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Anne Applebaum is an award-winning historian, writer, and publicist. In an interview with DW, she shared her insights on Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals in Ukraine. She also explained what she thinks the West doesn't understand about Putin, and vice versa.
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00:00There's this idea that Putin was one in 2000, let's say one or two or three, and then he
00:07became different after the Munich speech.
00:10So what do you think?
00:11Did he change, or is he what he always was?
00:17So I, to be clear, I never thought he was a great reformer or a great friend, and particularly
00:24was bothered from the very beginning by the language he used about himself.
00:28He talked about himself as a Czechist.
00:31One of the first things he did when he took over the FSB was put up a portrait of Yuri
00:35Andropov, who was famous, for those of your listeners who don't know, was famous for his
00:40repression of dissidents in the 1980s.
00:44And so I never had much hope that he was some kind of Democrat.
00:48I do think he may have changed strategies.
00:50I mean, obviously in the early 2000s, he found it useful to be friendly with the West.
00:57He wanted Russia to be part of the G7, and briefly it was the G8.
01:01And he had, you know, he sought some kind of accommodation or joint projects, anyway, with
01:07American and European leaders.
01:10And so, but, you know, was he always a Russian imperialist?
01:13Yes, of course he was.
01:15We know that from the story.
01:16What, in your view, the West doesn't get, doesn't understand about Putin's Russia and
01:24the way it's ruled, about its rulers?
01:28And what does Putin, in your view, does not understand about the West?
01:36I think that the West doesn't understand the extremism of Putinism.
01:43You know, as I say, they keep imagining that there's a deal to be done, that if we just
01:48give Crimea to Russia, then he'll stop fighting.
01:52And I don't think they understand that his goals are much broader and more ambitious.
01:58And that those goals involve the destruction of the transatlantic alliance and maybe even
02:06of the European Union.
02:08So I think they just haven't quite understood how broad those goals are.
02:14And therefore, they haven't understood the need to, you know, that before there's going
02:22to be any end to the war, Putin will have to lose it.
02:25Or he will at least have to be convinced that it can't be won.
02:29And so the path to peace is through convincing Putin that he won't win the war, that it's hopeless.
02:35And I didn't see right now, and I leave open the possibility of change.
02:39People do change their minds and, you know, these are very capricious people and whimsical
02:43people.
02:45I don't leave, I leave open the possibility of something different happening.
02:49But right now, the only thing I can see that if you really, really want peace, then you
02:53must arm Ukraine and defend it until Putin realizes the war is over.
02:59So I think that's the main thing that Westerners don't understand.
03:03And what does Putin not understand?
03:05So Putin has underestimated from the beginning, from the beginning, he's first of all, underestimated
03:12the Ukrainians.
03:13He knows very little about modern Ukraine.
03:14He doesn't know who they are.
03:16He doesn't, he didn't understand that, you know, the Ukrainians, Ukrainian government is
03:21a genuine elected government.
03:23It has support and that the Ukrainian national identity is real and that the Ukrainians will
03:29fight back as long as they can.
03:32And that will, that includes fighting a guerrilla war if Kiev were to fall.
03:35So I think he has, he's not, he failed to understand Ukraine.
03:39I think, I didn't, I don't think he's been to Ukraine in many years and he certainly had
03:43no contact with modern Ukrainians.
03:45So he's imagining Ukrainians from some Soviet peers, some Ukrainian communists he met 30 years
03:50ago.
03:51He has no idea what is modern Ukraine.
03:53I think he also...
03:54Well, he met Yenukovych, Kuchmov, and Yushchenko for that job.
03:58Sure, but he, but, but that's, that makes my point.
04:03But I also, I also think that he doesn't, you know, he really underestimated the ability
04:10and willingness of Europe and the United States to help Ukraine.
04:15And he has underestimated the power of the, of the ideas of such as democracy, it's also
04:22about unity and integrity that, that do motivate at least a part of the West and Western leaders.
04:30And he is, he's consistently underestimated them and he's consistently got things wrong.
04:34Why Trump is so patient with Putin?
04:39He knows him since quite a long time.
04:43He was president already and he dealt with him.
04:48Why is he so gentle with Putin until now?
04:53What's your explanation?
04:55People have been asking this question for a decade.
04:58There was a major investigation during Trump's first presidency into the sources of Russian
05:04influence on the Trump campaign.
05:06And it was, it wasn't inconclusive.
05:09It showed that there was influence, but they were never able to prove that Trump was criminally
05:14involved or that there was a, that there was a criminal involvement.
05:21We know that Trump has had Russian connections for more than 30 years.
05:25He's had Russian investment into his business, and this is not a conspiracy theory.
05:29This is all documented.
05:31We know that he has had positive thoughts about Russia.
05:35We know he's felt very negative about US alliances for a long time.
05:38It's in his books from more than a decade ago.
05:41It's in the 1980s, he took out big magazine, a newspaper, sorry, advertisements arguing that
05:48the US was wasting money on alliances.
05:50So all these instincts have been in place even before Putin came to power.
05:56Since he's in power, Trump is someone who's very impressed by people who operate without
06:04checks and balances, without restrictions, without courts, without journalists.
06:09He admires that kind of power.
06:11So my guess is that he's positively-
06:14Disposed.
06:15Disposed to the Russians anyway, and that he's personally impressed with Putin.
06:20I don't know, obviously, what their personal interactions are like, but Putin is a trained
06:25KGB officer.
06:27He would know how to find somebody's weaknesses and somebody's- he would know how to find the
06:34way to manipulate someone and persuade them that he's his friend.
06:38Certainly it's the case that Trump believes Putin to be his friend, and he has said that
06:42he's used that word.
06:44Isn't it just a way of telling his own audience that he controls everything?
06:50Can he seriously believe that Putin be his friend?
06:52I think he seriously believes that.
06:53He doesn't use that word about other people.
06:56He doesn't use it about other leaders, but he does use it about Putin.
07:02It's interesting that many people were saying that Trump does not have empathy, that it's
07:07not part of his psyche, of his character.
07:10And then we see him speaking to a Ukrainian journalist during a press conference in The
07:16Hague after the NATO summit.
07:17And suddenly he seems quite warm and disposed and empathetic.
07:22Do you think that maybe something moved him psychologically recently?
07:26I could not have any way of answering that.
07:30He clearly has no empathy for many people.
07:33He speaks of his opponents as vermin.
07:35He talks about immigrants in the United States as poisoning the blood of the nation, which
07:39is—this is the language that Hitler used.
07:42So he's somebody who is very immune to cruelty and not bothered by civilian casualties.
07:51So I doubt very much that one incident has changed him, but who knows?
07:56What is going to happen next?
07:57Because we are always told by political scientists that American politics is so dynamic that everything
08:04turns essentially in a matter of five seconds.
08:08That's true, although you're also making this mistake that almost every European I talk
08:12to makes, which is that you forget that America does not have a job for leader of the opposition.
08:18There is—it's not a parliamentary system.
08:20There is no single person who's going to be the leader.
08:23And there won't be until we have primaries for the next presidential campaign, whenever
08:28it is, two or three years from now.
08:31So what you want is the emergence of some figure, but that's not going to happen.
08:36What you have instead is about ten people—ten to a dozen people—who are beginning
08:42to build really big constituencies.
08:45The ones who get sometimes the most attention are the ones on the left, you know, AOC, or
08:50the mayor of New York, by the way—
08:51Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right?
08:53Yes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or the mayor of—the new one of the candidates for mayor
08:57of New York, who—and by the way, mayor of New York has never been a position that leads
09:01into national politics.
09:02Never.
09:03It just happens to be, you know, a very loud election.
09:06But you're not seeing Chris Murphy, who's a senator from Connecticut, who's on air all the
09:12time, who speaks constantly, who's building a really important narrative about the excesses
09:20of billionaires and so on.
09:23You're not paying attention to Pete Buttigieg, who has an equally large online following.
09:29There's maybe, as I said, a dozen, half a dozen senators and governors from different
09:34states who are also building support.
09:37The governor of Kentucky, governor of Illinois, governor of Pennsylvania.
09:40We're all talking Democrats, right?
09:43I'm talking these are Democrats.
09:44These are Democrats.
09:45So, you know, we had some weeks ago, we had the largest national demonstration—this was
09:55the No Kings demonstration—against Donald Trump, which is the largest demonstration that
10:00there has ever been in American history, with the most numbers of people in all 50 states.
10:06So it's not quite fair to say that there is nothing happening.
10:09And Republicans, are there people that you see now that are preparing to eventually challenge
10:16Donald Trump?
10:17No, nobody will challenge Donald Trump before his term is over.
10:22But clearly there are people who will want to be president after him.
10:26And I imagine the main candidate right now is the vice president.
10:30There are two or three leading Republicans, a couple of senators who have made clear that
10:35they're going to begin to dissent more.
10:37One of them is the governor of—excuse me, senator from North Carolina, Tom Tillis, who has announced
10:43that he's not going to run for office in 18 months, and instead he's going to spend the
10:49next 18 months saying—he says, saying what I think, which we assume to mean as being more
10:54critical.
10:55There are two or three others who have certainly at least made passage of legislation for Donald
11:01Trump very difficult.
11:02So we are beginning to see that too.
11:04If we look especially at Europe, countries with similar histories of oppression, of Soviet,
11:16Russian and Soviet occupation, for that matter, react so differently to Putin's war.
11:24I mean, the best examples, of course, are Slovakia and Hungary.
11:28No, they're different.
11:30Hungary is very important.
11:32To understand about Hungary, you need to understand that Viktor Orban is leader of a country that
11:37is failing economically, that is badly in need of money and investment.
11:45And his party is in need of money and investment.
11:48And he believes now that he will get it from Russia and China and not from Europe.
11:51So Hungary is the decision of one leader who has made this decision to back Russia.
11:58And he backs Russia.
11:59I mean, it's not very nuanced.
12:02Slovakia is a little bit more complicated.
12:04I think it's also about money.
12:05It's also about Fico's allegiance to Orban.
12:09It's about his fear of Slovak courts and Slovak civil society.
12:16And it's less clear to me that he'll stick to some kind of line.
12:20But Orban has simply made a decision to switch sides.
12:24By the way, you can see huge protests on the streets of Budapest against him.
12:30So it's not that he is… not all Hungarians agree with him.
12:33And what can be done about it externally?
12:35Generally, you don't expel countries from NATO and the European Union.
12:39I mean, I'm not in charge of NATO and the European Union.
12:42But if I were, yeah, I would have found a way to suspend Hungary's voting rights.
12:46I mean, Hungary is not an ally anymore.
12:49Hungary is not acting in good faith as a member of the EU.
12:55And I would have suspended them.
12:57But one doesn't want to kick them out because there are other Hungarians and there's at
13:03least more than half the population would like him to go.
13:07What could the West do externally apart from supporting Ukraine all the way and imposing
13:16more sanctions?
13:18Are there other things which you think are other ways of impacting Russia and the Russian regime
13:23that are missing?
13:24Well, we've never had an information campaign to Russia directed at Russians.
13:30You know, we have sanctions, but we didn't have an information campaign to accompany the
13:37sanctions.
13:38We didn't explain our sanctions.
13:40You know, we have backed Ukraine and we don't really tell the Russians why we backed Ukraine.
13:45Now, you know, the Russians spend millions and millions of dollars, as do other autocratic
13:53countries, examining and analyzing and thinking about ways to influence us.
13:58And we spend, as far as I know, almost nothing on thinking about ways to influence Russia or
14:04reach Russians or speak to Russians or have conversations with them.
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