In Moscow's Shadows 254: Endgames

A collection of stories to discuss, but all of which in one way or another come down to endgames: the death of Sergei Ivanov, the "drone siege" of Crimea, the debate over the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons, and a shell-shocked soldier threatening mutiny. How far, to put it fancifully, does what feels like the increasing the emergence of all kinds of false prophets, end is nigh doomsayers, cultists and rabblerousers tell us something about the mood in Russia?

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Transcript

Notes That Become One Theme

MG 0:00

You know, when first jotting down some notes as to what I wanted to talk about today, I thought it was going to be one of those magazine episodes with just a bunch of different pieces and no real theme. But when I look at them, I think in a way they're all to some degree about end games. Hello, I'm Mark 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. Before I start, you may well get the sound of occasional seagulls or other background noises, but well, tough luck. It's early enough in the morning amidst this bestial heat wave that Europe has been having, that I there's no way that I'm not going to have the window as wide open as possible to get all the breeze I can. And well, in fact, again, following a certain theme, I'm thanks to the organisers who invited me to speak last week at the Bundeswehr Centre for Military History and Social Sciences in Potsdam, and indeed also to the audience who braved those ridiculous temperatures to come and hear me speak. And apparently I think a recording of that event is going to be released in due course. I'll let people know when that happens. And also thanks to Gwendolinsas and Soyce, the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, for the invitation to come and speak on the power of the Russian intelligence services.

Sergey Ivanov And Putin’s Favourites

MG 1:58

And speaking of spooks and power, the first topic I wanted to address was the death the other day of Sergey Ivanov, another 73-year-old. And well, patrons will already receive my sort of first thoughts, uh retrospective on his career. And the aspect that I wanted to talk about is really how it demonstrates, first of all, how much of power in Putin's system depends on his personal likes and dislikes, and often the sort of complex emotions he has towards people. But secondly, also the alternative perspectives, the alternative trajectories rather, that Russia could have taken. So let's start with likes and dislikes. For those who don't particularly know him, I mean, and he hasn't been in frontline politics for quite some time after all, Sergey Ivanov was in many ways the kind of Soviet and spy that Putin himself always aspired to be. He was urbane, he was fluent in English and Swedish. He pretty much immediately got into the first chief directorate, which was the KGB's relatively elite foreign intelligence arm, three overseas assignments and such like. But the interesting thing was also that actually his his career track in the early stages, or his background, very much actually mirrored Putin's. His father had died, brought up by a a a single mother. They both went to Leningrad State University. Putin read law, which was frankly the kind of thing which tends to anyway push you towards the domestic security side of things, even though that wasn't necessarily what Putin wanted. Ivanov, on the other hand, was a linguist. So very great similarities, but on the other hand, Ivanov was was a rather different person. You know, he he actually and indeed he spent time abroad not just in the context of intelligence operations under diplomatic cover. He also spent a year doing English language training at Ealing College in London as part of his degree. Again, this is always some of the weird things about Putin. This is a man who essentially never had any contact or real interest in the world outside the Soviet borders. I mean, even East Germany, which he did actually travel around when he was attached to KGB office in Dresden, but nonetheless, again, that was after the event and it was in a more of a professional capacity. This is not a person who has travelled in the West at all, except precisely once he was in power and once he was part of official delegations. So no apparent curiosity about the world. And so for Putin, and again, here it's the crassest of sort of long-distance amateur psychoanalysis. My view has always been that he saw Ivanov with a mix of respect and envy. That this was the guy who in some ways had the life he had. But nonetheless, it was a very kind of close relationship and one that I'm sure Putin relished, that he was generally going to be the boss. That he would he was poached from Ivanov was poached by Putin from the SVR to come to the FSB when he was head of the FSB, becoming his deputy. Likewise, he would then become Secretary of the Security Council after Putin, when Putin became Prime Minister. Once Putin was president, he brought Ivanov in as his defense minister, later on also as deputy prime minister, he would become head of the presidential administration. So, you know, there's always that sense of tracking, but never the chance of Ivanov replacing him. Though, again, this is where the whole maybe man factor comes

The 2007 Succession That Never Happened

MG 6:12

in. There was this interesting issue in 2007, when there's different possible scenarios being discussed behind closed doors in the Kremlin above all, well also in the presidential administration, about what to do. Because he's come Putin's coming up to the end of his second presidential term in office, and term laws mean that he cannot stand for a third. So there's some who are saying we'll just change the constitution to take out that particular requirement. But on the other hand, there's also the option that is being taken, that it ends up being taken, which is that he picks a suitable kind of proxy president to serve a term, while he himself goes into the position of the Prime Minister, albeit a Prime Minister plus, shall we say, with enhanced powers, and that gives him the option of either then returning after this uh period of castelling, as it's known, or else actually, and I think this was really being considered, certainly by Putin, that he could actually leave politics altogether if he felt that things were in good hands. So the question is who is going to be that proxy president? And the two real contenders were Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. Now, Ivanov was better known and more popular than Medvedev, something attested to by both opinion polls, but also the opinion of his peers. And in some ways that may well have been precisely the problem, as it was there was a sense maybe that Ivanov would do too good a job as standing president. And it's likely that his enemies were also whispering against him, foremost of which was Igor Siechin, who essentially also felt rather jealous of Ivanov. Member Sechin, also almost certainly an intelligence officer in the past, although probably military intelligence GRU rather than KGB SVR, and was essentially whispering that, oh well, Ivanov's people they're already dividing up the ministries and they're already treating it like it's theirs. There may well have been a fear that Ivanov actually wouldn't have handed back the presidency at the end. So eventually went for Medvedev, who was it a good choice or a bad choice? It was a good choice in the sense of this is ultimately a man who, although he did make a little bid to try and actually become a real boy, um a real president, wearing a leather jacket, going to the Kuril Islands, posturing on security issues, which is merely meant to be Putin's field. Nonetheless, when it came down to it, he he broke, and he rather pathetically actually endorsed Putin's return to the presidency, saying there was no better person for it. So it was a good choice if you're thinking just simply in terms of someone who just keeps the seat warm, to allow Putin to return to the presidency. It's a bad choice if Putin had had any hope of getting off the power merry-go-round. Ultimately, I think that Putin himself found it impossible to consider himself to be at all dispensable. And more to the point, the people around Putin were very keen to convince him that he was indispensable, because after all, their positions, all the patronage that had been lavished upon them, depended upon Putin remaining in power. They feared that a new generation of cronies and favourites would take over without Putin, so they needed him to stay. But what might an Ivanov presidency have looked like? Obviously very hard to know, but I think there are some things we could say. I mean, first of all, look, he he has at best a mixed record as a manager of a political system, in the sense that when he was defence minister, he basically got the got the problem. He realized that what Russia had at the time was a decaying husk, a remnant of the Soviet army. A system which frankly didn't work. A it cost too much, but also the whole basis of the Soviet military was really it was built for one purpose, which is the absolute apocalyptic mass war. So however huge it was, it was still really envisaged just as the skeleton on which mobilization of millions of reservists would then sort of build the full beast that will be unleashed. Now that's fine if you are thinking about something more or less like a rerun of World War II, but it didn't really meet both the purse but also the strategic requirements of Russia

What An Ivanov Presidency Might Do

MG 10:59

at the time. So he understood it, he he tried to move a bit away from conscription and towards professionalizing the service. There was a greater number of units brought up to permanent readiness and so forth, but essentially he was never willing or able to break the power of a conservative high command. And so, you know, ultimately his period is one of the foreshadowings really of effective military reform rather than really carrying it out. On the other hand, in his latter career, after he'd more or less resigned himself to the idea that he wasn't going to become president or prime minister, and he could indulge a very genuine passion of his for environmental issues, and particularly things like saving the Siberian or Far Eastern leopard, actually he was surprisingly effective, whether it's in terms of pushing recycling, which was not really a Russian thing, but then has become much more of one, and also specific measures to do with wildlife reserves and so forth. The key things I think one would say that an Ivanov presidency would be was first of all, you know, he's he wasn't a friend of the West, but on the other hand, as we saw with his interesting personal relationship with Kondoleza Rice, who was his sort of counterpart, they were they were both charged by Putin and George W. Bush with being the sort of point people for Russo-American relations. You know, actually that that was a very positive, friendly, I mean respectful, even if, of course, you know, in some ways necessarily antagonistic relationship. So I don't think we would have seen a Russia that suddenly rushed towards liberal democracy, oh, let's join the European Union and endorse, you know, European concepts of human rights and the like. But on the other hand, I also think that it would have been, you know, a much more, I think, efficient is the word that comes to mind, actual relationship. So less of the posturing, less of the outrageous language, probably a greater awareness of the inevitability of Russian decline. I mean, certainly Ivanov was a pragmatist. But also, I think it's fair to say that he would have listened much more carefully to technocrats because he was himself, more than anything else, I would say, a technocrat, rather than a political or ideological figure. But in any case, he would not probably be president now. I mean, again, think of the trajectory. So you have 2008-12, let's say there's an Ivanov presidency. Now, in the real world, what happened is within that term, very quickly, Medvedev put forward, clearly under pressure, the constitutional amendments that first of all extended term limits for a president from four to six years, and secondly, that did away with the term limits in question. Well, Ivanov might not have done that. So what we might have had is that he serves out 2008 to 12, and then another four-year term, 2012 to obviously, 2016, and then steps down. Now, that clearly covers the span of the revolution of dignity. Would Ivanov in other circumstances have taken Crimea? Possibly. Would he then have allowed himself to have been sucked into the wider conflict in the Donbass? And I say sucked into, I know it's controversial, my view is that the very initial impulse there came from a relative handful of locals who were not necessarily looking for independence from Ukraine, but just greater degree autonomy, or just pushing back against their concerns about the revolution of dignity, egged on and supported by ultranationalists within Russia, who included figures within the Kremlin, like Glasiev, but not with any kind of direct official backing, nor with any official blocking. I think Putin was just willing just to let see what happened, and only then later did he decide to throw his weight into it. Not in any way an excuse or whatever, but I just think that it's the timeline is significant. But anyway, I digress. So, you know, we might have had the annexation of Crimea and nothing more. Frankly, I think Russia would have got away with that. Not because Kiev would have been happy, but essentially some kind of de facto acceptance of that would, I think, have been possible. But anyway, regardless of that, one way or the other, he would have stepped down in 2016, and who knows who would have taken over. But it almost certainly, again, would have involved a generational shift down. So whoever would have become president, and I'm not even going to try and guess at that one, it would be someone who is not of the Septuaginterian Homo Sovieticus generation. So this is why I think it's such a kind of uh an interesting, you know, what if scenario. But of course, it didn't happen that way. So that's one kind of end game, so certainly for Mr. Ivanov.

Drone Pressure On Crimea’s Lifelines

MG 16:10

The second issue I want to talk about, and only briefly because I do actually cover this in a piece in today's Sunday Times, and I don't just simply want to essentially read it out to you, is the current drone siege of Crimea, which you know is absolutely proving very effective, hammering first it was Crimean air defence installations, then using that opportunity to then strike at the various logistic connections, the roads, the railways, the ferry terminals and the bridges clearly, that allow Crimea to be supplied, as well as things like power stations. You know, Sevastopol is periodically without energy these days, and no wonder that Sergey Aksionov, the the essentially the governor of the region, has declared a state of emergency. Now, the idea is that by striking at Crimea, which you remember is the crown jewel of Putin's various conquests, it's the one bit of Ukraine that most Russians actually do think is genuinely Russian. Well, that by striking at that, by raising the prospect maybe that it could be retaken militarily, though that's probably not on the cards at the moment, but more to the point that just simply it becomes untenable to try and maintain your position in Crimea, that Putin is brought to the negotiating table. Is that possible? Well look, I think Putin does indeed regard holding on to Crimea as somehow existential politically, not just to his historic legacy, but also maybe his actual position. If he can't hold Crimea, then he does begin to look very, very weak indeed. So could this force him to come to terms? Maybe. Of course, it could also force him to escalate, and I think this is this is the factor that one needs to consider. And I'm I should stress, this is not therefore me saying that's why the Ukrainians shouldn't be doing this. I think it's just to say this is why the whole process needs to be calibrated politically as well as militarily. Because remember, Putin still does have escalatory options. He could be pushed into a mobilization wave. There are people talking about that, there are people advocating it, knowing full well that it would be incredibly disruptive politically, but nonetheless saying, look, better to have a short, sharp shock. Do the things we need to do, however unpopular they are, in order to bring a quick end to this war, because exactly we cannot allow this war to become a forever war. So mobilise reservists, maybe use conscripts as well, perhaps expand targeting even further, maybe even more covert attacks on the various connections, you know, whether it's the factories or the rail links or whatever, bringing weapons from Europe into Ukraine, you know, things like that that maybe up to now people have held back precisely because of the different risks involved. But it's it's possible. I I honestly don't know which is the way. The key thing, therefore, is, and this is one of the reasons why I have been so yammering on about the importance of maintaining contacts, not just for Ukraine, but for the West, with the Russians, is to actually have more in the way of connectivities through which messaging can be transferred, to basically say, look, you know, this is this is what the situation is, this is the basis on which there is scope for negotiation. If Putin feels that there is no real scope for a negotiation that even allows him to save face, and I know a lot of people saying, why should we let him save face? Well the answer is again, if you push a rat into a corner, that rat will turn on you. It may not make sense, but nonetheless, that is the rat's instinct. Putin knows that, having already faced such a rat in his childhood, again go going back to his own autobiography, and we don't necessarily want to make Putin into that situation. So I think that the importance here will be about finding political ways of also calibrating the campaign. You know, rather than look, Zelensky's open letter to Putin during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was not an open invitation to negotiate. It was a direct and clear set of gibes, precisely intended to provoke Putin into the kind of bloody-minded response which we which we got, because Zelensky wanted to paint Putin as the troublemaker. Fair enough. But nonetheless, there is also a time for actually building some kind of route to conversation. But it also really, I think, highlights the degree to which what is this war currently being fought for? I mean, you have a position in which the Russians are saying that it's it's all about Donbass, and then there are also these much more airy, fairy things about anti-denazification of Ukraine, whatever that means, etc. But basically speaking, this is a war that is still being fought over that little bit of the Donbass, over whether or not there is a ceasefire and a negotiation after Russia takes it, as it still believes it can, or now without Russia having taken it, and Russia therefore having to accept that it's not going to get that territory. The Ukrainians are not going to just hand it over as part of any kind of a deal. I think it is an odd situation in which actually if one really boils down where the key issue is here, it does seem to be that little bit of Donbass. Because the chance of the Russians being pushed out of most of the rest of the occupied territories, still not great, though again one has to recognise that the Ukrainians have been pulling off surprises at the moment. But likewise the chances of Russia actually being able to take that bit of the Donbass, I would say, before. winter, when I think probably the ground campaign will will do a degree sort of block up and instead the focus will be on both sides hammering the other's electrical grids. Also not great. So maybe the Crimean siege is a way of trying to break that deadlock. And it may but not necessarily in the way we'd like. But still I do think it emphasises the extent to which we are coming towards an end game in the war. I know that sounds unduly optimistic at the moment, when both sides are so sort of dug in to their positions both military and political, but just that is how it feels me. Don't ask me to spell out how this thing comes to a kind of resolution. But just and this is a deeply deeply unprofessional way of putting it and indeed a deeply unprofessional way of thinking about it, but just that is the vibe for me at the moment. But of course endgames can be unpredictable, they can be risky. So let's talk a bit more about that after the break. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conductor which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism and civil affairs. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows. And remember that patrons as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier including articles I've written, the most weekly Gavarit Moscovar press briefing and other bonus content like the chronicles of a different Russia alternative histories. And you can also follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or on Facebook MarkGaleottionRussia. Now back to the episode.

Tactical Nuclear Weapons And Reality Checks

MG 23:52

So I did talk about the potential that Putin might actually escalate over Crimea and of course one of the ways in which he could escalate is this is the most extreme form the use of a tactical nuclear weapon sorry these are now called for whatever reason non-strategic nuclear weapons and this has also become part of a wider debate. So first of all I think it's worth noting a variety of reasons why I continue to be unconvinced that this is particularly likely. I mean first of all remember these these weapons they have been mothballed for decades. They have not been tested out they have not been overhauled since Soviet times. They're sitting in 12 arsenals scattered across the Russian Federation. And so first of all they would have to or one or more would have to be brought up to usable standards.

Support The Podcast And Patrons

MG 24:45

And remember there are no people currently within the Russian military who have any practical experience of doing that. So they'll be doing this off manuals which can't be a very comfortable thing. Then after that's been done the actual warhead will have to be transported in a very visible secure convoy with all sorts of specialist vehicles and so forth something that will be exceedingly visible to Western spy satellites possibly to electronic intelligence and also probably known about through human intelligence. But anyway it will then have to be transported to wherever it'll be mated to its delivery system, you know, a missile or whatever. So in other words we in the West should have advanced notice which not least gives us a chance to basically try and make uh you know interventions to basically say for God's sake don't do this and also hopefully give a sense of what will be the repercussions and even more importantly for the Chinese and the Indians who have already made it very very clear just how unhappy they would be with any breach of the nuclear taboo. They themselves who probably would have rather better chances of influencing Putin. Anyway then the question is well what would you use it for? Are you actually willing to go straight into firing a nuke which could be shot down so you might actually end up having to use multiple ones. But anyway firing a nuke at a troop concentration well at the moment this is such a dispersed war that it would be a massive example of overkill. And maybe that's the point maybe you you use it precisely as a political demonstration you know I'm willing to go to crazy lengths you do not want to push me of course a safer way of trying to demonstrate that is to as some have suggested demonstratively firing one into a into the sea. The thing is though that is only really effective as a demonstration if there is a genuine belief that you would scale up to use against real targets, that you would hit Leviv or whatever with one which you know again it's it's it's a question whether or not people would really believe that Putin would be that insane given all the various risks and given the risk that it absolutely would galvanize the West I mean for a start you can imagine every single patriot interceptor that was intended for anywhere else would be being headed to Ukraine. And there would be that probably that sense that Putin had just become so dangerous such a wild dog that he needed to be put down and in the circumstances again I I find it hard to believe. And in many ways I was reassured despite the fact that it was surreal and disturbing by a debate about the use of nuclear weapons that was raised in the context of a conversation between international relations scholars Sergei Karaganov and John Miersheimer mediated by Glenn Deesson. Now I mean Miersheimer in some ways has become either the patron saint of one particular school of thought over Ukraine which is more or less oh realism demands that the Ukrainians must be forced to make a deal or indeed the personal demon of so many others. Sergei Karaganov on the other hand oh heavens he well calling him hawkish I think does Hawks a tremendous disservice but very much he seems to be trying to carve out that position as being the sort of the the academic voice of insanity and very much he was pushing this rather weird notion that deterrence is failing, visible by the fact that the West is so willing to openly support Ukraine then they should feel deterred about doing that indirectly fighting a nuclear power and that therefore some kind of use of nuclear weapons is necessary to restore deterrence. Now there are so many holes in this argument that it is essentially almost transparent but nonetheless this is an argument that we're hearing you know though that you've gone off the deep end when it's Igor Gyrkin in other words Strelkov one of the guys who precisely did pull the trigger on the whole Donbass war, currently now behind bars in a in a in a Russian prison colony anyway it's when it's Strelkov who has to inject a note of sanity and restraint I mean he says look there's no better gift for enemy propaganda which stubbornly insists that a vicious, aggressive Russia is preparing to wage war against Europe. But the message itself is even worse. Karaganov who is positioned as one of the Kremlin's advisors and I must admit yeah that's that's a nice way of framing it is positioned. I think that I don't think Karaganov has a lot of weight these days. Anyway, is giving such advice it's simply terrifying to imagine what will happen if they heed it because essentially Stelkov is saying that you've got this guy Karaganov who is suggesting that essentially Russia can take on Europe and he doesn't think that it can that Russia can avoid a nuclear exchange if it starts to throw nuclear weapons around which again Stralkov is unconvinced by and that Russia is competent enough to essentially manage this process by both targeting the right places and also managing the political dimension and his view is that the current Russian authorities have demonstrated them to be so serially incompetent at managing things that's highly unlikely. And he concludes I believe that if the Russian authorities have any common sense, then Mr Karaganov needs to be gently reigned in because of course he's an old man he's going to die anyway but to so blatantly push the Russian leadership towards suicidal decisions not only for himself but for the country and for the leadership as well that, forgive me, is even close to a crime not just simple senile dementia. So yes i if if if a nationalist like Strelkov is saying that you've gone way too far, I think we can safely say that there is a consensus that isolates Karaganov. Karaganov his name crops up a lot but that's because again this is classic sort of way of operating under Putinism is that people's names become used to justify certain arguments. They don't drive it they don't initiate but sometimes they kind of throw themselves out there in the hope that their words are useful to someone with genuine influence. Karaganov is sometimes presented as an advisor he's not he is just simply a content provider but others are doing the edits the samples and the curating so that was one particular form of insanity that I wanted to talk about that would bring a very very problematic kind of endgame to Russia.

Karaganov, Mearsheimer And Nuclear Taboo

MG 31:48

But of course there is another kind of endgame that people do keep looking at with some kind of hope is that there will be a coup, a mutiny against Putin that there'll be a Deus ex machina from inside Russia. And for those people well they got another little dopamine hit this week when Alexander Lunin, a 39 year old junior sergeant from Russia's Sudoplatov Volunteer Battalion recorded a video in which he made a sort of public appeal to Putin that was really a threat. Speak to me about the fate of soldiers at the moment or there will be a military mutiny. Within 24 hours it had nearly five million views on Instagram with Lunin wearing his parade uniform and medals staring into the camera and saying that he's this representative of senior figures within the military and the security agencies and they'd met with him and asked him to be their spokesman. You know why him? Well he said I'm delivering a message nothing more I'm not the leader of the rebellion. They came to me with one simple re for one simple reason because I can't be bought and well his message is precisely that if Putin doesn't grant him a personal audience live on air quote the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin. Well look as you can imagine the excitement on certain sort of sectors of the Western media and punditry we had the Daily Beast that will never let an opportunity like this go by with the headline Putin humiliated as troops threatened to turn their weapons on him. And on X, for example, there were this one guy Mark Slapinsky who describes himself as Canada's leading journalist and political commentator providing news and analysis on trade wars and geopolitics look I confess I had never heard of him until someone pointed me in his direction and I was inclined to just assume that this was nothing but hype but I do notice he has more than 1400 followers. Anyway yesterday he posted Breaking and first of all look always always always mistrust those social media posts that start breaking because that is a naked appeal for attention and clickbaitery. Anyway breaking the Russian elite are done with Vladimir Putin as the military prepares to stop obeying orders, withdraw from Ukraine and march on the Kremlin. It's happening Well no it's not happening. Of course look we mustn't take this necessarily seriously in itself though it is an interesting coincidence or is it a coincidence that it falls on pretty much the anniversary of Prigozin's mutiny and as tends to happen in these cases then there is another video it dropped on Friday very very profane one in which Lunin claimed that his statements had been twisted that he hadn't threatened a military mutiny that he wasn't demanding an on-air meeting with Putin I mean obviously he he was but nonetheless he's he's walking it all back no not even walking he is running it back as fast as he can just claiming that he had simply wanted to let the commander in chief know that soldiers who resisted suicidal orders or refused to pay their superiors bribes to avoid being sent into battle were being abused which in fairness is indeed a very

Viral Mutiny Threats And Information War

MG 35:08

real issue. So what's going on? Well I mean there are really two ways of thinking about this. One of them is that and this is again the line that outlets like Tsagrad Tever took is that this is in fact just simply another example of subtle Western information operations. Tsargrad wrote they're rocking the boat exploiting our internal turmoil the information war against Russia never ceases and each time we're fed the same old refrain the army is dissatisfied the generals are stealing the soldiers are ready to turn their guns an old song a new singer going on enemy intelligence agencies exploit any crack, any conflict any unresolved problem to portray it as a systemic crisis Well look I mean that is it's worth saying entirely possible but you know we know that there are information campaigns taking place. But of course you know this is not just something that does happen it is also a very convenient excuse to take any kind of expression of negative feeling particularly the more extreme ones and just simply claim to find a foreign hand behind it. The alternative is that this is perhaps more genuine but also something of a moment's madness. Lunin has a fairly big social media following but a very recent one and he only started posting videos this year and he's already racked up nearly 800 videos on his Instagram feed and thus he is another player in the attention economy. So he might have thought that this was a way of of getting attention. And at the same time it's worth noting that apparently you know he had been diagnosed as being shell shocked, currently out of action and there were some therefore interesting parallels with the case of you know remember Ilya Remislo, this lawyer blogger who back in March again came out with a sort of a broadside of a social media post that he then hurriedly walked back and voluntarily checked him into psychiatric care and the like so you know this this this could just simply be someone who had a very real issue he wanted to raise, ended up thinking that he needed to do so in a much more eye and click catching kind of way and overstepped the mark and suddenly realised oh dear and again had to try and sort of remedy the situation. I I really don't know what's the case. The reason I would mention it though, you know apart from just simply that it's an interesting just a simple case is that I do think it's it it's symptomatic and it raises an interesting question. I mean what is more dangerous to the regime? Strelkov telegramming what are often actually quite astute but highly critical and also highly pessimistic assessments of the situation from behind the razor wire in the zone or the Lunins and the Remeslaus with their short lived but nonetheless viral and much more extreme interventions. I rather fancifully again this is bringing back to the whole issue of end games or rather this strikes me a little bit like and bear with me this this may be over extreme the hysteria of the end times the message the real message that we should be is not these specific words that any one particular viral post happens to say but precisely what feels like an increasing density the emergence of what we could all again fancifully regard as false prophets end of is nigh doomsayers, cultists and rabble rousers individually they are all irrelevant collectively though they are arguably symbolic of a growing sense within Russia within a whole variety of different circles ranging from the insider elite to the meanest soldier on the front line that things aren't going well and that somehow something's got to give. Now again that's a long way away from predicting any kind of protests or coups or any of these other things but just simply that that sense that I get and look it's so hard it's one of the many reasons why I I wish I could still be in Russia because

False Prophets And Closing Thoughts

MG 39:40

precisely you get a very different sense on the ground. But nonetheless however you know remotely from what I see what I people I talk to and so forth that sense that things just feel like they're coming close to a point in which there has to be something different a change. Does it mean that people have a clear sense of what they want well I suppose most of them they want an end to the war it's just that quite what that end means and how it's achieved may well be the area of debate. But yes, an end game a sense that an end game is coming So we'll have to wait and see. Bookmark this tell me how wrong I am when a year from now we're in exactly the same situation but I both hope and think that I'm not But anyway speaking of endgames this is the endgame for this podcast. Thanks as ever for listening Well that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Just as a reminder beyond this you can follow my blog also called In Moscow Shadows you can follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook MarkGaleottionRussia. 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 in Moscow 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