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- [00:00]
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Mark Galeotti
greatest motivating factor is fear.
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Interviewer
His childhood was one of significant loneliness.
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Mark Galeotti
He was a relatively small boy. One of the things that was distinctive about Putin was that he would never back down. Putin the opportunist? Not Putin a strategist,
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Interviewer
former KGB officer shrouded in mystery. Was he this super agent?
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Mark Galeotti
He was closer to a glorified file clerk than he was to James Bond
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Interviewer
speaking Speaking of strip clubs, how religious has Putin been?
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Mark Galeotti
It doesn't seem to have curbed his known proclivity of having mistresses or indeed his willingness to have people murdered. This sense of what have we lost? Seems to have metastasized over time into and who took it from us?
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Interviewer
What do we need to know about Vladimir Putin's own history to make sense of the way that he governs Russia? Wages war and thinks thinks about the future. Putin often collapses into lazy caricature in the west, evil Bond villain, grandmaster, strategist. But as Machiavelli said, everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are. Public image is any leader's most precious tool. So how much of what we think we know about him, especially in the west, is the real Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin versus what he wants us to see or what media has distorted, deliberately or not? Historian Mark Galeotti is an expert in modern Russia and can help answer that deceptively simple what history made Putin, and what does that tell us about what he'll do next?
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Mark Galeotti
He was born into a Soviet Union that was already beginning to show some cracks and more to the point, was diverging further and further from the original sort of grand ideals of Marxism then. And in particular, look, Putin was not born into the Nomenclatura, which is effectively the Soviet elite. Instead, he came from a relatively impoverished background, raised in a St. Petersburg or Leningrad rather, at the time that was still half rubbled from its siege during the Second World War. So, you know, generally for him, times were quite rough.
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Interviewer
From my understanding, he was raised by his biological parents. What do we know about them and his relationship with them and that his childhood was one of significant loneliness. Even though he was doted on?
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Mark Galeotti
Well, as you say, yes, I mean he was, he was definitely the, the apple of his parents eyes. They were not sort of again, in a position really to further his career that, that dramatically. And frankly, the young Vladimir Putin didn't seem to be especially sort of bookish, didn't seem especially ambitious. He ran with street gangs, he got involved in fights. It's one of the reasons why he then moved into martial arts was precisely because, you know, he was a relatively, he was a relatively small boy. But as one of his peers later remembered, one of the things that was distinctive about Putin was that he would never back down. You know, even when you knew that he was going to be ready for a drubbing in some fight or another, he would still get, get stuck in. So he was definitely a scrappy kid, but until he found some kind of greater cause, ended up being joining the kgb, political police, actually. You know, he certainly wasn't someone who looked as if he was headed for some kind of glittering career.
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Interviewer
There's so many elements I want to get into there, Mark. So to begin with, what do we know about his scholastic performance and interests at an early age?
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Mark Galeotti
I mean, it's very difficult to actually talk that sort of clearly about his scholastic performance because of the degree to which that has been mythologized and overlaid. I mean, not just in terms of his own memoirs, which are as mendacious as anybody's memoirs tend to be, but also no one's really wanting to turn up and say that he was useless or helpless, whatever. And this is, I think, actually a judgment that can make about so many aspects of his career. He was okay, he wasn't the worst, he wasn't, you know, a dropout, but certainly he wasn't regarded as one of the, one of the great prodigies. You know, he actually showed he has certain talents, indeed, he'd go on to show that he had certain talents for language. But nonetheless, this is just not a kid who was especially engaged. And that's something that came up time
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Interviewer
and again when he was 16. There's quite a well known story about him walking into his KGB hq, his local one, and asking for a job or how to get one. And basically he's rejected because they say we don't take walk ins and ends up eventually being told that if you take the route of law or military service, then you might have a good shot. And on he goes. How typical would that have been for a Soviet teenage boy at the Time to actually walk in and ask, and what does that tell us about him?
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Mark Galeotti
Yeah, I mean, it's monstrously untypical, it has to be said. I mean, particularly the headquarters of the Leningrad KGB was known as the Balshoidom, the big house. You know, there was the old joke about how it's, it must be the tallest building in Leningrad because you can see Siberia from its basement. This was actually a building that was rooted in infamy. I mean, it stained with the blood of the Stalin era, purges and such like. People on the whole would cross the road to avoid it, let alone actually go in. So they had this 16 year old turn up and it's clear that the, the duty officer at the time was rather perplexed about this. You know, he didn't have some kind of handy leaflet to hand out about careers in the kgb. What on earth is going on? He more or less says, kind of run along with Sonny, you know, going. And then he says, look, go to university first and if we're interested, we'll be in touch. And even then, Putin actually pushes and says, well, okay, if I go to university, what degree should I do? And the duty officer says, law. And again, I think it was probably as much as anything else, just an answer to get this. But indeed, that's what happens, that then Putin decides, right, it's going to be a law career for me at university. And all of a sudden go back to the issue of his school grades. His grades get better because he now has to focus. So, you know, this is definitely a sign that this is not your, your everyday Soviet kid.
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Interviewer
That is interesting though, that we start to see a shift in ability or outcome when he becomes more focused on a reason for application. Now, when it comes to his university years or late years at senior school, is there evidence of political interest or a political philosophy emerging? Because this is something that we see from a lot of political leaders, that they're quite precocious and they're those annoying people. I can say this because I was one of them that was sort of part of all the political clubs at university, giving lots of speeches, unsolicited that everyone wished they'd shut up. Do we see any of that from Putin?
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Mark Galeotti
Putin was not a political student, except insofar as he absolutely had to look to a degree. Activism was just simply a kind of a necessary activity to show that you were loyal and an insider. So there's no way you're going to be going to university, especially not. He got into Leningrad State University. That's sort of one of the, not the absolute elite universities, not like Moscow State University or Ngimo, which is a Foreign Ministry's one, but still a very reputable one. He could not have got into that without also joining the Komsomol, the Young Communist League or the Communist Party itself. And that means, yes, you've got to turn up to a certain number of meetings. Look, I've.
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Mark Galeotti
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Mark Galeotti
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Mark Galeotti
Known enough people who are at university at that time to know that essentially you go along, you basically have a good dose while some tedious speaker sort of reads a prepared speech. And having ticked the metaphorical box, you go on to the stuff that you enjoy. And certainly, you know, at university, Putin was, was certainly willing to, I mean, apart from the fact that his, his martial arts training continued and that did put a bit of a crimp in his socializing, but nonetheless he was still willing to go out and get drunk with his friends and so forth. He might have had his little Young Communist League pin on his lapel, but there's absolutely no signs that he was either interested in the tenets of Marxism, Leninism, who was. But nor was he interested in other kind of political philosophies. This is also a time, after all, in which there are some people who are beginning to think about reform. The sort of people who'd end up backing Mikhail Gorbachev and his reform program. That's not Putin. He's basically at this stage apolitical. He's interested in the kgb. Not because he wants to be the sword and shield of the Communist Party, but from his point of view, it's a way in which he can feel that he matters and in some ways join the biggest gang in town.
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Interviewer
Putin's role at the KGB is mentioned so often it is axiomatic. Just every single Western media outlet that describes him, says former KGB officer, this was very formative. It's shrouded in mystery. Was he this super agent, was he inconsequential? What's the real deal and what impact did his time spent in the KGB have on him?
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Mark Galeotti
Again, as so often with Putin's career The honest answer is he was okay. We actually do know this because although clearly all his records have now been sealed, but nonetheless, before that, some of his personnel files and certainly the appraisals that were made by, for example, within the kgb, the Young Communist League sort of activists came to light, and they demonstrated that he was regarded as okay. And frankly, if one looks at his career trajectory, I mean, this is a man who, after all, seemed to have been enthused by it by watching the films and the TV series that the Soviets put on about these. They're not exactly sort of James Bond. They tend to be a lot more broody and downbeat. But nonetheless, these agents who, you know, working undercover in foreign countries do these extraordinary things, and that was his vision. He didn't get into the First Chief Directorate, which is the overseas intelligence arm of the KGB and very much the elite. Instead, he spent the first part of his career really just basically following and persecuting dissidents back in Leningrad. Now, he later was able to get into the First Chief Directorate because by this time he spoke very good German. Again, his language skills coming out here, and they needed some German speakers. But even then, he was not actually carrying out what we would think of as proper espionage. He was based at a KGB office in Dresden in East Germany, and really he was just involved in routing reports back and forth between the KGB and the Soviet Union and the Stasi, their East German counterparts. So to be honest, he was closer to a glorified file clerk than he was to James Bond.
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Interviewer
So at that point, would you say nothing much has happened in Putin's life to dramatically shape how he sees the west or America?
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Mark Galeotti
I don't think he was particularly interested in the west or America. I mean, it's quite interesting, for example, that although he probably would have had a chance to do so as a KGB officer, he made no efforts to, for example, travel in the west in this time. Instead, look, he was just focusing on leading a fairly good life. He said it himself. While he was based in East Germany, he got used to German beer, put on some weight, managed to buy a fridge, which is no small matter for a Soviet citizen at that time. Those were his concerns, not geopolitics, let alone wondering about the relationship of his country to the West.
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Interviewer
When does that hunger begin, then?
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Mark Galeotti
I think it begins really with the collapse of East Germany and then the Soviet Union. Remember, this is a man who, after all, has seen not one, but two authoritarian regimes collapse around him. He was in East Germany when the East German regime sort of fell apart almost overnight. And clearly that was a shocking moment for him. And then he was also back in the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union was wiped out at the stroke of a pen by Mikhail Gorbachev. And in both cases, he sees, first of all, this as the result of irresolute leadership. Essentially, the lesson he learned, or he felt he learned from them, is that if a regime is strong and if need be brutal, it can remain in power. But also that's the point when he actually gets that sense that the west was not necessarily behind these collapses, but certainly profited from it. That when East Germany and then the Soviet Union fell apart, the west rolled in to pick what it wanted and also to try and impose its values, its ideas on these countries. So I think very much this is something that is in resistance, and this is a man who, after all, felt he had a place, a rising place in the system, and the system was then falling apart. And this sense of what have we lost? Seems to have metastasized over time into and who took it from us. And that's very much, I think, a feature of Putin's generation. It's very much this particular generation of figures who really haven't been able to cope with post Soviet life. They're now in their 70s, but they're also now running the Russian Federation.
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Interviewer
I'm going to ask you the martial arts question now because I've been looking forward to this. I'm a huge martial arts enthusiast, Mark, and I think about this a bit too often. I like to imagine in my worldview, what world leaders are associated with, which styles. For example, so Donald Trump would be drunken monkey, kung fu, Emmanuel Macron, fencing. Putin, we know, begins his martial arts training very young. I think around 12, is when he takes up judo and then sambo. How does this shape him as a man and his personal and political behavior? Because it seems like it does exert a demonstrable impact.
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Mark Galeotti
There's always an interesting chicken and egg issue about Putin and martial arts in that. Did he take up martial arts because it spoke to a certain aspect of him, the discipline, the capacity to unleash violence. And just generally that. That self image of wanting to feel like you're something special, wanting to feel as you walk through a crowd that you could take on anyone there? Or is it that.
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Interviewer
You're making me question myself, Mark?
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Mark Galeotti
Or is it that actually he turned to martial arts because he was a scrappy but small kid and needed the edge, and that in some ways that's something that he carried through in that, you know, one could argue that today's Russia is trying to punch or kick itself above its weight and therefore, again, needs that extra edge, you know, so we can sort of play it either way. But what is clear is, first of all, that this martial arts identity of himself, this kind of macho, on the one hand, the rather bland figure, but put him in the ring and he can take anyone down, sort of identity is very important to him. But secondly, the style of the martial arts actually, I think has influenced how he looks at politics. You know, there is this classic cliche, frankly, about the Russians as chess players. Well, Putin is not the sort of person, the cerebral individual who tries to work out, well, how can I achieve checkmate in seven moves? No, it's much more about, you go into the ring, you constantly are observing your opponent, you're looking for that opportunity to strike, and when you see that opportunity, you take it immediately. That is Putin the opportunist, not Putin a strategist.
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Interviewer
We learn a lot about people from their daily habits and routines. And Putin reportedly works very late past midnight sometimes, or certainly did when he was younger, wakes up late around noon. Martial arts swimming activity is supposed to be an important part of his schedule. And then he gets to government business. What do we know about his day to day choices now and when did those habits form?
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Mark Galeotti
It's worth noting. After all, we know so much less about Putin's life these days, really, ever since COVID but especially now, even if we go back to his time in the 1990s, when he had risen to become deputy mayor of what had then become St. Petersburg, that there was this sense that, first of all, precisely, Putin had a slightly different time frame to everyone else. I mean, there was a rather infamous striptease bar which he almost used as his office. And that's where you went if you wanted to meet him. And it might well be that you'd be meeting him at 8 o' clock in the evening, certainly not 8 o'
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Commercial Narrator
clock in the morning.
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Mark Galeotti
So, you know, already at that stage, there was that sense of a slightly different time frame. And that actually is in some ways a power move. It's not just simply about when. When his natural sleep cycle is. It's also. It makes people actually have to observe his time frame.
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Interviewer
Yeah.
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Mark Galeotti
The same way as he makes people wait, infamously as. As a little sort of power game. So too this. So certainly back in the 1990s, we had begun to see this emerge. Of course, at that point, he wasn't the boss, so he couldn't just simply dictate how things work, but nonetheless, the first signs were already there.
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Interviewer
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- [19:43]
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Mark Galeotti
If you believe the current narrative, he has always been religious. I mean, this is a man who, after all, was baptized. In practice, we've seen no real signs of particular religiosity until definitely into his presidency. And then look, in part, this is a political issue. His alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church has been phenomenally useful for him. Remember that the Metropolitan of the Church, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has described Putin as a miracle sent by God. And in some ways, the Russian Orthodox Church has acted as another one of the cheerleaders for Putinism and in return has been showered with all kinds of indulgences and benefits and indeed government contracts. So this is a political act, but it also, I think we can assume it is rather more so. You know, he has regularly in the past gone to the monastery in Greece, which is regarded as one of the great holy sites of the Orthodox faith. So, you know, he has, as it were, grown into it. The interesting thing is that it doesn't seem to have curbed his particular passions, whether it's in terms of his known proclivity of having mistresses or indeed his willingness to have people murdered on the needs of the state. So there is as it were, apparently Putin the believer. But then there is also Putin the politician and Putin the self indulgent kleptocrat. And none of these seem to kind of constrain the other.
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Interviewer
You're painting a very pragmatic picture. Putin has launched five major military campaigns. I believe so. The second Chechen war, Russo Georgian war, Donbas, Crimea, and the full scale invasion of Ukraine. Please add if I've neglected to mention any. Of course, yes. What have they revealed about his worldview, how he sees Russia's place in history and his appetite for risk?
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Mark Galeotti
Putin is actually surprisingly risk averse given the whole macho Persona that has been sold. Although fortunately we don't see it so much these days. But back in the day, the photos of him riding bare chested and whatever else. That said, though, on the one hand, look, he is clearly a nationalist. One can argue whether or not anything that he's done has really been good for Russia. But nonetheless, to him, he sees his great mission as president as being precisely too, as he put it, to lift Russia up off its knees. And he doesn't have a problem with the use of military force as an instrument. It's not his only instrument. He's perfectly willing to use trade deals and diplomacy and whatever else. But the point is, it is, you know, another tool in his toolbox is the army that he's been building up pretty much from the first day he was president. That said, he has always been cautious in the past in that he has picked fights that he knew he could win or that he didn't have to worry too much if he lost the second Chechen war. He accumulated a huge force much, much more extensive and much better prepared than during the second Chechen war to actually go and crush this rebellious province, Georgia. I mean, there was no question but that Russia had a massive military preponderance over Georgia. If we look at, think of the example deployment into Syria. I mean, essentially it was just Russian special forces, Russian aircraft and Russian mercenaries. And in some ways, if things had gone badly in Syria, as they eventually did, he could withdraw his forces without really any kind of particular impact on the motherland. So he always picked wars that he thought he could win easily, and that includes, after all, his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, because he was convinced. This is a man who doesn't really believe Ukraine exists as a country. He had convinced himself that the Ukrainians wouldn't really resist. And therefore this could be another quick few weeks of maybe some fighting, a few months of pacification operations, and then Pull the troops out now. He was catastrophically wrong that time. But nonetheless, it does say something about the fact that on the whole, Putin does not take what he would regard as unnecessary risks in terms of foreign
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Interviewer
policy or political failures. Do you still see evidence of what you said of him as a child and his approach to work and martial arts, where he might not be the biggest, but he can really take a hit, or is he a lot more fragile?
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Mark Galeotti
Look, Russia can take a lot of hits, as we have seen. And even in the current situation, it looks unlikely that the Russian economy is going to crumble, or the Russian military we pushed out of Ukraine or anything like that. I think particularly the point about the sort of extrapolation of the whole martial arts notion is this idea that, you know, a small kid from the wrong side of town in Leningrad can nonetheless take on people who are much bigger than him because he knows how to fight. So, too, there is this sense that Russia is an asymmetric great power. Sure, it doesn't have anything like the economic strength of a United States or indeed of a China these days, but it has, firstly, will, the power to actually keep fighting regardless, and secondly, an ability to fight in unexpected ways, whether it's moving into the realms of hybrid warfare and cyber attacks with the west or whatever else. So I think that's his sense of what you might say, what makes Russia still a great power, even if in all the kind of conventional indices of economic strength or whatever else, it doesn't anymore have that kind of clout.
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Interviewer
Something you argue very persuasively is that the west can sometimes make the mistake of overstating Putin's level of. Of chess grandmaster strategy, because they perceive things that are actually improvisation from Russia as part of some grand plan. What do you think is the biggest mistake that the west makes, the biggest distortion that they have about Putin and how he operates?
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Mark Galeotti
I think the biggest problem is that the West, I mean, like human beings, are creatures that are designed to look for patterns. And sometimes where there is no pattern, we create one. And that's very much what happens with Putin. Putin tries lots of stuff. He improvises. He's opportunistic. Today's policy may not be quite the same as tomorrow's. He has a rough sense of where he wants to get to, but he doesn't have a clear roadmap. And yet we too often do two things. One is that we use him as a grand alibi. Everything that goes wrong is somehow Putin's fault. But above all, we put that into an Artificially strategic construction. That seems to imply that somehow Putin is always two steps ahead of us, and whatever happens is whatever he wanted to happen anyway. And we focus so much on trying to work out what Putin's strategy is, rather than realize that there is no strategy. There is just simply a lot of improvisation. And therefore, that's the nature of the threat that we face.
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Interviewer
That makes this next question a little bit harder. What does Putin's personal history suggest about what he might do in future?
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Mark Galeotti
I have to say that, and this is me playing amateur psychologist, that in some ways, Putin's greatest motivating factor is fear. In his early years, it was fear being a small kid, and therefore, you know, you do martial arts, you join the KGB, which basically made you bulletproof. Then in the 1990s, he was motivated by fear of once again being impoverished. He was grabbing whatever resources and assets he could get, taking bribes, moving companies into his or his friends control, that kind of thing. Now, obviously, the fear is of Russia being vulnerable, but above all for himself, that he will find himself removed from power, marginalized, and even after his death, forgotten. So I think that is the key driver. This is actually a very insecure man. And that constant quest for security, a quest that can never be actually achieved, you know, he's never going to be able to feel, that's it. I'm fine. If he had been sensible in 2014, after he'd taken Crimea, he would have stopped. But no, there's always that sense of, oh, I need to do a little bit more, I need to push a little bit harder, because otherwise, who knows what will happen.
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Interviewer
Last question mark. Just for fun. So your brilliant book, we need to Talk About Putin begins with a quote from Donald Trump from 2015, and it says, putin is a nicer person than I am. Is that true?
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Mark Galeotti
Putin does, I would suggest, worse things. I mean, Trump can create all kinds of terrible things, but in many ways, I think, without really realizing what he's doing, whereas Putin is more likely to know what he's doing. However, if. And it breaks my heart to be trying to find some sort of excuses for Putin, not least given that Putin is the man who, after all, has banned me from Russia indefinitely since 2022. But nonetheless, look, at least Putin, I think, is driven by a belief that he's doing something that is good for his country. Now, there's massive amounts of self justification, and in practice, I think when historians look back, they will see his reign as being in two parts. First part of a genuine nation builder, and then the second part in which, because of self indulgence and bad choices, he increasingly rips this country and its future apart. But nonetheless, he does at least believe in something. So I would argue that although he does worse things than Donald Trump, he may do them for better reasons.
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Interviewer
Mark Gagliotti thank you so much for your time today.
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Mark Galeotti
A pleasure.
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