In Moscow's Shadows 244: The War Word And The Clickbait Trap

The fastest way to lose your grip on Russia is to reach for the word “war” every time a scary headline lands. The incentives are everywhere: politicians who want public backing for big defence spending, media outlets that live on attention, and all of us who share first and think later. 

I look at two particular examples: the current fascination in the British press with the idea that Russia may launch an attack using long-range missiles, and a truly insane essay by Konstantin Malofeyev in his Tsargrad media outlet  fantasising about a tactical nuclear strike to end the Ukraine war. 

The British article is here, the Russian one here.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Transcript

Are We Really At War

MG 0:00

The trouble is a big thing. Are we really always going to be able to do that? Hello, I'm Galeotti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conductor. Yes, after a whole week's hiatus, I'm back, and well it feels like I was never away. Not least because we're returning to this whole well-trodden topic of whether or not we're at war with Russia. And look, those of you who have listened to me for more than five minutes know that my answer is not really. Yes, look, we are in some kind of conflict, there's no question about that. But the W word is both dangerous and misleading, not least because it does imply some easy slide from bombarding each other with dank memes to bombarding each other with bombs and missiles. And look, the trouble is, first of all, as I say, yes, there is a conflict, and it's easy to reach for the W word. It saves a lot of that tedious thought. I mean, look, I wrote my book, The Weaponization of Everything, precisely to try and grapple with this. And I do feel that part of the problem is that we don't yet really have the vocabulary properly to characterize and provide nuance to conflict in the modern interconnected age. Secondly, the W word is politically useful, especially if you want to justify spending squillions of pounds, dollars, or euros on new kit, knowing that this almost inevitably means one or more of higher taxes, lower social spending, or more debt, none of which frankly tend to appeal. And thirdly, the W word is clickbait in an attention economy. And although it's very easy to blame a cynical media, look, let's be absolutely honest, the media do this because we respond to it. We are not victims, we are accomplices. And all of this creates a perverse feedback loop as journalists look to validate the opinions that they want to be able to express, and those who are eager to get their name in print will provide it. Let me just give you one very recent personal example. There's currently a bill going through the State Duma, which and it's already passed its first reading, and it would amend the existing laws on citizenship and on national defence in order to allow the president explicitly to use force in the event of the arrest, detention, or the criminal prosecution of Russian citizens abroad. Now look, it still needs two more readings in the Duma and then confirmation by the Senate and so forth, but it's going to pass. So the question is, is this a big deal? I mean it sounds it. And certainly I found myself fielding several journalists who were very, very eager to get the right quote from me. And this is a funny thing. Sometimes journalists ring up and they genuinely want to know what your view is. Now again, they may well be planning to write a story with one angle or another, but you know, at least they are, at least they're doing me the courtesy of leaving it wide open for me to head in whichever direction I want. There are other times you're talking to a journalist whom you know who really you realize is looking for a specific quote to fill a specific need. And so they will typically ask me what is in effect the same question multiple times, hoping that at some point I will strike on the formulation they're looking for. And I will confess, there's a part of me that just wants to tell them, look, what is it you want me to say? Tell me that, and I will tell you if I can say it, and we can stop this whole pretense. But anyway, this these tended to be, I mean, actually, if I think, of the four journalists who contacted me on this story, three of them I've got to say, my sense was they wanted a specific quote that was along the lines of that Putin would be ready to drop paratroopers on The Hague if this law passed, and that this somehow shows that Russia is uniquely nasty. They were rather less happy and certainly not interested in my three lines of response. And they were first of all the let's call it the whataboutist answer, which is to note that the 2002 American Service Members Protection Act, for example, explicitly gives the American president the authority to use all means necessary and appropriate to free US personnel detained by the International Criminal Court, which to me sounds pretty damn similar. Then there's the tediously analytic answer, which is to say that this is essentially a performative act, because under Article 8 of Federal Law 61FZ on defense of I think it was 1996, anyway, under that article, the President of the Russian Federation already has the authority to take measures to protect citizens when foreign or international bodies make decisions that run counter to Russia's interests, so one could say that that could be used without, frankly, too much of a stretch, to justify any such operations. And then thirdly, there is what we could call the subjective threat assessment answer. To the degree that, look, the Russians genuinely do think that they face Western lawfare, the use of law as essentially an instrument of international conflict. Vyachislav Volodin, the always amenable chair of the State Duma, said Western justice has effectively become an instrument of repression. Under these circumstances it is important to do everything possible to protect our citizens. Now look, I certainly don't agree with him or this wider notion that talk of war crimes, tribunals for atrocities conducted in Ukraine and so forth are nothing but a cynical attempt to exploit international law to undermine the Russian Federation. No, of course not. But nonetheless, when people like Volodin say what they do say, we can't assume that it is always just some kind of cynical Russian propaganda, any more than when they express fears about NATO. Again, this is something that we do, I think, risk losing, especially as fewer and fewer Western scholars, journalists, let alone policymakers, actually are able to go to Russia and engage with real Russians on the ground. It's this necessary sense of what we could call strategic empathy, which is not the same as agreeing with the Russians, it's understanding where the Russians come from. So, from my point of view, there's all kinds of different answers that are different from the one that three of those four journalists, and maybe I'm being terribly wrong, and if so, my apologies to any of them if they happen to be listening. But my sense was that three out of four journalists, what they wanted from me is something that was much more dramatic, what much more xenophobic, quite frankly, and also much more alarmist. They wanted to get the sense that there was some kind of imminent threat as soon as this law was passed. And that of course leads me on, if we're speaking about threat perceptions, we should look at the biggie one. The Kremlin has recently, well, I say the Kremlin's actually technically it's a Russian Defence Ministry, but the Kremlin then propagated it, listed a series of sites across Europe which could be considered targets in a future conflict because they were producing drones for Ukraine, and that included four sites in the UK, in London, Leicester, Reading, and Mildenhall in Suffolk. And look, the problem is, of course, that this was not just some kind of dry statement. It was then accompanied by a taunt from former President Dmitry Medvedev and his you know ever-obliging uh social media feed, who told Europeans as a result to sleep well. Ho ho ho. And as you can imagine, a lot of often very poor articles followed as a result, claiming that it again is a sign of the imminence of some kind of conflict, including one that I'm just going to use as an exemplar, which came out uh in the I paper under the rather breathless headline, What would happen if Putin attacked the UK day by day? Well, and it's worth noting, it it then did not proceed to actually give a day-by-day account of what how what would happen. But of course, since when have headlines had to have much relevance compared to the actual article. I'll leave a link to this article in the programme notes. And let me just pick on some sort of the various quotes and things from it. Moscow is already mounting hybrid attacks across Europe, targeting underwater cables and wind farms. Well, it's worth noting that a lot of these alleged cases of Russian ships dragging their anchors and breaking cables and pipelines and the like have actually since, under investigation, been demonstrated to have been genuine accidents. And as regards the claim of attacks on wind farms, well, sure, they have hit them in Ukraine as part of their wider campaign versus the energy infrastructure. But elsewhere, I mean there is this claim that pro-Russian hacking groups have targeted wind and solar farms with various cyber attacks, including incidents in Poland and Sweden aimed at disrupting their control systems. Well, in December 2025, there was apparently a coordinated cyber attack against the Polish power grid, which targeted wind and solar, but frankly it did so along with everything else, from combined heat and power plants to industrial systems. So that's a yes kinda. Sweden, though, I mean look back in, I think it was April, the Swedish Civil Defence Minister said that there had been an attempted hack in 2025 on a thermal power plant. But I don't know, and again, people let me know if I've missed something, but I don't know if there's any wind farm-related ones. So already we're beginning to see the reality, which is alarming in and of itself, but nonetheless being pushed into something rather more dramatic. In another strand of the Kremlin's grey warfare, God help us, we've got yet another term being used, Russian hackers have carried out cyber attacks on major NHS London hospitals. Well, again, let's look at the details here. Now they're probably thinking of the 2025 ransomware attack on Sinovis, which is a laboratory that provides pathology services, testing of blood sources and that kind of thing, to a number of NHS National Health Service hospitals. And this was blamed on a Russian gang, which is entirely possible. But a state attribution is a much, much harder issue. See what tends to happen, it's not that the Kremlin is saying target Russian, sorry, target British medical facilities or the like or whatever. It is more that it has been made clear that if you do target, if you're a criminal hacking gang, and if you do target Westerners, then you you can know that the authorities in Russia are not going to investigate, they are not going to be providing information to Interpol requests, they are certainly not going to be extraditing you. Even if that were actually legal, remember if you're a Russian citizen, you can't be extradited abroad. So, you know, again, is this is this yes, technically it does say Russian hackers, but the implication is this is a state attack because it calls it a strand of the Kremlin's grey warfare. Now, am I just being pedantic? Well, maybe, but when you you you make a criminal ransomware attack that is carried out just simply because you know your government is not going to prosecute you, is that really an a government attack? And also just that minor thing, it wasn't on hospitals, it was on a service provider to hospitals. Pedantry, but yes, each time though, it's pushing things in the direction of making it part of some kind of Machiavellian conspiratorial Kremlin plan. Drone incursions near RAF bases and a Russian-ordered arson attack on a London warehouse by six British members of the Wagner group, remember the Wagner Mercenary Army, are further proof, proof, no less, that the UK is already engaged in a proxy war with the Kremlin. Well, first of all, let me indulge my pedantry. The arson attackers were not members of Wagner. The person who ended up bringing the group together and leading the attack had offered his services to Wagner online and was indeed hired for the arson attack, though, frankly, I suspect that was not Wagner, but I think it was GU military intelligence which had sort of taken it over. But anyway, these were not British members of Wagner. As for the so-called drone incursions, I mean this this could be Russian intelligence activities, though it's a surveillance rather than anything else, sort of mission, really more than. But let's consider the cautionary tale of the panic that swept Belgium between September 2025 and January of this year. The Belgian National Crisis Centre recorded apparently 558 reports of suspicious drones, and this forced uh temporary closures at Brussels and Liège airports and so forth, and also a major political sort of storm at home. Defense Minister Theo Franken described the incursions as a hybrid war tactic, a military crisis, and look, the talk was very much that this is all part of Russian malign operations. However, very recently an investigation by Belgium's public broadcaster has revealed that there still to this day remains no confirmed evidence of hostile state drones. Indeed, in most cases, no evidence that there were actually drones where they were alleged. Indeed, actually, very specifically, footage of what was described as a large drone over Brussels airport, which Franken himself had shared, turned out actually just to be footage of a police helicopter. And as a result, on Friday, the Public Prosecutor's Office has launched a formal investigation into the Belgian Defence Ministry's, let's call it rather hurried acquisition of anti-drone equipment, very much as a result, and as a response to this and sort of a crisis measure pushed through. They spent, I think it's 50 million euros, reportedly paying way over the odds prices for what they bought, and indeed ignoring both procurement rules and warnings from the Inspectorate of Finance. Now, again, I said I would stress this is an investigation which is underway. We'll see, it might exonerate everyone involved. But there is a clear suspicion that this was a moral panic that spread and that suddenly everyone was seeing drones everywhere, and as a result, some perhaps rather ill-judged spending was rushed through, and it may well be that there's nothing there. Now, I I'm not saying that there have not been any cases of Russian reconnaissance drones or just simply Russian interference through drones. I'm just simply saying let's be careful about attribution, let's not talk ourselves into a situation in which we feel that we are facing every other day some terrible Kremlin, what's it, grey warfare operation. But even so, look, still, there isn't any talk, let's be clear, about Russian paratroopers landing in their home counties or naval infantry storming the white cliffs of Dover. The usual scenario that is presented these days is of long-range missile and drone attacks on the UK from ships and bombers coming from the north. But I must admit I have some significant problems with this scenario. First of all, it does tend to presume that Britain's allies would be totally inert, because after all, particularly the planes, which we're talking about, you know, would have to arc round, either, I suppose, just about theoretically across the Baltic Sea, but more likely northern routes. So this is the ones that, you know, as is, Russian bomber pilots do from time to time carry out both as training, but also to test British response types. Would Norway, Sweden, Denmark be entirely willing to just sort of sit back and let Britain be pounded because they're saying, oh well, it's nothing to do with us? Would the Baltic be open to Russian ships and submarines in these circumstances? I hardly think so. But if people do think that this is the case, then it does beg the question why we're in NATO at all. Secondly, we have to appreciate the degree to which the Russians have, well firstly, limited supplies of missiles, especially as they are using them on Ukraine, but also limited numbers of platforms at their disposal to launch them. There are the Tupolev 160, Tupolev 95, and Tupolev 22 bombers, but again, the more you use them, the more they have to be maintained, the more likely they are to suffer damage and the like. And there are some ships and submarines able to launch Kalibra cruise missiles. But they're all vulnerable, and as I said, limited, and above all, not quickly replaceable. UK air defence may, as some people argue, be rather limited, especially the decision to really focus on basically interceptor planes and seaborne systems rather than ground-based systems. Not that the idea of a British iron dome really makes any sense. But let's not forget what we do have, which is precisely we do have the RAF. We do have indeed, let's not forget, five astute class nuclear attack submarines, of which at least one is on station at any one time, you know, which all pose not just a direct threat to, for example, Russian ships which might be planning on launching cruise missiles, but the point is the potentiality of where these subs may be is of course going to be a constraint to any aggressor. Perhaps most crucially, though, what would be the point of such an attack? You know, what what does what what might Russia think it would really get from launching what would after all have to be a limited range of cruise missiles and long-range drones against targets in the UK? I mean, do they think what the UK is going to be able to force Ukraine to surrender? That the Ukraine Well, you know, if if let's put aside the Ukraine war, but but that that Britain will do what? Because certainly the British government cannot protect every facility, every installation, every citizen on the British Isles. Any more than it could during the First World War. I mean, where I live, um, zeppelins, German Zeppelins dropped some bombs on the Kent coastline, and especially obviously during the Blitz in World War II. But these were certainly were in World War II arguably a much, much denser threat. There's no way that Russia could bring, with conventional means, the level of destruction to, say, London that the Luftwaffe was able to in the Second World War. And even then, it didn't force Britain to surrender. Ukraine at the moment is suffering far, far worse than anything the Russians could level against Britain. So again, we come back to it. What would the Russians think they're going to get? Do you think they think that all of Europe would capitulate seeing the sight of a certain number of cruise missiles slamming into British installations? Or what? No one ever seems to answer that basic question. What is a truly plausible positive outcome for Russia? And look, we have to mention the final element, which is of course the fact that Britain does have its own nuclear deterrent. Now, for certain for sure, this is the final and most desperate option. One could argue, after all, that beyond just blowing up the world, nuclear weapons have no purpose whatsoever, especially for a country like the UK. Did it stop Argentina invading the Falkland Islands? No, of course not, because we weren't about to turn Buenos Aires into a sea of black glass. Did it mean that Saddam Hussein immediately capitulated when he heard that the Brits were on the way? No, of course not. So, you know, we have to appreciate that there is a limit. There is always this tyranny of proportionality when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. But if we really were prostrate, if we really were facing the risk of absolute surrender, might we not consider this as a final option? And if not, well, why is Britain spending$3 billion a month a year on upkeep of its nuclear deterrent and due to spend up to a quarter of? Of its total defence budget, modernizing it, replacing the Vanguard nuclear submarines with the new dreadnoughts. And that's, by the way, worth remembering when people bemoan the state of British conventional forces, is actually the degree to which the nuclear forces are an inevitable drain on that. So, look, this is not a very, very plausible scenario. Well, and here I'm using British understatement. Of course, the Russians absolutely are happy, willing, delighted to yank our chain, to get us alarmed by this talk. But we're talking about potential targets. This is all the Russians are saying. They're saying in a time of conflict, i.e., in a time of war, these are additional targets that we could hit. Let's not pretend that Britain, like any other country that is facing Russia, does not have its own list of potential targets. The thing is we are not making a big splash and announcing them. But the point is that the creation of false, questionable, or just opportunistically sloppy articles hyping this alleged threat from Russia. And it's not that there's no threat at all, but this current, you know, immediate threat and the nature of this threat, it does no one any favours. Again, as I've droned on about in the past, it's analytically bankrupt, assuming anyone cares about that anymore. It provides a short-term PR sugar hit, but then runs the risk that, given that it's going to have to be a long-term campaign to be able to rebuild European armed forces to a proper deterrent level, well, people may well get tired of the sacrifices that are involved if they keep getting told that otherwise Putin's going to invade next week. And of course, it does worry the Russians who see in this kind of rhetoric the create a deliberate campaign to create an environment, a permissive environment in which the public is actually willing to consider preemptive, aggressive attacks on Russia. Which again, I don't for a moment think is likely, but the point is, again, we go back to this issue of strategic empathy. Not only do we lack it when it comes to the Russians, the Kremlin absolutely lacks it when it comes to us. It does not understand us. It views us through a rather paranoid prism. But of course, look, let's be absolutely honest, the Russians don't help at all with their own rhetoric. And I'm not just talking about sad old Dima Medvedev, whether or not the rumours of him hitting the bottle hard these days before he turns to social media are true, I don't know. And indeed, I think that belligerent, warmongering Russian statements and rhetoric, even if it doesn't come from the Kremlin, is in fact rather more problematic because of its potential impact in the future to how Russia views things. So after the break, I'm going to turn from overheated Western reporting to thoroughly incandescent Russian lunacy. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conducto, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or on Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. And before I get started, let me express my thanks to Tim Grady and the University of Chester's Culture and Society Research and Knowledge Exchange Institute, a little bit of a mouthful there, for the invitation last week to come and give a, well, thoroughly jet lagged lecture on history and its present significance, and for the engaged audience who even weathered the false fire alarms. Maybe I should blame Russian grey warfare for that. Still, from grey, let's turn to very, very bright, nuclear bright, in fact, in the rhetoric of Konstantin Malofeev. Now Malofeev is a Russian minigarch, an avowed nationalist, a Russian Orthodox zealot, the figure behind the Tsagrad Media Empire, the man who originally bankrolled some of the operations that took place in Crimea and the Donbass in 2014, and I sometimes w wonder whether he's also a chap, let's say a goodly number of sandwiches short of a picnic. And he uses the bully pulpit at Tsargrad to write editorials of sometimes Baroque lunacy. And the one I want to talk about, well, never mind Baroque, it's positively rococo in its raving. It's from the 3rd of April, and again I'll provide a link in the programme notes. And well look, I just have to read you some of it with my own commentary. Eighty years after the end of World War II, Japanese Prime Minister Sanai Takaichi swore allegiance to the United States. She laid flowers at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Memorial Cemetery. It goes on. Thousands of soldiers and officers who fought against Japan eighty years ago are buried at Arlington Cemetery. With her gesture, Takaichi publicly acknowledged their rightness. She effectively thanked the Americans for the victory over Japan and for the nuclear erasure of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now come on. Arlington Memorial Cemetery contains the graves of more than 400,000 dead dating back to the American Civil War, and also includes Presidents William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy. I mean, when Leonid Brezhnev visited Arlington Cemetery in 1973, was he what thanking the Americans for its anti-Bolshevik intervention in the Russian Civil War, for the Cuban Missile Crisis? Indeed, maybe for the Cold War as a whole? You know, look, we we need to appreciate the extent to which any more than when Westerners would lay wreaths at the grave, you know, the memorial of the unknown soldier, in Moscow, they were specifically celebrating certain commemorating certain specific aspects of that. But anyway, never mind. Continue. This is a very painful act for Japanese society. But the country, home to 130 US military bases with 55,000 troops, has no choice. The post war occupation continues to this day. Yes, Iran's actions have demonstrated that the bases are not a defense but a target. But if Japan disobeys, the Americans stationed there could very quickly restore constitutional order. That last is, of course, in scare quotes. Well look, there are good reasons why Japan doesn't necessarily want to alienate the United States, particularly given, you know, the fears of a rising China. But look, let's just remember, 55,000 American troops. I haven't checked that figure, by the way, but let's assume Malafai is accurate in that, if in nothing else. Japan's population is 122 million people, and the Japanese self-defense forces number two hundred and fifty-one thousand. So we really saying that 55,000 Americans could, what was that, very quickly restore constitutional order? Come on. Nevertheless, the fact remains the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after nearly four years of war in the Pacific saved tens of thousands of Americans and let's not forget Soviet soldiers. Many of us would not have been born if the Quantung Army had held off the Transbaikal and both Far Eastern fronts in Manchuria to the last man. Okay, on that there is a fair point to be made about the degree to which actually, in aggregate terms, lives, especially US and Soviet lives, were saved by forcing the Japanese into a quick surrender. But some have also argued, in fact, that that quick surrender also stopped the Soviets from taking more of Manchuria. And remember, Soviet Union had not been technically at war with Japan until the very end. Stalin had pledged his other allies at Yalta that he would declare war on Japan within three months of the end of the war in Europe. And he did so on the 8th of August 1945, throwing almost one and a half million men into this massive three front offensive, Operation Autumn Storm, which was targeting Manchuria, Korea, and the Kurial Islands, which had been in planning for some time and came just after the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on the 6th of August, and just before the second bomb on Nagasaki on the 9th, which was then followed by the prompt Japanese surrender, which of course ended the Soviet advance. So there is a certain school of historiography, and I can't comment on how accurate it is, but there's certainly some basis for it, that actually suggests that part of the American imperative to quickly force surrender, given that the Japanese were already talking about surrender, is precisely to stop the Soviets from occupying another swath of territory this time in Asia, which, just as in Europe, they probably wouldn't have given up. Anyway, never mind. To return to Malafeev's ramblings. Fast forward to today, tactical nuclear weapons are still roughly equivalent in power to the Little Boy, 15 kilotons of TNT, and Fat Man, 21 kilotons, dropped on Japan. Russia has over 1,500 such warheads in its arsenal. And if one of them can end the four-year war, it must do so. So he then goes on talking about how that this is a new war and that in fact Ukraine is looking to escalate it, that it's the Ukrainians who are developing long-range missiles to hit Russian cities, that Zelensky is mobilizing more soldiers, but also that this is not just a geopolitical but also a spiritual struggle. He talks about a moral ruin, also known, and this is the point where I really begin to assume that he must be frothing a little bit as he writes this, also known as Ukraine's European path, must also be avoided. Until the outbreak of hostilities, the country was a hub for sex tourism. I don't think it was really, boasting low prices and, quote, high quality sex products. In 2024, cannabis was legalized. For now, only for medical purposes. Well, yeah, that's a big bit of a big difference, isn't it? Since the same year, the sale of Ukrainian land to foreigners has been permitted. And quite why that is a sign of moral degeneracy is never explained. In January 2026, a law on multiple citizenship was passed, devaluing the Ukrainian passport. A month later, the Supreme Court of Ukraine recognized a homosexual couple as a de facto family for the first time, and a law on registered civil partnerships, i.e. same sex marriage, is about to be passed. And so on and so on. So, you know, while Malafiev wipes that spittle from his lips, what is he really fantasizing as a result of this conflict against not just a military and political threat, but even a spiritual one? Russia warns the population seventy two hours before a nuclear strike on western Ukraine. There's ample time to evacuate. A twenty to twenty five kiloton strike causes critical destruction and panic throughout Ukraine. The war ends within a month. Denazification takes place throughout Ukraine. A population weary of hardships will enthusiastically support this, including public executions of Banderite leaders. Then comes post war reconstruction, both of the territories ceded to Russia and of Ukraine within its new borders. We fast forward to the future. Eighty years later, the leader of a free Ukraine comes to fraternal Russia and thanks the descendants of Tupolev one hundred sixty Pilot Ivanov, who ended the bloody war where our brothers died, where we killed ourselves, where Epstein's Satanists presided over the genocide of the Russian triune people. It's crucial that our generals have the willpower to give the order to Pilot Ivanov. Let's end this war with victory. It's time for the war to end. Wow. So much to unpick there, and so let me just unpick a bit of it. Um I mean, apart from whether or not seventy-two hours is a is a perfectly good enough time to evacuate, the idea that a single a single nuclear strike would just simply make the Ukrainians not just surrender but but enthusiastically support activities including public executions of various leaders. Well, yeah, I mean, as we've seen in the past, I mean you know it's not the case that actually facing nuclear annihilation the Ukrainians might not surrender, but I don't think they would be happy about it. And there's no question about what would the rest of the world be thinking? And I'm not even talking about NATO. Remember, China has pretty much read the riot act of Putin publicly against the use of nuclear weapons, and India has done so rather more privately. Yeah, I mean there'll be catastrophic wider impact. And good luck getting post-war reconstruction for the territories, quote unquote, ceded to Russia in that case. And then the idea that the leader of a free Ukraine comes to fraternal Russia, and you know, this this note about, by the way, the later the Russian triune people, again, that is essentially echoing Putin's own narrative. Remember in his 2021 article on the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people, you know, it's the same sense. Basically, the Belarusians, the Russians, and the Ukrainians, they're the same people. They're fraternal, and therefore this is essentially an unnecessary civil war. And one presided over by whom? Epstein Satanists. I mean, what a splendid way of actually rolling everything together in the absolute absence of even the faintest factual support. But nonetheless, the whole point is it's the general should have to have the willpower to give the order. This is obviously a particularly a particularly horrific example of the more extreme end of nationalist rhetoric, which we do see circulating in Russia, to be sure. And it's the kind of thing that precisely makes the Western fantasies of a Russian attack, whether it's on the UK, whether it's the whole, again, also overplayed notion of seizing NAVA in Ukraine or whatever, you know, all of these things begin to sound more plausible when you read this kind of nonsense. But does this show that we're dealing with the Zed nation? Proof that Russia is a death cult, fascist, dystopian hellhole, orwell meets Starship troopers, that the film that is, not the book. No, look, this particular strand of nationalism is a relatively marginal political force. It's worth noting after all that Zargrad is no longer on actual TV, hasn't been since 2017, because precisely, not just of official scepticism, but also poor audience figures. It's now only on the internet, and it's even pla it's a place where Alexander Dugin, remember, you know, Putin's brain, who essentially had a few months in favour and then was largely discarded. Well, this is where Dugin has washed up. That said, look, it is not totally irrelevant or marginal, but we have to keep it in context. First of all, yes, this is a time when the nationalists are becoming rather more outspoken. I've recently put a little piece in the Spectator's blog on this exhibition on the Life and Times of Vladimir Zirinovsky, which is currently being held at the Manej Center in the middle of Moscow. And it too is a sort of a sign of the degree to which even the Kremlin is having to try to work on co-opting the ultranationalists. And Tsagrad, for all that it is, and this is an irony, it's the plaything of a minigark with Kremlin connections. And yet it very much pushes a red-brown populist agenda. You know, the sort that says that, oh while the fat cats and the officials don't care about the country or the little people, they're all globalist kleptocrats who just want to get to Davos and sexually pleasure the IMF. They're selling out the country and our boys in Ukraine, blah, blah, blah. Now, again, this is something that it's uh a cynical gambit, quite frankly, when it comes from a rip wannabe media mogul like Molofeyev, but nonetheless, it is a potentially powerful force. I mean, this idea that you can bring certain aspects of leftism, and particularly the sort of the anti-rich ethos, and combine that with rabid nationalism, you know, we've seen it in the past. And yes, that is one of the particular wellsprings of fascism. Now again, remember, this is not official policy in any way, but we have to look to the future. At present, though, the these nationalists do provide a certain kind of constraint on Putin. He will, for example, have to consider their own potential backlash if, for example, he makes a deal over Ukraine, whether he needs to think about how he can satisfy the nationalists, or whether he feels he has to suppress them. And I'm frankly not convinced that, to put it in very crude terms, he has the balls to do the latter. I mean, think how long Igor Gyrkin, Strelkov, remained at liberty to lambast not just the conduct of the war in Ukraine, but in particular the leadership and continually calling tongue firmly in cheek, Putin as our unique strategic advantage. He remained at liberty for a much longer than we might expect. And even now that he's languishing in Kirovo Chepetsk IK5 penal colony, he can still get his messages out and onto social media. So he's still being treated with rather more kid gloves than certain other figures. So, you know, Putin clearly is concerned enough about his nationalist flank that it is one of the factors in it's not the determining factor, but one of the factors in calculation. And it could get even worse. I do fear a stab in the back myth is waiting looming in the wings. And particularly when you have hundreds of thousands of battle scarred, angry, dispossessed and disappointed veterans coming home from the war, these could be a new Fry Corps or new squadristi. So while I reject the idea that today's Russia is fascist for all sorts of reasons that I've gone to before, it's not an impossible trajectory of the future. But the tragic irony is if not this particular article, this kind of rhetoric bolsters precisely that more the more belligerent and russophobic forces in the West. So it is not just reflecting the views of a certain fringe in Russia, it also magnifies a certain fringe in the West. And this is the closing point. War, maximalism, the exciting rhetoric of threats faced and to be made. Of course, they have a certain intoxicating appeal, sadly everywhere. And the modern media and political environments alike do tend to encourage and feed off this kind of instant gratification cortisol economy. It does none of us any favours, but my wishing it away isn't going to make a difference. But if we are concerned about this, there are a few things we can do. First, we can stop and think a little before believing what we read, much less amplifying it. I mean, I'm amazed, for example, sometimes how often my own tweets get retweeted within seconds of my sending them out. You know, if it's a twitty leaf, it's a tweet that is actually providing a link to an article. There's no way anyone could have gone and read the article in that time and thought, yes, yes, this gallioty chap, he knows his onions, let me let my followers know. It's a fairly reflexive thing. Now, of course, I am wonderful, I am wise, and people should be retweeting my views at every opportunity. But you know, joking apart, everyone ought to be held up to scrutiny before they are amplified. Secondly, we should remember that just as Sex cells, war wins, and we are being played. Whenever you see the W word, and it's not in the context of real conflict, be cautious, be careful. Is this genuinely something that deserves to be given that standing? That said, look, we cannot and should not police our language to suit our antagonists. I mean, I'm not about to, for example, abandon using the term war for the special military operation in Ukraine. It is a warful stop. But even while we're not going to allow others to police our language, we have to remember that words matter. And because we are all in one information space, our words affect other people. Just as Brits can read Malafaiev's vaporings, even without using a VPN, incidentally, so too Russians can read the British press. And okay, even if they they need a VPN, they will probably find that the worst of the British press will then be reported in the Russian press as evidence of just how hostile and just how rossophobic the Westerners are. Because the point is, what is written is then viewed through different eyes. And it's very easy for both of us to actually see active hostile intent in what is essentially clickbait. We can all, if we really want to, talk and write ourselves into a war footing, but at the same time we can also avoid that all too human, all too stupid trap. And so ended the sermon. As ever, once I get soapboxing, it's probably best I stop. Thank you very much for listening, and well, we should be now back in a regular schedule of weekly podcasts. Hopefully with a little bit less lunacy next time. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.