Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan on the Russia-West Prisoner Exchange, Russian Hybrid Warfare, and the Russian Émigré Community Today
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Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Russian Roulette.

I'm Marisa Nikovaya and I'm recording solo today while Max is abroad. Today we're joined by two very special guests and friends of mine, shall I say, Andrey Soldatov and Irina Baragat.

Andrei and Irina are two of the most prominent investigative journalists covering Russia today. Together, they've co-authored numerous brilliant articles and books exploring the Russian secret services, the history of the Russian Internet, and the interplay between the Russian state and the country's various waves of immigrants, which unfortunately still continue now. Andrei and Irina, we are thrilled to have you on the show today. Welcome back. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us, Maria. Thank you very much.

I want to start today's conversation by last week's major event, one of the most dramatic mass prison exchanges between Russia and the West in decades. High-profile prisoners such as the Wall Street Journal's Ivan Gershkovich, the former US Marine Paul Whelan, Russian opposition politicians and friends of ours Vladimir Karamurze and Ilya Yashin were all swapped for imprisoned Russians of importance to the Kremlin.

Many of our listeners will of course be familiar with the story, which was widely reported. Your thoughts on what we've just witnessed? Why did this trade happen now? What does it mean for the broader relationship between Moscow and the West? And ultimately, who do you think won? Was it the Kremlin or was it the West?

I think that humanity won because innocent lives were saved. And you know that we're very worried about Vladimir Karamurza, who was poisoned twice in the last 10 years. And his state of health was not great. And he was...

kept in solitary confinement and he spent a lot of time in an isolated cell. He was not allowed to talk to people. He was not allowed to have some walks outside. He was not allowed even to read books. So to be honest, my nightmare was that Valoida would die. So humanity won and that's great.

And many, many other innocent people were also saved and freed. But in terms of politics, I have to say it happened surprisingly for me because the Kremlin is usually a very sophisticated and experienced player in terms of negotiation and swaps. And the Kremlin places came better than anyone else because humanity is not an issue for the Kremlin. But here...

I see that the West

The West won. And what we can see, we can see the Kremlin got eight people and the West got 16 people. And it was eight failed spies and killers, one killer and seven spies against 16 people. Among those, we have prominent Russian opposition politicians like Vladimir Karamurza and Ilya Yashin, and also as well as Alexei Pivovarov. And

The issue is that after the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russians abroad and liberal Russians inside Russia, they felt a little bit lost because they lost their leader and they lost the figure who fights the Kremlin in the most effective way.

other opposition politicians like Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Karamuzh, they were sent to prison and we didn't have a lot of access to them and they didn't have a lot of access to their supporters in Russia. So right now,

We can see these people in the West. They're definitely going to continue their fight against the Kremlin. And that's what we need right now. The people who most need this are the Russians inside Russia, who just really started losing their hope as far as they know.

Very important comment, Irina. Thank you for flagging this particularly important human aspect of the situation. Andrei, do you have anything to add to this great description? I also think that the Kremlin, as far as we see it now, is not winning, which is probably only part of the picture which we see. We all know that

The Kremlin wanted to use this swap as a political statement. It's quite clear because there were so many options for the Kremlin to swap these people in smaller groups over a huge period of time. Some of the people were arrested years ago and there was an option to swap some of them two years ago, a year ago, and then to get some other people. So it was the Kremlin's intention

to make it really bold and very sound. The biggest question I have right now is whether this swap was a whole deal or we see only part of the deal as the Kremlin secured from the West. We all know that for the Kremlin, the math is important. And back in 2010, when we got this huge swap with 10 Russian illegals who were arrested in the United States,

The Kremlin released four people from Russian prison and got 10 illegals back. The math that the Russians got 10 and released only four was promoted all over Russian television and Russian pro-Kremlin media. And now the math is different. So my suspicion is that probably we see only part of the deal.

Which is definitely very concerning because nobody can accuse the Kremlin of the good intent, so to speak.

On that particular notice as to what part of the deal we've seen, I wanted to move, Andrei, to the situation that I imagine is quite personal for you. This week, you've published an article, you quoted together actually an article in the Moscow Times, in which you describe how Andrei's father and Irina's father-in-law was recently convicted by a Russian court and sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a Russian labor colony.

You write that Alexei Soldatov, who is actually a prominent scholar, who also contributed greatly to the development of the Russian Internet, but right now he's terminally ill, and you fear that his imprisonment could constitute a death sentence.

In whatever terms you feel comfortable, could you please tell our listeners anything you'd like them to know about your father, this case, why you believe it's been put through this ordeal right now, and then probably connected to the broader issue of this taking hostages by the Kremlin that still continues, unfortunately? Well, I think that, unfortunately, the situation around my father reflects

what is actually the Russian society is going through. Because my father, he's a nuclear scientist by training and in the Soviet time, he spent most of his career at the Kurchatov Institute, which was the main nuclear research facility in the Soviet Union.

And it was a very secretive organization, of course. And at the same time, just because of that status, because these guys were involved in developing a nuclear bomb and some other very sensitive projects for the Soviet military industrial complex.

They enjoyed some freedoms, absolutely unthinkable for other research institutions and facilities in the Soviet Union. For instance, they had an option to travel abroad and they had a direct phone line, which was an extremely precious thing back in the 1980s. So a group of enthusiasts led by my father, they organized the very first connection between

of the Soviet Union back then with the West. So they actually orchestrated and set up as a first connection with the internet. Back then it was about emails, but nevertheless, for the connection which happened to break through the isolation the country lived. And already in 1991, when it was the first

Test, really big test for this group of enthusiasts. When the KGB tried to launch a coup d'etat and oust Mikhail Gorbachev, the KGB suppressed all traditional media in the country. We all remember the story about Swan Lake playing on the Russian television. It was a reflection of his censorship. But the KGB completely overlooked the Internet.

And the network which my father helped to launch was called RealCom. For some strange reason, they used the English word, so reliable communications, and it became RealCom. So this network of mostly scientists based all over the country, not only in Moscow, they started collecting evidence about what was happening in the Soviet Union during these three days of the putsch.

and broadcasting it abroad. And that was a way how, for instance, CNN learned about some crucial details about the coup.

And that was also, for me, a very interesting example when something which was organized horizontally without any boss, without any hierarchy, nevertheless worked brilliantly because it was all about people. People decided to share news about what they witnessed. So to me, it reflected the very nature of the internet. Why it's so important? Because it's never about a boss. It's never about Elisa. It's about people and horizontal networks.

My father helped to launch that. In the 1990s, he built most of the Russian internet infrastructure in the country. Because internet is not only about websites and browsers, it's also about technology infrastructure. You need to have some infrastructure to maintain domain names, IP addresses, this kind of stuff.

And at some point, the government became very obsessed with the idea of basically nationalization of this infrastructure. My father was approached by the Kremlin, and he was not extremely enthusiastic about this nationalization. And already in 2019,

As a punishment, the guy who back then was the head of the Internet Department at the administration of the president, his name is Andrei Lipov, he sent a letter denouncing my father to the interior ministry. And that was the moment when the criminal prosecution of my father started. It was 2019. My father was briefly detained and put under house arrest. And that was how his ordeal in the Russian legal system started.

Unfortunately, Irina and I were able to actually be present only until 2020, because in September 2020, we were forced to leave the country. And my father, at the same time, in all these years, he was released from house arrest, but put on bail, which means that he couldn't travel. And all these years, I had no option to see him in person.

And to be honest, for some years, because it lasted for so long, we had a hope that maybe the government is trying to find an excuse how just to end the case because it was so embarrassing. The accusation was ridiculous. It was something about abuse of power in the organization my father had no position at, which is a bit absurd even according to the Russian standards.

But at some point this spring, the case was sent to court. And again, something very absurd took place. The prosecution asked it for a lighter sentence. They asked it to send my father to a settlement. Basically, it's an exile in central Russia. And it's bad, but it's not that bad. The judge decided to send my father to prison.

which was a huge surprise for all of us and for me, of course, and for my father. Not atypical, by the way, for Russian judges to be even harsher than the prosecutors for the audiences. It's something we need to adjust and to... It's a new reality of the Russian state right now. So my father was sent to prison. Despite the fact that he is terminally ill, he's changing... He changed already to prisons.

Now he's in a cell with 10 people, which is a huge improvement in comparison with last week, because last week he spent a night on the floor in a cell with 40 other people, because there was no bed, no conditions for him. So now we have, now we call it an improvement. What is next? To be honest, we just don't know, because it looks like

Even if you have, for instance, an illness which is on the list of illnesses which you cannot be, just cannot be, sent to jail, even according to the Russian legislation and laws, nevertheless, if someone powerful enough wants to do that, it's possible. That is why it's very difficult for me to make any prognosis about what might happen to my father. Oh my goodness, what a horrible story. Seriously, Andrei, I'm so sorry.

Yeah, and that's of course the irony of the Russian jail system that hasn't really evolved much since the Gulag times that moving to a cell with 20 people is a significant improvement as opposed to a cell with 40 people. On that note, and to link the conversation back to the prison exchange, do you have a sense as to why now? And do you think it could be the case that they're trying to assemble another collection, so to speak, of prisoners now that they've run out of the previous ones?

I, in general, completely understand, and that is hard to explain. The rationality of it is going to be guesses. As you describe in your article, the Russian state is based on the very nature of vindictive and increasingly violent. So it's really hard to say, but maybe you have certain guesses as to why the situation has happened right now.

Well, to be honest, I think what we need to remember is that imprisonment became a weapon of choice of the Russian government dealing with all kinds of situations. It's not only about swaps. It's not only about prosecuting political opponents of the Kremlin. It's a tool of management, if you wish. So if the Kremlin sees a problem in some ministry or federal agency or even in some region,

They just arrest people because this is the way how you send a message that everyone needs to be loyal. It's also a very effective tool to get people worried about their personal fate and forget about the bigger picture. For instance, about the war, which is going on as we speak. And people are getting much more concerned about their personal circumstances, because

Just to remind you one story, which was, I think, quite significant. A year ago, a deputy minister of communications and digital development was arrested. Just two weeks after that, Ukrainian drones hit the headquarters of this ministry. And we back then, we spoke with some people who worked in this building, asked them, what are you more afraid of? And all of them said to us, we are more afraid of the FSB.

So this is how effective it is when you use arrests and detentions and repression as a tool of basically governing the country.

You know, this reminds me of my grandmother describing the period of the Second World War as being the freest in her entire life, because she lived under Stalin and to them, as horrible as the war was, it was still a more free experience. Also, Stalin kind of slightly relaxed the tides at the time. This is just very reminiscent of that situation, honestly. Nothing changes in Russia for centuries, right?

But back to your work, and I wanted to also suggest, recommend to our audiences your great book called The Red Web, in which you describe the development of the Russian Internet and do discuss the legacy of your father, who played a huge role, obviously, in its development. But there's another more recent book that you've published, the 2019, entitled The Compatriots, The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles and the Crazy and Agents Abroad. We have now seen the release of...

People like Ramos, Avara, Fyashin, as you mentioned yourself, Irina, for example, right? This is an event, a development that raised hopes that the Russian position in international Excel will have this revitalization, perhaps will be finally able to receive the leader, able to suggest maybe more creative action and constructive action.

What do you think will happen now that these people are released? Do you think that perhaps indeed Russia will get on a new trajectory and somehow maybe these current atrocities that unfortunately continue to happen, as you have just described, will somehow be able to be counted by a mass movement of Russian liberals abroad?

Firstly, I want to say a few words about our book, The Compatriots. It was, to some extent, an unfortunate book because when we wrote this book, we had no idea that we would be abroad for some time. And we wrote in this book that we have never been an immigrant, no one from our family emigrated, and we didn't have any experience with immigration. And the year passed and we emigrated.

Another year passed, and even before the war, a few investigative teams of Russian journalists were forced out of the country. Most of them, actually. Most of them, actually. And after that, the war started in February of 2022. And like thousands and thousands of people, according to some estimates, one million people emigrated. They left Russia after the war started.

When we were writing this book, we never meant that. But, surprisingly, the Russian opposition succeeded to find, they managed to find the new place in the new circumstances. And because it's a very Russian, usually immigration is a huge thing in the Russian mentality, and it occupied a special place. And usually all the views on the immigration, it's

very dark because immigrants, since after the 1917, the Russian Revolution and the following civil war, many people left Russia and they wanted to get back and they never get back. This fact is still very powerful for the Russian psyche. But for the first time in the history, and we know that in 1991, no one, I mean, not a lot of people got back to Russia. They had

The new democratic movement is made of Soviet people, not from former Russian people or descendants of the immigrants. But nowadays, the opposition to me, the opposition in exile, managed to find a new place. And the main task of the opposition abroad is to provide independent information to the independent-minded Russians in Russia.

and organize and also organize activity of huge diaspora, politically active diaspora abroad. And the opposition is great doing this because you know that

Every political movement has its own YouTube channel, Telegram channel, and they broadcast on a daily basis. And this broadcasting is consumed by millions of Russians, and the audience, according to our estimate, at least 20 million people. And all these people, they consume this information, and they want to know what's going on in Russia and abroad. And they got this information from these opposition groups.

So I see, despite what Ilya Yashin said, that I never humble myself to be an immigrant, I think that he will be a very successful immigrant. And he and Vladimir Karamurza and Pivovarov and other people who possibly will be abroad soon, they have to start

launching the new organization and they have to start working politically with the Russians in Russia and with the Russian abroad and that's because all my friends who still stay in Russia they are waiting with hope on these people and they are waiting for kind of directions from them they don't want to want to do they wanted to save their hope for the brighter future in Russia and they want

to be ready when the moment came and they could be able to fight Putin on the ground. And hopefully it happens. One day, I'm more convinced as a comparativist that it will likely to happen after Putin passes away naturally, but hopefully something happens before and we don't have to wait that long.

But there's also a possible downward aspect to this wave of immigration, right? And that is also something that relates to your excellent scholarship work, Irina and Andrey. Specifically, I talk about recent news, but also something that we've seen before, that these people who flee the regime, and as Irina, you described, often find themselves in difficult circumstances abroad.

They do not necessarily join the pull of the political opposition to Putin, but often out of a sense of self-preservation or other motivation, could turn out to be possible sources of intelligent assets for Russian agencies like the FSB, SVR, GRU. Most recently, there was news reported, for example...

that the FSB, SVR very actively recruits agents abroad for hybrid warfare through social media. And unfortunately, more often than not, they find willing associates specifically within the Russian-speaking community abroad. How high are the risks? Could you talk a little bit about that, essentially? And of course, what shall the West do given the situation?

I think you're absolutely right. It's a big security problem and it's going to be bigger. We wrote in December on foreign affairs how the Russian intelligence agencies regrouped after the humiliation of the 422. And the most important thing which they did is they understood how to make up for the expulsions, massive expulsions of Russian diplomats in 2022.

They completely understand right now that they cannot rely anymore on Russian officials and Russian diplomats and Russian embassies. And they need to find new ways what kind of people they can use in their operations. And they're getting better and better at that. So what they are doing now, they're relying more on foreign nationals than ever before. It goes for...

Recruiting among criminal groups and networks in Europe. We already see groups of Serbians helping, for instance, to extradite a Russian spy from Italy. And it was a successful operation. And that guy finally found his way back to Russia.

We also have Bulgarians, at least six of them, being detained by the security services here in Britain because they spied on Russian immigrants in London and in the UK. And again, it was a very big operation which lasted a very long period of time.

We also have Austrians helping to run these networks, which is a very interesting phenomenon. We have even more worrying things. We see now that not only recent Russian immigrants are used and recruited by Russian intelligence agencies. We see that Russian intelligence agencies, they're recruiting massively, quite massively among people with Belarusian and Ukrainian passports.

So it is a huge security problem, but it's not a political problem. And I think we need to stress that. It's not about that the political immigration from Russia poses a problem because there are some agents inside. Of course, there would be some agents inside. It's just absolutely inevitable. This is the way the Russian securities and intelligence agencies operated for decades. A friend of mine just sent me

a book by the KGB, of course, a top secret book published in the early 1980s. And it was all about how to use people in Germany, immigrants from the Soviet Union to infiltrate Soviet spies into Western Germany. So it's not a new problem. And it should be dealt by security services, not by politicians. But it is, you're absolutely right, it is a huge problem and it's going to be bigger.

This reminded me of the Comrade Jay, one of the famous books on this topic, right? This is just a memoir, essentially, of the former Russian spy. And he talks a lot about who he recruited during the Soviet time. He's one of the largest, the major high-level ranking Russian spies who defected to the United States ever.

And he says, one thing I remembered, he says, you can't really, it's very hard to recruit Americans directly because they have all the patriotics and whatnot, brainwashed about this and capitalism and imperialism. But you should find somebody who is in the United States, but holds certain grievances about the system for whatever reason, personal. So not an American, but certain immigration groups. And there are really a

very helpful tool for recruitment. So that certainly relates to, unfortunately, the Russian diaspora as well. We can imagine that people who had to flee often not necessarily for political reasons, right? They often ran away from mobilization, for example, but they may still be supportive of the war.

Unfortunately, they do not necessarily find their place in the new societies and they become more resentful in the pool, not just for radical populist right parties or other actors, but also for possible recruitment. But I agree completely that this is something that is to be dealt with by security services. And on that note, to go back to where we started, the prison exchange.

A lot of commentators flagged that one of the reasons why we could consider this binat such a win for the West is the release of Krasikov, who is, of course, a high-ranking officer in the Russian Secret Service, the FSB, who served a life sentence in Germany after his murder in 2019 of a Russian regime opponent in the central Berlin part.

And apparently Krasikov was as important for Putin that he even talked about him during his interviews and really kind of was willing to exchange, as you pointed out, Irina, more people from the Russian side just to get him back.

So some commentators I've seen who've commented on this topic say, hey, now this release of Krasikov is essentially an incentive for all these wannabe security agents. Hey, come work for us and commit all sorts of bad things. Afterwards, you're going to be released and live happily ever after as a hero in Russia. Do you think that is the signal that's been sent?

To me, I mean, firstly, I don't want to be like Putin's people. And to me, and I guess for all of us, the life of a murderer does not equal the lives of honest people. So that's the point. We can't be like Putin. We are not traders. We don't trade people's lives. So we know for sure. And I mean, all our life and our education and how we grew up,

tell us that we can't think that release of murderer and exchange the murderer for 16 lives, for 16 people, innocent people, honest people can be a failure. It's never a failure. It's a great deal. That's a normative assessment. Yes, I agree. What about a positive assessment?

Well, I think, of course, for Putin, it's about a message. And it's about two messages, basically. One is a message to people who are right now in the security services. And this is a message.

which we care about you. Remember that the narrative inside the country about Krasikov is that he killed someone who had murdered lots of Russian soldiers in Chechnya. So the idea is that this guy did something extremely patriotic

and very good for the Russian military. So yes, we remember this traumatic time back in the 1990s and in the early 2000s when the Russian army didn't perform really well in Chechnya and lots of Russian soldiers were killed. But we remember that and we are ready to send someone to kill the people who killed your kind.

That's the first message. The second message, of course, is a message to the potential targets of assassinations abroad. And this is a message where we need such kind of people. We need Krasnikov.

If not him personally, because of course I don't think that he could be... Couldn't be used twice. No, he cannot be used twice. It's very, very... Not even he is so good, right? That good. Yes, and he's not... Yeah, you're absolutely right. But the idea that we need these kind of people in our services and we are ready to make...

many things just to get them back because we need these kind of people, not spies, not only illegals, but these kind of people. It's a very strong message. And coupled with what, for instance, our former president Medvedev is tweeting or posting,

Well, basically said that all people who are released now in a swap should watch their back and they probably need to go on the witness protection program because they are not safe. This kind of combination is about...

Even if we think that Medvedev is a complete joke, he's not a complete joke just because he has a position as a deputy secretary on the Russian Security Council. It's not for nothing. He expresses the views of a lot of people inside of the Russian security services and intelligence community. And they feel encouraged to become more and more adventurous and more aggressive.

Something, of course, that we should be on alert about, given that, obviously, the Kremlin's war against not just Ukraine, but the West more broadly, is nowhere near end, unfortunately. On that note, my other question is about this, generally, broadly speaking, this hybrid warfare. I don't know how you feel about the term. It's widely contested, but the reality is that

We see obviously that the Kremlin is actively trying to create all sorts of disruptions, problems using maybe not necessarily always lethal conventional means, but hacking, spying incidents, cyber attacks and whatnot.

against not just Ukraine, but also the West more broadly. It's been unraveling for quite some time. You've obviously contributed for your work to comment on this topic. More recently in Europe, CNN, for example, has published a couple of months ago an article describing that there is a really massive increase of these various attacks, including arsons, that are often linked one way or another to the Russian secret influence.

What is your general take since we've been witnessing all of this for quite a while, right? It's been more than a decade that this hybrid warfare unravels. Is the West really winning or losing this war against Russia? Is the West getting better? Andrey, you also pointed out that FSB is learning, but are we learning here in the West how to counter those unfortunate trends that are also nowhere near to decrease, but in fact, they're increasing potentially? Yeah.

It seems that the West isn't ready to this sabotage and to these attacks because it started happening in 2014 when the military reports in the Czech Republic blew up. And nothing happened. And the West did nothing. And even now we can't see any reaction to these actions because some of the acts, we know, they were prevented, like an attempt to take life of

Or the head of Red Metal. Or the head of Red Metal. But prevention is good. But the West have to find a way how to react to these attacks because so far they can't see a proper reaction. And again, partly that's understandable because you could not mirror these acts in the West. You can't start an attack on Russian diplomats or, I don't know, Putin's people abroad, even Russia.

his oligarchs, their children, that's just impossible. But for Putin, for the Kremlin, it's very, very possible. So there is a disparity, the obstacles that you can't overcome being a moral person, being just normal. But anyway, the West have to find a way how to react to these attacks. I think the problem is even deeper.

Well, the Russian and Soviet intelligence agencies always had at their disposal a sabotage option. But the thing is that the West completely forgot about this option because for some reasons, but the Soviet intelligence agencies

decided never use the sabotage option in the West after the Second World War. So the Cold War was, of course, a very dramatic period and a real global conflict between the West and the Soviet Union. But nevertheless, Soviet intelligence agencies restrained themselves.

from launching a sabotage option in the West or in the United States. May I just clarify, Angie, by sabotage option, you mean like any types of this hybrid warfare or specific actions? Specific things, for instance, blowing up military facilities, attacking transport facilities, railways and all this kind of stuff.

And we know that this option has been always on the cards. For instance, we know that the KGB and military intelligence operatives were tasked to find proper places for caches or weapons and explosive devices. And they were tasked to check on them regularly. But then this option was never activated.

And to some extent, I think it led to the Western intelligence agencies and the counterintelligence agencies to think that somehow maybe some Western strategy worked to prevent the Russians from activating this option. But nevertheless, they almost forgot about it. At the same time, I unfortunately, I need to give you this example that when the West

was put in face of his sabotage option.

the West failed to respond properly. And that happened in Germany in the 50s when the French security services, French intelligence, DSA, decided to launch a series of sabotage operations targeting specifically German arms traders because German arms traders in Western Germany were selling arms and weapons to the Algerian rebels. Several people were killed. There were explosions in Hamburgs. There were attacks on ships.

Again, successful. And Germany just failed to respond to these series of sabotage operations. Of course, it didn't went completely unnoticed by Soviet spymasters. It was only for internal political reasons inside of the Soviet Union why they decided not to activate this option. Putin now decided to activate this option. And again, he took almost everybody's surprise. And I think...

It's a high time when the Western agencies, and not only Western agencies, but also politicians, need to start thinking about finding a proper response to that. Because once activated, I don't think that Putin would put an end to it, because it's so effective, actually, unfortunately.

And as often, just as you said, the continuous theme is that obviously we're playing by the rules, they're not. So their set of tools at their disposal obviously is much bigger. And just another point that I wanted to flag is the fact that this regime is possibly even more dangerous than the Soviet one was. It may not be as powerful. Yes, we need to forget about this. We always have this comparison, which I think is inertia. We always have this comparison with Andropov.

and with the late 1970s and 80s, which of course was a very high period of lots of spy games and scandals, and the KGB was on a high pedestal in the Soviet Union and all of that. But what we are dealing with now is something completely different. It's not about the KGB. The KGB never was in a position of an existential war.

threatening the existence of the Soviet regime. Afghanistan adventure was never like that. What we have now with Ukraine and with the West is absolutely different. And that already prompted Russian spies and

Russian generals and Putin himself to look deeper into Russian history. And the closest inspiration, the closest example they need to follow is, of course, a time of the Great Patriotic War, which means Stalin and his spies and his agencies and the way they dealt with security problems in the Soviet Union and beyond.

This is unfortunately a chilling conclusion, right? Given that this whole spiral is far from being over. And thank you very much for making this very important point as to how dangerous the regime is.

Perhaps one of my last questions now, given all these risks and challenges ahead of us, what's your biggest fear? Going forward, obviously, the Kremlin is not going to stop. I don't think it's going to stop, even if there's some type of armistice achieved in Ukraine, which is also far from given. Looking specifically at the active measures, this gray zone warfare,

What do you think the West should be on the lookout for? And perhaps certain lessons for them to apply going forward? One obvious conclusion is that they just have to be tougher in responding to these challenges, but maybe there are more specific suggestions. I don't think the only West has to be tougher in responding. It has to be

It has to be more sophisticated and complex in responding because it's a long war. It will not end tomorrow or next year. Even if we have some kind of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and some kind of ceasefire, the war with Putin wouldn't stop and the war with the Kremlin wouldn't stop. So the West have to prepare themselves, have to brace for the long war, the new concept which happens

could not be equal the concept of the Cold War because this is a new time, this is in new conditions and this is a new war. The new concept should be, must be, must be prepared.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think we need to also understand that, well, Russia is a big country, which means not only a lot of soldiers, but also a lot of people who are ready to serve as intelligence operatives. And the more the war goes, the more war-hardened operatives Putin gets.

That already affected the way, for instance, the Russian military intelligence became active. For instance, already after 2016, we saw that military intelligence became more and more and more aggressive. That was because of the experience a lot of people got in Syria and Ukraine. And of course, now we have a conflict on a much, much bigger scale, which means that this war produces on an industrial basis

who are ready to go and kill and do what they would be allowed to. We need to be ready for that. Yeah, absolutely, we should. And hopefully, thanks to this podcast, Irina and Andrey, your excellent contribution, this will help shed some light on this situation, dangerous situation, and clearly also draw some lessons going forward.

Unfortunately, we have to end it there. That's all we've got time for today. But Irina, Andrey, thank you so much for joining us. And Andrey, certainly all the prayers and wishes, you know, with your father. And I'm really hoping that somehow the situation improves, even unfortunately, it does not look as good as at the moment. Liz, Hamkin, thank you very much for all the work that you're doing.

As always, thank you as well for our listeners for tuning in. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and give us a five-star rating. And also be sure to check out our sister podcast, The Eurofighter, wherever you get your podcasts. And see you next time. Thank you. Thank you very much, Maria. Thank you. Thank you for having us. You've been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon.

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