Viva & Barnes - Viva & Barnes SPECIAL: Live with Russians With Attitude!

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Aug. 6, 2025 - Viva & Barnes

01:53:54

Viva & Barnes SPECIAL: Live with Russians With Attitude!

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	It looks like Barnes has got it's Duran merch.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	But it looks very Russian.
	Yeah, the I was I was looking for my Russian hat, but left that in Las Vegas.
	So the for those tuning in, we have a live sidebar with the Russians with attitude.
	You can follow them on X. They have a very prominent account there.
	They do podcasts, they do other things as well.
	The great background, oh true, I always call them, honest to God, Ruskies, real Ruskies, true Ruskies, which means, you know, East Tennessee just extended a little bit.
	But really represent and reflect and understand and appreciate the Russian mindset and Russian mentality, which sadly our own president appears to have no understanding of.
	He doesn't even understand what Russian imports are coming into the United States.
	He doesn't understand what the casualties are in Ukraine, the disturbing level of lack of understanding of our own president, which is reflective, unfortunately, of the vast mass of the American people who do not understand the perspective of Russia.
	And if you're one of those people that perceives them as your adversary, then strategic empathy requires you to understand them.
	Otherwise, you end up like our last Secretary of Defense who got humiliated in a long war, Robert McNamara in his documentary The Fog of War, who discovered, to his shock, that the Vietnamese were actually motivated by something other than communism in their conflict, that in fact they had a little bit of a problem with people invading their country.
	That, of course, if you had studied any of Vietnamese history, a region that managed to kick out the Mongols not once but twice, then you would understand where that mindset came from.
	So it is important, even if you disapprove or dislike the current Russian politics or power, to understand the Russian perspective mindset.
	I, of course, don't happen to have that degree of hostility.
	I think Trump was right in 2015 when he said, wouldn't we, America, be better off if we got along with Putin?
	And so the, so part of the process is to introduce a very interesting, fun, engaging channel, whatever you think of their politics, they provide useful and valuable insight often in a very entertaining manner, but also to provide a broader perspective to an American audience that unfortunately is still mostly illiterate in understanding the rest of the world, thanks to our mainstream media and poor academia.
	I like the concept of strategic empathy because even if you don't like someone, it would serve you well in battle and in conflict to understand their tactics.
	And I say that, no judgment here because I've been listening to RWA and I actually found them to be mildly critical of the Russian leadership, at least in the two episodes that I was listening to.
	And if they don't have an avatar, I think I might just use this picture.
	That's a joke.
	That's from the episode of The Simpsons when Abe Simpson says, you know, my son, he's not a communist.
	He might be a Porsche or communist.
	Okay, but then Lisa said, I knew that picture of Homer Simpson was going to come back to haunt him.
	So everybody, if you're watching right now, I'm going to be live at 3 o'clock again today anyhow for my daily livestream on Rumble.
	This is sort of a sidebar that has to be earlier given the time difference from what I understand.
	I don't exactly know where they are.
	I asked ChatGPT and they said they could be anywhere in the world, but we're going to hear the perspective of bona fide Russians, I guess.
	Gentlemen, how goes the battle?
	Yeah, thank you for inviting us.
	It's a pleasure to be on your show.
	And it's no big secret where I am.
	I say it constantly on our podcast.
	I live in the capital of Ural Mountains and Kirill lives in some mainstream area.
	Yeah, some, yeah, stupid city.
	Please say where you live.
	Yeah, I I live in Moscow.
	You're one of you is in the Ural Mountains.
	Yeah, that's me.
	That's beautiful.
	I'm looking, I'm just pulling pictures of that now.
	That's beautiful.
	Are you off?
	So if I may ask, I don't want to ask, I'm going to ask questions.
	If you don't want to answer them, please don't answer them.
	I see from your avatars, which we see, one of you is Nikolai, the other is Kirill.
	Nikolai, you live in the Ural Mountains.
	Yeah, that's correct.
	Okay, very cool.
	And so, gentlemen, for those who don't know of your channel, they're looking at the avatar from your channel tell the people who you are yeah so we're well russian for attitude a podcast launched in late 2020 originally mostly focused on like Russian history, philosophy, literature, culture, music, and stuff like that.
	Basically, our goal when we started the podcast was just to tell like Western audiences, mostly like our friends on Twitter and so on.
	just some non-mainstream stuff about Russia that they may just not have access to because of the language barrier and so on.
	And when the war started in 2020, we, well, sort of involuntarily in the beginning, became a very large information source for a lot of people because the English language coverage of events, both in Russia, domestic affairs and of the war, they were quite lacking.
	And specifically, the Russian perspective was not really well represented.
	like from just average Russian people, like not in the term of like statements by the government or whatever, but like normal people who just live in Russia.
	So we started doing that and apparently it, we do meet our fans.
	And when I was in Moscow, I went to Moscow a couple of times and all the listeners who happened to be in Moscow as well, well, we drank some beer together.
	So it's no big secret, but it's part just not our style, I guess.
	And we always did that.
	And if you notice, Russians are like that, right?
	Like the Russian soldiers are masking their faces.
	And yeah, it's part of the character.
	Maybe it's the Oriental thing.
	I'm not sure.
	Like the Japanese load their COVID masks even when it's not COVID outside, right?
	But it's yeah, something like that.
	I guess it's part of the character.
	Maybe we will have to actually face fag to widen our audience.
	That's the only way to do it.
	And we know that.
	Yeah.
	I was curious.
	So, you know, when the I first went over to Russia 2006 and then again in 2008 and I had sort of the Western stereotype of Russian society, Russian people of Putin.
	And then I get over there and I meet, you know, the the borscht, I'm still hooked on borscht from that from that trip.
	But what was striking was like the the ordinary Russian gave me a very different perspective of Putin, very different perspective of Russia, and it belied the Western stereotypes.
	What in your experience are some of the biggest myths or misunderstandings of the Russian people from say the American or Western perspective?
	I think in many ways the American perspective is kind of stuck on the early nineties, like right after the collapse of the soviet union when things were like when basically russian state and society suffered total collapse on every level we had immense poverty violence crime diseases in some places even starvation and
	things like that, just complete social collapse.
	And it just takes time to recover from that.
	And it took us quite some time, I would say, 15, maybe 20 years to recover from that really properly.
	And I think It was like the peak of American history, I would say, in many aspects.
	the early 90s, the peak of American dominance in the world, probably the peak of material prosperity in America before large-scale de-industrialization and all that stuff.
	And so I think for many people, especially people who were like...
	um yeah i i just think that a lot of stereotypes that the ordinary american might have about what life in russia is like uh stem from that time period when when russia was really at its worst the um i can say my grandmother uh was either from it was a part of russia but it might have switched hands between Ukraine at some point in time.
	But I have very indirect ties, if any, and I've never been to Russia.
	One of the stereotypes that everybody has out in the West, set aside Putin and government, is that Russia is thoroughly fundamentally corrupt at all levels of government, bribery and all what you associate with.
	I mean, I don't know if it's unique any more to any one part of the world, but that the government business is irreparably corrupt and organized crime runs rampant in Russia.
	And I'm saying this not to be funny, not to be judgmental.
	Is this mildly accurate, totally accurate or wildly inaccurate it was well like i just said it was totally accurate in the 90s and early 2000s and it's just been getting better ever since and uh yeah now is it getting better does it get better because of an iron some people refer to as an iron fist of putin in terms of dealing with it or is it something like like cultural growth or
	cultural evolution at large I would say it's both.
	I would say it's both.
	It's both just an objective process of society just being less broken and healing from the trauma of the night.
	the trauma of the 90s and government policy as well.
	I mean, of course, there is still, I think the term corruption is kind of, I don't know, it's, how to put it, it's biased per se because the way, like there is no country on the planet that has no corruption.
	that's just just it's just uh it depends on how it happens and uh the the sort of corruption that you imagine that you like want something from the government and you just meet at a shady restaurant and give them a suitcase full of cash.
	That sort does not happen very much in Russia anymore, at least compared to how it was.
	Yeah, but high level corruption, of course, I think it's nepotism, I think that happens everywhere.
	Nepotism, lobbying, I think that's just a very universal human experience.
	Yeah, and you mentioned also the organized crime and that issue has been dealt with very well.
	There are no organized crime groups basically no more.
	So it was a drastic change from the 90s, a completely drastic change.
	They were all either, well, jailed, killed, exiled, or, yeah, there's a huge graveyard in my city and like half of it is the Russian mafia types from the 90s.
	And they're pictured with their BMWs on the gravestones, no joking.
	And yeah, they killed themselves in the gang wars, right?
	But Putin and his speciality was dealing with organized crime and yeah, there is version in none of that anymore.
	So yeah.
	It's quite, quite stunning.
	I just pulled up the chart.
	I always look at intentional homicide rate of any country and this is the graph from two thousand to present.
	It's the polar opposite of what's going on in Canada from two thousand to the, or at least twenty fifteen to the present.
	No doubt.
	I mean, I'm not sure what you mean by corruption.
	There's nothing in the Epstein files here in the United States.
	We don't have any corruption, of course.
	But speaking of that, like with the one of the things I've tried to explain to people about Putin's true source of power in Russia is that we portray him as this tin cup, authoritarian, irrational dictator., none of which makes any sense that my view, my understanding and from being there was that Putin is just deeply popular.
	And he's deeply popular because of the successes in the turning around of the economy, turning around of crime, turning around of poverty, turning around of just, I mean, extraordinary policy successes in that regard.
	And I remember when I was there once that I tipped well at the hotel there at St. Petersburg and they made a nice referral to me to a local place I could smoke my cigars.
	Later on, I was with one of these young oligarch types.
	And I said, hey, I know a cool cigar place.
	And we start going there.
	He realizes where it is.
	And he drops me off and never talks to me again.
	I didn't realize the place had a long history of ties to organized crime.
	But that was already starting to fade.
	I just tipped well.
	That's why the guy sent me over there.
	Yeah, I'm sorry for interrupting.
	It's actually quite...
	And to be fair, there's one thing that actually got worse with Putin, namely, as you mentioned, you went to a cigar place and back then in 2006 you could smoke indoors, not anymore.
	The Putin dictatorship just ruined it for everyone, I'm sorry to tell you.
	That truly is disappointing.
	But how much is the Western perspective that Putin is a tin cup dictator and authoritarian?
	ruler with no public support.
	How much is that inaccurate?
	How much does his support come from actually having a very big voter base behind him?
	On one aspect and related to it, I've often pointed out that you go back through it, the alternative to Putin in the West's mind, the alternative to Putin is some version of like they thought that the son of the Shah would replace the Ayatollah in Iran.
	Some neoliberal would rise up, the neoliberals discredited in the nineties, and that Russia would become a much more pro western, pro US Western pro-US EU docile vassal kind of government.
	Both of those, can you answer both of those as being how much is that a misrepresentation, misunderstanding of Russia?
	Yeah, I'll let Kirill answer that afterwards, but what I wanted to mention is that Putin's approval rating was actually way worse around 2012 and 2011.
	That moment was actually quite dangerous for Putin, not more.
	So if you put it in numbers, it was around 60, 60 or 55 even.
	And there were massive protests of not only liberals, but also the socialists.
	And it was very lively at the time, right?
	And also in the 2000s, like people were not as, yeah, they didn't trust him as much as they do now.
	So now it's around 80.
	And I think it is genuine because I know of no huge oppositional movements anymore.
	like the Russian liberals just, well, they disappeared.
	And I don't mean they fell out of the windows and Navalny died.
	And it's not just that.
	All of them emigrated to Europe.
	And then the infighting between liberals just made them completely unpopular.
	No one knows of them anymore.
	And it's not even Putin's doing.
	They did it themselves.
	They failed as a movement.
	So, yeah, Putin's approval rating was lower actually before than it is now.
	And as you said, as always in all countries when it's well any kind of a military conflict the approval rating actually goes up and you can you could actually see that with trump as well although it's incomparable but the short scene with Iran,
	although many people were vocal on being opposed to the strikes and so forth, but I think in the normisphere, most people actually, well, like Trump better because of his assertiveness or something such.
	So yeah, in 2014, people really started loving Putin, and now they do it still.
	And he is a generally liked person for, well, 11 years, I would say.
	Before that, it was kind of mixed.
	You mentioned Navalny, and there's a bit of a conflicting narrative as to who killed Navalny, why he was in jail.
	The West says it was Putin cracking down on his political adversaries, and the other side says that Navalny was always a corrupt, no good nick to begin with.
	People will accuse your answer of being wildly biased just because you're literally cold Russian attitude.
	What is your analysis of whether or not Navalny was a good player, bad player, killed, not killed, Putin had something to do with it or didn't?
	Yeah, I'm happy to answer that actually.
	Navalny started out as a genuinely interesting young politician.
	He started out that he became very popular or not super popular but like he had a measurable degree of popularity precisely during the time period that Nikolai just mentioned around 2011.
	um you know there was the aftermath of the financial crisis the very unpopular pension reform in russia and things like that and so there was some real political potential and navalny started out as he was really quite interesting.
	He was not the typical Russian liberal who is basically just regurgitating State Department talking points and so on.
	He was hanging out with right-wing political movements.
	He was a kind of unifying figure because the modernity moderate leftists thought he was okay, the liberals thought he was okay, the nationalists, many of them thought he was okay.
	And he definitely had the potential to become a sort of influential populist figure.
	But then at some point he just turned away from this sort of populism that had the chance to actually become popular, and he just went all in with the establishment liberals.
	He went to Yale around that time for a year of some kind of program, young leaders, global leaders, something.
	some such you can see it on his wikipedia page and then he kind of changed yeah yeah and when he came back from that he and when I say Russian liberals that's a very small part of the Russian population that was politically influential in the 90s,
	but since then really not anymore, and that have generally approval ratings between like 2 and 5 percent in Russia.
	And so he became really relevant in terms of actual like federal level influence on politics.
	And then, yeah, there was some business stuff he and some of his comrades and relatives did.
	But I don't really think it was like much, it was like super bad.
	Like I don't like when a Russian state media or something portrays Navalny as some gangster, some corrupt gangster.
	I mean, yeah, there were some shady deals but not much shadier than like the average Russian business deal if we're being honest and yeah Navalny's problem was that he just gave up on trying to be an actual populist politician and just became this well state department puppet really instead of trying to for broad appeal and there was just this laser focused putin
	back put in bed, put in bed, put in bed and not much else.
	And so yeah, his approval ratings, I don't think they were ever really high.
	And yeah, so I do find it sad because I don't think he was like a bad guy at this coronavirus.
	I think he was smart, ambitious, interesting and much more sympathetic than like the average Russian liberal.
	But yeah, it's sad that he squandered all that on just going all in with the hardcore liberals and then of course all the prison stuff.
	And regarding his death, I don't think that Navalny was assassinated, but he did have health issues, and the prison he was in, it's like literally in the Arctic circle.
	And I don't think that being...
	being locked in a concrete box in the Arctic Circle is very good for anyone's health.
	And actually, it may seem like I'm trying to avoid the topic, but...
	And I just think the Russian prison system is really shitty and it's really bad for your health regardless of who you are.
	And Navalny clearly had health issues, serious health issues and so I think I don't think it's super surprising that he died in the shitty Arctic prison.
	What was surprising however is that previously like a month before or even two weeks before his death There was this famous interview of Tucker Carlson and Putin.
	And in that interview, Putin hinted that he has just one guy in mind who he wants to release and exchange for some prisoners in US, Russian guys, right?
	And there was that famous FSB guy in Germany and such.
	So he hinted on that he wanted to do it.
	And then he dies.
	Well, it's kind of illogical, right?
	For if you want to make a big show out of releasing your most vocal critic and then he dies.
	It doesn't really benefit you in any way.
	And besides, he was harmless and he had like twenty years ahead of him in prison.
	There was no reason to do it.
	And yeah, but as Kirill mentioned, it's not great for your health.
	And also what the prison administration could do and probably did was to like invite in his cell like obviously ill guy, right?
	With some tuberculosis or something like that.
	And yeah, that doesn't boost your health either.
	But I don't believe in any kind of assassination either.
	But in general, I think Navalny, yeah, his life was kind of tragic and he became more delusional with every year, thinking that he's some insanely popular figure and that he could do a revolution via a YouTube video.
	That was his plan all along because the idea, well, when he was in Germany, right, in the hospital after an equally shady poisoning affair, he was warned that there are a couple of criminal cases against him in Russia and if he ever comes back, he is going straight to prison.
	And well, a sensible person would think, no, I would not want to spend the rest of my life in prison when I was, well, it's, yeah, he knew that, right?
	And everyone knew that.
	But his circle of his allies actually motivated him to return to Russia, which is a completely delusional, crazy or insidious thing to do.
	And his wife as well, which is crazy to me, right?
	What wife would send his her husband to this, yeah.
	And Navalny became delusional in that he was preparing a big reveal on YouTube, a huge video., the most famous one about the Putin's castle, I think it was called.
	Have you guys seen that one?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, that was the biggest video, right?
	And it's got like 200 million views or something more than Russian people in Russia.
	So, and he thought that because it's such a big, big video, people would rise up and defend him from prison going to prison.
	And they just didn't.
	So, yeah, it's tragic, it's tragic, of course.
	I'm not really gluttoning at all.
	And yeah.
	What's amazing is at the time, Robert, I remember we were hypothesizing that, you know, if there was a conspiracy theory, it would have been to kill Navalny and blame Putin, which is what they were doing at the time.
	And I didn't follow, I didn't realize this.
	The article that I've just pulled up from ABC News was from 2024.
	Much later, it says Putin likely did not directly order Navalny's killing.
	They say, oh, but by sending him to the prison up in the north, they effectively killed him.
	But at the time, we were talking about it, like they were blaming it on Putin.
	And we're like, it made no sense for Putin to do it.
	And more likely than not, intelligence might have done it.
	And this is the question I was also going to bridge into, how like this would be the explanation I gave here to people in the States would be like if Russia was pretending Lyndon LaRouche was intensely popular in the United States and that he was wrongfully died because he was about to take over the United States because of public demand.
	That's how laughably absurd it was.
	But I'm wondering how do Russians perceive this connected like another example, like idiots, we passed a law for that criminal fraudster Bill Browder who is such a hopeless criminal that the anti-Putin Russian documentary maker, when he was making a documentary about him, realized he's a complete scam artist and had to change the whole documentary.
	We actually, I mean, we praise him, we put him on mainstream media here.
	We pretend this huge criminal is, you know, the honest, ethical businessman who was, whose accountant was murdered by the Russians.
	The one could you explain sort of the Russian perspective on Bill Browder, but in broader context, when Russians see us do these laughably absurd things like pretend Navalny has mass popularity in Russia, pretend Putin is hated in Russia, pretend Bill Browder is this honest, ethical icon.
	How do Russians perceive that?
	I mean, does it make us look as laughably absurd as sometimes I think we should be perceived for those things?
	I think it makes you look aggressive.
	Like Russians think that you're not you of course, but the US government is purposely lying.
	Like they know the truth, but they obscure it.
	Maybe it's not the case actually.
	But as a Russian, I didn't even know that it's such a staple belief that Putin is unpopular in Russia.
	I had no idea.
	I think it's quite clear that he is quite popular.
	But yeah, please go ahead, Kirill.
	Brother is a gigantic criminal and if he lived in the country where he committed his crimes, regardless if that country was Russia, America or Britain, he would be in prison for life.
	He is just an actual gangster oligarch who participated in probably in murders as well in the 90s.
	I mean, that like the stuff that was going on there, it was.
	Like he hung around with all these people like Khadarkovsky, who is another mafioso basically who would be in prison for life in a normal country and all these people who got rich in the 90s they are all criminals and the way that Putin stabilized the political sphere in Russia is that he basically
	made an offer to all these oligarch types who looted the country in the 90s and the deal was that they stay out of politics, they don't sell out the country, they don't try to destabilize the country, and in exchange, they can keep their old gut and gains and well become legitimate, become tycoons instead of oligarchs.
	And many took that deal, some didn't, and Browder was a very close ally of people who did not take that deal.
	and who remained determined to fight for achieve political power in Russia or destabilize the country and so on.
	But all of these people are criminals.
	So that's what I've got to say.
	It fleshes out actually for people.
	I actually brought up a chart earlier about Putin's election victories.
	And he actually had like 60, one with 60 percent back in 2000, give or take, and now he's up to 88 percent and there was a bit of a dip.
	People, I think, in the West are not used to seeing that.
	And I'm skeptical of it too.
	When someone gets close to 90 percent of the vote, I'm inclined to think election fortification.
	I say that, however, from a perspective of a two-party regime, the same thing in Canada, even though we have five parties where you have liberal, conservative, and no matter who's at power in America, it's going to be 52, 48, give or take.
	And so I think people view the election in foreign countries with a similar perspective that anything above sixty percent reeks of corruption because it just wouldn't happen in a two party system.
	What are the political parties in Russia to even compete with Putin in the first place?
	And also subsidiarily, how long Putin can be president forever, right?
	There's no term limits in Russia.
	Well, there are term limits.
	And that's one of the reasons why Medvedev had to, well, intervene.
	So they were adjusted on the constitutional referendum, right?
	And believe it's six years, one term is six years and one person can.
	do two terms subsequently.
	I believe it is the case, right?
	So we will see.
	And Putin is now within the legal framework of the Russian constitution.
	And yeah, there was no giant well, you could argue that the referendum was kind of schemy and so forth.
	But Putin is a legalist, even though he doesn't really want to leave.
	It's also clear.
	But as to the parties, I think there is one miscon major party, the United Russia, but the United Russia doesn't really is not that powerful.
	It's not the United Russia party that gives the power to Putin.
	It's the other way around.
	So without Putin, the United Russia party is nothing, quite literally nothing.
	So in that sense, it's a no-party state.
	And in the US, it's a, well, two-party or uniparty, however you want to call it.
	But yeah, understood.
	And with regards to the percentage of the votes, well, I believe it.
	is genuine and authentic when it comes to these contenders.
	These contenders like Zyuganov from the Communist Party, he's no more popular than 20%, never was.
	And Zhirinovsky as well, although I was a big fan of Zhirinovsky from my childhood, but yeah, the guy never was, never had a chance to actually win on any fair elections because of many reasons.
	And the other question is that is that the, well, the Russian.
	government doesn't allow genuinely popular figures to enter the, well, the elections.
	party yet.
	But the only popular figure really was Navalny, as we discussed.
	And Navalny was allowed to participate in the Moscow mayor mayoral election of 2014 or something like that, where it was very clean.
	They really made a point to show that Navalny is not as popular as he claims to be.
	And he did get substantial amount of votes like like 35 percent or 5% or 30%.
	But in the end, he still lost to Stabianin and he did not become the mayor.
	And I believe it is also quite, well, true that he didn't have any more.
	But when it comes to the access to the television, yeah, well, it is not, it is quite rigged for oppositional figures, I would say.
	And that's the only thing that stands out.
	Like, yeah, oppositional figures are not allowed freely on the Russian television.
	But another thing is that at this point, there really no.
	There really are no such figures.
	No such figures at all that people know about.
	And speaking of which, the other thing I was going to bridge into is the perception in the West that has long been propagated is that they could basically return to the nineties if they could just get rid of Putin, that they could, you know, their goal of breaking up Russia, you know, raping and ravaging Russia.
	They have the same goals with China in the West.
	They want a weak, kind of like Israel with its perceived adversaries.
	They want chaos.
	They want broken up countries.
	They want nothing strong, nothing centralized that can compete or conflict.
	But it's, you know, I remember the election when, you know, that was, you know, closer, if you will, when Putin first came in.
	And the alternatives was an ultranationalist general.
	You mentioned Zharnowsky, the who I think I was introduced to doing an ad from his shower, which I was like, that's fascinating.
	But his whole sort of populist, I recognize it within the American populist political tradition, which there was a Russian populism tradition at points in Russia going back a century or so.
	But in the Communist Party.
	But like the could you explain that from a Russian perspective, Putin is actually more on what would be called the liberal side of the equation?
	I think you guys have described him as almost autist in his belief in the rule of law in these western conditions what the real autism in russia is much more hardcore than putin uh and and the and and why putin is from the russian perspective actually more western than uh than many of them would like Yeah, I think the legal autism thing is a personal touch, not a political view.
	But yeah, I think if you were to compare Putin really in terms of political views and political action, the closest comparison would be, you know, like 1970s, 1980s,
	moderate conservative Christian Democrats in Western Europe, like something like the CDU in Germany back then, the conservatives in France, like something like that, like really moderate European conservative with a heavy liberal touch.
	Yeah, so the alternative, I mean, we could look at like the Russian parliament, though I would mostly conceive of the parties as, you know, like pressure groups, maybe and not as political parties as such.
	the main one is like the the largest is of course the Communist Party which really is mostly like you know a party for old people it's like it's the
	Because obviously the world is always perfect when you're 20 and it's always much better when you're 20 than when you're 70.
	And I think I would conceptualize the Russian Communist Party most of all as the party of boomer nostalgia.
	And it does not have any young, serious young figureheads.
	Its political platform is really weird and has a lot of mutually exclusive stuff.
	and so on and yeah after that you have like the the so-called the just russia party which is basically the economic populist is I think the term that you would use for that.
	It also proposes some measures that could be described as economically left-wing, but it's mostly a populist approach to the economy and just being more populist in general.
	I would generally say that the average voter like the median voter in Russia is a bit of an economic populist, a bit of a slightly left-wing economic populist on economic stuff.
	and like socially conservative.
	Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
	Oh, sorry.
	I would follow up.
	I described the Russian people as basically East Tennessee, just a little more East.
	In the old East Tennessee, home of Davy Crockett, you know, we grew up in the 1700s.
	Two of our favorite competitions were bear baiting and eye gouging.
	And what was really useful about those is you always knew who won.
	Because, you know, they came back with an eye or they didn't, came back dead or alive.
	But that the culture of Russia is very more akin to America than the culture of France or Germany or any of these EU countries that we're currently, you know, following in certain respects.
	How much is that accurate in the sense that it's a really like how you just described the politics, economically populist, socially conservative.
	That's basically the American populist mindset, very deep seated in East Tennessee, in places like that.
	How much is that accurate in the sense of the religious conservatism culture?
	How much is there more in common with the culture of the ordinary Russian and the culture of the ordinary American than there is different?
	I mean, I've never been to the United States, but I do have.
	a bunch of American friends that I talk to and things like that.
	In my opinion, I think there is definitely many cultural parallels between the American heartland and the Russian heartland.
	It's like a population that I know that loves guns, loves trucks, are generally conservative.
	and such.
	I think those are quite similar and would, I don't know, get along if they met in real life.
	I think we have to actually, it might be a hard segue into the current war with Ukraine because you talk about what's going on in Russia.
	Do we hear in the West, Russia's losing the war, losing hundreds of thousands of men.
	Does the average Russian on the street even feel or appreciate that they're at war right now?
	Right now, more than at the beginning of the war.
	At the beginning of the war, the Russian government really did everything in its power to create the impression that nothing is going on, that it's business as usual.
	Then, of course, when the Ukrainians started to mass mobilize and inflicted a defeat on the Russian army in the autumn of 22 and Russia started mobilizing as well, started recruiting volunteers en masse and offering them a lot of money and since then of course the war became much more real because before that it was really only the professional soldiers who were already
	in the army at that time and a few volunteers and then it became apparent that the Russian government needs the inputs from the Russian society.
	It needs people to volunteer for the army.
	It needs people to go work in military industry and such.
	And that's when it became more apparent.
	It's still, for example, here in Moscow where I live, on a usual day you don't like go outside and see anything that would tell you that there's a war going on um other than maybe recruitment posters like that's the one thing that became quite ubiquitous you have recruitment posters on every corner now but other than that really not much.
	I mean, it's different, of course.
	The closer you get to the actual front lines, there are more drone attacks and things like that and more often.
	And the drones don't reach Moscow very often.
	You say recruitment posters.
	Is there conscription in Russia right now?
	There's always conscription in Russia.
	So basically you have mandatory military service that when you turn 18, unless you have a good reason not to, like medical, you're studying at university or whatever, you go serve in the army for a year.
	But these conscripts who are doing their mandatory military service are not used in the war.
	And it's specifically forbidden by a special decree from Putin to use them in the war.
	Because that would be, I think, socially not very accepted in Russia.
	I mean, more so, it's a trauma, I think, from the first Chachin War back in 94, when these conscripts were used, when Russia didn't have a professional army yet.
	It was all conscripts.
	And, you know, having many thousands, 18-year-olds who are there against their will dying, it's really bad for society.
	And so, conscripts are not used in the Special Military Operation, but only professional soldiers who signed a contract...
	Basically people who already completed their mandatory military service at some point.
	When they leave the army, they joined the reserves.
	And so they were basically reservists who were called up.
	But since September 22, no one was drafted into the war again.
	Only to mandatory military service, yes.
	The estimates that the West circulates is a quarter of a million dead.
	And so I guess the only objective question to establish that is like, does everybody know somebody in Russia who has died in this war?
	No, definitely not.
	I mean, that's at least my personal impression.
	Thankfully, I mean, I know a lot of my friends are in the war.
	I know a lot of people who are in the war.
	Thankfully, I have not, I was not forced to grieve many times.
	So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely not like everyone knows someone who died in the war.
	That's not the case.
	Exactly speaking of it, the perception that our dear president has here in the United States, they've been given.
	by General Kellogg and some others, Secretary Rubio amongst them, is that the Ukrainian war is deeply unpopular in Russia, that the Russians lost over 114,000 people in just 2025, Ukraine has only lost 8,000 and a few missing, that it's basically the reverse.
	In other words, that my understanding of the facts on the ground is this is a war of attrition, deep battle policy that Russia helped originate a century ago, that Russia has dominance, escalatory dominance and battleground dominance and professional soldier dominance.
	And they're in territory where they are welcome because it's the Russian-speaking Russian natives that are in the eastern part of Ukraine that want them there.
	And that it's Ukraine that is on the losing end of the casualties war.
	It's Zelenskyy who's deeply unpopular in his own country.
	It's Ukraine that finds it's its own population opposes the wars we see on the streets where they're dragging people in to conscript them.
	President Trump didn't even know Ukraine was drafting the mentally disabled, drafting elderly people, trying to kidnap people off the streets.
	He's totally unaware of it.
	Also unaware of what we import from Russia.
	Could you explain from the Russian perspective my understanding?
	is the war is strongly supported by the Russian population.
	If anything, they think Putin was too generous to the West in the build-up to this, that he should have gone in in 2014 to secure the Donbass and the Russian population.
	That if anything, they would like him to be stronger and more aggressive.
	Am I accurate about that?
	Yeah, definitely.
	Yeah, you are absolutely right.
	Yeah, go ahead, Kirill.
	Yeah, I think...
	And the public sentiment can contradict itself.
	And I think, yes.
	Yes, a majority of people support the war goals, support the fact that, or like agree with the fact that Russia's cause is just in this war.
	But at the same time, of course, it's annoying to be subjected to, even if they're mild, relatively mild compared to like historical wars, it's still kind of annoying.
	And I think what people don't like is how
	And but like the only thing that Russia could do to really, really speed up the war, which is like forcibly conscript a million people at the same time and have two and have a quarter of them die in assaults that would be even more unpopular than the war taking long so it's uh overall there is a bit of fatigue i think at this point um but
	it's not like again it's a bit hard to put into words i think i think uh people, the people who are the most annoyed, they think that there is some sort of secret win the war button that Putin is just not pressing for whatever reason.
	And yeah, that's because of the fatigue.
	And I'm bringing this up here.
	And everybody, don't hold anybody to the AI overviews.
	It's just the easiest immediate answer.
	My understanding is that there were rumors, allegations of North Korean soldiers either being recruited or fighting alongside Russia.
	I don't trust any media, and especially not the Western media that I know has been dishonest for the last ever.
	Do you guys know of this?
	Is there any?
	Yes.
	So this, there are in 24 I think or 23 I don't really remember Russia signed a military treaty with North Korea a treaty of alliance like a full treaty of military alliance that that basically that has a clause that you come to the defense of someone else when they're attacked and then the North Koreans did offer to send soldiers to fight
	in Kursk region.
	So basically the old Russian region that is not part of the new regions that were incorporated into Russia, but old Russian territory where the Ukrainians invaded exactly one year ago actually exactly one year on August 6 24 and by I think December or so or January there were some North Korean units who participated
	in the Liberation of Coast Region, specifically only on old Russian territory, because again, Russia is very legalistic about these things.
	And yeah, so they did participate.
	I mean, it's a win-win kind of, because Russia has more manpower.
	The North Koreans learn something about modern warfare and get invaluable experience.
	And the numbers were quite limited.
	I think it was around 1 around 1500 or or so okay a number of them were killed of course but that was not hidden or anything like north koreans were present at the victory day parade this year in russia there was video of uh the north korean government receiving the coffins back of their soldiers who were killed in Kogus region.
	There's a monument being built in Kogus region to the North Koreans who came to our aid.
	I mean, most people conceptualize that as like an ally coming to our aid in liberating a region that was occupied by the enemy.
	It's of course debatable how fair you think that is and everything, but that's how I think most people conceptualize it.
	It's not like, yeah, it's a win-win because for the Koreans, it's quite sensible as well to receive some experience in how modern wars are fought.
	And yeah.
	I was just thinking, if I'm North Korean and I see this as my only chance to actually escape North Korea, either I don't know if they're able to defect.
	I don't know where an ethnic North Korean could blend in in Russia, but if I wanted to escape North Korea, I mean, you might flip the coin on that one.
	I don't think that, so as far as I know, I mean, I've heard that from people who have like first or second hand contact with the North Korean soldiers who were there, but of course it's second hand knowledge.
	But as far as I'm aware, the people who came were all volunteers specifically for this mission.
	So it's not like some specific military, some random military unit was sent.
	and they gathered volunteers and then sent them all together and they were all like already people from elite North Korean military units.
	And I would presume that those are that those have a relatively high social status in North Korea anyway and would be less inclined to defend.
	Yeah, we had an interview with a Scottish volunteer, our latest podcast episode, and he was very, well, he bemoaned that he had to leave his Kursk positions because the Koreans took over, because it was such a comfortable place for him.
	and he had to be sent back to Donbass.
	That's yeah.
	So yeah, it is definitely public knowledge for quite some time now.
	Yeah.
	In sort of the endgame analysis for Ukraine, without going like Fool Putin, you know, let's start in 783, there's a perception here in the United States that is feeding into the policy.
	And I think the perceptions are wrong and it's leading to poor policy choices by the president currently.
	And that perception is Russia's losing the war, Russia's massive casualtiesties, Russian opinion is unpopular towards the war, Putin is hated in the country, Russia's economy is on the verge of collapse, all of that, those are false narratives.
	And that for Russia, this is existencial, for the Russian people, it's existencial, not only the NATO threat, but defending and protecting Russian people, Russian culture, Russian history in the Russian part of Ukraine.
	And that for Russia, the only successful outcome will be to at least protect and incorporate the Donbass region and Crimea and the four provinces that have already voted to join Russia, that will be a minimum requirement.
	And that any belief that Russia could practically or politically accept going back to pre-2022, to letting Ukraine take back, or even pre-2014, let Ukraine take back Crimea, let Ukraine take back all of eastern Ukraine, that is never going to happen.
	What's your sense of what's realistic, what's attainable and achievable as an outcome, what's acceptable to Russians as an outcome in this war?
	I think, I mean, the, The basic conditions that Russia demands for a ceasefire, for an immediate ceasefire, have not changed in more than a year.
	I think it was June 24 when Putin held a speech in which he outlined the government.
	It's the regions that have voted to join the Russian Federation remain, are internationally recognized as part of the Russian Federation and sort of like mild regime change in the Ukraine with like having elections, lifting the bans on pro-Russian political parties and organizations, lifting restrictions on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
	banning neo-Nazi organizations, disbanding neo-Nazi militias and limits on what sort of weapons the Ukrainian army can have.
	So basically nothing that could threaten Russian territory.
	Those are like the basic things and these are the basic Russian demands and they have not changed in over a year.
	I think there is a misconception generally about the way that Russia does diplomacy and negotiations in such very serious matters.
	I agree with what you said a bit earlier that I mean, I don't know what's going on at the White House.
	It's all speculation.
	But I would agree that there is an impression that the U.S. government or Trump personally receives intel that is not especially realistic and based on this intel that he receives he expects russia to be much more eager to make a deal immediately than it actually is and um but russian demands i don't think they are going ever to be less than what russia is demanding because
	at the beginning of the war russian demands were much milder um The Ukrainians basically already did accept a peace deal in March 22, two and a half years ago, and the conditions to which they agreed back then were a lot milder than those now because back then they only had to like accept that Crimea is Russian and some sort of and
	the Donbass regions since then and even that was negotiable like basically Russia was semi-ready to go back to to the Minsk agreements from 10 years ago in which the two Donbass regions would become sort of autonomous and not integrated into Russia.
	Since then, four more regions have become non-negotiable for Russia.
	And the deal that Ukraine or the West is going to get is only going to get worse over time.
	The conditions are never going to get milder or better than they have been in the past or are now.
	And yeah.
	I mean, that's basically what happened at one of the last meetings in Istanbul between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations where apparently according to media from both sides at some point the Russian delegation was so fed up with how stubborn the Ukrainian delegation was that the Ukrainians basically said that they would never accept under any conditions that the four regions go to
	Russia and then apparently the Russian delegation got up and said that next time it would be more regions that they would have to accept not less and just left the room.
	And I think that's the general tone of negotiations.
	Yeah.
	And speaking of which, in that regard, if you were in the White House talking to President Trump, In other words, it seems to me he's operating on this delusional impression that Russia is under pressure that it's not under.
	The pressure is the opposite direction to get the war done, to secure more of the Russian freedom and peace and security long term, to be more aggressive, not less, that the Russian economy is just fine, not falling apart, not collapsing.
	Putin is more popular than ever before in Russia.
	That is the base of his support.
	That if you could give him honest intelligence, what should be the deal he should be seeking?
	I don't think it's it's up to Intel as such, but it's a deeper problem of America fearing losing its hegemon status, basically.
	And they don't see any face-saving exit from it because they did invest a lot, right?
	And if they just stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, they, well, understand that Russia is going to win and very quick.
	So they don't really know how to do it.
	And there is, I think, popular conspiracy theory among the And actually, there is a backroom deal that the US is trying to leave with the, well, phase seven exit.
	But I'm not sure that's right either.
	So I'm not sure if they have a way to do it.
	Well, they kind of, the US did leave Vietnam, right?
	And well, nothing really happened.
	It wasn't, its reputation wasn't destroyed.
	So yeah, the only advice would be to, I guess, prepare for that and prepare itself so that the US is not actually losing any exceptional hegemon status just because they stopped giving away billions of dollars and all the weapons to Ukraine.
	But at the same time, I'm not sure if they're exactly hurting doing that, right?
	So it's beneficial for the military industrial conflict.
	I'm not sure what advice to give him, honestly, but I would say that it was very., yeah, it was kind of underwhelming.
	And my biggest contention with Trump is the false hopes that people had, especially the Americans.
	I know some people who earnestly believe that Trump is going to be a force for good, right, in the Ukraine conflict.
	And he sounded as much.
	But yeah, in the end, he's kind of worse for that because he gave all these false hopes to people.
	And Kamala didn't, right?
	And Biden didn't.
	You kind of knew what to expect from them.
	And instead of this back and forth of him insulting Zelensky and then caressing him the next day, it's kind of a schizophrenic feature.
	And they do seem to be enjoying that.
	I'm not sure.
	A question I have here, I mean, out in the West, at first nobody knew of the biore-research facilities in Ukraine.
	Then people discovered them and said, oh, it's a conspiracy theory.
	Oh, they exist, but they're only research and not chemical development plants, whatever.
	The knowledge of Russians, like Russians who are reasonably informed and educated.
	Is it a known fact what the West has been doing in Ukraine for the last, I'd say, better part of a decade plus?
	The bio lab thing, it's kind of a weird story because I mean, there definitely were American bio labs in the Ukraine, as much has been admitted by the US as well.
	We don't really know very much about what was going on there.
	The Russian government has published a few documents about some cursory bioweapon-related research, but like no real, I think, smoking guns either.
	I mean, I don't think it's the bio labs were ever that important.
	It's just one more aspect.
	I mean, there was a lot of stuff that the US has been doing in Ukraine.
	Like one of the things that is not really public knowledge, for example, or not really talked about much is that not just the US, but European nations as well, they paid Kiev to dump.
	their nuclear waste in the Donbass, in abundant mines.
	And so in a lot of places, like the groundwater is now very dangerous.
	But that's just not public.
	No one ever talks about it.
	No one cares about that.
	And there's a lot of stuff like that has been going on.
	And it's just, the Ukraine was just a very comfy place to do all that stuff because of low state capacity, high corruption, the government generally depending on the U.S. for a lot of things.
	So they could just do whatever they wanted.
	Like, for example, make the, give a great no-show job to the president's son.
	And back then he was Secretary of State.
	It's actually really funny, that whole Hunter Biden Burisma story.
	Because in the U.S., I think, no one really talked about that before the last presidential election.
	And so 10 years after it actually happened.
	And it's funny, no one cares about it for a long time.
	a decade and there's a lot of stuff like that that just it's not important enough for people to be talking about and I think the bio labs it was I think it was brought up in Russian media so much because it was on everyone's mind after the whole COVID thing.
	And so it was a powerful propaganda point.
	And while it is clear that there were sketchy biological research facilities run by the US in Ukraine, I don't think that it was some sort of really gigantic conspiracy or smoking gun.
	It was just, you know, the US ran that, they ran research in China as well.
	And it's just stuff they can do in other places that they can't do in the US because of laws.
	Speaking of which, in the broader, you know, Putin early on talked about Ukraine being brothers, you know, went back to what he perceived as outside forces going all the way back to the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, trying to turn Ukraine against Ukrainians, against the Russian population.
	Ukraine, of course, literally means borderlands in the language.
	But can you describe how the Russian perspective is of what could be perceived within Russia as a kind of betrayal by the Ukrainian population due to Western corruption?
	That going all the way back to the end of World War II, we bring Bandera in to put him in Germany.
	The Russians paid him back a little bit later in Germany.
	I mean, the knee he was, the Ukrainian Nazis were so bad.
	Even the Nazis were disgusted by what they did.
	The German Nazis were like, whoa, whoa, it was too much.
	But we employed a lot of those people.
	And then, after the Cold War, we really started, you know, George Soros, Ukraine is his favorite project.
	There's multiple color revolutions.
	There's multiple efforts to basically use Ukraine as a, as a wedge against Russia.
	While, as you guys describe it, this cesspool and honeypot of everything deep state corruption, biolabs, human trafficking, money laundering, nuclear waste dumping, all that.
	That's why you see the latest Ukrainian general with his.
	Lamborghini at the Monaco casinos.
	For the Russian people, this whole project in Ukraine that's now been arguably almost a century in the making, but definitely decades in the making in its modern form, you know, rewriting Bandera's history, where you see a Ukrainian soccer match this weekend, football as it's described around the world, where they're doing the Nazi salute and the Western press is trying to pretend otherwise.
	Every time they do an interview with a Ukrainian official and he's got a Bandera Nazi photo behind him, they're trying to whitewash it out of there.
	How much of it the Russian people do they see?
	is it is an irreplaceable uh a break what the the the sort of the eastern slav ukrainian brother uh in terms of going forward do they see it as a betrayal do they blame the ukrainian politicians and oligarchs or do they blame more of the western corruption how do you perceive all of that i think it's at first russians first in the
	and foremost blamed the Soviet rulers, especially Gorbatchov and Yeltsin, because they allowed this to happen by, well, Belavieze Accords, basically.
	There was no need for Ukraine to become an independent state.
	There was no enormous pressure by the Ukrainian groups.
	Nobody actually wanted it.
	So that was the initial sin and unforgivable mistake, really, that inevitably led to what we're having right now.
	So if it in any case without Putin, the war was inevitable basically.
	And because Ukraine became a splinter independent state, of course, it was a well, an easy target for the for the for the West to meddle and to intervene.
	So the initial mistake and crime and sin was upon the Gorbachev in Yeltsin, especially Gorbachev because well, yeah, we will not.
	go into that and we will cover that in some future historical episode.
	But as to the brotherhood question, of course, in the, like in the 90s and 2000s, it was not only the brothers, it was indistinguishable really.
	There was a border intact, but people just ignored it and were surprised that, well, there are border guards.
	How come?
	What happened?
	Well, that happened.
	And people were ignoring their reality for the longest time, up until 2022, basically.
	People were either saying that we are brothers or we are literally the same and nothing is happening, but it was ignoring parts of the reality of the which was unfathomably broken because the border became very real, very real, not only on the physical side, but also the mental border.
	Russians didn't change much since the nineties, apart from the well, yeah, the criminal rates, crime rates, homicide rates, all that dropped.
	But identity wise, Russians remained the same.
	Ukrainians changed quite a lot.
	They changed their language for one, which is quite interesting for a nation to do in such a short period of time.
	And they are still, of course, it's a kind of a mixed language.
	They go back and forth, but it used to be an 80 to 90 percent Russian-speaking nation with the only exception of a few regions in the west of Ukraine, which are actually culturally different and always were.
	But the older Russian speakers were reprogrammed.
	We are, well, we're, we've got to give credence when it's due.
	The Ukrainian media machine is very powerful, one of the most powerful in Europe and the world.
	And they're very good at the media stuff and the union of the political machine and the media.
	And they're exceptional at that.
	And with a lot of side-ups, with a lot of, well, revolutions of dignity and blood being spilled, they did successfully reprogram tens of millions of people.
	And it's already over and done.
	So yeah, I think that as of now, Russians don't really see Ukrainians.
	They do see Ukrainians as kind of traitors.
	Well, not all Ukrainians, but those who are actively anti Russian who are fighting against us.
	So the line of separation is no longer blurry, it's very apparent.
	If you fight for us, you're a good guy.
	If you fight against us, you're a bad guy.
	It's very simple.
	And I think it's going to stay.
	And there will be no Ukrainian Russian brotherhood.
	Even as imagined by the Russian state, because in the initial phase of the war in the Liberated Territories, the schools were offering, well, they still do, but then they were offering Ukrainian language for kids.
	And they didn't even take down Ukrainian flag in the Russian Federation.
	Nothing really changed for the liberated territories.
	They just remained, well, their identity remained Ukrainian.
	And some of them, or a lot of them, were studying online in Kiev schools, despite living under Russian administration.
	And now it's changing.
	Like a month ago, there was a silent push for well dropping the mandatory Ukrainian language in those territories and it's becoming apparent to the Russian elites that yeah the the brotherhood thing is kind of over and it's better to have them to have their identity as Russian and not Ukrainian they are not erasing Ukrainian identity there is still a voluntary Ukrainian language
	at schools and so on so we are not at the Ukrainian level right when they just outro ban all everything Russian but still yeah there is a degree of realization and sobriety about this matter?
	I think in a lot of ways it's also a generational thing because basically whether you view how you view like the fact that we are fighting Ukraine a lot depends on your age.
	For example, I don't know, a guy who was 19 years old and patriotic enough to join the army when the war started in 22, the Ukrainians, they had a rapidly anti-Russian government for his entire conscious life and they were bombing Russians in the Donbass for his entire conscious life basically whereas if you're older you have a very different conception of what Ukraine because for
	such a guy Ukrainians they're just the enemy they're just the enemy there is no this whole cultural baggage of growing up in one country together it doesn't exist for people who are 19 now for example it doesn't exist for them but for older generations it's different um for example like my father right um he He grew up in the Soviet Union,
	he served in the Soviet Army, and he is as much of a Russian patriot as can be, fully supports special military operation and so on.
	He was quite sad when we bombed the tank academy in Kharkov, the Ukrainian tank academy in Kharkov, because when he served in the Soviet Army, all of his favorite officers, they were from this academy.
	And he had fond memories of them, of serving together in one army, doing stuff together, being friends with them and then we just bombed this stuff.
	There was also a very case that I personally found quite well tragic in the context of the whole thing.
	It was I think it was on late 22 or early 23 within a week.
	two senior officers were killed, one on the Russian side and one on the Ukrainian side.
	And after a little digging, it turned out that they were classmates at the military academy in Minsk.
	And they were both in the class of like 1990 at the Suvorov Academy in Minsk.
	They studied military science together and so on.
	And 30 years later, they both die within a few days on opposite sides of a war.
	I think for Americans, this is probably easier to understand actually than for many Europeans, because America had a lot of histories like that, a lot of stories like that in their own civil war.
	But it sounds like what you're describing is we're not going to get the reconciliation that we got ultimately in the US Civil War, it took like two generations.
	But it sounds like the bridges have been burned in such a way they're very unlikely to get built back.
	think the main problem is you know that entire idea of brotherly people or a brotherly nation I think it's bullshit I think it's strong
	it's stupid.
	It doesn't work.
	Real life doesn't work like that.
	There are people in the country called Ukraine who are Russians.
	And they are going to be just fine living in Russia under Russian administration.
	And people who self-identify so much as Ukrainians that they would not be fine with living in Russia.
	who are the majority in some parts of the Ukraine.
	I don't think that Russia is interested in taking over those parts because why?
	What's the point?
	So that was actually one of the..
	chat has a number of F Russia and F Ukraine.
	And one person said, this guy sounds like he wants to take over all of Ukraine.
	Internet trolling aside, I guess the question is, what does a Russian envision as being the end solution to this?
	Like where does Russia stop?
	Does it stop in the Donbass?
	Does it go further?
	Does it take over, I don't know, all of Ukraine?
	I don't think that's feasible.
	But like, what is the ideal end goal of what Russia aspires to gain out of this war?
	Well, there's a historical region that is called New Russia, Nova Ossetia in Russia.
	and it basically comprises eight regions of what is generally considered to be Ukraine.
	Four of those are already under Russian control.
	And this is an area historically that was, well, empty.
	You know, there were like nomadic Turkic peoples living there doing slave raids into Eastern Europe.
	But it was not settled.
	And it was settled by Russians in the 18th century.
	the regions that comprise new Russia, that I think would be a logical endpoint.
	They don't have to perfectly match the administrative borders that exist now.
	I think you can be more granular than that.
	But parts of that, I think especially the city of Odessa.
	I think the city of Odessa is like the measure by which I personally would assess whether the war was successful or not.
	But if I may actually, because Korn Pop over on ComiTube made the comment I was just about to say, Russia basically wants to control the sea and landlock Ukraine.
	I mean, I don't know what the Kremlin was.
	We can only...
	It's a reasonable...
	I think it's reasonable.
	I think it's very reasonable to assume that the cities of Nikolaev and Odessa and at least parts of the region are among Russia's ultimate wobbles.
	I think that's very reasonable to assume.
	It has never been Ukrainian-speaking.
	It has never been any sort of Ukrainian nationalist hotspot.
	There was the infamous Odessa massacre in 2014 when 50 people were burnt alive by Ukrainian neo-Nazis in Odessa.
	Many, many, many Russians have been to Odessa because it's a very popular holiday destination.
	I have personal connections to Odessa as well and I think it would be symbolically emotionally as well as strategically make perfect sense for Russia to want to be in control of Odessa by the time this is over?
	I have a sort of a random historical question because you guys do great history on your podcast and channels.
	And then another and then a fundamental question about the Russian economy.
	When I was over in Russia, I mean, I once went to Ukraine briefly, I was on an Aeroflot flight, and the plane stopped before it even got to the full airport.
	I was in the first class section and the oligarch next to me hopped off and he had his own like private car to pick him up right off the commercial.
	I was like, I have to figure out what this deal is.
	One of the stories I heard was that Odessa was populated with all these beautiful women because Peter the Great wanted to make sure that the Russian sailors had a motivation to go to Odessa to set up a port on the Black Sea.
	I have no idea if it's urban legend or not, but I was curious about does that explain the extraordinary beauty of some of the Ukrainian women, who unfortunately right now are being forced into boardels throughout Western Europe thanks to the human trafficking of the Soros crowd.
	But one, just I was curious about whether that's just urban legend or not.
	And the second is one of the big fundamental myths that we of the propaganda we keep getting in the West is the Russian economy is just about to collapse.
	It's just about to implode.
	that the Kissinger said, control food, you control countries, control fuel, you control continents, while Russia controls its own food and its own fuel, and increasingly is industrializing the way Trump is trying to do in the United States that allows it to scale up military industrial production very fast, much faster than was predicted in the West.
	What is the state of the Russian economy from the perspective of the ordinary person?
	Is it on the verge of collapse?
	Is it doing pretty solid?
	Is it doing much better than expected?
	So those two questions.
	Well, regarding Odessa, Odessa was founded half a century after Peter the Great died.
	So it was not him who could have done that.
	It was actually founded by a woman, by Empress Catherine the Great.
	So I don't know if she had the strategic insight to populate it with attractive women.
	But it is true, though.
	It is incredible because, well, you can say that all Russian women or most of them, Ukrainian women, are hot, but Odessa is exceptional in that department.
	It stands out.
	It's true.
	I don't know the specific reason for that.
	And regarding the economy, I think it's well the russian economy is doing extraordinarily better than anyone expected it would do when the war started after the sanctions hit um i think most including inside russia including the russian government didn't expect the russian economy to weather the sanctions as well as as it did would be my impression
	i have no i i feel so stupid i did not know that odessa was world-renowned i just pulled up a random montage of odessa women um i'm a married man so that's that part of my my mind.
	It's also, I am also American man and my wife is from Odessa.
	Okay, that's wild.
	Gentlemen, I got one totally random question.
	I was friends with a Russian, I'm good friends with a Russian who actually was from, geez, come on, the place where they send everybody.
	Not Siberia?
	Siberia, yeah, sorry.
	Grandda is from Siberia.
	And I don't remember if it was her or someone else.
	Someone told me in Russia, it is common knowledge that America never reached the moon landing, that it was fake in order to bankrupt Russia, and that everyone in Russia knows this to be the case.
	Is that crazy conspiracy theory or is that idea prevalent in Russia?
	It is a crazy conspiracy theory and crazy conspiracy theories are quite popular in Russia, but I don't think that's something a majority of people believe.
	Okay.
	In terms of the war...
	Because publicly, the Soviet Union congratulated America on the successful moon landing and then it would have been like the biggest propaganda win in half a century to publicize the notice that it was fake.
	So it doesn't make any sense.
	The people who believe with that, right, that US has never been on the moon, they say that it was a hidden deal because USSR faked Gagarin reaching the states and America was in within conspiracy.
	They were conspiring together.
	So yeah, it's tit for tat.
	But yeah, let's not go into that.
	Militarily, watching this conflict as sort of one of the first major ground wars of this kind in Europe for quite a while, which has a long history of ground wars.
	But looking at what's happened from a battle perspective, whether it's the employment of deep, you know, a battle of attrition policy, the expanded use of drone warfare, the way mercenaries and volunteers have sometimes been incorporated into professional soldier units, the old Soviet lines of fortification that actually has helped Ukraine up till now that may be about to collapse.
	What's been both reinforcing and surprising and learning from just a military perspective about this conflict?
	I mean, it is the probably most major lesson, the major lesson that can be somewhat abstracted from this war is that for decades now, military experts, analysts, HQs all over the world,
	military academies in every developed country have been predicting that the future of warfare is that you don't need a lot of men, you don't need a lot of vehicles, tanks, guns, whatever.
	You just need robots and very small special forces units.
	And that was the assumption that really the mainstream of military theory for the last 30 years or so has been.
	That in the future of 21st century warfare, you don't need a lot of people.
	You just need the technology.
	And that has been squarely disproven, I believe.
	With both Ukraine and Russia switching away from the brigade system that was initially kind of, I guess you could call it a NATO innovation.
	That the army is not built on corps or divisions or army groups, but on brigades that are small and mobile.
	And both sides of the war have now left that behind because it just doesn't work in a war like that.
	And as many drones as you have, as sophisticated as they are as many robots you have or whatnot you still need to runs with rifles on the ground to actually hold territory it doesn't work without them and like the best tank like people like these military enthusiasts on X,
	they love discussing the technical details of tanks, of like Leos, Abrams, T-90s, whatever.
	But it literally doesn't matter because all these details, they would matter in a theoretical tank against tank battle.
	And for over three and a half years, we have seen like five of those on camera.
	of really tank against tank engagements.
	So it really doesn't matter.
	I'm sorry, Kirill.
	But yeah, Kirill is great at this stuff and he promised to do a.
	two hour show of him talking about autistic militia.
	And I'm seeing on the screen actually our plug.
	Thanks for that.
	I want to show our show a little bit if that's okay by you.
	So, yeah, speaking to our audience right now, if you're interested in independent English speaking, no nonsense Russian podcasts telling about Russian past, present, well, theories and hard truths, Then check out our X page and Patreon, where we have lots of free stuff.
	So it is our main hub of podcasts because we couldn't figure out other platforms.
	We are on YouTube as well, but Patreon remains the main page for podcasting.
	We are currently recording a short series on Chechen war.
	And I think it's the only in-depth historical study of the conflict from anyone really in English language.
	And various bi-weekly news segments and interviews.
	interviews and our latest interview with a scottish volunteer a disillusioned scottish volunteer within the russian army was very gritty maybe too real maybe we scared away our turbopetrols of Russia, I'm not sure.
	But yeah, there's lots of stuff.
	And if you're interested in Russian affairs, give it a look.
	Oh, absolutely.
	The Russians with attitude on X, Russians with attitude on Patreon, Russians with attitude on YouTube, fascinating history.
	I describe them in our East Tennessee language as true roosties that are entertaining to boot.
	Speaking of which, if you were to introduce people to the West, to Russian culture, Russian history that could really exemplify it, and you guys let me know how much longer we can keep you.
	We're fine with whatever you need in that regard, time-wise.
	We've taken up a lot of your time already, and it's been great.
	But what would be like some films, like, I mean, I love a lot of the Russian military films.
	A lot of those are really cool.
	I mean, the ones about Stalingrad, fascinating.
	The ones about tanks, by the way, are really cool.
	I like some of those, the Russian tank driven ones.
	But the, in fact, there were some American films that tried to emulate that.
	One with Brad Pitt that was really just trying to steal from certain popular Russian films.
	But are there certain Russian films or Russian books or Russian music?
	Of course, you've got a very deep, long cultural history that you would say if you want to get a sense of Russia today or a sense of Russia's mindset writ large, are there any particular films or books or music that you would direct people to?
	Yes, I think there is one movie that a majority of Russians would recommend in response to that question and that's the 1997 movie called Brother, Brat in Russian.
	I think it's really sort of I don't even know, it's like the most, the deepest portrayal, I think, of the general Russian mindset in the guise of a.
	90s gangster movie and it's I if I remember correctly the full movie is on YouTube with English subtitles so yeah I think brother is is the one I would recommend first of all maybe Nikolai has another idea Oh, I think both.
	If you're not talking about everything, there's, well, too many Russian great composers to pick from.
	I really like Rachmaninov, but yeah, you probably all know about this.
	As to the, well, yeah, check out, start with the Russian canon, because Brat is good and all, but it's too 90s coded, right?
	And it might scare away some people.
	It's not high culture enough.
	It's great.
	But yeah, start with the Russian canon.
	Okay, if we talk high culture, then one movie I like to recommend is the 2002 movie Russian Ark.
	It's basically about, it's more of a high culture thing.
	It's basically about a guy walking through the winter palace in St. Petersburg and like It's a really great movie, Russian Arc.
	It's very aesthetic.
	And I think it's, yeah, in terms of if we talk about like serious eye culture, then that is what would be my recommendation.
	Amazing.
	Gentlemen, did I have one last question?
	I don't think I did.
	What is your streaming schedule like for those who want to tune in?
	Unfortunately, we don't have one.
	We're a bit disorganized by nature.
	So, yeah, we will try to fix that.
	But in general, yeah, just check out our updates on Twitter and Telegram as well as the backup.
	And that's it.
	That's all I can say.
	I actually totally forgot there's all there's super chats and tip questions.
	USA Now from our community says, I'll never use Patreon.
	What other platforms have they tried?
	I'm going to propose, not Patreon actually, Locals.
	So we'll see what we can do with Locals, get the team set up there.
	We have Gumroad as well for those who hate Patreon.
	And it's a funny thing about Patreon, although it is like big tech, right?
	And we had thousands.
	Thousands upon thousands of reports, as you can imagine, by certain people and certain activists, but they didn't do anything.
	I guess they love money more than the complainers.
	So it's great in that department, but if you hate it, yeah, we have Gumroad as well, and we have free stuff on our YouTube, not all of it, like fifty percent maybe, but still, check that out, and Spotify as well, yeah.
	We've got from Ginger Ninja who asks, what was Navalny arrested for?
	What was he actually guilty of?
	And did things go through a legitimate judicial process?
	Right, well, yeah, he was arrested for there were two criminal cases.
	They're a bit boring and convoluted, but they are not political in nature.
	They are concerned.
	One of them was political, I think the latest one was political, yeah.
	There were two normal criminal cases.
	The third one was political, but it was the first initial criminal cases were centered around his business and how they actually scammed a French company, funny enough.
	So it was international kind of I'm not saying, yeah, he's that big of a scammer.
	Probably most of the Russian businessmen did similar things and some of them don't get punished for it.
	And yeah, the reason why they dig that dirt because he had it.
	And of course, it's the well, yeah, take it as you want.
	But I think it was a pretty clear cut case he did.
	And yeah, there was one other criminal case, actually semi political.
	with him.
	So there was a, there was a, he had a friend who had who was a governor of Nizhny Novgorod and he moved there, Nizhny Novgorod, to be an advisor to this guy, Nikita Bilych, his name was.
	So this guy was a liberal governor of Nizhny Novgorod.
	And it was a big thing that, yeah, liberals are in power, great.
	They're trying to, like, march through the system, something like that.
	And Navalny and his team and Gaidar, the daughter of Gaidar, the 90s guy, they all went to help him.
	But the problem was there was a huge corruption deal with the forest.
	So forest being a national property was cut down and the money went straight to the Nikita Bilich's pocket and also Navalny.
	Well, that happened.
	So, and I believe it was completely real.
	And he just made some money on this side hustle, cutting down forests in Nizhny Novgorod.
	It's not as dramatic, but it is what it is.
	I think in the US, he would probably be in prison for decades for that too.
	So it's not that different.
	Speaking of the, in terms of, this was sort of my last question in this regard, and then Viva will get to any remaining super chats.
	When I was in Russia, I was going around and I was smiling at everybody.
	And they looked at me like they were scared.
	And I talked to my Russian friend, and she was like, there's only two people who smile at strangers in Russia, tourists and crazy people, and they're praying that you're a tourist.
	How much of that is still culturally phenomenon and how much of that has really shifted as time from the Soviet Union and the Tsars' days have distanced?
	Yeah, I think it does change.
	It is changing in a way.
	So it's especially in the service industry, especially in the US.
	Yeah, yeah the service industry is big one so the problem of the Soviet Union and I've seen some chat message are you a communist no we are not communists we're good orthodox Christian boys so anyway the problem of the Soviet Union was that the service industry really sucked people had no incentive to be nice to the customers why bother you're not making any profits right none of them you can be rude it's actually advantageous to be rude to scare them away.
	Go away, people.
	Right?
	And that really ruined the customers and public relations and stuff like that.
	No incentive to be nice to people.
	It's all advantageous to be rude.
	And when capitalism arrived, of course, it's changed quite a lot.
	And up to, yeah.
	And we have become Americanized in a good way in this department.
	But I'm seeing actually in the last few years that the American norms of smiling to customers, it's a bit fading away at some banks., they're not as nice as they used to be pre SMO, let me say that.
	It's negligible.
	It's nothing like the Soviet Union, but it's still, yeah, there's some room for improvement.
	And it carries over to the general population.
	We're not smiling everywhere like Americans and probably never will because of the climatic or other reasons, right?
	But yes, people generally became more friendly, I would say, well, outwardly.
	They were friendly as well in the Soviet times as well, but they had no reason to do it to strangers.
	And now it's changing., but we are kind of stuck right in the middle between like the Soviet experience and the, I guess, American norms.
	But maybe in the US it's also changing, I'm not sure.
	I never even thought of that.
	Like when it's a communist based economy, you have no incentive to provide good service or be polite.
	Yeah.
	It's actually very funny, all those writers and, you know, like Dov Latov, the Soviet writer who went to America, he fell in love with America just because a cashier girl smiled at him.
	And he thought she was flirting.
	She was both completely in love.
	He was disappointed like half a year in.
	Apparently they don't care about him just like in the Soviet Union but they were very nice and it was disarming for a lot of like dissidents.
	Yeah.
	Very cool.
	Nathan Danner over on a cometube says I've been reading, listening to Alexander Solzens' book, 200 years together.
	Has anyone read it?
	And Eugene Hong said, How do Russians, Russia's NCO Corps compare to the West?
	What's the NCO Corps?
	Non-commissioned officers, he means, I guess.
	It's a big complicated question.
	I mean, we can talk about it.
	if this is interesting, there is this stereotype in American military circles that Russia does not have non-commissioned officers for some reason.
	It's just the system is different from the American systems.
	we don't have uh that many people who stay ncos their entire life um but uh yeah i mean we have nco rank with junior sergeant sergeant senior sergeants staff sergeants and um we have the the rank of uh
	And Russian NCO Corps has both conscripts and contract soldiers.
	and of course in recent decades mostly contract soldiers.
	I guess there is less of an emphasis on, you know, Western militaries are big on, you know,
	This will be the last question before we exit.
	Remember everybody, Russians with attitude on X, Russians with attitude on Patreon, Russians with attitude on YouTube, other places you can follow.
	Great historical analysis, great contemporary analysis with some entertainment kicked in.
	The sort of a bifurcated question.
	One is just generally, do you think there's hope for.
	a Russia America detente in the future, even if not in the near short term.
	Is that opportunity still available for Trump to balance out relations between the US and Russia to realign our interests with US and Russia or for the time being, has that chip sailed?
	And I've always been curious, I've seen the video, do Russians really work out with bears?
	Do you want to take this one, Nikolai?
	Which one?
	The bear?
	The first one.
	Yeah, I've seen, well, as to the bear stuff.
	My wife's relative actually owns a bear, not a joke, even two bears.
	So it's kind of true.
	It's kind of true.
	But then again, he lives in Taiga, in very remote area.
	In the cities we unfortunately don't.
	But as to the US-Russia relations, well, in general, I think that American model is based on behaviorism, right?
	The carrot in the stick.
	And that's the problem.
	Because when they don't see any advantage in being nice, right, with Russia, they will not go through it.
	It doesn't matter Trump or no Trump, if you remove Marco Rubio and put another guy in, it almost never changes anything because they need to understand that, yeah, the friendship with Russia will actually benefit us and how.
	And like being hostile to Russia will actually hurt us.
	And that's the problem, I guess.
	That's why Trump doesn't see an advantage in actually building normal relations.
	I think Trump is a bad actor for it because he has too many Russian baggage from the start, right?
	He was kind of linked to Russia dirty narrative, which was faked as we now know, and we always knew that.
	But it doesn't matter.
	Because half of the America, it seems that they are still, especially the Democrats, they are still under suspicion of that, yeah, Trump is actually a Putin's pie.
	Well, there's no way to grow from that.
	It depends on the, yeah, it depends on the Ukraine being disadvantageous and being involved in the Ukraine conflict being majorly hurt.
	And when it happens, it is entirely possible because, yeah, it's artificial in many ways.
	Like, there's no argument for why we should be enemies.
	There used to be one before, well, communism and capitalism and whatnot.
	Now it's gone and they just, they have to manufacture reasons.
	Yeah, I think it's inevitable, but I'm not sure what's the time frame and what kind of, I think it's, it will be better when the boomers, the boomer generation kind of, yeah, goes out of power, maybe both in Russia and the US because the Cold War baggage will be gone and then we can actually talk like normal human beings.
	But that's maybe too optimistic.
	And it depends also on the freedom of speech and freedom of the internet in all of the countries involved.
	Because right now, like half of the American sites are blocked, not even by the Russian government, but by the American side, for me to see.
	It's kind of hard.
	And it really depends on that, on the freedom of access to one another.
	If it's severed, then it's hostility without end in sight, I'm afraid.
	Amazing.
	I'm going to bring this up because we have a new member, Robert, Uncensored News has subscribed to us on Locals.
	Gentlemen, first of all, I'm going to go raid Tucker Carlson who's live now.
	I'm going to, oh, did I not hit the raid?
	I'm going to do raid forward slash, no, forward slash raid.
	Tucker Carlson, we'll see if he's still live.
	Did I just put that, oh, he might not be live anymore.
	Well, we're going to raid whoever's on, I'm going to raid somebody on Rumble.
	Gentlemen, all of your links are in the pin comment.
	Give us a second.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes once I figure out how to do it.
	Thank you very much for inviting us.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, thanks.
	It's been a great show.
	You know, great education., great learning, that for those of us that see this as a better geopolitical relationship long term, it's critical to get valuable information.
	For those that are still thinking Russia is the Soviet Union, at least you can learn something about someone that you perceive as an adversary.
	Either way, very beneficial, I think, to the American public, American audience.
	And recommend Russians with Attitude on X, on Patreon, on YouTube.
	You'll learn a lot.
	You'll get very valuable intelligence and information from whichever political perspective you may come from.
	And may we all have a little more peace and prosperity in the world going forward.
	Gentlemen, I'm hearing multiple voices.
	I've rated someone who's talking about Howard Stern.
	So go in the chat there.
	Russians with attitude, their links are off there.
	Everyone, thank you.
	I'll be live in one hour talking about what's going on in Canada.
	Everyone, peace out.

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