‘Grandpa in a bunker’: is Putin losing control?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Is Putin losing his grip on power?
Today, is Putin losing his grip on power?
Last month, the Kremlin released this curious video of Vladimir Putin dressed casually in jeans and a jacket, walking with a bouquet of flowers in a hotel to meet his high school teacher. Pyotr Sauer is The Guardian's Russian affairs reporter. Decoding Kremlin propaganda is very much part of the job description. On his way to meeting his teacher, he also made chitchat with a random passerby, who later turned out to be someone who worked for the Russian security services. The video showed the Russian president driving himself to meet Vera Gurevich. She taught the young Putin at school number 193 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. She seemed delighted to see him, planting kisses on his waxy cheeks before he whisked her off for dinner at the Kremlin.
So we as journalists often don't know where Putin is at any moment of the time. He is extremely careful about revealing his location.
What does Putin's recent public appearance signify?
We know that he has a number of offices that look identical to each other, which is meant to hide his location. Sometimes he says he's in the Kremlin, but in reality he's sort of in an office that resembles his Kremlin office, but somewhere else. And all of this is meant to prevent any possible attacks that he fears. As his war in Ukraine enters its fifth bloody year, Putin is seen increasingly rarely in public. What he thought would be a quick and easy conflict has proved anything but, costing the lives of half a million Russians and hitting the Russian economy hard. That's why this public appearance was so noteworthy. The whole image was striking because it came amid growing reports that the Russian leader is isolated, that he's paranoid, and that he might even be fearing a coup.
By releasing this image, I think the Kremlin really tried to fight those reports, and they tried to portray the Putin that many Russians have come to know over the last 26 years, a man who's comfortable with the public, who considers himself one of the people. but do the Russian people still see him that way? From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, cracks in the Kremlin.
Piotr Sauer, welcome back to Today in Focus. Great to see you. Great to be here. So you're actually talking to us today from Armenia, and we'll talk a little bit about why you're there later on. But you're our Russia Affairs correspondent. You grew up in Moscow and you lived in Russia until Putin decided to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And I know that you're still in very close contact with a lot of people in Russia. How are they feeling about their lives these days? So for the last few weeks, I've been gathering as much information as possible for several stories I wrote for The Guardian about the mood in Moscow and in Russia. And the picture I got was a country that is growing more and more tired of the war.
It has now entered its fifth year, both of the general population and as well as the elites. I don't know how reliable polling is in Russia, but has much research been done to try and take the temperature of the population? Yeah, of course, polling in a deeply authoritarian country should be taken with a grain of salt. But we've seen from a number of indicators that from the beginning of this year, really, Putin's ratings have fallen. His approval has fallen.
How are ordinary Russians feeling about the war in Ukraine?
One poll showed that more and more Russians could imagine themselves joining a political protest. Another poll showed the happiness index is lowest in 14 years. But I think polling is just one indicator that we as journalists use to measure the atmosphere in Moscow. And the others are the interviews, but also some of the outrage we've seen on social media. And how much of this outrage do you think is about the death toll in Ukraine? Last week, the head of GCHQ, a UK intelligence agency, said that 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the conflict began in 2022.
As we remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine, Putin is going backwards on the battlefield. With new intelligence... showing that almost half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the conflict began.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:08
2
Is Putin losing his grip on power?
0:08–1:33
3
What does Putin's recent public appearance signify?
1:33–4:09
4
How are ordinary Russians feeling about the war in Ukraine?
4:09–5:26
5
What do recent polling results indicate about Putin's popularity?
5:26–9:21
6
How is the Russian economy being affected by the war?
9:21–12:25
7
What role do Russian business elites play in Putin's regime?
12:25–12:53
8
Is there a possibility of a coup against Putin?
12:53–27:16