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.
Gilbert Doctorow 