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0:31

Hello and welcome to The Bunker, I'm

0:33

Chris Jones. Russia's

0:42

election is done and dusted and it went

0:44

exactly how we knew it would. Vladimir Putin

0:46

won with a landslide of 87% cementing

0:50

his position at the summit

0:52

of the Kremlin. His

0:54

victory exemplifies his immense control over

0:56

Russia and the influence he has

0:58

in all corners of society and

1:00

how it sees the world. But

1:03

what are his views of the world today

1:06

and how does the way he thinks

1:08

shape how Russia acts in a world

1:10

becoming more and more hostile day by

1:12

day? Well joining

1:14

me now to discuss all of this is

1:16

Dr Ivan Grigoryev, a lecturer in Russian politics

1:19

at King's College London. Hi Ivan. Hi

1:21

Chris. So let's start with that election.

1:24

Obviously 87% is a massive margin. We've talked

1:27

on this podcast a little bit about that,

1:29

about how the world kind of reacted to

1:31

that and how politics reacted. But what about

1:33

the Russian public? How do you think they

1:35

would have taken that 87% statistic? Well

1:39

I think for them that's a signal

1:42

that Putin can make them produce that

1:44

kind of electoral result. Which

1:46

is I believe the primary goal

1:48

of this whole you know performance,

1:50

this whole show. To

1:53

make people see, to make the elites,

1:55

the society see that if Putin wants

1:57

87% he will get

1:59

87%. Do you

2:01

think it was just purely a peacocking

2:03

exercise to show the world

2:06

just how powerful it is despite everything

2:08

that we've seen over the war in

2:10

Ukraine, for example? I'm not

2:12

sure if the outside world was the

2:14

primary audience for this. So

2:18

the way it was staged, my

2:20

impression is that the primary audience

2:22

would probably be the people. So

2:25

many electoral malpractices used were actually

2:27

obvious to the population. People

2:30

were forced to vote at

2:32

the workplace. It was

2:34

clear that many electoral procedures

2:36

were violated. So a

2:38

significant proportion of the population would

2:40

either know that they did not want

2:42

to vote for Putin, yet they voted or

2:45

they did not vote for him, and they

2:47

are surprised at the numbers. I

2:49

guess for them it's just this kind

2:51

of a picture that says, OK, we

2:53

are really consolidated everybody is supporting

2:55

Putin. If you are not supporting him, you

2:58

are in the minority. That in

3:00

turn would probably have been the

3:03

signal sent to the main audience,

3:05

so the elites around Putin, because

3:07

for them it's important to know

3:09

first that the political system

3:12

is safe and sound. So

3:14

their fortunes in Russia,

3:17

their future, etc., it's secured

3:19

with Putin. He can

3:21

produce this kind of result. That

3:24

it would make no sense for them to

3:26

try to look elsewhere, because the chances of

3:28

Austin, Putin, given this result are really low.

3:31

And they think it's only the third

3:33

step when we think, OK, what would

3:35

the outside world think? Because

3:38

for the outside world, I would say, it does

3:40

not look good. So probably

3:42

it's not for them that they have put up the show.

3:45

Yeah, and you mentioned the outside world there. We

3:48

know what Russia wants

3:51

or plans to do with Ukraine. We've seen

3:53

that with the illegal invasion over the past

3:55

couple of years. But what about other countries,

3:57

for example, in the Baltics, for example, you

3:59

look at Latvia and Estonia, but also

4:01

to some extent Georgia as well, where

4:03

we've seen some unrest in parliament over

4:05

the past couple of days as well.

4:08

I think a minister punched another minister

4:10

or something like that, something wild. We

4:12

don't exactly know what Putin wants or

4:14

plans for them. Should they be worried about any of

4:17

that? Well, they had all the

4:19

reasons to freak out two years

4:21

ago, February 2022, when the invasion,

4:23

well, the full scale invasion started.

4:25

I really could not believe

4:27

when the invasion of Ukraine started. So I'm

4:29

not sure if I'm good at

4:32

predicting things like that. But I

4:34

would say that countries, so

4:37

Latvia, Estonia, they

4:39

are probably safe because they are NATO

4:41

members. I think what Russia has been

4:43

trying to do, the Kremlin strategy, has

4:46

been to disrupt

4:48

other countries' possibilities to

4:50

join NATO and the

4:52

EU by instigating territorial

4:54

disputes in those countries.

4:58

Much of what has been happening in

5:00

Ukraine is actually about that, but the

5:02

same applies to Moldova, the same applies

5:05

to Georgia that you've mentioned. Once

5:08

you have these territorial disputes, so

5:10

currently 20% of Georgia is actually

5:12

occupied by Russian forces, by Russian

5:14

troops. Once this has

5:16

already happened, I would

5:18

say there is not much to fear, really.

5:20

So it's like, Latvia and

5:22

Estonia are already past this threshold. They

5:25

don't have to fear because they are

5:27

already NATO members. And countries like

5:29

Georgia, they have not crossed

5:31

the threshold. And we know

5:34

they have nothing to fear because there are

5:36

territorial disputes there. So NATO or the EU

5:38

would be reluctant to extend an invitation to

5:40

a country like that. Also

5:43

with Georgia, the current government

5:45

is kind of friendly towards

5:47

Russia. And I

5:49

mean, it may seem that as

5:51

if Russia was kind of bribing

5:54

the Georgian elites into that. At

5:56

the same time, if you look at the Georgian

5:59

GDP, it has been growing throughout

6:01

the last few years,

6:03

quite significantly. A

6:05

lot of it comes from Georgian

6:07

reorientation towards Russia. So even

6:09

though officially Russia and Georgia are

6:11

kind of hostile because of the

6:14

2008 war, they

6:16

have restored flights. Moscow sent

6:19

Pittsburgh to the

6:21

capital city of Georgia. They have

6:23

restored trade, tourism, and all of

6:25

that is really very lucrative for

6:27

Georgia. So even though Georgians have

6:30

all the grounds not to like

6:32

Russia and the Russians, it

6:34

is kind of economically beneficial for them

6:36

to still cooperate with Russia. So if

6:39

I were them, I would not fear

6:41

that something would happen. Yeah. When

6:44

you do consider Putin has a

6:46

list of issues that he has

6:48

with the West, and so does

6:50

his inner circle, what

6:53

are his priorities, do you think,

6:56

outside of away from Ukraine with

6:59

the West? Because it is clear that he

7:01

wants to make some changes to the geopolitical

7:03

landscape, but what are

7:05

they? And realistically, can he get any of them done

7:07

if when you look at Ukraine,

7:09

he has not been able to really achieve any of

7:11

his goals there, although he would tell you otherwise. So

7:14

what are his priorities with the West, do you

7:16

think? It's a good question. It's really difficult to

7:18

decipher what's going on in his head. I would

7:21

say that if we are trying to

7:24

imagine that there is some strategy behind what

7:26

he's doing, I would assume that he was

7:29

trying to create some kind of a buffer

7:31

zone around Russia, or to

7:33

maintain its existence. I mean, it

7:35

has existed since the early 1990s.

7:38

On many accounts, he failed

7:40

doing that. So whatever he

7:42

he miscalculated with Ukraine, but

7:44

also that created this cascade

7:46

with Finland and Sweden that

7:48

joined NATO. I think

7:50

if that was a strategy, that was a

7:53

really stupid one. Currently,

7:55

most probably his main

7:57

goal is to just get

7:59

out of the Ukrainian crisis and

8:02

at the same time keep the

8:05

annexed territories, the occupied territories. So

8:07

Crimea, but also the four regions

8:09

of Ukraine, parts of which are

8:12

currently occupied by the Russian troops.

8:15

I don't think that he thinks any further

8:17

than that. And it's actually quite

8:19

unclear where this horizon is. So how close

8:21

is it, whether he will be able to

8:24

do that, because it depends on loads

8:26

of things. US

8:29

elections, whether the

8:31

Western assistance to Ukraine will continue,

8:34

etc., etc. Whether the

8:36

Ukrainians will be able to fight as bravely as

8:38

they've been fighting so far. What

8:40

do you think his biggest issues are with the West?

8:42

If you kind of put it into a collective, what

8:45

is his biggest problems? Well,

8:47

if we are reconstructing that based on

8:49

what he started saying roughly 2006, 2007,

8:55

I think he believes that

8:58

the outcome of the

9:00

Cold War was unfair for Russia.

9:02

He thinks that many promises that

9:05

were made throughout the, well, in

9:07

the early 90s and then

9:10

in the 90s, more generally, were not

9:12

kept. He probably

9:14

thinks all that. But

9:16

at the same time, much

9:18

of what he's doing is really

9:21

targeted at the Russian society. So

9:23

he's trying to pump up this

9:25

kind of revenge-iest

9:27

agenda. He uses

9:29

the resentment that exists in the

9:32

Russian population to do

9:34

that credibly. He kind of has to

9:36

be really vocal on the international arena.

9:38

You know, what's been called, so at

9:40

some point they introduced this very useful

9:42

word to describe Russian foreign strategy. They

9:45

said Russia was becoming more

9:47

assertive internationally. Of course,

9:49

up until the point when everyone started saying

9:51

that Russia became aggressive on the international arena.

9:54

But this assertiveness was kind

9:56

of trying to create crisis

9:58

primarily for the US. wherever

10:00

it was possible, like Syria

10:03

or you know doing stuff in Ukraine

10:06

or Moldova. You mentioned

10:08

society then, I think that is a

10:11

huge part of the messaging that Putin

10:13

and his wider inner circle within the

10:15

Kremlin talk about in terms of degradation

10:17

when it comes to the West. For

10:19

example, I was listening to

10:21

a report from BBC's Steve

10:23

Rosenberg and in

10:26

that report he mentioned for example

10:28

Sergei Stepchin who is a former

10:30

Prime Minister and he

10:32

was talking about the West being

10:35

forces of the Antichrist. So they

10:37

bring religion into a lot of the

10:40

conversation as well. Why do you think that

10:42

religion plays a part

10:44

in the messaging that we hear from

10:47

the Kremlin when it comes to criticising the

10:49

West? Truth be told,

10:51

Russians are not particularly religious. So

10:55

many Russians claim that they

10:57

are Orthodox Christians, ethnic

11:00

Russians. Of course there is a huge

11:02

proportion of the Russian population that are

11:04

Muslim and that are not ethnically

11:07

Russian. So if we focus on

11:09

the ethnically Russian part which

11:11

is roughly 75-76% of the population of Russia,

11:13

they say that they

11:18

are Orthodox Christian, many of them say,

11:20

but they do not attend church services.

11:24

It's an element of a Soviet

11:26

identity really. So some of them

11:28

would probably attend the Christmas

11:31

service or the Easter service and that's

11:33

pretty much it. At the same

11:35

time, it's difficult to

11:37

untangle but there is this

11:40

kind of combination of anti-Westernism

11:43

which goes through critiques of

11:45

the Western morality

11:49

which is very closely tied

11:51

to the anti-gay sentiment which

11:55

was in turn instigated by

11:57

the Kremlin itself. Russians

12:00

did not used to

12:02

be anti-gay. I mean,

12:04

you look at the

12:06

public opinion surveys and

12:10

more than half of the population thinks that

12:12

gay and lesbian people, that's how they would

12:14

formulate it in Russia, should have the

12:17

same rights with the rest of the population,

12:19

which is quite strong. Currently,

12:21

it's two-thirds of the population that they

12:24

should not, right? And

12:26

much of that was created by

12:28

propaganda. And that

12:30

somehow is tied to religiosity, which Russians

12:32

really do not have that much of.

12:35

Various political figures, like, for instance, Sergei

12:38

Stepasian, by the way, he was only

12:40

a prime minister for three months

12:42

in 1999, so he did not

12:44

last long, Vladimir Putin

12:46

replaced him. So in

12:49

many cases, they are just using this kind

12:51

of rhetoric because it's

12:53

acceptable, because you cannot

12:55

make a mistake there. You

12:57

criticize the West, you refer

12:59

to Christianity, etc., that kind

13:01

of the mainstream. Whether

13:04

they really mean, they probably mean what

13:06

they say. They are

13:09

elderly white men

13:12

who grew up in the Soviet Union.

13:14

Many of them have some kind of

13:16

KGB background. So they probably

13:18

mean what they say. But if the circumstances

13:20

would be different, I wouldn't be surprised to

13:22

hear them say something completely different, to tell

13:25

the truth. So do you think in that

13:27

sense, they're completely out of touch with a

13:29

majority of the Russian public who might not

13:31

necessarily look at the Western, necessarily

13:34

care whether they are

13:37

or they hold religious views that are similar to

13:39

theirs? Not really, no.

13:41

So for the Russian population, apparently

13:43

this very strong resentment that a

13:45

significant proportion of the Russian population

13:48

has after the 1990s, and after

13:50

all the hardships that the Russian

13:52

society went through, this

13:55

resentment is channeled into

13:58

aspiration to be this, you know,

14:00

self-right is nation, you know,

14:02

which is properly

14:04

rooted in the real Christianity,

14:06

whereas, you know,

14:09

those people in the West, they are,

14:11

you know, completely decadent and stuff

14:13

like that. So it's

14:16

not that many Russians actually traveled

14:18

abroad and in the West. So

14:20

I guess Turkey

14:22

and Thailand would be the two

14:24

countries that Russians would have visited

14:26

most often. Well, besides Ukraine, of

14:29

course. So

14:31

a lot of propaganda they see

14:33

on TV, they do believe, they

14:36

tend to believe, especially people older than

14:38

50 years old. Yeah.

14:40

And what about the propaganda when it comes

14:43

to Ukraine, for example, you mentioned just how

14:45

strong is that propaganda that the

14:47

Kremlin puts out to its own

14:50

public? It's incredibly strong. Do they

14:52

believe it? Yeah, it's like a

14:54

steamroller that, you know, keeps rolling

14:56

over and over on the Russian

14:59

population. I've been thinking about that

15:01

just recently because I was talking

15:03

to a friend who

15:05

had the misfortune of talking to

15:08

her mother about the recent terrorist

15:10

attack in Moscow. And

15:13

even though all of the evidence

15:15

suggests that this has completely nothing

15:17

to do with Ukraine, her

15:19

mother believed that Ukraine somehow was

15:21

connected to it. And

15:24

the fact that it's possible,

15:26

I mean, that's just one instance, but

15:28

the fact that it's possible to turn

15:30

the public opinion that way. Well,

15:33

it might be that Russians are just so

15:35

impressionable. But I mean,

15:38

the extent to which the propaganda, you

15:40

know, the extent to which Russians are

15:43

being brainwashed every day is very high,

15:45

especially on issues like Ukraine. Thanks

16:00

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of home, Carvana will pick up your car

16:14

from yours after you finalize your offer. Visit

16:17

carvana.com or download the app and sell

16:19

your car from your comfy place. It's

16:27

really quite strange to

16:30

me to see quite how far Vladimir

16:32

Putin has gone in terms of becoming

16:36

more isolated from the West. Because I

16:38

think it was in 1999 that he

16:40

said that he couldn't see a future

16:43

where Russia became isolated from Europe. And

16:45

now fast forward to today, it's almost

16:47

completely adrift from the rest of Europe,

16:50

isn't it? Does that

16:52

surprise you how far he's gone

16:54

in his ideology? Well

16:56

now it does not. But I mean, if

16:58

you think about it that way, then yeah,

17:00

that's of course, that's a big change.

17:03

On that word change, what has changed? Why

17:06

has Putin decided to take

17:08

Russia so far away from the rest of Europe?

17:11

I guess there was a point when

17:13

he tried to just keep power in

17:15

Russia. It became apparent

17:17

to everyone that that's what he's trying to

17:19

do. That he's basically usurping the power in

17:21

2011 when they swapped seats with the then

17:28

president and next prime minister Dmitry

17:31

Medvedev. At this point,

17:33

the public support for him went down

17:36

quite significantly. And what they started

17:38

doing then at that point is

17:41

they invented this combination of two

17:43

strategies. One, this kind of international

17:45

assertiveness, which started

17:48

with Ukraine and

17:50

Syria, etc., etc.,

17:52

using this to create this rally around the

17:54

flag effect inside the country. And on the

17:57

other hand, they're creating something, something that's not

17:59

a good idea. kind of a conservative

18:01

agenda. This is where the religiosity

18:03

comes from, etc. And

18:05

the more they are doing that, the more

18:07

they are stuck with that. Besides, when

18:10

they first used this international

18:12

agenda in 2014,

18:14

when Crimea was annexed, it was

18:16

a very successful move for Vladimir

18:18

Putin, for his popularity, for his

18:20

support. So they might have thought,

18:23

okay, if we repeat that again,

18:26

which is what they've done in 2022, that might have

18:28

the same effect, which

18:31

it kind of did. But

18:34

on the other hand, it's unclear to

18:36

what extent it's genuine, because in 2014,

18:38

there was no censorship, and

18:41

currently Russia lives under military

18:43

censorship. It was much

18:45

less repressive towards their position, towards

18:48

the activists, etc. Obviously

18:50

we are not sure if the emotion

18:52

is genuine, and if it will not

18:54

dissipate once state

18:57

becomes less repressive towards its citizens.

19:00

Just to look in the other direction for

19:02

a second, this drift that we've seen away

19:04

from Europe by Russia has kind

19:06

of pushed them a little bit

19:08

more further towards Xi Jinping and

19:10

China and developing a relationship there.

19:13

What do you think Russia and

19:15

the Kremlin specifically sees the relationship

19:18

with China? Is it one for

19:20

now, or is it a potential

19:23

long-term strong friendship? I

19:25

think they want it to be a long-term

19:27

friendship. They really have

19:29

no other choice, right? So

19:32

Russian economy is largely exporting

19:34

mineral resources and oil and

19:37

gas. Russia doesn't

19:39

have many ports, so a lot of

19:41

these exports should be by land.

19:45

And then you look around, you see that

19:47

basically it's either Europe or China. Another

19:50

good partner would be India, but

19:53

I mean, there you need to go by sea.

19:56

On the one hand, there is

19:59

not much choice. On

20:01

the other hand, I mean, I think

20:03

when Putin, during his first two administrations,

20:05

so in the 2000s, when he was

20:08

saying that Russia is part of Europe,

20:10

etc., I think that's what he

20:12

thinks, really. I'm not

20:14

sure if China would be his

20:16

first choice. Right. I mean,

20:19

he has, so his career

20:21

was in Germany in the

20:23

1980s when he was working in the

20:25

KGB. He speaks German.

20:29

Much of his work was

20:31

actually with people from the West. He

20:34

has contacts mostly

20:36

with people from the West. I

20:39

wonder how confident he is when

20:41

he communicates with the Chinese. So

20:44

whether he is sure that the

20:47

toolkit that he has, and he

20:49

has quite a toolkit because, I

20:51

mean, he was trained that way,

20:53

whether it applies to the

20:55

Chinese. Yeah. And

20:57

then just finally, what

21:00

would it take, do you think, for Russia

21:03

to reintegrate with Europe?

21:05

Would it take the death of Putin,

21:07

for example, or if

21:10

Putin were to disappear, would

21:12

his legacy be carried on by his inner

21:14

circle that he keeps around him, and

21:17

would they continue to push away from Europe? What

21:20

do you think would bring Russia back to Europe?

21:22

Anything? That's a good question. Part

21:25

of the question is whether, so

21:28

for instance, when Putin

21:30

dies, would Russia necessarily

21:33

reintegrate? I

21:35

think there is

21:37

definitely a problem with integrating Russia

21:40

into Europe or into NATO in

21:42

terms of, so

21:44

there are many technical obstacles to

21:46

that. Russia is huge.

21:49

I mean, not geographically, but

21:51

it's a huge market. It's 140 million people.

21:55

So any kind of economic integration

21:57

with Russia is really difficult to

21:59

achieve. on the level that the

22:02

European Union could integrate, for instance Estonia,

22:04

a much smaller country in terms of

22:07

the size of the market and the

22:09

population. So any

22:12

kind of economic integration would

22:14

probably not go further

22:16

than the free trade area most

22:19

probably. And that's not big really.

22:21

I mean the free trade area you kind of

22:23

can achieve it at the level of the WTO.

22:27

Free integration is difficult to

22:30

achieve first because

22:32

Russia and the West have historically

22:35

been adversaries in terms

22:37

of nuclear arsenals, etc.

22:41

How do you build trust there? It's

22:43

really difficult. On the other hand, maybe

22:45

it would sound less important but it

22:47

is important. Russia

22:49

and the West have completely different military

22:51

standards. Everything would

22:54

mean that one

22:56

of them would have to override

22:58

those standards which would probably have

23:00

to be Russia which

23:02

kind of means disarmament if

23:05

you think about it. Russia will

23:07

not go there. So

23:09

I think a good roadmap

23:11

for this reintegration would probably be

23:13

to just recognize that Russia is

23:16

not part of those organizations, that

23:18

it's more of a neighbor and

23:21

that you do not need this Russia

23:24

to move in but you just need

23:26

good neighbor relationship with Russia. It

23:29

would really be difficult for the

23:31

West to think about that after the

23:33

war in Ukraine. It

23:35

would probably also be very difficult

23:37

for the Russian society to accept

23:39

that because they would have to

23:41

go through recognizing, through realizing that

23:44

this is what we've done in Ukraine. I mean

23:47

there would need to be some reckoning. People

23:49

would not want to reckon with

23:52

that. So I would

23:54

not expect Russia

23:57

to reintegrate in any way in the

23:59

next decade. Yeah, it really

24:01

does seem as though the relationship

24:03

with Russia and Europe

24:05

and the UK where we are

24:07

really seems like it's been ruined,

24:10

whatever existed beforehand has kind of

24:13

completely gone and away back to

24:15

any kind of conversation really seems

24:18

quite difficult. Ivan, thanks so much for your

24:20

time. Thank you for having me. Listeners, if

24:22

you enjoy our episodes and want to hear

24:24

more exactly like this, then why not go

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back as on Patreon for just £3 a

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well as access to our exclusive merchandise.

24:38

I'm Chris Jones reporting from the bunker.

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