for their own totally pragmatic reasons, they will probably begin to create more rule of law in Russia.

And that's a good thing. Because you can have rule of law without democracy. You can't have democracy without rule of law. That was a big problem in the 1990s. Russia tried to create democracy, but there was no rule of law, so it just became stolen, essentially. So you might say if the next generation are going to be the pragmatic kleptocrats who bring in a certain degree of rule of law, maybe the generation after that will be the Democrat generation.

So it's a long road. But nonetheless, and it's not by any means a guaranteed road, but there is that chance. And as I said, it's not because of niceness. It's precisely actually that this is in the self-interest of the sub-Putting elite. And one of the things that Vladimir Putin has done as authoritarian leaders not only often do, but you could argue almost have to do, is clear the field of any real competition to him. And so the question, I suppose, a lot of people have been asking who are studying Russia closely is, who is the potential successor?

I've heard, you know, when I speak to my contacts in Russia, I hear, or the son of this guy who you've never heard of this, you know, who are the potential successors? Do we know their names yet? No, the honest answer. And again, very much depends on when it happens and how it happens. I mean, if Putin doesn't wake up tomorrow morning, then the prime minister, Mishustin becomes interim president. Yeah, but he's not.

He's not going to, you know. But I mean, this is the thing, you know, so we know what the Constitution says, but we don't know what the political underpinnings it. But in some ways, again, that is, and it's really strange to be talking positively and optimistically about the current Russian system. But in some ways it's a good thing

because it means there is no obvious single person who has the power base to be able to succeed Putin. I don't know if you've seen the film, Amanda Eonucci's death of Stalin. Yes. Brilliant film, I think. But in some ways, I think it's very much going to be the same situation. But when Putin goes, you're going to have the great and the good, great and not very good at all, getting together and behind closed doors trying to work out some kind of a deal.

And that's good because that kind of coalition politics tends to kind of bring politics away from the extremes. But there is no one person who could just simply stand up and say, I'm the next Putin. So it may well be a figurehead, someone who is just a. you know, again, someone's son, who is really the person who is just reading the scripts that a cabal of people behind him, and normally certainly will be him, sort of reads. Or it may be someone who is some kind of technocrat who can get on well enough with the security apparatus, but on the other hand can actually manage the country properly. There's a lot of people like that, Moscow mayor Sabianin, Shustin, or whatever,

if you just want someone who's a effective manager who's not going to try and do too much. But the point is, you know, that's today's list. Ask me in a year's time and probably it'll be a different list. Has he been cultivating some kind of successor to himself or is that just not on the menu for someone in his position? Again, I think this is the problem. As soon as you try to do anything which implies there may be a vacancy in the future, people start thinking of the vacancy. There are people who say, oh, well, like a former bodyguard of his who became governor of the Tula region, I would say, Duman. Oh, well, this might be a successor.

But we've not seen anything to suggest that there's anyone. It may well be that there'll be some point, at some sort of ex-bodyguard who suddenly the press is all saying what an amazing guy he is and he's going to meteorically go through the system. In a way that Putin did in 1998, 1999, no one was thinking in 1998 that Putin was going to be the next president. Well, no one knew who he was. I was living there at the time and I remember that all the, I was a young boy, but the adults around me going, who's Putin? So you think the same thing is likely to happen. If he starts to think I need a successor, then I think that's what we'll see.

We'll see someone meteorically being sort of hyped as the next guy. But otherwise, no, at the moment, as I said, I think the whole idea of even thinking and talking about a post-Putin Russia is taboo. Because that sense of once you start, once you almost you allow people to engage their imagination, Putin's great strength. I think this is what we're going to see in March, he's standing for president, and I'm willing to tip that I think he's going to win. But I think the way this election is already shaping out is likely to be it's almost as if it's not really a choice. It's going to be like a Soviet election.

Well, you know the result that you're meant to go in and just simply drop your ballot that already has a Communist Party candidate written on it in the box. It's a civic duty rather than a real chance to actually shape the country because no one, No one must be thinking about alternatives. Mark, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And I know that Buten, as he knows himself, has a lot of enemies. Do you think it's likely that they're going to try and bump him off? The longer this goes on, the more unsustainable it becomes.

The more the economy goes down the toilet, the more people start to feel the pinch. I mean, no one is ever totally safe. There's always going to be the chance that someone will get through. But it has to be said that there is a massive security structure around Putin. I mean, I remember I for a while lived on Kutuzovsky, one of the great big thoroughfares of Moscow, which would be where, you know, his motorcade would go through on. There's relatively rare times when he actually bothered going to the Kremlin. And, I mean, they would lock the road down for hours in advance.

They would be checking every manhole. there'll be snipers up on every roof. And that's just simply for one journey when you have this sort of massive motorcade of armored vehicles passing through. So generally, I mean, I think one has to say he is pretty secure. That's never a total guarantee,

but it's more that I think that what he has to face is not actually being bumped off necessarily. It's a political coup. It's that the situation reaches such a state that the elite decide, look, this guy's got to go. and they get over their fear, and we're nowhere near that point yet,

but they get over their fear and actually start talking amongst each other. And that one day, there he is in his dacha, one of his palaces, and he picks up the phone and there's no dial tone. And he presses the whatever button and the people who come in his security detail, they're there to sort of, for his own safety, moving to me. The sort of thing that happened to Gorbachev in 1991. I think that's the more plausible fear. than actually just someone putting a bullet against him.

Well, Mark, it's been an absolutely fascinating conversation. We will see how these things play out. And of course, before we let you go, we've got the usual question we finish with and then a bunch of questions from our local supporters. So we'll go there in the second. But first, what is the one thing, perhaps in this context, that we're not talking about, that we really should be? Russia after Putin.

I mean, this is the thing. We are at the moment so understandably obsessed with what we do with Putin, But Putin is going to go. There will be a Russia after Putin. And I think that we're missing a chance to think about how do we reach out to ordinary Russians? How do we undermine Putin's narrative that says the West hates Russians? And actually make it clear that we have a problem with Putin. We have a problem with this war, but not with Russians.

That we think Dosyevsky is great. And we think, you know, Swan Lakes, the finest bit of music ever, or whatever we want to say. And I think particularly Britain's missing a trick there because there is a lot of anglophilia amongst Russians. Absolutely. And we should be absolutely playing to that. And it's hard because Putin will try and make it hard. But we need to be getting that so that when Putin does go, actually ordinary Russians are not still imbued with this sense

that we just hate them all and want them all to die. That's actually such a good point because I've been very conflicted. I've been obviously a fierce critic of the invasion and all the rest of it. But at the same time, I don't understand how banning Russian composers from things or things of that nature, how that advances the cause. in any way and I've been sort of torn about because yeah look if you've got a professional athlete who stands up there and says oh you know I love the invasion that's maybe a little bit different to somebody who just happens to be Russian or happens to be playing Russian music or Russian literature

and having those things restricted and banned just seems to me like a very counterproductive thing to do. Yeah it means that we understand Russia less well we give Putin lots of propaganda advantages and quite frankly we also miss a chance to be Machiavellian I mean you know if if some highly skilled Russian IT worker once wants to come to Britain, I would say absolutely let them. It's someone who'll be useful for us and we deprive Putin of him rather than as is the moment making it almost impossible for that individual to get away. Actually a guy stopped me in an airport once who recognized me and he asked me to exchange money for him because apparently you can't exchange money in the UK with a Russian

passport. I'm just going, how does that stop the invasion of the war? And we just seem to go into some kind of virtue signaling spin-off of, I don't understand it. Well, I mean, you said it yourself. It is about virtue signaling. It's about showing that we are tough. And at a time when we know we can't do anything practical, we can do something symbolic. Yeah. And also as well, it's worth bearing in mind that the more you reach out to Russia, the olive branch, especially post-Putin, the less attractive an alliance with China becomes. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. All right, we've sold it. Nailed it, mate.

All right, Mark, stick with us and you guys stick with us because we're heading straight over to locals for your questions. Is the war in Ukraine proving that the far more expensive complex weapons systems used by the Western NATO aren't as superior as we thought? Are NATO countries misspending on overly expensive weapons systems that can't be mass produced, while Russia is mostly going with quantity of equality?