The West's Forgotten War and the New Russia | Mark Galeotti

**Demetri Kofinas** (0:00)
What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Mark Galeotti, one of the most informed and provocative voices on modern Russia, who hosts the renowned podcast In Moscow's Shadows, and whose work has centered on the politics, security, and criminal underworld of Putin's Russia, a country he has been banned from entering since 2022
Mark and I spent the first hour of our conversation today taking stock of Russia's war in Ukraine. Conflict Mark describes as several wars all happening at once, a grinding battle of attrition in the Donbas, an economic war of deep strikes on refineries and critical infrastructure, and a political war that has enveloped not only the conflict's chief counterparties, but all of the war's major powers and regional blocks for whom this war has become the central battlefield in the emergence of a new global order. We discussed the human and economic costs of the war, the strategic aims of the various European nation-states, and how those aligned with Washington's, and the fraying and increasingly uneven state of Western support. From there, we engaged in a thought-provoking discussion about the mind of Vladimir Putin, the insecurities marked places at the core of his character, his survival instincts, his narrow circle of trust, and the sources and forces shaping his perception of how this war is going. In the episode's second hour, our conversation moves into an exploration of what Putin would actually need in order to end this war, why he keeps chasing a symbolic victory in the Donbas rather than the settlement that is presently available to him, and why his aversion to weakness is critical for us to understand if we want to make sense of his decision-making and calculations. From there, we turn to the taboo question of succession, what the death or departure of a personalistic ruler tends to unleash, the lessons we can learn from Stalin's untimely death, and why Mark expects any transition of power in Moscow to reflect the will of a coalition of post-Soviet elites, rather than the machinations of a younger, smarter Putin. We weigh the escalatory paths that were European capitals, from a direct challenge to NATO's Eastern flank, to the sabotage, subversion and campaigns of hybrid warfare that Mark considers more plausible, and close by examining how America's current entanglement in the Middle East has been received by Putin. What a hollowed out, but battle-hardened post-Ukraine war Russia could mean for the world, the lopsided and deepening dependency on Beijing, and the prospects for Washington to cleave Moscow away from its sphere of influence, and what all of this could mean for energy markets and the global economy. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device, using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation, become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like her intimate dinners and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io.
And I, or someone from our team, will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this incredibly informative and timely conversation with my guest, Mark Galeotti.
Mark Galeotti, welcome to Hidden Forces.

**Mark Galeotti** (3:55)
It's great to be here.

**Demetri Kofinas** (3:56)
It's even better having you here, Mark. I've been a listener to your podcast since the very early days of the Russian-Ukraine War. You'd of course been doing it for several years before that, but I realized heading into this interview that I don't really know anything else about you outside of the podcast, other than the fact that you're one of the world's leading experts on Russian politics, crime and security, and you were banned by Moscow from entering the country in 2022, so there's probably some interesting backstory there.
Tell us a little bit about you and how you became such a popular authority and leading voice on Putin's Russia.

**Mark Galeotti** (4:31)
Well, in many ways, I'm a quintessential wonk. I have been fascinated with this country since as long as I could remember, and I had no clear or good reason for it. There's no family connection, I'm half Italian. There's no real reason why it's not like I'm, like so many who come into this field, fascinated by Russian literature or music or whatever. I'm actually interested in the country, and in some ways it's because I'm a historian of the old school. I'm interested in the stories, and for me, Russia's always had the best stories, not the happiest stories generally, but nonetheless the most fascinating.