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Hello and welcome to Battleground Ukraine with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop. As well as news and analysis, our aim is to bring some perspective to what is a very complicated historical situation. We're going to do our best to try and explain the Russian mindset as well as the Ukrainian. And helping us gain some idea of the complexities and contradictions today is Professor Orlando Fijas, who was very kindly agreed to talk to us. He's a professor of history at Berkbeck College London, where he's built up a reputation as one of our foremost historians of Russia with a deep knowledge and understanding of its history and culture. His latest book, The Story of Russia, is Out Next Week. I asked him about how Russia's historical relationship with Ukraine explains the war, how he thinks the conflict is going, and how he thinks it might end. Putin's chief justification for the invasion of Ukraine is that it is not a real country, as you put it in the book, but a historic part of Greater Russia, a borderland protecting Moscow's heartlands from the West. What is the historical basis for such a claim? Well, there's come some Putin's article published by the Kremlin in July 2021, entitled on the relations between the Russians and Ukrainians, in which he argued that ever since the founding of Kiev and Rus, which is essentially a 19th century term for the state formed in the 9th century, arguably by Slavsomsae, by Viking, Maraudes, others say by Asiatic tribes. So definitely the reality is that Kiev and Rus was probably a multiethnic configuration. But for Putin in that article, it's the foundation of the modern Russian state, therefore the Soviet Union, therefore the Russian Federation as the successor of that imperial entity. And in that reading of history for Putin, Ukraine or Little Russia, as it was called in the imperial discourse of the 18th and 19th century, was just, as you say, a borderland of Greater Russia. It had no claim to nationhood or statehood, other than the false or artificial statehood that Lenin gave it in forming the Soviet Union. So that gives us a clue to, I think, Putin's other great historical gripe about the existence of Ukraine. Suddenly that the post Soviet Ukrainian state formed in 1991 was illegitimate because it took firstly more Russian lands than it should have taken on forming an independent state. So in particular, what the Russians used to call new Russia, the province of the coast on the south excluding Crimea and the Donbass, which is where so much of the fighting has been, but also that Ukraine, if it was to succeed from the Soviet Union as it did, pulling the plague effectively on the Soviet Union in 1991, should have left it with what it entered. Now you can see that as two suggestions, either that it should leave without new Russia and the Donbass or that it should leave it with what it entered, which imputence ideas possibly nothing. So either way, for Putin's historical vision, Ukraine should not exist because it never had this element of statehood or nation behind it. Now this is clearly nonsense, really. I mean, it's what is any of this to do with contemporary reality is the most obvious thing to us. Ukraine has been an independent state for 30 years and Russia, as a post imperial state, clearly has tremendous problems in coming to terms with that reality. And I guess that leads us to the question of well, when will Russia sort of leave this notion of itself as an empire? When will it exist as a nation state or be it a rather large and clumsy one at peace with its neighbors? And for my money, that won't happen for as long as Putin and the supporters of this imperial ideology remain in power. You talk very early on in the book The Story of Russia, Orlando, to give a bit of sort of understanding for Putin's mindset now about the how and understanding of Russian history with regard to its geographical location and its subordination of society to state. It's vital that you understand that to understand Putin. Now, can you tell us a little bit about the early years of certainly Romanov Russia and why it always felt so unstable and needed to create this kind of protective ring rounded? Yes, I mean, I think there's essentially been two Western views of Russia's expansion. Firstly, the idea that it is intrinsically expansionist and aggressive, which is, for the Russians at least, a russaphobic view going back to the Cold War and beyond that into the 19th century when the market of Kustin in 1839 wrote a very influential treatise on Russia, saying essentially that, that it was an autocracy built as a military state to enslave its people for its military expansion and it expanded because it was so unstable as a political entity that war and expansion was necessary to keep this autocracy going. And you could, I suppose, apply that to Putin's war in Ukraine. And then there's another view, which is that because of Russia's size and the openness of its frontiers on the Eurasian step, what defines Russia? It's not clear. The Ural Mountains are really just a series of high hills with gaps in between. So there's no clear differentiation between European Russia and Asiatic Russia. Likewise, the seven frontiers of Russia have always been open to incursions by Turkic speaking tribes and the Crimean Tartars and the Black Sea coast, which became under Catherine the Great, the frontier of Russia, remained very, very vulnerable to naval attacks through the Black Sea and was itself on a sort of Christian Muslim fault line running right across the southern frontier of Russia. So because of the instability of Russia's frontiers, the poorest nature of those borders, the argument goes that Russia needed to expand into borderlands to create a buffer zone around itself, to protect itself from attack from hostile powers who would use those ebrow borders, use those national minorities like Ukrainians or Poles under the Tsars to attack Russia itself. And that is how the Russians now under Putin see that sort of geopolitical, historical background to the war. So Putin and his ideologists in the Kremlin today are constantly harping on about this history that Ukraine has always been used by Western powers to attack Russia. Before Ukraine, it was Poland, always used by the Polian and other powers to attack Russia. So you have essentially then two diametrically opposed historical versions of Russia's expansionist history and geopolitical situation. And where Western historians and certainly ideologists and politicians would subscribe to the first, I think we nonetheless need to understand that from the Russian point of view be it slightly paranoid maybe, but necessarily for their point of view grounded in history, we have to understand where they're coming from in order to deal with them now. So that in a sense was what I was trying to do with the book, not to apologize for the Russian point of view, but to try and balance their point of view about their history and how they've got to where they are now in Ukraine with what we in the West might see as a more objective view. There were along those lines, Orlando, I think, as you point out in the opportunities at the end of after the fall of communism to maybe encourage the Russians to take a more Western type stance, even Putin himself spoken those terms in the early years of his leadership. Was this an opportunity mess, do you think? I think so, yes. I mean, I don't want to get into the game and sort of blaming NATO for the war in Ukraine. I mean, it's Putin to blame for the war in Ukraine and we should have no doubts about that. But I certainly agree with George Kenan, the great scholar and diplomat and Russia watcher who indeed himself came up with the idea of containment in 1946 in his long telegram. So he's no sort of a politician for Russia in any way. He has to have better than anyone in his day, the threat which the Soviet Union represented to the West. But George Kenan in the late 1990s is on record as saying that he thought the expansion of NATO was a mistake and a provocation to Russia. And whether a different course could have been pursued possibly through the idea of neutrality for post Soviet states is another matter. I mean, the Baltic states are sovereign states. They have a right to apply for NATO membership. But regardless of that, I think that there could have been more communication possibly between NATO and the Russian Federation, greater transparency about what was going on. And I certainly think that the build up of US military presence and aid and training of Ukrainians since 2014, although entirely justified, given the Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014, nonetheless was inevitably going to lead to some sort of reaction from the Russians. For me, the missed opportunity really was after 1991, when Russia might have been brought into a closer security arrangement with NATO and indeed with the EU, because it had under Yeltsin a genuinely Western oriented government with democratic aspirations, albeit with huge problems to overcome. It's importantly its own imperial legacies. But NATO was quite explicit in excluding the possibility of Russia ever joining it. I mean Putin did float that question, albeit informally in 2002, 2003, which was a period of great collaboration with NATO after 911. And he received a very dismissive rebuff from the West on that point. And it became clear to him that NATO was really an anti Russian alliance. And I don't think NATO has ever succeeded in persuading the Russians that it is anything about that. I know it cast itself as a defensive alliance. But from the Russian point of view, it's essentially a Western alliance against Russia and could never incorporate Russia, could never even embrace Russia in some sort of informal arrangement that would look for security arrangements to address Russian concerns over NATO's presence on its borders. So I think that the opportunity should have been taken in the 1990s. But you know, I think it was part of that zero sum game thinking that Russia had lost the Cold War. The West could dictate to a weakened Russia under Yeltsin's leadership what Russia should put up with, what Russia should expect from the West. And that just fed those historic Russian resentments of the West that were already there and well developed during the Cold War by propaganda. But which, given the economic collapse that Russia suffered in the 90s, given the great resentment that many people felt about the imposition of capitalism and the imposition of democracy as they saw it, were bound to only exacerbate that sense that it was okay for the Baltic States to join NATO. But Russia would always be seen as the bad guys. And so the anti Western nationalism that Putin developed in the 2000s found an echo, found some sort of resonance in those large segments of the Russian population that had lost out from capitalism and which had no sort of conceptual framework to explain why they had lost out other than to blame the West. If we drill down a little bit into Putin's relationship or at least policy towards Ukraine since he came to power, Orlando, how would you characterize that? Well, I think there has been a gradual and accelerating shift in his attitude towards Ukraine. I think that as late as 2008 and 2009, there was nothing in his rhetoric to suggest. He believed Ukraine should be erased from the geopolitical map. He fully accepted Ukrainian sovereignty. But I think that his discourse about the Russian world which develops from 210 to 11 much under the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church suggests a shift. And that rhetoric was, as I say, originated by the church in the sense that there was a sort of civilization of the orthodox spread beyond Russia's geopolitical borders, which the church wanted to reclaim. So the Russian world rhetoric started with the patriarchy and other church leaders talking about reclaiming the diaspora churches under the sovereignty of the Moscow patriarchy. Putin saw this as a chance to develop the idea that Russia should be defined beyond its borders, that it was effectively a civilizational empire that represented all those millions of Russian speakers left outside of Russia by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which, as you recall, in 2005 he had characterized as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. Well, what people often forget about that speech was that in the rest of that sentence, he said, as for Russia, it left us with tens of millions of our, quote, our citizens outside of our borders. Well, they're not our citizens. Russian speakers in Ukraine are Ukrainian citizens, and generally now would see themselves as Ukrainian citizens, likewise in Kazakhstan or the Baltic states. But Putin has this imperial conception of Russia's claim to all Russian speakers, which developed strongly after 2012. I think some of it under the influence of thinkers like Karl Schmidt, who was a Nazi theorist, legal philosopher, whose ideas were popularized in Russia by people like Alexander Dugin and other Eurasianist thinkers, who wanted to reconceptualize Russia as a Eurasian power, but also as a power of an empire that could be characterized as a civilization with a statehood at its core, and with almost like a built in right to dominate those that it claimed as part of its civilization. You can see where this comes from, Nazism. Well, it's sort of thrust onto Putin's conception of Russia as a new empire with a sphere of influence at the very least, but which then is used from 2012 and comes to the fore in 2014 as almost a sort of built in messianic right to save the Russian speakers from the possibility of genocide after the Ukrainian revolution, when it's true the Ukrainian parliament passed an ill thought out law which it later revoked to take away the protection of Russian as an official language, as a language you could use in schools and offices. Well, Putin jumped onto that to claim that the Russian speakers of Crimea and East Ukraine were threatened by a sort of linguistic genocide by the Ukrainian nationalist regime as he put it, the junters he characterized it, and that was the pretext for the invasion of Crimea and he's continued with that sort of rhetoric ever since. It's not realistic and in fact the effect of his policies and certainly his war since February has been to drive those very Russian speakers into the arms of the Ukrainians. So Ukraine is arguably now a much more united nation including the Russian speakers than it was before the war. So this is a case I think of Putin sort of fulfilling his own prophecy by pursuing his fantastic ideas of Russia's imperial claims and it just goes to show I think how damaging, how dangerous these sort of mythic ideas of history can be when used by nationalistic taters. How do we explain in that context Orlando, his extraordinary decision to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine when, frankly, he was achieving quite a few of his regional goals by not actually going to war. So how can we possibly explain that? Yeah, it's very hard to explain. I think everyone was taken by surprise and shocked including some people I believe in the, you know, Kremlin's in a circle. I mean, when you look at that security council meeting of the 21st of February when he lines up all his ministers and gets them to support his recognition of Luchansk and Danyetsk, I mean, it seems to me that Lavrov is visibly shocked and tries to point out well, there's still mileage to be had in diplomacy. So it did take everyone by surprise and is hard to explain. I think that the explanation is not in some notion that Putin went mad or is crazy, which was the initial sort of tabloid reaction to the war. I think this is a war that has been long planned by the KGB effectively, the FSB in Russia. I think that as you say, everything was really going its way. I mean, it was dividing the West. It had effectively got Trump into power, Brexit had taken place. Europe was divided. Russia was stacking up a huge foreign currency reserve by selling oil and a gas to the West. It was getting away with its Crimean annexation. There were no real sanctions against the Russian elites. And what was there to be gained from war? So how do we explain it? I'm really still scratching my head, but it seems to me that there are two things that we need to bear in mind here. One is, as I say, was a war long planned out and the timing for this was pretty good to come February 22. In the sense that Europe was visibly divided still, the West was still recovering from COVID. US military aid to Ukraine was slowly building up. So this was perhaps a window of opportunity. They had tried out some of their other tactics, namely forced refugee movements in the war in Syria, which they tried again, remember, by smuggling Middle Eastern refugees across the border from Belarus into Poland. They could see the sort of destabilization they could affect through measures like that. And so I think there was a sort of a window of opportunity which the planners of this war saw and which they knew would be limited because at some point, a West would recover from COVID and everything else. But the other factor, and I think this is probably the key to an explanation, but it's only a guess, is that it was really a cock up. A cock up because the FSB, the foreign wing of its intelligence gathering, was really off the ball in saying to Putin, as we believe it did, that the Zelensky government was weak and would collapse. Key of could be taken in a matter of a few days. I suspect we'll find out as it was rumored at the time, I believe, that a lot of that intelligence was wrong because some of the intelligence officers were pocketing the money but making up the stories they were feeding back to Moscow. And that would sort of ring true with a lot of the cock up sort of happen pre invasion in not just Russian history for that matter, but in other historical episodes, I suppose. So yeah, so I guess historians in 50 years time might find out what really happened. Great stuff, Orlando, really, is true to medicine. One last question and that. And again, this is sort of hopelessly imprecise, of course, at this stage, but how might this end on what type of Russia and Ukraine for that matter might we see when this all plays out? Yeah, well, as I say at the end of the book, I think there are three possible scenarios. I mean, the first and least likely I'm afraid is a Ukrainian victory. If we mean by victory, the expulsion of Russian forces from the whole of Ukraine in its 1991 borders, I don't think that is really feasible. I think that Russia is more likely to remain in the territories it presently occupies, namely the Baud Donbass, the coastal region and Crimea. And I don't think even if Ukraine were to score some sort of victory and put in word to be humiliated, I don't think that the regime would topple somehow. I mean, his power base is strong, his popularity is high, the propaganda machinery will explain whatever defeat Russia might suffer in a way that gives a positive gloss. Much more likely is some sort of long stalemate in which effectively Russia remains in occupation of the territories. Russia has and Ukraine remains for many years a dysfunctional state. I'm able to join NATO. I'm able to join the EU because it's still occupied and that would be in a way, I guess, as a limited victory from the Russian point of view because that was always its aim in stirring the war in the Donbass to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. When I'm afraid, I'm slightly pessimistic about this war and therefore inclined to the view that some sort of limited Russian victory or something that Putin can declare as a victory is the most likely scenario of this because ultimately his war campaign is based on the notion that the West just will not see it out. Western societies will divide possibly right wing populist governments will come into power maybe in Italy as early as September. He's already got one in Hungary and that these governments will divide the Western alliance and support for Ukraine will slowly decline. I just hope that Western resolve can remain strong enough so that support can continue to flow to the Ukrainians long enough for them to fight their way into a position where yes they will have in the end to approach the Russians for peace talks but that they can do so from a position of strength where some sort of resolution to preserve some element of Ukrainian sovereignty can be achieved through those talks. But the result of that for Russia, I mean there's no good outlook in this war for anybody but the best that we can hope for is a Ukrainian peace with Russia that allows for Ukrainian sovereignty or be it at the expense of some Ukrainian territories but that Russia will be as a result of this war isolated from the West that there will be a huge effort on the part of Russia required over probably several generations for Russia to reenter the international community in a way that it can be trusted. Well that was absolutely fascinating and in part two we're going to dig into some of the points that Orlando made and look at the key development shaping the war this week. We'll be back in a minute. Welcome back. Well that was all very illuminating. What I got from it saw was a very strong sense that at the back of Russia's behaviour is an inability to let go of the past and to define itself according to the realities of its new circumstances. Well it's a problem of course that faces all declining empires or once great powers. Unfortunately most of them seem to accept their fate and try and manage it rather than aggressively reclaim the past. Yeah I think you've got a double problem here Patrick with one harking back to the past but also harking back to the past which as Orlando points out in some ways is a complete myth. The relationship between Russia and Ukraine is fascinating. It goes all the way back to Kievan Rus or at least both sides claim a connection to Kievan Rus. But is there really a link? Of course the Kievan Rus are knocked out by the Mongols in the 12th and 13th centuries and there is no actual long term link. So really you've got two strands going back to something that doesn't really exist. Yeah but of course you'd admit that it's powerful as reality perhaps more powerful in these circumstances. But this sort of question of managing decline. The comparison with the British Empire which there was a certain amount of nostalgia, the Empire loyally it was actually a political movement and some idea that the Empire could somehow continue in its old power if you like but in a kind of new form and that took a time to die but it's now really got to the end of the process. So we're actually now looking back on the Empire and seeing nothing there to like. So there's this sort of process of self flagellation which we see on all fronts and I think a distortion of history not because I'm an empire enthusiast or a defender of colonialism but it just seems to me to be a disservice to history to go from one extreme to the other. So to see it as some do now, many do now, as really a kind of evil empire I think is not the right way to go and utterly distort the past. Yeah, I think it's important of course just like with the British Empire that you look back and you accept that there is good and bad but you can't return to those days. Can you imagine if we said well actually there are bits of the former British Empire we'd really rather like to get our hands on again in the case of let's take some of the former white colonies because they were British originally and it's clearly nonsense and what the war of course is done as Orlando points out is actually make people who have Russian ethnicity in Ukraine actually think well no thank you very much if this is the way Russia behaves we want no part of it. Yeah, this may be think actually about America's standing at the moment. I mean there are some who say and I think they're increasing signs of this that America already is well advanced down the road of decline and that looking back at the adventures in Iraq have Afghanistan to a certain extent this could be interpreted and indeed Russian propaganda does present it like this and anti Western propaganda presents these actions like this as sort of you know the flailings of a declining power desperate to try and project its influence and its prestige show that it's still master of the universe with these very costly military adventures so I mean there is a case perhaps to be made for seeing Iraq in the same sort of terms as the Russian invasion of Ukraine does that argument have any validity for you. Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated because of course America was lashing out you know blindly and very violently after 9.11 in other words it had pretty serious provocation and we we know now of course there is no link between 9.11 and the war in Iraq but I think they thought there was a bit of a link and they also saw as a chance to reset but I take your point I mean America of course is you know apart from the odds territory has never really had a formal empire but it's had an informal empire that matters matter and matters very much and I agree with you I think historians will look back on Iraq and say this was one of the last great imperial ventures were they intending to stay no of course but they wanted to create kind of informal imperial control there which means putting a client state putting a client government in control and you would then have the benefit not only of the strategic benefit and the security benefits but you would also have a lot of business benefits and that is or has been America's modus operandi to a certain extent so yes I think it's a very interesting analogy actually Patrick. Yeah also thinking about Germany and France I mean France although it sort of technically it's sort of abandoned it or rather let it senpa go of course it remained very present particularly on the kind of diplomatic military and economic front so that was one way of doing it a sort of soft part way of doing it Germany had a complete personality change after the defeat in the Second World War so it went from being you know militaristic aggressive expansionist into this you know very Pacific economically oriented all its energies went into the economic miracle and it kind of completely renounced its its parts now I think the reason for that was was the complete utter disaster they experienced in the war so they to put it very simply they learned a lesson and I always think that is one of the arguments for the strategic bombing campaign I mean it didn't take long for people to start saying that actually we were guilty of war crimes as well this was a barbaric act and indeed it was you know setting out deliberately to kill civilians but if you are going to justify I think one thing you can point to is this personality change so Germany was a completely different nation after the war and it was because it saw what happened if you followed someone like Hitler now I think for Russia to have the same utter change of outlook and direction you probably have to have a catastrophic defeat do you think that's likely well you know looking into our crystal ball we don't know I mean we'll come on to the news and some of the important developments that might give you a tiny indication that the tide is turning a little bit we talked a bit about this last week but Orlando Fijas was really quite pessimistic really and how he thinks all of this is going to turn out I mean he personally as he said right at the end thinks that the West really has to stay strong on this and give Ukraine some kind of negotiating position so that it gets some kind of ramp state that allows it to live it as an independent nation but as he also pointed out you know no one's going to come out of this or winner he doesn't see a disastrous Russian defeat as likely I'm a tiny bit more optimistic that Russia might suffer more of a bloody nose for the ray reasons you point out because if he doesn't in other words if the West doesn't allow the Ukraine to to inflict or support Ukraine to inflict significant military defeat on Russia then this will probably happen again and the idea that even a defeat wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the Putin regime is also quite striking isn't it so firmly embedded is the regime and the security apparatus there that even as Professor Fijas says even a defeat could be spun into something different. Yeah but I think for the catastrophic defeat to come about would need NATO to basically declare war on Russia there's no sign of that happening at the moment. Now one more one thing that came up in your conversation with Professor Fijas was that of Alexander Dugin we better point out that this interview was done sometime before the news that Dugin was the apparent target of an assassination attempt that instead killed his daughter Daria. Now he wasn't particularly well known to Western audiences before this event but he certainly is now he's striking figure Soljinitsyn type beard peasant shirt and a very vocal proponent of a greater Russia a new Russia a kind of Euro Asian Russia so he's a traditional figure but a very modern one at the same time using television social media etc to boost himself but a bottom a massive ultra nationalist and war monger who's been predicting a war with Ukraine and cheering it on once it happened four years. So he's a kind of part of a modern political landscape I was reminded of Steve Bannon strangely enough when I first heard about him various people have pointed out like Mark Gallyotti the brilliant Russian analyst that he's one of these people that sort of sees some coming political trend starts espousing it and when it actually comes to past claims to credit for having inspired it so he's a shapes events post facto in order to big himself up essentially so he's of the view that he wasn't actually a particularly important political figure the idea that he's Putin's brain etc is not given much credence you know his daughter he's even less important some that on the Russian political scene so does ask beg the question what on earth is going on there. Yeah I mean I think the clue that he's not firmly embedded in the Putin regime is the fact that this assassination attempt was carried out on him I mean virtually no security for example for either him or his daughter he was clearly the the target of the assassination attempt because that was his car that his daughter was driving and he was incredibly lucky and pure coincidence he didn't get in the car and decided to drive in another car and of course you know tragically because there is no justification for such a killing of a civilian albeit one with such extreme views as even his daughter because his daughter very much you know plows the same furrows as her father I mean I find it also interesting the speculation about you know as I say I don't think he's that firmly embedded in the regime right man at the right place saying the right sort of things for Putin as Putin moves steadily away as Orlando explained from the you know basic attempt to consider a repressimal with NATO and the West I don't think that was ever that serious to be truthful in the early 2000s to very much seeing the encroachment on NATO as a threat and therefore turning back towards the East I suppose you would put it and trying to create this kind of panagia block that would allow give Russia a certain amount of protection but I think we also need to accept another really important point made by Orlando and that is there's always been this debate as to why Russia has become so inquisitive a positive in terms of land all the way going back to you know the early days of the Romanov's it's steadily increased in size and why is that well you know he points out actually part of this is security it's is it paranoia not necessarily because you've got a country that is stepland the original Russia we're talking about and there were no natural frontiers and therefore you need buffer zones to protect yourself now whether that's an argument that you should still hold true today is another matter but it is interesting that he feels there were opportunities not so much in the 2000s but particularly in the 1990s were the Yeltsin regime that were missed by the West the West was pretty haughty as a result of having won in inverted commas the Cold War and didn't really make serious attempts to bring Russia into the fold we'll never know whether that was properly possible but certainly Orlando Fijas feels that those attempts could have been made and weren't yeah interesting he raised a name of George Kenan the American diplomat who has seen the story right through from from beginning well from the start of the Cold War to the end of it and that the end of his life he was counselling against this triumphalist attitude something that struck me actually was the way that Kenan you know great foreign department figure state department figure how the status of of American diplomats has declined in recent years recent decades I've seen that in my own journalistic life where you'd go to the American Embassy you get a fantastic the interesting briefing showing real depth of knowledge analysis and a kind of you know positive a political if you like approach to the country in question particularly so it's Saudi Arabia and elsewhere and then none of this ever translated into policy on the part of the president so I think the the standing of American diplomats high quality though they they are and were not withstanding they don't really have a great deal of say in how foreign policy is shaped anywhere that's another subject for another day perhaps getting back to doogin once again we get this sort of you know Russian version of events they don't really expect anyone to believe it because it is so far fetched we've got them telling us that this was the work the assassination was the work of a woman agent who traveled around with her her child in tow they've even named an atalia ruvk she's called allegedly and she rented an apartment in the same block as Daria so they're saying that was Daria was actually the target not Alexander somehow you know planted a bomb etc and has since fled to Estonia of course everywhere Ukrainians are denying that any such thing was done by them the Estonians are saying no and cross the border etc etc so once again we get this sort of almost fascicle attempt to explain the thing away they wrapped up the investigation in 48 hours which is an absolute record given that they've never actually tracked down the assassins a lot of other people who've been murdered for political ends in Russia so they seem to be kind of almost mocking the rest of us in this respect what about what do you think are the potential motives here then then saw how do you how do you want to pick this well they've immediately identified the Ukrainians as the possible originators of this plot and it is of course we'll have to wait and see we may never know for sure actually we'll have to wait and see and it is of course possible that the Ukrainians were involved but it's also very possible that internal elements of of Russia possibly even members of this security apparatus are involved I mean some commentators are speculating that this is an indication to Putin exactly how this is an indication I'm quite sure but this is an indication for him to take an even harder line than the years in the war at the moment had to use long range missiles to target civilian infrastructure in places like here which has you know pretty much been unaffected relatively speaking by the war for the last month or two so you know it's incredibly difficult to work this out could it be members rogue members as it were or at least hard line members of the FSB sending a signal to Putin I mean one of the most reliable commentators who will we will hope to have on the program relatively soon Professor Philip Sobrion who's who's a professor up at St Andrews has been keeping a very close eye on this has said actually we can't know for sure by now in these early days who's responsible and why but Putin's response will be very telling if he purges the FSB for example that might give us an indication that something within the organization might have been responsible he may be purging it of course because he's angry that they didn't do anything to stop the plot there could be other elements in Russia we'll we'll we'll speculate on that in a second and of course there is the rather chilling coincidence that as we're recording today on a Wednesday this is independent stay for Ukraine and of course there's a very strong likelihood that he's going to lash out and look at significant or symbolic targets in Ukraine and try and hit them today so we'll report on that or at least the aftermath of that next week but certainly the Americans and President Zelensky himself have been warning Ukrainians not to gather in large numbers today that there is a real danger that they will be under attack whatever the connection of Ukraine in the Dugina killing there was always going to be a likelihood that there would be Russian symbolic Russian strikes this day I think yeah now if it was actually a Russian state job it seems to me that there are you know there is some potential proper count of value for them in that it will underline the message that they've been pumping out to the Russian public that the you know the Ukrainians or Nazis and this is the kind of thing they do this is the kind of thing you can expect from them and to kind of up the out the outrage levels and that may be necessary because there are some polls I know Russian polls extremely unreliable but there is some evidence that the story that's being peddled that this is a special operation they're wearing a bit thin patience is running out if it's a special operation how come it's taking so long and also the question of casualties how do you explain the fact that there are probably I think we can reliably say there are about 20 000 at least Russian dead we always go back to Afghanistan figure there are only 15 000 Russian dead and Afghanistan over a period of nine years this is 20 000 dead in six months how do you that had a huge political effect the bodies coming home news of the deaths reaching the villagers etc did bring political pressure to bear on what was a totalitarian regime and you know got forced them eventually to abandon the project so something must be happening on that front what again we've given that we've got all this potential information waiting to come out none of it very little of it is getting up we still have very little idea of what the mood is there it seems by and large to be have been a fairly solid bit is that really starting to a road we'll have to wait and see yeah I mean the biggest conspiracy theory of all of course Patrick which we may as well even vaguely considers that Putin himself was responsible well I'm not I you know I can't buy that responsible because of course he then blames the Ukrainians and this justifies you know even more outrageous acts plus it brings in a lot of wavering supporters in Russia as you say we don't really know what's happening with in terms of public opinion in Russia what they think about the war I mean I got an interesting indication yesterday when I had a follow up chat with with Orlando Fijus and he said I had an interesting chat with someone who has a very close connection in Russia today and he said that basically support for the war is split on generational lines which I think we knew anyway that is the older generation of broadly in support of the war and the younger generation are against it and you know could this be an attempt to bring some of the waverers so to speak into line I'm not buying it because as we know from Putin's own features Dugin was was an inspiration you know is he you've honestly got to authorize the killing of this ultra nationalist I I don't believe it but rogue elements within his regime possibly but also dissidents in Russia as things stand and things will shake down of course that's probably the most likely scenario at the moment yeah well come on to that a bit but I think I just agree with you actually about Putin stopping short of murdering someone who done so much to support him he's with my opinion perfectly capable of doing such a thing given his history I mean this is a man who is almost certainly behind the Russian apartment bombings September 1999 which killed 300 Russian citizens in Moscow and to other cities now the bombings were of course blamed on the Chechen and this triggered this gave Khazas Belay for the second Chechen war Putin was Prime Minister at the time and his firm response calling for the bombing of Grozny etc was widely implored and helped him win the presidency a few months later but all the evidence is that it wasn't the Chechens who planted the bombs but FSB agents working at Putin's behest is he capable Patrick you know I couldn't agree with you more he he absolutely is capable of ordering something like this but it's it's the identity of the target Dugan a man who he has you know as I've already pointed out as as confessed as inspired his thinking about you know greater Russia no I can't see the benefit of for Putin killing Dugan but we'll have to disagree on that one and that's absolutely fine so what are the other possible scenarios well from the Ukrainian perspective equally I can't see what's in it for them you know if they've had actually had the resources to reach into Moscow to carry out this sort of operation surely it would be better to go after someone more important than a self promoting TV guru yeah true and actually the the reaction was always going to be you know pretty pretty severe the the Ukrainians that you know as you point out have already denied any responsibility and they've made pretty much that point is that we wouldn't have wasted our time on someone like this on the other hand he is a target that was relatively easy to get at as I say if you're not a not a member of the inner circle the inner security apparatus in in Russia of course you're not going to have much in the way of protection so it made him an interesting target well the most intriguing theory that's been put forward so far is that this was the work of an internal resistance group the National Republic and Army there's an MP exiled MP Ilya Bonom Malov who was kicked out of the Duma and now kind of is an opposition figure abroad and he said that it was this National Republic and Army which was responsible and which had also carried out other operations as the first time I've heard of them but digging around I can cross their their manifesto which declares we declare president Putin a usurper of power and a war criminal who amended the constitution unleashed a fractal war between the Slavic peoples IE the war in Ukraine and sent Russian soldiers to certain and senseless death poverty and coffins for some palaces for others the essence of his policy we believe that disenfranchised people have the right to rebellion's tyrants Putin will be deposed and destroyed by us what what have you heard about him yeah I mean I've heard the same story that's interesting I didn't hear the detail of the of the manifesto you know it sounds like a credible option doesn't it of course officially the Russians are saying absolutely nothing to do with this this group they're not even acknowledging that it exists understandably because of course if it if it does turn out to have been a Russian responsible there is no justification for any any reaction any tip for that as far as Ukrainian targets are concerned and and of course you know it's very useful for them frankly at the moment to have this crime pinned on Ukraine for reasons that we've already discussed we don't know enough about the national liberation army it's something we need to keep our eye on it's a possibility my personal instinct is that this act has been carried out by someone internal to Russia it's not a Ukrainian act but but you know who knows we'll we'll have to wait and see their kind of logo is a blue and white flag not the trickler of Putin's Russia and this is also the emblem of something called the freedom of Russia Legion which is a apparently you know pretty small group of ex Russian and ex Belorussian soldiers who are now fighting on the side of Ukraine some of them are defectors and they've been formed into this Legion which is obviously not terribly military significant but has significant propaganda value for the Ukrainians so they're apparently been trained up they're using the anti tank weapons that we've supplied them others have supplied them with which have been so effective on the on the battlefield and you know there is of course a history isn't there of defections throughout the Second World War from the Russian side yeah absolutely and also grim circumstances Patrick as we remember at the end of the war for anyone who had done that but yes there is a long tradition of that pretty much anyone who fell into Russian hands at the end of the Second World War and who had fought in on or with the access in any way was you know that was almost certainly a guaranteed death sentence so you know incredibly risky to do that sort of thing in an authoritarian state and therefore if that is the answer that a lot of very brave people involved talking of the FSB which is the the security apparatus you form a KGB that Putin of course used to lead himself I think it was interesting just going back to Orlando Feige's explanation or at least assessment of why the war had come about that he thinks they played a or might have played a very significant role and that is they were giving dodgy information back to Moscow as to how the Ukrainians might react to a war on the one hand saying a lot of Russians and indeed you ethnic Ukrainians would support the war and secondly saying Zelensky's government would collapse like a house of cards so clearly there's something quite rotten in the FSB to have got it so badly wrong why did they do it well Orlando's version of events is you know this is corruption basically they were taking cash which of course should have gone to informants in Ukraine and making up stories that it believed Moscow wanted to hear whether they assumed that was actually going to lead to an invasion is another matter so just you know just before we go on to the news I think it is worth just both of us speculating a little bit on why he took that decision because Orlando is quite clear and I asked the question um you know what is going on here because he was getting most of what he wanted which is to keep Ukraine destabilized NATO out he'd already annexed the Crimea I mean what was to be gained by the war and how do you explain it um Orlando felt it was long planned and and and at the timing in 2022 was pretty good but still it is a big leap from all of those things it basically in favor including the dodgy information from the FSB to actually pressing the button if we can use that analogy it's slightly unfortunate one for a for a nuclear power um any thoughts yourself Patrick on what might have tipped Putin over the edge this year yeah well a couple really I mean one one is that he he I think this is an indication that that of how far removed from reality he's he's become which is always the case with autocrats you insulate yourself from anyone who's going to tell you something you don't want to hear uh so therefore all you ever get is the good news and link to that I would say is that he's coming to the end of his life I won't bother speculating about his health because we don't hear much about that anymore there was some excited notions earlier on that you know analysis of his hands shaking a little bit or something meant that he had this or that disease now that all seems to have faded away but I think there is a kind of you know legacy phase of his life he's moving into thinking what am I going to leave behind and thinking what about you know one last throw the dice that will bring everything that I'm now currently working on as part of the of Russia's future project and it could all come very quickly and very easily um because this is what I'm being told now I think you know in his old the old Putin would have known just how dodgy all intelligences particularly human intelligence uh which is there are so many motives behind why he would tell the story one is to keep your job your nice cushy job we saw that's very much in the Second World War with um with German intelligence particularly abvarian intelligence you've got a nice job in Paris or down the south of France uh you invent a whole load of agents who are very greedy and you have to keep paying uh and then you send back all sorts of bullshit reports about what's going on um just to uh you know benefit your own particular happy situation so the old Putin would have would have seen through all this stuff and and try to get to the real hard of the matter but I think you know in his current isolated paranoid and grandiose state he might have thought okay let's just do it see what happens yeah well I mean you know it's speculation and we're going to have to wait and see of course so let's move on to some of the interesting news stories this week and they have been some really fascinating ones actually Patrick uh a piece in the Times war fatigue sets in as Russians switch off their televisions um you know this is a story really about about uh or at least the the slantes that Russians are fed up with the pro war propaganda and that whereas 86% of the population were watching the three main television channels at the start of the war that's now fallen to 65% and you know this is indication of uh you know as I say they're just being bombarded with stories that are not particularly entertaining well it's partly it might be an indication that the war is becoming less popular but it might also be an indication frankly that those popular light entertainment programs that they used to which have been removed from the airwaves so that it's just got you know wall to wall crèmeley friendly pundits uh who are telling viewers that Ukraine is a Nazi state and explaining why it needs to be liberated they're pretty much fed up with that so you know I suspect that that can be taken either way but it is quite an interesting thought that the you know the 24 hour propaganda machine is reaching fewer people these days yeah I mean the thing is in the west uh those decisions are made by the editors so they decide okay the the viewers or the readers are getting a bit bored with it so let's kind of you know change the diet a bit but of course that's that's not the case uh in Russia so I think you know you can one can possibly read too much into this um and it doesn't sound like an enormous fall either so I'd be a bit wary of that one yeah there's another interesting story about uh the the UN announcing a team to investigate the attack I don't if you remember this patch I got a week or two ago maybe a little bit longer than that there was a you know very bizarre story which was that a lot of the POWs had been taken from Marriapal particularly members of the you know allegedly far right as of battalion were killed in an attack on a on effectively a prisoner wall camp uh of course the Russians said the Ukrainians did it and the Ukrainians uh and frankly they're a bit more believable on this uh say that Russia did it so why might Russia have done it well the very fact that the UN has prepared to put a team together to investigate the mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war indicates I'm afraid that that or at least it looks like that Russia was responsible so what might have been the motive well the motive uh seems to have been we want to do we were away with these guys anyway but also and probably more significant that actually a lot of torture and killing had already gone on in that camp and that this was effectively a cover up that they were going to blame on Ukraine and that as you know as we've already speculated over the over the Dugina killing is very much uh their modus operandi yeah it is astonishing when you just spelt out that possibility that we're talking in these terms you know in the well into the 21st century that this sort of barbarism uh is thinkable it is quite chilling yeah now another interesting story um three politicians this is the German story going back to uh you know some of the points you made about where it was interesting what you said Germany has come full circle now in in in in some ways as a reaction to Nazism it's become uh certainly since the end of the Cold War almost a pacifist state and and that it needs to row back from that of course and arm itself significantly well well interesting development this week three politicians from from three separate parties that SPT FDP and the Greens have written an op ed together in Daßpiegel the popular German newspaper not only calling for more weapons for Ukraine but also uh clearly stating they feel that that it needs an announcement needs to be made that clearly states that European uh and German security is being defended by Ukraine and that the Bundeswehr the the German army should accept some deficits and lack of equipment uh so that Ukraine can be equipped faster I mean this is really quite a major uh development of course you don't have the every every single member of those parties um uh in on this but it is quite an interesting shift I think that might be going on in Germany yeah I mean this actually runs counter to what we we've been saying before about a gradual weakening of will uh among democratic parties of the west towards supporting Ukraine playing into that scenario that Ukraine will gradually come to be seen as being the um that the party holding up the prospect of some sort of settlement but this seems to to be very much the opposite of that doesn't it in a sense uh you know if you want to see a decisive Ukrainian victory then this is good news yeah exactly as I was saying and that one other interlinked story um not directly connected but trending in the same direction I suppose you you might suggest is the news coming out of the United States this week that they are going to transfer uh Excalibur high precision long range shells to Ukraine now these are shells that have a a range of between uh well up to 70 kilometers which uh we'll let you know give or take 50 miles and they can be fired with glide fins used they're GPS guided and they've got an accuracy apparently Patrick it's hard to believe isn't it fired from an artillery piece of four meters um it's makers claim that a shell can accurately hit a target that would take uh from 10 to 50 conventional unguided shells to destroy and more significant than all of this is uh some of this kit can actually be fired by stuff that's already in Ukraine including high Mars and and of course this uh is going to give the uh Ukrainian significant targeting capability uh with these precision long range shells but there's something else uh uh happening as well um interlinked to this story and that's the uh growing speculation that the United States has already supplied um uh Ukraine with uh so called ATACMS there's a big acronym so I won't read it out but these are short range tactical missiles uh these can be fired by high Mars multiple rocket launch systems and that Ukraine has already received them uh and they have a range and this is the really significant uh point here Patrick of 300 kilometers now this is all speculation at this point but it could explain it could explain some of these uh long range attacks in Crimea that have been going on and there is a suspicion that uh America has already supplied these and it is denying these at the moment to give of course the Ukrainians the edge to sort of you know take a little bit of the bite off the Russian reaction uh uh but that sooner or later we'll find out the truth and one of the indications of of of this is that they have denied other kit in the past and it's then been discovered that the kit is actually there so we'll have to what wait and see what's going on on this one but it's definitely um a possible explanation for some of these long range attacks and of course it's giving uh Ukraine a significant long range capability yeah well that would make sense all around it would explain a lot of uh mysterious events for sure of course the the big question uh ongoing question is whether this technological edge will cancel out the Russian uh overmatch in just men and conventional kit um that's really the the big question the other one of course is the question of will and morale i think the Ukrainians still very much have the advantage on that front and going back to Dugin i think whatever the truth about the Dugin story is if we do whichever way you look at it if it was Ukrainian to it was the Russians it does sort of uh it's an indication of weakness isn't it at the heart of Russia uh and i think this sort of thing it's symbolic but it's it's nonetheless significant yeah and uh last couple of very interesting stories coming out of the Ukrainian military this week um on the one hand they've admitted they can precise figures for the number of soldiers killed they they they've said that almost 9,000 soldiers have been killed in the war so far and of course they they haven't given total casualties but you know give or take if we give a three to one um which is fairly typical in war you could say the total casualties of about 40,000 now you talked about 20,000 uh Russian dead i think it's higher than that the Americans are estimating total casualties of about 80,000 the Ukrainians have gone on the record of saying at least 40,000 uh Russians are dead so we'll probably split the difference and say maybe up to 30,000 uh Russians have been killed going back to your point this is going to be affecting um uh people in Russia uh apart but the only counter to that uh of course is that a lot of these guys as you pointed out on the on the podcast i think last week actually get coming from distant areas of of the Russian federation and actually it's not the heartland the decision making areas like Moscow and some Petersburg that are feeling the pinch in terms of body count at the moment yeah uh i think that on that figure of 9,000 Ukrainian dead uh i think that is probably accurate because in Ukraine uh that will be a checkable verifiable and it will be very bad politics i think for uh Zelensky to underestimate the dead for all sorts of obvious reasons it seems to it would be a kind of cynical manipulation of the sacrifice and i don't think he's at the moment do that i think he's he's demonstrated over and over again his his fantastic the death to political touch so i think we can take that 9,000 dead as being as being a true figure yeah and one other comment made by the Ukraine military apropos are speculation and discussion last week Patrick about the kerson offensive which people are sort of waiting and saying yeah a lot of people to say well when's it actually going to happen you know what what's going on here well well according to um uh the Ukrainian military this week it's it has already begun and it is beginning to take an effect and the reason we're not we aren't noticing it in quite the same way is that what it at what they're actually doing it is carrying out a gradual a systematic a methodical counteroffensive that is not loads of guys leaping out of the trenches trenches and trying to take ground it's degrading the capacity of the Russians in that area of southern Ukraine to resist by targeting infrastructure bridges resupply ammunition depots and that slowly but surely this is having an effect and they're direct quote from the press coordination center in Ukraine for the military is if everyone expected that they would see how troops rise up and march through the steps of curse kerson oblast too bad because in the conditions of modern warfare the counteroffensive looks very different basically it's the depletion of the enemy's forces so we've got here a situation Patrick where really they're playing the Russians at their own game to a certain extent yeah fascinating another indication of how you know this this war is taking warfare in general into new areas but learning new stuff about how contemporary wars conducted every day yeah and not so much news but that finally a kind of interesting opinion piece by a journalist and you know of a very experienced political commentator called Peter Conradi who's really just backing up a lot of the points that we've already had from Orlando on the program and that is that mistakes were made and that actually you can never stop talking to Russia so this is really the sort of Kissinger point mistakes were made in the 1990s even in the 2000s NATO became you know far too aggressive I suppose in terms of expanding its membership and that you can never stop talking to Russia because otherwise you've got you you've got on the sidelines you know a really quite a dangerous state and yeah I don't think Conradi is going as far as saying you know let's do a deal that sells the Ukrainians down the river I don't think he's doing that but he's suggesting that in the slightest but what he is saying is channels of communication need to be kept open absolutely okay well that's all we've got time for now join us next week when we'll have another star guest offering that real insights into the world goodbye goodbye