March 23, 2024 • 27 mins
Yesterday’s devastating terrorist attack in Moscow—which left at least 115 dead and reportedly implicates the ISIS-K terror group—poses a significant political challenge for Russia’s freshly reelected president Vladimir Putin. In a bid to manage the fallout from his government’s intelligence failure, Putin's initial remarks this morning hinted at Ukrainian complicity, signaling a clear strategy to shift blame. What are the implications for Russian politics as well as Putin’s war in Ukraine? In this special episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Paul Saunders, a noted Russia expert and the president of the Center for the National Interest. Saunders served in the Bush Administration from 2003 to 2005 as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.
Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest, and my guest today for
(00:28):
our podcast in the National Interest is Paul Saunders, the president of the Center for
the National Interest. Paul is an expert on Russia, and we wanted to discuss the ghastly
terrorist attack that took place yesterday in Moscow and has claimed over 100 lives.
The United States had earlier this month warned Moscow that a terrorist attack might be imminent.
(00:55):
In a speech this past Tuesday, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the American
warning, saying that they were provocative and that, quote, these actions resemble outright
blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society, end quote. In effect,
Putin confirmed that the United States was issuing warnings. Paul, what does this imply
(01:21):
for Vladimir Putin now that the elections have recently taken place in Russia, endowing him with
a new term as president? Yet a week later, he's faced with what looks like an extremely embarrassing
lapse in national security in Russia. Jacob, thank you. It certainly looks like a massive
(01:41):
intelligence failure on the part of the Russian government and the Russian security services,
starting with clearly a failure to take seriously the warnings that they received from the United
States, which, you know, of course occurred in the context actually of other attempted
(02:01):
ISIS attacks in Russia. And the Russian security services actually had kind of prevented some other
attacks from occurring. So it looks very bad for Putin. And I think we're seeing kind of very
quickly an effort here to sort of seize the narrative and to to try to explain what occurred
(02:25):
in a way that doesn't reflect quite as badly on Mr. Putin and his leadership.
Russian authorities are now saying that some of these figures that were involved in this attack
were attempting to flee to Ukraine, which the Ukrainian authorities are stoutly denying and
which it looks like an attempt by Russia to drag Ukraine into this as well. What is your
(02:51):
interpretation of that? Well, look, I mean, first of all, the Russian government says that it's
arrested the four people who were responsible for the attack and the attack and a total of 11
who were involved in facilitating this and that they were attempting to flee to Ukraine. So
(03:13):
I guess the first question we have to ask ourselves is whether that's actually a true statement.
Did they arrest all the perpetrators or are they trying to create the impression that they
rolled this all up very quickly? And I don't think we can really know the answer to that question at
this point. Secondly, look, I mean, if you commit a terrorist attack in Moscow and you want to get
(03:41):
out of Russia, the borders to the West are probably the easiest borders to reach. So
there would be a certain logic in trying to flee in that direction. It's a chaotic region. There's
a war underway. It wouldn't be unreasonable for anyone with plans like that to think about that
(04:02):
as a way to slip out of Russia because that's a way that you can get out without going through a
border checkpoint or airport security or other systems that might catch you. Now, the question
that the Russians have raised and President Putin said this himself directly in a statement
(04:26):
today actually to the Russian people, he's been implying that this was somehow pre-arranged
with the Ukrainian government or that there was some cross-border coordination.
Who knows? But it certainly looks like an effort to deflect blame as part of a wider
(04:49):
systematic effort to deflect blame. At least one of the alleged perpetrators has already been
interviewed actually by Russian government television, sort of spilling his story, which
I think would not be the normal procedure for most criminal and terrorist investigations around
(05:13):
the world. So we kind of have to ask ourselves why that occurred in that way. And that individual
was actually claiming to have been recruited online and offered money actually to conduct
these attacks. Is Russia experiencing what other Western countries have experienced?
(05:37):
Blowback from we know that these ISIS that ISIS is active in Afghanistan, that these
were allegedly members of a cell in Afghanistan. Has Russian activity in Syria now prompted this
kind of blowback inside Russia itself? Look, I mean, that's been underway for a period of
(06:00):
some years already. So it would not really be kind of a new event actually to have ISIS or
other terrorists kind of angry at Moscow because of Russia's role in Afghanistan, Russia's role in
Syria, Russia's long war in Chechnya. There are a variety of different reasons for this. So, yes,
(06:25):
certainly it does look like blowback and very severe blowback in this case.
In December 1934, Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov was assassinated at the Somali Institute.
That event was either planned by Stalin or at a minimum seized upon him. It triggered beginning
(06:47):
of the Great Purges. Do you believe, as some are speculating, that Putin will seize on this event
to usher in a wider crackdown or even martial law in Russia?
Well, you know, first of all, just to be clear, you know, one can never rule out anything in Russia,
but I think it's fairly unlikely that the Russian government itself was behind this. It's pretty
(07:11):
hard to keep secrets like that in the modern age, even in Russia. And I think that's a little bit
of a reach, but who knows? More generally, however, will Putin seize on this? I think
Putin will seize on this. I expect he absolutely will seize on this. And it certainly provides
(07:36):
an opportunity to take a hard look at a variety of, you know, Russia's domestic security
agencies. And if there's anybody there that he wants to get rid of, this is certainly this
big opportunity. But, you know, I'd look more in the direction, perhaps, of a new round of mobilization
(08:02):
of soldiers to go fight in Ukraine. That's going to be politically difficult for Moscow at any time.
It's not popular. Many people support war in general, but many fewer people are interested
in fighting in them. And I think we see that in Russia in the same way that we do in other
(08:26):
countries. So I certainly wouldn't be surprised at all if this event and this kind of alleged
Ukrainian role in it also is used to justify a variety of actions in that direction.
So you do not see any sign that Putin's rule is being destabilized. On the contrary,
(08:50):
he will use this to fortify it.
Look, I think he'll try to use it to fortify it. I think he's in control of Russia's domestic media,
and that's allowing him to try to define what occurred here in ways that reflect well on him,
(09:14):
or at least don't reflect as badly on him as the otherwise might. Certainly, there will be people
who know or who think they know what really occurred here, who believe that there was an
ISIS-K terrorist attack, who believe that Putin and the Russian security services had their eye
(09:39):
off the ball because of the war in Ukraine. And certainly among some elements of the Russian elite
or others with access to outside information, it may discredit Putin. I think that's likely.
What impact will that have on Putin's continued leadership? I'm not sure that it'll have too much.
(10:04):
It looks like he's still pretty firmly in control.
I guess the one open question is, will there be further attacks? This was a very ambitious attack.
If there were further attacks in coming weeks, that would unsettle Russia, wouldn't it?
Oh, I imagine that it would. I expect that the Russian domestic security agencies will be,
(10:30):
at this point, going into overdrive to look for anyone else in the country who they think
may be planning something like this. It's always hard to know about the motives and the planning
processes the terrorist organizations use. There's a logic in trying to have multiple
(10:54):
sequential attacks, but as you execute each of them, you become increasingly vulnerable to the
domestic security agencies. So if you have the capability to do that already, there might also
be a certain argument for doing multiple things at the same time in different locations actually
(11:18):
for greater effect. But who knows? Certainly, if there are more attacks like this, particularly
attacks on this scale that are so destructive and horrific, and the official casualties,
I believe, at this point are 115. There are people on this Russian social media channel
(11:43):
Telegram talking about 150. The Russian authorities have essentially said that there was a big fire
and part of the roof collapsed and we're not really going to know until we get into the building and
go through the rubble. It's a terribly, terribly destructive attack, and pulling off something else
(12:10):
on that scale soon may prove to be challenging. Paul, one thing I wonder about is in the aspect
of US-Russian relations, which is that if Putin had not publicized this American warning, he could
have dismissed it right now. He could have said, well, we were never really warned or we didn't
(12:32):
know, but he actually went out and denounced the warning. What effect does that have inside Russia
itself? Yeah, this is the whole challenge. And of course, there was, from what we know, a private
warning first, and then of course a public statement on the US embassy website. So I think that Putin
(12:59):
may have felt a need to say something because of this announcement on the US embassy website.
The remarks that he made, I believe actually were remarks in an address that he was giving to
security agency officials in Moscow. So it looked a little bit actually like kind of a gratuitous
(13:25):
slap at the United States. But yes, it put him on the record denouncing this warning that he
had that was offered. And I think that's why it took close to a day for him to get on Russian
(13:46):
television. That's why we've had these sort of contorted explanations emerging that, well,
maybe they were Islamist terrorists, but they were recruited online and offered money.
(14:07):
And who knows where that money came from? And by the way, it looks like there was some coordination
in their effort to escape Russia. We're seeing all of that as an effort to try to deflect
responsibility from him. And it's noteworthy that in his own remarks so far, he made this sort of
(14:35):
reference to coordination with their effort to flee, but he didn't really provide a lot of other
detail. The investigation is ongoing. We've apprehended these people. And that's also kind
(14:55):
of interesting. He's sort of leaving it to the Russian media, which of course is largely
government controlled. He's leaving it to the Russian media to explain to Russian citizens what
occurred so that he kind of doesn't need personally to explain himself.
(15:18):
To what degree, and this may be a question that no one in the West can really answer because Kremlin
politics is pretty opaque, but to what degree do you think this revives some degree of unease
in elite circles with Putin's rule? We saw that with the rebellion before with the Wagner Brigade
(15:43):
about a year ago. Then things seem to die down. The war in Ukraine seems to be more successful.
But now you have a real serious terror incident inside Moscow. Do you think that would revive
at least some sense of unease among those elite circles?
Well, of course, the Russian elite isn't monolithic, I think is the first thing that I would say there.
(16:12):
There are economic elites, there are security elites, there are other elements of the elite.
Certainly, I think the economic elites were shocked by the decision to start the war in Ukraine
in the first place. Within the security elites, I think you've seen certainly when you look at
(16:38):
Wagner and you gaining pergosian, people who were very frustrated with the conduct of the war
and thought that it wasn't well executed. A lot of that was reflected also by their
Russian military commentators on Telegram. There was real frustration there. When the war
(17:06):
wasn't going well, there was a broader effort inside particularly the security elite
to pin the blame on one group or another. So you have a little bit of military
complaining that the intelligence services didn't give them good information in advance
(17:26):
of the war and that's why the beginning phases of the war went as poorly as they did.
Then you have others trying to pin the blame on the military. I think the key question
in the final analysis is if you're in one of these elite groups and you're frustrated with Putin and
(17:51):
his leadership, what can you do about it? Are there like-minded people who you trust sufficiently
that you can talk to without yourself being arrested, investigated, or worse?
If you somehow succeed in having impact on Russian policy, is that going to lead to a wholesale
(18:22):
reevaluation of Western policy toward Russia and removal of sanctions and other things?
Or is that not really a possibility? So I think there are a lot of big questions there.
Paul, I want to ask you a final question and spread the ambit a bit wider, which is that
(18:47):
last night, Ukraine fired off more drone attacks against Russian oil refineries and they were
fired off more drone attacks against Russian oil refineries in the region of Samara.
Despite Biden administration warnings, are we just entering what looks like a time of troubles
(19:10):
for Russia and Ukraine? That we've just entered a new era of profound instability
that is not going to go away. Look, I mean, if you look to people like
Karl von Clausewitz, the noted German war theorist, he would say, once you start a war,
(19:35):
there's a tendency to escalate and the side that's prepared to escalate the most is going to win.
Certainly in the case of Ukraine, I think the Ukrainian leadership and many Ukrainian people
feel that their country is in a war for its survival. And when you're in a war for survival,
(19:59):
then gasoline prices in Ohio, for example, are during an election year. That may be a really big
concern for the Biden administration, but the Ukrainian leadership and the Ukrainian military
(20:20):
likely have more immediate concerns. They're actually trying to increase gas prices in Russia,
by the way. And Russia suspended at the beginning of March its own gasoline exports for six months
for precisely this reason. It is an illusion in many respects for US leaders to believe that they
(20:43):
can contain and manage this conflict because certainly Russia is not responding to our advice.
And Ukraine obviously is dependent to a very large extent or has been at any rate. But
if there's no further forthcoming American help to Ukraine and that leverage over their
(21:12):
war fighting sort of no longer exists, then I think we have much less influence on the tactics
that Ukraine uses. And it does really risk instability, uncertainty, escalation,
(21:33):
horizontal escalation, vertical escalation. It's a very dangerous situation.
I guess just to try and be slightly more precise, Russia has been fairly immune internally from this
conflict until the past couple of months with the Ukrainians stepping up the drone attacks
(21:55):
inside Russia. You couple that with what looks to be an extremely ambitious and well-executed
terrorist attack in Moscow. It just conveys the feeling again that the world is lurching away
from the stability we had during the Cold War toward a much more dangerous era.
(22:16):
Oh, I think the world is becoming far more complex and dangerous. I'd certainly agree with you very
much on that point. And if the attacks in the Moscow region kind of demonstrate anything,
(22:37):
it certainly demonstrates that Russia has more than one problem to worry about at the same time.
And Russia is not alone in that. The United States is kind of worried about Ukraine. We're
worried about China and Taiwan. We're worried about Iran. We're worried about the Houthis
(22:59):
and these attacks in the Red Sea. We're worried about Israel and Gaza and so many other issues.
And again, there's, I think on the part of some, an illusion about the extent to which
we really have influence over all of this and control and shape it. And especially the extent
(23:26):
to which we can do all of that at the same time with one government and one president
and one secretary of defense and one chairman of the joint chiefs and one CIA director and one
secretary of state and sorry, one national security advisor if I didn't mention the national
(23:50):
security advisor. Our government kind of only has so much capacity and you're absolutely right.
The world is just an increasingly complicated and dangerous place.
Final, final question. It just occurs to me that Vladimir Putin has created an enormous
(24:12):
mess in Ukraine and he just got hit in Moscow. If he is unable to deal with these problems
successfully, isn't it likely that a more ruthless leader will supplant him in the next couple of
years? I don't think that we really know the answer to that. I mean, there's success kind of falls
(24:39):
along a spectrum and he doesn't need to be perfectly successful. Nobody will be,
he only needs to be successful enough. And at the same time, he needs to through a combination of
threats and buying people off and setting them against one another and the various other tools
(25:05):
that he has at his disposal to manage the Russian elite. He needs to keep anyone from feeling
sufficiently secure that they think they can move on him. Now, Prigozhin, of course, was from a
certain perspective unexpectedly successful with his mutiny in the sense that it went a lot further
(25:35):
than many thought something like that really could. But from another perspective, if you're part of
the Russian elite, that failed and he was killed when his jet exploded. This is a very
interesting case. This is one of those cases when I think there's a saying, you know,
(26:03):
that I'll paraphrase, you know, if you're going to go after the king, you kind of have to kill the
king. Putin, in other words, is more than ruthless enough already. Well, you know, he's quite ruthless.
I think he certainly noted that Gorbachev's lack of ruthlessness got him into real trouble
(26:30):
as the Soviet Union was unraveling. And I think he's probably prepared to do a lot more than he
has so far to keep things together and to stay in power. Well, Paul, thank you for these acute
observations on an early Saturday morning. We will no doubt return to these topics again.
(26:55):
And thank you and thank you to everyone for listening. Thank you, gentlemen.
(27:25):
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest, and my guest today for
(00:28):
our podcast in the National Interest is Paul Saunders, the president of the Center for
the National Interest. Paul is an expert on Russia, and we wanted to discuss the ghastly
terrorist attack that took place yesterday in Moscow and has claimed over 100 lives.
The United States had earlier this month warned Moscow that a terrorist attack might be imminent.
(00:55):
In a speech this past Tuesday, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the American
warning, saying that they were provocative and that, quote, these actions resemble outright
blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society, end quote. In effect,
Putin confirmed that the United States was issuing warnings. Paul, what does this imply
(01:21):
for Vladimir Putin now that the elections have recently taken place in Russia, endowing him with
a new term as president? Yet a week later, he's faced with what looks like an extremely embarrassing
lapse in national security in Russia. Jacob, thank you. It certainly looks like a massive
(01:41):
intelligence failure on the part of the Russian government and the Russian security services,
starting with clearly a failure to take seriously the warnings that they received from the United
States, which, you know, of course occurred in the context actually of other attempted
(02:01):
ISIS attacks in Russia. And the Russian security services actually had kind of prevented some other
attacks from occurring. So it looks very bad for Putin. And I think we're seeing kind of very
quickly an effort here to sort of seize the narrative and to to try to explain what occurred
(02:25):
in a way that doesn't reflect quite as badly on Mr. Putin and his leadership.
Russian authorities are now saying that some of these figures that were involved in this attack
were attempting to flee to Ukraine, which the Ukrainian authorities are stoutly denying and
which it looks like an attempt by Russia to drag Ukraine into this as well. What is your
(02:51):
interpretation of that? Well, look, I mean, first of all, the Russian government says that it's
arrested the four people who were responsible for the attack and the attack and a total of 11
who were involved in facilitating this and that they were attempting to flee to Ukraine. So
(03:13):
I guess the first question we have to ask ourselves is whether that's actually a true statement.
Did they arrest all the perpetrators or are they trying to create the impression that they
rolled this all up very quickly? And I don't think we can really know the answer to that question at
this point. Secondly, look, I mean, if you commit a terrorist attack in Moscow and you want to get
(03:41):
out of Russia, the borders to the West are probably the easiest borders to reach. So
there would be a certain logic in trying to flee in that direction. It's a chaotic region. There's
a war underway. It wouldn't be unreasonable for anyone with plans like that to think about that
(04:02):
as a way to slip out of Russia because that's a way that you can get out without going through a
border checkpoint or airport security or other systems that might catch you. Now, the question
that the Russians have raised and President Putin said this himself directly in a statement
(04:26):
today actually to the Russian people, he's been implying that this was somehow pre-arranged
with the Ukrainian government or that there was some cross-border coordination.
Who knows? But it certainly looks like an effort to deflect blame as part of a wider
(04:49):
systematic effort to deflect blame. At least one of the alleged perpetrators has already been
interviewed actually by Russian government television, sort of spilling his story, which
I think would not be the normal procedure for most criminal and terrorist investigations around
(05:13):
the world. So we kind of have to ask ourselves why that occurred in that way. And that individual
was actually claiming to have been recruited online and offered money actually to conduct
these attacks. Is Russia experiencing what other Western countries have experienced?
(05:37):
Blowback from we know that these ISIS that ISIS is active in Afghanistan, that these
were allegedly members of a cell in Afghanistan. Has Russian activity in Syria now prompted this
kind of blowback inside Russia itself? Look, I mean, that's been underway for a period of
(06:00):
some years already. So it would not really be kind of a new event actually to have ISIS or
other terrorists kind of angry at Moscow because of Russia's role in Afghanistan, Russia's role in
Syria, Russia's long war in Chechnya. There are a variety of different reasons for this. So, yes,
(06:25):
certainly it does look like blowback and very severe blowback in this case.
In December 1934, Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov was assassinated at the Somali Institute.
That event was either planned by Stalin or at a minimum seized upon him. It triggered beginning
(06:47):
of the Great Purges. Do you believe, as some are speculating, that Putin will seize on this event
to usher in a wider crackdown or even martial law in Russia?
Well, you know, first of all, just to be clear, you know, one can never rule out anything in Russia,
but I think it's fairly unlikely that the Russian government itself was behind this. It's pretty
(07:11):
hard to keep secrets like that in the modern age, even in Russia. And I think that's a little bit
of a reach, but who knows? More generally, however, will Putin seize on this? I think
Putin will seize on this. I expect he absolutely will seize on this. And it certainly provides
(07:36):
an opportunity to take a hard look at a variety of, you know, Russia's domestic security
agencies. And if there's anybody there that he wants to get rid of, this is certainly this
big opportunity. But, you know, I'd look more in the direction, perhaps, of a new round of mobilization
(08:02):
of soldiers to go fight in Ukraine. That's going to be politically difficult for Moscow at any time.
It's not popular. Many people support war in general, but many fewer people are interested
in fighting in them. And I think we see that in Russia in the same way that we do in other
(08:26):
countries. So I certainly wouldn't be surprised at all if this event and this kind of alleged
Ukrainian role in it also is used to justify a variety of actions in that direction.
So you do not see any sign that Putin's rule is being destabilized. On the contrary,
(08:50):
he will use this to fortify it.
Look, I think he'll try to use it to fortify it. I think he's in control of Russia's domestic media,
and that's allowing him to try to define what occurred here in ways that reflect well on him,
(09:14):
or at least don't reflect as badly on him as the otherwise might. Certainly, there will be people
who know or who think they know what really occurred here, who believe that there was an
ISIS-K terrorist attack, who believe that Putin and the Russian security services had their eye
(09:39):
off the ball because of the war in Ukraine. And certainly among some elements of the Russian elite
or others with access to outside information, it may discredit Putin. I think that's likely.
What impact will that have on Putin's continued leadership? I'm not sure that it'll have too much.
(10:04):
It looks like he's still pretty firmly in control.
I guess the one open question is, will there be further attacks? This was a very ambitious attack.
If there were further attacks in coming weeks, that would unsettle Russia, wouldn't it?
Oh, I imagine that it would. I expect that the Russian domestic security agencies will be,
(10:30):
at this point, going into overdrive to look for anyone else in the country who they think
may be planning something like this. It's always hard to know about the motives and the planning
processes the terrorist organizations use. There's a logic in trying to have multiple
(10:54):
sequential attacks, but as you execute each of them, you become increasingly vulnerable to the
domestic security agencies. So if you have the capability to do that already, there might also
be a certain argument for doing multiple things at the same time in different locations actually
(11:18):
for greater effect. But who knows? Certainly, if there are more attacks like this, particularly
attacks on this scale that are so destructive and horrific, and the official casualties,
I believe, at this point are 115. There are people on this Russian social media channel
(11:43):
Telegram talking about 150. The Russian authorities have essentially said that there was a big fire
and part of the roof collapsed and we're not really going to know until we get into the building and
go through the rubble. It's a terribly, terribly destructive attack, and pulling off something else
(12:10):
on that scale soon may prove to be challenging. Paul, one thing I wonder about is in the aspect
of US-Russian relations, which is that if Putin had not publicized this American warning, he could
have dismissed it right now. He could have said, well, we were never really warned or we didn't
(12:32):
know, but he actually went out and denounced the warning. What effect does that have inside Russia
itself? Yeah, this is the whole challenge. And of course, there was, from what we know, a private
warning first, and then of course a public statement on the US embassy website. So I think that Putin
(12:59):
may have felt a need to say something because of this announcement on the US embassy website.
The remarks that he made, I believe actually were remarks in an address that he was giving to
security agency officials in Moscow. So it looked a little bit actually like kind of a gratuitous
(13:25):
slap at the United States. But yes, it put him on the record denouncing this warning that he
had that was offered. And I think that's why it took close to a day for him to get on Russian
(13:46):
television. That's why we've had these sort of contorted explanations emerging that, well,
maybe they were Islamist terrorists, but they were recruited online and offered money.
(14:07):
And who knows where that money came from? And by the way, it looks like there was some coordination
in their effort to escape Russia. We're seeing all of that as an effort to try to deflect
responsibility from him. And it's noteworthy that in his own remarks so far, he made this sort of
(14:35):
reference to coordination with their effort to flee, but he didn't really provide a lot of other
detail. The investigation is ongoing. We've apprehended these people. And that's also kind
(14:55):
of interesting. He's sort of leaving it to the Russian media, which of course is largely
government controlled. He's leaving it to the Russian media to explain to Russian citizens what
occurred so that he kind of doesn't need personally to explain himself.
(15:18):
To what degree, and this may be a question that no one in the West can really answer because Kremlin
politics is pretty opaque, but to what degree do you think this revives some degree of unease
in elite circles with Putin's rule? We saw that with the rebellion before with the Wagner Brigade
(15:43):
about a year ago. Then things seem to die down. The war in Ukraine seems to be more successful.
But now you have a real serious terror incident inside Moscow. Do you think that would revive
at least some sense of unease among those elite circles?
Well, of course, the Russian elite isn't monolithic, I think is the first thing that I would say there.
(16:12):
There are economic elites, there are security elites, there are other elements of the elite.
Certainly, I think the economic elites were shocked by the decision to start the war in Ukraine
in the first place. Within the security elites, I think you've seen certainly when you look at
(16:38):
Wagner and you gaining pergosian, people who were very frustrated with the conduct of the war
and thought that it wasn't well executed. A lot of that was reflected also by their
Russian military commentators on Telegram. There was real frustration there. When the war
(17:06):
wasn't going well, there was a broader effort inside particularly the security elite
to pin the blame on one group or another. So you have a little bit of military
complaining that the intelligence services didn't give them good information in advance
(17:26):
of the war and that's why the beginning phases of the war went as poorly as they did.
Then you have others trying to pin the blame on the military. I think the key question
in the final analysis is if you're in one of these elite groups and you're frustrated with Putin and
(17:51):
his leadership, what can you do about it? Are there like-minded people who you trust sufficiently
that you can talk to without yourself being arrested, investigated, or worse?
If you somehow succeed in having impact on Russian policy, is that going to lead to a wholesale
(18:22):
reevaluation of Western policy toward Russia and removal of sanctions and other things?
Or is that not really a possibility? So I think there are a lot of big questions there.
Paul, I want to ask you a final question and spread the ambit a bit wider, which is that
(18:47):
last night, Ukraine fired off more drone attacks against Russian oil refineries and they were
fired off more drone attacks against Russian oil refineries in the region of Samara.
Despite Biden administration warnings, are we just entering what looks like a time of troubles
(19:10):
for Russia and Ukraine? That we've just entered a new era of profound instability
that is not going to go away. Look, I mean, if you look to people like
Karl von Clausewitz, the noted German war theorist, he would say, once you start a war,
(19:35):
there's a tendency to escalate and the side that's prepared to escalate the most is going to win.
Certainly in the case of Ukraine, I think the Ukrainian leadership and many Ukrainian people
feel that their country is in a war for its survival. And when you're in a war for survival,
(19:59):
then gasoline prices in Ohio, for example, are during an election year. That may be a really big
concern for the Biden administration, but the Ukrainian leadership and the Ukrainian military
(20:20):
likely have more immediate concerns. They're actually trying to increase gas prices in Russia,
by the way. And Russia suspended at the beginning of March its own gasoline exports for six months
for precisely this reason. It is an illusion in many respects for US leaders to believe that they
(20:43):
can contain and manage this conflict because certainly Russia is not responding to our advice.
And Ukraine obviously is dependent to a very large extent or has been at any rate. But
if there's no further forthcoming American help to Ukraine and that leverage over their
(21:12):
war fighting sort of no longer exists, then I think we have much less influence on the tactics
that Ukraine uses. And it does really risk instability, uncertainty, escalation,
(21:33):
horizontal escalation, vertical escalation. It's a very dangerous situation.
I guess just to try and be slightly more precise, Russia has been fairly immune internally from this
conflict until the past couple of months with the Ukrainians stepping up the drone attacks
(21:55):
inside Russia. You couple that with what looks to be an extremely ambitious and well-executed
terrorist attack in Moscow. It just conveys the feeling again that the world is lurching away
from the stability we had during the Cold War toward a much more dangerous era.
(22:16):
Oh, I think the world is becoming far more complex and dangerous. I'd certainly agree with you very
much on that point. And if the attacks in the Moscow region kind of demonstrate anything,
(22:37):
it certainly demonstrates that Russia has more than one problem to worry about at the same time.
And Russia is not alone in that. The United States is kind of worried about Ukraine. We're
worried about China and Taiwan. We're worried about Iran. We're worried about the Houthis
(22:59):
and these attacks in the Red Sea. We're worried about Israel and Gaza and so many other issues.
And again, there's, I think on the part of some, an illusion about the extent to which
we really have influence over all of this and control and shape it. And especially the extent
(23:26):
to which we can do all of that at the same time with one government and one president
and one secretary of defense and one chairman of the joint chiefs and one CIA director and one
secretary of state and sorry, one national security advisor if I didn't mention the national
(23:50):
security advisor. Our government kind of only has so much capacity and you're absolutely right.
The world is just an increasingly complicated and dangerous place.
Final, final question. It just occurs to me that Vladimir Putin has created an enormous
(24:12):
mess in Ukraine and he just got hit in Moscow. If he is unable to deal with these problems
successfully, isn't it likely that a more ruthless leader will supplant him in the next couple of
years? I don't think that we really know the answer to that. I mean, there's success kind of falls
(24:39):
along a spectrum and he doesn't need to be perfectly successful. Nobody will be,
he only needs to be successful enough. And at the same time, he needs to through a combination of
threats and buying people off and setting them against one another and the various other tools
(25:05):
that he has at his disposal to manage the Russian elite. He needs to keep anyone from feeling
sufficiently secure that they think they can move on him. Now, Prigozhin, of course, was from a
certain perspective unexpectedly successful with his mutiny in the sense that it went a lot further
(25:35):
than many thought something like that really could. But from another perspective, if you're part of
the Russian elite, that failed and he was killed when his jet exploded. This is a very
interesting case. This is one of those cases when I think there's a saying, you know,
(26:03):
that I'll paraphrase, you know, if you're going to go after the king, you kind of have to kill the
king. Putin, in other words, is more than ruthless enough already. Well, you know, he's quite ruthless.
I think he certainly noted that Gorbachev's lack of ruthlessness got him into real trouble
(26:30):
as the Soviet Union was unraveling. And I think he's probably prepared to do a lot more than he
has so far to keep things together and to stay in power. Well, Paul, thank you for these acute
observations on an early Saturday morning. We will no doubt return to these topics again.
(26:55):
And thank you and thank you to everyone for listening. Thank you, gentlemen.
(27:25):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!