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Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and

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Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Putin's Russia versus Ukraine. On

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Speaker 1: February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, Russian President Vladimir Putin

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Speaker 1: launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine. He intended to

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Speaker 1: quickly subjugate the entire country. That, of course didn't happen. Ukraine,

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Speaker 1: backed by a global alliance, fought back. Tens of thousands

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Speaker 1: of Ukrainians and Russians have died and tens of millions

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Speaker 1: of people have been displaced. Energy markets have been disrupted,

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Speaker 1: Diplomatic relationships have been reordered. Western Europe has rearmed, and

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Speaker 1: NATO has been revitalized. Punishing sanctions have been imposed on Russia,

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Speaker 1: but strangling its economy has been difficult. Still. Putin's war

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Speaker 1: machine has been exposed is disastrously inept. He's threatened to

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Speaker 1: use nuclear weapons if necessary. To take stock of all

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Speaker 1: of this, we're joined by Stephen Kotkin. Steve is a

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Speaker 1: senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution where we're having

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Speaker 1: this conversation today. He is the author of an epic

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Speaker 1: and definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, and he's widely regarded

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Speaker 1: as one of our foremost experts on Russia, its history, culture,

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Speaker 1: and economy. Hi, Steve, great to see it's him. Thank

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Speaker 1: you for the invitation. I wanted to ask you, given

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Speaker 1: you how long you've watched all of these contemporary events unfold.

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Speaker 1: Were you surprised that Putin invaded Ukraine? It was certainly

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Speaker 1: not a complete surprise. The surprise was the fact that

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Speaker 1: he had other options to exert pressure and he didn't

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Speaker 1: use them. So, for example, he could have tried to

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Speaker 1: crash Ukraine's economy and get them to Triuncle. He could

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Speaker 1: have tried covert opts and done some damage and said

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Speaker 1: I might have to do more if you don't come

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Speaker 1: to the negotiating table. There were other ways that he

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Speaker 1: could have figured out how to apply some pressure to

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Speaker 1: try to get what he wanted. But it turned out

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Speaker 1: his appetites were greater than most of us understood them

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Speaker 1: to be. He wanted everything. He wanted to take the country.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to roll NATO back to its pre nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety seven boarders. He had a kind of crazy apocalyptic

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Speaker 1: view of what he might achieve. Of course, all of

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Speaker 1: this at Ukraine's expense, so you never know the intentions.

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Speaker 1: You know the capabilities, you can see what they have,

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Speaker 1: you can assess what they have, you can assess where

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Speaker 1: they might be strong, where they might be weak. But

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Speaker 1: what are they actually going to do? And since it's

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Speaker 1: one guy making the decision, it was hard to understand

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Speaker 1: for sure what might happen. Bill Burns at the CIA

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Speaker 1: knew more about what Putin was going to do than

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Speaker 1: the number two or three guy in Putin's defense ministry

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Speaker 1: because he didn't tell them. He kept it very close

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Speaker 1: to the vest. Only two or three people four maximum

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Speaker 1: were involved, and he made the decision by himself. So

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Speaker 1: the fact that he didn't use his capabilities to reduce

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Speaker 1: his risks, lower his costs, and to try to get

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Speaker 1: his gains that way, I think that was somewhat of

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Speaker 1: a surprise. But of course the bigger surprise was Ukraine.

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Speaker 1: Before we move on to Ukraine, though, why do you

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Speaker 1: think Putin went that route? You mentioned this apocalyptic view

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Speaker 1: he has of Ukraine and the West, and probably Russia's

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Speaker 1: position in the world more broadly, That all played into

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Speaker 1: this but I'm putting Virginia up. Why do you think

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Speaker 1: he decided to launch a war rather than prosecute a

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Speaker 1: war through other means. We don't know, and I don't

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Speaker 1: know that's something that he's going to have to answer for.

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Speaker 1: But war has often started at a desperation, the perception

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Speaker 1: that you're losing something that you value, that it's drifting

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Speaker 1: away from you, that time is not on your side,

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Speaker 1: that if you don't go now, you'll never get the

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Speaker 1: chance to go again. The door will slam shut, And

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Speaker 1: so it's possible once again, I don't know, it's possible

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Speaker 1: he saw Ukraine slipping away and that he was never

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Speaker 1: going to have a better time to try to reverse that,

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Speaker 1: and so ironically it was the fact that Ukraine was

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Speaker 1: leaving his grasp in his mind, potentially more quickly or

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Speaker 1: potentially even for forever, that made him attempt such an

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Speaker 1: apocalyptic approach. People speculate, well, maybe it was because the

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Speaker 1: West was so weak and the West was going to

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Speaker 1: just roll over, and it was dependent on him in

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Speaker 1: energy terms, and therefore there was no way they could

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Speaker 1: really resist him, and they hadn't really resisted his two

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Speaker 1: and fourteen violent seizure and annexation of Crimea, and maybe

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Speaker 1: the Joe Biden administration didn't impress him very much, and

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Speaker 1: the withdrawal of Afghanistan potentially emboldened him. And all of

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Speaker 1: these other speculations, some of which could certainly have a

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Speaker 1: basis in truth, feed into this. But what we do

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Speaker 1: know from his public statements, and he made frequent public

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Speaker 1: statements in the run up to the war, and since

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Speaker 1: he's launched it, he was obsessed with Ukraine and still

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Speaker 1: is deep, profound upset with Ukraine. He talks about how

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Speaker 1: Ukraine doesn't exist, Ukraine is not a nation. Ukraine is

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Speaker 1: really just a fake state, a state created solely to

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Speaker 1: try to unravel Russia. In other words, it's a dagger

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Speaker 1: pointed at Russia. It's not real. Ukrainians are really just Russians,

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Speaker 1: They're not actually Ukrainians. And so this seems to be

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Speaker 1: at the core of his thinking, because this is all

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Speaker 1: he talks about when he talks about the war, before

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Speaker 1: the war and after the war. So if you start

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Speaker 1: thinking about the NATO expansion arguments, and you start thinking

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Speaker 1: about how the US is sometimes blamed for the war,

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Speaker 1: you have to say to yourself, if he's speaking and writing.

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Speaker 1: He actually wrote historical essays about Ukraine that he published

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Speaker 1: under his own name. When did he published those essays. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's done quite a number of historical essays about World

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Speaker 1: War two and Russia's role in the war and the

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Speaker 1: Nazi Soviet Pact and who's responsible for starting the war

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Speaker 1: and was Russia really on the offense was it actually

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Speaker 1: an ally of Hitler? And then the Ukrainian nation is

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Speaker 1: the Ukrainian nation for real. So in the Russian imagination

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Speaker 1: from the empire days, there was a Great Russian nation

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Speaker 1: and then two smaller related nations, White Russians, which is

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Speaker 1: how you translate Bella Russia or bell ARUs and Little Russians,

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Speaker 1: which was their name for Ukrainians. So little Russians and

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Speaker 1: White Russians and Great Russians are a single family in

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Speaker 1: the sort of eighteenth century Russian Empire understanding of ethnicity.

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Speaker 1: And let's remember people had religious identity back then, not

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Speaker 1: nash or ethnic identity predominantly. Over time, however, you get

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Speaker 1: a Ukrainian nation, you get a Ukrainian people, and that consciousness,

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Speaker 1: ironically is something that he's done more than anybody else

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Speaker 1: to consolidate and to western iz achieving the exact opposite

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Speaker 1: of his name. His aims were to destroy this idea

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Speaker 1: of a Ukrainian nation, and now he's consolidated it, not

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Speaker 1: only for all time, but in a pro Western, anti

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Speaker 1: Russian fashion. So that's something that even Stalin didn't achieve

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Speaker 1: with his murderous regime. And so this obsession with Ukraine,

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Speaker 1: this idea that Ukraine was not really a country, not

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Speaker 1: really a people, just part of Russia, belonged to Russia.

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Speaker 1: Russia deserved to control it. This seems to be if

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Speaker 1: we take his public speeches and writings at face value,

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Speaker 1: this seems to be the core of what he was thinking.

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Speaker 1: In addition to him launching an invasion, no one expected

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Speaker 1: him to, he put an army on the ground that

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Speaker 1: has turned out to be almost laughably inept. I don't

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Speaker 1: think anyone thinks that it's going necessarily to continue on

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Speaker 1: that path, although it might. But were you surprised at

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Speaker 1: how poorly prosecuted and ineffective his army was when the

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Speaker 1: war launched. Well, you know, once again, many people did

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Speaker 1: expect him to launch the war, right. The CIA got

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Speaker 1: this right. They had tremendous insight into what was going

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Speaker 1: on in his very narrow regime. So let's give credit

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Speaker 1: to the intelligence people for figuring this out. They shared

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Speaker 1: the insight, the intel in real time, and it went

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Speaker 1: a long way to helping form the coalition that opposed

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Speaker 1: Putent with the sanctions and everything else. And we did

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Speaker 1: think that it was possible. We just thought he had

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Speaker 1: cleverer options in the tool kit, let's say, with covert

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Speaker 1: opts and applying pressure that way to try to collapse

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Speaker 1: the Ukrainian regime. So with the full scale invasion that

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Speaker 1: we have that you just referred to in February twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty two, February twenty fourth, right, it was actually a coup,

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Speaker 1: not an invasion. Let's send in our best guys from

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Speaker 1: Belarus very close to Kiev, lightning raid, coup, capture the capitol,

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Speaker 1: grab the airport. Then we can land our paratroopers at

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Speaker 1: the airport, who could then provide the security perimeter around

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Speaker 1: our coup in the capitol. And it all goes up

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Speaker 1: in smoke. But it's a closely run thing. They come

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Speaker 1: close to seizing the capitol, there's fire outside the presidential palace.

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Speaker 1: It's not clear that Zelenski's going to survive this. He's

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Speaker 1: talking to the Americans and the Europeans on Zoom and

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Speaker 1: other media about how this might be the last time

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Speaker 1: he talks to them. That wasn't actually bluff and hyperbole.

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Speaker 1: But it fails. The Ukrainians resist successfully, and then you

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Speaker 1: end up once again with an invasion and occupation, and

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Speaker 1: it fails because the Ukrainians fight back in a surprisingly

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Speaker 1: robust way. Is that the key factor and all of that, Yes,

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Speaker 1: the Ukrainians, their valor and their ingenuity on the battlefield

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Speaker 1: is breathtaking inspiring. That combination, right, the breathtaking combination of

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Speaker 1: not just the courage but the ingenuity of how they fight,

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Speaker 1: an ingenuity enabled by the way by intelligence briefings they're

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Speaker 1: getting from the West, by support they're getting from the

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Speaker 1: West to prosecute the war. They have their own intel. Also,

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Speaker 1: let's be honest, they get their own intel. But yes,

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Speaker 1: we certainly help them. Zelenski has a very modern communications

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Speaker 1: equipment that President Biden might recognize for his when he's

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Speaker 1: speaking to Western interlocutors and his own people. They get

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Speaker 1: off the shelf drones ninety nine dollar drones, the kinds

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Speaker 1: that you can buy in Walmart or off Amazon, and

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Speaker 1: they hook up a catapult and a grenade to it.

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Speaker 1: That's done in people's basements. They do some programming and

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Speaker 1: some coding. These are kids. We're talking about the twenty somethings,

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Speaker 1: and in some cases the teens in Ukraine are helping

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Speaker 1: to fight the war. The whole Russian new economy, their

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Speaker 1: internet economy. They're twenty somethings. They flee, they don't want

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Speaker 1: any part of this. So Russia is fighting without the tech,

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Speaker 1: without the modern economy, without the twenty year olds, because

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Speaker 1: those people flee to Armenia Kyrghistan. Right, Armenia is second

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Speaker 1: per capita globally to Silicon Valley in it workers. Now,

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Speaker 1: I did not know that. That's fascinating because of the

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Speaker 1: exodus from Russia. None of them are helping the Russian

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Speaker 1: war effort. No, they're against it. They're either indifferent to

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Speaker 1: it and trying to escape it, or they're actually trying

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Speaker 1: to help the Ukrainians fight it. But the Ukrainians have

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Speaker 1: all these people volunteering their ingenuity and know how, and

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Speaker 1: at great risk of their own lives, they're doing this.

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Speaker 1: So that's been very interesting. We saw that. But let's

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Speaker 1: remember the Ukrainians. We knew that they were serious people

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Speaker 1: before the war, because twice in our lifetime two thousand

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Speaker 1: and three and four aranged revolution. In two and fourteen,

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Speaker 1: they overthrew domestic tyrants who try to fraudental elections stay

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Speaker 1: in power, and they came out in the streets and

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Speaker 1: risk their lives against their own tyrants. So when the

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Speaker 1: invasion came, we understood that they would resist. Maybe we

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Speaker 1: didn't understand the full extent I speak for myself here

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Speaker 1: their ability to resist in the war effort, but we

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Speaker 1: were pretty sure there would be at a minimum an

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Speaker 1: insurgency against the Russian occupation. Even if Russia was successful

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Speaker 1: in taking the capital, that the Ukrainians wouldn't give up.

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Speaker 1: But more than that, they prevented Russia from taking the capitol.

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Speaker 1: That was the great victory that they won early in

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Speaker 1: the war. That did surprise themselves in some cases, and

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Speaker 1: certainly the Russians and certainly the rest of the world.

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Speaker 1: This is one thing that the CIA didn't get correct,

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Speaker 1: was the ability of the Ukrainians to hold their capital

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Speaker 1: hold the Russian occupation at bay. Having said that, however,

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Speaker 1: Ukraine is not winning the war. We'll come back to

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Speaker 1: that in a little bit let's stay for a minute

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Speaker 1: on this idea of unexpected developments or surprises. I think

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Speaker 1: one of the other unexpected developments in this, I think

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Speaker 1: was the cohesion within the West. Who would have thought

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Speaker 1: that we'd be talking about rearming both Japan and Germany.

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Speaker 1: That was probably unimaginable as recently as three or four

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Speaker 1: years ago. Now it's essentially a FATA complete. What do

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Speaker 1: you think of that piece of all of this also

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Speaker 1: remarkable and also crucially important. I've always been of the

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Speaker 1: opinion that the West is by far more powerful than

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Speaker 1: people understand. And the West is not a geographical term.

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Speaker 1: The West is an institutional and values proposition. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's North America, Yes it's Europe, but it's also the

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Speaker 1: first island chain in the Pacific, in East Asia. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's South Korea, it's Taiwan, it's Japan all the way

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Speaker 1: down to Australia. That's also the West. Right, Japan is

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Speaker 1: not European, but it's Western, and Russia is European, but

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Speaker 1: it's not West. Because this is an institutional matrix, its

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Speaker 1: rule of law, it's open society, it's open dynamic market economy,

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Speaker 1: it's elections that are real rather than fraudulent or not

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Speaker 1: existent like in the Chinese case. So this is the

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Speaker 1: collective West. It was easy to see it was powerful,

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Speaker 1: but it looked like it was dormant. It looked like

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Speaker 1: cappuccinos were more important than freedom. But when challenged, when

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Speaker 1: there's a criminal aggression right there in Europe, countries bordering

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Speaker 1: Ukraine are in the EU part of the West. When

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Speaker 1: that happened, the West sprung to action. It was Ukrainian

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Speaker 1: valor plus Russian atrocities. That's my equation. Ukrainian valor plus

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Speaker 1: Russian atrocities equals Western unity and resolve. I said this

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Speaker 1: early on, it's going our way because it's not that

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Speaker 1: the Russians are committing atrocities. The whole war is an atrocity.

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Speaker 1: They bomb schools, the Germans will send weapons, They bomb hospitals,

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Speaker 1: the Germans will send heavy weapons. They start raping children,

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Speaker 1: not just women but girls, and the Germans are going

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Speaker 1: to send tanks. Right, So this Ukrainian valor plus Russian

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Speaker 1: atrocities equals Western unity and resolved has only gotten stronger

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Speaker 1: and stronger and stronger over the course of the war.

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Speaker 1: And everyone's been predicting at some point it's going to

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Speaker 1: go sold At some point the West is going to say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, those cappuccinos are really more important. But that

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Speaker 1: hasn't happened despite the predictions. On the contrary, they weaned

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Speaker 1: themselves from Russian energy in a much shorter period of

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Speaker 1: time than any of us understood was possible. So that

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Speaker 1: actually allows us a segue into, you know, maybe the

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Speaker 1: second prong of the offensive against Russia. We've talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the military piece of this. Let's talk

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Speaker 1: about economic sanctions. You and I had a conversation about

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Speaker 1: that shortly after the war began, and you said that

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Speaker 1: people were focusing largely on the wrong things when we

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Speaker 1: looked at sanctions on Russia, that the most deadly and

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Speaker 1: effective sanctions we could impose would have been technological sanctions,

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Speaker 1: and that that wasn't really being fully and robustly conceived.

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Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about that. So I

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Speaker 1: was a skeptic about sanctions, as you know, before the

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Speaker 1: war and after the war. This is the single biggest

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Speaker 1: mistake that we made, and it's why Ukraine is not

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Speaker 1: winning the war right now. What we did with the sanctions,

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Speaker 1: and that would include swift, would include freezing the assets

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Speaker 1: of Russian central banks. When you say SWIFT, you're talking

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Speaker 1: about blocking Russian access to the global banking system essentially,

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Speaker 1: and transfer payments. Yes, some Russian banks not being able

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Speaker 1: to use the communication system Swift, which is really just

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Speaker 1: a messaging system but is nonetheless the one that all

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Speaker 1: banks use. And then freezing, not confiscating, but freezing Russian

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Speaker 1: central bank assets that were held in Western countries, and

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Speaker 1: some of the other things that happened, companies voluntarily pulling

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Speaker 1: out of Russia. The problem with all of this is

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Speaker 1: it didn't work the way we hoped it would work,

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Speaker 1: which was to say, crush the Russian economy and crush

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Speaker 1: the Russian will to fight. So in a war, the

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Speaker 1: will to fight and the capability to fight are the targets,

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Speaker 1: not territory. You can gain territory, you can lose territory

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Speaker 1: if the other side is still willing to fight and

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Speaker 1: still capable of fighting. You didn't get anything by taking

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Speaker 1: territory back. And so we haven't crushed his will to

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Speaker 1: fight nor his capability to fight. And in fact, they

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Speaker 1: had massive financial reserves built up in case they needed him.

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Speaker 1: At some point. Putin had been planning to build a

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Speaker 1: can of fortress wall of money around Russia long before

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Speaker 1: the war began. What the sanctions did was they strengthened

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Speaker 1: their regime, and they annihilated the private sector and the opposition.

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Speaker 1: The private sector in the opposition that was our friend.

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Speaker 1: The oligarchs who supposedly were in bed with Putin, that

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Speaker 1: was our friend. We wanted Russians to peel off from Putin.

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Speaker 1: Putin's strength is conflation. Putin equals Russia, conflating his personal regime,

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Speaker 1: his personal dictatorship, with the country. So he says Russia

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Speaker 1: is under threat. Russia could call as he's talking about

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Speaker 1: his personal regime, he's talking about his personal dictatorship is

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Speaker 1: under threat. Russia is not under threat. But what we

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Speaker 1: did was enable strength in actually that conflation. Instead of

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Speaker 1: separating Putin from Russia, we're canceling Balshoy appearances, We're canceling

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Speaker 1: tall story in universities and high schools. We're canceling Russia

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Speaker 1: across the board, and we're giving Russians nowhere else to

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Speaker 1: go except the Putin regime or exile where they can't

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Speaker 1: use credit cards because they are Russian citizens and they're

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Speaker 1: blocked from the payment system. So you know, this absolutely

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Speaker 1: crazy thing that we did was to enable Putin to

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Speaker 1: realize his dream. Everyone is more dependent on him than ever.

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Speaker 1: The oligarchs have to run to him rather than run

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Speaker 1: to us because we sanctioned them, because we freeze their essets,

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Speaker 1: because only Putin is safety for them now. And so

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Speaker 1: we did this across the board, instead of differentiating, instead

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Speaker 1: of deconflating, instead of separating, instead of opening up a

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Speaker 1: space for defection, so that you could be patriotic, loyal

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Speaker 1: to Russia. You could be proud to be Russian, which

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Speaker 1: you could be anti war. You could say this war

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Speaker 1: is a criminal aggression, the Putin regime should go, and

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Speaker 1: this is not Russia, this is Putin. That was the

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Speaker 1: strategy that we needed from the beginning. But the sanctions, unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: which are understandable at an emotional level, because it's a

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Speaker 1: criminal aggression. We're not going to risk direct US or

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Speaker 1: NATO confrontation with Russia on the battlefield, so sanctions looks

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Speaker 1: like the best or the only option left there to

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Speaker 1: confront Russia, arm Ukraine and try to destroy roy Russia's

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Speaker 1: fighting capability with sanctions. But it was a political era

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Speaker 1: of colossal magnitude. But I just want to push back

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Speaker 1: on that thought for a little bit, because the sanctions

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Speaker 1: that have been imposed may take time to work their

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Speaker 1: way through the Russian economy. Is part of the problem

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Speaker 1: here that people were expecting sanctions to have a more

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Speaker 1: immediate impact than they ever could have, and if we

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Speaker 1: can wait it out, that this could end up cutting

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Speaker 1: off some of the oxygen to the Russian economy. Technological controls,

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Speaker 1: controls on tech export always take a long time. That's

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Speaker 1: always a generational thing. And so we understood that because

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Speaker 1: we practice that. The big bang shock and as sanctions

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Speaker 1: that Treasury came up with which were meant to collapse

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Speaker 1: the regime or at least collapse the will to fight

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Speaker 1: and maybe even the ability to fight. That was the expectation.

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Speaker 1: People now say, oh, we didn't expect that. You know,

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Speaker 1: they're backing off of what the motivations were. But certainly

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Speaker 1: the motivations were a shock and awe knock Russia off

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Speaker 1: balance and make them unable to fight. But here's your

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Speaker 1: problem once again, wars of attrition. That's what we're in here, right.

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Speaker 1: All wars begin as wars of maneuver. Somebody attacks, things

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Speaker 1: move really quickly territory is taken. If they're victorious, sometimes

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Speaker 1: you get the insurgency against their victory, like what happened

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Speaker 1: in Iraq. If they're not victorious, you get the war

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Speaker 1: of attrition, and then it's I outproduce you. My willpower stays,

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Speaker 1: and my production stays increases, and your production decreases. Well,

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Speaker 1: we're not bombing Russian production facilities. They're producing at least

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Speaker 1: sixty missiles a month now, and that's with the sanctions,

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Speaker 1: sixty missiles a month, not including with they're buying from Iran,

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Speaker 1: with they're buying from North Korea. What they went to

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Speaker 1: Africa and scooped up that they originally sold to the

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Speaker 1: Africans and now rebought or god forbid what they might

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Speaker 1: get from the Chinese. Right, so, just on their own steam,

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Speaker 1: they got enough to hit Ukraine twice a month forever

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Speaker 1: into the foreseeable future with these barrages of missiles. What

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Speaker 1: about on our side, no increase of production at all.

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Speaker 1: And so ironically, who's the one running out of stuff

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Speaker 1: to fight the war? It's us, It's not the Russians.

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Speaker 1: And so here we are in a war of attrition

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Speaker 1: where it's about our stuff increasing their stuff decreasing. Their

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Speaker 1: stuff is not decreasing, and our stuff is not increasing.

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Speaker 1: So sure, maybe twenty five years from now, maybe fifteen

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Speaker 1: years from now, Russia has some trouble because of export

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Speaker 1: technology control rolls more state of the art missiles or

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Speaker 1: whatever it might be. And in the meantime Ukrainians are

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Speaker 1: being murdered and raped and kidnapped on the battlefield, and

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Speaker 1: we don't have enough stuff for them. So, on that

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Speaker 1: happy note of thinking about how hard it is to

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Speaker 1: supply a war effort, I want to take a break.

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Speaker 1: We'll hear from one of our sponsors, and then we'll

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Speaker 1: be right back. We're back with Steve Kakin. I was

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Speaker 1: first introduced to Steve in nineteen ninety nine after I

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Speaker 1: returned from a reporting trip to Moscow for the New

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Speaker 1: York Times. I've looked at him for guidance on all

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Speaker 1: things Russian ever since, and I'm happy to be continue

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Speaker 1: our conversation today. Steve. Let's zoom back in on Putin

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Speaker 1: for a minute. He's seventy. He appears to be fit

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Speaker 1: as a fiddle, So he could be at this for

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Speaker 1: a very long time, couldn't he. The solution here would

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Speaker 1: be some type of defection his regime. Not democratic opposition

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Speaker 1: that's in exile, but his people inside his regime peeling

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Speaker 1: off because they were Russian patriots and they didn't like

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Speaker 1: the way this was going, and the West was accommodating

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Speaker 1: a Russian patriotism that was anti war, non putin Russian patriotism.

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Speaker 1: That's still the game. A good outcome here would be

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Speaker 1: an armistice where Ukraine does not agree that territory Russia

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Speaker 1: controls is legally Russian. So no necessary peace treaty, no

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Speaker 1: agreement to annexations, no legalization of the criminal invasion, but

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Speaker 1: an armistice to stop the fighting. Once you get an armistice,

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Speaker 1: you have a DMZ. You're going to need a demilitarized

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Speaker 1: zone with Russian Ukraine no matter what the outcome of

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Speaker 1: the war is, because Russia is actually not going anywhere.

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Speaker 1: South Korea is your victory here. If you get something

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Speaker 1: like South Korea out of this, sure, it's disappointing, it's

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Speaker 1: not a peace treaty, it's just an armistice. They're actually

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Speaker 1: still at war on the Korean peninsula. Nonetheless, South Korea

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Speaker 1: has been a great outcome. If Ukraine could have an

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Speaker 1: outcome like that, and so how did we get the

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Speaker 1: South Korean outcome? Stalin died. That's how we got the

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Speaker 1: armistice in the war. So if Putin doesn't die, tim

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Speaker 1: we need to unravel that regime with defections and get

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Speaker 1: another Russia that we can bargain with and deal with.

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Speaker 1: Isn't the easiest outcome in all of this. If Putent

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Speaker 1: were to die, but no one can get to Putin, no,

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Speaker 1: well you can try. I wouldn't recommend it. He's in

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Speaker 1: a cocoon. He's got a thirty thousand member Praetorian Guard

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Speaker 1: multiple as a security. He's in this vast, deep cocoon.

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Speaker 1: Almost nobody has any access to him, and the people

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Speaker 1: who have access to him are loyal. There's been no

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Speaker 1: defection or disaffection in that group, that Praetorian Guard. So

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Speaker 1: those are his IT people, his cooks, his cleaners. Right,

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Speaker 1: those people are vetted, those people are watched closely, and

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Speaker 1: those people are not allowing you to penetrate the regime.

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Speaker 1: It could happen, but this is what he does, right.

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Speaker 1: He suppresses all political alternatives and he obsesses about security.

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Speaker 1: So it would be fabulous if he were to die

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Speaker 1: from natural causes and the war would end. Sure of that,

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Speaker 1: you're going to need some type of unraveling of the regime,

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Speaker 1: which is not happening. There's no evidence that it's happening

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Speaker 1: right now. Because let's be honest, you think you might

426
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: oppose Putin and you're going to have to talk to

427
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: other people about that. You can't do it yourself. The

428
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: first first person you tell let's get together and undo

429
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 1: this Putent thing, that person's going to run immediately to

430
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: Putin and knock on you to save their own life,

431
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: protect themselves because they're worried that there's eavesdropping could be

432
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 1: a test of their loyalty, and so they're going to

433
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: run immediately to Putin. So internal dynamics of this regime,

434
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: building trust to undo the regime is really hard. You

435
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: got to do that with a government in exile. You

436
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 1: got to take a bunch of Russians in London and

437
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: make them your government. And so when you have the

438
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: Munich Security Conference and you don't invite Russians because they're

439
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 1: just going to come and spet propaganda, well, here's Russians

440
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: you can invite to the Munich Security Conference or fill

441
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: in the blank of where you might invite them to

442
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: EU meetings, to G seven meetings, to G twenty meetings. Right,

443
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: you have to begin to build the idea of another

444
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: Russia that Russian nationalists can defect two as long as

445
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: it's ending the war. Remember, if Putin's overthrown in a coup,

446
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:08,720
Speaker 1: tim there's no guarantee that a capitulationist leader replaces him,

447
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: maybe again an escalatory leader. So your goal is not

448
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: Russians who are going to be members of the Democratic

449
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 1: Party in the United States and align with those values.

450
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: Your goal is Russians who can be whatever they want

451
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: because you're pluralist and your values and your pluralist in

452
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: allowing whatever politics. But they're anti war, they're for ending

453
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: the war. They're for granting an armistice to Ukraine. They're

454
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: for stopping the murder, stopping the kidnapping, the destruction of

455
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: Ukrainian cultural artifacts. Someone else has to come into the

456
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: picture to destabilize that regime, so that there's the imagination

457
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: in the Russian mind of political alternatives to Putin. There's

458
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 1: a future for Russia. Russians can be proud of their civilization,

459
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: their culture, their country, but the war has to stop.

460
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: And if we don't get their tim then it's a

461
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: wing and a prayer right now that we outproduce them

462
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: somehow and that they don't continue to produce those weapons

463
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: that they're using on the battlefield, because you see Ukraine,

464
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: they need their country tim they don't have another country.

465
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: So if Ukraine gets wrecked, that's not victory. Even if

466
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: they hold their capital, even if they hold territory, even

467
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: if they take back some of the territory that the

468
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: Russians have. The Russians are destroying ukraine infrastructure, people, culture,

469
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: Russia has its own country. Russia's country is a thousand

470
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: times the size of the parts of Ukraine that they're occupying.

471
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: They don't actually need Ukraine. If Putin recks Ukraine, who

472
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: wins that? Do the Ukrainians win or do the Russians win? Right?

473
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: So for Putin, I have Ukraine, nobody can have Ukraine.

474
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: Do you think that Putin would use nukes? He has

475
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: the capability. You have to take seriously that he has

476
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: the capability. There's many, many arguments about mutually assured destruction

477
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: otherwise known as mad The problem with those arguments is

478
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: that they're true until the second they're not true. So

479
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: sure it makes no sense, but then it could happen.

480
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: I've often thought that when he threatens to use nukes,

481
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: he's bluffing. Every time he's threatened fire and brimstone from

482
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: the beginning, he hasn't acted on those threats. When we've

483
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: crossed those lines, he said, if you supply them with weapons,

484
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: you're going to get a response like you've never seen

485
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 1: before in history. And then nothing happened. So you start

486
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: to see this crying wolf phenomenon. You start to think

487
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: we can do what we want because he's never gonna

488
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: actually use those weapons of mass destruction. But once again,

489
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: the problem is he's got them, so you can't just

490
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: ignore that fact. Yeah, it would be crazy if he

491
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: did it, and he could do it, so we have

492
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: to tiptoe along that line and cautious. I'm of the

493
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 1: opinion that if he uses tactical nukes in Ukraine, that

494
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: that's the quickest path to Ukrainian military victory on the battlefield. Why,

495
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:33,280
Speaker 1: because NATO gets directly involved with conventional forces and wipes

496
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: out Russian forces and weapons on Ukrainian soil, wipes out

497
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: the Russian occupation because it has to react. One of

498
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: the things about this threshold of not wanting to get

499
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: involved directly US or NATO forces against Russian forces on

500
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: the battlefield is there's no domestic political support for that,

501
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 1: as I said, and there's no support in the Alliance

502
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: and their domestic populations. And we live in a democracy.

503
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: Foreign policy has to be rooted in majority public opinion

504
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:07,839
Speaker 1: to be enduring, sustainable over time. But if he were

505
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: to do the unthinkable, the crazy, what he could do

506
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 1: to use the tactical nuclear weapons that would change the

507
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:21,400
Speaker 1: opinion situation in the US and in the NATO Alliance

508
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 1: and potentially make it more popular or indeed very popular

509
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: to respond in some significant fashion. It could go the

510
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: other way. It could go that it unravels the coalition

511
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: and people say, Okay, now that he's using nukes, stop,

512
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: I've had enough with fighting this. But it could ironically

513
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: be the case once again that he steps on the rake. Here.

514
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,239
Speaker 1: You started out talking about all the things he hoped

515
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:56,280
Speaker 1: to accomplish, and he's accomplishing the opposite, perverse and unintended consequences. Okay,

516
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,439
Speaker 1: With visions of mushroom clouds dancing in our heads, Steve

517
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: and I are going to take a break. Listen to

518
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 1: one of our sponsors, and then we'll come right back.

519
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: We're back with Steve Kotkin, one of our foremost Russian

520
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: authorities and scholars. Steve, you often described Russia to me

521
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: as episodically powerful. It was powerful underpd to the great

522
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: it was powerful under Stallin, but that it's a relatively

523
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: weak superpower overall. Do Putin and Russia come out of

524
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: this conflict in Ukraine weekend? Ultimately? Do you think or no?

525
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 1: This war is about their weakness, not their strength. This

526
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,760
Speaker 1: is a strategy of a failing country, not a succeeding country.

527
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: Russia wants to be in the first rank of powers.

528
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:51,240
Speaker 1: It wants to be deciding the fate of Europe European security.

529
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: It wants to be astride the world the way it

530
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:56,839
Speaker 1: is at the UN with a permanent veto in the

531
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:01,320
Speaker 1: Security Council. Why does Russia love the UN? Because everywhere

532
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 1: else Russia is just another country. But at the UN

533
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: it's a permanent member of the Security Council with a

534
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: veto which it earned by defeating Hitler's land Army on

535
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: the Eastern Front in World War Two, let's remember. And

536
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 1: so its aspirations are to be a power of the

537
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: first rank, and its capabilities have never been that ever,

538
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: not because they're not a powerful country. They are a

539
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 1: powerful country, but there are other powerful countries in all

540
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: powers relative and so there's this thing called the United States,

541
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:38,839
Speaker 1: and the United States has built this amazing system of alliances,

542
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: this incredible open sphere of influence which is economic and

543
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: security and soft power and just breath taking, and they're

544
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: up against that. So they're a great power. Right. You

545
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: can probably play soccer, and if you played against the

546
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: five year olds that were running outside my house this morning,

547
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: you might be able to beat them, crush them. And

548
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, Lionel Messi will show up

549
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: on and then you'll say, oh, this is a different

550
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: league I'm playing in. Now. That's been Russia's problem through

551
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: the ages. They can beat the five year olds, or

552
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: they can beat the lesser powers, but then they come

553
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: up against a greater power, in fact, the greatest power.

554
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: And so this weakness, this cry of anger and resentment,

555
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: this royaling cauldron of wanting and not being able to

556
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:35,720
Speaker 1: be the greatest power in the world. Again and again

557
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: Russia tries to overcome this weakness, and again and again

558
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: it backfires and so Putin has now produced a worst

559
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:50,360
Speaker 1: strategic situation for Russia than the one he was complaining about.

560
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:54,919
Speaker 1: And this is not something that he's done alone. This

561
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: is a pattern in Russian history. I call this the

562
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:05,239
Speaker 1: geopolitical conundrum that Russia faces too much geopolitics, too much aspiration,

563
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 1: not matching capabilities, too much trying to leap and overcome

564
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:13,280
Speaker 1: the chasm and ending up in a worse situation time

565
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: and time again. What does he do then? Does he

566
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,760
Speaker 1: accept defeat or does he decide he won't accept defeat?

567
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: And that's a question. Fortunately you and I don't have

568
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 1: to answer, but there's somebody sitting in a big chair

569
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: in the White House who's got to think about that question.

570
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 1: Since you brought up the White House, tell me what

571
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: kind of grades would you give the Biden administration for

572
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: prosecuting this war. A government is graded on a curve,

573
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 1: you know in academia, that's where you can get a

574
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:49,959
Speaker 1: low score numerically but still get a decent letter grade

575
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 1: because everybody gets a low score, and your low score

576
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: is a little higher than theirs. So we grade government

577
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: on a curve. We have expectations that government is hard.

578
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: There's a lot to opposition. There's a lot of things

579
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 1: that government is all fumbs. I would say that very

580
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: good on building the coalition, very good on maintaining support

581
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: for the war for more than a year now. Very

582
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,280
Speaker 1: good in other words, that latching on to Ukrainian valor

583
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:24,839
Speaker 1: and courage and making the most of it. Not so

584
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:28,879
Speaker 1: good on figuring out what victory could look like and

585
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: how we could get to victory, and how we could

586
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: not push all the Russians into Putin's lap but instead

587
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 1: separate them from Putin. So on some of the big

588
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: things high scores, and on one of the biggest things

589
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 1: a low score. But government is a lot harder than

590
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: sitting here in the tower at Stanford University, at the

591
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 1: Hoover Institution, talking about what the grade might be, not

592
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: just sitting in any part of the tower. Your office

593
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: happens to be Herbert Hoover Old Study, right. Yes, I'm

594
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 1: very lucky that way. Tell me something you've learned from

595
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 1: watching this war unfold. We always want to end on

596
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: a learning note on this show, and what we can

597
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: learn from Collisions crash course is both instructive and a

598
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: learning moment. So tell me what you've learned. It's new

599
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: to you. In watching this war, sadly, I've learned many things.

600
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,720
Speaker 1: I already knew that the world is full of evil,

601
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: that war is still a problem. Happens, it's not something

602
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:41,240
Speaker 1: that is let's say rare. I've also learned that the West,

603
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 1: rather than one world is um is the basis of

604
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: our security and prosperity. So the GAT rather than the

605
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:54,439
Speaker 1: wto NATO, the EU, and the First Island chain rather

606
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:58,800
Speaker 1: than Kumbaya. Those are all things that I thought before

607
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: that have been straightened with this war. The biggest thing

608
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: I got wrong is I expected another part of the

609
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:10,719
Speaker 1: world to blow up while this was happening. I expected

610
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: other countries to take advantage of the situation, whether that

611
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: would be something happening with Iran, something happening with North Korea,

612
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 1: with China. I expected, maybe it wouldn't even be in

613
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 1: a place that I was paying attention to. So one

614
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: bad thing happens, and it's not an isolated event. It's

615
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,920
Speaker 1: a potential trigger for other bad things to happen in

616
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: an unraveling. So far that's not been the case. I

617
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:43,799
Speaker 1: predicted that that would happen, and I've been wrong about that, fortunately,

618
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: So let's hope I continue to be wrong about that

619
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: going forward, because it's enough already trying to resolve this

620
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 1: criminal aggression against Ukraine. Steve, we're out of time. I

621
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: appreciate you sitting with me today, and I'm going to

622
00:42:57,600 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 1: come back and pass to you against some time in

623
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: the future. Tim always great to talk to you. You

624
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: can find Stephen Cootkin's book Stalin Paradoxes of Power and

625
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: Stalin Waiting for Hitler, the first two volumes of a

626
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 1: three part biography of Joseph Stalin wherever books are sold

627
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: here At crash Course, we believe that collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,

628
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:25,359
Speaker 1: and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that

629
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: no matter how forceful our military response to Putin's invasion

630
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:32,760
Speaker 1: might be, and how tightly we draw the financial noose

631
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:37,280
Speaker 1: around the Russian economy, Vladimir Putin and his war maybe

632
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:40,919
Speaker 1: with us for a very long time. What did you learn?

633
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet at

634
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim

635
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:52,279
Speaker 1: O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also

636
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and

637
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 1: leave us a review. It helps more people find the show.

638
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by the indispensable Annamazarakis and me.

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Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing

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Speaker 1: help from Sage Bowman, Katie Boys, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nietza

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Speaker 1: and Christine Vanden Bilard. Blake Maples does our sound engineering

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Speaker 1: and our original theme song was composed by Luis Gara.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another

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Speaker 1: Crash course