Gilbert Doctorow analyzes President Putin's precarious position, noting that while his personal approval exceeds 70%, the United Russia Party has collapsed to 20% support, threatening State Duma control ahead of the critical September election. He warns of a potential "palace coup" if economic policies fail, citing Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina's stifling interest rates and internal elite frustration over the prolonged war. Doctorow downplays Iran's recent diplomatic visit as lacking material aid but suggests intelligence sharing against Donald Trump, while promoting his book "War Diaries, Volume 2" which frames the conflict as a proxy war where the 2024 Krokus attack forced Putin to reconsider the war's nature. Ultimately, the episode argues that without electoral success or economic reform, Russia faces a return to decree-based rule reminiscent of the chaotic 1990s. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Undeclared Wars and Preemptive Force00:14:32
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes, to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, April 29th, 2026.
Gilbert Doctorow joins us now.
Gilbert, a pleasure, my dear friend.
You have been writing about the level of frustration in Russia over President Putin's stewardship, specifically the war in Ukraine and the economy.
Can you assess the level of frustration?
And if you could, in three different areas.
We'll start with the Kremlin, then I'm going to ask you about elites, and then I'll ask you about Russian folks.
Is there frustration amongst the president's own people inside those castle walls on Red Square?
Before answering, I'd like to call attention to a technical problem.
There is a double recording going on right now.
Chris, do we have some issue?
Okay, I think you can just answer, Gilbert.
We don't see any issue on our end.
Okay.
Look, we're going to talk about a subject that is not in the public domain, neither in Russia nor in the West, although it is in the discussion among Russians, among themselves, and social networks.
And some of this comes up on major.
News tickers where I capture some interesting information.
We all know that Mr. Trump is facing the election, midterm elections in November, which may spell his success or failure for the remainder of his term in office.
The same situation faces Mr. Putin a bit earlier.
There are in September, I think before the 26th of September, is the Legal requirement, there will be elections to the legislature, to the lower house, to the state Duma.
And though nobody is talking about it, particularly among the Western media, including the alternative media, this election could be the first interesting election in Russia since 1996.
Looks like we are having some internet issues, Gilbert.
It's a double recording.
Yeah, all right.
Well, I'm not sure what it is, but the last thing we heard you say was this election could be the most critical since 1996.
What happened in 1996 and why could this one be the most critical?
Maybe I click out and re enter.
Okay.
Because something's wrong.
All right, go ahead.
All right, so stick with us because Gilbert Doctorow will be back in a moment.
He has been writing publicly and privately to me his own view, effectively, the title of this show, that President Putin may very well be on the ropes, that the level of frustration amongst those in the Kremlin, that is, officials in the government itself, elites in Russia, The oligarchs, the academics, the people in the media,
sort of movers and shakers of society beneath the level of the Russian president, as well as ordinary Russian folks, are just not happy with the way things are going.
All right, Gilbert is back.
Hopefully, we don't have two of you.
No, there's one of me now.
All right.
All right.
You were talking before the break about the significance of this election coming up in September of this year.
Nobody is paying much attention to it, but there are facts that are coming out in Russian media which should force us to pay attention to it.
The most recent facts are the latest polls of President Putin, who has been, we know, for months and months, maybe a couple of years, has had more than 80% popularity rating.
He now has 70% rating.
So you may say, oh, so what?
That's still one of the best ratings in the world.
However, that's only telling you part of the story.
At the same time, the latest polls are telling us that Russia's United Russia Party, that is the ruling party through which Mr. Putin exercises his control of Russian political life, that party has fallen to a new low of popularity of 20%.
Traditionally, it has had a 30% of the voters saying that they will vote for it.
That's down to 20%.
But what does that mean?
How is it that the United Russia Party has more than 50% control?
Of this legislature.
Well, from 30%, they could manipulate their way up to 50% by some tricks.
What I'm about to say is not my discovery.
These issues have been discussed over the last several years on Russian state television by people who are quite outstanding and who are very important in Russian political life, particularly Mr. Zhiranovsky, who spoke about this directly.
This is in the period before he died of.
Of COVID, he was celebrating his anniversary, I forget what it was, 75th or something, anniversary of his birth.
And he was given primetime on Vladimir Solovyov's show, since Solovyov was always close to Chernovsky politically and backed him.
And what he said, when he didn't have to act the clown, because traditionally we know of Chernovsky as a clown who was wearing bizarre colored blazer jackets.
And saying things that were quite outrageous.
Well, he was no fool.
He was playing the fool not to be knocked out of political life.
And when he spoke frankly on the Solovia program, he discussed exactly what I'm about to say.
So it's not my discovery that we know that the United Russia Party changed electoral rules, just as we have various electoral manipulations in the states, which have been news for the last several months, which state has changed the districting and so on, to ensure that the voters available vote for them and win seats and their votes are not concentrated.
In one area or another, where they have no impact on the general vote.
So they have games like that in Russia.
And the big game in Russia was between electoral lists and one man candidates, one party, one man candidates.
What does that mean?
The electoral list is very widespread used in European parliamentary electoral systems.
It means that when you go to vote, you don't vote for a person, you vote for a party.
And the party has a list.
The top of the list is the one they think is most important or successful.
And it goes down.
And it goes down from the one that they want to be elected absolutely, and the ones whom it would be nice if they're elected, but it's not strategically important.
And so when they win a given district, then the number one on their list becomes the Duma member or governor or whatever it is being elected for.
The other system is that you vote for a person, just as you do in the States.
You vote for this candidate or that candidate.
And the United Russia did that, used that, put that in place in those jurisdictions.
Where they had a candidate who was long in power and who had a very high rating with the public, so that all the opposition candidates who were unknowns because they hadn't been in power would lose.
All right.
So, where does all this leave us as to what you think might happen in September?
Well, with only 20%, United Russia can't pull that game.
30% was enough to pull themselves up above 50.
20% isn't.
Moreover, 20% is very close to the level of popular support for the Communist Party of Russia, headed by Gennady Zelensky.
Zyuganov.
And Zyuganov came out last week with a statement which, of course, all of our media ignored, but Russian media did not.
He spoke before the Duma and he said this was on the anniversary of the birthday of Lenin.
And he said that, you know, if we don't change our economic and financial policies by the fall, we may have a new Russian Revolution of 1917.
Well, you can imagine what kind of furore that set off in Russia.
In the social networks.
The next day, because there was so much confusion and so much talking about it, the party corrected somewhat his remarks or refined them, shall we say.
And they said there will be an equivalent to the February 1917 revolution, because in Russia there were two revolutions.
One was in February, in which the Tsar was forced to abdicate, and that was what we would call a palace coup, because it was managed by Leading generals who stopped his train in the middle of nowhere and forced him to abdicate with the support of the leading members of the centrist parties in the state, in the legislature, the Duma, who was also called a Duma then.
And he abdicated, which put Russia on a slippery path towards the revolution that we all know, the October Revolution, which brought the communists to power.
Well, Gennady Zuganov was talking about a palace coup.
And that is something that is entirely thinkable.
There are people at the top of Russian political life who are coming out of the woodwork and are saying that enough is enough.
This war has gone on for too long and we should get it over with, including a general, a retired general, who last week, again, was in social networks saying that the party's over.
We have to do something to end this war.
Well, these are not favorable comments for the powers that be.
And that's why I'm saying that the election in September of this year could be a make or break for Mr. Putin.
Are you able to evaluate the reaction on the part of average Russian voters to these comments?
In other words, are the comments resonating or is it just an echo chamber amongst elites?
Look, before the war was going, I would say there was a special freedom of speech and expression in Russia.
No war in any country leads to greater liberty.
A war in every country leads to the turning of the screws.
And I think that to look at what Russians would say in any poll is now to ignore that fact of reality, that the screws are tightened.
And I think people are very careful what they say in public.
Therefore, I would not accept statements in public by an average Russian.
As meaning anything at all, they will say what will keep them out of trouble.
They will not necessarily say what they think.
All right.
Switching gears a little bit, but sticking with the Kremlin.
What is the significance of Iranian Foreign Minister Arachi coming to Moscow and meeting not only with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, his opposite number, but with President Putin himself in an ostentatious manner?
And obviously, publicly demonstrated way.
What message is Putin trying to send to Donald Trump?
We don't know.
And here's where I differ from my colleagues colleagues who are saying, oh, Russia is all in.
Yeah, who says who?
They do.
But we don't know anything about what's going on behind the scenes.
What real assistance Russia is giving to Iran today is absolutely unknown.
Maybe it is substantial.
Maybe they're shipping weapons.
And maybe they're doing nothing.
Mr. Putin's remarks, which everyone's listening to, or Lavrov's remarks, hey, we're with you.
So what?
We're with you.
We're not against you.
That's about all you can say it means.
We don't know to what extent Russia is providing material assistance or even leverage against the United States.
Russia's Hidden Assistance to Iran00:07:13
None.
We have no idea.
And anybody who says otherwise is not telling the full story.
Well, neither of us was there, but what do you think they talked about?
Why would Arachi make this?
Pilgrimage, and why would he be received by President Putin, who normally, correct me if I'm wrong, would be expected to receive a head of state, not just a foreign minister?
Well, Iran is in a very particular situation.
The head of state may be half dead right now.
So I don't think anyone would dismiss the logic of his receiving any properly authorized representative of Iran to come see him.
Now, Rachi is quite authorized.
So it's logical that he would receive him.
The question is, What was the value of his receiving them?
And considering the overall tone of the issues we discussed a moment ago, it is the extreme caution of Vladimir Putin in everything relating to war and peace.
I think it is improbable that the Russians were providing or assurances of real material assistance.
I think that Arachi in Iran was using Russia as an unknown point of leverage against Trump.
Nobody knows what was really done, including Mr. Trump and all of his assistants.
So they could assume the worst, which is what.
Some of my colleagues are proposing that Russia is all in and is going to support Iran.
All they could imagine, as I do, that it meant nothing whatsoever.
Wow.
Is Russia supplying either intel or satellite data, as far as you know, to the Iranians?
As far as I know, yes.
But then so are the Chinese.
And of course, this is very important.
I don't dismiss it.
But that's not the same thing as providing them with missiles.
It isn't.
It's offering mediation.
It's offering the kind of assistance that it gave previously under Obama, leading up to the successful conclusion of that deal on enrichment.
That is important, but it's not the same thing as a military alliance.
Okay.
Let's go back to Putin for just a moment.
The economic state, the state of economics.
What are interest rates to borrow money for a home loan or a small business?
I'm not talking about an oligarch borrowing money.
I'm talking about a small businessman or woman or a young couple wanting to buy a house.
Well, I don't want to personalize it and say that the preferential rates are only given to oligarchs because they're oligarchs.
It's given to oligarchs because they happen to own the most important industrial.
And mineral extraction companies in Russia.
So, as the owners of that, they benefit from the privileged access to subsidized loans that the Ministry of Finance gives out.
Now, coming back to the start of your question, until yesterday, I think the prime rate in Russia was 15%.
Going back a month or two, it was over 20%.
All of these are totally out of line with the estimated.
Inflation rate in Russia, which has been under 10% and at times under 8%.
Let me just stop you.
I assume this rate is dictated by a central bank.
This is not the result of supply and demand.
It's dictated by one person.
And there you have the animus against Mr. Putin right now because of his total backing of Elvira Nabiulov, who is the head of the central bank.
And there is a big dispute going on in Russian.
In Russian elites, and I think even within the government, not just the people outside the government, the cabinet, but also inside the cabinet.
And you have two liberals with a capital L, one of them is Snabiulina, and the other is the Minister of Finance.
And the rest of the government is against that because it is killing the Russian economy.
It is not the sanctions that are killing the economy, it is the central bank rate that's killing the economy.
And going back a year and a half on public television, you had the deputy head of the state Duma, a certain Mr. Babakov, who was a centrist, non party politician in the Duma.
He's been saying every week, every week to Tillian on Solovyov's program, get rid of her.
She is killing our economy.
She was setting a growth, a both prognosis of 1.5% for Russia, when Putin is talking about 4% and 5% growth.
That was a discrepancy that was inexplicable.
Does Putin see these issues?
The disenchantment, the impatience with the war, the frustration at interest rates?
Causing stagnation in the economy?
He's beginning to.
As we approach September and those elections, he's going to have to, because otherwise, United Russia is going to get plastered.
They're going to be really driven very low.
And Putin will lose control of the Duma.
Now, I know very well what that means, because I was living in Russia in the 1990s.
And although it was called a parliamentary democracy, it was a dictatorship, Mr. Yeltsin, because the whole Duma was opposition.
Directed.
It was communist dominated.
And so all laws were passed by decree and not by legislative act.
And we could be heading for that situation very soon.
If Mr. Putin loses the Duma, then he will start ruling by decree, which is really a very unpleasant situation, both for him and for the people.
Certain moves are, baby steps are being taken.
There is a big fight going on right now.
In the Russian government, I'm not speaking about elites, I'm talking about within the government, over how much further the prime rate has to be lowered.
Now, what is the fact of that prime rate being so high makes it impossible for small and medium sized businesses to survive?
And they have gone bankrupt.
And that has caused the loss of jobs of a lot of people across Russia.
This is not headline news, but it's a reality.
And that reality is coming home to hit Mr. Putin and his party.
In September, unless they do something rather serious right now.
The most serious thing they can do would be to fire Nabilia at once, because she is a problem.
Now, this takes us back to why hasn't she been fired?
And this takes us back to 1999, 2000, when Mr. Putin came to power.
Putin's Rise and the 1999 Deal00:03:22
Again, I'm not saying anything that I've discovered because I'm looking under people's pillows or doing archival research.
I'm telling you what is in common knowledge about the political classes of Russia.
That a deal was done when Yeltsin handed power to Putin.
Part of the deal was don't attack the family, the family in the immediate sense, and family in the extended sense.
In the extended sense, you have the oligarchs.
Don't attack them.
And that was what went on.
And don't attack the liberals.
And so there always has been, in the Putin administration, a distinction of factions between right and left, between the liberals and the conservatives.
The liberals are the holdovers from the Yeltsin years.
And they are pulling in a different direction from the conservatives.
Fascinating conversation, Gilbert.
On Saturday in my mailbox at the post office, this arrived Gilbert Doctorow War Diaries, Volume 2, The Russia Ukraine War 2024.
And to my surprise and delight, there are transcripts of our conversations, as well as many, many other of your writings and analysis.
Tell us.
About this work, which I know you work on every day, and it's only volume two.
I think you're projecting two more.
Well, volume three will come out in about six weeks when the production company in Arizona finishes it up.
The text is written and has gone to them.
The cover photographs are in their hands.
So, as soon as they can get it ready, it will be up and published and on sale.
But, volume two, I call attention to this.
This is, yes, it's a history of the war, of turning points in the war, turning points in the psychology of Moscow, from it being a war with Ukraine or a special military operation to clean up Ukraine to a proxy war with Europe.
And I call attention to the significant events that caused, that prompted, That change in psychology in Moscow, the Kremlin, over what kind of a war was fighting.
One of them is on the cover page, the one that you're showing now.
That is the destruction of the Krokus Entertainment Center in a suburb of Moscow that took place in the spring of 2024, killed more than 160 civilians.
These were people who came to watch a show, a musical show, and who were attacked by hired assassins, hired and directed by from Ukraine.
That set off a wave of revulsion in Russia, which brought pressure on President Putin and to rethink what kind of a war they were in.
Wasn't this really an all out war?
Then, on the back cover of this, I tried to put the human face on this, on what the war is all about, by showing a picture of German Chancellor Schulz visiting a hospital in Ukraine and shaking hands with a double amputee.
I have some difficulty.
I noticed that it's a very moving photograph.
One of the chatters, one of the people that writes to us, asks if this is in Russian or just in English.
Human Cost of Total War00:01:13
Which?
The book.
No, the book is in English.
And the picture in the back is moving, but it brings it to the human level because it affects Russia as much as it does Ukraine.
Of course, the numbers are different.
There are multiples of killed and wounded.
In Ukraine versus those who are killed and wounded in Russia.
But nonetheless, the figures are big.
Whether it's 150,000, 200,000 Russians killed so far, there are multiples of that who are maimed for life, and this war has to stop.
There's the picture in the back cover of then Chancellor Scholz visiting the amputee.
Gilbert, we have to go.
Good luck with the book.
Thank you for your analysis.
Thank you for your generous quotes from this program and the book.
All the best to you.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks again.
Bye bye.
Thank you.
Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 90 minutes at 10 o'clock this morning from Tehran, Professor Mohamed Morandi at 1 this afternoon, not sure where he is, but he'll be with us, Pepe Escobar at 3 this afternoon, the great Phil Giraldi.