Vladimir Putin's one.
Ukraine
is certainly not going as he intended.
But on the home front,
his dreams may be coming true.
That was the thrust of a terrific
New York Times article by the paper's
Moscow reporters, Valerie Hopkins
and Anton Tryon Off Ski.
Valerie joins me now from Moscow.
Welcome Valerie.
I want to ask you to start
by talking about something
that I found very interesting
in reporting
you've done before this article,
but including this article
which is President Biden
has said a couple of times, I think
once the body bags start coming back,
the Russian people will stop supporting
this war or words to that effect.
And what you found
is that the body bags are coming back,
but it is actually increasing the support
for the war. Explain what's going on.
Well, thank you very
much, Fareed, for having me.
And I wish I didn't
have to talk about this with you today.
But it's true in my reporting
across Russia.
What I found
when talking
to people, mothers of
of those who who have been lost
or relatives, people are finding that
their losses are actually making them
support the war even more.
They're starting to feel it even more.
And, of course,
the Kremlin has refused
to actually release
the full statistical data
of how many people have been killed,
how many soldiers have died in this war.
You know,
they've only released them
intermittently.
And I believe the last full count
was in September at 6000.
While Western intelligence
estimates that there have been
200,000 killed and wounded in this war.
Russians only so,
of course, many Russians.
Most Russians
don't know the full extent of this.
But my reporting
and reporting by other colleagues
who remain in Russia
and who have spoken to
to the mothers
and relatives of these dead soldiers
find that
that this makes them supportive of it
even more because,
you know,
they feel a concrete sense of loss.
They do believe they the propaganda
that that the government
has been pushing,
not only for the past year,
but also before,
but it has really ramped up
this year
is that the West seeks to destroy Russia.
And this is an existential struggle
for Russia's survival against the West.
And they also are increasingly
buying the line that actually the West
was preparing an invasion
and that Putin was smart
to take a preemptive
to preemptively invade Ukraine.
It's quite surprising and quite shocking.
But but this is where we are right now,
one year in.
You talk also about
a much
broader transformation
that is taking place in Russia.
This goes back a long way,
the debate
between Russia,
between the kind of Western eyes, ears
and what used to be called
the SLAVA files
you know, people who thought
Russia's destiny lies with the West
and those
who said no,
Russia is its own distinct, unique
creature.
You say that this war has helped
almost finally in a very decisive way.
Move that debate in one direction, right?
Absolutely.
Well, as you read in the article,
one of the very
one of the businessmen
closest to very close to President
Putin comes in military have expressed
his joy
that this war or his moment,
he expressed some degree of closure,
we can say,
about the fact that this war continues
as long as it did know.
As as you know,
initially when this was planned,
it was planned as a blitzkrieg.
It was
they thought they could take
Kiev in three
days,
change that,
change the government and just occupy.
But instead,
you know,
this has required
a societal transformation
and consulting mafia.
This businessman said this is great.
Because, you know,
if the blitzkrieg had succeeded,
we would still have
these liberal elements of our society.
But now that the longer it goes
on, the more
this changes into the society,
that Putin wants,
the more liberals are either silenced
or forced to flee.
The more free speech is suppressed
and the more
it's possible to to create educational,
cultural institutions
and and even civil society
into the type of organizations and bodies
that the Kremlin wants to see,
which are traditional conservative
and essentially define themselves
as the
antithesis to the values
that the West professes to stand for.
So in a sense,
it feels to me
like what you're saying, the longer
this war goes on,
don't expect Russia to feel that it's,
oh, my goodness, it's a big mistake.
It's actually having the effect
of making Russians double down on this
anti Western narrative and anti
Western society
On the one
hand, yes, I
think, you know, in the near term,
that's that is the case.
But I think, you know,
what we've learned
from Russia's experience
with other wars,
you know,
the Russian and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan
was something
that many people were frustrated
about and opposed to.
But it didn't
it took them years to organize
and to truly be fed up and frustrated.
I think a lot of this is actually apathy,
and much of that is due
to the fact
that the economy
has sort of more or less remained normal.
But it's possible
that, you know, at a certain point
that there
there may be some tipping point.
It's just how far along that might be.
It's really hard to say.