November 29, 2025 • 57 mins
Stephen talks to Andrew Ryvkin again - this time for Andrew to answer listeners' questions.
Andrew Ryvkin self-describes as having worked as a Russian propagandist. Stephen interviewed him on this podcast, on episodes released on the 1st November and 8th November. Go back and listen to those before listening to this one.
Andrew's Substack : https://andrewryvkin.substack.com/
Andrew's website : https://andrewryvkin.com/
Until Monday there is a €10 discount on joining SEND7 as a yearly supporter, using the code BLACKFRIDAY25
Our supporters have access to all of our transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets and world news quizzes, at send7.org
Andrew Ryvkin self-describes as having worked as a Russian propagandist. Stephen interviewed him on this podcast, on episodes released on the 1st November and 8th November. Go back and listen to those before listening to this one.
Andrew's Substack : https://andrewryvkin.substack.com/
Andrew's website : https://andrewryvkin.com/
Until Monday there is a €10 discount on joining SEND7 as a yearly supporter, using the code BLACKFRIDAY25
Our supporters have access to all of our transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets and world news quizzes, at send7.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, this is Stephen. Today.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm joined again by Andrew Rivkin. Andrew self describes as
having worked as a Russian propagandist in the two thousands
and twenty tens. If you haven't already listened to them,
then I highly recommend going back and listening to the
two part interview that I released with Andrew, where he
(00:23):
talks about his life and working as a propagandist in Russia,
and then we talk about propaganda more generally. Those episodes
were released on the first of November and the eighth
of November. After releasing those episodes, I asked our listeners
to send in questions for Andrew, and in this episode,
which was recorded eight days ago, I asked him those questions.
(00:47):
Thank you to everyone who sent in a question for Andrew.
As always, this podcast is free, but it is made
possible by our amazing seven supporters, who also have access
to our transcripts of every episode, including this one, vocabulary
lists for each transcript, weekly worksheets, and a weekly world
(01:08):
news quiz. You can become a supporter at sendseven dot org.
I've just extended the Black Friday offer until Monday, so
until Monday you can get ten euros off joining as
a yearly supporter using the code black Friday twenty five.
Any questions you can write to me at podcast at
(01:29):
senseven dot org. Now he is Andrew Rifkin. Part three
Your Questions. I am again joined by Andrew Rifkin. Andrew,
thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You have a very distinct position. I think of being
the first person to ever come back as a second
for a second round to answer question So thank you
so much for agreeing to do this.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It's very flattering.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I'll do my best to answer all questions.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Let's hope I make it work.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
We have a really nice mix actually of audience questions,
some about your life, a little bit more of your
experience as a Russian propagandist, and then also a little
bit more about the way that you feel about propaganda
in general, and then also a little bit about the
war in Ukraine as well. So right, starting with your life,
(02:35):
this is from Martin in Germany while you were working
as a propagandist. How has your own opinion about the
Kremlin and politics changed and how could you form a
propaganda free opinion? Was it hard or just normal for
you to try not to believe the products of the
opinion machinery you had to work with.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Very good question, very interesting question, And I have to
say I always for me, I think it was not
because I'm super smart or anything like that, but because
I probably grew up in America and sort of I
don't know, formative years we're here in the United States
(03:22):
when I came to Russia and I did start working
for the Kremlin and I started doing propaganda. To me,
in my head, it was still somewhat of a game.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It was.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
I was kind of removed from that in my mind
because I grew up on American TV shows. I watched
American news, sitcoms, read English language books. I've always consumed
much more English language stuff than I did Russian language stuff.
So it kind of it gave me a little wall
(03:55):
between the propaganda itself and I would think system of beliefs.
So I never really some things I agreed with, some
things I didn't, But just as with anywhere, so it's
not even right now. I watch CNN, some things I
agree with, some things I don't. I don't think that's
(04:18):
my being a victim of propaganda. But for the most
part No. I would say this in terms of what
I thought about the Krumlin and the people working in propaganda.
I saw them as very smart, ambitious, well read, worldly,
(04:39):
highly educated. Everyone had a wonderful education. These some had PhDs,
and these were people with degrees and philosophy or history,
you know, these were these would be people who you
would love to have a very long conversation with somewhere
at a restaurant or like on the porch over wine,
(05:02):
for hours, talking about everything.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So in that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Sense, I very much respected them, and I liked them
regardless of what they did, because they were just so interesting.
But the things that they said to me, I could
always tell when it's the person speaking and when it's
their job.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Is speaking for them.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
However, that was of course some time ago, a long
time ago, when I was leaving Russia, when the war
in Ukraine started, and even before that a few years.
I could see that a lot of these people they
started believing their own propaganda because they were inside of
(05:50):
it for so long and they didn't have this alternative
that I did. They couldn't come home and turn off
everything Russian, get back to Seinfeld or whatever, and just
not regarded as real. So I saw with a lot
of them, not everyone, but with a lot of them
they kind of started believing the stuff they were paid
(06:13):
to say, which simultaneously made them much less interesting as
people because they it's like they gave up and they
lost to that machine. And when I was still working
with them, they lived double lives.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, fantastic. Okay, this is from luku In.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Actually I don't know where they're from, but this was
from Spotify. Did your family know what you were doing,
and if so, what were their reactions? Just to be clear,
I'm not one hundred percent sure if Luca is talking
about how you were working in the propaganda in the
first place or when you left the propaganda world, but
(06:57):
maybe you could talk about both of those.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Okay, So my mom didn't like it, But to her,
she really didn't like it. She grew up in the
Soviet Union and she was always against the power. She
was like a hippie, and in nineteen sixty eight when
the Soviets went into Czechoslovakia, she was arrested for protests,
(07:27):
et cetera, et cetera. So she didn't like it. Definitely, Again,
she didn't. I don't think neither she nor I thought
that it would lead to something this bad like the war.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
But still and my.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Father, we didn't talk much with him, but he was
more okay with that. But I think that maybe because
for him it was like, I actually have a career,
I have money. I'm not like, you know, some aimless
student somewhere actually have a job. So I think that
was more of his opinion.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So I would say that if.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
We're talking about the work in the propaganda paraz.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, and would they have been worried for you when
you were leaving that propaganda world.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
When I left the propaganda world and I got beat up, Yes,
yes they were worried, but not not too worried now,
not like oh you have to leave Russia or anything
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, it's something. This is not one of the questions.
This is just me speaking now. But in the last
episode with you, you spoke about the people who beat you up.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Do you want to talk about them a bit?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Tell us who they were and what their jobs were
a little bit so we can get a more full picture.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I mean, it was covered a lot by the by
the media.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
One of them, one of them was actually at some
point a host of the of the TV show where
I worked, so it was like rather personal for him,
and strangely since that time, because they still lived in Russia,
we kind of managed to put that behind.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Us, we like.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But the other guy was a die hard artcore Putinist
who was Putin's election trusted person. I still don't know
that word in English. I guess representative popular representative of Putin.
And obviously with him it was you know, mutual hatred
all the way. He passed away a few years ago.
(09:41):
Uh so that's basically his story. But yeah, yeah, so
like for a number of years, it was kind of
risky because both of them were I mean, it's Moscow.
Moscow is very so social. It used to be you
could have Kremlin people in our position people at the
same parties, you could have them at the same clubs, restaurants.
(10:06):
You would see them and they would have hundreds of
mutual friends.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
It's a very it's.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
A kind of situation that's very hard to imagine. But
let's say nineteen twenties Berlin, you would have the Socialists
and the National Socialists going to the same poetry readings.
So it would be like that, and for a few years,
I was very I was trying very hard not to
see any of them because they're public people, etc. But
(10:34):
with one of them we did sort of like not makeup,
but kind of understood our differences. But the other one,
the one who was directly the Krumlin guy, hired by
the Krumblin, paid by the Krumblin.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah, that was that was entirely different.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I've seen their names in something else published. I can't
remember whether it was by you or by somebody else
writing about you, But you obviously did identify them in
public at some point. Did the identification of them talking
about them? Did that not make you worried that they
(11:14):
would come back for more?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
It did make me worried that they would come back
for more. But also that incident when they did assault me,
it became the number one news of that day because
again I was like a chief political correspondent for GQ.
It's a big magazine, and everyone was commenting on this,
(11:39):
and obviously I wrote about this to sort of, first
of all, to let people know that, I mean, I'm
a journalist and I just got beat up. And second
of all, because I thought, and I still do think,
that it would kind of put some sort of protection
in the future against these like future assaults, so that
(12:01):
I wouldn't keep it to myself, but I would be like, hey,
I'm a journalist. I was assaulted by these people. And
that put these people on the defensive, and then they
had to go online and they had to be like, well,
this has nothing to do with politics. We just hate them.
And it wasn't the two of us, and we didn't
have like, you know, documents that prevented the police from
(12:22):
stopping us, et cetera, et cetera. But it worked in
the sense that, well, I was never assaulted again. And
what sucks about this is that if you still google
my name in Russian you get that scandal. And yeah,
and a woman I was recently dating googled me and
(12:43):
she was like, do you get into fights on the
streets or something? And I'm reading like like like the
Moscow Times, right, it's about your street fights, Like what's wrong?
I had to explain, But it did. I think it
did kind of protect me, So I would say it
was the right thing to do again in twenty twelve,
right now, things would be different.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Right, Yeah, very brave anyway, Okay, this is from Kristoph
in poland completely different about the war. How much is
China involved in the war. Don't you think that the
war between Russia and the West is a great opportunity
for China.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Well, I don't think Russia's not fighting the West. Russia
is fighting Ukraine because it's the West is supporting Ukraine,
and Russia is trying to do like hybrid operations in
the West and Europe things like that. But I would
not call this a war war considering that there have
(13:43):
been a number of wars that Russia did literally fight
against the West, and those were we all know them,
far bloodier and bigger, et cetera, et cetera. The question
was like, is it beneficial for China.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Yeah, I think it's beneficial in the sense that it
that first of all, Russia became dependent on China.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
That's very good for the Chinese.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Russia was never that dependent on anyone, and now it's
very dependent in China. It sells its oil to China,
it sells its natural resources. China of course provides cells
to Russia. The component's numerous components for weapons, just all
these things that keep the Russian war machine running. So
(14:33):
that's beneficial for China. It makes a lot of money
in this, and of course it keeps the West distracted
with this war, and it allows China to sort of
sort of do.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
What it wants.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
But also just to know, obviously there are news about that,
their opinions about that everywhere. China is not Russia's run
in this. It's not an ally. It just makes money.
Nothing that China does for Russia. It's free nothing. So
it's not the same situation as like, you know, Poland
(15:08):
supports Ukraine and China supports Russia. No, because Poland gives
Ukraine things for free and supports it everywhere, and China
just sells and tries to get the best deal and
Russia simply has no choice.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Great, Okay, this is from Luciano in Brazil. Good afternoon, Andrew.
Is quite long, but I'm gonna read the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Good afternoon, Andrew. I'm a Brazilian physician. Congratulations for the
amazing interview. Your capacity to understand, forgive yourself and a
bubble radically modify your life after that is impressive. I
wonder if you see a shrink. Thank you for sharing
these important facts with SIN seven listeners. I have been
to Saint Petersburg in twenty eighteen as a tourist and
(15:53):
sensed an atmosphere of sadness and fear among regular people.
The taxi driver, the waiter, the guide, et cetera. Was
so intense that they refused to speak about politics. My
question for you is, do you think that the daily
life and the way people interact with strangers and even
with family is affected by Putin's regimes fear? Doesn't it
(16:15):
look like the Nazi regime?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Okay, okay, so it looks nothing like the Nazi regime.
Russia in general does not look like a Nazi regime.
Not because it's so amazing, because Russia had Stalin. Russia's
experience with that was Stalin, it was not Hitler. So
(16:37):
it looks like Stalinism. It looks like people don't trust.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Each other, that's true.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
People are afraid to discuss things in public. I know
a lot of cases where foreigners would come to Russia,
not in twenty eighteen, but after.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The worst started.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Foreigners would come to Russia and they would get these
looks if they were speaking their native language, especially English, German, French,
so Spanish, and people trust each other less and with
the taxi drivers and everyone. Yeah, because there's a lot
of criminal charges against people who like It's called discrediting
(17:23):
the army, which is basically saying anything about the war.
So yes, that is definitely the case, and it has
become worse. It's not like Nazis. It's more like Stalin.
It's not entirely also like Stalin, because Putin is not Stalin.
So it's like a little but that love, there's fear.
(17:43):
I want to defend the city of Saint.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Petersburg, where I was born.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It is always sad. It's it is the most northernmost
million people strong city in the world. It is incredibly
cold and to the point that it has polar polar
days and polar nates, so people there are never happy.
And these are writing jokes about Saint Petersburg. So even
(18:09):
if you come to Seet Petersburg when it's going to
be democratic, no one's going to smile.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And yes, I do see a strength.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yes, great, Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
This is from someone in China who doesn't want to
share their name, as I am Chinese. Much of what
you described is very familiar to me. I witnessed the
process when all media in the country gradually transitioned into
official spokespeople for the state. This makes me curious about something.
I'm wondering, how did the independent media operate in Russia.
(18:43):
Did independent media exist there at least before the war
in Ukraine? If so, was there a transformation into official
propaganda or their effective disappearance a sudden event, or was
it a gradual process that went largely unnoticed by the public.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Well, I'm not too familiar with China, but I would
I would probably guess of listeners from Hong Kong, where
there was this transformation of media slowly losing its independence,
sometimes quicker, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and aligning with Beijing. Okay,
(19:23):
So in Russia, yes, definitely independent media. There was a
lot of independent media. The crackdown on independent media was ongoing.
It started from the moment that Putin came to power,
and first he went after big television networks. So the
first one was in two thousand and one or two,
(19:45):
I don't remember. It was the third largest television network
in Russia that Putin. That Putin sort of beheaded. He
put his own people, he made his own people buy
that network. It became very loyal, and then it went,
it went further, and I would say, like, let's say,
(20:08):
in right before the war, right right before the war,
a lot of media was shut down, but Russia still
had an independent TV channel that it could only broadcast online.
But you know, you would go online. It was called
TV Rain. It still exists. They're all in exile. You
could watch it on YouTube. You could watch it online.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It would have a number of.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Independent news websites, very good ones, very great investigations, anti
corruption investigations, amazing ones.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
It would have. It would have hybrid media.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Hybrid media, I think, is a Russian only invention where
the media would be loyal in some matters and not
loyal in other matters, so they would understand, Okay, we
can't write about Putin's family, but we can write about
this political activist going to jail. And the editors of
(21:06):
such media. Like, there's a media. It doesn't exist anymore.
It's called Echo of Moscow, which is a very popular
was it very popular radio station. It's all the liberals,
all the Democrats, all the opposition. People would go there
to give interviews and everyone in Moscow listened to it.
Millions of people listen to it. But it's editor in chief,
(21:29):
the main guy at the radio station you of course
new and communicated with everyone from the Krumlin and it
was very controlled. So but it's still existed right now.
Independent media exists, but not inside Russia.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It comes from the outside.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
So there's like Medusa, which is one of the greatest
news websites ever. They all went outside of Russia. They're
based in Latvia, the TV channel Rain, They're based in Amsterdam.
They all have apps. These apps all circumvent government firewalls,
you know, things like that, so that people could read
(22:09):
a lot of things that that would have.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
People reporting from Russia.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
The name of the reporter would not be mentioned or
it would be anonymous because that person would get in trouble.
But Russia is a very very media savvy culture, both
independent and state. It's extremely media savvy. So it everything
still exists. Everything is there, like just repressed or in
(22:35):
obscure websites.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But yeah, yeah, yeah great.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Coming back to the way that her question was asked,
it's in that case, it's was kind of a gradual
process and a sudden event, right because it was over
say ever since Putin was elected in you know, and
(23:00):
nineteen eighty ninety two and then and then it was
slowly becoming more and more propagandistic, less free. And then
when the invasion of Ukraine happened in February twenty twenty two,
there were lots of media organizations that were still more
or less independent that evacuated at that point, Right, that
(23:22):
left Russia or closed down at that point.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Is that more or less?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Right?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
It is more or less I would say this there
mostly I don't know fo one hundred percent, but mostly
there was no media that was independent and then became
propaganda for them. Maybe in the nineties it was independent,
I don't know, But for the Krumblin it's much easier
(23:48):
to close something down than it is to sort of
make it into a I don't know, like a bastion
of democracy or liberalism. Yes, the process went slowly, slowly, slowly,
I'd say after twenty one, which is one year before
the war, they started shutting them down. And the moment
the war started, that's when, like within two or three months,
(24:13):
all media and mus was shut down. Their websites were blocked,
and of course in that time all the journalists had
to leave. Those who didn't leave they either went to
jail or they stopped working. They stopped being journalists. And
I'm looking at their instagrams now because I'm friends with
a lot of them, and a lot of them are
doing state friendly projects like not propaganda, but just you know.
(24:39):
So they stopped consciously just so they could live in
Moscow and do their work what they trained to do.
They stopped doing investigative journalism or this freedom fighting, and
they started doing cooking shows or things like that and
not talking about politics.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Right right, Okay, this is from Ruichi in Japan. Do
Russian people know about the real information of the war?
For example, the casualties of the Russian army. I learned
the history of World War Two, and the Japanese army
told lies about the battles, and newspapers wrote as they
(25:15):
were told. But still, while Japan said that they were winning,
the battle places were coming closer and closer to Japan,
so some people could tell that they were actually losing.
Is something similar happening in Russia?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Well, I'm sure no.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Russians know for the most part what's happening in the war.
They know it because, I mean, first and foremost, the
most important thing telegram. It still exists in Russia. It's free,
it's available to everyone, and if you have telegram, Okay,
you can sign up to Volodo mar Zelenski's telegram channel,
(25:54):
or you can sign up to a lot of Russian
militorney channels or Ukrainian ones. It doesn't matter. Even when
you're watching the TV in Russia. No, they don't tell
you about the casualties. They only tell you about the victories.
But every city has new cemetery's graveyards with soldiers graves.
(26:17):
A lot of people made a lot of money from
this war, as in because if most people fighting for
Russia in Ukraine get paid to fight, they're not conscripted,
they're not taking off the streets.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
They get paid to fight a.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Lot of money, like a lot of money fIF sixty
thousand a year. So these are huge amounts for Russia.
These are big amounts for even Western countries. I would say.
So people do understand. They see those people die, they
see their contracts, they see people coming back buying new
cars and new apartments. But most importantly, most importantly, they
(26:53):
see that you know, the war has been going out
for almost four years. Now Russia is getting bombed. You
don't need the media to tell you that a rocket
is flying to your Ukrainian drone and that happens every day.
So I know that in Russia a lot of people
(27:14):
don't want the war to happen.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
They want to stop. Some people wanted to go on.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
But I don't think that anyone there thinks that Russia's
winning that pretty much everyone knows the situation.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Everyone knows the towns that are being fought over right now.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Everyone knows what kind of weapons like America or the
West are giving the Ukrainians the moment, for instance, when
Donald Trump said he might give Tomahawk missiles, some of
the people I knew in Russia they called me and
they were like, there are the Ukrainians going to get Tomahawks?
Like should I be worried? So, yeah, it's Russia does
(27:53):
not have one hundred percent, not yet. It does not
have one hundred percent control of information flow. It's trying
to do that, but not yet.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Just to remind you of where we were, you had
just been saying that Russians do know what is going
on in Ukraine. Russians do know the extent to which
the war is what it is, Yeah, more or less.
So I've just got a backup question to that. During
(28:32):
the nineteen eighties, the Soviets fought the war in Afghanistan,
and I think it was something like fifteen thousand soldiers
died or something like that. Yeah, which at the time
was the biggest war that the Soviets had fought since
World War Two. And I know that a lot of historians,
(28:56):
I think anyway, say that that is one of the
was one of the causes of the downfall of the
Soviet Union, or at least it helped to push it along.
Why is nothing like that happening in Russia today? I mean,
from what we can see and from the best evidence
(29:17):
and of numbers, it seems like ten times that many
Russians have died in this war.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, more yeah, probably more right, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I mean, the Ukrainians are saying that they've inflicted one
point one million casualties on Russia. Of course that includes dead,
civiely injured and captured, so it's a combination. But even
if you take you know, just a quarter of that,
that would be two.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Even if you say that, you know, they're massively exaggerating
because they want to, you know, cut in in half.
That's still one hundred and twenty five one hundred and
fifty thousand or something.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
It's a hell of a lot more than die in.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And before I get I'm imagining what people are going
to say in the comments to this. The Western analysts
have agreed with these numbers, have said that they are
more or less similar, and quite a few different countries
militaries have also said that those numbers are pretty close
to what it is in reality. So again, if the
Soviet war in Afghanistan was able to wake people up
(30:26):
to how bad things were and to make people very
angry about what was going on in Afghanistan, how could
nothing similar be happening today? And is that something to
do with a more total control of the propaganda space. However,
of course you did just say that Russians do know
what's going on. That's a very long rounded question there.
(30:47):
You can take that from any angle you.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
First of all, the Soviets had total control of propaganda.
Russia modern Russia does not. If a person in Russia
wants to listen to this podcast, our podcast right now,
they can do that. They can find the website, they
can go on YouTube, they can use a VPN. They
can't do that. None of that was the case in
(31:14):
the Soviet Union because the technology was different. You only
had television, radio in newspapers pretty much, that's it. And
they would block BBC Voice of America. So people back
then people knew much less. That's the first difference. But
(31:34):
there's a different there's something else too, and it's immensely important.
Can't struss just how important it is. People Soviet people,
not just Russian Soviets, all Soviets, Ukrainian's objects every week
who fought in Afghanistan. They were conscripted and the eight
(32:00):
told them, go go fight in Afghanistan. We want to
support our socialist brothers.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
These people were regarded by everyone as honorable warriors that
they go. It doesn't matter if you supported the war
against Afghanistan or not. I don't think that most Soviets
cared about Afghanistan. But it was like our boys are fighting.
(32:31):
It was entirely different. They were soldiers of an empire, essentially,
and that's why when they came back they didn't get
support from the state, but they had a lot of respect.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
If you were to.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Say in Russian Afghani, so Afghani means, it could mean
two things, Afghan person or Afghan veteran and being an
Afghan veteran was a badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
And everyone kind of knew.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
That the state, that the Soviet Union shouldn't have sent
you there, but you still went and you're a hero.
And people know the songs, the uniforms, things like that,
and they knew that they were fighting the Americans because
the Americans supplied the weapons everything. It was a warm
It's going to sound very strange and not justifying the
war in Afghanistan, but it was more noble. It's like,
(33:24):
we're an empire. We're going there in this desert to
fight these people. They're supported by another empire. Things like that.
Right now, one of my sources, who was a sociologist
in Russia told me a very interesting thing. He was like,
he said, what do you think, what do you think
(33:45):
happens when a Russian man dies in Ukraine? Russian soldier
gets killed in Ukraine? Do you think they breathe? They
don't really grieve. Do you think they're proud of him?
They're not proud at all. There's zero pride. There's absolutely
zero pride in this. The only reaction obviously his parents
(34:08):
grief has a family. But he said, the only reaction
to a soldier to a Russian soldier. Step now, one
of those hundreds of thousands dead proven dead is that
he took a risky job and he lost. That's it.
It was a risky contract. It didn't work out for him,
(34:30):
but at least the family got the money. And that
is an incredible departure from what even the warren Chechnia
was because people did not go to fight, and it
was also a horrible imperial war of conquest, but people
didn't Russians didn't go to fight the Chess for money,
and that's why they had this notion of like, that's
(34:55):
a tragedy.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Right now, people are not.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
The in this is that these deaths are not a
tragedy because these people are willing to go. And it's
an incredibly important distinction, something that never happened before. There
is no pride in that, because you can't be proud
of a mercenary. There's no patriotism in that, because again
you're either a patriot or you get paid a lot
(35:21):
of money. You can't really have both.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
And people, especially people in.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Russia, very militarist society, militant, very like a society that
loves guns and wars and everything. Inherently they do not
respect that, and these people who went to fight are
not respected, so their deaths don't matter nearly as much.
It sounds very cynical, but it's a person who took
(35:49):
on a risk, who got paid and it didn't work out.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
And in terms of like, the Soviet Union fell first
and foremost because of the economy, and it did. There
was no food in stores because it was socialism, and.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I think that's.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Much more important than a war. Obviously it hastened the
end of the Soviet Union, but the fact that there
you know, no food, bad medicine, you can't buy clothing,
all these things, and like socialism that stopped working and
communism did much more than a war. But of course
(36:33):
it's it did paint it did paint the leader as weak.
So if Russia loses in Ukraine, Putin is going to
seem weak. And if not Russia, but then Putin might
find himself being, you know, judged by the people in
a very bad, like pre revolutionary way.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Or something like this.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Like you said, you're a strong leader, but you lost,
and Russia can't have weak leaders.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Very long answer, yeah, no, In fact, I want to
go back to something you said a minute ago about
the fact that these soldiers are not respected. You know,
it's essentially people just seeing it as a lot of
money and if you die, then well that's bad luck.
(37:21):
This kind of idea. From what I can see, all
of the soldiers now fighting in Ukraine are volunteered, but
paid volunteers, and they still seem to be able to
get something like thirty thousand a month or something like that.
I think I've got that number right, and they've been
doing that constantly for years now.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And who are all these men?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I mean, how can they continuously, month after month just
produce another thirty thousand, of which you know the half
of them are dying presumably, and then they just they
just keep finding more. I mean, are these all just
this just show the size of Russia that they can
just keep on producing all of these presumably quite poor
(38:11):
men from different areas of this massive country to send
to Ukraine willingly, just because they want the money.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Last estimates that I heard is that they're expecting next
year to get about four hundred, four hundred and twenty
thousand volunteers, so this is roughly twelve hundred people a
day sign up so we've been talking for one hour.
That's however, I don't know fifty people. Fifty people signed
(38:45):
up as me and you we're talking about this.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
It is they do come from poor, poor regions.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Those regions are not poor anymore. Because so many people
from those regions died that the economy shifted. You would
see cities that used to be the worst in Russia
new buildings, new cars, new stores. Because so many people died,
everyone got fifty You get fifty thousand dollars when your
family gets fifty thousand dollars when you die.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
If you're fighting in.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Ukraine and they buy new apartments, you have It's called
in Russia deathonomics, where the death of people results in
upward mobility and the creation of a new middle class
that's outside of like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Obviously, I
would say this Russia. People in Russia not rich, definitely,
(39:42):
they're not like Western Europe. But it's also not the
poorest country in the world. When the war started, it
was not. It didn't have hunger, it didn't have like
you know, the it didn't have like failed state levels
of spare povert or anything like that. And it was
(40:02):
a question. For many of these people, it was a
question of well, I make four hundred bucks a month
or five hundred bucks a month, and it's not a lot,
or like at the best, I make like a thousand
dollars a month. But man, but here they're offering me,
I don't know, ten thousand dollars immediately at signing or
(40:25):
seven thousand and a lot of benefits and you get paid.
I think the salary now is two and a half
or three thousand dollars a month for fighting. For fighting
in Ukraine, you get paid additional bonuses, like if you
just imagine that kind of army and it's all official.
If you destroy an enemy tank or Ukrainian tank, you
(40:47):
get paid ten thousand dollars. If you destroy like a helicopter,
it's like one hundred thousand dollars. Everything is sold and bought.
It's it's the most capitalist war that I've seen in
my life. It's like the entire country is what's that.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Company's name, blackwater? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
But not professionals. So and they can produce it for
a while. Clearly, because.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
I don't want to generalize, but Russia has.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Russian culture has a different relationship to human life and
death and the price of life, and you know these things.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You could see it. It's not Putin.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
You could see it in Russian literature and Russian history revolutions.
Putin did not invent the Russian culture of feeding human beings.
Do not give him that credit. He's only been there
for twenty five years. Dostoyevsky has been there for much longer,
and he found this very effective combination of people who
(41:53):
don't really care about their lives and most importantly, they
don't care about getting killed or killing go and kill
for money. They do not care, and that's why, Yeah,
it worked. Fun fun little note when Prump came to
power in America this year, right and he started making
(42:16):
these movements towards Putin, saying how about we do this
and we and criming it could be yours and let's
under war.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Do you know the.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
Biggest advertising campaign, propaganda campaign that was going on in
Russia enlistment campaign to attract volunteers to fight.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
What it was called.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
It was called sign up to fight in the army
while you still have a chance, because like we're about
to sign peace and get that money, get that money,
like you sign up, like you get millions right now,
because if in a month, you know, Zelenski and Putin
are going to shake hands, there goes your opportunity. So
(42:57):
that's just so you would kind of understand the level
of cynicism there and the level you know, when cynicism
mixes with Dostoyevsky and capitalism of this is what happens.
So the thing I like to say to a lot
of people is that when they say that all Russians
(43:18):
they're afraid to protest outen, they you know, they they
all hate the war, but they are afraid to like protest,
et cetera, et cetera. Russia has sixteen hundred I think,
if I'm not mistaken political prisoners around that much, that's
about as many people as sign up to fight and
die in Ukraine every day. So that's that's the reality there.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Okay, I'm going to combine two questions here. This is
also from Ricci. I'd like to know more detail about
how Andrew expects the war could end. For me, I'd
expect some kind of coup in Russia. I'd rather say
I just hope for it, and I can't imagine any
other way for the war to end. I know Andrew
already spoke about it a bit, but I'd like to
(44:02):
hear more details if possible. And this one is from Christine.
She says, what would he guess about how long the
war in Ukraine would last?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
I don't know how long it could last. I know that,
and I don't think the war is going to end
with a coup. I think a coup might happen if
the war ends unfavorably towards Putin. Right now, it's not
the kind of situation where the war is going so
(44:35):
horrible that you know some generals want to kill Putin.
I mean they might, but no, But if, for instance,
Trump recently, just yesterday, I think, offered a new peace plan.
That peace plan is bad for Ukraine, but it's not
very good for Russia either. Russia only gets like four regions,
and it has to pay a lot of money, and
(44:57):
it has to it has to do a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I would say it's bad for Ukraine, but for Russia.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
It does not treat Russia as the victor. And if
that happens, I think the worst thing for Putin in
general is ending this war, because as long as he's fighting,
he's in power. The moment he ends the war, he
comes back to his people and it's like, Okay, well,
we spent almost all of our money and a million
(45:25):
people for.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Like these four three and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
A half regions, and we kind of told you that
we're fighting the global West, but this is mostly what
we got is these four regions. And we also have
to pay Ukraine now, and you know, we were forced
by America to do this deal. It's a very weak position,
and I think from that position Putin might get in trouble.
(45:48):
So if I was Putin, I would not agree to
any deals because it would be very hard to sell
them to the Russian public. And I think Russia's going
to keep fighting to last, like whatever, because to them,
fighting is surviving to the Russians, to the Puten regime,
as long as there is a war, he's in the Kremlin.
(46:08):
The moment the war started stops, people start asking questions
like was what was the solve for what? Like weren't
we supposed to conquer all Ukraine. Weren't we supposed to
be like on the border with Poland, scaring the entire
world with nuclear weapons?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So I think I think that's going to be the
end of the war.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Is that it might pause like from a piece treaty
and then and then Puttin might face the consequences.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Just for the record, we're speaking on the twenty first
of November, so this is I think it was just
yesterday that this possible plan came out, which seems to
have been agreed by some Russian diplomats and some US
diplomats without any any any interaction of Ukrainians or European
(47:00):
at all in that. But I must say I'm extremely
skeptical that this could result in anything, just because I
really cannot see Ukraine agreeing to many many parts of
what we've seen of this, Like, for example, they have
that Ukraine would have to cut down the size of
(47:20):
its army. I just don't think that they would agree
to that. They would have to give up all of
Donnett's region, you know, including the parts that have not
been conquered by the Russian army. I just can't see
them agreeing to give that away. I think this is
a real non starter for various points that I've seen.
(47:40):
And despite that, I know what you mean that Russia
would be in a bind even if they agreed to
it as well, or Putin would.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Be Yeah, because it would mean that it didn't win.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
It took a deal.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
It took a deal that was imposed on it.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
For Ukraine. Also in terms of the half of.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
The size of its army, it's very funny, like you've
got to look at the numbers in that deal. Russia
demanded that Ukraine limit the size of its army. Even
in twenty two it always said, and Russia said, Ukraine
can have eighty five thousand people in the army.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
This deal allows for six hundred thousand. So right now
it's eight hundred thousand. Right now, Ukrainian army wartime is
eight hundred thousand. So six hundred thousand strong Ukrainian army
not good for Russia. It's not they want to for
it to disappear. It's definitely still a bad deal for Ukraine.
(48:39):
But again, imagine, even if Ukraine signs that Putin comes back,
the Ukrainian army is still there. It's huge. He has
to pay them. It's not a good deal for anyone.
Maybe that's prompt approach.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, yeah, Sorry, this podcast isn't going to come out
for another eight days, and I'm willing to make my words,
but I am I am ninety nine point nine percent
sure that that deal is not going to be signed anyway.
So right, last question, this is actually from Niall, my
co host, and he asks, having been on the propaganda
(49:16):
agenda setting side of things, are there any techniques or
approaches that could be repurposed to fight misinformation, perhaps to
amplify honest, accurate information.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Of course, of course I.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Spoke on this exact topic just a couple of days ago.
I was giving a lecture at the Key School of
Economics in Ukraine, which is very interesting because the former
Rumlin propagandist is giving a lecture on I gave it,
I speak of creating. I gave it still in English.
But one of the key points there was that to
(50:04):
counter propaganda you have to be proactive. You cannot be
the guy the country organization that that For instance, I
told you, I was like if I if I said, uh,
you know what, Stephen actually stole one billion dollars and
he has yachts and a and a mansion. Really and
(50:28):
and it's not even him, it's Ai. He lives you know,
on a hill in a mansion and goes to space.
You could most people approach this like as such, you
would go, well, that's not true. I don't have a
billion dollars. Here I am, this is me hosting. This
is a video of me hosting. I don't live like
in some mansion. I'm not Elon Musk. And that would
(50:52):
make you react to my propaganda, I would achieve my objective.
Of my objective is to get the information out there.
Whatever you do after that doesn't matter, because you're you
saying no, that's not true is not going to be
as loud as me saying that you have that you
(51:13):
stole a billion dollars or or something like that. Right,
so you never you never go into oh that's not true,
Oh that's false. Oh here we're going to prove that
this is actually a lie. This was a major problem
with the American efforts to counter propaganda, European efforts to
counter propaganda.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
You do not fight it by.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
Just imagine how much time you would be wasting by
saying that you're not a billionaire and trying to prove
that you're And I'm giving the situation like especially absurd,
like you would have to prove absurd things right that,
like no, I'm not a billionaire like Zelensky. Zelenski is
accused of buying gods every day. Every day he and
(51:58):
his family by God's Apparently they don't disprove that they
don't care about that, because instead they push their own agenda.
So not to waste time on these, not to waste
time on reacting to the propaganda. And when you do
try to get your message across, when you do sort of,
when you do want to get your point across, First
(52:19):
of all, most important, you have to make it accessible
to people. It cannot be over. It's not that the
people aren't smart, but it has to approach it. Like advertising.
Nike's slogan is just do it. It's not we have
the most technically advanced shoes with soles that are very
soft and good for jumping and they support the arches.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It's just do it.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Same thing like if you have to sell sneakers, you
say those three words when you want to counter propaganda,
and it's literally counter propaganda. You have to affect. You
have to first affect people's emotions. You cannot when when
there's an actor that is affecting their emotions saying, oh
(53:07):
my god, you see you in a billionaire he stole
everything good God like you cannot be the guy trying
to rationalize that. So propaganda Russian propaganda, not Nazi propaganda.
Fox News here in America, and I'm sure in the
countries where we have you have listeners, they all see
(53:30):
some forms of like populists, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
All of these people are.
Speaker 4 (53:36):
First and foremost appealing to your emotions and not your rationality.
So and you cannot fight emotions with rationalities, so you
have to also appeal to emotions. Does that mean that like,
that's why Also, that's why you know, places like dn N,
BBC or some more or less reuters neutral news sources
(54:00):
are becoming less and less popular because there are people
on YouTube who are screaming in your ear like we're
all dying, we're all this, and you instinctively listen to them.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
So the new way, not the new way. The only
way to.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Count of propaganda is to also affect the same emotions,
the same registers, the same feelings of the people, because
you don't want to be the guy, uh, you know,
standing there and just saying no, that's not true, because nobody,
nobody listens to that guy. As we see a lot,
(54:35):
as we see what's happening Andrew Rifkin.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
You last time you told me that you are bringing
out a book next year.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Do you want to tell us about your book again?
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
The book, it's called The Propagandist. It's a book about
It's a book about my years in Russia, about how
I came from Boston to Russia, started working for the Krumlin,
left it and have left it physically and have been
trying to leave it emotionally mentally ever since, and how
(55:10):
how you walk away from something evil that you took
part in, and how you sort of how you try
to live with that, how you try to maybe redeem
yourself if at all possible, and what it's like to
live with that feeling of guilt.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Of course, it's it's obviously I.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Talk much more about the Kremlin there, the way it operates,
the way propaganda does there. It's not a it's not
a boring confessional book. It's not something that I tell
to my therapist. But in the book I do try
to show just how fun it was, how interesting it was,
like we on this podcast folk like when we started
(55:50):
talking today, how very interesting educated, worldly people that you
work with, and how incredibly hard it is to sometimes
see look at them and be like, oh my god,
they're evil John, the most interesting people in the world,
and then you think, am I one of them? And
it's what you do after you know?
Speaker 3 (56:09):
That counts.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Okay, fantastic. I can't wait to read that.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
And you said that you've got a substack that you've
started recently. I've been following you and and reading since
the last time that you were on and I think
it is it's just Andrew dot Rifken dot substack.
Speaker 4 (56:28):
I think right, it's a no doubt, just Andrew Rifkin.
One word Andrew dot substack dot com. And I promised
to rate there more frequently. Did have a lot of
work on the lectures the past few weeks, but now
I'm back at the laptop, so I'll be updating my
readers more frequently.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
So if anybody is still listening and thinks, hey, I've
I've wanted to ask a question and I didn't get
it into this episode, maybe you can put it into
Andrew over at subs.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Or go on my website.
Speaker 4 (57:01):
There's a form there to like, ask me a question
Andrew Rifkin dot com, so I'll get it right away.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
Great, great, Okay, well, Andrew Ripkin, thank you so much
for coming back on for a second appearance.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Thank you, thank you. I absolutely love being here.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
Amazing questions and thank you to the listeners. These were
very thoughtful, insightful questions, and I absolutely love just how
how much you know and you feel about the information environment,
media and it really it's a huge relief to know that,
you know, there's so many thinking people out there, so
(57:41):
it gives us home
Hi, this is Stephen. Today.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm joined again by Andrew Rivkin. Andrew self describes as
having worked as a Russian propagandist in the two thousands
and twenty tens. If you haven't already listened to them,
then I highly recommend going back and listening to the
two part interview that I released with Andrew, where he
(00:23):
talks about his life and working as a propagandist in Russia,
and then we talk about propaganda more generally. Those episodes
were released on the first of November and the eighth
of November. After releasing those episodes, I asked our listeners
to send in questions for Andrew, and in this episode,
which was recorded eight days ago, I asked him those questions.
(00:47):
Thank you to everyone who sent in a question for Andrew.
As always, this podcast is free, but it is made
possible by our amazing seven supporters, who also have access
to our transcripts of every episode, including this one, vocabulary
lists for each transcript, weekly worksheets, and a weekly world
(01:08):
news quiz. You can become a supporter at sendseven dot org.
I've just extended the Black Friday offer until Monday, so
until Monday you can get ten euros off joining as
a yearly supporter using the code black Friday twenty five.
Any questions you can write to me at podcast at
(01:29):
senseven dot org. Now he is Andrew Rifkin. Part three
Your Questions. I am again joined by Andrew Rifkin. Andrew,
thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You have a very distinct position. I think of being
the first person to ever come back as a second
for a second round to answer question So thank you
so much for agreeing to do this.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It's very flattering.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I'll do my best to answer all questions.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Let's hope I make it work.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
We have a really nice mix actually of audience questions,
some about your life, a little bit more of your
experience as a Russian propagandist, and then also a little
bit more about the way that you feel about propaganda
in general, and then also a little bit about the
war in Ukraine as well. So right, starting with your life,
(02:35):
this is from Martin in Germany while you were working
as a propagandist. How has your own opinion about the
Kremlin and politics changed and how could you form a
propaganda free opinion? Was it hard or just normal for
you to try not to believe the products of the
opinion machinery you had to work with.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Very good question, very interesting question, And I have to
say I always for me, I think it was not
because I'm super smart or anything like that, but because
I probably grew up in America and sort of I
don't know, formative years we're here in the United States
(03:22):
when I came to Russia and I did start working
for the Kremlin and I started doing propaganda. To me,
in my head, it was still somewhat of a game.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It was.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
I was kind of removed from that in my mind
because I grew up on American TV shows. I watched
American news, sitcoms, read English language books. I've always consumed
much more English language stuff than I did Russian language stuff.
So it kind of it gave me a little wall
(03:55):
between the propaganda itself and I would think system of beliefs.
So I never really some things I agreed with, some
things I didn't, But just as with anywhere, so it's
not even right now. I watch CNN, some things I
agree with, some things I don't. I don't think that's
(04:18):
my being a victim of propaganda. But for the most
part No. I would say this in terms of what
I thought about the Krumlin and the people working in propaganda.
I saw them as very smart, ambitious, well read, worldly,
(04:39):
highly educated. Everyone had a wonderful education. These some had PhDs,
and these were people with degrees and philosophy or history,
you know, these were these would be people who you
would love to have a very long conversation with somewhere
at a restaurant or like on the porch over wine,
(05:02):
for hours, talking about everything.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So in that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Sense, I very much respected them, and I liked them
regardless of what they did, because they were just so interesting.
But the things that they said to me, I could
always tell when it's the person speaking and when it's
their job.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Is speaking for them.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
However, that was of course some time ago, a long
time ago, when I was leaving Russia, when the war
in Ukraine started, and even before that a few years.
I could see that a lot of these people they
started believing their own propaganda because they were inside of
(05:50):
it for so long and they didn't have this alternative
that I did. They couldn't come home and turn off
everything Russian, get back to Seinfeld or whatever, and just
not regarded as real. So I saw with a lot
of them, not everyone, but with a lot of them
they kind of started believing the stuff they were paid
(06:13):
to say, which simultaneously made them much less interesting as
people because they it's like they gave up and they
lost to that machine. And when I was still working
with them, they lived double lives.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, fantastic. Okay, this is from luku In.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Actually I don't know where they're from, but this was
from Spotify. Did your family know what you were doing,
and if so, what were their reactions? Just to be clear,
I'm not one hundred percent sure if Luca is talking
about how you were working in the propaganda in the
first place or when you left the propaganda world, but
(06:57):
maybe you could talk about both of those.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Okay, So my mom didn't like it, But to her,
she really didn't like it. She grew up in the
Soviet Union and she was always against the power. She
was like a hippie, and in nineteen sixty eight when
the Soviets went into Czechoslovakia, she was arrested for protests,
(07:27):
et cetera, et cetera. So she didn't like it. Definitely, Again,
she didn't. I don't think neither she nor I thought
that it would lead to something this bad like the war.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
But still and my.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Father, we didn't talk much with him, but he was
more okay with that. But I think that maybe because
for him it was like, I actually have a career,
I have money. I'm not like, you know, some aimless
student somewhere actually have a job. So I think that
was more of his opinion.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So I would say that if.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
We're talking about the work in the propaganda paraz.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, and would they have been worried for you when
you were leaving that propaganda world.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
When I left the propaganda world and I got beat up, Yes,
yes they were worried, but not not too worried now,
not like oh you have to leave Russia or anything
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, it's something. This is not one of the questions.
This is just me speaking now. But in the last
episode with you, you spoke about the people who beat you up.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Do you want to talk about them a bit?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Tell us who they were and what their jobs were
a little bit so we can get a more full picture.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I mean, it was covered a lot by the by
the media.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
One of them, one of them was actually at some
point a host of the of the TV show where
I worked, so it was like rather personal for him,
and strangely since that time, because they still lived in Russia,
we kind of managed to put that behind.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Us, we like.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But the other guy was a die hard artcore Putinist
who was Putin's election trusted person. I still don't know
that word in English. I guess representative popular representative of Putin.
And obviously with him it was you know, mutual hatred
all the way. He passed away a few years ago.
(09:41):
Uh so that's basically his story. But yeah, yeah, so
like for a number of years, it was kind of
risky because both of them were I mean, it's Moscow.
Moscow is very so social. It used to be you
could have Kremlin people in our position people at the
same parties, you could have them at the same clubs, restaurants.
(10:06):
You would see them and they would have hundreds of
mutual friends.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
It's a very it's.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
A kind of situation that's very hard to imagine. But
let's say nineteen twenties Berlin, you would have the Socialists
and the National Socialists going to the same poetry readings.
So it would be like that, and for a few years,
I was very I was trying very hard not to
see any of them because they're public people, etc. But
(10:34):
with one of them we did sort of like not makeup,
but kind of understood our differences. But the other one,
the one who was directly the Krumlin guy, hired by
the Krumblin, paid by the Krumblin.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah, that was that was entirely different.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I've seen their names in something else published. I can't
remember whether it was by you or by somebody else
writing about you, But you obviously did identify them in
public at some point. Did the identification of them talking
about them? Did that not make you worried that they
(11:14):
would come back for more?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
It did make me worried that they would come back
for more. But also that incident when they did assault me,
it became the number one news of that day because
again I was like a chief political correspondent for GQ.
It's a big magazine, and everyone was commenting on this,
(11:39):
and obviously I wrote about this to sort of, first
of all, to let people know that, I mean, I'm
a journalist and I just got beat up. And second
of all, because I thought, and I still do think,
that it would kind of put some sort of protection
in the future against these like future assaults, so that
(12:01):
I wouldn't keep it to myself, but I would be like, hey,
I'm a journalist. I was assaulted by these people. And
that put these people on the defensive, and then they
had to go online and they had to be like, well,
this has nothing to do with politics. We just hate them.
And it wasn't the two of us, and we didn't
have like, you know, documents that prevented the police from
(12:22):
stopping us, et cetera, et cetera. But it worked in
the sense that, well, I was never assaulted again. And
what sucks about this is that if you still google
my name in Russian you get that scandal. And yeah,
and a woman I was recently dating googled me and
(12:43):
she was like, do you get into fights on the
streets or something? And I'm reading like like like the
Moscow Times, right, it's about your street fights, Like what's wrong?
I had to explain, But it did. I think it
did kind of protect me, So I would say it
was the right thing to do again in twenty twelve,
right now, things would be different.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Right, Yeah, very brave anyway, Okay, this is from Kristoph
in poland completely different about the war. How much is
China involved in the war. Don't you think that the
war between Russia and the West is a great opportunity
for China.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Well, I don't think Russia's not fighting the West. Russia
is fighting Ukraine because it's the West is supporting Ukraine,
and Russia is trying to do like hybrid operations in
the West and Europe things like that. But I would
not call this a war war considering that there have
(13:43):
been a number of wars that Russia did literally fight
against the West, and those were we all know them,
far bloodier and bigger, et cetera, et cetera. The question
was like, is it beneficial for China.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Yeah, I think it's beneficial in the sense that it
that first of all, Russia became dependent on China.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
That's very good for the Chinese.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Russia was never that dependent on anyone, and now it's
very dependent in China. It sells its oil to China,
it sells its natural resources. China of course provides cells
to Russia. The component's numerous components for weapons, just all
these things that keep the Russian war machine running. So
(14:33):
that's beneficial for China. It makes a lot of money
in this, and of course it keeps the West distracted
with this war, and it allows China to sort of
sort of do.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
What it wants.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
But also just to know, obviously there are news about that,
their opinions about that everywhere. China is not Russia's run
in this. It's not an ally. It just makes money.
Nothing that China does for Russia. It's free nothing. So
it's not the same situation as like, you know, Poland
(15:08):
supports Ukraine and China supports Russia. No, because Poland gives
Ukraine things for free and supports it everywhere, and China
just sells and tries to get the best deal and
Russia simply has no choice.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Great, Okay, this is from Luciano in Brazil. Good afternoon, Andrew.
Is quite long, but I'm gonna read the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Good afternoon, Andrew. I'm a Brazilian physician. Congratulations for the
amazing interview. Your capacity to understand, forgive yourself and a
bubble radically modify your life after that is impressive. I
wonder if you see a shrink. Thank you for sharing
these important facts with SIN seven listeners. I have been
to Saint Petersburg in twenty eighteen as a tourist and
(15:53):
sensed an atmosphere of sadness and fear among regular people.
The taxi driver, the waiter, the guide, et cetera. Was
so intense that they refused to speak about politics. My
question for you is, do you think that the daily
life and the way people interact with strangers and even
with family is affected by Putin's regimes fear? Doesn't it
(16:15):
look like the Nazi regime?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Okay, okay, so it looks nothing like the Nazi regime.
Russia in general does not look like a Nazi regime.
Not because it's so amazing, because Russia had Stalin. Russia's
experience with that was Stalin, it was not Hitler. So
(16:37):
it looks like Stalinism. It looks like people don't trust.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Each other, that's true.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
People are afraid to discuss things in public. I know
a lot of cases where foreigners would come to Russia,
not in twenty eighteen, but after.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The worst started.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Foreigners would come to Russia and they would get these
looks if they were speaking their native language, especially English, German, French,
so Spanish, and people trust each other less and with
the taxi drivers and everyone. Yeah, because there's a lot
of criminal charges against people who like It's called discrediting
(17:23):
the army, which is basically saying anything about the war.
So yes, that is definitely the case, and it has
become worse. It's not like Nazis. It's more like Stalin.
It's not entirely also like Stalin, because Putin is not Stalin.
So it's like a little but that love, there's fear.
(17:43):
I want to defend the city of Saint.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Petersburg, where I was born.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It is always sad. It's it is the most northernmost
million people strong city in the world. It is incredibly
cold and to the point that it has polar polar
days and polar nates, so people there are never happy.
And these are writing jokes about Saint Petersburg. So even
(18:09):
if you come to Seet Petersburg when it's going to
be democratic, no one's going to smile.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And yes, I do see a strength.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yes, great, Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
This is from someone in China who doesn't want to
share their name, as I am Chinese. Much of what
you described is very familiar to me. I witnessed the
process when all media in the country gradually transitioned into
official spokespeople for the state. This makes me curious about something.
I'm wondering, how did the independent media operate in Russia.
(18:43):
Did independent media exist there at least before the war
in Ukraine? If so, was there a transformation into official
propaganda or their effective disappearance a sudden event, or was
it a gradual process that went largely unnoticed by the public.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Well, I'm not too familiar with China, but I would
I would probably guess of listeners from Hong Kong, where
there was this transformation of media slowly losing its independence,
sometimes quicker, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and aligning with Beijing. Okay,
(19:23):
So in Russia, yes, definitely independent media. There was a
lot of independent media. The crackdown on independent media was ongoing.
It started from the moment that Putin came to power,
and first he went after big television networks. So the
first one was in two thousand and one or two,
(19:45):
I don't remember. It was the third largest television network
in Russia that Putin. That Putin sort of beheaded. He
put his own people, he made his own people buy
that network. It became very loyal, and then it went,
it went further, and I would say, like, let's say,
(20:08):
in right before the war, right right before the war,
a lot of media was shut down, but Russia still
had an independent TV channel that it could only broadcast online.
But you know, you would go online. It was called
TV Rain. It still exists. They're all in exile. You
could watch it on YouTube. You could watch it online.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It would have a number of.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Independent news websites, very good ones, very great investigations, anti
corruption investigations, amazing ones.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
It would have. It would have hybrid media.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Hybrid media, I think, is a Russian only invention where
the media would be loyal in some matters and not
loyal in other matters, so they would understand, Okay, we
can't write about Putin's family, but we can write about
this political activist going to jail. And the editors of
(21:06):
such media. Like, there's a media. It doesn't exist anymore.
It's called Echo of Moscow, which is a very popular
was it very popular radio station. It's all the liberals,
all the Democrats, all the opposition. People would go there
to give interviews and everyone in Moscow listened to it.
Millions of people listen to it. But it's editor in chief,
(21:29):
the main guy at the radio station you of course
new and communicated with everyone from the Krumlin and it
was very controlled. So but it's still existed right now.
Independent media exists, but not inside Russia.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It comes from the outside.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
So there's like Medusa, which is one of the greatest
news websites ever. They all went outside of Russia. They're
based in Latvia, the TV channel Rain, They're based in Amsterdam.
They all have apps. These apps all circumvent government firewalls,
you know, things like that, so that people could read
(22:09):
a lot of things that that would have.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
People reporting from Russia.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
The name of the reporter would not be mentioned or
it would be anonymous because that person would get in trouble.
But Russia is a very very media savvy culture, both
independent and state. It's extremely media savvy. So it everything
still exists. Everything is there, like just repressed or in
(22:35):
obscure websites.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But yeah, yeah, yeah great.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Coming back to the way that her question was asked,
it's in that case, it's was kind of a gradual
process and a sudden event, right because it was over
say ever since Putin was elected in you know, and
(23:00):
nineteen eighty ninety two and then and then it was
slowly becoming more and more propagandistic, less free. And then
when the invasion of Ukraine happened in February twenty twenty two,
there were lots of media organizations that were still more
or less independent that evacuated at that point, Right, that
(23:22):
left Russia or closed down at that point.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Is that more or less?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Right?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
It is more or less I would say this there
mostly I don't know fo one hundred percent, but mostly
there was no media that was independent and then became
propaganda for them. Maybe in the nineties it was independent,
I don't know, But for the Krumblin it's much easier
(23:48):
to close something down than it is to sort of
make it into a I don't know, like a bastion
of democracy or liberalism. Yes, the process went slowly, slowly, slowly,
I'd say after twenty one, which is one year before
the war, they started shutting them down. And the moment
the war started, that's when, like within two or three months,
(24:13):
all media and mus was shut down. Their websites were blocked,
and of course in that time all the journalists had
to leave. Those who didn't leave they either went to
jail or they stopped working. They stopped being journalists. And
I'm looking at their instagrams now because I'm friends with
a lot of them, and a lot of them are
doing state friendly projects like not propaganda, but just you know.
(24:39):
So they stopped consciously just so they could live in
Moscow and do their work what they trained to do.
They stopped doing investigative journalism or this freedom fighting, and
they started doing cooking shows or things like that and
not talking about politics.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Right right, Okay, this is from Ruichi in Japan. Do
Russian people know about the real information of the war?
For example, the casualties of the Russian army. I learned
the history of World War Two, and the Japanese army
told lies about the battles, and newspapers wrote as they
(25:15):
were told. But still, while Japan said that they were winning,
the battle places were coming closer and closer to Japan,
so some people could tell that they were actually losing.
Is something similar happening in Russia?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Well, I'm sure no.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Russians know for the most part what's happening in the war.
They know it because, I mean, first and foremost, the
most important thing telegram. It still exists in Russia. It's free,
it's available to everyone, and if you have telegram, Okay,
you can sign up to Volodo mar Zelenski's telegram channel,
(25:54):
or you can sign up to a lot of Russian
militorney channels or Ukrainian ones. It doesn't matter. Even when
you're watching the TV in Russia. No, they don't tell
you about the casualties. They only tell you about the victories.
But every city has new cemetery's graveyards with soldiers graves.
(26:17):
A lot of people made a lot of money from
this war, as in because if most people fighting for
Russia in Ukraine get paid to fight, they're not conscripted,
they're not taking off the streets.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
They get paid to fight a.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Lot of money, like a lot of money fIF sixty
thousand a year. So these are huge amounts for Russia.
These are big amounts for even Western countries. I would say.
So people do understand. They see those people die, they
see their contracts, they see people coming back buying new
cars and new apartments. But most importantly, most importantly, they
(26:53):
see that you know, the war has been going out
for almost four years. Now Russia is getting bombed. You
don't need the media to tell you that a rocket
is flying to your Ukrainian drone and that happens every day.
So I know that in Russia a lot of people
(27:14):
don't want the war to happen.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
They want to stop. Some people wanted to go on.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
But I don't think that anyone there thinks that Russia's
winning that pretty much everyone knows the situation.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Everyone knows the towns that are being fought over right now.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Everyone knows what kind of weapons like America or the
West are giving the Ukrainians the moment, for instance, when
Donald Trump said he might give Tomahawk missiles, some of
the people I knew in Russia they called me and
they were like, there are the Ukrainians going to get Tomahawks?
Like should I be worried? So, yeah, it's Russia does
(27:53):
not have one hundred percent, not yet. It does not
have one hundred percent control of information flow. It's trying
to do that, but not yet.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Just to remind you of where we were, you had
just been saying that Russians do know what is going
on in Ukraine. Russians do know the extent to which
the war is what it is, Yeah, more or less.
So I've just got a backup question to that. During
(28:32):
the nineteen eighties, the Soviets fought the war in Afghanistan,
and I think it was something like fifteen thousand soldiers
died or something like that. Yeah, which at the time
was the biggest war that the Soviets had fought since
World War Two. And I know that a lot of historians,
(28:56):
I think anyway, say that that is one of the
was one of the causes of the downfall of the
Soviet Union, or at least it helped to push it along.
Why is nothing like that happening in Russia today? I mean,
from what we can see and from the best evidence
(29:17):
and of numbers, it seems like ten times that many
Russians have died in this war.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, more yeah, probably more right, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I mean, the Ukrainians are saying that they've inflicted one
point one million casualties on Russia. Of course that includes dead,
civiely injured and captured, so it's a combination. But even
if you take you know, just a quarter of that,
that would be two.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Even if you say that, you know, they're massively exaggerating
because they want to, you know, cut in in half.
That's still one hundred and twenty five one hundred and
fifty thousand or something.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
It's a hell of a lot more than die in.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And before I get I'm imagining what people are going
to say in the comments to this. The Western analysts
have agreed with these numbers, have said that they are
more or less similar, and quite a few different countries
militaries have also said that those numbers are pretty close
to what it is in reality. So again, if the
Soviet war in Afghanistan was able to wake people up
(30:26):
to how bad things were and to make people very
angry about what was going on in Afghanistan, how could
nothing similar be happening today? And is that something to
do with a more total control of the propaganda space. However,
of course you did just say that Russians do know
what's going on. That's a very long rounded question there.
(30:47):
You can take that from any angle you.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
First of all, the Soviets had total control of propaganda.
Russia modern Russia does not. If a person in Russia
wants to listen to this podcast, our podcast right now,
they can do that. They can find the website, they
can go on YouTube, they can use a VPN. They
can't do that. None of that was the case in
(31:14):
the Soviet Union because the technology was different. You only
had television, radio in newspapers pretty much, that's it. And
they would block BBC Voice of America. So people back
then people knew much less. That's the first difference. But
(31:34):
there's a different there's something else too, and it's immensely important.
Can't struss just how important it is. People Soviet people,
not just Russian Soviets, all Soviets, Ukrainian's objects every week
who fought in Afghanistan. They were conscripted and the eight
(32:00):
told them, go go fight in Afghanistan. We want to
support our socialist brothers.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
These people were regarded by everyone as honorable warriors that
they go. It doesn't matter if you supported the war
against Afghanistan or not. I don't think that most Soviets
cared about Afghanistan. But it was like our boys are fighting.
(32:31):
It was entirely different. They were soldiers of an empire, essentially,
and that's why when they came back they didn't get
support from the state, but they had a lot of respect.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
If you were to.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Say in Russian Afghani, so Afghani means, it could mean
two things, Afghan person or Afghan veteran and being an
Afghan veteran was a badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
And everyone kind of knew.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
That the state, that the Soviet Union shouldn't have sent
you there, but you still went and you're a hero.
And people know the songs, the uniforms, things like that,
and they knew that they were fighting the Americans because
the Americans supplied the weapons everything. It was a warm
It's going to sound very strange and not justifying the
war in Afghanistan, but it was more noble. It's like,
(33:24):
we're an empire. We're going there in this desert to
fight these people. They're supported by another empire. Things like that.
Right now, one of my sources, who was a sociologist
in Russia told me a very interesting thing. He was like,
he said, what do you think, what do you think
(33:45):
happens when a Russian man dies in Ukraine? Russian soldier
gets killed in Ukraine? Do you think they breathe? They
don't really grieve. Do you think they're proud of him?
They're not proud at all. There's zero pride. There's absolutely
zero pride in this. The only reaction obviously his parents
(34:08):
grief has a family. But he said, the only reaction
to a soldier to a Russian soldier. Step now, one
of those hundreds of thousands dead proven dead is that
he took a risky job and he lost. That's it.
It was a risky contract. It didn't work out for him,
(34:30):
but at least the family got the money. And that
is an incredible departure from what even the warren Chechnia
was because people did not go to fight, and it
was also a horrible imperial war of conquest, but people
didn't Russians didn't go to fight the Chess for money,
and that's why they had this notion of like, that's
(34:55):
a tragedy.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Right now, people are not.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
The in this is that these deaths are not a
tragedy because these people are willing to go. And it's
an incredibly important distinction, something that never happened before. There
is no pride in that, because you can't be proud
of a mercenary. There's no patriotism in that, because again
you're either a patriot or you get paid a lot
(35:21):
of money. You can't really have both.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
And people, especially people in.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Russia, very militarist society, militant, very like a society that
loves guns and wars and everything. Inherently they do not
respect that, and these people who went to fight are
not respected, so their deaths don't matter nearly as much.
It sounds very cynical, but it's a person who took
(35:49):
on a risk, who got paid and it didn't work out.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
And in terms of like, the Soviet Union fell first
and foremost because of the economy, and it did. There
was no food in stores because it was socialism, and.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I think that's.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Much more important than a war. Obviously it hastened the
end of the Soviet Union, but the fact that there
you know, no food, bad medicine, you can't buy clothing,
all these things, and like socialism that stopped working and
communism did much more than a war. But of course
(36:33):
it's it did paint it did paint the leader as weak.
So if Russia loses in Ukraine, Putin is going to
seem weak. And if not Russia, but then Putin might
find himself being, you know, judged by the people in
a very bad, like pre revolutionary way.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Or something like this.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Like you said, you're a strong leader, but you lost,
and Russia can't have weak leaders.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Very long answer, yeah, no, In fact, I want to
go back to something you said a minute ago about
the fact that these soldiers are not respected. You know,
it's essentially people just seeing it as a lot of
money and if you die, then well that's bad luck.
(37:21):
This kind of idea. From what I can see, all
of the soldiers now fighting in Ukraine are volunteered, but
paid volunteers, and they still seem to be able to
get something like thirty thousand a month or something like that.
I think I've got that number right, and they've been
doing that constantly for years now.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And who are all these men?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I mean, how can they continuously, month after month just
produce another thirty thousand, of which you know the half
of them are dying presumably, and then they just they
just keep finding more. I mean, are these all just
this just show the size of Russia that they can
just keep on producing all of these presumably quite poor
(38:11):
men from different areas of this massive country to send
to Ukraine willingly, just because they want the money.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Last estimates that I heard is that they're expecting next
year to get about four hundred, four hundred and twenty
thousand volunteers, so this is roughly twelve hundred people a
day sign up so we've been talking for one hour.
That's however, I don't know fifty people. Fifty people signed
(38:45):
up as me and you we're talking about this.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
It is they do come from poor, poor regions.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Those regions are not poor anymore. Because so many people
from those regions died that the economy shifted. You would
see cities that used to be the worst in Russia
new buildings, new cars, new stores. Because so many people died,
everyone got fifty You get fifty thousand dollars when your
family gets fifty thousand dollars when you die.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
If you're fighting in.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Ukraine and they buy new apartments, you have It's called
in Russia deathonomics, where the death of people results in
upward mobility and the creation of a new middle class
that's outside of like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Obviously, I
would say this Russia. People in Russia not rich, definitely,
(39:42):
they're not like Western Europe. But it's also not the
poorest country in the world. When the war started, it
was not. It didn't have hunger, it didn't have like
you know, the it didn't have like failed state levels
of spare povert or anything like that. And it was
(40:02):
a question. For many of these people, it was a
question of well, I make four hundred bucks a month
or five hundred bucks a month, and it's not a lot,
or like at the best, I make like a thousand
dollars a month. But man, but here they're offering me,
I don't know, ten thousand dollars immediately at signing or
(40:25):
seven thousand and a lot of benefits and you get paid.
I think the salary now is two and a half
or three thousand dollars a month for fighting. For fighting
in Ukraine, you get paid additional bonuses, like if you
just imagine that kind of army and it's all official.
If you destroy an enemy tank or Ukrainian tank, you
(40:47):
get paid ten thousand dollars. If you destroy like a helicopter,
it's like one hundred thousand dollars. Everything is sold and bought.
It's it's the most capitalist war that I've seen in
my life. It's like the entire country is what's that.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Company's name, blackwater? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
But not professionals. So and they can produce it for
a while. Clearly, because.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
I don't want to generalize, but Russia has.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Russian culture has a different relationship to human life and
death and the price of life, and you know these things.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You could see it. It's not Putin.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
You could see it in Russian literature and Russian history revolutions.
Putin did not invent the Russian culture of feeding human beings.
Do not give him that credit. He's only been there
for twenty five years. Dostoyevsky has been there for much longer,
and he found this very effective combination of people who
(41:53):
don't really care about their lives and most importantly, they
don't care about getting killed or killing go and kill
for money. They do not care, and that's why, Yeah,
it worked. Fun fun little note when Prump came to
power in America this year, right and he started making
(42:16):
these movements towards Putin, saying how about we do this
and we and criming it could be yours and let's
under war.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Do you know the.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
Biggest advertising campaign, propaganda campaign that was going on in
Russia enlistment campaign to attract volunteers to fight.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
What it was called.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
It was called sign up to fight in the army
while you still have a chance, because like we're about
to sign peace and get that money, get that money,
like you sign up, like you get millions right now,
because if in a month, you know, Zelenski and Putin
are going to shake hands, there goes your opportunity. So
(42:57):
that's just so you would kind of understand the level
of cynicism there and the level you know, when cynicism
mixes with Dostoyevsky and capitalism of this is what happens.
So the thing I like to say to a lot
of people is that when they say that all Russians
(43:18):
they're afraid to protest outen, they you know, they they
all hate the war, but they are afraid to like protest,
et cetera, et cetera. Russia has sixteen hundred I think,
if I'm not mistaken political prisoners around that much, that's
about as many people as sign up to fight and
die in Ukraine every day. So that's that's the reality there.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Okay, I'm going to combine two questions here. This is
also from Ricci. I'd like to know more detail about
how Andrew expects the war could end. For me, I'd
expect some kind of coup in Russia. I'd rather say
I just hope for it, and I can't imagine any
other way for the war to end. I know Andrew
already spoke about it a bit, but I'd like to
(44:02):
hear more details if possible. And this one is from Christine.
She says, what would he guess about how long the
war in Ukraine would last?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
I don't know how long it could last. I know that,
and I don't think the war is going to end
with a coup. I think a coup might happen if
the war ends unfavorably towards Putin. Right now, it's not
the kind of situation where the war is going so
(44:35):
horrible that you know some generals want to kill Putin.
I mean they might, but no, But if, for instance,
Trump recently, just yesterday, I think, offered a new peace plan.
That peace plan is bad for Ukraine, but it's not
very good for Russia either. Russia only gets like four regions,
and it has to pay a lot of money, and
(44:57):
it has to it has to do a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I would say it's bad for Ukraine, but for Russia.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
It does not treat Russia as the victor. And if
that happens, I think the worst thing for Putin in
general is ending this war, because as long as he's fighting,
he's in power. The moment he ends the war, he
comes back to his people and it's like, Okay, well,
we spent almost all of our money and a million
(45:25):
people for.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Like these four three and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
A half regions, and we kind of told you that
we're fighting the global West, but this is mostly what
we got is these four regions. And we also have
to pay Ukraine now, and you know, we were forced
by America to do this deal. It's a very weak position,
and I think from that position Putin might get in trouble.
(45:48):
So if I was Putin, I would not agree to
any deals because it would be very hard to sell
them to the Russian public. And I think Russia's going
to keep fighting to last, like whatever, because to them,
fighting is surviving to the Russians, to the Puten regime,
as long as there is a war, he's in the Kremlin.
(46:08):
The moment the war started stops, people start asking questions
like was what was the solve for what? Like weren't
we supposed to conquer all Ukraine. Weren't we supposed to
be like on the border with Poland, scaring the entire
world with nuclear weapons?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So I think I think that's going to be the
end of the war.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Is that it might pause like from a piece treaty
and then and then Puttin might face the consequences.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Just for the record, we're speaking on the twenty first
of November, so this is I think it was just
yesterday that this possible plan came out, which seems to
have been agreed by some Russian diplomats and some US
diplomats without any any any interaction of Ukrainians or European
(47:00):
at all in that. But I must say I'm extremely
skeptical that this could result in anything, just because I
really cannot see Ukraine agreeing to many many parts of
what we've seen of this, Like, for example, they have
that Ukraine would have to cut down the size of
(47:20):
its army. I just don't think that they would agree
to that. They would have to give up all of
Donnett's region, you know, including the parts that have not
been conquered by the Russian army. I just can't see
them agreeing to give that away. I think this is
a real non starter for various points that I've seen.
(47:40):
And despite that, I know what you mean that Russia
would be in a bind even if they agreed to
it as well, or Putin would.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Be Yeah, because it would mean that it didn't win.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
It took a deal.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
It took a deal that was imposed on it.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
For Ukraine. Also in terms of the half of.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
The size of its army, it's very funny, like you've
got to look at the numbers in that deal. Russia
demanded that Ukraine limit the size of its army. Even
in twenty two it always said, and Russia said, Ukraine
can have eighty five thousand people in the army.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
This deal allows for six hundred thousand. So right now
it's eight hundred thousand. Right now, Ukrainian army wartime is
eight hundred thousand. So six hundred thousand strong Ukrainian army
not good for Russia. It's not they want to for
it to disappear. It's definitely still a bad deal for Ukraine.
(48:39):
But again, imagine, even if Ukraine signs that Putin comes back,
the Ukrainian army is still there. It's huge. He has
to pay them. It's not a good deal for anyone.
Maybe that's prompt approach.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, yeah, Sorry, this podcast isn't going to come out
for another eight days, and I'm willing to make my words,
but I am I am ninety nine point nine percent
sure that that deal is not going to be signed anyway.
So right, last question, this is actually from Niall, my
co host, and he asks, having been on the propaganda
(49:16):
agenda setting side of things, are there any techniques or
approaches that could be repurposed to fight misinformation, perhaps to
amplify honest, accurate information.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Of course, of course I.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Spoke on this exact topic just a couple of days ago.
I was giving a lecture at the Key School of
Economics in Ukraine, which is very interesting because the former
Rumlin propagandist is giving a lecture on I gave it,
I speak of creating. I gave it still in English.
But one of the key points there was that to
(50:04):
counter propaganda you have to be proactive. You cannot be
the guy the country organization that that For instance, I
told you, I was like if I if I said, uh,
you know what, Stephen actually stole one billion dollars and
he has yachts and a and a mansion. Really and
(50:28):
and it's not even him, it's Ai. He lives you know,
on a hill in a mansion and goes to space.
You could most people approach this like as such, you
would go, well, that's not true. I don't have a
billion dollars. Here I am, this is me hosting. This
is a video of me hosting. I don't live like
in some mansion. I'm not Elon Musk. And that would
(50:52):
make you react to my propaganda, I would achieve my objective.
Of my objective is to get the information out there.
Whatever you do after that doesn't matter, because you're you
saying no, that's not true is not going to be
as loud as me saying that you have that you
(51:13):
stole a billion dollars or or something like that. Right,
so you never you never go into oh that's not true,
Oh that's false. Oh here we're going to prove that
this is actually a lie. This was a major problem
with the American efforts to counter propaganda, European efforts to
counter propaganda.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
You do not fight it by.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
Just imagine how much time you would be wasting by
saying that you're not a billionaire and trying to prove
that you're And I'm giving the situation like especially absurd,
like you would have to prove absurd things right that,
like no, I'm not a billionaire like Zelensky. Zelenski is
accused of buying gods every day. Every day he and
(51:58):
his family by God's Apparently they don't disprove that they
don't care about that, because instead they push their own agenda.
So not to waste time on these, not to waste
time on reacting to the propaganda. And when you do
try to get your message across, when you do sort of,
when you do want to get your point across, First
(52:19):
of all, most important, you have to make it accessible
to people. It cannot be over. It's not that the
people aren't smart, but it has to approach it. Like advertising.
Nike's slogan is just do it. It's not we have
the most technically advanced shoes with soles that are very
soft and good for jumping and they support the arches.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
It's just do it.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Same thing like if you have to sell sneakers, you
say those three words when you want to counter propaganda,
and it's literally counter propaganda. You have to affect. You
have to first affect people's emotions. You cannot when when
there's an actor that is affecting their emotions saying, oh
(53:07):
my god, you see you in a billionaire he stole
everything good God like you cannot be the guy trying
to rationalize that. So propaganda Russian propaganda, not Nazi propaganda.
Fox News here in America, and I'm sure in the
countries where we have you have listeners, they all see
(53:30):
some forms of like populists, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
All of these people are.
Speaker 4 (53:36):
First and foremost appealing to your emotions and not your rationality.
So and you cannot fight emotions with rationalities, so you
have to also appeal to emotions. Does that mean that like,
that's why Also, that's why you know, places like dn N,
BBC or some more or less reuters neutral news sources
(54:00):
are becoming less and less popular because there are people
on YouTube who are screaming in your ear like we're
all dying, we're all this, and you instinctively listen to them.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
So the new way, not the new way. The only
way to.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Count of propaganda is to also affect the same emotions,
the same registers, the same feelings of the people, because
you don't want to be the guy, uh, you know,
standing there and just saying no, that's not true, because nobody,
nobody listens to that guy. As we see a lot,
(54:35):
as we see what's happening Andrew Rifkin.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
You last time you told me that you are bringing
out a book next year.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Do you want to tell us about your book again?
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
The book, it's called The Propagandist. It's a book about
It's a book about my years in Russia, about how
I came from Boston to Russia, started working for the Krumlin,
left it and have left it physically and have been
trying to leave it emotionally mentally ever since, and how
(55:10):
how you walk away from something evil that you took
part in, and how you sort of how you try
to live with that, how you try to maybe redeem
yourself if at all possible, and what it's like to
live with that feeling of guilt.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Of course, it's it's obviously I.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Talk much more about the Kremlin there, the way it operates,
the way propaganda does there. It's not a it's not
a boring confessional book. It's not something that I tell
to my therapist. But in the book I do try
to show just how fun it was, how interesting it was,
like we on this podcast folk like when we started
(55:50):
talking today, how very interesting educated, worldly people that you
work with, and how incredibly hard it is to sometimes
see look at them and be like, oh my god,
they're evil John, the most interesting people in the world,
and then you think, am I one of them? And
it's what you do after you know?
Speaker 3 (56:09):
That counts.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Okay, fantastic. I can't wait to read that.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
And you said that you've got a substack that you've
started recently. I've been following you and and reading since
the last time that you were on and I think
it is it's just Andrew dot Rifken dot substack.
Speaker 4 (56:28):
I think right, it's a no doubt, just Andrew Rifkin.
One word Andrew dot substack dot com. And I promised
to rate there more frequently. Did have a lot of
work on the lectures the past few weeks, but now
I'm back at the laptop, so I'll be updating my
readers more frequently.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
So if anybody is still listening and thinks, hey, I've
I've wanted to ask a question and I didn't get
it into this episode, maybe you can put it into
Andrew over at subs.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Or go on my website.
Speaker 4 (57:01):
There's a form there to like, ask me a question
Andrew Rifkin dot com, so I'll get it right away.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
Great, great, Okay, well, Andrew Ripkin, thank you so much
for coming back on for a second appearance.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Thank you, thank you. I absolutely love being here.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
Amazing questions and thank you to the listeners. These were
very thoughtful, insightful questions, and I absolutely love just how
how much you know and you feel about the information environment,
media and it really it's a huge relief to know that,
you know, there's so many thinking people out there, so
(57:41):
it gives us home
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