'We Need To Talk About Putin' w/ Mark Galeotti

What do we really know about one of the most powerful men in the world after two decades in power?
Putin has been in power for twenty years, but how much have we really learned about him? Why has such a mythology built around him, and why do so many in the West seem so much to want to believe so much of it?
Veteran Russia-watcher Mark Galeotti, London-based author of the recent and much-praised book 'We Need To Talk About Putin' will be in conversation with NUPI's Julie Wilhelmsen about Putin the man, Putin the myth, how observers can try to tell the two apart, and why it matters for policy towards Russia.
In the first chapter of the book, Galeotti writes:
“We need to talk about Putin. We really do. Not just because he is, like it or not, one of the most important people on the planet, and nor because of the impact of the geopolitical struggle he is waging with the West, with bluster and bluff, memes and money. It is also because he has become a global symbol, which everyone defines in their own way. […] he is like a Rorschach inkblot test used by psychologists: the splash of pigment is deliberately ambiguous; what we read into it says more about what is going on in our heads than what is on the paper.”

[@debrutomeyer9117]

It’s interesting to listen to this following recent developments (2023)

[@bogweedx]

this hasn't aged well

[@kurtstubbs1]

Very enlightening!

[@danhanqvist4237]

Always useful to listen to Galeotti. However, Muscovite history, and the history of the menace of Muscovy to its neighbours, did not start with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is just one iteration of Muscovy. Putin and his regime is not the cause of our problem with Muscovy. They are a symptom of a more fundamental issue.

[@missyvon88]

Great lecture. Clear and well reasoned.

[@cenccenc946]

wooo, did he call it. well done.

[@BeyondBorders00]

Haha. Not at all. He ended his speech with the prediction that Putin would like to become Chairman of State Council and go into semi-retirement

[@GEMINICT]

The sell by date of this lecture is well over.

[@danhanqvist4237]

Galeotti doesn't particularly like the comparisons between Putin and Hitler. Actually, the way Galeotti describes Putin's system is very close to how Hitler's worked ("working towards the Führer" is a central theme in Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography).

[@antinoris]

He wasn't farsighted.. :( couldn't imagine the extent of atrocities Putin may commit.

[@quentinnewark2745]

He is a historian, he looks backwards.

[@Conn30Mtenor]

@@quentinnewark2745 probably the worst description of what historians do that I've ever read.

[@quentinnewark2745]

@@Conn30Mtenor your version is…

[@vanhamies8512]

Galeotti sounds disarmingly naive in 2022. At best.

[@danhanqvist4237]

I'm not convinced by the moderator. I think her line has been falsified since 2022 as well. Muscovy only respects strength. The admiral was right.

[@A2Z1Two3]

What is it with some people who bring Brexit into everything , we lost we move on . I vote every election and I have never got the politician I preferred , but I still go to my MPs surgery .

[@janmarsh4104]

As I understand it, he said that Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine. Well.....how does he explain things now?

[@yumyumyukyuk]

How many analysts and politicians do you know that thought Putin *would* invade? So many caught on the bacofoot, right?

[@hmmcinerney]

@Toask Which was prior to Russias stealth invasion of Donbas

[@Conn30Mtenor]

@Toask civil war? Russia initiated that. It was a proxy war engineered by the Kremlin which peddled a fake narrative. Then they started shooting down airliners.

[@GEMINICT]

@@toask2576 Which is total fabrication... but then you are a Putin Bot.

[@alexh9778]

Galeotti comparing Brexit to the collapse of the Soviet Union is stupendously stupid.

[@quentinnewark2745]

I agree, he has Brexit Derangement Syndrome. Like he doesn't understand it at all. Like nearly all Remainers, he sees Britain's subservience to an unelected bureaucratic super-state as the sine qua non, obvious, necessary, the starting position. Instead of a sovereign Britain as the starting point, and the mistaken involvement with Europe's latest experiment in recreating the Roman Empire, as a phase fortunately over. I remember being brought into my parent's front room, and sat down in 1975, before they voted in the referendum to remain in the European Economic Community. They very earnestly told me they were voting 'yes' to remain, because they wanted economic opportunity for me, and Edward Heath had promised the British people, despite the warnings of Michael Foot and Tony Benn, that no sovereignty would be ceded, and the British Parliament would continue to discuss and vote on every law. When Remainer-Rejoiners catalogue the lies, they never include these primary, fundamental lies, without which, we would never have been part of the EU.

[@hmmcinerney]

Have a look at the FT video on YT on Brexit. The government just can’t admit it’s a disaster.

[@quentinnewark2745]

@@hmmcinerney FT is Remainer-Rejoiner Central. Has every interest in painting Brexit as wrong and disastrous. The days of dispassionate factual journalism are gone, if they were ever here. Every news outlet is now activist: arguing a particular view.

[@carlpierce2486]

Except it really was wrong and disastrous.

[@hmmcinerney]

@@quentinnewark2745 You should watch it, it might change your obvious stance.

[@markus717]

2023: Now we know.. Putin IS Blofeld.

[@danhanqvist4237]

This is 3 years ago. History since 2022 has falsified much of his arguments.

[@b_lumenkraft]

Yeah, this didn't age well. Fucking vatnik there!

[@zhukie]

Mark's description of how the RT journalists are given "suggestions" of what the Kremlin would like to see disseminated at the weekly meetings sound remarkably similar to what has been described as happens at the Murdoch media empire.

[@danielhutchinson6604]

Recent events in the US show Tucker Carlson, pointing a finger at the current Administration, as the documents reveal the potential perjury of Mark Milley? He testified under oath before Congress, that NATO was winning the conflict that they created in Donbas, then the revelation that Kyiv was losing seven Soldiers for each Russian who died to defend Russia. I am not a Murdoch fan, most of his employees appear to be Hacks, but it seems difficult to hide the revelations of the documents?

[@stevecross9922]

We need to talk about Galeotti. Who's behind him & what's his real agenda?