Mark Bennett (2:41)

My mother in law was one of these people who was hypnotized. I think that's the correct word to use. I think she was hypnotized and sent into a kind of like trance like state by this steady kind of drumbeat of propaganda and hatred that emanated from Russian television almost around the clock. And if it wasn't television, it was radio. If it wasn't radio, it was the newspapers.

Manveen Rana (3:03)

If the media is telling you to hate the west, that will have a toxic effect on your relationship with your British son in law.

Mark Bennett (3:10)

As the only Western person, person from the west that she knew, obviously I became kind of the focus of this laser kind of hatred that she now had for Britain, for the United States, for Europe, for Ukraine. It became increasingly difficult to have a normal conversation. And so eventually I just stopped.

Manveen Rana (3:31)

How have millions of Russians been brainwashed into believing the Kremlin's view of the how did the country sleepwalk into totalitarianism? And how did one man remake Russia in his own paranoid image, informed by his firsthand experience of the country's recent history? Mark's new book, the Descent, answers all of those questions and more. The story today how Russia spiraled into madness.

Mark Bennett (4:10)

I've always been interested in the Soviet Union, in Russia, growing up during the Cold War, my parents gave me a copy of Master Margherita by Mikhail Bulgakov when I was a teenager, which is a surrealist novel about the devil paying a trip to Soviet Moscow. And I basically wanted to go and see it with my own eyes. So when the chance came to teach English, I decided it would be a good idea to head east for a while. I didn't expect to go there for 25 years, but anyway, that's how it

Manveen Rana (4:42)

worked out 25 years later. What was it that made you think, I really have to leave now with your family in tow?

Mark Bennett (4:51)

After Putin sent tanks into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russian government introduced a new law banning what they called fake news. And these crimes punishable by seven and 15 years in prison. Their definition of fake news was anything that wasn't contained on the Russian Ministry of Defense's website about the war in Ukraine. And then when that happened, I think kind of like 95% of Western journalists left. I kind of hung on for another three months. And then at the end of May 2022, I got a call from an editor at the Times who said that the News UK security team thought I was going to be arrested and it was time to leave. After which didn't really have a choice.

Manveen Rana (5:32)

Mark, you were telling us about your mother in law and how she was influenced by all the messaging in Russian state media. All the messaging coming out of the government. Is it possible to live there right now and think differently right now?

Mark Bennett (5:50)

Yeah. I know people who live in Moscow, in other cities in Russia, who oppose the war, who oppose Putin. Before 2022, it was possible to say those things out loud. But after that, it became almost suicidal to voice any dissent in Russia. I mean, amazingly, some people still do go out on the streets with signs or write in social media like, no war, but there's no kind of mass movement and most people just stay quiet.

Manveen Rana (6:16)

And are those just sort of little pockets of academia, intelligentsia, people who are looking outwards, you know, for the bulk of the Russian population? Is it just easier to believe the message you're being fed 24 hours a day?

Mark Bennett (6:31)

Yeah. I mean, there is support for the war and it's quite high. There's support for Putin. But, I mean, I think that things are starting to change now because of economic consequences. And I think the scale of the losses in Ukraine amongst the Russian military has become very noticeable. In March 2026, the mobile Internet services were closed down in Moscow, which was unprecedent step. I think it kind of brought home to a lot of people that this was another consequence of a war, of the war in Ukraine. But then even here, we can see kind of the Kremlin's propaganda starting up. Russian state television, on one of its regular entertainment programs, broadcasts a group of children singing a song about how good it was to live in a country where there was no longer any Internet. And the lyrics were incredible. They were like, there are no websites, there are no blogs. We're all going to play badminton.

Manveen Rana (7:42)

Mark your 25 years in Moscow mirrors such a key period in the history of the country where it could have gone in so many different directions. So take us back to the beginning. Take us back to when you arrived in Moscow. What was it like then for Russians, and just explain the circumstances in which Vladimir Putin first came to power. Remind us how that happened.

Mark Bennett (8:09)

So I arrived in 1997, when President Yeltsin was in his second term, and I think it's fair to say that Russia was chaotic, violent in many places, but that also people in the country were freer to say things that they were freer than they'd ever been in their history. The idol of communism, which spread everywhere social strife, animosity and unparalleled brutality, which instilled fear in humanity, has collapsed. It has collapsed, never to rise again. I am here to assure you we shall not let it rise again in our land. But on the other hand, there was Kind of massive poverty. People weren't getting paid their wages on time. A friend told me that mother worked at a fish factory. Instead of getting her wages, she was being baiting fish. And they would just sit there and eat mackerel soup all week, but then buy bread to go with it.

Manveen Rana (9:03)

Yeah, you can't pay your electricity bill in fish.

Mark Bennett (9:05)

Yeah. So the Russians started to call it this kind of period of democracy, shitocracy, kind of a play on words. In Russian, poverty and deprivations became associated with democracy, or the flawed version of democracy that existed on the Yeltsin. And it made Russians more open to the idea that what they needed to save the country was an iron fist, a man from the KGB who would come in and crack down. And that's essentially how Putin came to power.

Manveen Rana (9:40)

How was he viewed by both the Russians, but also by foreign powers when he was first elected? Was this a moment of hope?

Mark Bennett (9:49)

Well, I mean, when he was first elected in 2000, lots of people who would go on to oppose him, they supported him. They thought that he was going to lead the country towards this kind of brighter future. I mean, obviously some people were immediately suspicious. It's like, he's from the kgb. Nothing good is going to happen. I think in the west, they were willing to kind of give him a chance and encourage good relations with him, and often turned a blind eye to, for example, human rights abuses in Chechnya. George W. Bush met Putin during his. During Putin's first term and said, I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. I looked into his eyes and I saw his soul. He's a man we can do business with. In 2003, Putin and his wife Lyudmila came to Buckingham palace for a state banquet. This was after Putin had closed down the only remaining independent television station. So he comes to Buckingham palace, the Queen tells him that Russia is now our friend and our partner, and we wish you luck. My message to you, Mr. President, is therefore one of admiration, respect and support. Putin kind of sits there in his dinner jacket, looking very pleased with himself. I'm Blair. Tony Blair seemed again to be more interested in doing business with Russia than anything else. Essentially, Anna Pletkovska, the Russian opposition journalist from Nova Gazeta, who was later murdered, assassinated on Putin's birthday. She asked Blair about why he was kind of ignoring the bad things that were already happening. And he said, according to her column in Nova Gazeta, that as Prime Minister, it's my job to like Mr. Putin. Not coincidentally, of course, that this time the British oil industry, for example, was investing massively in Russia. I don't think it's surprising that he is and presents himself as a strong leader, as a patriotic leader for Russia. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing, provided it's combined with a healthy attitude to the outside world, which in his case, it is.

Manveen Rana (12:00)

And initially you point out that things were already starting to go wrong. There was a crackdown on some media freedoms. People were starting to notice that things weren't as democratic as the hope had been. But what was life like in Putin's Russia? You know, was it sort of an improvement from the poverty of the Yeltsin years? How were ordinary people experiencing it?

Mark Bennett (12:22)

Yeah, living standards improved rapidly. I mean, Putin was very lucky because the price of oil shot up immediately. He introduced a flat tax rate of 13% for everyone in the country, which helped businesses, et cetera. Shopping centers started to spring up everywhere. Russians started to be able to take kind of foreign holidays, and things seemed to be on the up. I mean, in sport, Russia was doing well. It won the Eurovision Song Contest. I think it was 2008. But even that, at the time, you could see something was still not quite right, because state television, they took it so seriously. They were like, this is another sign that Russia is regaining its superpower status.

Manveen Rana (12:58)

I don't think anyone's ever described the Eurovision Song Contest as quite that before, but a sense of destiny, Russia's great destiny. If we're looking back now and trying to understand how Putin got to the place he did, a lot of it seems to come come down to his version of Russian history and Russia's place in the world, that sense of Russian destiny. So just tell us, you know, what was the story he would tell about Russia?

Mark Bennett (13:23)

I think one of the key elements in Putin's view of Russia was the way that the Kremlin organized victory day every May 9, which is the celebration of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. When the first Victory Day attended, people would just go out and drink beer. It was just a day off. People would go to parties. I remember once walking through Red Square and some company was handing out, as an advertising stunt, these fake rabbit ears. Everyone was walking around with fake rabbit ears. And I was asked, what does rabbit ears have to do with World War II? I'm like, everyone just don't know. Who cares? But it just seemed like another holiday to some extent. And then as the years went by and you could see the confrontation with the west was slowly starting to heat up, Victory Day become almost like a religious holiday. And then the very concept of victory itself became this obsession. Victory in World War II. But also the idea that one of Putin's early slogans was, Putin's plan for Russia is a victory. I mean, on one hand, it was difficult for an outsider to criticize because the Soviet Union lost over 20 million people during World War II, and they really did stop the Nazis. So it was difficult to say, like, hey, maybe you're going a little bit overboard. But I think it was 2020. This Russian schoolgirl stood on a bed of. Stood barefoot on a bed of nails for 75 minutes.

Manveen Rana (14:52)

Wow.

Mark Bennett (14:53)

To honor the memory of her grandfathers who had died in World War II. That's, I think, one of the early signs for me. I think when I realized that this kind of constant stream of propaganda was slowly driving people out of their minds,

Manveen Rana (15:08)

was there a moment where it felt like, you know, even though those ideas were sort of being seeded quite earlier on, you know, the ideas of a bigger, greater Russia, the sort of the KGB paranoia, was there an inflection point? Was there a point where suddenly Putin decided this was the destiny of Russia and he could openly change the way the Russian people would look at their place in the world?

Mark Bennett (15:36)

I mean, usually his speech at the International Security Conference in Munich is cited as the moment when his intentions became clear, when he accused America of wanting to dominate the planet and that Russia wouldn't stand for this and that Russia needed to be respected again. Incidentally, Russia, we are constantly being taught about democracy, but for some reason, those who teach us do not want to learn themselves. First and foremost, the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural, and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

Manveen Rana (16:17)

And that was a big moment on the world stage, because up until then, Putin had sort of been you know, invited to NATO conferences. He was sort of, you know, being lauded by the West. That was quite a stark moment.

Mark Bennett (16:31)

Yeah, it was. But then for a lot of people in Russia, and I think a lot of people in the west as well, they saw that as his kind of Swanson, because then in 2008, he stepped down and became prime minister, and Medvedev, who was this kind of, like, young lawyer who was into kind of Western rock, he was like, a big fan of Deeper Purple, became president of the country, and they Kind of saw that, okay, that was Putin just letting off steam before he hands over to the younger generation who are more kind of Western orientated. But it wasn't his swan song. It was almost his manifesto for the Future. Because in 2012, he took the presidency back from Medvedev and began his path towards full scale war in Ukraine and the elimination of all dissent and all independent thought within Russia.

Manveen Rana (17:22)

Coming up, Is this Russia's descent into madness or its leaders? What do we know about Putin's state of mind? That's in just a moment, Mark. You've been describing how Putin has become quite wary and resentful of the west and how he's preoccupied with a sense of Russia's greatness as he enters his third term in office. At what point does he start to channel all of that frustration in the direction of Ukraine?

Mark Bennett (18:12)

I mean, I think he's always been obsessed with Ukraine. There were documents that were discovered not so long ago where he was talking to a European diplomat, I think it was German, about Ukraine and how it should never have been allowed to leave the Soviet Union. And this was in the 90s when he was just an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg. So I mean, it's just obsessed him throughout his life, really.

Manveen Rana (18:33)

And is that true of like, the Russian people? Have they always. Has that been the, the part of the end of the Soviet empire that they really regretted?

Mark Bennett (18:42)

Not all.

Manveen Rana (18:43)

Really.

Mark Bennett (18:43)

Not all. I mean, the idea about Crimea belongs to Russia. Until Putin decided that it did, no one cared. The only people who said, I bring back Crimea were like die hard nationalists and they were repressed by the Kremlin because they would go on protests and call for Russia to Annex Crimea. In 2014, there was an opinion poll which asked, do you think Russia should intervene in Ukraine? And around 75% of Russians said no. Under no circumstances should Russia intervene in Ukraine. Of course that will change. Once Putin annexed Crimea, sent troops into Donbas and the propaganda kicked off, which is frightening because, I mean, it just shows the power of propaganda.

Manveen Rana (19:25)

And you're right, this does show the power of propaganda. It does show what you can do when the state media organization kicks in. When all the messaging turns, how did they do it? I mean, if you were watching TV at the time, what sort of messages were you hearing? What was it that made you think this is an entirely justified war, Ukraine should never have left Russia?

Mark Bennett (19:48)

Well, from 2014, the messaging was very emotive. For example, one famous story that was run by Russian state media was that Ukrainian troops had crucified A three year old Ukrainian boy and made his mother watch. It was just completely false.

Manveen Rana (20:04)

Wow. Total fake news.

Mark Bennett (20:05)

Total fake news. Yeah, 100%. Eventually they pulled it, but the damage was done. And then there was the whole kind of idea that Ukrainians are Nazis. I mean, there was a kind of very vocal far right movement in Ukraine. But to say that the whole of Ukraine was Nazi or that the government was Nazi, I mean, it would have been like saying that Britain was a Nazi state in the 1970s because the National Front was the fourth biggest party, I think, by vote share in 1979. I mean, Britain clearly wasn't a far right country. But all that kind of died down again. I mean, before 2022, the state media coverage was quite calm. That's why a lot of people thought that the war, that Putin wasn't going to send tanks in. I remember before the full scale invasion of Ukraine happened, I was kind of walking the streets of Moscow asking people, do think there's going to be a war? And people were like, why would there be a war? Like, are you stupid? Like, no one wants war. I mean, the Kremlin was denying before the war that they were going to send troops in. Then it was just almost as if it got kind of like sucked into this like memory hole. And state television didn't explain why they'd lied. People who had said there wouldn't be a war, they suddenly started supporting it and come on, out of all these justifications for the war, which was also quite scary to watch, actually.

Manveen Rana (21:14)

Yeah. Watch people being convinced.

Mark Bennett (21:16)

Well, watch people being convinced, Welch. People kind of almost erasing their minds of the thoughts they'd had just a few days before.

Manveen Rana (21:24)

Yeah.

Mark Bennett (21:24)

And then just replacing them with something which had come from state television.

Manveen Rana (21:29)

The state media messaging is so strong. I mean, in your time there, did you sort of see how they work? Did you see how they can twist a message or can mislead the public?

Mark Bennett (21:40)

They're kind of masters at masters of deceit. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, there was a protest against this in the center of Moscow. I think around 50,000 people turned up to demonstrate against this. I was there as well, covering it. And just before it started, I saw this presenter from state television, state controlled television, anyway, and she was standing next to a road slightly away from the protesters. And this road, it wasn't where the protest was taking place, but there were a few people coming towards the main protest with flags. Yeah. But like a handful later and the camera on it, she stood it and did a stand up as you can see there's just a few kind of like deluded, like idiots basically come to this protest.

Manveen Rana (22:22)

A few.

Mark Bennett (22:23)

Because she. They weren't showing the 50,000. They were showing a few people coming up the road with flags towards the main protest. So I went up to her and said, so why did you do that? Why did you lie? I mean, you can see there's 50,000 people here. And she was like, you do your job and I'll do mine. All right? And just walked off. Wow.

Manveen Rana (22:37)

As blatant as that?

Mark Bennett (22:38)

Well, yeah. I mean, it's just a career for a lot of people, you know, I mean, that's the debate. Do the people who push this, like, ridiculous, hateful kind of murderous propaganda, do they believe it, or are they just doing it for money and for career? I mean, I think it's kind of half and half by now. I think maybe some of them started doing it just because they were cynical and they wanted money, they wanted promotions, whatever. But after you do it for so long, it's kind of like an actor who kind of grows into the role.

Manveen Rana (23:04)

It's how you see the world.

Mark Bennett (23:05)

Yeah, yeah. And it's. And it's also not. It's to your disadvantage not to see the world like that.

Manveen Rana (23:10)

Yeah.

Mark Bennett (23:11)

You know, so.

Manveen Rana (23:12)

And clearly it has a huge impact on people. You know, you described your mother in law earlier. Were you able to see. I mean, were people around you being as affected as your mother in law? Were people worried about members of their family who were entirely believing all of this?

Mark Bennett (23:30)

Yeah. I mean, one woman told me that her dad was watching two televisions and listening to the radio at the same time.

Manveen Rana (23:36)

Oh, wow.

Mark Bennett (23:37)

And he would just scream at her. She was an enemy of the people. If she said anything against the war. Sometimes you would talk to people and they would just. You wouldn't even be talking to them about Ukraine. The conversation wouldn't even be about Ukraine. But they would just start obsessing about it themselves. I remember once I was on Russia's Arctic coast in this fishing village, and I was hanging out with some fishermen. One of them suddenly started shouting, war. War is all around us. And then they started quizzing me on Donbas, like, donbas is ours. Right. I'm Crimea. And then one of them was gutting fish with this huge blade, and he picked it up and started waving it in front of my eyes and talking just like, just this kind of stream of insanity about Ukraine, Druids, the British royal family.

Manveen Rana (24:21)

Wow.

Mark Bennett (24:21)

But then I was thinking, like, this is like the far north of Russia. Crimea is in the Black Sea. I think differences can possibly make to your lives. You're living in this kind of fishing village with no infrastructure at all. You don't have any money yet. You're so proud, and it's so important to you that Crimea is part of Russia. So, yeah, I mean, became quite depressing a lot of the time to talk to people and see how brainwashed they became. But then it was also kind of quite uplifting to see how many people have resisted the brainwashing and were trying to organize opposition movements. Were trying to organize protests. Yeah.

Manveen Rana (24:54)

I mean, how easy is it to voice dissent now? Just describe what's happened, how much it's changed.

Mark Bennett (25:02)

You can go to prison in Russia now for eight years for writing. For example, you write the Russian army bombed Mariupol. On social media, they can arrest you, put you in prison for eight years. It happens all the time. I think the youngest person to have been arrested was 15. He was arrested for handing out leaflets about Putin. Like, do you want this man as your president? He got five years. So, yeah, I mean, it's just. Just. It's. It's extremely dangerous. I spoke to one person, and they said it's like. It feels like you're walking along a tightrope above an abyss. It's just like one stumble and you fall. You're gone forever.

Manveen Rana (25:46)

Mark, you've been describing how over a number of years, Russia, through the use of propaganda, through the messaging, through the increasingly harsh punishments for people who did speak out, Russia sort of descends into a state of almost a certain kind of madness during that period. What's happening to Putin? Because there's been a lot of speculation about his own sort of ability to judge the truth and his view of the world and how, you know, whether he's too cocooned to understand what's really happening. How do you assess what's happening to him in the Kremlin? During this period, I think we saw

Mark Bennett (26:26)

a change in Putin's not necessarily mindset, but I think that he became more extreme and more prone to taking kind of radical decisions. During the coronavirus pandemic, where he was just locked. Locked himself up basically in his residence, and during this time when he was in this extreme state of isolation, his circle just reduced to hardliners, basically, and they just sat there and discussed the West. They just sat there and they discussed Ukraine. I mean, this isn't to excuse Putin, obviously, but he was just locked in this echo chamber, and he wasn't getting any feedback or any information at All. There's no one of Putin's top aides who was at the time who said that the west wanted to invade Russia because they wanted Siberia. And the reason they wanted Siberia was because they all wanted to relocate there after the explosion of the super volcano on the Yellowstone park, which would destroy most of humanity. But Siberia will be left. But I mean, but it has that. I mean, it started to get extreme.

Manveen Rana (27:22)

So, you know, I think what's really fascinating about that is that we all know the Russian state exercises this huge propaganda arm. It tries to manipulate people into believing certain things, but you start to get a hint that at the center of it all, the people putting these messages out kind of believe them.

Mark Bennett (27:39)

I mean, I think it's all coming from Putin. I mean, it's coming from the rantings and ravings of Putin and the few people around him who are unhinged and have become increasingly unhinged and detached from reality. He's been in power now for 26 years. And I mean, it's a kind of cliche that power corrupts, but I mean, I think it also, at least in Putin's case, I think power also drives you out of your mind, really. And then it's also again, this echo chamber, because then state media starts to repeat the idea that Putin is the only person who can rule Russia. I think he genuinely believes that there's no one else who can rule Russia and that his mission is to make Russia great and that he has to conquer Ukraine, he has to punish the Ukrainians. He's no longer what I think we would identify as sane.

Manveen Rana (28:30)

Yeah, it's very hard to see how you could be rational in that position, especially when you have a cult like media kind of reflecting your own manipulation and your own sort of self image back at you.

Mark Bennett (28:44)

Yeah, yeah.

Manveen Rana (28:46)

Mark, is there something about the historical context of Russia and the lived memory in Russia that explains why the population is so willing to put up with Putin for so long and not see that as a problem?

Mark Bennett (29:02)

Yeah, I mean, throughout the centuries, Russians have never had a choice as to how their country is run. They've always been oppressed by the man at the top. And for many people, that's kind of become the natural order of things. It's reflected or manifested in apathy, whereas people feel like they can't change anything, so why bother? I mean, I remember I went once to this village in Russia's Black Earth region where environmentalists were measuring uranium which had kind of leaked into the local well, and this woman came up and said, Just leave us alone, Willia. Why can't you just leave us alone? I was like, but don't you care that it's uranium coming into you and that your kids are going to be drinking it? And she was like, we don't decide anything. How can I decide? It's all decided in Moscow, just like, clear off and leave us alone. So that's kind of like apathy, that you can't change anything and that the average person doesn't actually. Their lives have no meaning at all.

Manveen Rana (30:01)

Do you have any sympathy for ordinary Russians who are, you know, this is. That they are just getting a diet of these messages through, you know, social media too, but certainly sort of state media, the papers everywhere. Do you have any sympathy for why they would be think in a particular way?

Mark Bennett (30:20)

That's a really difficult question. I mean, I have sympathy for my mother in law because she's my mother in law when it comes to a. And I feel essentially she's a good person, but her mind has just been kind of damaged and twisted by state propaganda. And I know she's a good person because I knew her when she wasn't a bad person, when she didn't wish death upon, like the west and Ukraine. But when I think about the people I know, not my friends, but the people I knew who support the war and fell completely for propaganda, I don't even think of it in terms of sympathy anymore. They're just dead to me. I don't even think about them, really. I don't want anything to do with them. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to try and persuade them that they're wrong, because I tried a little bit at the beginning of the war, but it's pointless. And it just depressed me. That's probably wrong because, I mean, if anything's going to happen in Russia, we need to somehow convince these people that Putin isn't God, you know, and that Ukraine isn't full of Nazis. But I mean, for me personally, I don't know how to do it and I don't have the energy to try and convince these people that they're on.

Manveen Rana (31:36)

That was Mark Bennett's foreign correspondent for the Times, whose new book is called the Descent, Witnessing Russia's Spiral into Madness under Putin. The producer today was Michaela Arneson, with help from Grace Kehoe. The executive producer was Tim Walklate. Sound design was by Ross Burns and theme composition was by Malicetto. If you'd like to get in touch with us, do drop us a line to the story@thetimes.com thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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