A conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen: Russia must restore its deterrence to survive

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Professor Diesen and I have patched up relations, as you will understand from the opening minutes, and I believe we have had a discussion this morning which the Community will find particularly valuable. I am particularly proud of my explanation for why the whole question of Russia winning or losing has generated so much passion, fury and venom among colleagues.

 At the same time, the translators of my interviews into Russian for the rutube will be wondering about the advisability of putting up on the internet my recommendation to the Kremlin that they fire General Gerasimov and his immediate circle and change their strategy to ‘escalate to de-escalate’ if there is to be any chance for the war to end soon and on Russian terms, rather than in a Pyrrhic victory.  On the other hand, the same translators and their friends in the Kremlin will be delighted by my denunciation of the Ukrainian claims to have taken the initiative and my insistence that the drones which are striking deep into the Russian heartland are NATO supplied and NATO programmed rather than proofs of Ukrainian military genius.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

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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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One thought on “A conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen: Russia must restore its deterrence to survive”

  1. Pingback: Doctorow & Diesen: Russia Must Restore Its Deterrence To Survive – Western Rifle Shooters Association

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