Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Hello, and welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. 0:17 My name is Elliot Waldman, and I'm the associate editor here at WPR. This is the interview episode of Trendlines. Don't forget to tune in again on Friday for our editors' discussion looking at the week's top headlines. 0:29 Our guest for the interview this week is Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. 0:37 Mark is the author most recently of We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right. 0:45 As you might have guessed, we'll be talking about all things Vladimir Putin, his strengths, his foibles, and whether he's actually the geostrategic chess master that many Western commentators make him out to be. 0:56 Mark, thank you very much for being here. Welcome to Trendlines. It's my pleasure. 1:01 Your most recent book argues that, uh, Vladimir Putin is frequently misunderstood by politicians, by journalists, by commentators, and as a result, by the general public. 1:13 Uh, what in your view is the most important misunderstanding about Putin out there, and why is it important to correct that? Well, I mean, this is the trouble. 1:21 There's, there's about eight of them in the book, and I, I could pick on each and any, any one of them. But the thing I, I will probably focus on, I think, is 1:29 there is this notion that in some ways Vladimir Putin is the real-world equivalent of a James Bond villain, that he's some kind of geopolitical mastermind who sits there. 1:41 He's not really a cat person, but, you know, with, with a large dog on his lap. Um, and he is behind everything that happens. All the West's reversals, all Russia's advances, all come, come down to him. 1:55 But the fact of the matter is he's not. Um, he is absolutely the most powerful figure in Russia. He is the decider, but he's not a man with a strategy. 2:05 And when it comes back to it, again, it's one of the, the classic Russia tropes is the chess grandmaster. Well, he's not a chess player. He actually is a judoka. He's, he's a judo fighter. 2:17 And in many ways, his approach is much more, he knows he wants to win, but just like a, a martial artist, you go into the ring with a sense of what the other c- your competitor's strengths and signature moves are, and you've thought through maybe some of the ways, well, if he acts this way, I'll respond that way. 2:35 But basically, you're going in there, you're circling your opponent, and you're waiting for an opportunity, and when that opportunity happens, bang, then you strike. That's much more Putin's approach. 2:45 He has a rough idea where he wants Russia to be. He has a sense that Russia must be regarded as a great power, and his notion of a great power, very 2:54 frankly, out-of-date, 19th century ones, a sphere of influence, a role in the world, and essentially that it can ignore international law. But he doesn't have a grand plan of how to get there. 3:06 He's trying all kinds of different things, and more to the point, approving all kinds of initiatives from, from his minions, um, in the hope that it'll get him somewhere there. 3:15 But we keep looking for some grand strategy, some grand plan, and we keep getting confused about that because it's not there. 3:23 I must confess, I have actually written, uh, articles in the past referring to Putin, uh, playing the long game, specifically with, uh, uh, his meeting with Kim Jong Un recently of North Korea. 3:35 Um, that seemed to me like a, a situation where, you know, there were, there were some longer term strategic, uh, underpinnings. But, uh, but do, do you think that that's, uh, that sort of hasn't been the case at all? 3:46 Are there not any-- Is there any, is there any long-term thinking at all that we can, uh, attribute to the, the Russian government under Putin? Look, a lack of strategy does not mean long-term thinking. 3:56 Um, we're actually f- closer than, than, than, than, than you're, you're implying, for example, in terms of his relationship with, with North Korea. 4:03 As I say, he has a sense of where he wants Russia to be, where he wants Russia in five years, in 10 years, and, and in a way, what kind of legacy he wants to give, because a lot of his think- his thinking now is, I think, very much driven by his sense of how will the historians write about me. 4:17 But the point is, it's, it's how you get there, and particularly, in some ways, it's relatively easy with a country like North Korea because basically you're dealing with a constituency of one. 4:28 You've got to make sure that you get on the right side of Kim Jong Un, and you manipulate him, and, and the, the process is the way you want. 4:35 When it comes to democracies, when it comes to the West, it's a vastly more complex target environment. 4:41 Um, and it's much, much harder to predict, because even if you think you can predict the actions of one guy, Donald Trump or Emmanuel Macron or whatever, they have huge numbers of other influences playing, playing in on them. 4:55 And I think that's where we really see this, this improvisational strategy at its, at its peak, because rather than sort of it being driven just by Putin. 5:04 And remember, Putin is a guy who doesn't really understand the West. He's not traveled, um, even b- before he was president. 5:11 Um, instead, you have a whole variety of different people coming and, and pitching ideas to him. This is the Dragon's Den school of geopolitics, people pitching ideas to the boss and him saying, "Yeah, I like that. 5:24 Yes, try that. No, we're not doing that." And that's why you end up with this much, much more varied approach. But as I said, it doesn't mean he doesn't have a long-term idea. 5:33 It just means he doesn't have a, a roadmap there. Can you give us another example of, of that sort of more ad hoc, uh, approach, either from the book or otherwise? Yeah, sure. I mean, again, f- just an example. 5:43 There, there, there was an attempted coup in this tiny little Balkan, um, state of Montenegro shortly before it joined NATO. 5:52 And, you know, it, it transpired that it was involved, there was involvement of Russian military intelligence, GRU and so forth. But when one, um, actually unpicks how that happens- 6:02 We tend to think of things would have originated from the Kremlin and, and from the sort of the higher echelons of the state. 6:08 In fact, what seems to have been the case is that a Russian, he's not really an oligarch, let's call him a mini-garch, by the name of Konstantin Malofeev, who has, first of all, you know, very, very strong Russian nationalist, Russian Orthodox views. 6:24 He was involved in Crimea, he's been involved in the Donbas. He has quite a business empire in the Balkans already. And he clearly had this idea that actually, maybe we could forestall this country joining NATO. 6:37 But he knew that was above his pay grade. So instead, what he did is he took the idea to Moscow, and he shopped it around, trying to find someone higher up in the system who would like it. 6:47 And eventually, it seems to have been the very powerful Secretary of the National Security Council, which in Russian terms, it's the closest the Russian system has got to a national security adviser, um, this gi- this guy, Patrushev, who, let's be perfectly honest, is so hawkish as to make Putin sometimes look faintly dovish. 7:04 But anyway, Patrushev likes the idea, and he takes it to the boss and gets the boss's okay. And as soon as Putin signed off on it, suddenly this operation becomes a state venture. 7:16 And for example, that's a point when suddenly you start getting military intelligence involved. But this is it. It came from the bottom up. And at the same time, 7:27 the Russians have been trying to, um, build positive contacts with neighboring Serbia. Two separate missions, all geared to try and ensure Russia has a strong position in the Balkans. 7:38 The point is, though, once the coup failed, it became clear that the Russians had staged it out of Serbia, and Patrushev has to hotfoot it down to Belgrade to basically smooth all kinds of ruffled feathers in Serbia, because they are understandably annoyed at having been used as a turntable for this operation they, they had no idea about. 7:57 So in this respect, you had two separate operations, each of which had the same kind of broad goal, which is to strengthen Russian position in the Balkans. 8:05 But in practice, they ended up being totally counterproductive because they were bo- they were basically both going against, you know, they, they weren't coordinated. 8:12 They were essentially, um, heading in different directions and then no wonder clashed. So if there wa- if there had been a, a more sort of top-down coordination, then it perhaps could have gone a, another way. 8:24 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, maybe, frankly, it was a, it was a stupid idea to run this coup anyway. But nonetheless, um, you know, but certainly people would have said, "Well, hang on a minute. 8:32 What about X and what about Y?" What we have is a Russian system, I mean, I, I call it an ad hoc-ocracy, in the sense of what really matters is not your official job title, not what your ministry technically does. 8:44 It's basically your job is to do what Putin and the other bosses want me to do today and tomorrow. And you have all kinds of overlapping and competitive relationships. 8:56 You know, we tend to look, for example, at the Russian intelligence agencies as if they're analogs of our own, roughly speaking. 9:04 So the SVR, that is the Foreign Intelligence Service, we think, oh, well, that's kind of like the Russian CIA. GRU, Military Intelligence, oh, well, that's like Defense Intelligence. 9:14 FSB, which is largely a domestic security agency, well, that's like kind of the FBI on steroids, or maybe Hoover's FBI. 9:22 But actually, when it comes down to cases, what, what becomes very clear is that these agencies all step on each other's turf. 9:30 They're constantly competing to try and show that they can do the other person's job even better. So it's a, it's, it's a situation in which agencies and individuals are constantly competing. 9:39 They're constantly trying to show the boss how useful, effective, and imaginative they are. And that's really where policy comes from. It's actually people pitching ideas to the boss. 9:50 What does that mean for the way other world leaders have interacted and engaged with, with Putin? 9:56 Do you see, uh, leaders like, uh, Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, for instance, or Theresa May in the UK, or even Donald Trump, uh, 10:06 engaging with Putin based on, uh, some of these, uh, assumptions that are not always true in reality? Well, yes, because very much the assumption is that all it, it matters is getting Putin on side 10:18 and winning Putin over. And the, and the thing is, what we've seen is that Putin is actually quite inconstant. 10:26 Today, he can be persuaded by your argument, but you have no idea if tomorrow someone else is gonna come with an even more exciting PowerPoint and persuade him of, of something else. Um, so I think this is the thing. 10:39 People have a tendency, because they assume that you might say, because Putin has final decision-making powers, which he does, he also actually is the guy who's formulating policy, which he's not. 10:52 They have a tendency to assume that basically once you've persuaded Putin of something, then everything will go smoothly. And they've also had this assumption that there is a grand plan. 11:02 You go to Putin, and you're trying to find out what is the strategy. And the fact of the matter is, Putin doesn't know what the strategy is, so you're definitely not gonna be able to find it out from him. 11:12 So I think this is one of the problems when, when, when you have leaders going to Putin, is that they're trying to find out something that doesn't exist. 11:19 And, and you argue in your book that one of Putin's, uh, greatest successes has been to get other countries to essentially overestimate him, and I'm wondering how, in your view, has Putin been able to do that so successfully? 11:33 I mean, often it's by basically breaking the rules. And in the long term, this is gonna be disastrous for Russia. I mean, there's difficulty. I, I really don't want to suggest that actually Putin is, uh, 11:44 showing us a road that other countries should follow. But in the short term, it means you can get some easy successes. Again, a couple of examples. Crimea. 11:54 When in 2014 they decided to annex Crimea, um, they rolled out the troops that frankly were already based there, part of the Black Sea Fleet, um, and they were already some of the best Russian troops around. 12:06 They were, they were naval infantry, marines, and Spetsnaz special forces. But this is a point where everyone was thinking, "Oh my gosh, is this a Russian land grab?" 12:14 And the Russians are saying, "No, they're, they're not our soldiers. Oh, they might have just simply bought latest edition kit to an army surplus store or whatever." Now, on one level, this was a totally banal thing. 12:26 I mean, you know, countries lie all the time. But nonetheless, the, let's say the etiquette of international relations is that on something like this, you don't lie. 12:35 And therefore, instead of just immediately going for the most obvious answer, which is they're telling porkies, they're lying, instead you had the West tying itself up in knots for at least 24 hours thinking, "Well, maybe these are mercenaries. 12:50 Maybe this is the Black Sea Fleet Command operating on a maverick basis rather than because of what Moscow tells it." All kinds of nonsense theories being floated. 13:00 And that gave Moscow that crucial, um, free space in which essentially they could control the, the Crimean Peninsula. 13:09 But after 24 hours, if the Ukrainian forces there had tried to make a fight for it, it would've been suicidal or even more suicidal than otherwise, because by that point they consolidated their grip. 13:19 But the point is that that's fine, but you can only use that once. You can only get away with lying. 13:24 Next time, and I don't think there would be a next time, but if there was a next time when, when these little green men appeared somewhere and Moscow said, "No, it's not us," no one's gonna believe them. 13:33 But in the short term, it went. Second example, Venezuela, obviously very, very current. 13:39 Um, it's fascinating really because this is an example of how, as we see in this case, a country with an economy about the size of Italy's can, at least for the moment, look like it's a genuine global player. 13:52 So you have the United States, you know, committed to trying to, um, destabilize this thoroughly reprehensible Maduro regime. 14:00 Um, and in the process, incidentally, making the Russians think that everything they assumed about America, that it tries to destabilize countries and so forth and they might be next, is true. 14:11 But anyway, the Russians decided to respond in a defiant but very small scale way. 14:18 They sent maybe 300 specialists, a mix of special forces to provide security, some mercenaries, and some cybersecurity specialists, because obviously cybersecurity is one of the areas where the Venezuelan regime is very weak. 14:33 But 300 guys, that's nothing. That's a plane load. And at first, the first American response was, "Get those guys out." And Russia said, "No, shan't." Now, 14:46 you know, there's some talk that actually the Russians are scaling down their presence there. Who knows? 14:50 You know, in, in some ways that doesn't really matter because what that means is the Russians laid down a token that said, basically, "Even in Latin America, we are willing to stand up for our guys." 15:02 If the Maduro regime falls, which it may well, then in a way, no one's gonna be surprised, but at least the Russians have demonstrated will and, and the capacity to act. 15:15 If on the other hand, the Maduro regime survives, which is not impossible because basically unpleasant authoritarian regimes actually tend to survive if they're willing to shoot enough people, just ask the Chinese, 15:28 um, then the Russians will spin it, spin this as, "We stood up and we basically defied and beat the Americans in their own backyard." 15:40 It's a very, very small scale venture, which again, this really quite weak country can get away with. But in the long term, what it's doing is actually, 15:51 uh, fossilizing this notion of Russia as the kind of the pariah state. 15:56 There is almost no chance, for example, that so long as Putin is in the Kremlin, the current sanctions and the current, uh, whatever you wanna call it, cold peace or whatever, but I mean, the confrontation between Russia and the West is, is gonna improve. 16:11 So in the short term, Putin looks like he's really been quite successful. In the long term though, the costs are racking up for Russia. 16:18 There was some confusion this week, as you alluded to, uh, about Venezuela, where Trump tweeted that, uh, he was informed by Russia that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela. 16:28 That was denied by Kremlin spokesperson, uh, Dmitry Peskov, uh, who said, you know, Trump was apparently referring to media reports, uh, about a declining Russian presence. 16:38 That, that to me str- uh, seems like a, a very good example of what, uh, what you were talking about, the sort of, uh, un- lack of clarity that creates a free space, uh, under which, uh, Russia can maneuver. Yeah. 16:51 And I mean, obviously we also have the, the particular challenge that un- under Donald Trump, um, you know, American politics has also become a, a clarity-free area in many ways. Um, but yes, this is it. 17:02 By, by, by creating this, this sort of, this sense of Russia as being this ubiquitous power, you have them, first of all, being in many ways credited for things that they don't deserve credit for. 17:15 Um, the rise of populism of the left and the right across Europe. Um, I've had people saying that basically the Russians were behind Brexit. I mean, I wish I could blame Putin for that, but alas, I can't. 17:28 Um, and of course the election of Donald Trump. 17:31 I mean, the thing is that people are, are very willing to give the Russians credit for all these things, and the Russians actually are perversely willing to accept that credit because it somehow makes them out to be vastly more powerful than they really are, and that's a central element of their strength. 17:45 Look, I've been playing around with this notion of something that I've been calling dark power. You know, we're used to the idea of there's hard power, which is a country's military sort of strength. 17:53 It's, it's a hard muscle. 17:55 And then there's soft power, which is the power of e- of example and cultural connections, and basically people wanting to do things for you because they like your country and want to be your friend. 18:04 Well, in some ways I think that under Putin, the Kremlin has decided, "Look, we're not gonna be making any friends in the West." We're gonna be regarded as the schoolyard bully. 18:15 Well, in that case, you want to look like the biggest, baddest bully in the yard because then no one's gonna challenge you, and people are gonna give you their lunch money without you actually needing to flex any muscles. 18:28 And I think this is the problem, that, that the more we actually elevate Russia, the more we give it dark power, the more we give it the capacity to be intimidating. 18:37 You mentioned the, uh, the costs that are racking up from all these foreign interventions that Russia is, is making. Uh, earlier this year, we saw Putin's domestic approval ratings fall to record lows, I believe 32%. 18:50 We can talk about the reliability of public opinion polls in Russia, but if we take that number at face value, it would seem to be a pretty big blow, especially considering the, you know, sky-high approval ratings he enjoyed a few years ago. 19:02 Um, but do you attribute that to the foreign, uh, sort of adventurism under Putin, or what else might be causing Russian people to lose faith in Putin's leadership? 19:12 I certainly think that adventurism is, is a sort of a part of, of this story. Look, um, Putin, 19:20 Putin came to power, um, in, in the year 2000, and really for his first decade, he could play on the fact that life had got better. 19:28 The 1990s was a horrific decade for Russia and for the 99.999% or whatever who weren't busy stealing whole industries into their back pocket and such like. Um, and it was a period of chaos. 19:42 It was a period under Boris Yeltsin in which the country seemed rudderless. And so the fact that they then had a leader who was bringing back a degree of stability and control and pride was important. 19:54 And also, Putin was just very, very lucky that a combination of, you know, the, the international market and prices for oil and gas, which are sort of key to the Russian economy, were buoyant. 20:06 So suddenly there was, there was money, and this is a time in which actually p- Putin could ensure that everyone was basically getting better off year by year. 20:14 And so the social contract was more or less, "Look, you stay out of politics, and your life will continue to get better." And for Russians who'd been through some very hard times, they were happy to accept that deal. 20:25 Now, that anyway was, was, was beginning to run down even before we had Putin's return to power in 2011, 2012 when there was this very sort of shabby deal in which he basically handed the presidency to his Prime Minister Medvedev just for one term to avoid term limits, and Medvedev then sort of handed it back. 20:44 And there were people protesting in the streets saying, "Well, actually, now what about real politics and real elections?" But he weathered that. But the point is that in a way the, the trend was steadily going down. 20:55 People by that point had already begun to feel, "Okay, fine. So things got better in the, in the, in the noughts, but things are getting harder again now. What are you gonna do about it?" 21:04 And Putin didn't really have any answers. Then 2014 came along, Ukraine virtually collapsed, and Putin seized Crimea. But the point is, Crimea was, you might say, a unique case. 21:20 You had this area that was part of, of Ukraine, but pretty much every Russian, even diehard anti-Putin liberals, think was genuinely part of Russia, that it was just, it was basically handed to Ukraine in the 1950s. 21:32 Secondly, that the annexation could be done really easily because there were already Russian troops on the peninsula, and the Ukrainian forces that were there were just not in a position to fight. 21:43 So it was almost bloodless. There were two casualties, and neither of them were Russian. 21:47 And thirdly, the people of Crimea, on the whole, wanted to become part of Russia because they saw the quality of life was better on the other side of the border. There are no, you might say, other Crimeas around. 21:58 So yes, everyone was happy about Crimea. But then, for example, when, when Putin then went into southeastern Ukraine and the Donbas, people don't really care about the Donbas. Um, Putin's getting involved in, in Syria. 22:10 Well, that's fine, but no one really cares about Syria and let alone Venezuela. No one actually wants to see their own money being spent propping up a regime in Venezuela, let alone an unpleasant regime. 22:23 So I think for all these reasons, actually, the, the foreign adventures have not actually, um, attracted the, the attention or the positive attention of ordinary Russians. 22:33 And if, if anything, that's visible by the fact that the, the Russian regime is lying to its own people about the scale of its commitment. It's trying to play them down, says, "No, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. 22:42 These are only very, very small commitments." Meanwhile, though, if anything, the economy has got worse precisely because of the implications of those advent- that adventurism. 22:51 We've had international sanctions which, you know, are nowhere near breaking the Russian economy. Frankly, the Russian economy is surviving this and, and is doing okay. But that's just okay. That's not good enough. 23:04 Um, given the levels of corruption, given the amount of money that is going to kind of featherbed Putin's cronies, ordinary people are actually finding their life getting harder and harder, and that's what they really matter. 23:15 They feel that basically Putin has lost his way, that Putin has lost his time. It was interesting, I mean, I, I, I travel back and forth to Russia quite a lot. 23:23 My most recent trip was the first time I actually heard Putin being referred to as the old man. 23:29 It was interesting 'cause this is a guy who so much of his mythology is based on him being, you know, fit and virile and, you know, when he's not wrestling bears, uh, he's trekking across the tundra or he's doing judo or whatever. 23:41 Well, when people start talking, referring to you as the old man, it suggests that your time as that kind of a leader is coming to an end. 23:48 Do you think that means we'll see him stepping down in 2024, perhaps with a, a successor in place, or do you think he'll, he'll hold on to power? I think frankly he would like to step down. 23:57 Um, I mean, this is very, very much a sort of a personal, um, assessment because it's very hard to know. Putin doesn't speak openly, and the people closest to Putin don't really either. 24:07 But nonetheless, I mean, just looking at him, I mean, he seems increasingly bored, detached from the job. 24:13 He scarcely even comes into Moscow, um, from his palace on the outskirts, let alone actually traveling around the country anymore. 24:21 M-many of his public appearances, particularly the sort of the, the, the bigger, less scripted ones, you know, he looks frankly tired. And he's clearly looking for a successor. 24:33 The thing is, I don't think he's going to be standing down straightforwardly. I mean, this is not a system which is comfortable for retirement. No one really owns anything in Russia. 24:46 Rule of law, property rights mean nothing. One can look at the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was one day the richest man in Russia, and very shortly thereafter, he was a convict in a prison camp. 24:59 Everyone knows that money, property, assets, you hold until the point where the state or some more sharp-toothed predator within it wants to take it from you. So from Putin's point of view, he can't step down fully. 25:15 If he does so, he becomes terribly vulnerable. So I think what we're going to see is him try to arrange some kind of semi-retirement. 25:22 Yes, he'll need to find a successor, one he feels he can trust with his legacy, but also his own personal security. 25:28 But he also is going to want to find some kind of constitutional position that means that he is still present. He just doesn't have to deal with the boring day-to-day stuff. 25:37 And it's a little bit like what we've seen happen very recently in Kazakhstan, where Nazarbayev, 25:44 the former president, has now sort of moved to this role as kind of father of the nation type figure, which gives him, you might say, the capacity to step in when he wants to get involved, but not the requirement to actually handle day-to-day politics. 25:59 So I think that's what Putin is going to be wanting to look for. The big question is whether he finds someone and whether he ultimately is able to trust. 26:08 If he still has to stand again at the end of this presidential term and find some way to make that permissible, it will be because he has failed, because he has chickened out from actually making that big step. 26:20 I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the Russia investigation here in the United States. 26:26 We've barely finished digesting all the details of Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russia's interference in the 2016 election year. You are obviously a distant observer of that process. 26:39 You have the luxury of not having to pay attention to the day-to-day news about it, or maybe you do, I don't know. 26:45 But I'm curious to hear what advice you would give to presidential candidates running for president here in the United States to replace Trump, given that the Russia issue and Russia's active measures campaign 27:00 in the political process here in the United States is going to continue to shape the campaign-related discourse. Yes, I think I'd make two points, really. I mean, one is, again, it's interesting the extent to which, 27:12 obviously, we've only seen the redacted version, but nonetheless, as near as we've been able to read in the report, that actually, although clearly there was a Russian campaign to interfere in the election, 27:23 that it was nowhere near decisive. There are all kinds of other factors. But I think the key thing is to accept that, look, the Russians, for the moment, they regard themselves as being in a political war. 27:39 I mean, I think this is a key thing. They are on war footing. 27:42 As far as they're concerned, and I don't agree with this, but nonetheless, I think it's genuinely believed in Moscow, that they're in an existential struggle for Russia's role in the world as a great power. 27:52 And a crucial way of responding to that is they have to disrupt the West. This is what they're trying to do. They're trying to divide us within and between our countries. 28:04 They're trying to distract us with other challenges and problems and issues. And they're also trying to dismay us, to make us feel that it's better to make a deal with Putin than to continue to try and stand up to him. 28:15 Now, we saw all of these present in the kind of campaigns that are outlined in the Mueller report. Attempts to stir up, whether it was from the right or the left, but all kinds of divisive campaigns. 28:28 Attempts to make this about all kinds of other issues, whether it's illegal migration from the south or whatever else. 28:36 And also attempts to try and actually be so disruptive that people would feel we need to just basically just, again, cut a deal with the Russians. 28:44 So I think looking to the future, I mean, apart from the obvious point, which is, you know, if some Russian comes along and wants to offer you some dirt on your rival, 28:53 definitely sort of master the urge and say no thank you. 28:58 But more to the point, look, accept that so long as Putin is in the Kremlin, America, like other Western countries, is going to face a continued series of these kind of challenges. 29:08 But the point is, the Russians do not have magic mind control powers. They can't create divisions. They can't create controversies where they absolutely don't exist. 29:19 Where they are often quite effective is at opening the gaps that have already been formed, of blowing on the fires that already have been lit. So the key thing is to address the issues of legitimacy. 29:34 Why is it that so many people are willing to believe the worst of their own leaders? Why do so many people feel that they are disconnected from the political system? 29:43 So long as that continues, then the Russians will have material to work with. That's how we actually defend Western societies best. 29:51 Not by trying to kind of myth bust or put sanctions on the Russians or whatever, but by actually shoring up our own political defenses. That's basically the challenge that American and European leaders are going to face. 30:05 All right, Mark, thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure. My great pleasure. 30:17 Once again, Mark Galeotti is an honorary professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. 30:24 His book, published earlier this year, is We Need to Talk About Putin, Why the West Gets Him Wrong and How to Get Him Right. 30:32 If you'd like to comment on the discussion or ask a question, please email us at podcast at worldpoliticsreview.com. This week's episode was produced and edited by Peter Dury. 30:42 And don't forget that the editor's discussion episode will go live, as usual, on Friday. Thanks for listening, and tune in again next week.
