In Moscow's Shadows

In Moscow's Shadows 229: Heroes and Villains

• Mark Galeotti • Episode 229

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To end the year, instead of the grand sweep of geopolitics, let's look at a collection of people making the news, sometimes whether they like it or not.

(PS: Listened to JD Vance at the Moscow Security Conference? A Freudian slip there -- of course, I meant Munich Security Conference!)

And of course, as befits the last episode of the year, a little round up and thanks to everyone listening -- and doubly so, to my paying Patrons.

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MG:

This is some of the people who have made the news in the past week or so.

MG:

Hello, I'm Mark Galeotti, and welcome to my view of Russia, In Moscow Shadows. This podcast of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conducttr.

MG:

Okay then, so let's end the year with a in some ways rather unfocused episode that looks at some of the people in and also out of the news. Heroes, villains, and everything in between.

MG:

And obviously we'll start with Vladimir Zelensky, who is off to the United States again to Mar-a -Lago, Donald Trump's Versailles. And this is obviously the latest iteration in the shuttle diplomacy process that is now around what is the 20-point plan. Now, let's be clear, this 20-point plan is, in my opinion, as much of a non-starter as the original 28-point plan, in that the 28-point plan was clearly ridiculously skewed towards Russia's interests, and this 20-point plan very much speaks to what Kyiv wants to have sorted and doesn't really offer the Russians anything. And in particular, this notion of a demilitarized zone. Let me just talk briefly about that and why I think it is a complete non-starter. Putin is demanding that the Ukrainians surrender the remaining fifth of the contested Donetsk region. What Ukraine is proposing in return is that they can withdraw their forces from this region, but a demilitarized zone does not carry with it any transfer of sovereignty and authority. So this area would still be run by Ukraine, indeed, specifically policed by Ukrainian police officers. It's just that there wouldn't be Ukrainian troops there. And Russia would be obliged to withdraw its heavy forces, whatever that means, an equal amount back. So in other words, not only does Putin, according to this, not get the territory he wants, he actually has to withdraw his forces and indeed pull them out of another 500 or so square miles of ground that has been taken up in various other regions. I mean, clearly that's actually worse for Putin than the current situation, rather than better.

MG:

So generally speaking, I think that there is that degree to which both sides are continuing to play to an audience of one. They're both trying to show to Donald Trump that they are still in the game, that they're still willing to work with him, and it's the other side that is the obstacle. Now, that doesn't mean that the process is useless. This is the whole thing about shuttle diplomacy. It is all about the back and forth, the constant edit and re-edit of the fundamental documents. Just that usually we ought to be not seeing this. It ought to be being done out of sight behind closed doors by experts rather than in full view of the global press.

MG:

But let's just appreciate that's the situation. Zelensky says 90% of the issues have been sorted. Again, to a degree, he may well be playing to the audience. But there's, I think, more than a little bit of truth there. The problem is, of course, that the remaining 10%, especially Donetsk and security guarantees, are the ones that are still probably the rocks on which this process will break. But still, for the moment, Zelensky is in the game.

MG:

But the point is this is taking up a lot of bandwidth of his. This is taking up a lot of his time. He still hasn't replaced Andrey Yermak as his chief of staff. Remember Yermak who stepped down when he ended up in the middle of a very serious corruption investigation by Nabu, the independent anti corruption agency. He's not quite off the scene, that said. Initially he said he was going to go and serve at the front, but there's no sign of any such martial endeavour so far. Instead, he apparently spends the evenings at the state residence in the Shishi neighborhood of Koncha Zaspa, and is still in daily contact with his old mate Zelensky. So without a chief of staff, Zelensky is still having now to both run the country on his own as well as be this kind of super foreign minister. And if that was not enough on his plate, Nabu has actually just now raided the Rada building, the parliamentary building, claiming that it uncovered a cabal of parliamentarians selling their votes for money. So, you know, the whole issue of corruption is really coming to the fore at the very time when Zelensky really needs to be focusing on either addressing the issues in the country and therefore the support base for the war effort, or addressing the international political dimension of both peace talks and indeed aid and general support.

MG:

With the current polls, and look, polls out of reach of an election without a clear set of platforms and so forth, are always a bit of a fantasy process. But nonetheless, the current polls suggest that in an election, Zelensky would lose out to both the ex-head of the military, General Zaluzhny, currently Prince Across the Water as ambassador in London, but also the military intelligence chief and ultra hawk, Kirill Budanov. Now, I can't help feeling that Zelensky's future political career so much depends on the outcomes of the talks and the war. So in some ways, as I said, this is all a a bit abstract. And that is, of course, if Zelensky wants such a future career. I mean he must be exhausted, he must actually quite like the idea. What do I know? But nonetheless, of able to step down and not being the constant spotlight and indeed firing line. But that's the way that at the moment so much of Ukraine's hopes rest on this single potential point of failure, but also point of triumph, Zelensky.

MG:

So let's move to the other side. Dmitry Kozak, former former negotiator for Russia or lead negotiator of Russia with Ukraine, former deputy head of the presidential administration, recently resigned, and who made it clear that it was to a large extent because he felt that he was frankly not being able to perform any kind of useful function because Putin didn't want to listen to his recommendations over Ukraine or over wider reform. And we had a couple of strategic leaks, one would say, one to the New York Times and one to the business newspaper RBC, in which it was made clear that he had been a sustained critic of the war from before the Ukrainian invasion of 2022 all the way to now, and indeed that he had promulgated this manifesto for a lovely potential future Russia: rule of law, Russian democracy, which doesn't fall prey to the same ills as Western democracy, etc, etc. Very similar in some ways, it's worth noting, to the kind of vision that Navalny had.

MG:

Anyway, on one level, this is being interpreted as a sign that not just Kozak but others are preparing the ground for a potential succession. The idea being that if Putin gets the kind of peace deal he wants so that he can finally claim triumph in Ukraine, that he then steps down and Kozak can be manoeuvred in as his successor. Now that would be an absolutely lovely outcome, in my opinion. I mean Kozak, you know let's be honest, Kozak is a liberal within the context of the current regime elite. So let's not overplay it. Remember, I I profiled him, the technocrat with the Cheshire Cat smile, back in October in Moscow Shadows 117, the 8th of October 2023. Why not go back and re-listen to it, if especially if you hadn't listened to it in the first place? So, you know, I think I think that a Kozak presidency would be a very great step forward, and indeed might well be a sort of transitional process towards a genuinely democratic basis for a transition. However, however, yes, this is the time of Christmas and New Year films which always involve wishes coming true. I don't think this is coming true.

MG:

And in fact, I don't actually think that this is a preparatory operation before a transition of power. No, I am sadly actually in the cynical camp that sees this instead as a political hit job to get Kozak off the scene once and for all. And the suspicion is that it's his arch rival Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration, who has been encouraging this. I'm not saying that for a moment that Kiriyenko bought the New York Times or anything like that, but you know, it is possible to encourage certain people to speak to certain journalists and generally put out the word, precisely to make Kozak look problematic in Putin's eyes. Now, I don't think anything bad is going to happen to Kozak. Putin is, as I've mentioned in the past, surprisingly loyal to those he regards as good soldiers, and is even willing to accept a certain degree of criticism as long as you do it behind closed doors and to his face. But this is the point. When it starts getting into leaks in the press, especially the Western press, then it's no longer within those acceptable parameters. And I think the outcome is much more likely that Kozak definitely comes off Putin's Christmas card list, and generally speaking, is sent further and further out, sort of adopting a position in that same kind of hinterland that, for example, former finance minister Kudrin occupies. Still someone whom Putin might look on with favour as an old friend, but certainly not someone who actually now has any kind of political traction, and certainly not brought in to discuss issues of the moment. Unfortunately, then this charming end-of-year fantasy of a Kozak administration is, in my opinion, oh, I would so love to be proven wrong, but anyway, is in my opinion not going to happen.

MG:

So if we're talking about people out of favour, let's talk about someone who was never really in favour. Sergey Udaltsov, who's head of the Left Front Marxist organization that is affiliated with, but frankly also rather critical of the official Communist Party. He is a nationalist, he's pro-war, but he's very definitely anti-Putin and you know a genuine leftist, who I think has frankly largely abandoned his earlier fanboyishness of Stalin, but nonetheless is still very definitely a Marxist. Now, Udaltsov has a tendency to spend his life in and out of prison. I mean, this is a guy who was seriously willing to put himself on the line. In 2014, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in the whole Bolotnaya Square case because of the protests then. Served his sentence in a general regime penal colony and was released on parole in 2017. Now he's been convicted on justifying terrorism charges and convicted, sorry, sentenced to six years in a maximum security penal colony, not so much fun. And all of this is because of an article that he posted online, simply supporting a group of Russian students from Bashkortostan who were accused of forming a terrorist organization in the so-called Ufa Marxists case. And the basis of the state's case against the Ufa Marxists was that in studying Lenin's writing, they were therefore essentially edging towards a commitment towards the violent overthrow of the state. And they brought out their tame historian who indeed argued that he found signs of extremism in Lenin's writing -- I mean, you think? -- and that therefore this was grounds as claiming that studying them was analogous to a call for that violent overthrow. I mean this is ridiculous, of course, but unfortunately this is what happens if you come into the crosshairs of the FSB. And it was interesting that with Udaltsov's case, Kommersant, a business paper, not exactly one which you regard as Marxism aligned, anyway, it noted that at the beginning of Udaltsov's hearings, the results of two expert examinations, one that was commissioned by the investigative committee and the other one from the Justice Ministry, they were added to the case. Both of them concluded that there were no calls for terrorism in Udaltsov's publications. So the state dragged out a third linguistic examination, a third tame expert, this time though conducted by an FSB specialist. And even this, who must be considered the tamest of the tame experts around, could only come up with the claim that as the publication didn't contain any explicit condemnation of the Ufa Marxists, it was therefore implicitly justifying their alleged actions. Very, very tenuous stuff.

MG:

Now, The Guardian, The Independent, The Washington Post all reported this, and kudos to them, but otherwise very little coverage in the West. And I think that's telling in that we still we want our Russian dissidents one of two things. We want them either to be cosily liberal or excitingly ultranationalist. Someone like Udaltsov doesn't really fit into the schema and therefore he tends to get ignored somewhat. But nonetheless, I do think I'm unfashionable in this, I do think that Udalsov, whether he turns out to be important as an individual himself, but nonetheless I think he represents something that is actually important and it's worth noting. Ever since the Prigozhin mutiny, the Kremlin has become increasingly concerned, not just about its obvious nationalist critics, people like Strelkov, but also the growing potential for what we could think of as a red-brown threat. In other words, one in which you have leftists and ultranationalists both examining a common critique of the regime. And I mean we we've already beginning to see this in all places the Tsargrad online news channel, which is often, I mean, while it's rabidly ultranationalist, and indeed Russian Orthodox aligned, but at the same time it's increasingly concentrating its fire on them, the powers that be, these sort of shadowy forces, you know, oligarchs and ministers and bureaucrats and politicians who are undermining the country, feathering their own nests at the expense of the masses, all that kind of thing. You know, a classic, in this respect, populist, neo-leftist vision of what's wrong with the country.

MG:

And I think this is something that we may well see in the future. The state has so heavily and viciously cracked down on liberal opposition that it has created this market opportunity for precisely an other brands of critiques of the regime. And the nationalist critique that says, frankly, Putin, for all his his talk about defending and elevating Russia's position, but who nonetheless is actually weakening it and selling it out to global capital and such like, can indeed fruitfully overlap politically with a leftist populist dimension that says everyone is getting hungry because a handful of fat cats at the top are enriching themselves, including through an imperial war. So again, I think the fate of Udaltsov, just simply as a canary in the mine, is going to be worth watching.

MG:

But if we're looking at extreme figures, let's talk about Stanislav Orlov. Rest in peace, O violent neo-Nazi, known by the Nom de Guerre Spaniard. Indeed, it's actually worth noting this has not been a good month for Russian neo-Nazis, what a shame. Couple of days ago, apparently a drone attack did for Denis Kapustin, who went by the pretty on the nose Nom de Guerre White Rex, because he was an ultranationalist, but also an ultranationalist who was supporting Kyiv. He commanded the Russian Volunteer Corps, which is actually a Ukrainian unit that is drawn from Russian deserters, defectors, emigres, and the like.

MG:

But anyway, to return to Orlov. He was the founder of Espaniola, which was a small force with an outsized and very dubious reputation fighting on the Russian side. Now Espaniola began as a notional private military company, but in practice it was part of the forces of the so-called Danetsk People's Republic, that has since been rolled into the wider Russian army. He'd been one of the Russian volunteers who fought in the Donbas early on in that undeclared conflict, eventually forming his own militia, Skull and Bones, before joining the Union of Donbas Volunteers and being reportedly involved in a Moscow-backed coup attempt in Montenegro in 2016 to try and forestall that country joining NATO.

MG:

Espaniola is not a nice unit, frankly, even by the standards of the Russian military. It recruits its members predominantly from both neo-Nazis and also, and again, there is a distinct Venn diagram overlap here, from ultras, particularly violent football fans, from the firms associated with Shakhtar, that's in Donetsk, Tska, Spartak, Lokomotiv, and Torpedo from Moscow, Zenit from St. Petersburg, Ural from Yekatharinburg, and also teams from southern Russia. So you get a sense, neo-Nazis and extreme violent football fans. So no wonder it had a particularly brutal reputation, even by the standards of its peers. But also, I mean, frankly, for being pretty gung-ho in a fight. I mean, it participated in the battles for Mariupol, Kherson, Bakhmut, Abdivka. And it's also actually, it's worth noting, unusual in allowing women not just to join, but to actually fight in its frontline Assault groups. There we go, you see. Equal rights for women, the neo-Nazi Creed.

MG:

Now, rumors of Orolov's death had been circulating for a while, and originally it was assumed that he fell in the war, like his pro-Ukrainian counterpart. However, since then, closed circuit television footage has emerged of an armed raid by security forces on his home in the Flotsky Dacha Corporative in Crimea. And well, he clearly was shot then. The claim is that he was shot resisting arrest on organized crime and arms and drug trafficking charges. But his partisans say this was a hit carried out by the state because he had become inconvenient. We can't honestly rule that out at all. Because if you look at the fate of various, again, often ultra-nationalist or even neo-Nazi militia commanders in the Donbas during the undeclared conflict between 2014 and 2022, there were several that it is pretty clear were carried out by the state just simply because the individuals had become a little too willful, a little too embarrassing, or a little too dangerous. So it looks like Orlov has gone. And, well, it is hardly coincidental that in October Espaniola had announced that it was "rebooting" and creating "new structures within the defense system and law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation." Well, what that actually means is that it's being taken over. I mean it's being merged with another far right organization, Russkaya Obshchina, Russian community, while its combat units are frankly disappearing into the bulk of the armed forces. Orolv was, however, allowed a lavish funeral in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the very ornate one that was rebuilt after it had been dynamited by the Bolsheviks. Because after all, in death he can be a hero. It's always very useful to have your heroes conveniently posthumous, because you can then make them into what you want. But nonetheless, Orlov's death, I think, is a sign, again, of the concerns that Moscow has about the growing potential, and I'd stress that, potential, for a political threat from the right. And in particular, if there is some kind of peace agreement, the risk for a stab in the back myth that says, you know, Putin started this war, he mishandled it from the first, and then he sold us out at the end. So I think that's something that they are, to some degree, preparing for. Let's have a break and then let's return. And isn't this a happy seasonal episode with another death?

MG:

Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs, and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash In Moscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mark Galeotti or on Facebook, Mark Galeotti on Russia. Now back to the episode.

MG:

So we're back, and I I promised another death. Whose death? Well that of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov. He was killed by a bomb under his car when he was coming out of his home in Moscow on the 22nd of December. And although it hasn't been officially admitted, it's a pretty safe bet that it was carried out by the Ukrainians. This is after all the third general killed in Moscow in twelve months, after there was General Kirillov, head of the Chemical Weapons Forces last December, and then General Moskalik in April. Now the repercussions, well, we'll have to wait to see. I mean, this is another massive embarrassment for the Federal Security Service, the FSB, but on the other hand, as far as Putin is concerned, they seem entirely coated in Teflon and never seem to actually suffer any downgrading of their status as a result of their blunder after blunder. So we'll have to wait and see. Is it going to change attitudes inside Russia or even amongst the high command? I suspect not. I mean, most Russians probably consider it just like the deaths of the volunteers on the front as just part of the cost of war, not something that affects them directly. And the density of attacks is probably, I'm guessing here, not great enough to really change attitudes within the high command. You know, if you really thought that you had a pretty good chance of being killed, then maybe you'd think twice about your continued willingness to support the war, or indeed your willingness to accept a promotion to a position at which you might come into Ukraine's crosshairs. But there are a hell of a lot of generals within the Russian Armed Forces, and I'm therefore not convinced that this will do more than just simply change perhaps the security precautions that people take about checking under their car and that kind of thing. Russia will have to adapt to terrorism if this war goes on in that way.

MG:

But implications are also present in terms of the way that this has led to not just criticisms of the FSB and the state, and a lack of security, again, as if you can put a security detail on every single general who might be a target, but also the fact that there's, and this is something that I noted in the Govorit Moskva weekly press roundup, concerns about the possibility that there may be a mole in the government or particularly within the Defence Ministry that is putting out the information as to where these people live. The trouble is there is so much, so-called Probyv, confidential information that is available for pay on the dark net, that frankly I don't think it'd be that difficult to find these people's addresses. But nonetheless, the more there is talk of a mole, the more problematic that is for Russia. Mole hunts are incredibly divisive and disruptive. Especially because if you don't find a mole, you don't know whether you simply haven't found the mole yet or whether there is no mole at all, and therefore the institutional momentum tends to keep the mole hunt happening, spreads paranoia. I mean, just as, in many ways, one of the most effective aspects of Russian hybrid war, subthreshold, grey zone, whatever it is, operations within Europe are to generate paranoia, so that every Wi-Fi outage, every drone sighting, every cyber attack somehow becomes attributed to the dread hand of Moscow. Well, so too, actually, every time that there is some kind of intelligence and security failure may begin to contribute to this sense that there is some kind of terrible Ukrainian mole somewhere. So we'll have to see what happens with that.

MG:

Now, it's interesting that Moskovsky Komsomolets and its rival Komsomolskaya Pravda, they ran pieces suggesting, in suspiciously identical words, that Sarvarov had been a pivotal figure. His actual role was commander of operational training directorate within the general staff. But he's not really been that involved in trying to operationalise the lessons of the war more broadly. He was mainly involved at higher level training for generals and colonels and such like. But anyway, they both suggested that he was a pivotal figure whose death was, quote, not just a blow to a person, but to one of the key functions of troop command and control. An attempt to weaken the intellectual potential of the Russian army. They both used those identical words, so clearly they were both cribbing off the same press release or whatever from the Defence Ministry. So was this in fact a terrible blow to the Russian armed forces? Well, Tsargrad, in my opinion, rather more accurately described him as, quote, not a key figure, but rather an effective specialist in the vast machinery of the Russian general staff. I think that's true. We have to recognise that Sarvarov was not in any way unique or indispensable. The whole point of a chain of command is you have someone who can step up to fill his position.

MG:

But overall, does this kind of campaign work? Obviously it's satisfying and morale boosting for the Ukrainians, and obviously it is shocking for a day or for a week. But is it more widely problematic? I think I'm going to do a future podcast on the, shall we say, the war behind the lines that both sides are waging in rather different ways. The Russians aren't focusing quite so much on assassinations and the like. But nonetheless, to try and look at actually whether it is genuinely disruptive, or whether in some ways it actually bolsters resolve and makes people angry. Because I think there's often this assumption that if we look at sabotage operations, we tend to overplay their value precisely because they are exciting and dramatic, and when they're carried out by people on our side, they are heroic. But we also have to think about whether they really have an impact proportionate to the effort involved, and also whether the impact can be counterproductive.

MG:

But let's move on and let's talk about Jacques Baud. Now you're probably thinking, who on earth is Jacques Baud? Well, he is a 70-year-old Swiss retired colonel, former intelligence analyst, and his name cropped up in the EU's latest package of sanctions, along with a whole array of facilitators of the shadow fleet transporting Russian oil, and some GRU officers, you know, fair enough, as well as some well-known Russian foreign policy analysts like Fyodor Lukyanov and Andrei Sushentsov, who in some ways are just doing their job, but again to a degree fair enough.

MG:

There were three other people, three notional Westerners, who were sanctioned on the basis that they were Russian propagandists. There was Xavier Moreau, a French-born former paratrooper officer and businessman, but who has lived in Russia since 2000 and acquired Russian citizenship in 2013. There's John Mark Dugan, a US citizen, former Marine and then Deputy Sheriff in Florida, who fled to Moscow in 2016, with a variety of criminal charges hanging over his head, it's worth noting. So those two are Russian-based. Baud, though, lives in Brussels, and now, frankly, is pretty screwed. I mean, you know, when you're under sanctions, things like your bank accounts get frozen, no one wants to deal with you, etc. And the specific grounds for sanctioning him are I'll actually read the whole thing:

MG:

"Jacques Baud, a former Swiss Army colonel and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programs. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example, accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO. Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for implementing and supporting actions or policies attributable to the government of the Russian Federation, which undermine or threaten the stability or security of a third country, Ukraine, by engaging in the use of information manipulation and interference."

MG:

Now look, I mean I've never met Baud, and I don't really know his work. He was on my radar, I come across him several times, as a source of some, let's be clear, pretty barking mad ideas about Russia and Ukraine. Particularly this notion that Ukraine deliberately provoked Russian invasion in order to join NATO. I mean that that's quite a doozy. But he's hardly either a household name or probably the worst of the conspiracy theorists. But nonetheless, I can't help but feel that this is a strange and frankly worrying step. So he's wrong. So he's a regular guest on pro-Russian television. So his views coincide with many of the talking points of the Russian state. But unless there is some evidence that he is actually in Moscow's pay and that he's spreading what he knows to be lies, because after all that's the essence of disinformation, then isn't this just something that we should chalk up to freedom of thought and speech? The fact that in a democracy everyone has the right to be a moron? I mean, if someone suggests on television, for example, that Taiwan is rightly part of the People's Republic of China, are they not supporting actions or policies attributable to the government of the PRC, which undermine or threaten the stability of a third country, in this case Taiwan?

MG:

You know, we are moving into the territory, I can't help but feel, and okay, these are just three people, two of whom I'm not standing up to defend, but aren't we moving into the territory of thought crime? I mean if there is more serious evidence that Baud is not just simply saying stupid things which irritate European governments, but t hat he is indeed a knowing agent of the Russian Federation, then I do hope that we are told about it. Now, look, I appreciate that maybe I'm responding to this not just because it plays to Putin's own propaganda, his claims that Europe is essentially a hypocritical power that talks a good talk about democracy, rights, freedom of speech, rule of law, but then ignores them whenever it's in its own interests. So, and frankly, that is absolutely what is already going on. But also because it sounds very much like the kind of basis on which I was banned from Russia for my supposedly russophobic views. And it would deeply depress me if in the West we end up adopting Russian tactics in the name of resisting Russian tactics.

MG:

So again, you know, without in any way subscribing to, defending, or indeed doing anything more than finding laughable Bode's particular perspectives, this is also something that we need to watch. We expend a lot of time, effort, and language talking about the bad things that Russia is doing to us. Fair enough, rightly so, and I've done so myself. But we also need to be thinking about the things that we are doing to ourselves because of our perception of the Russian challenge.

MG:

But anyway, having moved into a more self-referential phase, let me end by talking about me. After all, this is my podcast and the end-of-the-year one. 2025 saw the publication of my book Homo Criminalis, How Crime Organizes the World, along with an updated edition of We Need to Talk About Putin, as well as two very slender little illustrated books from Osprey, Tanks in Ukraine 2022 and Putin's Mercenaries 2013-2024, the latter being the last time I worked with that legend of an editor, the much-missed Martin Windrow.

MG:

Now, don't expect new full-size books in 2026, although one might just make it, but there will be three more Osprey books. Donbas 2014-15: Undeclared and Uncivil War, Kyiv 2022: The Battle for Ukraine's Capital, and earlier than them in every sense, the one that I confess I'm actually most excited about, Siege of Kazan 1552, Ivan the Terrible breaks the Kazan Khanate, which is out in February, and incidentally available for pre-order.

MG:

It's a year in which I got to give a briefing on the HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK's new and very impressive aircraft carriers. Listened to JD Vance at the Moscow Security Conference [NB: A Freudian slip here: of course I meant Munich Security Conference!] and watched the subsequent real-time meltdown of the Europeans there. Rode the golf buggies at the NATO summit in The Hague. Talked to all sorts of interesting people, and did far, far too much travelling in general. But still, I'm not complaining, I enjoy what I do, and I'm still trying to tread a path of providing analysis the best I can, which yes will have inevitably my own biases and so forth, but unfortunately that tends to mean that I am accused periodically, successively, and indeed at times simultaneously, of being both a russophobe and a Putin stooge.

MG:

And in that context, I was struck by a recent response to a question I posed on Twitter X, when I said, "Am I missing something? I can't see how Zelensky's proposed plan, Russia not gaining that twenty per cent of Danetsk region, pulling its forces back and seeing Ukrainians police the DMZ, as even faintly acceptable to Putin. Surely this is just a gambit to trap him into rejection. No?" Now that was a genuine question. It wasn't a criticism of Zelensky or anything like that. It wasn't a suggestion that Zelensky should give more to the Russians or whatever. It was just an attempt to basically ask the collective wisdom out there whether I felt I was missing something, because surely Zelensky must know that his his demilitarized zone notion would not be acceptable to Putin. I was astonished by the amount of vitriol that generated, essentially as people precisely felt that this was a criticism of Ukraine, and including some really personal stuff that came in on direct messages. And I'm left wondering why people think it's a good idea to do that.

MG:

Look, were I running a PsyOps unit, a psychological warfare element within the FSB or the SVR or whatever, I would set up various solidly backed fake IDs on social media with Ukraine flags in their names and icons of shina inus and everything else, and would use them to monster, to savage anyone who seemed moderately middle ground, in the hope precisely of discrediting the Ukrainian cause or at least Ukraine supporters. Because let's be clear, no one who is personally attacked is more likely to think, huh, those people who have just dumped all this verbal waste on me, maybe they have a point. Maybe they're good people and I should be supporting them.

MG:

I mean this could actually be happening, though I very much doubt it. But this does remind me of this crucial point that also I raise with the Jacques Baud case, which is that the West creates its own threat surface. Whether it's the gap between rhetoric and realities in our political system, whether it's our failure to address a variety of vulnerabilities from cyber protection of our critical national infrastructure to the presence of constituencies at home who feel alienated, marginalized, and therefore unwilling to accept the official line, making them prone to Russian amplification of their concerns, all the way through to a wider unwillingness to let analysis survive in the face of advocacy. You know, we we are going to undermine ourselves a damn sight more quickly if we're not careful than anyone is going to undermine us.

MG:

But still, all that said, let me try and end on an upbeat note.

MG:

Well, firstly, just from a personal point of view, many of you are listening to this podcast, and my thanks to you all. I mean, so far this year in Moscow Shadow has been listened to 1.6 million times. Just under 1% of these come from Russia, so a particular shout out to you. And although this is episode 229, I think, if I add in some odd extra episodes that weren't sort of numbered in the same way, we're actually just too short of hitting the 250 episode mark. Ura.

MG:

And more broadly, looking for optimism, I this is something that I develop in a piece in today's Sunday Times that I've circulated to paying patrons. But I do think that, as I say, while this peace process is likely, unfortunately, to founder on the issues of Donetsk and security guarantees, it has brought us closer to a future peace process working, in that a lot of the peripheral issues have been sorted, including, I suspect, NATO membership. And we also have a better idea, not just of how, but how not to try and run a multilateral peace negotiation. Besides which, both sides are getting exhausted, and again, this is something that I will explore in the future In Moscow's shadows, but for that reason, I think 2026 will either see an actual peace deal or else the tempo of war diminishing because of exhaustion from every side.

MG:

Speaking of paying patrons, obviously a particular thanks to them, I cannot convey just how much their support allows me to maintain, again, if I'm going to use this today's word is tempo, this tempo of podcasts, as well as the other activities that they facilitate. And you know, if you like this podcast and you want more, why not join their number?

MG:

And while I certainly won't echo Zelensky's Christmas wish that "today we all share one dream, and we make one wish for all of us, may he perish." Hmm, I wonder who that could be. I will note that Putin and his septuagenarian posse are going to be a year older. Happy New Year. С Новым Годом.

MG:

Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at Mark Galeotti or Facebook, Mark Galeotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash In Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.