- 9 months ago
"Yes, it was Russian troops that launched an unprovoked invasion – but it's the West that started the war in Ukraine." That's the long-repeated line spun again this Monday by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in China. Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it, goes the saying. But for Putin, this founding myth story is not a myth at all.
Tried and true Kremlinologists insist that the ex-KGB agent genuinely feels grievance and genuinely believes in greater Russia's manifest destiny – a right to expand steeped in nostalgia and mysticism. After a summer of chatter about venues and incentives for still hypothetical direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks, we ask about the mindset in Moscow and elsewhere across the 11 time zones of the Russian Federation, and about a traditional NATO leader – the US – whose mixed messages fuel uncertainty over its loyalties and embolden all those in the West who buy Putin's line. Produced by François Picard, Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
Visit our website:
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Tried and true Kremlinologists insist that the ex-KGB agent genuinely feels grievance and genuinely believes in greater Russia's manifest destiny – a right to expand steeped in nostalgia and mysticism. After a summer of chatter about venues and incentives for still hypothetical direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks, we ask about the mindset in Moscow and elsewhere across the 11 time zones of the Russian Federation, and about a traditional NATO leader – the US – whose mixed messages fuel uncertainty over its loyalties and embolden all those in the West who buy Putin's line. Produced by François Picard, Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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NewsTranscript
00:00Sure, it's Russian troops that launched an unprovoked invasion, but it's the West that started the war in Ukraine.
00:07That's the oft-repeated line spun again this Monday at a summit in China by Vladimir Putin.
00:14Repeat a lie often enough people will believe it, so the saying goes.
00:18But for Putin, this founding myth story is no myth at all.
00:22Tried-and-true Kremlinologists insist the seemingly jaded and cynical ex-KGB agent genuinely feels grievance,
00:31genuinely believes in greater Russia's manifest destiny, a right to expand steeped in nostalgia and mysticism.
00:40After a summer of chatter over hypothetical direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks,
00:45we'll ask about the mindset in Moscow and elsewhere across the 11 time zones of the Russian Federation
00:51about the real-life death and destruction raining down on Ukraine
00:55and about a United States whose mixed messages, critics say, embolden all those in the West who buy Putin's line.
01:02Today in the France 24 debate, why Putin won't relent.
01:06With us from Geneva, he was a Russian diplomat who quit his post over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
01:11Boris Bondareff, author in German of Ministry of Lies.
01:15Thank you for being with us here.
01:18Good evening. Thank you for inviting me.
01:21France 24. Former Moscow correspondent Elena Voloshin, author in French of Propaganda, Vladimir Putin's Weapon of War.
01:30Good to see you.
01:31European correspondent for Newsmax, Craig Kapitas, author in English of Bear Hunting with the Politburo.
01:38How are you?
01:38Okay.
01:39And Manlio Graziano, geopolitical analyst, author of What is a Border?
01:45Good to see you again.
01:47A reminder that if you're on the go, you can listen to the show wherever podcasts are streamed.
01:53Let's begin with that all-important question.
01:55Does Jude Law make a convincing Vladimir Putin?
01:57The English actor, the star of the screen adaptation of the best-selling Giulia D'Empoli novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, the film premiering at the Venice Film Festival Sunday.
02:09In it, the central character is not Putin, but a fictional advisor called Vadim Baranov, a character inspired by real-life political strategist Vladislav Surkov,
02:19who accompanied the Russian president in his rise and consolidation of power.
02:26Alina Volashin, a movie you will see?
02:29I was afraid you would be asking me about The Wizard of Kremlin.
02:32Obviously, I haven't seen the movie.
02:34I've read the book.
02:34It's not out here yet.
02:35I don't want to lose people who like me, so maybe I won't.
02:38Well, it's a great fiction.
02:40It's a good fiction.
02:41But this concept, and I'll put it to you and also to Boris Bondareff, about how important the propaganda machine was in the rise of Putin and the consolidation of Putin.
02:54That is a bit the thrust of the novel by Giulia D'Empoli.
03:01You know, how important was the myth-making?
03:05It's absolutely central because Putin has, and that's what I'm telling in my book, Putin has raised his popularity amidst the war in Chechnya,
03:15which was built around this idea of an enemy who is posing an existential threat to Russia.
03:24And it was also a war of propaganda.
03:26I cannot go into details on this part in 99, but just before the starting of the war, he had 2% of popularity because he was completely unknown as a head of the FSB.
03:38And throughout the years and different conflicts, like in Georgia also, the propaganda was really powerful, joining his military action on the field.
03:51But with the war in Ukraine, it took, like, unprecedented scale.
03:56And in my book, I demonstrate and I explain how this war is built on a lie, on propaganda, on a myth,
04:03of the myth that he has put forward just these days on the summit in China, saying that, you mentioned it, that it's not the Russian aggression against Ukraine that is the start of the war,
04:17but a coup, a Nazi coup promoted by the West, which, like, just is completely not what happened in Ukraine on Maidan in 2014.
04:25It was a pro-European revolution, and it was not what Putin is saying.
04:32Boris Bondarev, Vladimir Putin becomes prime minister in 1999, becomes president in 2000.
04:39It's 2025, a quarter century later.
04:42How central is this character of this political strategist, Vladislav Surkov, in the mindset that Putin has and that Russia has today?
04:55Well, Vladislav Surkov was very instrumental in consolidating the power in the hands of Putin and his close entourage, there is no doubt.
05:09But he was not the only one.
05:12He was not this wizard or whoever.
05:15He didn't make any miracles.
05:17He just was doing his job, and his job as the deputy chief of the presidential administration was to control, to strengthen control of the Kremlin over the Russian domestic affairs, domestic policy.
05:33And he invented this term, sovereign democracy, which is still in use, so to speak.
05:40Russia is a democracy.
05:41Russia has all democratic procedures, like regular elections and other things.
05:47But it's not that democratic as in Europe or in the United States, because we have our own democracy, sovereign democracy, which reflects Russian specifics and all these things.
05:59That's why we have only two presidents.
06:02And we don't need any more, I think, new presidents, as Vladimir Putin may think now.
06:08So, yes, Vladislav Surkov was an author of some pretty useful concepts, which were used at the time.
06:17But now I think he's pretty much forgotten.
06:20And there are new people who do his job now.
06:24And as I said, he was instrumental in that time.
06:27So, so.
06:28Then he was out of use.
06:30These new people, are they about the method, the sophisticated methods in which you get your message across?
06:37Or are they about the content, about the ideology?
06:44Well, there is no ideology in Russia.
06:49Only genuine ideology is to keep power forever.
06:53And all these things like Russian world and the sovereign democracy and all just labels, labels, because you cannot sell this true ideology to the people.
07:06You cannot sell it to your electorate, even in Russia, even to the electorate that is under the spell of very powerful propaganda.
07:15They just won't buy it.
07:17They won't buy it, this simple concept that we, as Putin's people say, we and our children, our grandchildren will live in the most luxurious life ever.
07:28And you will be doing whatever is necessary to provide this luxurious life to you.
07:36So, it's not, it's not sellable, right?
07:40So, there are a lot of labels and Surkov was one of the very lucky author to have come up with some of these labels.
07:48There are other guys like Sergei Kiriyenko, who is now, is in the place of Vladislav Surkov.
07:55He's making other things.
07:57He's coming up with new labels.
07:59He's promoting this Russian world in Donbass and some other regions.
08:03But still, there is no such thing as a true ideology in Russia, in political sense, like it was in Soviet times.
08:13Craig Kapitas, you were a Moscow correspondent in the waning days of the Soviet Union.
08:18Was there an ideology then?
08:20Yeah.
08:21The ideology is that Russians have a cursed capacity for allowing their leaders to make them suffer.
08:28Fatalism.
08:29Fatalism, mysticism, the use of the church.
08:33Russia's great asset is that it has a long-term memory.
08:38Europe has a short-term memory.
08:40And sometimes I think America doesn't have any memory at all.
08:44This all gets very confusing for most of our listeners.
08:48I mean, I will admit that.
08:49We're hearing a lot of names that people have never heard before that are difficult to pronounce.
08:54Russian is a very difficult language.
08:57I would advise everyone who is watching tonight to read George Kennan's long telegram written in 1946.
09:07You can find it on the web.
09:09You can't tell the players without a program document.
09:14And too many leaders in the West and America and Europe and elsewhere have forgotten about George Kennan's long telegram of 1946.
09:23But hang on, getting back to your previous point, there's no ideology, but there is a long-term memory.
09:31A very long-term memory in Russia, going back to Ivan the Terrible and the use of the Russian Orthodox Church,
09:39which Kennan points out, as you pointed out, as part of this propaganda.
09:44Look, the Russians use propaganda for negative and destructive reasons.
09:52You can see this historically.
09:55And the way they get the West, the way they niggle us is, and again, Kennan points this out, it's not just me,
10:02is they will participate in everything.
10:06You name a group, an organization, they're going to join it, not only to increase their own power, but to dilute the power of others.
10:16And that's what we're seeing right now in these so-called peace negotiations in Ukraine.
10:22When you see the foreign minister, Lavrov, go to a summit meeting with the president of the United States,
10:29wearing a T-shirt that says Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I'm sorry, the Soviet Union Empire did not die.
10:38It's alive and well.
10:39Let's talk about that.
10:40There we see the image of Sergei Lavrov arriving in Anchorage, Alaska, more than two weeks ago.
10:46He said, Manlio Graziano, that what's at stake there is history and has to be preserved, even with humor.
10:56So he's saying you're taking this all too seriously.
10:59Yeah, I think...
11:00What did you think when you saw CCCP?
11:03I was not surprised because, in my opinion, Russia today and the Soviet Union yesterday and the Russian Empire,
11:11even before, are the same, the same institution, the same country and the same empire.
11:20Stalin was able to rebuild the Russian Empire, even greater than, bigger than it was before.
11:28And so I'm not surprised that nationalists in Russia dream of rebuilding of the Soviet, the Russian Empire.
11:36When you see the foreign minister wearing a sweatshirt that says CCCP...
11:41Of course, I laughed.
11:42I laughed, but I was not surprised.
11:45What is the message he's sending there?
11:47Exactly what I said, that we want to rebuild the empire.
11:51Exactly the same.
11:52Take it at face value?
11:54You agree with that, Elena?
11:55Yeah, I completely agree.
11:56In the new Russian historiography, you have not one but two big catastrophes,
12:01which are the two falls of the two empires, the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Soviet Empire in 1991.
12:09Speaking about the ideology, first of all, Surkov, he played a central role in 2014.
12:15And you have, you can find them on the internet, the Surkov leaks that shows the dozens of email that was exchanged between his cabinet.
12:23Just to remind our viewers, 2014 is when there's the Maidan revolution.
12:27Revolution and the invasion of Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbass.
12:32And then, and they were trying at that time already to invade Kharkov, to invade Odessa.
12:37They did not manage because the pre-Ukrainian population was too strong in this region.
12:42But you have all these emails that are showing that they were trying to use proxies to have this protest against the so-called coup d'état, Nazi coup in Kiev, etc.
12:54So he really played a central role in organizing these fake puppet republics in the eastern Ukraine.
13:02Speaking about ideology, it reminds me of what former KGB officer Litvinenko, Alexander Litvinenko,
13:10said before his death in an interview, as far as I remember, it was to Radio Free Europe,
13:14when he said the KGB could not survive without ideology.
13:17And for years and years and years, you would have Russian conservatives pushing for the state to, you know,
13:24for years to make Putin's regime appear as democratic.
13:28They were pushing a more, a harsher speech than the regime was, whereas they were just pursuing the same line.
13:33And they were saying Russia should have an ideology, just impossible to, to, to, to exist without this.
13:39And it all started in 2020, uh, 2012.
13:42And in 2020, it ended up by reforming the constitution in which was, uh, inscripted the idea of God,
13:51the idea of, uh, historical in heritage, the idea that Russia was a millennial civilization
13:57with, uh, traditional values for family, et cetera.
14:00So you have two schools today between analysts, uh, the ones that they know Putin is still the same cynical KGB agent
14:09that it was, and all his story with ideology and, and values and so on is completely cynical.
14:14And I'm defending in my book another theory, which is that Putin, with years, um,
14:21got himself to be like inhabited by this idea of white imperialism of, uh, saint war, et cetera.
14:28Because if we remember in 2004, and I will end with this, he got repatriated from Switzerland,
14:33for example, the corpse of, uh, Ivan Ilyin, who was the, uh, the ideologist of the Russian fascism in 1948.
14:42So I think that with years, he, he really, because you should not underestimate ideology
14:48because ideology forges determination and determination is something that ends up by having a war in Europe.
14:54So, so let me just get, let me just be clear on this, Elena.
14:56You're saying that the, the man who was a KGB agent in Leipzig, uh, back in the 1980s,
15:02he wasn't an ideologue. He was a, he was a foot soldier.
15:05No, completely not. Of course, no.
15:06But something changed while Putin was in power.
15:10Yeah, I think that he's been, you know, it's been 25 years that he's doing his job and it's to drive someone like crazy.
15:16Yeah, kind of crazy. And I, and I think like seeing today when you have like a Congress of, uh, uh,
15:22called Sabor with, uh, Putin between two images of Christ and everyone crying to him and him saying
15:29that he's going to save humanity from LGBTs, I think like there is a ideology there and it cannot be like
15:35only cynical, you know, I think he's just went just crazy with it.
15:38Forrest Pondereff, do you agree?
15:39I can say that this ideology, of course, you cannot stay the same if you are for 25 years in the, on the throne of Russia.
15:55Yes. It makes you change personally, of course.
15:59And when he was appointed in 1999, he was, well, very much unprepared for his role because he had no team.
16:07He had no, no real vision, no program, nothing.
16:10So now, of course, after 25 years in power, he's, he must be to some extent different person, of course.
16:20And when you have the power and you have no plans to relinquish it, to hand it over to anybody else.
16:28And if you are so much concerned about keeping this power in your hands, of course, it's very tempting to convince yourself that you don't do it just for yourself.
16:39Yes. It's not your egoistic goals because you are entitled, you know, to protect Russia.
16:48You must show Russians the right path into the future or something like that.
16:53Of course, people always tell themselves that they must do something because of higher, you know, higher ideas to do something idealistic rather than to accept the truth.
17:06Then you just do it because you want it, you like it.
17:09That's it. And then if it happens for some time, you can really believe in it.
17:15And I think now Putin, he believes in himself and he believes that he cannot go away.
17:24He cannot leave power.
17:26He cannot hand it over to anybody else because he is the one who can save Russia from whatever threats he can perceive.
17:33Boris Bontorev, the polling done throughout his presidency shows he's very popular in Russia.
17:42And the Russians believe in Vladimir Putin.
17:45Do they also believe in the greater Russia, in the mystical shroud of the Russian Orthodox Church that surrounds his push for expansionism?
18:00Do they believe in that stuff?
18:01No, people in Russia don't believe in anything.
18:08They don't.
18:11OK, for instance, OK, I live now in Switzerland and I meet with some local people.
18:17And when I when I would talk and they say, oh, next year we are planning to have a holiday somewhere.
18:23And that and I am very much surprised because we in Russia, we can we never plan for such a long time.
18:29You know, we can plan only what we do tomorrow and not always.
18:34We leave from morning until tonight.
18:38Tomorrow is another day and there will be another world, another reality.
18:41So the planning horizon for Russians is very, very short.
18:46So why do they believe in Vladimir Putin, according to these polls?
18:50Well, they don't because he's the only politician in Russia.
18:54He's the president, of course.
18:56He's the he's on top of this pyramid.
18:57And well, who if you ask them, who is the the the most, I don't know, important person in Russia?
19:06Now, everybody will say Putin because he is and because there is no alternative.
19:10You know, there is only Putin and some other like system opposition people like Communist Party, like some other puppet parties.
19:21They are just puppets.
19:22They are just clowns.
19:23Nobody takes them seriously.
19:25Like nobody takes Dmitry Medvedev seriously in Russia, unlike in the Western countries.
19:32But Putin is the is one of the main pillars of Russian society today.
19:38And it's a traditionalist and I agree that in some regards, Russia today is very much like to the imperial Russia before 1917, when also it was very, very unjust and unfair society.
19:53And a lot of people, most of people felt that only one figure on the top, like the Tsar or Emperor, can be a protector of them.
20:03So now Russians need someone to whom they can address the situation of, you know, catastrophe.
20:11And so long Putin is on top, he will be, as you say, this this this person whom they believe.
20:20But it's not like they believe and they it's not like they are going to save him from something.
20:25They are not going to take to streets if Putin says, I'm in danger, people, please save me.
20:31Just like nobody took to streets in 2023 when Evgeny Prigozhin was marching on Moscow, right?
20:37You mentioned Tsars.
20:38Last week, fiery Russian talk show host Vladimir Solovyev repeated his call to keep on going after Kiev and march on Paris.
20:46Turns out that's happened before, when the Tsar's troops overran Napoleon's armies and forced the first of his two resignations and exiles from in back in 1814.
20:58Craig Kapitas.
21:00Dawn, March 31st, 1814, flocks of Parisians climbed Montmartre, which was then called Montnapoleon.
21:08They looked out and there were 63,000 Russian troops, primarily Cossacks, coming at the city.
21:17They fled.
21:19Some 6,000 Russian troops were killed during this battle for Paris.
21:25The Russians who came in had been taught two words in French.
21:30Brûlée Paris, brûlée Paris, Paris burn, Paris burn.
21:34Frighten the hell out of the citizens here.
21:36Napoleon, well, he scrambled the Fontainebleu, and according to those with him, what he was saying the entire way was,
21:44Cossacks, les Cossacks, bleh, the Cossacks are beasts.
21:48So the Russians come in.
21:50They're here for two months.
21:52They camp on the Champs-Élysées, the Bois de Boulogne, and actually came as far as where our studio is right now.
21:59And they pretty much destroyed the city.
22:02The prostitutes had a great time.
22:04A lot of bars were destroyed, according to the history books.
22:09But the Tsar, the interesting part, Alexander I, the Tsar came with them.
22:17And he kind of tamped down their irrational exuberance to burn down Paris.
22:24And he instead sent them on a mission.
22:28And that mission was to build a Russian Orthodox church on the Place de Concord,
22:35which was supposed to sanctify Paris for Russia and Russians for all time.
22:42Now, back in my day in Russia, at the old dollar bar,
22:45at the in-tourist hotel where they served Heinkin, if you had hard currency.
22:51Many times I heard Russians there giving the toast, next year in Paris.
22:56Next year in Paris.
22:58And guess what?
22:59We now have, thanks to Sarkozy, a Russian Orthodox church that doubles as a spy center,
23:06right across the river from where we are.
23:08Yeah, it's along the left bank towards the Eiffel Tower.
23:12And it's thanks to a 170 million euro deal that Sarkozy sold the Moscow,
23:19the prime real estate that became the Russian Orthodox church there.
23:22And an unusual step, Moscow even obtained, this is what Craig was referring to,
23:27diplomatic immunity for what it's called a spiritual and cultural center,
23:31declaring it the official chapel of its Paris embassy.
23:37Manlio Graziano, everybody in Paris walks past that edifice these days.
23:43You heard Craig Capitas describe it as a listing post for the government.
23:49It's a church, though, but it's on, it's got the same status as the Vatican or an embassy.
23:56You know, Americans after World War II were saying that their best listening post was the Vatican in Rome.
24:05So I'm not surprised that a church can become a listening post for everybody.
24:11I mean, if you need it, the church is a very good place to do that.
24:16I wanted to say something, except the idea that they left the bistro, right?
24:22The Russians in Paris when they arrived.
24:24In 1814.
24:24Exactly.
24:25Yeah, they did.
24:26Yeah, okay.
24:27So they left something, at least.
24:29They also, they also, when they destroyed all the bars, which were made of wood,
24:33you could look this up, historians recount the reason we have zinc bars in Paris
24:39was because they put a coating of zinc metal on the bar because they were destroying the bars.
24:44Okay, but fast forward to 2025, Elena Volusin.
24:46How much of a design on Paris do Russians really have?
24:53Do they really want to march to Paris or it's just talk?
24:57No, they don't want to march to Paris because we already have Marine Le Pen.
25:01So they don't really need to march towards Paris.
25:05Oh, it's true.
25:06It's true.
25:07To be more serious.
25:09And by the way, let's not talk only about Paris because I'm just back from Russian Orthodox Church in Nice,
25:14and Russia also is just retaking some new churches there in the Côte d'Azur.
25:19But, yeah, Russia is in a strategy of not military invasion in European countries,
25:27at least if we don't talk about Baltic countries, because there we don't know.
25:31But in Central Europe, the strategy is that one of the states change,
25:35and our authorities change even when it goes to the level of local authorities,
25:40like, for example, in the landers in Germany.
25:43This is their strategy, Putin's strategy, because he wants to have as much political governments loyal to him as possible.
25:53And when we see the vote against the resolution labeling Russian action in Ukraine as an aggression in the UN
26:00at the beginning of this year, who would vote against?
26:02It was Northern Korea, China, the United States, Israel, and more and more countries loyal to Russian narrative.
26:12And we see that more countries join the BRICS and more countries are in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
26:17So why is it working? Why is it working?
26:19It's working because, first of all, ideology also, because these nationalistic, far-right, conservative politicians,
26:31they don't see the world as a space where international law should prevail,
26:37where human rights should prevail, where democracy should win.
26:40And they just want, like Donald Trump, for example, they want an authoritarian state with power
26:44and with these ideas of the far-right conservatism.
26:48So this is why it works, because it's a...
26:50And we end up by having what Putin is saying we are having is a civilizational war.
26:57It's a war of values.
26:58It's a war of humanism, democracy, against the re-establishment today of authoritarian, patriarchal, conservative, retrograde,
27:10and maybe sometimes fascist regimes.
27:13The...
27:14Manuel Gratiano, this civilizational war, it's an appealing concept in the West?
27:21I think it lost steam since the book written by Samuel Huntington in 1996.
27:32So I don't think that it's exactly what the problem is.
27:38The problem is the fact that the society is, let's say, in the West,
27:42because I should say many things about the West because I don't think that the West exists, really.
27:47But they are in decline, and they are in decline, and decline means that you are losing something,
27:53and when you are losing something, you want to be protected in any way.
27:58And so the first who proposes something that seems to be able to protect you, they choose them.
28:05So these populists, we can call them populists because they say what the people want to listen to,
28:12these populists don't have any kind of problem in lying openly about what they wanted to achieve,
28:22because they perfectly know the people who understand what they say,
28:26because there are people who don't understand what they say.
28:28But the people who know what they say don't believe in what they propose,
28:33but they propose because they win the elections with that,
28:36because people vote for them because people want to be protected.
28:39And in Russia, it's more or less the same things.
28:44What Mr. Bondelev was saying is exactly that.
28:48Putin is the shield of Russians.
28:51So they love Putin because they think that Putin is protecting them from,
28:58they don't know what, because actually nobody knows what is the real danger in a society in decline.
29:04What J.D. Vance said in Munich, the danger is not Russia,
29:07the danger is the politicians who prevent people from praying in churches against their dead fetuses during abortions.
29:15They say whatever they want is not a problem for them.
29:19And by the way, just to come back to the beginning of the discussion,
29:23I don't think that what Putin thinks really is very important.
29:27I don't think that what Bush was thinking when he invited Iraq was really believing in that.
29:37What is important with these guys is what they do, not what they think.
29:42Putin's narrative is drawing true believers in the West and those who say there are good people on both sides.
29:48Like last week, when Russia pounded Ukraine's capital, including the city center of Kyiv,
29:54the White House was asked for President Trump's reaction.
29:59He was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised.
30:04These are two countries that have been at war for a very long time.
30:07Russia launched this attack on Kyiv, and likewise, Ukraine recently dealt a blow to Russia's oil refineries.
30:13They have taken out, as a matter of fact, 20 percent of Russia's oil refinery capacity
30:18over the course of their attacks throughout the month of August.
30:22So you talked at the beginning of the show, Craig Kapitas, about Americans having no memory.
30:28Is that simply ignorance of the facts when the White House spokesperson equivocates between Kyiv and Russia?
30:39Or is it, as Elena Volusheen was mentioning, a tinge of, well, I hate to say it again, ideology on the part of, for instance, the U.S. vice president?
30:51When it comes to Russia in the United States, and solely Russia,
30:58intelligent people have been banned from thinking so not to offend the imbeciles.
31:03And there are a lot of imbeciles in the United States.
31:07And all of them, again, and I'm sorry to repeat myself, Francois,
31:11but they have to go back and read George Kennan's long telegram of 1946.
31:15Oh, aren't you all bored hearing me say that?
31:18But that is the program of what's going on here for the uninitiated.
31:22And it's not only, it's not only President Trump who has greatly screwed the pooch on relationship with Russia.
31:33Clinton screwed the pooch.
31:36Bush, too, screwed the pooch.
31:38Obama, all of them.
31:41Putin has beaten every Russian leader.
31:45American.
31:46Yeah, I'm sorry, American leader.
31:47They've just done it because Americans bought into the fact that Russia would and could create a democracy.
31:56In fact, back in the Yeltsin years, when I was also there and wrote a book on it, America paid for it.
32:03They paid for it.
32:05And now we're hearing that there's deals going on for Exxon to get back into bed,
32:10for oil exploration in far eastern Russia and the Sakhalan Islands.
32:19I mean, that, we don't have the time to go into how the Russians pulled this off, but they were brilliant.
32:29The Americans paid for it.
32:30The West paid for it.
32:32And what Putin is doing now, he's saying to the West, he's saying,
32:36we're going to do the Star Wars deal on you, spend all your money on weapons like you made us do during the Reagan years.
32:44That's why the Soviet Union fell.
32:46We outspent them.
32:48Putin knows that.
32:50He's going to do the same thing.
32:52And he's doing it.
32:54Boris Banderth, let me ask you, your experience as a diplomat,
32:58when you had American interlocutors, did you have people who understood Russia?
33:04Or were they in the vein of what Craig Kapitas is describing?
33:14No, in peace time, it's not that important whether you understand Russia or any other country,
33:20because if you can find a mutually understandable language, it's fine.
33:25You can strike deals.
33:27But, of course, even before the war, I've noticed many Western European diplomats and Americans
33:33who were, I would say, too soft on Russia.
33:40And Russia's policy, even in 2019, 2020, for instance, in Geneva, I recall,
33:47was quite tough and very uncompromising.
33:50And we used a lot of consensus rules in some UN conventions to block any decisions that we didn't like.
34:01Just one Russia against 150 other countries.
34:05And no one stood up and asked why Russia is turning consensus rule, consensus procedure, into with the power.
34:15Who gives you this authority?
34:19No one.
34:20And after, I recall, after one session was adjourned, totally.
34:25Then a few European diplomats approached our head of delegation and asked,
34:30why you never make any concessions to us?
34:34We have given you so many concessions.
34:37And then Russian diplomats just smiled and went away.
34:42It was very, very eloquent.
34:43And I said, yes, because you will never get any concessions if you don't ask for it.
34:52You know, Russians ask for concessions, and Europe is ripe to giving it.
34:58That's right.
34:58May I briefly add?
35:00If I may, just.
35:02Yeah.
35:02Boris Bondarov first.
35:03Go ahead.
35:03Previous question about why Russian narrative is gaining so many supporters right now.
35:10It's to a very high degree is because the Western countries, which say we protect our values, our principles, we stand with Ukraine as long as it takes.
35:21In 2022, in 2022, in 2025, what Western countries are discussing, how much of Ukrainian lands, Ukrainians must give away to aggressors, right?
35:32So everybody around see that this very Western civilization, which so boasts about human rights, values, principles, international law, is so weak and weak-willed to protect, to substantially support its claims that it's no surprise that China, India, all other global South looks that the West is weak.
35:57And why should we, you know, we should be friends with the weak when we can and should be friends with the strong, like Russia, which is strong enough to pursue its policy even through war?
36:10Correct, please.
36:11Boris's analysis is on target.
36:15Bullseye.
36:15At the same time, I think it's very important to add that there were boxcar loads of American-Russian specialists who were advising various administrations, Republican and Democrat, not to do what they did, and they didn't follow the advice.
36:34Linda Volusheen, those years that Boris is talking about, those are the years you're in Moscow.
36:39Seen from Moscow, does the West seem weak?
36:42I mean, you're in the daily fray of the difficulties of life for an ordinary citizen in the Russian capital.
36:50They say nothing works, right?
36:52It does.
36:53And they were predicting what is happening today quite early in the 2010s years.
37:00I remember just one anecdote when, you know, François Hollande, the French president, and Angela Merkel, a German chancellor, were coming to Moscow to try to negotiate with Putin about the ceasefire in Ukraine amid of the Minsk agreements.
37:16They would spend, like, a night in the Kremlin, and we were waiting for them at the end, and at the end, we were meeting the French ambassador, who was always, you know, very optimistic about the realm of Europe, the European security, the France and Germany taking over, like, the European security project, and so on.
37:35And at the end of the day, he would just say, but you cannot negotiate with him because he says that he is not part of the war.
37:42So, I mean, you cannot, Putin was just saying that Russia is not part of this war, and it's a civil war in Ukraine.
37:49So, that's it.
37:50They were really, like, they were just making fun out of Europeans.
37:54The real target and the real threat and the real enemy and the real adversary would always be in the United States.
38:01And with Donald Trump in 2020 in the White House, they won.
38:04Now, this target is eliminated.
38:07So, now they are targeting with their propaganda and with their demonization speech Europe.
38:12But I would say, like, we see what's happening and what Donald Trump is doing towards Ukraine, and Munster Bondrov was mentioning that today.
38:21We are just discussing how many land Ukraine will seize.
38:24So, to me, it's already a defeat of Ukraine, a victory of Russia.
38:27The question is of the scale of the defeat and the victory.
38:31Manuel Gratiano.
38:32Yeah.
38:33This is why I was saying that I don't think that the West exists because the West is always divided.
38:38And they have this particular skill is to use Russia for their purposes.
38:46Each one of them, be France, be Germany, be the United States, sometimes one time, at least even the Britons, they use Russia for their purposes.
38:59And why they are using Russia?
39:00Because among all these powers we are talking about, Russia is the weakest one.
39:05And so, they use Russia because Russia is not a danger.
39:10And this is why I was always being...
39:13Explain what you mean by Russia is not a danger.
39:15It's not a danger because it's too weak.
39:17Whenever Russia tries to do more than it can afford to do, it disappears.
39:23And this is what I said when the war started one week later when it was clear that they were not able to conquer Kiev.
39:30I said, okay, Russia lost the war, it's already done, and I still think that Russia lost the war, unless it is helped either by China or the United States.
39:47And everybody was thinking that I was crazy because China was more or less credible, but in the United States, nobody was thinking of it.
39:54But I was not saying that because I was thinking of Donald Trump.
39:59I said that because I was thinking of 1945 when the United States used Russia to divide Europe because they left Russia to conquer the eastern part of Europe.
40:13And this is why they could have this deal with Russia, because it was perfect.
40:19In Europe, they had the real competitors.
40:22In Russia, they will never have a competitor because Russia doesn't exist in economic terms.
40:28So it's not a danger for... It's not China. It's not China.
40:32You... I think you have to go back further.
40:35You have to go back to Yeltsin and Clinton.
40:38I remember an interview I had with U.S. Ambassador Robert Strauss in the 90s.
40:43And he said, look, I'd rather give the Russians a few hundred billion dollars now than look at a, quote, fascist-type situation in 30 years' time.
40:55And I remember there were people in that room.
40:58There were CIA analysts, Russian analysts saying, no, don't give them the money.
41:04Why are you giving them all this money?
41:06Why are you giving them 51% control in every joint venture?
41:11They're going to steal everything.
41:12They're going to bite you back.
41:14And they didn't listen because they thought Russia was going to go democratic.
41:19For the February issue of The Atlantic magazine, as anti-vaxxers prepared to take the reins at the Department of Health in the United States,
41:28journalist Anne Applebaum compared to the moment of the dying days of the czars,
41:33when mystics like Rasputin first rose to prominence and then became scapegoats.
41:38Like the Russians in 1917, we now live in an era of rapid, sometimes unacknowledged change, economic, political, demographic, educational, social, and above all, informational.
41:51We, too, exist in a permanent cacophony where conflicting messages, right and left, true and false, flash across our screens all the time.
42:01Elena, you wrote your book about Russia.
42:03Is the blurred lines and the confusing messages and the mixed messages, is that moved west?
42:13Yeah, I was thinking about Rasputin and who was like the spiritual and mystical advisor to the czar, Nicolás II, and his wife.
42:23And some say that he has accelerated the fall of the Russian Empire and the defeat in the war.
42:30So I don't know if Putin has this kind of – he has Tihon, his confessor.
42:35But is the Rasputin in Russia or is the Rasputin in the West?
42:40That's the question.
42:41That's too much of a difficult question.
42:43I will leave it to Craig.
42:46Well, he did, you know.
42:48One of Putin's bête noire's was the holy man from Siberia who Putin sent basically a small army to arrest and detain.
42:56He put it in jail and finished.
42:57Well, that was a big deal.
42:58That was a big deal.
43:00He was marching to Moscow to dig up devils beneath the Kremlin and Putin shut him down real quick.
43:05Sorry.
43:05Just the problem is the decline.
43:09This notion of decline.
43:101917 was the worst year for the decline of the imperial Russia.
43:19And now we are living the worst days of the decline of the United States.
43:24So this is where I see similarities.
43:26And on that happy note, Mario Graziano, we'll have to end it there.
43:30I want to thank you.
43:31Thank you, Professor.
43:31I want to thank as well Craig Capita, Selena Voloshin.
43:34Boris Bondareff, thank you so much for joining us from Geneva.
43:37Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:40Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:45Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:47Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:49Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:50Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:51Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:52Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:53Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:54Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:55Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:56Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:58Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
43:59Thank you for being with us here in the France 24-D.
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