Russia in revolt: Is Putin a failing tsar?

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If you'd asked me very early on, I would have been very pessimistic.

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The race to build a quantum computer.

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**Geraldine Doogue** (0:38)
It's not exactly wise to speak out against the war inside Russia.

**Latika Bourke** (0:43)
No, Geraldine. So when a leading Russian oligarch starts sounding alarm bells, the world pays attention.

**Geraldine Doogue** (0:49)
There are consistent voices that are apparently unhappy with the direction of the war.

**Latika Bourke** (0:53)
Could that hint of failure start to affect Putin's image?

**Geraldine Doogue** (0:57)
I'm Geraldine Doogue.

**Latika Bourke** (0:58)
And I'm Latika Bourke. Let's go Roaming.
Geraldine, I believe today's guest is someone you met on your incredible travels across Europe.

**Geraldine Doogue** (1:23)
Yes, I did indeed meet our guest, Konstantin von Eggert, in Vilnius, actually, in Lithuania. I went to one of the first things that I went to Poland and Lithuania, and of course, to really, I hadn't really properly been to Eastern Europe. You know, I've been fortunate enough to have traveled in Western Europe widely, but not Eastern Europe. And it's just a completely different experience, which I know you know about.

**Latika Bourke** (1:46)
Well, I haven't been to Vilnius, so that is definitely one you've got on me there.

**Geraldine Doogue** (1:50)
Pearl of a city, lots of ghastly things happened there in the past, of course, which you confronted with. But look, I think you just, when you're there, they sit right by Russia. They have a very different attitude, honestly, they do, to their neighbor. And they're completely unyielding about the capacity of Russia to change. We keep asking questions, you know, how many times we've done it on Global Roaming, saying, surely there might be some change coming. And they persistently say, no.
Now, I think a lot of us dream of some, there must be some shift, we think. And that's really what we're trying to test today.

**Latika Bourke** (2:27)
Well, let's bring him in to ask exactly these questions. Konstantin von Eggert is a distinguished journalist and political analyst with Deutsche Welle and the former editor-in-chief of the BBC's Russian Bureau.

**Geraldine Doogue** (2:45)
Konstantin, welcome to Global Roaming.

**Konstantin von Eggert** (2:48)
Hello. Thank you very much for having me.

**Geraldine Doogue** (2:50)
Now, you have spent your career thinking about Russia, reporting on it, being Russian. How would you characterise Russia as you see it today?

**Konstantin von Eggert** (3:01)
A country in deep moral crisis which will not end even if the war ends tomorrow. That's for me the main thing which overraches everything, including the Putin dictatorship and the current aggressive war.
This crisis predates this war and it will continue after it's over. So it is a country in very deep moral and because of that, all other types of crisis.

**Latika Bourke** (3:29)
What do you mean by the morality conditions existing pre this war? What exactly are you talking about?

**Konstantin von Eggert** (3:35)
It is a country with population but without citizens in the political sense of the word. It is a country which doesn't care about the war that its government is waging on a neighboring, completely innocent neighboring country. It is a country which agrees that being a mercenary for whatever, 30, 50,000 euros is a pretty honorable profession. And that's how the majority of the Russian military is now recruited, or at least the significant parts. It is a country which only becomes agitated when Ukrainian drones hit the Russian version of Amazon facilities near Moscow, and starts asking why.
We're not to blame for anything. This is a country which refused to support its opposition leaders, including the late great Alexei Navalny, over the last two decades of Putin dictatorship. I mean, if this is not a country in crisis, then what it is, I don't know.

**Geraldine Doogue** (4:40)
I suppose, is that crisis deepening or not? That's what I think we're particularly keen to find out, whether there are shifts that you can detect.
This amazing piece by the Andrey Malnichenko, who's one of the big oligarchs in Russia, giving this big interview to and writing an essay for The Economist, is really what seems to, well, people are wondering what it means. Why has he spoken out now? It's a most intriguing essay. I'm going to recommend to listeners that they do take the time to-