Today’s interview with News X World on the Zelensky Open Letter

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See minutes 21.15 to 26.30

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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2 thoughts on “Today’s interview with News X World on the Zelensky Open Letter”

  1. Excellent discussion with George and Peter Lavelle. A delight to listen to

    I am curious though as to why you are separating Trump and America from the so-called “Ukrainians” attack on Russian oil and gas facilities?

    For me it seems to be so self-evidently in the US companies interest and so straight out of the Trump playbook, that I don’t see what else it could be. After all, the attacks themselves do very little to obstruct the Russian military effort.

    There was no public rebuke from Trump for attacks on Russian nuclear bombers either, which if you think about it, were they to have been an independent operation by the Ukraine,would make no sense

    Which brings me onto the absurd, continued talk from Dmitriev about building this bridge between Alaska and Russia,which is both highly uneconomic and inappropriate. He’s acting under Putin’s authority, is tone-deaf and seems to be inviting ridicule among Russians. With you quite rightly emphasising that Putin is a politician, not a military man, it brings home to me that Putins political instincts at this current moment are well below-par

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  2. I checked the payments by region for the Special Military Operation.

    For Saint Petersburg it’s 4 to 4.5 million Rubles. Leningrad Oblast 3 to 3.5 million rubles.

    The poorer regions like Pskov the sign-up fee is 800 thousand Rb, Chechnya too. Average across the country is just under 2 million

    Now you characterised this I think as a war where recruiting from the hinterlands reduces the political risk for the Kremlin, but with your ear to the ground in SP and these astounding signup fees- I was wondering is that playing out in practise?

    Cities don’t run without masses of blue collar workers anyway, and 4.5 Million Roubles in SP ( double that offered by Moscow) seems to be a very tempting offer to a resident, despite the obvious risks as we are talking about, as its a 4 or 5 fold wage increase from the average

    You must know someone in SP with a son who has taken up this offer?

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