This nearly hour-long interview covers the waterfront of issues surrounding the 28-point peace plan that was jointly elaborated by Team Trump and Team Putin in a secret backchannel that eluded the attention not only of Congress but of the recalcitrant Secretary of State and others in the Administration who have been working against Trump on resolving the Ukraine war. This was the plan that Steve Witkoff was planning to hand deliver to Zelensky in Istanbul yesterday, but which the Ukrainian leader hoped to dodge by cancelling the meeting.

On the American side it evidently was developed by Witkoff and his junior aides. On the Russian side, it appears that Kirill Dmitriev carried the ball during his visit to the United States following the break-off of plans for a summit of the two presidents in Budapest. What then looked like an irrelevant trip to promote US-Russian big business projects when relations were at a nadir turns out to have been a cleverly disguised step forward in coordinating plans for peace.

There are many current developments in Kiev suggesting that a regime change piloted by the United States is underway. As of today, these are all a matter of conjecture, not hard facts. The latest word on Russian state television last night was coverage of attempts in the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) to bring down Yermak, Head of the Office of the President, and key power behind Zelensky’s throne. The corruption scandal is the lever for this attack. Yermak’s downfall would prepare the way for Zelensky’s removal or forced power sharing with other political forces.

The talk with Szamuely and Lavelle focused on the Russian side of the equation and what it will take to end the war.

I was delighted that at the start of our chat Peter brought up our mutual excitement in November 2016 when we met the news of Trump’s electoral victory and celebrated on air in the RT studio, Moscow by opening a bottle of shampanskoye. I was then a regular panelist on his CrossTalk show.  My contact with George Szamuely so far had been virtual when we were matched panelists on a couple of Press TV (Iran) talk shows.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript submitted by a reader

NewsX World: 0:09
Hello and welcome viewers, I’m Pia and you’re watching NewsX Eurozone and here are the top headlines.

Switzerland has won US tariff rate cut to 15% from earlier imposed 39% tariffs. The trade agreement includes both Washington slashing its tariffs on its products and a pledge by companies to invest $200 billion in the US by the end of 2030.

UN Secretary-General António Gutterez has strongly condemned Russia’s latest wave of large-scale missile drone strikes in Ukraine, which have claimed it caused widespread damage across several regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that no Russian strike will go unpunished after deadly attacks on Kiev and in areas in southern Ukraine.

1:08
The major oil terminal in the Russian port city of Novorossiysk has temporarily suspended operations, which is approximately 2% of its global oil supply. This comes after a Ukrainian strike targeted its oil facilities.

US Vice President JD Vance says that US President Trump recognizes the need to negotiate with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the ongoing war despite their differences as the meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest was cancelled earlier.

Dutch computer chipmaker Nexperia has stated that they have not halted the shipping of the chips and have alternative supply chains in place. This comes amid the disruption caused by the dispute between Europe-based unit and its factory plant in China.

2:08
US President Donald Trump has stated that he would likely sue the BBC next week for as much as $5 billion. This comes as the British broadcaster admitted it wrongly edited a video of a speech delivered by US President Donald Trump.

Several people were killed and many were reportedly injured when the bus crashed in central Stockholm. The Swedish police have ruled out an attack and are investigating the incident as involuntary manslaughter.

2:42
My viewers, those are the headlines and our top focus: the Russian defense ministry has stated that its forces have taken control of Yablukova in Ukraine’s Zaporozhiya region. The ministry has also stated that it has downed 13 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions, including Rostov, Crimea, which is disputed, and Belgorod. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have reported that Russia launched a heavy drone and missile attack on Ukraine early on the 14th of November. The attack on energy facilities, apartment buildings, and infrastructure has killed six people in Kiev and two more in the southern area of the country. Meanwhile, UN spokesperson Stephanie Jadwaryk had earlier stated that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterrez strongly condemns large-scale missile and drone attacks by Russian forces on Ukrainian regions.

3:39
With us on the broadcast is Ms. Alison Muttler, former Associated Press Bureau chief joining us from Romania. Thank you so much for taking your time and speaking to us on NewsX World. Yablukova is obviously a village, but it lies very close to certain key logistical footholds and also areas that are a crucial part of the supply chains regarding the Ukrainian defense equipment. In that context, you know, many experts are touting this as a strategic gain. What do you make of this current advance by the Russian forces on the front lines?

Mutttler: 4:23
Well, this current advance, this current offensive is very important to Russia. They want to strangle hold on Ukrainian defense to stop the Ukrainian defending their territory. And so they’ve decided this is the way to move in the Zaporizhzhia region, which is in the southeast of Ukraine on the Dnieper River. It’s very important to them.

And they have been making an advance in that area. But what’s important to remember is that these are Russian claims. These are Russian claims that have appeared on Russian media outlets in Russia. They have not appeared on Western media outlets. They have not been independently verified.

5:03
I looked at the Institute of War and there is nothing at this moment confirming it. So we cannot state with any certainty that it is as Russia says. This is the message again that Moscow, the Kremlin wants to give to the Russian public and also anybody abroad who will be broadcasting it, but we can’t be sure what is happening without independent verification. What is certain from what we’ve seen over the past few years, there is a Russian offensive in that area, a Russian advance and they do have strategic aims to choke off Ukrainian defense. But at the moment we cannot base our reporting on what Russia is saying because they have you know they have propaganda interest in this war

World: 5:52
Indeed and I want to also understand from you if Russia continues to follow its strategy of pincer attacks as it’s doing right now, does it then run the risk of its lines being too stretched, especially with winter around the corner?

Muttler: 6:09
That’s a very good question. A pincer attack is like a crab when you grab an area, you strangle it. And it’s a good strategy for attacking. But as you say, if you put a lot of your forces, a lot of your troops, if you invest a lot of your troops in these attacks, these advances, these offences, then you risk leaving other areas uncovered. And as winter approaches, and we’re coming close to December and it’s pretty cold over there, it gets much, much harder.

So Russia, I think, want to make a final effort, as they seem to be have been doing in the previous weeks to get as much offensive activity as they can before the snow falls, before it gets icy and conditions get a lot more difficult. But they do have a problem with manpower. They are relying, for this huge war effort, they’re relying on troops from North Korea. North Korea are also working in their military factories.

7:09
So they are very stretched. Russians don’t generally want to fight in this war for obvious reasons. So it is difficult. And if they do put too many troops into one region or one attack, that does take away their military from other regions that they might need to, they want to attack or they need to defend.

World: 7:28
Indeed. And we’ve also seen a statement by US Vice President JD Vance. He has emphasized that Donald Trump now recognizes the need to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, despite their differences. We did see that Trump was eyeing talks in Budapest which did not materialize. Of course it happened after Kremlin sent a memo to Washington. But what do you make of Vance’s statement, especially the timing of it?

Muttler 8:00
I think it’s an interesting development. What I know is that it was Donald Trump who cancelled the talks in Budapest. And I know that this caused a lot of problems in the Kremlin in Russia, because any time Donald Trump appears with Vladimir Putin, it’s good optics. It looks good for Vladimir Putin. It looks bad for Donald Trump because the general impression is that Vladimir Putin runs circles around Donald Trump in terms of negotiation and in terms of persuading Donald Trump of his point of view.

But we have seen this offensive in recent weeks, and I know that Trump definitely wants to settle this dispute. He wants to say that he is a peacemaker and he has managed to end this war. So it was clearly a postponement. But what is interesting is obviously J.D. Vance is being used here as a spokesman for Trump. He’s putting forward the administration’s position.

8:57
What is interesting is he is acknowledging publicly there are differences. So we may expect the announcement of a new meeting and we’ll have to watch it play out, where it will be, what will happen, etc. etc. Because the one in Alaska was generally seen as a big victory for Vladimir Putin, a failure for Donald Trump and nothing was achieved.

World:
Indeed, I would request you to stay on with us as we are tracking further updates from Europe. We are now learning that Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has reiterated his opposition to the European Union transferring 140 billion euros in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. Fico has stated that the transfer of 140 billion euros to Ukraine would mean two more years of killings in the conflict. Fico has recently emphasized that as long as he is Prime Minister, Slovakia will not participate in what he calls financing the continuation of the war. Slovakia has maintained that it insists on an immediate ceasefire and lasting peace in Ukraine.

Still with us on the broadcast is Ms. Alison Mutler. Slovakia is not the only country we’ve seen trying to stall this bit. We’ve seen Hungary in the past as well. We also know that the Czech Republic and its Prime Minister Andrzej Babis are also not really pro-Ukraine. But at the same time, the EU is having to deal with pressure from the Trump administration to really pull up their funding in this war. How do you think Brussels will sort of balance the two?

Muttler:
Well, I read Robert Fico’s statement. I also read that he went to a school and they were pro-Ukrainian students there, protesters, and he actually said to them, why don’t you go and fight in Ukraine? I also noticed his statement that he opposed the use of 140 billion euros of frozen assets and then prolong the war.

The first news agency to pick it up, I’m talking outside Slovakia, was TASS. So TASS is the Russian national news agency. So Robert Fico is doing the work, if you like, of the Kremlin. He is a spokesman in a way for Vladimir Putin as is Viktor Orban and also the new Czech Prime Minister. These are Russia-friendly nations, and their aim is to disrupt any effort that Europe is making towards bolstering, helping Ukraine and they are very useful to the Kremlin.

I’m sure the European Union and NATO as well will find a way around their vote against – I mean, it’s a democracy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a unanimous decision. But we can expect, if we hear Robert Fico, Viktor Orban, the new Czech prime minister, we can expect opposition to any help, any military aid, any unfreezing of assets that Europe, that Brussels intends to give Ukraine. These are nations that feel themselves more closely aligned to Vladimir Putin and Russia than they do to helping Ukraine in its war effort. As I’ve said before, Ukraine’s war effort is, they call it not just a defense of their country but defense of Europe, but these three other nations they feel more closely allied to Moscow than they do Brussels.

World: 12:24
All right now with that I’d like to thank you for taking your time, of course putting all of that into context for our viewers.

On that note, we should focus on some more developments coming in. We are now learning that US President Donald Trump has stated that he would like to hold a meeting between the United States, Russia and China to discuss reductions in nuclear arsenals. Aboard the Air Force One, Trump has stated that he would like to denuclearize, in a meeting primarily of the top three nuclear powers to cut back on nuclear weapons. Trump has added that the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country, with Russia being the second and China the distant third.

These are his claims of course. He’s also added that both Russia and China will be at par with the US within four to five years. Listen in to what Trump has said.

Trump: 13:14
–renovated them, have built some, and I hated to do it, but I had no choice because they haven’t. We have more, Russia’s second, and China is a distant third; but within four or five years they’re going to be up with us.

What I would like to do is I would like to go denuclearization. In other words, where we have a meeting primarily of the top three to cut back on nuclear weapons. That would be a great topic.

World: 13:44
With us on the broadcast is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs expert, joining us from Brussels. Thank you so much for taking your time and speaking to us. Of course, Donald Trump there trying to once again make a bid for denuclearization, an interesting 180 degree U-turn from his earlier assertion that the United States will resume nuclear testing. He’s also in fact stated that the United States is first as far as its nuclear arsenal is concerned, a claim that is disputed. Many consider that Russia is leading at the moment. But despite all of this, what do you make of Trump’s rhetoric now, the abrupt change in his tone? What sort of spurred that?

Doctorow: 14:30
Well, there’s nothing particularly surprising that he changes his position by 180 degrees on any given major international issue from day to day or week to week. So this isn’t an exceptional change. I think perhaps he got a better briefing from his military advisors as to what the real state of the situation is, where Russia has completely renovated its nuclear triad, and it’s perhaps 10 years ahead of the United States in that regard. So they told him, “Boss, we are behind in the arms race. In fact, we lost the arms race. So maybe we should go back to the negotiating table.”

That’s what it’s all about. The idea that he will bring together both the Chinese and the Russians at the same table is a complete nonstarter, and he knows that. The Chinese have refused to be roped into any new limitation on nuclear weapons when they are so far behind the Russians and the United States.

By their own earlier decisions, they did not want to go nuclear. They only wanted to have a kind of riposte, a kind of deterrent to prevent nuclear attack on themselves. Well, the United States surrounding China doing everything possible to prepare for a war with China has changed the Chinese thinking. And now they’re going for broke. They are going to match the same level of nuclear weapons as the United States and Russia.

15:57
And there’s nothing that Mr. Trump can do about that unless he backs off completely from the strategic assault on China that he is overseeing.

World:
Indeed, you’ve mentioned that China has basically, it’s looking at increasing its arsenal in light of what the United States is doing in the Indo-Pacific and its arsenal in the first place is in order to deter a nuclear strike on it first. We do know that China does have a formal no-first- use policy. But in spite all of this, is Taiwan one of the primary considerations for the United States to come out with this aggressive rhetoric in the first place? And China, of course, not seeing eye to eye because of the One-China policy.

Doctorow: 16:47
Yes, there’s a sharp contradiction here. And Mr. Trump is never completely consistent. I don’t take his words at any face value.

I look at his actions. His actions so far have been to put up a vast fortune to finance a Golden Dome to protect the United States from Russian and any other missile attacks, an utterly hopeless task which the Russians have brought home and made very explicit by demonstrating their latest strategic weapons, the Burevestnik in particular, which can penetrate any foreseeable future dome. So he has committed to spending vast fortunes of American taxpayers’ money on absolutely hopeless and useless defenses. Now, I think he finally may have gotten the message that that effort is useless and perhaps should be stopped. And now he’d like to go to the negotiating table.

The problem with all this is: Mr. Trump has been the leading force in the world in the last dozen years against multi-party agreements. He is against any measure that restricts America’s freedom of action. So his saying that he is for arms limitation is in sharp contradiction with his actions over the last decade.

World: 18:11
Indeed sir, and you know, if China is successful in augmenting its nuclear arsenal, Some even estimate that it is trying to basically double the current number of warheads that it has. How might then a future scenario like that impact the balance of power, especially in the nuclear arena?

Doctorow:
It won’t. Let’s face it, the nuclear arms that each of these major powers has is not usable. If it were to be used, you have mutual assured destruction and the end of civilization on Earth as we know it. And all of the leaders of these powers understand that perfectly.

The only strategic strength that any country can have today is conventional weapons. And in that realm, Russia is way out ahead of everybody else, including ahead of the Chinese. So when you take measures of military strength, the measures used in the past, and particularly the ones you’ve mentioned now, are invalid.

World: 19:15
All right. So with that, I’d like to thank you for taking our time and of course sharing your analysis with all of us at NewsX World.

Transcript submitted by a reader

Napolitano: 0:31
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 12th, 2025. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Dr. Doctorow, a pleasure and thank you very much for being here. Are you sensing or were you even experiencing any palpable domestic effects on everyday Russian life arguably triggered by the war?

Doctorow: 1:05
I’d like to point out that the Russian government policies are caught between two factions, they’re called factions, they’re two branches of the government, which are at odds. And the answer to your question lies with one of those. It seems to be predominant at the moment. What I’m describing is a ministry of foreign affairs being on the progressive liberal open society end of things, and the successor organization to the KGB called the FSB being on the repressive side of things. Recent developments that affect a lot of people in Russia that are negative and repressive are coming from the KGB successor, FSB.

2:04
And if you have any doubts, you could find it in major media in Russia in the last 10 days. I’ll just give a few of these and you’ll see what I mean. Everyone knows that about a month ago or six weeks ago, WhatsApp lost its voice functionality in Russia. That’s to say, in Russia, anybody can call you from abroad, from anywhere, and the phone rings. You pick it up, and it disconnects.

It will not connect for a voice connection. On the other hand, the text function of WhatsApp works. You can send people, say, an equivalent to SMS, and it works fine. Now, that doesn’t sound like much if you don’t know what’s been going on in Russia for the last several years. Everybody was using WhatsApp.

And WhatsApp was a free way to speak with the whole world. You know, you pay nothing for international phone calls on WhatsApp. And Russians were using this very well. Now when the voice function is cut, they are left with, most people are left with using the normal telephone system.

Napolitano: 3:15
Can you use a VPN? Can you use one of those systems that bypasses the blockage and would allow you to use the WhatsApp?

Doctorow:
You can use a VPN, but first of all, not everybody is very clever about these things. Those who are clever, they use it. And of course they have access to everything. However, it is viewed with a jaundiced eye by the authorities. And there is going to be a crackdown on VPN, because it obviously violates the whole principle of the regulations that have come down now from on high.

Napolitano: 3:58
Does the government acknowledge these regulations? Does it say what it’s doing? Does it give a reason or does it just do it?

Doctorow:
Absolutely. It both gives a reason and explains what it’s doing or about to do. And in the last two weeks, while I mentioned the WhatsApp incident, which I see is more powerful in cutting off Russians from the world than their loss of the BBC or CNN or whatever else that they had when international broadcasters left the Russian market or when satellites stopped carrying Russian transmitters. Big things happened in the last few weeks. One of them I mentioned in our previous chats and I’ve written about was this taking away from foreigners of the right to have a Russian SIM card or telephone number in Russia. And of course, having a telephone, local telephone, is very important if you’re a visitor or if you live in Russia, either as a permanent resident or as a temporary long-staying visitor, to do almost anything, including calling a taxi.

5:15
Well, so foreigners were the first to be hit by this rule, and it was explained, as we know, by the incidents around the Spider Web attack on Russian strategic assets, in which local telephones were used as an enabling device for setting off the drones and so forth. OK, that’s the foreigner side. But now, in the last several days, the authorities have issued a new ruling, a new directive, that any Russian who travels abroad and comes back with his telephone will find that his telephone number is blocked. And he has to go to his service provider and, I don’t know, somehow explain himself to them. Well we’re speaking about– about 10 million people a year leave Russia and go abroad on vacation or work or whatever. And they come back to the country and they don’t have a telephone.

6:16
They have to go to their service provider. It’s not yet clear what you have to do to be verified or re-verified to get back the use of your phone. Just to be petty about it, you arrive at an airport and you can’t call a taxi, you can’t call your friends, you are cut off until you get around to visiting your service provider. Not very friendly. The reason, as I said: they’re doing it for national security reasons.

And here I see two different agencies of the Russian government pulling in different directions. The FSB is clearly issuing these directives, claiming national security is uppermost. Their rationale, I’m sorry to say, is hare-brained. To think that by subjecting all Russians to this type of scrutiny, you’re going to prevent terrorism, you’re going to prevent the British and the Ukrainian and other foreign intelligence operatives on Russian territory from getting telephone numbers. For heaven’s sakes, Russian television was carrying yesterday the story of the MI6 attempt to bribe Russian pilots with $3 million in cash and citizenship somewhere in Western Europe if they would fly a MiG-31 into Romania together with the latest generation missile, Kinzhal, to go to Western intelligence.

7:42
Three million dollars in cash was available. I’m sure that a few dollars are available to buy up from some stupid local person or drunk–

Napolitano:
Let me stop you. I get the picture, but I had not heard about this bribe. Who was offering these bribes? MI6, CIA, Ukrainian, Mossad? Who was it?

Doctorow:
According to the Russian story, this was carried by Mr. Lavrov last night, Brits, it’s all Brits. Brits means–

Napolitano: 8:11
How pervasive, maybe the answer to this question is unknowable, but how pervasive are MI6, CIA, Ukrainian intel throughout — let’s limit it to– Moscow?

Doctorow:
No, the whole of Russia. The British in particular have worked closely with Ukrainians. Remember, so many Ukrainians are good Russian speakers; that was the essence of the nationalities problem in Ukraine. Half of the country didn’t speak the language of the land. They spoke Russian. So, of course, there are plenty of Ukrainian agents all over the place in Russia. And to think that you’re going to prevent them from using the telephone network to do terror acts in Russia by holding up every Russian who comes back with his phone is really nonsense.

Napolitano: 9:10
Tell me more about this rivalry or conflict between FSB, the intelligence services, and the foreign ministry headed by Sergey Lavrov. The people that work for him are generally graduates of the School of International Diplomacy, which is a very high-end academic institution at which I’ve been privileged to lecture. And they were very interested in the American constitution when I was there. They knew exactly what they were talking about. These of course are future diplomats. Mr. Lavrov himself is a graduate of that school.

9:51
But tell me about the rivalry. Can President Putin control the FSB, unlike President Trump, who cannot control the American deep state?

Doctorow:
I have to wonder about that. You would think that as a former KGB officer, he would know these people perfectly well and have them under control. But I have my doubts now, that that’s happening.

Let’s come back to the central issue. I would like to take this away from the personality of Mr. Putin — as if he is the whole of Russia; he isn’t– and take it to the institutional and ideological differences that are different in his government.

You asked me a week ago about the rumored retirement of Lavrov, and I had nothing to say. But you know, in light of what I’m about to say now, I think it makes a lot of sense that these rumors spread. What is the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diplomatic Corp and who is who? Let’s look at age. The people who are now ambassadors are mostly in their 50s.

10:58
That’s to say they started their careers in the Yeltsin years. That tells you a lot. They were what the Russians call Zopadniky. They were westernizers. They were sympathetic to and wanted to have the best of relations with the United States and Western Europe. And they are the ones who are now ambassadors across the world.

Napolitano:
Is, in your opinion, Sergey Lavrov of that mentality?

Doctorow:
Absolutely.

Napolitano:
Yes.

Doctorow:
And the only big exception that I’m aware of in his immediate entourage is Mr. Ryabkov, who is a real hardliner, a real tough guy looking after in the most vigorous way Russian interests. Other people came up into the ministry when Mr. Kozarev was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was the yes man, as opposed to Gromyko, who had been Mr. Nyet. Mr. Kozarev agreed to everything that the United States wanted, however it undermined Russian national interests. And he was finally sacked in about 1998.

12:06
The point is that these people who are the professional diplomatic corps of Russia, they went to MGIMO. I agree with you. It is one of the best institutions of its kind in the world and has a lot of Americanists in it, like the people who spoke to you about the American Constitution. These are very well-educated people. But the disposition of the institution is open to the world, and that’s the key point.

What is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs doing? Every chance it has, it opens the world for Russians. I think a week ago they announced that they had just agreed with Saudi Arabia to have visa-free travel of Russians in Saudi Arabia. That is a regular preoccupation of that ministry, opening the world to Russians. The FSB is closing the world to Russians.

Napolitano: 12:56
Is the FSB, I’ll use the word repression, I don’t know if that’s the right word. I don’t know if it’s gotten to that point. Let’s be charitable and call it the new regulations. Are these something would have to be approved by President Putin himself?

Doctorow:
I don’t know. I don’t know to what level this type of issuance of regulations rises for approval. It’s not a dramatic thing we’re talking about, for a government to do this. It is a very big influence on how people feel about themselves and their access to the world. But I don’t think it is the kind of crucial issue that would come up to the desk of Mr. Putin, or even to the head of the FSB.

Napolitano: 13:43
So are these regulations a nuisance and an inconvenience, or are they a knock on the door in the night?

Doctorow:
It’s not a knock on the door in the night. 1937 has not returned. But the country’s steady march towards an open society, towards the end to arbitrariness and graft that Mr. Putin oversaw for 25 years is now beginning to unravel.

Napolitano:
And I guess you’re attributing this to the consequences of the war.

Doctorow:
Absolutely. And this is why — I don’t mean to sound like a one-note orchestra — but this is why I’m saying that the war has to end as quickly as possible, which is within the power of the Russian army, if it wants to use its power, which up till now it doesn’t. What they’re doing, and I think here’s where the FSB influence comes in, they are destroying the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. They’re causing great misery to average Ukrainians, but that will not end the war [sooner] by one day.

The country will get electricity supplies from Europe, as it now does partially. All they have to do is build more high power lines from Europe. If Europe’s going to put up tens of billions of dollars in arms, they certainly can afford to put up some energy high power lines.

Napolitano: 15:16
How decrepit is the– and I use that word intentionally because of what I’m about to tell you, nothing new to you– the Ukrainian military? We are in the West getting reports of conscription, which is horrific, training of non-existent young men in their late teenage years and early twenties on the front line who barely know how to pull the trigger on the weapon, terrified that just a week ago they were at home with their parents. I mean, this can’t be any way to run a military. We’re also getting reports from General, I only know his first name, forgive me, Oleksandr, I forget his last name, the commander of the [Ukrainian] troops, acknowledging to some of his, some Ukrainian parliamentarians that the military is in a bad way.

Doctorow:
Of course it’s in a bad way when you lose the vast numbers of people they have. However, let me just point out that in the interviews with prisoners of war who surrendered, say around Pokrovsk in the last couple of weeks–

Napolitano:
These are Ukrainian groups who surrendered to the Russians.

Doctorow: 16:37
Right. But mostly if you look at the faces, these are people in their late 50s or 60s. These are not the 20-year-olds. The 20-year-olds I see around here in Brussels bars, that’s where the young Ukrainians have gone and where they want to stay.

It is unfortunately a lot of overaged people who are now in the military, aren’t good for very much actually, and not a one of them spoke about how they were dragooned into the army. So it’s more complicated than speaking about these excessive measures to forcibly put people in uniform. And as to the experience of people in this part of the world, Eastern Europe and Russia in particular, with preparation for military service, just go back and look at what happened at the start of World War II and the Germans invading Russian territory and the start of the siege.

17:32
Well, we have friends in Petersburg, or had friends, because many of these have died already, who fought in the first days defending Leningrad from the invading German troops. And boy, they had zero training. They also could hardly know how to pull a trigger. So this isn’t an exactly new development in that part of the world.

Napolitano:
What pressures are there on President Putin? Or let me restate the question. Is this societal change affecting his popularity and approval?

Doctorow:
I don’t think so. But again, let’s not personalize this whole thing. When you look at Russian television and the criticism of the way the war is being conducted, there is never a word about the president. It’s only about the specifics of the way the war is being conducted, not who has approved it; we all know who it was. So Mr. Putin is essentially one step back from the front lines of answerability for the way the war is being conducted.

Napolitano: 18:44
Well does he receive pressure from either the military or the FSB to get the war over with?

Doctorow:
I can’t say that. I don’t think, but just looking at the dynamics here, I don’t think the FSB is under particular pressure to get the war over with. The war is giving them more power.

Napolitano:
So, just as there’s criticism of Secretary of State Marco Rubio that he does not want the war to end because he belongs to the neocon camp that thinks the war will bleed Russia dry and adversely affect President Putin’s presidency. You’re suggesting that there are elements of the Russian government that do not want the war to end, the military-industrial complex, certain elements in the military, certain elements in the intelligence community, because they’re at the height of their power.

Doctorow: 19:41
This is rather normal. I don’t see any aberration to this, but let’s just call facts as they are. There are reasons why certain groups in government would find the war to be convenient.

Napolitano: 19:57
Is the war popular amongst average Russians? Are they cheering on the Russian military or is it not in the Russian consciousness? Is it not something they talk about every day? It’s just something happening in Ukraine. Or “I don’t like what the war is doing to me now, and I wish Putin would end it.” Can you put your thumb on the pulse of Russian thinking or is there no one standard way of thinking common to the Russian people?

Doctorow: 20:27
Well, there is one standard common to the Russian people, and that is they want the war to end with Russian victory. That is a hundred percent guaranteed. But once you get past that commonality, how is Russian victory going to be assured? That’s where differences come up.

Napolitano:
Got it. What do you think will happen? Do you think we’ll wake up one morning and five Oreshniks will have leveled Kiev? Or do you think President Putin will maintain slow, methodical, patient wearing down of the Ukrainian military?

Doctorow: 21:03
I don’t think the latter is going to happen because the Ukrainian military is not what’s behind this war. It is London, Paris, and Berlin that are behind the war today.

And they are not going away. They have not conceded defeat. They are ready to put up particularly the frozen Russian assets, to keep the war going while they rearm and prepare for direct conflict with Russia.

Napolitano:
Are they going to send troops to Ukraine?

Doctorow:
They may. It is possible. It’s unlikely, but it’s possible.

Napolitano:
Well if they don’t send troops and the Ukrainian military is on its last legs, I mean what good is military equipment if there are not human beings to operate it?

Doctorow:
I wouldn’t agree it’s on its last legs. The front line, present front line is on its last legs. It is still east of the Dnieper River. If the Russians in the next several months, and I don’t say next several days, but in the next several months, push further and reach to Dnieper. Well, that’s it. They’ve reached 40 percent of the Ukrainian territory. What about the rest?

The other 60 percent? They don’t want to move there because it is Ukrainian Ukraine. They will be an army of occupation when they set foot there. And that will be dangerous, expensive, and it will not bring them closer to a normalization with the rest of the world. So that is not thinkable.

The idea that this war will end after Pokrovsk falls, I mean, I could be wrong. We’ve had a lot of false predictions for the last three years, including my own. But it seems to me improbable that there’ll be a collapse on the Ukrainian side after Pokrovsk falls, which is a matter of days.

Napolitano: 22:52
Got it. Dr. Doctorow, thank you very much. A fascinating, fascinating series of observations, much of it firsthand. And I thank you for your time. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. We’ll look forward to seeing you again as always next week.

Doctorow:
It’s a pleasure.

Napolitano:
You’re welcome. Coming up later today at 11 o’clock this morning, Phil Giraldi; at 1:15 this afternoon from the Ron Paul Institute, my dear friend Daniel McAdams; at two o’clock this afternoon. Aaron Mate; at three o’clock this afternoon from St. Petersburg, Russia, Scott Ritter.

23:32
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

I am pleased to inform the community that this interview heads off in new directions which may be productive in understanding the contradictions in Russian domestic and foreign policy under wartime conditions.

I attempt here to depersonalize the formulation and implementation of Russian policy, to remove Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for a moment and to identify the conflicts between key organizations in his government, namely the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB.

My point is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the diplomatic corps, stand for Russia’s ever greater integration into the world, for an open society. One of the preoccupations of this ministry over the years has been to reach agreement with ever more countries around the world for visa free travel by Russian citizens. Just last week such an agreement was reached with Saudi Arabia.  Today, in the midst of war, the MFA stands for reaching a diplomatic solution to the war, a peace treaty, and normalization of relations with Europe and the USA. Yesterday’s little speech by the new Russian ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium at the WWI memorial territory within the Ixelles Cemetery (Brussels) on the occasion of Armistice Day conformed perfectly with that generalization about what the MFA stands for.

Meanwhile, the FSB is pulling in the opposite direction. It is issuing directive after directive that aim to isolate Russians from the world. That was the effect of the ban on voice functionality of WhatsApp, which had been the most popular App used by Russians to communicate with the world cost free. That is the effect of the newly introduced blockage on the SIM cards of all Russians returning from abroad until they can restore service by some unspecified verification of their service providers.  And, since the war enhances their powers over the population as justified by national security reasons, however tenuous, the FSB obviously is interested in the war’s going on forever.

Enjoy the show!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kMxKQNjJEs

Diesen: 0:00
Welcome back. We are joined by Gilbert Doctorow, historian, international affairs analyst, and author of “War Diaries – the Russia-Ukraine War”. So thank you for coming back on.

Doctorow:
It’s a pleasure.

Diesen:
We have, we often see that wars can have a profound impact on society, especially prolonged wars. And it’s said therefore that nations are born in wars such as Germany in 1871. And I would argue that Ukrainian national identity has strengthened as well greatly over the past four years, irrespective or despite the very divisive Bandera faction which has less ability to unite. But in Russia we see that there’s been some of the great revival of national pride. I’m often a bit cautious about having the national pride revived based on war. But this is the reality and wars, they have some negative impacts such as fueling dangerous war industries. Someone will always profit from war, as warned by Eisenhower in his farewell speech.

And we also see that wars create this demand for much greater social cohesion. So societies often become more authoritarian during war. Obviously, Ukraine has had its screws tightened to a great extent, but we also see it to a lesser extent here in Europe with this relentless warmongering and growing authoritarianism, which is hardly any secret. But it’s also true in Russia. That is, the war will take its toll on society.

Some individual freedoms will go away. But I thought I should ask you, because you recently returned from yet another trip to Russia and you work there, you travel there often. What is your impression about the change in society and what kind of change do you, what possible changes do you think we might be seeing?

Doctorow: 2:19
Well, the changes are not dramatic, but they are incremental. And as you say, in wartime, the screws are tightened. In Russia, there is enhanced censorship in the sense that those who speak openly or write openly against the war, not how it’s being managed, but against the war in principle, are facing problems. I visited with the director of the St. Petersburg Union of Journalists and was informed that not so long ago they were instructed by the successor organization to the KGB, which is called the FSB, that they were to expel any journalists who were in that category and they did. They expelled one person who was rather unlucky and they felt very badly about it because they knew that they were headed in the wrong direction. However, for the Russian public, this question of how free is the Russian press is more complicated than it seems.

3:25
It always was. I remember being rebuked by a German parliamentarian who was at the time, this is 10 years ago, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee within the European Parliament, rebuked for saying that Russia had extensive press freedom and he said how much did Putin pay you to say that. But this was typical ignorance which unfortunately continues to this day. The fact is that in Russia though it is state controlled television, you can’t say that there isn’t state controlled television in Britain; the BBC, whatever.

They are getting the line that comes out of the prime minister’s office. No question about it. Anybody who thinks that Euronews is anything different than what Ursula von der Leyen wanted said today is just not serious. Of course, it is the private broadcasting network of Ursula von der Leyen. So let’s come back to the Russians.

4:26
Of course, the media is subject to control, but every day on major programs, you get extensive digests of the world press, print media and the electronic media. And I mean not sound bites, but extensive excerpts, videos from Deutsche Welle, from BBC, from NBC or CBS, they’re all there. And they’re presented because the government is satisfied that its public is well educated enough to reach some conclusions and doesn’t have to be instructed. So to judge Russian media today from the pressure of the war, I don’t see a great change. There are voices who are saying that the war is being badly conducted without pointing a finger at anybody in particular, least of all against the president.

5:24
But they are saying that it should be ended on terms that give Russia victory and will ensure that Ukraine does not turn against Russia again, simply by decapitating the governing individuals in downtown Kiev today. It’s possible, it’s feasible. In any case, looking at society, there are ills that I saw in the last 17 days, which are not new ills, they are old ills, but they had been contained by very careful work of Mr. Putin and his team over the last 25 years.

And the runaway bureaucracy, by that I mean the excessive issuance of decrees and ministerial directives. That is a sign that Mr. Putin and his close colleagues no longer have their eye on the ball. They were cutting this back. They were improving relations between the citizenry and the administration that governs them. They were digitalizing this relationship, to take the personal element out of it and to cut arbitrariness.

6:42
All of that is coming loose. The amount of regulation for simple things like registering a foreigner. And foreigners doesn’t mean just you and me. It also means in much larger numbers people coming from Kazakhstan, people coming from Tajikistan, anybody who’s coming either as a Gastarbeiter or because they have relatives in the Russian Federation. They’re now subjected to a barrage of paper filling and time consuming and not very agreeable or pleasant and often absolutely useless.

As a foreigner, I’m obliged to, as you are obliged to, register. You don’t do it if you’re in a hotel, because they do it for you without any effort. But if you’re living in private lodgings, as I do, you have to go and register with the person who is your sponsor, in this case my wife. And it has gotten more difficult, more miserable, I can say, each time, and more stupid. The people who are handling this, I won’t run on, I won’t go on too long, but I just want to point about the senseless decrees that make life difficult and that are running unchecked because the government’s attention is elsewhere.

7:58
The people who process you, mostly women behind the guichet, windows of the administration, they’re very nice. This is not the Soviet officialdom who were underpaid, under-equipped, miserable, and they took it out on anybody who sat in front of them. No, no, no. The people who are processing you today are well-meaning, well-disposed to the public, presumably well-paid, and their equipment is up to date. It’s the latest equipment of every kind to process you.

But they’re processing requirements that make no sense and that take them, say, 20-40 minutes per person. And you have to have an engineer’s degree or a lawyer’s degree, as these ladies do, to do this simple, utterly useless work. And they know that it’s useless, and you know that it’s useless. And that is, I say, it’s come unstuck. It proliferates.

8:59
Now, that side of life, the petty theft of lower government officials has returned. One of the first things that Vladimir Putin did was to curb corruption of the small kind that was all over the country because you had to deal with the government officials to make your tax declaration. Boy, was that an opportunity for them to rip you off with bribes and so forth. That was done away with by the 15% flat tax and no questions asked. Now this kind of invitation to corruption has come back.

In the 1990s if you had a car, you were always being stopped by traffic police for real or more likely imaginary traffic offenses. They shake you down how much cash they could get off of you to buy your way out of it. Now that money didn’t go anywhere except into their pockets. It’s back. It’s back.

10:01
And it tells me that the government has lost control of this side of life, which makes life less pleasant for citizenry. Nothing tragic, but less pleasant. So as to economic well-being, of course, people who have some savings of substance in the banks are getting now – well, it’s dropped from 18 percent, now it’s 14 percent interest capitalized, and we know that inflation is 10 percent. So they’re covered against inflation more than covered. They’re being rewarded for not spending their cash and not increasing inflation thereby.

If you are an ordinary Russian who doesn’t have big savings, you profit from the extensive increase in social benefits for families, large families, starting families, special reduced subsidized mortgage rates. So you’re not paying 16% on your mortgage, you’re paying out 3%, 4% if you fall into certain categories. So the sting of the war is not felt by a great many people. Moreover, an important fact, since I have in past discussions mentioned that the Russian casualty losses, death and injuries are twice the level of America suffering from the Vietnam War against the population. The United States, 300 million, Russia was 150 million, The United States suffered 65,000 deaths plus injuries, and the Russians have suffered now, let’s say 150,000 deaths, again with the population half the size, and maybe four or five times that in people who are maimed for life, who’ve lost limbs and so forth.

11:52
Now why aren’t there demonstrations against all this? Well, because the Russians learned perfectly from Mr. Nixon and from the results of the Vietnam War. The war is being fought by professionals and by volunteers. It’s not being fought by conscripts.

Russia has the callup every year to fill the ranks of its basic military. These callups have gone up in number as the military is expanding itself to meet the possible conflicts with NATO. But none of the conscripts is sent outside the Russian Federation. The only conscripts who ever faced Ukrainian soldiers were when there was the incursion in Kursk and the Russian conscripts who were situated in Kursk, there was a war and they were in it, but that was really unintentional and quite a surprise to Moscow that its own conscripts would be actually fighting. So the reasons for there to be active resistance to the war do not exist.

Diesen: 13:01
Well, I also come across a lot of people in Russia, both Russians as well as foreign officials who are there, were perplexed about the decision to go with this slow grinding war of attrition because if you look at their American counterparts, they’re always going for this quick regime change as an approach. Indeed, that’s how they got Ukraine on their side as well. And that’s what they seem to be planning for possibly at least for Venezuela. So there are many who are curious why there’s no efforts at all to pursue some form of a regime change. Because you do have people, I don’t like to use Aristovich too much as an example, but again, like the former advisor of Zelensky, Aristovich, he was interviewed and asked, if you become president, what would you do?

And he said, well, the first thing I would do is go to Moscow and just promise them that Ukraine will never let itself again be used as a threat against Russia. And based on this, we have to learn how to live next to each other again. And so, you know, you do have people who, again, he’s made some very hawkish statements on Russia. We are all familiar with the statements from 2019 where he was all very much looking forward to a war with Russia because this is what would bring NATO directly involved and they would be able to defeat the Russians. But again, it’s not as if he’s part of the pro-Russian club, but you do have pragmatists.

14:39
And that’s what I mean. The people who realize that our best future is not to continue this war, losing more territory, men and infrastructure. So I am perplexed why there’s not, why there hasn’t even been an effort to change the government because you see this now as well. I mean, it sounds very brutal to suggest a decapitation strike, but instead, what’s happening now is also very brutal. This massive destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure in which people more or less will be compelled to leave.

This will destroy the Ukrainian nation. And of course, all the Russian losses which comes along with this as well. It just looks like it would be much more conducive to have Zelensky replaced. Again, they might fail. America has failed in many of its regime change, but it also succeeded in many. It’s just strange to me that they haven’t gone down this path at all.

I wanted to ask though, in terms of the military industrial complex, because on one hand the Russian army has developed at a very amazing pace that is, you know, this is a common trait in Russian history. They start slow in wars and then they adjust to new realities and then they win. But with all this military development, there’s a lot of people who stand to make a profit. Do you see this being a concern in Russia?

Doctorow: 16:12
Well, I heard this stated. In fact, it was in the Union of Journalists that I heard the American maxim “Follow the Money” used to explain why there is, within Russia, support for continuing the war. I’ve heard from a longtime designer of ballistic missiles, an engineer who’s retired now for several years, at a very advanced age, I might say. He was saying that he sees what’s going on as being target practice that the general staff of Russia is very happy with because they’re testing all kinds of new weapons. So there are within top government and military industrial complex, there are clearly people who are averse to seeing an early end to this war and who are enjoying it and profiting from it.

But I think that is not really decisive in what’s going on. I think the decisive issue is the personality of the Supreme Commander and his risk aversion approach. Many people, certainly many viewers of this program, similar programs, authoritative interviewing programs are pleased to believe that Mr. Putin is the only adult in the room and that he is a peace advocate and proponent and not a war advocate. They find this comforting, that at least somebody in the world has not gone mad.

17:49
However, there is a problem with all this, and that is at what point does the gradualism and caution, and that is what certainly is involved in Mr. Putin’s behavior, to avoid at all costs slipping into nuclear war. That is a good approach in abstract, but in practice, it starts to look a lot like appeasement. And that appeasement is the most dangerous thing if your intention is to avoid progression to a war. So there are problems.

I don’t see any malevolence. I don’t see any intent to destroy the youth of Ukraine, which also by the way is a nonsensical view of what’s going on. You only have to look at Russian television and what they had two days ago. They were interviewing newly taken prisoners of war from the encirclement around Pokrovsk. And look at the faces.

18:53
There are a few in the 20s and there are more than a few who are clearly in the late 50s and 60s. The Ukrainian army has a lot of old timers in it. I don’t say they’ve been dragged off the street, though some of them have, but many of them are there for the very reasons that you mentioned. They are patriotic, they’re defending their land, and they feel obligated to go out and fight to protect what’s theirs. So you have a lot of old folks.

It’s not just a generation of young Ukrainians who are being slaughtered. It is a Ukrainian male nation that’s being slaughtered. And unfortunately, a lot of Russians are suffering too. And my acquaintances who spoke to me over dinner or behind closed doors on their wish for this war to be over as soon as possible, I think the single biggest motivation was their awareness that Russia is not just suffering deaths, compared to the Ukrainian deaths, of course, it’s small, but if you know those people who are dying or you empathize with the bereaved, then 150,000 deaths is a big number. And say four or five times that number are people who are maimed for life.

20:12
Russian television is already showing products by companies that are making prostheses for missing arms and missing legs. It’s gotten to that point. It’s on television. They’re trying to sell it to the relatives of those who have suffered. People are aware that a lot of Russians are maimed for life. And so the idea that “why is this going on when Putin could end it by decapitation in Kiev?” strikes a lot of people.

Diesen: 20:43
I guess, well, It does seem that over the past few weeks now that the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, including Putin then, has hardened a bit. And also there’s been more posturing now, especially with the announcement of these new missiles. And again, it does seem relevant because once this kind of speech is made, it’s very difficult thereafter for Putin to start to back down, if there would be, for example, like another attack such as what we saw back in June on this nuclear deterrent. So it does appear though that the hawks are gaining ground or at least Putin is moving in that direction.

That, by the way, would be another consequence of societies which go through a prolonged war that is you will have the rise of the hawks because, yeah, once you’re in conflict, they are seen to be proven right. And again, in Russia, there’s always been this, I know you went to St. Petersburg, which has always been the more European side of Russia, but there’s always been this idea that by large part of societies, we can have this incremental integration with Europe. We, you know, more or less from Peter the Great to Gorbachev, like all these common ideas, which always come back. But for the hawks, who have warned that the Europeans hate us, they want our destruction, they will use, you know, any every Ukrainian they can find in order to keep this going.

22:24
They are now seem to be proven to have been correct and there’s no, there’s no political force behind any pro-European liberals any more. So do you see this as being something that’s impacting society as well? That the, I mean, the liberals were never strong in Russia, but there’s a long history going back to 1825 to explain why the liberals aren’t doing well in Russia. But how do you see the, I guess, the rise of the hawks affecting Russian society? Because even people I know who were more mild-spoken before have now become very, very hawkish.

Doctorow: 23:07
All right. The hawks are divided. There are hawks who are loyalists and there are hawks who are militarists. That’s the definition I can take from an article that was published a few days ago by Piotr Sauer, obviously the son of Dirk Sauer, who was the founder and owner of the Moscow Times and who died about six months ago in an accident. And what Sauer was saying in this article is that the militarists,  those who have been raising funds very conspicuously to support Russian soldiers on the logic that the formal military was not sending our boys out properly equipped for this war and they had to receive additional clothing with better protection than the standard kit coming from the Russian army.

This view was for a long time quite widely supported. Officially, I think of The Great Game where Nikonov, the host, had time and time and again, some lady who was in charge of one of these volunteer organizations and showed pictures of the soldiers somewhere in the front receiving these presents from patriots inside Russia and saying thank you so much and we will of course win. All of this was every day on television. No more. Finally somebody upstairs understood that that’s what brought down the Romanov dynasty. It was these public activists who behind the show of assistance to the army were blaming the government for the way the war is going badly and brought it down with a little bit of diplomatic help from the British.

24:59
So people do have some sense of history and they are closing down and attacking these, the one part of what you just described, the right. And the loyalist right, which also is not completely supporting what Putin is doing, though they never would say a word about who is issuing the orders. They are calling for, like I think about Vladimir Solovyov, And he’s repeatedly calling for decapitation and repeatedly saying, this is not a special military operation. It is an all-out war. They are trying to kill us and we should finish them off without any mercy.

So to speak about the hard right in Russia, it is divided into several different voices, one of which is now being suppressed, those who are using the volunteer support to the army as a basis for attacking the official army, the same way the Prigozhin did, by the way, and then the others who are supporting Mr. Putin and those around him, though are being very critical of the exact things they’re doing, which are not giving the results everyone wants.

26:18
But coming back to your point about the Liberals, the Liberals in society were a small stratum. The Liberals in the government were a holdover from the Yeltsin years, very important. And even those just next to the government, like Germann Gref, who was moved out of government because he was maybe too Liberal and was made head of the Sberbank.

And Mr. Gref, I say, is in the shadows now, out of favor. His Sberbank has been completely outrun by what? By VTB Bank, which is headed by Andre Kostin, who is a great supporter of Mr. Putin, and is actually running things and making them work, like the whole shipbuilding industry now, which he controls when he has spare time left from his banking job, or maybe the other way around.

27:12
He’s doing the banking job, the time left over from running the shipbuilding industry. These Liberals, who else? Nabiullina, the head of the Central Bank. She’s an outstanding Liberal who is being berated every day on state television by people like Solovyov, and not just by a talking head, but by Deputy Premier of the Duma, Babakov, who uses every appearance on the Solovyov program to explain how she is killing the Russian economy and ruining the war effort. And there she is, supported by whom?

By the boss. Then there is the minister of finance, Siluanov. He’s also a Liberal. And I’m talking about open Liberals, not closet Liberals. So Liberals have suffered big defeats. A lot of them have gone abroad just ahead of being arrested, like Mr. Chubais. But in terms of influencing government policy and pulling in the other direction from the hawks, they’re still there.

Diesen: 28:20
Well, a big change though on both sides in this NATO-Russia proxy war is how each side speak of each other. That is a few years ago, I would say it would have been unthinkable to hear state leaders from Germany, France, Britain, talk about long range strikes into Russia, the need to strategically defeat Russia, this kind of war rhetoric. But one gets the impression from, not impression, one does see in Moscow as well that the resentment is now building up to a massive degree, the frustration and anger at the Europeans.

Indeed, I think one of Trump’s achievements is that a lot of the anger which was more directed towards the Americans in the past are now focused on Europeans. And some Europeans, such as the Germans, seem to be more in focus than others. Do you– again now you hear more talk about the need to attack or retaliate against Europeans as well. So do you see this as a rhetoric which is winning ground, the idea that, for example, German logistics centers or military facilities have to be destroyed?

Doctorow: 29:48
Well, the Russians are doing their best to keep Trump and the Europeans separate. And that is partly why Mr. Putin, surely the main reason why Mr. Putin has put up with Trump’s nonsense and has sung his praises when given any opportunity, which looks by itself to be peculiar. But the ultimate logic is to keep Trump on side, to make sure that he isn’t going to support the Europeans in some risky provocation that leads us to World War III. So is this view supported in the public? I think the public, if you ask Russians, they hate England, for example.

I think England has outrun, outpaced Germany as the first country they would like to flatten if they ever use the Poseidon against an enemy. It was said, a few days ago, that  five Poseidons, and England will be erased from the globe. This is not going to happen, But it’s an idea which pleases Russians to think over. The idea that rolling out these new weapons systems as has happened in the last two weeks, reminding the West of Russia’s superiority in strategic weapons, I don’t think that that restores Russian deterrence, not at all. First of all, it takes us into the realm of the value of nuclear weapons in general.

31:28
It’s always been conceded that nuclear weapons are of last resort and that they are not used for deterrence purposes, except against miserable countries that have nothing. But among peers, that cannot affect deterrence because nobody would use them. The Russians may have come close to a first strike capability recently. The Americans may have come close to a first strike capability before the Russians had readied for use their new weapons systems. But neither side really is going to risk a nuclear war on the hope that this first strike will be effective and totally effective.

Partially effective is not good enough. Therefore, what you have is conventional weapons. This is the thing that I find puzzling and incomprehensible. Why the new generation conventional weapons of Russia, these hypersonic missiles and the Oreshnik in particular are not being used right now to decapitate the Kiev regime.

At the very least to ensure that there’s no more diplomatic tourism of every Danish prime minister or German minister of defense every couple of weeks to go and buck up, to support Zelensky and keep his spirits up. This is an utterly inexplicable situation.

Diesen: 33:11
Yeah, well, my last question is, well, whenever we talk about the divisions and domestic problems of other countries one should always be aware that this is always used as well for propaganda purposes. And I’m not sure if you’ve seen this latest thing now in the media. I think it’s a bit suspicious right around the time Pokrovsk is falling, the idea that Lavrov and Putin are now deeply divided. Again, it’s possible.

I tend to be very critical because these stories often rest on hearsay and they always pop up around very strange time and they don’t always make that much sense either. I was just wondering, again it could be true so I’m not going to dismiss it altogether, but what do you make of these reports which are now being pushed around the Western media that there’s this split between Putin and Lavrov?

Doctorow: 34:19
I don’t believe it. Look, the reason why they raised this question is that many people in the West believe that Mr. Lavrov is an important personality, that he influences policy, in fact, he makes policy. Well, to a certain extent, under the weakling president, Medvedev, Lavrov stepped in and in a way made policy when he revised and made literate the very juvenile revision of European security architecture that Medvedev put out as his main initiative. In that particular moment, with a very weak president, Lavrov had something resembling a policy role. But generally speaking, under a strong president like Putin, Lavrov has only been an implementer. He has never been an independent force.

35:14
The notion that he would be at odds with the president, well, he should just resign, because he is nobody without being the implementer of his boss. The further fact, which I think many people don’t think about is whom is he overseeing? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is populated with, sorry to say it, Liberals, pro-European people. People were very disappointed that there’s a war and that they have to fight like hell to get postings in Western Europe and to be accepted by the host countries. So the idea that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its boss would be at odds with the president, And that that would have a policy value, I’d just dismiss from the get-go.

Diesen: 36:06
There’s an interesting contradiction also in Russia, though. That is, on one hand, you see this real rise of this new confidence, which wasn’t there before. Again, part of it was economic, that they’re able to stand and grow despite doing better than the other European economies despite all the sanctions and also the ability to win on the battlefield despite NATO throwing everything it has into this and again being welcomed around the world as a great power despite the western efforts to isolate Russia. So there is this, You can’t deny that this is massive new confidence which has come forth. On the other hand, one sees that there’s a very cautious, as you would suggest, overly cautious almost in terms of how they engage with the NATO countries.

Of course, there could be a lot of strategic thinking below the surface there, which could explain for this, which I wouldn’t be aware of. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Doctorow: 37:17
My point from this trip was simply to pick up what I see around me. And what I saw around me was enough to justify my claim that what is in a general presentation to the broad public on these interview programs is often misleading and claims an accuracy that is unjustified. Not because I have greater accuracy, but I can say that what I saw contradicts completely, well, contradicts in many ways the general view of Russia’s position in the reorganization of the governing board of the world.

It is much more complex. It is much less solidified. And that my peers are often taken in by their hosts on very high level, very attractive visits to Moscow, sponsored by Russia Today, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or by very high level oligarchs in the media realm, like Mr. Malafeyev, and they’re not aware that they are willy-nilly being disseminators of the official Russia line.

And they take that to be the whole of Russia. Russia is 150 million people, very complex society. And I make no claims to have my arms around it. That would be totally foolish. But I do see that others who are behaving as if they have their arms around it are doing so in an unjustified way. There’s a lot of work that you and your guests are doing and must be doing to make the public aware of the complexity of the challenges we face.

Diesen: 39:20
Yeah, I think it would be naive not to recognize that this, yeah, this war will also take a toll on Russian society as well. We tend to always measure things either military or economic, but the societal is quite an important aspect to keep an eye on. So thank you so much for taking the time, and hope to have you back on soon.

Doctorow:
Yeah, very kind of you.