1 00:00:00,140 --> 00:00:06,630 So today I would like to use the smart guy, Aussie, who is CEO of the consultancy Market Intelligence, 2 00:00:06,630 --> 00:00:12,270 as well as an honorary professor at UCLA's School Ceramics and East European Studies. 3 00:00:12,270 --> 00:00:20,610 He's also a senior research associate at. Also the National Jewish Strategy Institute of International Relations in Prague. 4 00:00:20,610 --> 00:00:26,460 He works in modern Russia with a particular focus on security related topics, including organised crime, 5 00:00:26,460 --> 00:00:31,320 the intelligence services, the military and the politics of national security guards. 6 00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:38,430 He read history at Robinson College Cambridge and took a doctorate in politics of the NSC, is head of history at Keele University, 7 00:00:38,430 --> 00:00:47,160 professor of global affairs at New York University and a fellow at the European University Institute and a senior research fellow of the FCO. 8 00:00:47,160 --> 00:00:51,300 Self-esteem Visiting the Centre boasts rookies New York and the US, 9 00:00:51,300 --> 00:00:55,920 Charles University in Prague and Moscow State Institute for International Relations. 10 00:00:55,920 --> 00:00:59,910 He has also advised and given evidence to avoid the boys from the House of Commons, 11 00:00:59,910 --> 00:01:06,630 Foreign Affairs Committee and the Parliamentary Assembly to each pole and shape is, of course, a prolific author. 12 00:01:06,630 --> 00:01:11,850 Recent books include The Weaponization of Everything from the A Short History of Russia. 13 00:01:11,850 --> 00:01:18,390 Last year, Russian political warfare moving beyond the hybrid election to 2020. 14 00:01:18,390 --> 00:01:26,520 We need to talk about Putin with also he in 2019. He writes regularly in the press, most recently in Moscow Sunday Times, 15 00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:30,420 and he was originally when we were arranging his talks for us to speak of more of us as 16 00:01:30,420 --> 00:01:36,060 conflict changing Russian perceptions between the military and civilian security services, 17 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:40,020 but thinks they might be a bit of a change. Welcome to. 18 00:01:40,020 --> 00:01:45,180 Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here, even if in the most terrible of circumstances, 19 00:01:45,180 --> 00:01:55,110 it's quite a difficult thing to try to talk about war and conflict in abstract when it is being played out for two wheels in Ukraine at the moment. 20 00:01:55,110 --> 00:02:02,480 And also, this is a conflict which actually breaks the rules, not the terms of international law and so forth. 21 00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:12,810 I gather that one, but also the rules of actually how the Russian state thinks and thought about war and about conflict. 22 00:02:12,810 --> 00:02:22,130 So what I'm going to do is, and to an extent, this is a this is sort of not together on the fly, so it may well be less coherent, but more timely. 23 00:02:22,130 --> 00:02:26,250 That's a trade off that I might otherwise have hoped for. 24 00:02:26,250 --> 00:02:32,100 What I want to do is talk about precisely the the way that both the military and 25 00:02:32,100 --> 00:02:38,820 the civilian slash super national security establishment think about conflict and 26 00:02:38,820 --> 00:02:43,050 then talk about precisely how what's what's striking to me is the degree to which 27 00:02:43,050 --> 00:02:49,740 the Ukraine example demonstrates actually how little real impact that has when. 28 00:02:49,740 --> 00:02:55,860 And this is sort of strap line I was thinking of. Yeah, autocracy meets technocracy. 29 00:02:55,860 --> 00:03:03,300 It's all very well having all kinds of splendid theories and deeply reasoned arguments in the military, 30 00:03:03,300 --> 00:03:10,680 doctrinal press and round tables within the confines of Security Council secretariat 31 00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:17,680 about the best way to manage conflicts if the boss doesn't want to listen. 32 00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:22,950 And so in some ways, that's going to be who I think the sort of the closing leitmotif. 33 00:03:22,950 --> 00:03:25,860 It's a little bit about the two approaches. 34 00:03:25,860 --> 00:03:35,640 First of all, military action, there is no such thing as the overarching doctrines that will be an albatross around my head, 35 00:03:35,640 --> 00:03:43,980 around my neck for a long time. There's a lot of nonsense that in the past has been written by some about how the Russians 36 00:03:43,980 --> 00:03:50,950 think about conflict and particularly the role of non-kinetic instruments in that conflict. 37 00:03:50,950 --> 00:03:56,400 And it's certainly true that that the Russian military, which does have a very, 38 00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:01,920 very intellectual approach to how it thinks about war fighting the power structures itself. 39 00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:07,800 In that line, I must remember the doctrine in Russian terms is not just a word. 40 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:10,080 A military doctrine is not a document, 41 00:04:10,080 --> 00:04:19,560 which is an absolutely foundational one from which all kinds of other decisions from procurement personnel, all of those flowed. 42 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:23,220 Military doctrine is a very serious thing within the context of military doctrine. 43 00:04:23,220 --> 00:04:33,060 The Russian military identified a series of types of conflict all the way from essentially what you might think of as potentialities, 44 00:04:33,060 --> 00:04:35,970 which can be dealt with by a variety of different instruments, 45 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:46,840 whether it's diplomatic or political or indeed military show of force and such like all the way through to major all our conflicts between Box. 46 00:04:46,840 --> 00:04:57,870 But again, they they take care to consider these and consider these as distinct phenomena, each of which has to be approached in a different way. 47 00:04:57,870 --> 00:05:05,130 Since then, I mean as. They have time to think about how they can wolf fight in the modern age. 48 00:05:05,130 --> 00:05:12,450 We have indeed seen an increasing interest in the use of non-military means and with it a slight blurring as to 49 00:05:12,450 --> 00:05:21,810 quite what war means because as soon as you stop thinking of non-military means as a core part of your arsenal, 50 00:05:21,810 --> 00:05:25,590 you start to raise complex philosophical questions, which of course, as we all know, 51 00:05:25,590 --> 00:05:30,120 generals love conflicts with some of the questions about why what is a war? 52 00:05:30,120 --> 00:05:33,870 What point is a cyber attack? An act of war? 53 00:05:33,870 --> 00:05:43,770 What point is, for example, massing large numbers of troops on another country's borders tantamount to an act of war? 54 00:05:43,770 --> 00:05:46,710 Now, obviously, the Russians have done these things, 55 00:05:46,710 --> 00:05:52,890 but the Russians have also been trying to answer for themselves questions of what would they consider an act of war? 56 00:05:52,890 --> 00:06:00,660 Would they consider it in a what would they consider it if, let's say, almost a natural massed forces? 57 00:06:00,660 --> 00:06:07,480 This is a kind of fantasy show that could last forces the nature of Putin's nightmares. 58 00:06:07,480 --> 00:06:15,600 You know, if that massed forces on Russian borders were supporters, where would that fit in this chain of conflict type situations? 59 00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:19,380 And if so, what does that actually unlock in terms of a Russian approach? 60 00:06:19,380 --> 00:06:25,680 So that happened thinking in all these terms and particularly they have begun to develop beyond the 61 00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:32,400 notions of what do we have sort of a lottery think a cool jet ski check-up calls non-contact war, 62 00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:38,490 which is basically the idea that future warfare is increasingly going to be fought not by close quarter battle, 63 00:06:38,490 --> 00:06:47,490 but by long range precision guided munitions in the way in which actually enemy forces may well never even need visual contact of each other. 64 00:06:47,490 --> 00:06:52,740 Well, what we found is actually non-military means being increasingly blurred even with that. 65 00:06:52,740 --> 00:07:00,990 There are different ways of reaching out and remotely bringing havoc to your enemy than just simply launching missiles and such like. 66 00:07:00,990 --> 00:07:03,720 You can also use other means. 67 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:13,710 So we have seen a certain element of the Russians beginning to kind of try and cope with the notion of how wars can be fought by non-military means, 68 00:07:13,710 --> 00:07:19,200 but only up to a point when it comes down to it ultimately. 69 00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:23,010 And for all the talk about hybrid warfare chicken above bear mind, 70 00:07:23,010 --> 00:07:30,780 no war history has not been Typekit for all about that sort of talk when it comes down to it, 71 00:07:30,780 --> 00:07:41,400 the Russian military trains arms prepares to fight proper shooting wars and actually the conventional peer to peer ones. 72 00:07:41,400 --> 00:07:46,800 More often than not, yes, would comfortable with training and preparing for intervention operations and such like they 73 00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:52,740 can send their paratroopers into Kazakhstan at 24 hours notice or less than 24 hours notice. 74 00:07:52,740 --> 00:07:55,470 Under the terms of the Cousteau's, they did. 75 00:07:55,470 --> 00:08:06,810 They can seise the peninsula when no one's watching which they did, but they still regard their primary mission as being a proper war. 76 00:08:06,810 --> 00:08:07,770 And for that, 77 00:08:07,770 --> 00:08:16,260 and I'll explain quite why I'm dwelling on this in a moment so that they actually have a very clear structure of how this is meant to be managed. 78 00:08:16,260 --> 00:08:26,250 They have this shiny, fancy new national military command centre in the basements of basement of the Defence Ministry Building in Civil War, 79 00:08:26,250 --> 00:08:34,420 which is exactly what you'd expect if you've seen any films rooms full of huge screens where you have banks on banks, 80 00:08:34,420 --> 00:08:44,100 people behind computer desks and suchlike, all kinds of things going on in the heart of any militaries, autocrat or nine year old boy. 81 00:08:44,100 --> 00:08:50,070 But the point is that centre, which was first, properly stood up to coordinate the Crimea operation. 82 00:08:50,070 --> 00:09:02,580 Music isn't just a set of rules, isn't just the one of the fastest supercomputers military supercomputers in the world. 83 00:09:02,580 --> 00:09:11,240 It represented a particular kind of command philosophy because the point is this centre is a way of stopping. 84 00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:15,300 A fusion centre is built on the site in Western terms that it brings together. 85 00:09:15,300 --> 00:09:23,700 First of all, information from all over they can tap into anything from a helmet camera of a special forces operator 86 00:09:23,700 --> 00:09:29,670 in the field all the way through to real time representations of how cyber attacks are processing. 87 00:09:29,670 --> 00:09:33,900 I have no idea how to put that into a visual form, but apparently they do. 88 00:09:33,900 --> 00:09:40,140 But it's also a way of coordinating different arms of the Russian government. 89 00:09:40,140 --> 00:09:47,220 One of the one of the particular conceptual problems we the West have in understanding the Russians often is a degree to which we are much, 90 00:09:47,220 --> 00:09:52,350 much more siloed. We have a much sharper distinction between peace and war. 91 00:09:52,350 --> 00:09:57,360 We have a much sharper distinction between chasing government and military, public and private. 92 00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:00,510 All of these kind of. They are. 93 00:10:00,510 --> 00:10:12,390 Not necessarily immaterial to the Russians, but they are certainly much fuzzier and much, much more porous, particularly since 2013 2014. 94 00:10:12,390 --> 00:10:24,600 Putin's Russia has been a warfighting state. It has run on the principle that Russia is at war with an aggressive, hostile West. 95 00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:30,270 Believe it or not, Putin and Co. They are the defenders. 96 00:10:30,270 --> 00:10:36,570 They thought as much for years as they watched things like the Arab Spring risings, 97 00:10:36,570 --> 00:10:43,500 the colour revolutions within post-Soviet Eurasia, which of course, 98 00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:55,260 just in case irony is now present, which of course were not natural organic risings by populations unhappy with corrupt and unresponsive regimes. 99 00:10:55,260 --> 00:11:01,590 No, of course not. They were managed following the real essence of hybrid war hybrid. 100 00:11:01,590 --> 00:11:05,760 Presumably not is actually as far as the Russians are concerned. 101 00:11:05,760 --> 00:11:15,060 We do it. We are the people who have these arcane measures, secret arms that can bring down governments. 102 00:11:15,060 --> 00:11:18,850 That can mean this is how irrational for a friend it in this. 103 00:11:18,850 --> 00:11:27,430 Now this article is in the military industrial courier that within a matter of days, 104 00:11:27,430 --> 00:11:33,190 a perfectly functioning society can be brought into a state of chaos. 105 00:11:33,190 --> 00:11:42,330 No, that was bad enough. But when we did that crime, that was a point when Putin knew we were coming for him. 106 00:11:42,330 --> 00:11:48,660 Ukraine matters to the Russians, have a lot of Ukraine's to as we use governance as their discovery. 107 00:11:48,660 --> 00:11:55,650 But I think the point of view of someone like Putin, it is part of Russia's historical and cultural trinity. 108 00:11:55,650 --> 00:11:59,460 It is not a truly independent state. 109 00:11:59,460 --> 00:12:09,120 Kiev is the mother of Russian cities, doesn't stop showing half, but nonetheless there still is a motorcycle tendency crime. 110 00:12:09,120 --> 00:12:15,540 But generally speaking, you know, Kiev matters, and the idea is that Kiev is being taken by the West. 111 00:12:15,540 --> 00:12:28,020 They have toppled democratically elected leader in a coup and installed one that was willing to basically make over Ukraine a forward base for nature. 112 00:12:28,020 --> 00:12:33,690 And it's quite interesting that we focus very much on NATO's membership as being 113 00:12:33,690 --> 00:12:41,730 so nice to have a centre that wants more dramatic roles from later membership, 114 00:12:41,730 --> 00:12:50,430 which clearly Russia. Putin is just not there, but quite often I will fall into the habit of talking about Russia. 115 00:12:50,430 --> 00:12:53,730 We must remember this is Putin's war, not the Russians war. 116 00:12:53,730 --> 00:12:58,080 And it's not just about the thousands of great Russians who have been protesting against this war, 117 00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:04,990 despite the fact they know who will be arrested quite possibly give a damn good beating in the after corner or the police station. 118 00:13:04,990 --> 00:13:11,280 But many, many others are not aware of this is there from Putin's point of view. 119 00:13:11,280 --> 00:13:15,630 This was a regime toppled by a coup. And it's not that he's so concerned about NATO membership. 120 00:13:15,630 --> 00:13:19,860 As such, he was concerned about the presence of mix forces. 121 00:13:19,860 --> 00:13:24,870 Time again, these various intemperate speeches, he talked about the presence of NATO forces, 122 00:13:24,870 --> 00:13:31,890 nature, missiles and hockey that could hit Russian soil x number of minutes and so forth. 123 00:13:31,890 --> 00:13:42,120 His view was this was basically Ukraine being prepared to become Airstrip one, a forward base to make necessary in the bosom of Mother Russia. 124 00:13:42,120 --> 00:13:49,830 All I should stress, or ninety nine percent paranoid, conspiratorial nonsense. 125 00:13:49,830 --> 00:13:57,120 However, I think it's fair to say he genuinely believed paranoid, conspiratorial nonsense. 126 00:13:57,120 --> 00:14:01,050 So, I mean, in that context, what's happening in Ukraine matters. 127 00:14:01,050 --> 00:14:06,210 And that's why Russia has become a warfighting state in which basically every element of 128 00:14:06,210 --> 00:14:13,920 the state apparatus and indeed society as a whole can be conscripted is the best way. 129 00:14:13,920 --> 00:14:18,960 This is not a totalitarianism that thinks that every element of society ought to be controlled by the state, 130 00:14:18,960 --> 00:14:24,120 but it does believe, as frankly most societies do when they feel they're in a tug of war. 131 00:14:24,120 --> 00:14:32,160 It does believe that any company, any individual or any agency can be tapped on the shoulder and be told we need, 132 00:14:32,160 --> 00:14:36,150 you know, the state needs to do something and you do it. And again, 133 00:14:36,150 --> 00:14:42,870 this this National Centre is a way of managing that kind of a war because it brings 134 00:14:42,870 --> 00:14:47,120 in representatives from a whole variety of other agencies the intelligence services, 135 00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:52,480 the National Guard, which provides a sort of parallel internal security army within within Russia. 136 00:14:52,480 --> 00:14:56,940 And you know, all of the elements know ministries doesn't matter who they are. 137 00:14:56,940 --> 00:14:59,820 Their representatives can be brought out the dentistry. 138 00:14:59,820 --> 00:15:09,240 He said that if it really matters, to actually have real time understanding of how many people are taking which train on the Moscow metro, 139 00:15:09,240 --> 00:15:16,540 that's actually a specific example, by the way, they can plug into that should they need it. 140 00:15:16,540 --> 00:15:23,790 So it's all about coordination control. What happens is when there's a crisis that they feel may well involve the use of military force. 141 00:15:23,790 --> 00:15:29,310 They said, Let's call together you, which is a combat management centre, a group product. 142 00:15:29,310 --> 00:15:33,900 There is a point on it, a little bit tedious as we start moving into the bureaucracy of a military national. 143 00:15:33,900 --> 00:15:42,330 There is a point anyway. This is basically responsible for someone essentially bringing together the task force that is needed, 144 00:15:42,330 --> 00:15:50,790 whatever is involved, making sure that task force has the resources that it needs, setting these specific objectives, 145 00:15:50,790 --> 00:15:55,920 but not actually running the operation that is in the hands of the operational commanders, 146 00:15:55,920 --> 00:16:05,250 which if it's on Russia's borders or within Russia, it would be actually coming to the military district of Seoul Operations Army Group. 147 00:16:05,250 --> 00:16:08,460 And if it's outside of Russia, Syria, 148 00:16:08,460 --> 00:16:20,670 they set up a group of forces command all very clear or sensible or very rational or very bureaucratic over military bureaucracies. 149 00:16:20,670 --> 00:16:25,500 These days, you need to because of all the necessary elements. 150 00:16:25,500 --> 00:16:30,900 It's not just about simply putting all your troops in the direction. You have to make sure all the logistics are ready. 151 00:16:30,900 --> 00:16:38,780 Nothing else. As near as I can tell, and this is very, very early days, 152 00:16:38,780 --> 00:16:49,310 and these are distinctly difficult environments to actually get any kind of news from people in Moscow as near as I can tell, 153 00:16:49,310 --> 00:16:57,620 the new Ukrainian operation was not set up until after the fateful Security Council meeting, 154 00:16:57,620 --> 00:17:11,060 at which Putin bullied and badgered his senior security officials into rubber, stamping his plan to recognise the People's Republic's madness. 155 00:17:11,060 --> 00:17:17,750 According to the way that the Russians rumblings that they really should have been stood up as soon as there was the possibility. 156 00:17:17,750 --> 00:17:23,510 So in other words, it should have been actually at the start of the troop build up a year ago. 157 00:17:23,510 --> 00:17:30,410 Come back to that in a moment. Quantum making is this is this is a very rational, thoughtful, thoughtful thinking about things, Robin. 158 00:17:30,410 --> 00:17:44,990 Consider it armed forces structure who have built a whole process of warfighting precisely to address problems that they normally tend to have, 159 00:17:44,990 --> 00:17:51,890 which is frankly in some capitals that the Russian military is much more teeth than tail, 160 00:17:51,890 --> 00:17:54,930 that they're much more about warfighting capabilities than making sure they're 161 00:17:54,930 --> 00:18:00,170 all in the right place and they get fed and they have the mission of fuel. We understand that. 162 00:18:00,170 --> 00:18:09,470 And so they trying to address it. So this is the kind of nature of how they were thinking about warfighting. 163 00:18:09,470 --> 00:18:15,680 And when they do fight a war, they would anticipate starting it with a morale amassed rocket, 164 00:18:15,680 --> 00:18:22,040 an air strike and which there was kind of it wasn't massed. 165 00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:31,800 It was slightly halfhearted. In Ukraine, there is terrible, but not not anything like what the Russians would normally put out. 166 00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:37,490 And the key point is, in some ways, 167 00:18:37,490 --> 00:18:45,920 what in the West which saw course commander's intent people do is the generals expect to be able to fight the war the way they want to fight the war, 168 00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:57,290 the way they trained to fight the war. There's been a long tradition that the role of the boss is to say, you have a quote from Marshall Connue. 169 00:18:57,290 --> 00:19:04,970 If my money was actually the better of the Russian marshals in World War Two, even though it's the glory of God who gets all the credit. 170 00:19:04,970 --> 00:19:07,220 But anyway, Marshall Cronin, 171 00:19:07,220 --> 00:19:18,110 this is the commander in chief and the guard co-opting the high command sets the target and we soldiers must divine the best means to hit it. 172 00:19:18,110 --> 00:19:22,370 Now he was watching that just after the end of World War Two. 173 00:19:22,370 --> 00:19:32,060 And the interesting thing is, I mean, this will actually get to notes I took when I was at a meeting someone I knew who is that just this is 2016, 174 00:19:32,060 --> 00:19:39,470 who was a retired army officer, colonel who had been in the General Staff Operations Directorate, 175 00:19:39,470 --> 00:19:43,760 which is his main thinking and commanding sort of element. 176 00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:51,070 And what he said is the Kremlin understands that the professionals we can achieve our goals if we are allowed to do so. 177 00:19:51,070 --> 00:19:57,710 Now he was talking about Syria, which the Russians definitely felt. Syria was a pretty good example of what we can do. 178 00:19:57,710 --> 00:20:01,550 The boss just told us to make sure that Assad doesn't fall. 179 00:20:01,550 --> 00:20:11,400 Make sure you push back. I just make damn sure the Americans have anything to crow about and the military, to be honest, we should do that very well. 180 00:20:11,400 --> 00:20:14,150 So they know how to fight wars. We think about it. 181 00:20:14,150 --> 00:20:20,810 They have a clear sense of hierarchy in different wars, and how to distinguish between them will come to at the end. 182 00:20:20,810 --> 00:20:26,630 None of those elements have we seen in the Ukraine conflict. 183 00:20:26,630 --> 00:20:34,430 Let's talk about leaving the civilian national security establishment, even though some have General Rex the spooks as well. 184 00:20:34,430 --> 00:20:37,100 They have a rather different. But I would say, 185 00:20:37,100 --> 00:20:44,330 quite complementary approach to to war fighting for the military or that all the non-kinetic stuff is really part of what in the West, 186 00:20:44,330 --> 00:20:53,690 we might consider shaping operations and ways of making the battlefield the most convenient for your operations. 187 00:20:53,690 --> 00:21:01,160 On the other hand, what we have seen emerging, particularly within the Secretariat of the Security Council, is a real different notion of warfighting, 188 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:07,580 one that actually anything for my money echoes what George said veteran American 189 00:21:07,580 --> 00:21:13,730 diplomat and architect of American Cold War strategy described as political war. 190 00:21:13,730 --> 00:21:17,900 In other words, the use of all means at the nation's disposal illegal and illegal, 191 00:21:17,900 --> 00:21:29,480 overt and covert economic or whatever to achieve national goals short of war does get very, very broad concept. 192 00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:38,740 And this is inevitably a place. Into the legacy of the KGB version of what we call active measures. 193 00:21:38,740 --> 00:21:43,180 In other words, direct political operations to change the situation on the ground. 194 00:21:43,180 --> 00:21:49,660 Again, it reflects the way that the Russian intelligence services have never considered themselves just intelligence services. 195 00:21:49,660 --> 00:21:57,390 The way we think of them as first and foremost about providing intelligence, providing best truth to the political leadership. 196 00:21:57,390 --> 00:22:05,260 And even before Putin went on the offensive, they considered themselves to be executive bodies whose job is not just to gather intelligence, 197 00:22:05,260 --> 00:22:09,850 but to formulate policy, to advocate for that policy within government circles. 198 00:22:09,850 --> 00:22:15,330 And then, if need be to execute that policy and individuals sometimes. 199 00:22:15,330 --> 00:22:23,560 And in this context, you know, we we have a tendency to draw sweeping parallels take to sample the SVR Foreign Intelligence Service. 200 00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:32,610 It is primarily a human intelligence service, increasingly with a bit of cyber attached, which one could say, well, it kind of maps roughly across. 201 00:22:32,610 --> 00:22:40,360 So I guess my sex thing is again, these don't bear in mind the difference between a war fighting beside me. 202 00:22:40,360 --> 00:22:46,310 That better parallels what we think about the other sense and the certainly in World War Two agencies. 203 00:22:46,310 --> 00:22:54,190 That was specifically as much, if not more, about sabotage and destruction as it were just about finding out what the [INAUDIBLE] is going on. 204 00:22:54,190 --> 00:22:59,410 And this constituency is very heavily represented within the Security Council secretariat, 205 00:22:59,410 --> 00:23:10,480 which until about 2008 was a very boring and banal administrative unit. 206 00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:17,050 The Security Council is the body which brings together all the key security related figures. 207 00:23:17,050 --> 00:23:24,310 Officials within the Russian government. I remember, is very kind of rapacious in how the Russians think of it, 208 00:23:24,310 --> 00:23:29,100 but I would say everything from obviously people like the prime minister and so forth. 209 00:23:29,100 --> 00:23:33,550 There is some of the general staff, his intelligence agencies, that kind of thing, 210 00:23:33,550 --> 00:23:41,140 but also involving the deputy prime minister in charge of defence industrial complex in that kind of thing. 211 00:23:41,140 --> 00:23:51,340 The Security Council has never been a decision making body. It is a bit a bit about allowing these sort of individuals to express their views. 212 00:23:51,340 --> 00:24:01,660 It's also a lot about finding a body which can resolve interagency disputes, things like that. 213 00:24:01,660 --> 00:24:06,400 That doesn't in some way necessarily seem to take a lot of administrative back up. 214 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:15,070 So until 2008, Security Council secretariat was as much as anything else a place for superannuated ex-military and spook types to retire. 215 00:24:15,070 --> 00:24:20,570 It's kind of a semi-autonomous place. You go there, but a few years up your pension, you get to feel important. 216 00:24:20,570 --> 00:24:25,330 You wear a suit to a set of uniform or nice. 217 00:24:25,330 --> 00:24:30,850 Then 2008, a new Security Council secretary, Nikolai Patricia. 218 00:24:30,850 --> 00:24:39,610 If my money is the most dangerous man in Russia, and that's up against some pretty stiff competition. 219 00:24:39,610 --> 00:24:47,020 You said Nikolai Panopto, chef, the hawk. Yes, of course he is. 220 00:24:47,020 --> 00:25:01,240 Ex KGB then continued on within the sort of successor agencies headed the FSB, his economic crime directorate, which so what? 221 00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:07,000 Everyone who has actually become director of the FSB has served as head of the economic directorate. 222 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:13,150 Why? Because that's where you make money. That's what you find out with all the bodies are buried. 223 00:25:13,150 --> 00:25:25,090 But it really is the one where, you know, that's that's if that's the the perfect blackmailers position anyway. 224 00:25:25,090 --> 00:25:36,910 So I he it's clear that he actually believes a lot of the most crazy branches and that we sometimes get hung up on credit. 225 00:25:36,910 --> 00:25:41,830 I've been trying to work for some years on the secretariat because I thought it was important and interesting, 226 00:25:41,830 --> 00:25:47,260 very hard to get people to find something that actually works specifically in Secretariat. 227 00:25:47,260 --> 00:25:54,970 It's technically part of the wider presidential administration, even though in practise it's semi-autonomous body 2018. 228 00:25:54,970 --> 00:26:03,050 So offices, different cars, you know, presidential administration of Kabul Security Council offices, but vice versa. 229 00:26:03,050 --> 00:26:10,750 Well, things like that. But no, it's not. Over the years, I've been able to speak to some former people within the Security Council, 230 00:26:10,750 --> 00:26:17,780 Secretariat or Moscow Secretariat or who work closely with them and so forth. 231 00:26:17,780 --> 00:26:22,160 And one of the questions I always ask them is the partnership. Does he really believe all this stuff? 232 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:26,590 I want to say, what do I mean by all this stuff? Well, let me just to. 233 00:26:26,590 --> 00:26:32,390 I mean, I could spend the next hour coming up with that, but I will spare you that it must give one track. 234 00:26:32,390 --> 00:26:43,690 It's really the doozy. There is this notion that the Russians have identified for certain that America has a long term plan. 235 00:26:43,690 --> 00:26:47,920 I mean, long term, I never was, you know, gun crossed. Different parties, 236 00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:59,020 different presidents and a long term plan to dismember the Russian Federation in order to gain access to all the raw materials of Siberia. 237 00:26:59,020 --> 00:27:02,740 Now how do they know that once you track back, where did this come from? 238 00:27:02,740 --> 00:27:12,400 This came from the claim of a Russian psychic who said he had gone into Madeleine Albright, 239 00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:30,510 former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, dreams and from those dreams, divine this mystic and blind plan against Russia. 240 00:27:30,510 --> 00:27:41,260 This must go. We now have Patricia essentially endorsing that view, even though people know where that came from. 241 00:27:41,260 --> 00:27:49,630 So I ask people, do you think he really believes that? And more often than not, the response I will get is, yes, I think he really does. 242 00:27:49,630 --> 00:27:57,100 The problem with Patricia is not that he's OK. The problem is he's a smart, ascetic, working poor. 243 00:27:57,100 --> 00:28:05,560 This is not a man who's aiming to make himself rich. I mean, you make damn sure his son gets rich, but that's just what a good father does. 244 00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:11,500 Also, I thought, but you know, he himself, you know, he is. 245 00:28:11,500 --> 00:28:16,720 He's much more like actually like a former KGB chief in the DMZ for Union Grove. 246 00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:26,830 You know, he is. He's a hardworking zealot. And he has consistently been essentially the voice in Putin's ear cups and pushing him in 247 00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:30,350 that direction when there were others who tried to sort of put looking the other way. 248 00:28:30,350 --> 00:28:34,030 Yet, I mean, I don't want to in any way exonerate him, anything that's happened. 249 00:28:34,030 --> 00:28:41,110 But I think, you know, we must appreciate the sense with partnership is clearly been what we would think of as a radicalising agent in this. 250 00:28:41,110 --> 00:28:48,610 But also, partnership completely changed the role of the secretariat from being an essentially sort of sleepy, 251 00:28:48,610 --> 00:28:54,160 tedious, little bureaucratic backwater and turning it into a real powerhouse. 252 00:28:54,160 --> 00:29:01,990 How? By making sure that it was the secretariat that actually got to dominate the bureaucracy of the security detail again, 253 00:29:01,990 --> 00:29:10,510 because bureaucracy is intrinsically fairly dull. But it means that almost all of the almost all the paperwork, the reports, the briefings, 254 00:29:10,510 --> 00:29:17,500 any materials relating to anything to do with security will be routed through the secretariat. 255 00:29:17,500 --> 00:29:26,980 And it's a pretty open secret that it is. It will be winnowed to make sure that the right message goes through. 256 00:29:26,980 --> 00:29:31,420 And what's happened is that the secretariat has begun to become the place to 257 00:29:31,420 --> 00:29:37,360 key documents like the military doctrine and so forth where they are brokered. 258 00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:41,520 It has become a place where the key briefings happen. 259 00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:47,080 It's become a place where key institutions resolve their disputes through 260 00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:53,380 meetings in the secretariat offices presided over by secretariat individuals. 261 00:29:53,380 --> 00:30:02,050 In some ways, it's the National Intelligence Council in the States or the Cabinet Office in the UK on steroids and with a very, 262 00:30:02,050 --> 00:30:06,970 very clear political agenda, and that's been absolutely crucial. 263 00:30:06,970 --> 00:30:15,670 And what has emerged from this, the secretariat is again this kind of political war notion. 264 00:30:15,670 --> 00:30:25,570 Interestingly enough, one of the sort of key intellectual Welshman's behind it as well is actually the name 265 00:30:25,570 --> 00:30:32,170 of getting my who was a white Russian immigrant who was actually writing in the 1930s. 266 00:30:32,170 --> 00:30:38,920 He wrote on his notion his his big thing was mutation envoy to subversion. 267 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:48,430 And let me just give a quote from one of his his pieces. Yiddish review is ongoing subversion in the name of the Third World War. 268 00:30:48,430 --> 00:30:57,460 Future War will not be fought on the front lines, but throughout the territories of both opponents, because behind the front lines, political, 269 00:30:57,460 --> 00:31:03,040 social and economic fronts will appear be before in a four dimensional space 270 00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:08,350 where the psyche of the combatant nations will serve as the fourth dimension. 271 00:31:08,350 --> 00:31:14,110 On one level, this is a spokesman on functions in Mexico, but written in the 1930s. 272 00:31:14,110 --> 00:31:21,550 On one level, this is nothing new. The idea that war is actually fought in the overall population and that's that's been around since whatever. 273 00:31:21,550 --> 00:31:30,070 And even more recently on Julian Douanes notions about strategic bombardment as a way of marking the will of the enemy and so forth, 274 00:31:30,070 --> 00:31:37,370 but particularly this idea of subversion. It's actually that you fight your war by subversion. 275 00:31:37,370 --> 00:31:45,470 And this, I think, crystallised the thinking within the secretariat because it brings together several themes. 276 00:31:45,470 --> 00:31:54,080 First of all, it's it's about how a relatively weak country and the Russians are aware that compared to the West, 277 00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:59,780 when the West is united, that they are relatively weak on all the conventional indices of power. 278 00:31:59,780 --> 00:32:06,800 There's a way in which the rescue people can fight back asymmetrically, shift the conflict to where it is stronger. 279 00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:16,280 And it also has all important in Putin's Kremlin a nationalist angle because Russia came up with this sounds silly, but actually, 280 00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:19,700 these things do matter when you're talking about a very small leadership, 281 00:32:19,700 --> 00:32:25,610 which increasingly nationalism is what counts as an ideology cohering them together. 282 00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:33,290 So I think you know what? What's happened is partition has become the the advocate of this, and with it, 283 00:32:33,290 --> 00:32:42,290 this notion that essentially Russia is in a constant and conspiratorial struggle, that this is a war that is forever undeclared is obvious. 284 00:32:42,290 --> 00:32:46,220 If you look hard enough, which is the classic sort of thing, 285 00:32:46,220 --> 00:32:56,480 you don't see it because you're not looking hard enough and it blends with how Typekit services tend to look at it. 286 00:32:56,480 --> 00:33:04,520 And this is what I'm going to cordon off. Who is the chair of the Russian Defence Council? 287 00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:09,890 The liberal academic, but with very, very strong government connexions to the Foreign Ministry. 288 00:33:09,890 --> 00:33:19,910 And in 2018, he said, it seems that we all in Eastern Voice are beginning to live according to the rules of war time, when all means of good. 289 00:33:19,910 --> 00:33:28,940 And as a result, for example, a very important red line between politics and a special operation is practically erased. 290 00:33:28,940 --> 00:33:34,790 In other words, from proprietorships point of view, they're all special, but they're all special operations. 291 00:33:34,790 --> 00:33:46,070 In other words, intelligence operations that aggressive, high tempo, subversive operations or how war is to be fought. 292 00:33:46,070 --> 00:33:54,050 And that's very much the Security Council's lie, and they have pushed effort and resources into ensuring Russia has these capabilities. 293 00:33:54,050 --> 00:34:00,170 And time and time again, when we look at a whole variety of operations, many of which it's worth noting actually, 294 00:34:00,170 --> 00:34:06,020 but deeply counterproductive, whether it's interference in political elections or whatever else, 295 00:34:06,020 --> 00:34:13,460 that actually one can track back and see that either they initiated their initiative in the Security Council Secretariat or, 296 00:34:13,460 --> 00:34:21,420 most crucially, they the secretariat was the midwife was the agency that took someone who had some quote unquote right. 297 00:34:21,420 --> 00:34:30,440 I'm deeply stupid, but nonetheless appealing idea and brought that person's ideas to the boss where it could be greenlighted. 298 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:37,610 So two very different senses of morphing warfare, one that is essentially the war is something that is precisely clear sport, 299 00:34:37,610 --> 00:34:42,230 and it follows a very clearly defined bureaucratised pattern. 300 00:34:42,230 --> 00:34:49,400 Another that says the war actually is constant, sneaky and opportunistic, 301 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:59,890 but it always stays short of kinetic clocks gunning down the old Chechen Berlin or whatever. 302 00:34:59,890 --> 00:35:09,980 Let me ask you now the interesting thing about Ukraine is that it started in many ways as a classic political war operation. 303 00:35:09,980 --> 00:35:21,810 I mean, think about it up to that point when the Russians actually crossed the border across the border more than they already had to. 304 00:35:21,810 --> 00:35:27,690 Frankly, the Russians were winning, they have a huge force in me, which frankly, they could maintain, yeah, 305 00:35:27,690 --> 00:35:34,310 there was a cost for the kind of authoritarian regimes is they can choose to spend money on things that that certainly wasn't 306 00:35:34,310 --> 00:35:41,400 liquidity cost to keep that force and what it was like one hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred thousand troops around it. 307 00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:52,970 Meanwhile, the Ukrainian economy was tanking under the fear of pressure that it was a very, very effective economic warfare instrument. 308 00:35:52,970 --> 00:35:57,510 I won't name which, but certain Western governments were getting more and more rattled. 309 00:35:57,510 --> 00:36:07,580 We're actually beginning to put pressure on the ANC. To make concessions to the Russians is actually a very useful political weapon. 310 00:36:07,580 --> 00:36:15,620 And meanwhile, not only who the Russians and the Russians unleashed the whole panoply of other non-kinetic weapons against Ukraine. 311 00:36:15,620 --> 00:36:22,040 Cyberattacks attacks essentially what it calls terrorism, subversion, disinformation, 312 00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:31,490 etc. But there was such a maniacal fascination and obsession with what was going on in Ukraine that in fact, 313 00:36:31,490 --> 00:36:35,140 the Russians have pretty much free hand elsewhere. You know what, 314 00:36:35,140 --> 00:36:40,130 the group mercenaries going into Mali after the French should withdraw from their 315 00:36:40,130 --> 00:36:46,850 whole variety of quite questionable other economic moves been made so-called. 316 00:36:46,850 --> 00:36:53,210 It was brilliant up to that point. 317 00:36:53,210 --> 00:36:55,880 And then, of course, the decision was made to to to actually invade. 318 00:36:55,880 --> 00:37:05,750 And to be honest, I still don't think we can be absolutely sure that Putin hundred percent intended to invade all along. 319 00:37:05,750 --> 00:37:09,530 I don't know. I like most political analysts. 320 00:37:09,530 --> 00:37:14,480 I didn't think he was going like I thought the odds were actually against him. I thought 30 to 40 percent chance of escalation. 321 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:20,210 But majority wasn't because that's what consensus common sense does. 322 00:37:20,210 --> 00:37:27,110 Isn't always the best guide to what what's going on. And we can talk in the Q&A one to one. 323 00:37:27,110 --> 00:37:30,800 Why did you decide that you have to do that? 324 00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:39,920 But is it clear, though, that the final decision was, if not made, at least communicated in very short order? 325 00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:48,350 And the thing that strikes me is one of the reasons why this war is going so badly for Russia, and we shouldn't assume it is over. 326 00:37:48,350 --> 00:37:51,260 Wars take a long time at lunchtime. 327 00:37:51,260 --> 00:37:59,570 I think nowadays we are in the age in which we expect everything to play out like a TV series we binge watch on Netflix. 328 00:37:59,570 --> 00:38:03,740 We don't bother watching, watching each week and so forth. 329 00:38:03,740 --> 00:38:10,940 Actually, the first two weeks of the war are not necessarily enough to tell us for certain what has been planned. 330 00:38:10,940 --> 00:38:16,400 But still, it is absolutely clear that the Russians have not had the result they intended. 331 00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:23,120 It seems to have been that the expectation was Kiev would fall in two days and the operation will be over in two weeks. 332 00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:34,490 The question Why is this? And I think the answer is actually that precisely that Putin himself increasingly insulated from policy process, 333 00:38:34,490 --> 00:38:43,010 the nuts and bolts of it increasingly unwilling to listen to alternative perspectives surrounded by people who are increasingly feared. 334 00:38:43,010 --> 00:38:54,470 And frankly, that extraordinary televised Security Council meeting at which he was openly let just wasn't just that he was bullying his SVR chief. 335 00:38:54,470 --> 00:39:02,990 It's that he was smirking as he did so. And it transpired that this was not being televised live, but those speeches were not included, 336 00:39:02,990 --> 00:39:09,470 so a decision was actually made to broadcast him pulling his intelligence chief. 337 00:39:09,470 --> 00:39:16,640 I mean, what kind of petty sociopath? 338 00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:21,530 So actually, I think Putin made two crucial decisions. 339 00:39:21,530 --> 00:39:29,240 One is the issue of secrecy so obsessed with he apparently with operational secrecy about not being willing to actually let anyone in on the planet, 340 00:39:29,240 --> 00:39:33,620 except maybe a handful of very senior figures until the very last minute. 341 00:39:33,620 --> 00:39:37,890 Which is ironic, given that Western intelligence services seem to have no problems. And yet this is going to happen. 342 00:39:37,890 --> 00:39:47,990 This can happen. And Morris was suggesting dates for it. But what it did mean was precisely that the Russian forces themselves were wholly unprepared 343 00:39:47,990 --> 00:39:52,940 for what they they've been through unprepared in terms of maintenance and logistics, 344 00:39:52,940 --> 00:39:58,910 as we discovered, but also at least as importantly, psychologically, 345 00:39:58,910 --> 00:40:04,960 most Russians do not regard Ukrainians as neo Nazis slavering enemies quite the opposite. 346 00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:06,740 These are their brothers and cousins, 347 00:40:06,740 --> 00:40:15,050 and they go in there and suddenly you find yourself in a situation where you have grannies will be berating you in the town square, 348 00:40:15,050 --> 00:40:21,740 not what you expected to be doing. We've heard from OK, this is we have to have some cautions about this, 349 00:40:21,740 --> 00:40:29,410 but we've heard from prisoners of war and people who just surrendered defected won't say that again. 350 00:40:29,410 --> 00:40:32,120 They thought they were just down on military exercise. Nothing. 351 00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:37,940 So psychologically on intent terms, the Russian forces were not ready for that operation. 352 00:40:37,940 --> 00:40:45,980 But I would say even more crucially, it was the extent to which Putin's own political assumptions and prejudices overlaid the entire operation. 353 00:40:45,980 --> 00:40:52,550 This is a man who makes no bones of the fact that as far as he's concerned, Ukraine does not exist as a. 354 00:40:52,550 --> 00:40:58,730 It has no legitimacy, it has no identity. There is no such thing as the Ukrainian people. 355 00:40:58,730 --> 00:41:03,770 They are a hodgepodge of Russians and Poles and whatever else. 356 00:41:03,770 --> 00:41:14,870 He clearly genuinely believed that this government regime, he would put it, would topple at the slightest faintest first push, 357 00:41:14,870 --> 00:41:19,640 and that helps explain certain decisions that militarily make no sense at all. 358 00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:26,050 The fact that there wasn't this huge initial barrage the morale, because if you think, anyway, look, 359 00:41:26,050 --> 00:41:31,250 you're going to change this country anyway, you're going to be imposing some kind of new puppet regime. 360 00:41:31,250 --> 00:41:41,900 You genuinely believe that the last portion of Ukraine's state apparatus will be willing, will be willing to obey that, that puppet government. 361 00:41:41,900 --> 00:41:47,930 Well, mass deaths might well get in the way of building that kind of consensus. 362 00:41:47,930 --> 00:41:54,570 And maybe there's also concern about how the West would think about it and also how Russians would think about it. 363 00:41:54,570 --> 00:42:03,140 You know, the site, as the case of Russians shelling the mother of Russian cities itself was problematic enough. 364 00:42:03,140 --> 00:42:12,680 But more to the point, it also helps explain the otherwise quite insane example to think that a couple of 365 00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:19,490 companies of paratroopers just motor into the central Kiev take over the government. 366 00:42:19,490 --> 00:42:25,160 Now, if you genuinely believe that basically the whole thing will collapse, then that makes sense. 367 00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:34,910 I do not see any evidence that either the sort of the military, nor actually the spooks genuinely thought about what's going to happen. 368 00:42:34,910 --> 00:42:40,310 But what do you do in that kind of situation? What do you do with someone who spent 22 years in power, 369 00:42:40,310 --> 00:42:51,950 has isolated them more and more and is only willing to listen to a very limited range of people and a very limited range of views? 370 00:42:51,950 --> 00:43:03,230 Sometime back, I was talking to a couple of Russian oil companies, exactly pretty story, and I'm terrible with dates. 371 00:43:03,230 --> 00:43:08,900 And you know, there was the usual first bit of the kind of dance around there thinking, 372 00:43:08,900 --> 00:43:14,180 what the [INAUDIBLE] is it a Westerner asking us about military stuff and Typekit? 373 00:43:14,180 --> 00:43:20,600 But offset, you know, with the usual key research to say alcohol. 374 00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:26,450 Once those we get get beyond that. And it was really quite interesting. 375 00:43:26,450 --> 00:43:31,400 Getting their perspective on Putin will handle one well. 376 00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:35,660 One of the questions about this one was absolutely what we might think of the Putin essence 377 00:43:35,660 --> 00:43:42,680 as we felt the Putin has saved the country from anarchy and irrelevance in the 1990s. 378 00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:51,920 On the other hand, what was quite interesting was both of them were uncomfortable with the kind of the macho culture Putin, the, you know, 379 00:43:51,920 --> 00:44:01,920 I mean, a particular example of pointing out that there was a Canada in a lot when it comes to the picture of love and then a tank firing gun. 380 00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:10,370 But you do all these kind of macho and verbal military things and all those guys who did his minimal basic research reserve officer training. 381 00:44:10,370 --> 00:44:16,520 What is the. He ends up graduating as a junior lieutenant in the artillery, 382 00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:21,860 but because he then joined the KGB, that actually meant he didn't have to do any more training. 383 00:44:21,860 --> 00:44:32,570 He didn't have to do is refreshing training on the level that he could have had he chosen to do so, but he chose not to. 384 00:44:32,570 --> 00:44:36,710 Who wants to be a soldier when you're KGB? 385 00:44:36,710 --> 00:44:44,300 And I guess they didn't like the idea that they weren't aware of the fact that actually Putin doesn't doesn't have any military experience or that. 386 00:44:44,300 --> 00:44:49,960 And yet he's the commander in chief, and he talks very bullish for military things. 387 00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:56,900 And one of them in a phrase that I think is more illustrative than the end of it, he said. 388 00:44:56,900 --> 00:45:02,540 I wouldn't want a virgin telling me what to do on my wedding night. 389 00:45:02,540 --> 00:45:10,110 And in some ways, this is precisely what's happening and the kind of closing point I would make us. 390 00:45:10,110 --> 00:45:11,930 I mean, I think in part, 391 00:45:11,930 --> 00:45:20,900 this is this is my own personal journey to try to understand how a bunch of people think so carefully about conflict can screw up so monumentally so. 392 00:45:20,900 --> 00:45:26,830 I apologise for a lot of policies of my life, but I have to think of the parallels in, 393 00:45:26,830 --> 00:45:32,690 to not least because that's the metaphor to which Putin constantly returns. 394 00:45:32,690 --> 00:45:43,070 But Stalin and Hitler had no qualms about overruling the generals and the disastrous initial performance of the Soviets. 395 00:45:43,070 --> 00:45:44,690 How do we have a global operation? 396 00:45:44,690 --> 00:45:52,760 Barbarossa essentially reflected that Stalin was absolutely certain that there wasn't an invasion yet until the next spring, 397 00:45:52,760 --> 00:46:00,290 and that therefore all this intelligence, he was getting all his guidance, even people just deserting from the German line to cross the border. 398 00:46:00,290 --> 00:46:09,200 This was all actually a plot to try and basically get the Soviets to act first and use the brakes anyway. 399 00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:13,130 We are. It's not. We actually find that. Is there someone who still thinks we matter? 400 00:46:13,130 --> 00:46:19,230 The Russians still have that. We are their most subtle and sophisticated antagonists. 401 00:46:19,230 --> 00:46:28,940 It's really very heartening. But anyway, you know, so, so Stalin made a colossal blunder there, and it was almost a fatal blunder, 402 00:46:28,940 --> 00:46:33,920 and he disappeared from the site thereafter, though he learnt his lesson. 403 00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:40,970 Yes, he obviously political guiding input, political control and decision making to use it was his job. 404 00:46:40,970 --> 00:46:48,290 But precisely his generals marshals got to decide actually how the war was fought. 405 00:46:48,290 --> 00:46:50,960 Hitler never learnt that lesson. 406 00:46:50,960 --> 00:47:01,010 Hitler continued to micromanage whenever he felt like it to intervene in political, economic and obscene battlefield decision making. 407 00:47:01,010 --> 00:47:08,120 One of them ended up one of the great world leaders, the head of a superpower. 408 00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:14,510 The other one ended up in the bunker. I don't think it's going to be that dramatic either way, Putin. 409 00:47:14,510 --> 00:47:21,680 But it will be interesting as to whether or not he's willing to accept there might have been a mistake made and learn from it or not. 410 00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:26,000 I have a feeling not that that's just my guess. 411 00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:39,970 OK, I finished rambling on. I would much rather than sort of open to comments questions, furious rebuttals. 412 00:47:39,970 --> 00:47:40,420 Well, 413 00:47:40,420 --> 00:47:48,780 so much that we all heard so much that I think I'm just going to set the context with already our discussion of the national security decision making, 414 00:47:48,780 --> 00:47:54,550 the infrastructure that got there and then brought up to the present day with the intensification of the war to create, 415 00:47:54,550 --> 00:48:01,210 as well as some of the misguided assumptions underpinning the decision making that is really going to hold only a cursory glance unit, 416 00:48:01,210 --> 00:48:06,010 which is very impressive. So kudos that you mentioned at the beginning of the spill. 417 00:48:06,010 --> 00:48:12,940 Slightly odd to be discussing this topic in sunny Oxford while war rages and military grade. 418 00:48:12,940 --> 00:48:16,630 But now, I suppose, is exactly the time for us to be understanding really about this issue. 419 00:48:16,630 --> 00:48:24,374 We're really grateful just coming here today and sharing your insights. Thank you so much.