Gordon Chang

They're ultra-nationalists.

They're very big Putin fans.

And they have been complaining openly for a couple years now how the Russians have completely ignored the need to protect airfields, oil refineries, other high value targets.

So this is a problem that's been going on for years.

The Ukrainians are just bringing it to the forefront now with their repeated strikes.

And so I think, again, it's really a weakness.

Yeah.

So I think that's a really hot question right now and one that I've been thinking about a lot just kind of personally, because when you're answering that question, you have to think about the Kremlin's very tight and actually getting even tighter grip on censorship and the Russian information space.

Right.

So this is not new that the Russians have controlled their population and their ability to have freedom of speech.

But it's getting a lot tighter.

So right now what's going on is the past few months, maybe even close to a year.

The Kremlin has been shutting down mobile Internet.

So this is having so many interesting ripple effects.

Right.

It is creating friction in amongst the Russian people.

You know, take residents, for example, of Moscow City, a huge modern metropolis.

These are citizens that are used to GPS.

their equivalent of Uber, you know, and their equivalent of food deliveries and being able to use these, you know, go to a store and use your phone to pay.

And all of a sudden, sometimes quite randomly without notice, all of those services just are completely gone.