Outline of the discussion and the Misfit’s questions for me:
I have some specific questions for you, but to start off, what do you think are the most important takeaways from this speech - either from what was in it or what wasn’t?
Putin invoked the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in this speech - he often refers to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the congratulatory, predatory attitude of the West toward that political collapse and the hardship that followed. He said again today that the West is constantly trying to break Russia up into smaller states that will fight with each other, and that Russia must resist that. So - he says on one hand, the decision to dissolve the USSR went against the will of the people of the Soviet Union, and that the people of these new regions of Russia wanted to restore their “historic unity” with Russia. He also said the Soviet Union is no more, and that Russia “cannot return to the past … we are not aiming for that.” So … I mean, how should some of the non-NATO members of the former Soviet Union take this? The West often tries to present Kazakhstan in particular as next on Russia’s list to take over. Putin has explicitly said, “Russia is not trying to reclaim former soviet states,” but he also keeps saying “but it sure is a shame they’re not united with us anymore” and invoke “great, historic Russia.” How should this message be taken and how is it being taken, from what you can see, in Russia’s neighbors?
Let me ask you about taking sides in this larger conflict that Putin lays out. Putin consistently frames the conflict in Ukraine as a war between Russia and the West, and this address was no exception. He said Russia is not going to continue to live under the false rules of the Western so-called rules based international order. He said Western elites “are colonizers and they remain colonizers, they discriminate between the first class of nations and the second class of nations.” Accurate. I totally agree. And Putin says, hey, I’m doing what I’m doing because Russia understands its responsibility to the international community. And then - because of course Putin is a right winger - he invokes the terrible ills of drug use, of gender nonconformity, sexual deviance, the horrifying possibility of trans people, Satanism - as some of the Western excesses he wants to spare Russia from. I don’t personally agree that all of those are terrible things, I’m not a right winger, I don’t particularly want to live under this Russian administration either. And I wonder your thoughts on the larger battle that Putin invokes, because this is something critics of US actions grapple with. It is true that powerful Western nations continue to plunder the planet in the name of liberation and fairness. But say this guy who is calling them out, and who is willing to use military force to block what he identifies as the encroachment of this evil hegemon - he also doesn’t represent the kind of leadership I want. What do you think is the responsible position? Anyone who is seriously challenging the west is worth supporting? Sit it out because you don’t like either of the combatants?
How are Russians reacting to this speech? And how much are they invested in what Putin calls Russia’s “great liberating mission”? There’s some question about how long European populations will go along with their countries’ leadership when it starts to really affect their wellbeing - how about for Russia?
Let me ask you some nuts and bolts questions. First, about what is going to happen in these territories that voted this week. What happens to borders? I imagine Donestsk and Luhansk have pretty hard borders with Ukraine, since they’ve been fighting for years now. But Kherson, Zaporizhia oblasts - like a state or a province - are there fortified borders with neighboring Ukrainian oblasts? Suddenly you’re going to have a national border where there was nothing? Has the population shift that’s going to result from this already happened, or should we expect more?
Update us on how this mobilization this morning. There are of course more reports of young men leaving Russia - we spoke about these reports last time, and it seems that, yes, people are leaving but the numbers tend to be exaggerated. I see reports that Putin himself said “mistakes” in the process must be corrected. What mistakes is he talking about, and do you think his acknowledgement will reassure people the process will be smoother going forward?
