Putin needs a technical break, he needs to stop this war for a while. But he won’t end it for good, because he loves this war.
Why?
– People often wonder what Putin would have to achieve to declare victory. He doesn’t need to achieve anything, he can declare victory at any time. But he has no intention of doing so – he simply prefers war.
The war helped him control society. He got rid of so many people who bothered him: he arrested some dissidents, killed others, and the rest left the country. The war also united Russia’s elites, who now feel sidelined by the West and see Putin as their only hope for a comfortable life. As a result, the war means less pressure on Putin than ever before.
But most Russians secretly hate the war. Of course, today they are silent as the grave – out of fear and comfort. If the war were to end, they would stop being silent. No wonder it is in Putin’s interests to keep it that way.
“War and Punishment” – this is the title of your book about the invasion of Ukraine. What will be the punishment of this war for Russia?
– All cruel and unjust wars have finally been punished. Villains are known as villains, even if there is always a small group of people who consider them heroes.
I am sure that in 10 years, or at worst in a few decades, even in Russia, the entire current Kremlin team will be on the list of shame. And the time will come when repentance for the current crime will occur. Russians must understand that Russian history was false. Everything they know about themselves was based on historical propaganda. We must get rid of all the illusions of the great Russian culture that are used today to justify violence. This would be an important part of our punishment.
But how will this happen? Even those who oppose Putin often support the idea of an imperial Russia.
– I was very critical of Putin. On the first day of the war, I realized that I could no longer live in a country that had become fascist.
But for many years I was blind to Russian history. It is still difficult for the liberal part of Russian society to accept the fact that we were a colonial empire. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we made a lot of efforts to discuss the crimes of the Bolsheviks – Lenin and Stalin, but we did not touch on a broader topic. We did not start a conversation about the Russian Empire as such.
With my book I try to start this conversation. I know it is difficult for many and it is only the beginning, but eventually it will happen. Of course, we both know that more than 100 years ago, many Russians had difficulty accepting the fact that Poland had become an independent state. Before the revolution of 1917, many liberal Russians still wanted Constantinople to be conquered by the Tsar. Today it all seems ridiculous and in 20-30 years all today’s imperial ideas will be equally ridiculous for Russians.
I won’t lie, it will be easy. We also know that in Russia there is a tradition of analyzing the brutality of the empire and its authorities. When the Russian Empire suppressed the Polish uprising in 1863, Alexander Herzen wrote that he was ashamed to be Russian. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the same thing more than 100 years later, when Soviet tanks suppressed the Prague Spring.
But he did not want an independent Ukraine.
– He had a very different approach to Poland and Ukraine. He was always very pro-Polish, during the Solidarity era he wrote several articles in the American media praising Poland. But, like many Russians, he could not accept the fact that Ukraine was an independent country. If that were not the case, we would not have the current war.
Why should Russia lose it? You yourself emphasize that after the initial shock, the Russian elites accepted this war. They will agree to whatever Putin presents. Meanwhile, Ukraine has more and more problems.
– It’s true – the elites are on Putin’s side. When Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many senior Russians believed the end was near – the economy was facing disaster and Putin’s regime was on the brink of collapse.
Today the mood has changed dramatically. Business leaders, officials and ordinary people are proud that the economy has withstood Western sanctions. Restaurants in Moscow are packed. Real estate prices are rising and construction is booming. At the beginning of 2022, most global brands left Russia, leaving shopping malls empty. Now the gaps have been filled by Russian production. Industry is also booming, led, of course, by arms companies.
But it is not enough. To win a war, a nation must believe in something. Ukrainians believe in their independence, Russians fight for money.
In the first year of the war, there were no volunteers for the front because no one took the issue seriously. Almost everyone considered all this propaganda about denazification to be nonsense. Therefore, Prigozhin had to recruit prisoners to fill the gaps. Starting from the second year of the invasion, the Kremlin people found a formula – they started paying a lot. In the poorest regions of Russia, where the average salary is $200, they pay $2,000. hole. in advance to anyone who wants to sign a contract with the army. Putin still has money, which means he will not run out of cannon fodder any time soon. Mercenaries have temporary success, but they fight only for money. And that is not enough to win.
And how did the Russian elites react to Operation Kursk?
– The businessmen and officials I spoke to have no doubt that recent events are among the most important in this war. Putin was really unstable in the first year of the war and it was clear that he was not winning militarily. This led everyone to believe in his weakness. By killing Prigozhin and stabilizing the front line, he made his elites believe in their leader. That is why the mood has changed. There are many reasons why the Russian elites have returned to Putin’s side. Fear, the belief that the protests are pointless because the Kremlin will suppress them anyway, etc. But perhaps the most important reason for this change is that they have come to see the invasion in a completely different light. They believed that Russia was winning. The invasion of the Kursk region is a very important success for Ukraine because it reverses this trend. Putin’s government is again seen as less stable. And this is the only way to bring Putin’s end closer.
Putin has replaced the most important generals and the defense minister – in fact, he is the only person responsible for the army and the war. And this is his failure. No one can be blamed for the fact that Russia has lost part of its territory and cannot regain it, except Putin himself.
One thing remains: It reacts to these clashes with delay, but always disproportionately. My sources in Moscow speculate that the response will be extreme: it will raze the occupied areas and “eliminate” the local inhabitants. “Our army always works in the same way – it can only destroy everything in its path – animals, children, old people,” a person close to the Kremlin administration told me.
Putin just said he wants Kamala Harris to win. He previously said he preferred Biden. That’s hard to believe.
– This is obviously trolling. Putin loves “House of Cards,” an endlessly cynical series about politics, and has even recommended it to his ministers. It’s his book on American politics, and he acts like Frank Underwood. He knows he’s very unpopular in the West, so he prefers to undermine Kamala Harris by saying he supports her.
What about Trump? What does Putin really think about him?
– He believed that Trump was morally close to him and understood him: he was a cynical colleague who also believed that money solved everything. He had hoped for a rapprochement with Trump during his first term. However, the scandal of Russian interference in the US elections ruined these plans. Putin and Trump have only held one real negotiation – in Helsinki in 2018.
But now Putin believes that if Trump wins again, everything will change. Not only will he stop paying attention to the liberal media, but he will also be ready to dismantle the old world order and take credit for creating a new one. Or at least he will try. And Putin dreams of a new Yalta – since Trump’s victory in 2016, the word “Yalta” has become one of the most popular among Kremlin officials. That’s not all: Putin’s current advisers believe that the United States will eventually collapse, just like the Soviet Union. This requires the right conditions and a leader who can plunge the country into chaos, but it is no coincidence that Trump is nicknamed the “American Gorbachev” in the Kremlin.
To Putin’s people, he is a president whose policies were so chaotic that his empire began to crumble.
The “New Yalta” aims to divide the world between the US, China and Russia. But the Americans see China as their main rival.
– Putin dreams of this, but in the current situation, the US does not need any tripartite peace treaty with China and Russia. If Trump is elected, negotiations with Russia will be possible, but not with China. I cannot imagine that. We are only at the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and China.
What is Putin’s long-term strategy in this war, other than keeping it going?
– Putin rarely has a strategy. He is a tactical player. Some people see him as a chess player, but he is more of a surfer. So his strategy is to wait and watch the waves, but chaos is usually his choice. That is why he wanted to kill Zelensky so much, because without Zelensky the situation in Ukraine would be more chaotic. He always thinks that time is on his side when he manages to create chaos.
He has always been reserved, but today he is more so than ever. He loves surprises obsessively, so he rarely leaks information about the decisions he makes.
Will he ever name a successor, as he was named by Boris Yeltsin’s circle?
– NO. Never, never, never! He’s not leaving.
That is why he recently invited Alexei Dyumin to the Kremlin, who became his advisor. He was once his bodyguard – he became famous for defending Vladimir Putin from a bear. Now he has to save him from a change of government.
But one day he will die. Or he will have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. What does that mean for the country?
– It means that one day a disaster will happen. We saw this at the end of Stalin’s rule and it could happen again.
Putin intends to replace his old guard. We are at the beginning of this process – he has started replacing old friends from his generation, such as Nikolai Patrushev, with a generation of technocrats, about 20 years younger. He believes that they are less experienced, but much more loyal. And this will be his plan for the coming years. But in some ways it is dangerous.
In the last years of his power, Stalin also wanted to get rid of people like Molotov and Mikoyan and replace them with younger ones. And he miscalculated, because the old guard knew he was on his way out and had no intention of leaving.
I don’t want to speculate, but maybe that’s why Stalin was killed. In Putin’s case too, this could be the moment when there will be a clash.
