News X World interview on evening wrap-up news bulletin

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See minutes 23.40 to 28.05

This podcast afforded me the opportunity to share with a broad public of this Indian global broadcaster my key impressions of Russia’s “war weariness” after spending a month in St Petersburg with my ear to the ground.

Russia’s war weariness among the elites, middle classes and working class does not mean readiness for peace at any price. No, it means the expectation that Mr. Putin will turn to drastic measures now that crush, destroy the Ukrainian government using Russia’s state of the art conventional weapons and bring on capitulation within a matter of days. There is no more understanding or acceptance of Putin’s gently, gently policies. Either he will bend to the public expectations of him or….he will be swept from power. This is precisely the scenario that Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov predicted several months ago in a speech to the Duma.

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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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3 thoughts on “News X World interview on evening wrap-up news bulletin”

  1. Professor Sakwa recently urged President Putin not to fall into the trap, take the bait and overreact.

    seems that Putin is doing just that,strategic patience.

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  2. Aoa Mr. Doctorow, I just wish to get your view on the following point! According to certain discussions I’ve seen, most of the or enough Generals in the Russian Army are loyal to Putin and owe their positions to him. Same is the case with the Russian Bureaucracy. Hence if the Siloviki or any other faction tried to remove Putin, then he’ll get these Generals to take care of it and crush the coup before it even takes off. This is why Putin feels so secure in his position. So I don’t see any faction capable of removing Putin from power as long as he has the support of the Generals and the oligarchs and he will continue with his “gentle politics“ until Russia faces defeat followed by dissolution. I am sure that even you’ve noticed how silent most of the military high command has been in the face of Ukraine’s drone bombings of Russian territory.

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    1. By the logic you set out, there would never be coups d’etats, the forced departure of presidents or heds of state anywhere. But we know very well that they do occur. To be sure, many are in unstable African or Latin American states. However, let us remember that Gorbachev was forced out of office in a palace coup that was eventually reversed. And given the open criticism of Putin now coming from respected military experts-retired senior officers, I think we are presently in a pre-coup situation in Russia. The latest brazen attack on Moscow using more than a thousand drones and missiles across Russia on the same day, as much or more than Russia has sent to Ukraine on any day during this war, shows that the situaiton has turned adverse for Moscow and that Putin is unable/unwilling to take the necessary action to destroy the Zelensky regime now when it is still possible.

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