Mick Hartley

Sociologist Grigory Yudin, interviewed by Margarita Liutova at Meduza:

There’s a widespread view about contemporary Russian politics that says war is an endless process for Putin, and Putin himself seemed to confirm the idea in his recent Federal Assembly address: He said nothing about how Russia will win and what will happen after that. Do you think that Putin’s plan is really eternal war?

Yes, of course, the war is now forever. It has no goals that can be achieved and lead to its end. It continues simply because [in Putin’s imagination], they are enemies and they want to kill us, and we want to kill them. For Putin, it’s an existential clash with an enemy set on destroying him.

There should be no illusions: while Putin is in the Kremlin, the war will not end. It will only expand. The size of the Russian army is increasing rapidly, the economy is reorienting toward guns, and education is turning into a propaganda tool and war preparation. They’re preparing the country for a long and difficult war.

And then it’s obviously impossible for Putin to win?

It’s absolutely impossible. No one has set any goal [for the war] or offered any definition of victory.

So, can we consider the point to be the preservation of Vladimir Putin’s authority?

They’re almost the same thing. He thinks of his rule as constant war. Putin and the people who surround him told us long ago that there’s a war against us. Some preferred not to mark their words, but they seriously think that they’ve been at war for a long time. It’s just that now this war has entered such an aggressive phase, and there’s obviously no exit. War itself is normal, in their worldview. Stop thinking that peace is the natural state, and you’ll see the situation through their eyes. As the governor of Khanty-Mansi [Natalya Komarova] said, “War is a friend.”

On February 22, 2022, you published an article on openDemocracy, in which you described an upcoming major war and Putin’s dismissive attitude toward the sanctions that Western countries imposed in response. In the second half of the article, you argued that “the war with Ukraine will be the most senseless of all the wars in our history.” Do you think Russian society has started to realize this over the past year?

No, in my view, it hasn’t. It was clear to many, many people from the very beginning, but since then that category has barely grown. In Russia today, you find this powerful feeling, and it’s one of those rare occasions when Vladimir Putin connects with a significant part of society. It’s far from everyone who shares his wild theories, but he does connect with people. Even more importantly, he produces this emotion himself. And that emotion is resentment — monstrous, endless resentment. Nothing can mollify this resentment. It’s impossible to imagine what could compensate for it. It doesn’t allow people to think about establishing any kind of productive relationships with other countries.

You know, it’s like a young child who gets deeply offended and then hurts those around him. The harm grows greater and greater, and at some point, he seriously begins destroying others’ lives, as well as his own. But the child isn’t thinking about that; he isn’t thinking that he somehow needs to build relationships.

I think that the feeling of resentment, which has been overflowing lately in Russia, is supported at a very high level, and we haven’t yet reached the point where someone might realize that we [Russians] have normal, legitimate interests, and we need to reach them by building relationships with other countries in the right way….

Worth reading in full.