Anne Applebaum in Conversation with David Aaronovitch.

good evening I'm David aronovich I am a presenter with the BBC I present the BBC's Radio 4 program The Briefing room uh and I also write for a living uh uh most recently I write a substack as I'm sure most of you do too um uh that's what I do and that's enough about that's enough about me um uh we're here to listen to Ann Apple Bal who's on my right who I haven't seen since we were at Mount Stewart in nor Ireland Mount Stewart house and wonderful National Trust house uh which used to do events and I hope will one day again I forgotten that meeting yes you see I'm forgettable you're not um I forgotten Mount Stewart house not you anyway it has wonderful guns um an's one of my favorite writers of factual matters um in fact I would think that she's one of the people who when I think I'm going mad convinces me that actually it's them who's mad and it's us that's sane um I first my first evance books that I ever bought was Gulag um which was as she was explaining upstairs partially a product of a lifetimes um desire to try which she got very early on to try and explain the Soviet Union and societies like it ever since she was first there we may talk a little bit about that later so it's gone through since G it's gone through um a number of uh uh of uh iterations if you like of an's deep interest in Eastern Europe and I think much broader actually than just Eastern Europe it's it's broadened out as we have seen a kind of series of um radicalization and authoritarian advances which weren't what we expected to see in the wake of the fall of the wall in of the Berlin Wall in 1989 so she's become one of not just an analyst of it but she's actually a rather good pist about it now I like pists if I can trust their analysis and so on I don't see anything wrong with that and an is a pesis whose analysis I can trust just as I can trust her histories now her latest book is this one here and she has signed about a million copies and her and so on and they're at the back autocracy Inc the dictators who want to run the world uh and um uh and I'm going to talked to Anne about that for about 40 minutes there's a lot that she has to say and one or two questions that I want to put and then after that there will be at least 20 minutes when people can put questions uh from the floor um and that will be the chance for people to as I said ask questions major speeches not welcomed we were having a little chat upstairs about questions that we find difficult um uh like what about India or you know something of that kind or you you know what are we going to do about China very big question very big question we might if that's us we might have to split it down um but and let's talk about uh uh so anyway maybe a little round of applause to welcome an would be thank you David by the way I've always thought that stools like this are discriminatory against older men uh I am very precarious here um uh I just want you to know that so you appreciate what I'm doing for you here this evening um and let's talk about the book the book starts in a very kind of particular place and not really where I would have expected it starts in Venezuela and it starts in Venezuela because you are analyzing a particular phenomenon and how it's organized I'd like you to tell us about it and explain what it is that that that that regime brought together so first of all thank you thank you to one of my one of my favorite journalist for to do this thank you all for coming a you can skip the bit about favorite journalist favorite journalist I can say that again um thank you for coming on a school night I suppose is the right is the right is the right way to put it um in a way actually it's appropriate that the book starts in Venezuela because actually my understanding of the phenomenon that the book describes in a way began in Venezuela um I was there in February of 2020 about two weeks before the pandemic although I didn't know that um and had a you know met a range of people there and um snuck in and snuck out on my polish passport and and and had a good look at Caracus um and Venezuela is an extraordinary story because it's a country that um has been slowly on the road to becoming a failed state for a long time um it's leadership it was it was the richest country in South America uh it is now the poorest uh it produces by some counts more refugees than Ukraine um although it's an oil Rich State uh it has malnutrition um it even has people who who who have no access to electricity which was not the case 20 years ago so it's been through this precipitous decline it's it's a state also that was a democracy and was taken over by an auto an autocratic populist party of the left um who slowly dismantled Democratic institutions um and it's also uh the regime is very unpopular it was originally Hugo Chavez now it's led by Nicholas Maduro it's very unpopular it's a it's an economic failure um it's one as I said it exports people around the region and the question is why does it survive and one of the reasons it survives one of the very important reasons it survives despite I should also add a very well organized very thoughtful very energetic and active opposition movement which has had different leaders some very the current one is a very very talented woman um uh nevertheless it survives one of the reasons it survives maybe the main reason is that it has the support of a network of autocratic states of other states some of with whom it has nothing nothing in common historically or geographically or culturally or any other way so the network is is a group of states that have no ideological links um nevertheless they all saw some purpose in helping the Venezuelan regime survive so one of them is Russia which has sold weapons to Venezuela probably assists the Venezuelan regime in hiding it stealing and hiding money it's conect has connections to International crime uh China has sold Venezuela surveillance technology the Chinese have also made these big investments into Venezuelan State companies there's a very famous investment into a railway most of the money disappeared and the railway was never built and apparently even the Chinese were very shocked by the scale of corruption like they thought there would be Kickbacks but not that actually there would never be a railway but that's that it was more or less what happened um the um they have also support from Cuba Cuba sends secret police advisors to to Venezuela and has done for a long time um I was told last week I don't I can't prove it since I'm not there but I was told that there are many there now who are helping the Venezuelan Army protect its weapons there's a lot of unrest there at the moment as you know there was just another an election which the regime lost and yet doesn't want to hand over power um and then there's the relationship with Iran and this to me is the strangest one because really I mean the Venezuelan regime is a left-wing socialist regime ostensibly the Iranian regime is a Islam IC theocracy um they have nothing to do with one another historically or culturally or geographically at all and yet they have a deep relationship which is based on the avoidance of sanctions um the venez the Iranians help the Venezuelans avoid sanctions and they give them access to their uh their networks in return the Venezuelans allegedly offer visas to Hezbollah um they give they they help the Venezuelans move around I mean excuse me the Iranian proxies uh move around move around Europe so in essence a kind of network emerged around Venezuela that keeps this regime um you know alive and it was really through understanding that that I came to understand that there is this network um it's it's a does not share an ideology um it has it is a network of both individual leaders and in some cases political parties who see themselves as deserving to rule without any checks and balances at all so there is no we we we there you know we there's no um independent Judiciary there is no Independent Media they control the information system in their countries um there is no legitimate opposition no real opposition sometimes there's fake opposition but there's no legitimate opposition um they they would like to continue ruling that way they would like to rule that way with no transparency no accountability um no Ombudsman no ethics rules um they share that that kind of absolute power that desire for absolute power um they share some kinds of Technology they learn from one another um they they they they have similar uh they they watch how one another you know they learn tactics of repression from one another um and they really have one only really one area of full agreement and the area of full agreement is that they don't like us and they don't like um the L language of liberal democracy they don't like exactly the language of the rule of law of of Rights human rights of um of you know of of transparency of accountability because those are the things that would hamper their particular vision of power um and they of course that's the language often used by their own opposition or their own dissident movements or their activists you know as a case may be um and so they dislike it when they hear it from them and also increasingly they dislike it when they hear it from us and they and they seek to undermine that language and the rules that are built into the international political system the rather the international legal system um in order to dismantle it um and so working together they work together in Venezuela you can see them operating together in other places in fact once you are aware that this network is there it becomes very hard to unsee it so I find almost every day there's some news story in which I notice again that there was a there was a Russian Chinese um um Aviation exercise a few days ago you know there's a they're they're almost almost daily there's some piece of news that reflects the the activity of this network um to be clear it's not a conspiracy it's not secret I mean most of the you know material in my book is open I mean it's from investigative reporting done by various people or it's open it's open material there isn't a secret room where dictators meet like in a James Bond movie you know that I think it's Spectre where they sit around the table and and and they all have octopus Rings right it's not like that so it's not like that a lot of it's open um I mean I'm sure there are some secret deals around as well or just private deals but um but it's a but but but they have as I said they have this set of common interests and they work together um and what's playing out in Venezuela now as I said there was an election a few weeks ago uh the opposition won and not only that they the opposition can prove that it won um and yet Maduro is going to try is resisting giving up power and one of the things that gives him confidence is as I said the support of of various whether it's Cuban or Russian or or or or Chinese um help so that's the that's the role of Venezuela actually I I have friends in the Venezuelan opposition and they also they they contribute a lot of my thinking about this comes from them and from Russians and Beller Russians and and and others who you know really if you want to understand the autocratic world it's best to talk to the people who live in it and who have analyzed it and can explain it and so they they a lot of the book is about them or comes from them one of the things I was very struck by um uh coming on to the next bit of the book um was to bring it closer to home was if you like what you might call the Putin delusion um and this is not about how they behave with each other it's about how we have behaved with them in the past and I think it would be interesting to go through how Germany's policy of OST politique the idea that you should have a rosma some kind of rosma over the Cold War uh barriers and that would be better for everybody back before the fall of the wall morphed into nordstream 2 and the dependency that Europe and other places be began to have upon autocracies and the delusions they had about what those autocracies were yeah now this is something I even before I wrote this book I started writing that piece of it because I got interested in the question of where did this come from um those of you who who some of you may know the history of of the of the of the German Russian relationship and it actually begins in the 1970s uh when um there was there's a there was one original meeting with sort of West German Austrian um you know businessmen met with basically it was Soviet bureaucrats you know the from the ministry of gas you know whatever it was and they met in a hapsburg villa and they began discussing how they could cooperate and if you try to imagine how weird that was this is a you know there were still you know Berlin was still divided and there were still you know American and Russian soldiers in Europe and you know yet they had this meeting about gas pipelines and some of it was was to do with changes in technology that made gas pipelines work better you I I spent some time trying to understand that but I will not bore you with that piece of the story um but but that essentially the original pipeline project which began in this era in the70s was it was from the beginning a political project so and it came from the West German desire to have a uh kind of mutually um um you know mutually valuable economic relationship with the Soviet Union and there was a theory behind it and the theory was if we're economically linked then we won't go to war um because of course they then people were afraid of it and actually I I I'm trying to give credit to the Germans of that era it was it was not illogical because that was the experience of Europe after the war which is that we built these economic links between one another and we formalized them and we created things like the European Union and other institutions and we didn't go to war and so there was this experience of that being successful and so the ger West Germans thought let's extend that further um and you know and then later on I mean there were plenty of elements of greed and so on and you know people made money out of it and there was cheap gas for for a long time relatively cheap gas came to take came to Germany it was part of how Germany became what it you know the economic Powerhouse that it did but it also created from the beginning these moral and political dilemmas that nobody ever really resolved so there was this gas flowed from Russia to Germany and actually then to the Netherlands and and elsewhere in Europe and it wasn't just the Germans who benefited Austria Italy I think um so there so there was a there was this this benefit you know and gas flowed there and of course we paid for the gas um and then at the same time the Soviet Union was funding at that in that era you know terrorist operations in Europe the red brigades and so on so we were paying the Soviet Union which then funded terrorism that was designed to to destabilize uh Europe and nobody ever really grappled with that I mean it was just it was just a thing that happened I mean I there were there were a number of critics of the pipelines including a lot of American American presidents were always skeptical of them you Nixon hated it he thought it was a you know plot to undermine American German relationship and undermine NATO and lots of I think Jimmy Carter didn't like them either I mean it was a was a but nevertheless it it survived and it survived into the 90s and in the 90s this became this idea because it hadn't really been refuted became the basis of not just but um Western American um uh the Democratic world's policy towards the post-soviet world and then later towards China the idea was that we would build economic links and those would lead to political links and then we wouldn't fight and you know everybody would benefit you know as the Chinese would say it would be a win-win situation and at certain point there even became an idea that was attached to that that by doing this we would also bring democracy to those countries and that they would become liberal and they would you know be friends with us and it has to be said to be fair again that a lot of Russians thought that too and wanted that to happen and even there were Chinese who thought that you know that if we you know it traded that they would they wanted their countries also to liberalize so it wasn't it wasn't some insane um idea um but clearly um over the next couple of decades uh this failed um it you know instead What It produced was um a a kind of a piece of the German business community that was very dependent on Russia was very pro-russian fought against the idea um of of H of of of you know s insisted on maintaining normal economic relations with Russia for example even after the invasion of 2014 um and you know even as you know because of course the the the pipelines that were built in in more recent Years also had a political purpose so the nordstream was a Russian project to build a pipeline across the Baltic Sea and thereby avoid Poland and Ukraine with the aim eventually of cutting off Ukraine and maybe of invading Ukraine um and the ukrainians everybody this was pointed out to the Germans um but they didn't want to believe it they kept saying it's just a business project in any I won't I won't give you too much more detail the point is that we have we we created these ambiguous economic relationships we had the we were operating on this assumption that we could have purely economic apolitical relationships with the autocratic world that there would not be a strategic backlash or um you know would not they it would not it would not rebound on us or undermine us and this proved to be wrong there's a wide there were a couple of WID spread yeah no I mean it's the other part of the delusion was I think that the autocratic world was primarily rational in the sense that we believed rationality or the West believ rationality to be which was the more trade that you had the better off their people would be the happier they would be even possibly within their autocracy yeah no no I mean the Assumption was that they want the same thing that we do that they want people to be prosperous and everybody to get richer and because they want that and we want that we'll have a mutual interest but not all autocrats want that I mean in some cases there are things that are more important to them and so it is not it is not important to Putin that Russians are prosperous or even that they stay alive I mean he's very happy for a lot of them to die in the on the front line he's not bothered by that um there was even an extraordinary television appearance by the woman who runs RT on Russian television that I saw a clip of in the last couple of days where she says something like that we Russians we're okay with dying you know it's we're fine with it you know that's the difference between us and the West we don't mind dying I mean to the extent I don't know whether most Russians share that view but um also also very notable that she wasn't dying so you know so Al-Qaeda used to say much the same thing exactly so but but the but the but the idea you know our idea was that everybody's rational and therefore um you can always talk to them I Tony Blair used to talk like that you know we if I could just sit down in a room with him and we would have a beer together we would find it but that's not always true um and and particularly as some of these regimes became more extreme or their leaders became more worried about their own power as happened in Russia or they became more anxious about the impact that liberal ideas could have on their people um they became less interested in trade just for trade's sake and they began looking for other things although I think there's a pretty widespread belief that that that is still a significant motive for let's say China by is interested there are there are big differences between these countries you know I'm not I'm there's no I'm not making any argument that says they're all the same very different um and yes yes you're probably are right in China I mean I think the Chinese Communist party to some extent it thinks that it's its legitimacy is um it matters um its legitimacy is uh derived in in some way from um from the prosperity of people and you know there could be discontent if it were so yeah I think they do care okay um so this I mean this delusion in the west um meets another has a kind of also has a kind of pragmatic um and slightly corrupting element in the west as well and you come into this in the last chapter of the book and it was also the subject of a of a piece that you wrote in the financial times this last weekend which is essentially that these autoc acies are partially kept going by um feeding vast amounts of money to their own ruling Elites um and the practices of those ruling Elites which are partially political as well have been immensely enabled by our own structures of finance and financial dealing in the west um it would be very interesting I think to talk about that uh a bit more yeah I mean um the you know clearly that one of the odd things about our economy we actually have in many ways very highly regulated Financial systems I mean if you run a pension fund um you know you have to comply with all kinds of rules and regulations you know you have to meet inspectors and you know you have to meet the be law at the same time we have also allowed to exist kind of side by side with the regular economy where people obey the rules and pay taxes there is another economy where um people operate through Anonymous companies or or or trusts uh where people have been at least until recently allowed to buy property anonymously um I think everybody who lives in London knows this phenomenon you know why is um there you know their whole sections of Central London that are owned by Anonymous companies and where and who treat London flats or houses as secret stores of value you know you can own a house and not have your name on it and just you use it as a almost like an old-fashioned Swiss bank account um and we have we you know and that's not a that's not something that exists because it's a natural way that things work it's there are regulations and laws that made that possible um and so it's one of the ways in which the people from the autocratic World hide their money or keep their money here you know protected by our rule of law in fact um and you know at we you know we've also enabled means of transferring money around the world we've allowed people to you know you can essentially steal or take money out of whether it's out of Russia or out of Angola you can move it around the world you can move it through the London financial markets um and you can keep it in various places bring it back in in different ways you and this is a this is a system that has um made a lot of even places that are sort of traditionally corrupt you know in a kind of low level way much more sophisticated in the book I write a little bit about Zimbabwe um which is partly just because I have a friend who's Zimbabwe and and he also once again explained some of this to me um and partly because it's such a good it's a certainly when people there there's some westerners some Europeans who have a fantasy about AO you know the autocratic World works so well and it's so much more efficient to have one leader I mean Zimbabwe is you can always say well how about Zimbabwe which is um another almost failed State um and the leaders of Zimbabwe have taken advantage of the international financial markets and money laundering and so on to be able to move money out in a way that wasn't wouldn't have been possible two or three decades ago and so part of the book is an argument about explanation of how that works um not in not in as much detail there are a lot of really great pieces of investigative journalism that really explain how it works you know all over bulock or or Tom Burgess um and and and and part of the book is also an argument that asks why do we let that happen and why and and an argument that part of fighting autocracy is fighting not so much individual countries um but fighting autocratic practices and among those practices are the secrecy around money um one of the features of the autocratic world is that you don't know why people have money you don't know how they got it you don't know how much it is you don't know where it comes from um you know very little about rulers or people in power um and to the extent that we have secrecy in our world um It's that kind of secr I mean everybody has privacy that's something different um to the extent that there's um secrecy about in in our world that's a that's a that's something that we imported from the autocratic world so one of the other arguments of the book is that globalization again we had this idea of I don't know we used to talk about West moving to East and you know democracy flowing from Europe I don't know to to to to Eurasia um it's it's in retrospect equally true that Auto in fact what globalization was neutral it just meant that ideas flowed in both directions and some autocratic ideas flowed in our Direction too you anticipated my next question which is if you are um a a a trump supporter let's say of Goodwill um uh you might very well say well okay but what does this matter to us uh what's this got to do with us if they don't actually interfere too much with us what does it matter that all these places are autocratic what does it matter even that they're run by kleptocrats it's up to them to deal with that um but you then just said the ideas can flow the other way um even if they're unattractive so let's explore that a bit you think they're unattractive ah but not everybody finds them unattractive go on no so there is um and this is a this is a more recent phenomenon I mean it was this this was originally Russian but now there are others um others who joined in um one of the conclusions that the Russians came to was that undermining the idea and of democracy just doing it at home inside Russia which by the way was a huge program I mean there there was a wonderful study I think it was Estonian if I'm remembering correctly of Russian television and they there was a they surveyed they watched you know every Russian television program about Europe for a month or two and then they came up with the themes and it was literally all about degeneracy and if you walk down the street in Europe you'll be murdered by an immigrant and um and so there so they seek to undermine the idea of democracy in Europe but they also realize that it would be very useful to undermine the idea of democracy here too um and so they did begin to run information campaigns some very silly and ineffective some rather more effective um uh and they and and and and presenting in essence are seeking to craft and build an autocratic narrative that would appeal here and then narrative more or less you all know it's that autocracy is safe and stable and democracy is divided and weak um you know autocracy protects Traditional Values and democracy is sexually degenerate um and they and those ideas some of which came from here I mean it's not as if you had to import those ideas from Russia I mean there are PL plenty plenty here um but their idea was to amplify them um and not not only that actually I mean they also seek to amplify extremism of different kinds of the farle of the far right you know there's a weird Russian involvement with Catalan separatism which I describe a little bit of the book I mean um there the anything that can divide Europe anything that can divide NATO anything that can internally create conflict inside Democratic states interests them you know to and as I some some of it's not serious they don't invent things I mean you know the Russians did not invent Marine Le Pen Marine Le Pen's been in French politics for decades her father was in French politics for decades before that you know he has links to vichi which is even older than that um but they can amplify her or they could give her some money as they did for one election campaign um or they could you know her MEPS they could invite them to Crimea to you know to to be to be election observers I mean there's a you know they would have a they would have they would they would seek to amplify protect help those kinds of movements because they think it's beneficial to them um and so that so they began to interview so you could look at both political interference you could look at financial and economic interference um you could look at um you know some of which is O open and above board I mean it's I'm not I'm not saying all this is legal um and you see the ways in which they seek to shape our world I mean and that's that's before even we've talked about um Chinese strategic investments in telecoms and ports um in other pieces of infrastructure that if they ever wanted to could be used to weaken us if they if if that was in their interests they might have not decided that yet all I'm so in the book I'm not asking for a new Cold War I'm not asking for you know his Reds under the bed hysteria just an awareness that this is what they do and this is um um an understanding how it works helps explain things about our in society I think you start to understand yourself because in the final section of the book there's a whole lot about what we should do about it so I would I mean I would I would I don't I I I I actually ask every time I meet somebody in I did this last night at and somebody I was sitting next to at dinner I asked so what's the give me the positive argument for anonymous companies like why should they why should they exist and really the only some people say well there's some celebrities who don't want you to know they own this particular house and it just doesn't seem to me that a massive billion dooll Financial system should exist just for that reason but I I find very little real justification obviously some people want to dodge taxes but I didn't I didn't see why that's legitimate I you know I can't Dodge taxes also the the the idea that celebrities want to be anonymous um is really is really quite interesting I mean you know um you're likely to know if the place next door to you is bought and lived in by Elton John um it seems to me but obviously I mean however if you're if you're a mafosi that might be slightly that might be that might be slightly different um it struck me while you were speaking there well firstly there was there was one moment in the book which I thought was I I kind of clocked it at the time but I thought it was wonderfully revealing which is the February 2022 meeting between XI and Putin uh when and this is 18 days before the Russian invasion full invasion of Ukraine when they issue a joint statement condemning intervention in foreign countries by the west and um they had a very particular view of what intervention meant and what it didn't mean no no they they they issued a statement I if I'm remembering correctly it was either that one or a different one they also talked about democracy they talked about um uh you know we have our own forms of democracy and so we don't want to hear from you about democracy there was a there was an aspect of that as well um and they and they you know they they they talked about you know the the of the of the of the of the conversation was or the of the statement was we don't have to listen to you and we don't accept your rules um and by that remember what they mean is rules like don't invade your next door neighbors and occupy them and set up concentration camps on their territory um and Putin by invading Ukraine was demonstrating the degree to which he has contempt for all those rules um and by that I mean don't mean um you know some kind of I'm not even talking about democracy I'm talking about uh you know the the the the language that has been used in Europe since the end of the second world war of never again you know we won't allow mass murder in Europe to happen ever again well the Russians are saying yeah actually we're going to we're it's going to happen we're going to kidnap children in Ukraine we're going to take them to Russia we're going to change their identities and we dare you to try and do anything about it um or or we're going to set up the so-called filtration camps in occupied Ukraine which are concentration camps and we're going to torture people until they you know reveal whether they're ukraini whatever in the Ukrainian Army and they are this is a this is a this is part of an attempt to say we would like to be able to run the world differently and by differently they mean um without regard to Human Rights without regard to the rights of smaller countries or to to to to have sovereignty they will decide who has sovereignty I mean Russia has a very particular idea about sovereignty only you know they say we are sovereign but Ukraine is not and actually they would say we are sovereign but Germany is not I mean they have a you know we we get to decide what we think Germany because it's part of the alliance you know the Americans tell them what to do um but they have a they have a clear idea and that's how they would like the world to be run in a way the the so that the international system functions like their system does at home that there are no checks and balances there's no blocks there's no International institutions that stand in their way uh I'm being genuine when I say that I don't actually think that Donald Trump sees the world vastly differently to that actually uh and the constraints upon him the constraints upon him are the institutional constraints they're not actually constraints in terms of attitude or policy that are very different uh from that I do business with that person um from my position of strength to that person's position and strength and anything in between is of no account to me and the rules are of no account I think I mean he says that more or less I mean I think that's the source you know famously he periodically says how much he admires Xi Jinping or how much he admires the lead dictator of North Korea and I think that's the source of his admiration these are guys who get to rule with you know they get to do whatever they want you know there's no New York Court stopping them and no New York Times investigating them and you know that's what he admires but in in some countries uh as you know there used to be New York Times is and New York Court stopping the government doing what they want and they've gradually moved in on them uh and I know that in this book you're dealing with the actual autrais themselves but maybe we should just discuss a little bit some of the halfway stages that people have got to I I'm particularly interested in a place like Hungary which acts essentially as an ally of Putin and Putin's main Ally within Europe but also employs people from this country and America to act as its mouthpieces here actually pays them directly to do it and somebody like Elon Musk who has effectively become all the things internally that you've said that Russia wanted to do externally to the information systems within democracies I mean um so actually my previous book was partly about how and why uh people inside democracies are attracted to Liberal ideas and also how you know this this idea of how you how a democratic Democratic elected leader can take over or capture the state um you know quite a nowadays when democracies end it's usually not there are some exceptions but usually it's not like there's tanks in the street and there's like a lieutenant colonel who shoots up the presidential Palace I mean normally it's a you have elected leaders legitimately elected leaders like Victor orbon or actually like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela um who who who come to power often using the language of so-called populism saying you know we represent the real people we represent the true hungarians um our opponents are Elites foreigners um uh traitors um and therefore when they win power we then have the right to dismantle the Democratic institutions and that is what happened in Hungary um there was a systematic dismantling of of the Judiciary over several years um actually there's a brilliant article Believe It or Not by the publisher of the New York Times that was published today in the Washington Post which was a very delicate of him um which which in which he talks about how it was exactly that the hungarians dismantled their press it wasn't done through censorship because Hungary is a democracy um it was done instead through tax investigations you know or um you know predatory investors or through I mean I saw there was a version of this that happened in Poland as well you know threatening business people who ad advertised in Independent Media for example so it wasn't done you didn't walk in with thugs and shut it down you just used the as I said State institutions to harass Independent Media until it disappeared or changed hands um and and and that's the you know and and and that's the process by which it by which those things can happen um you know that that idea that you could win an election and then dismantle the system so that you never lose an election again is very attractive to some politicians I mean that's it I mean then you don't have to worry about running another election or losing an election um and of course it also means that once you win you have a certain degree of impunity because you know there aren't any courts who can investigate you and then it's a lot easier to steal money if that's what you want to do which I think Victor Orban is interested in doing um very interested I lived through a version of this so some of you may know I live part of the time in Poland um and we had a government in power for eight years between 5 and last October that unsuccessfully and partly well they had some success but they did have this same goal and the goal was to dismantle the Judiciary to undermine media uh to capture State institutions and as it turned out you know of course it was all in the name of establishing traditional society and um you know promoting polish patriotism and actually in practice A lot of it was about money I mean it was they you know they set up foundations that were funded by the state and then they put their cousins in charge of the foundations and the cousins made enormous amounts of money so anyway it's more than you want to know but there but you know those practices and those goals are alive and well and one of the fears that people have about the Trump Administration is that that's what it would do and the the the the attraction that people around Trump have for Orban actually is that and what is it that they admire about him they admire the fact that he was able to do this of course Hungary is a very very small country um you know you could try to do that in the United States um you might not succeed um but it would you could cause a lot of damage in in the way that this touches on an area of Fascination you indulge me for a moment uh on this because some of you may have noticed in the last couple of days one of those kind of what used to be called Twitter but is now called X or what we call it an xtorm an xtorm um in which the former main um presenter for Fox News Tucker Carlson uh who was employed by my old employer Rupert Murdo for a very long time at Fox News uh and then was subsequently kicked out uh for a while has now gone kind of independent um who is a huge supporter of Victor Orban uh and who is supposed to have had significant influence in trying in helping to persuade Trump to pick JD Vance as his vice president on ideological grounds essentially on the grounds of his position on abortion women families church religiosity and so on bit like Law And Justice in in in Poland that kind of uh that kind of perspectus but in that interview with Daryl Cooper they revisit history and the F the quote that comes down floating through uh ex from tuo Carlson as Daryl Cooper's a revisionist historian is if Churchill was so great why 70 years later are English teenage girls begging for drugs on the Streets of London um and then he goes on and why is London no longer a majority English City why are the English a minority in their own city this city the city that we're sitting in right now and this seems to me an absolutely constant theme of the kind of Orban Etc and was a big theme also within the justifications for the for the riots that we saw uh at the beginning of August here which is that somehow or other this isn't our country it's been stolen and it goes right back into history and the people we thought were our heroes were actually villains and in the case of Churchill why he's really villainous but they don't want to quite want to say it is because he fought against Hitler um you're a historian um as well as uh as well as being uh somebody who looks at current societies how seriously should we take emanations like that um first of all I should make clear that I'm glad Churchill fought Hitler you know thank you England for for fighting Hitler I really appreciate it um uh I think we should take it seriously I mean these attempts to reinterpret history um not attempts actually these reinterpretations of History are have a serious goal and the goal is to question the legitimacy of our modern democracies uh to to loosen people's sense their orientation of of you know change the sense of who we are and maybe change our alliances um you know change the way we operate in the world um so so you know you know there's a fine I suppose there's a fine line to be walked between you know you don't want to amplify extremism and so on but I think it's also important to take it seriously um it's funny I was just you know there there's an argument Trump said at some in some previous some speech he made he said something about how I'm going to be a dictator for one day you know oh I'm just going to be a dictator for a day and a lot of people said well that's Trump saying stupid things and he's making a joke and so on and all he's he wants all the Liberals to be upset you know so doesn't mean anything and maybe that's true I mean you know he says lot of stuff I don't know if this gets across the Atlantic you know the stuff about sharks he talks about sharks he talks about sharks anyway electric boats and electric boats that's right and if you any never mind so he says a lot of stuff but I but on the other hand I think it's important to take some of that language seriously because it's also a way of Preparing People to saying well it's not so bad to be a dictator it's kind of a joke um you know may you know and then the same thing with an interview with somebody who who wishes that Hitler had won the war I mean it's a way of saying well those ideas you know they've been taboo for such a long time maybe they weren't so bad and it is a way of bringing them into the mainstream yeah so I would take it seriously yes and and into the mainstream for for current purposes and let's talk a little bit more before we open this up about how you got into all this because actually that history is interesting and your publisher convinced me that it was interesting and as soon as you started talking about it upstairs uh I did find it very interesting um which takes us back to you being a student of Russian deciding to go to Russia while the it was still the Soviet Union yeah so I was um I did study Russian at University I did Russian in in history and some other things um and I went to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1985 and I spent three months in Leningrad when it was still Leningrad and um at that time it really was like walking through the Looking Glass it was a completely different Society it was very hard to understand um I did speak Russian um you know at one point I spoke it really well uh it's gotten a little rusty since I can't go there anymore but um but I I I met people there I had the experience of asking somebody for directions on the street and then they heard my foreign accent and ran away because it was still a little bit weird to be a foreigner there this is well before it opened up and so on um and I you know and I I left and a few years later it fall apart and actually I was able to witness some of its falling apart I I then lived in Poland from from the end of 1988 for several years and I watched the collapse of the regime there um which it which was greeted with you know immense happiness and and and so on I was I was also in Berlin just the sort of day after the wall fell we I I drove with person who then became my husband um to to to watch that so I saw the end of it you know I was I saw it existing and I saw how it ended and then you know in the years that followed I started to wonder well if it was so obviously awful and stupid which is what people felt by by 1989 um how did it come to be in the first place like what was it you know how did it work and that produced first my book on the gulag which was an attempt to explain what was the Concentration Camp system why did people work for it how did it function how did you resarch for that how did you research for that well that book that was a time when you could do research in Russia so that was the research I did in the Russian archives that was a 10-year project which so they just really been opened they opened the archives and there was a period when um they they didn't exactly welcome foreign Scholars but they weren't bothered by them I mean it was the attitude in the 90s was sort of um some ridiculous American Girl Wants to read some old Bits of Paper that's fine you know it was a there was no there was no paranoia about it which developed later again um and actually the people who worked in the archives with not not all of them but some of them were really happy that you were there and so I actually had a um an archivist who I worked with a lot who was probably the world's greatest expert on the GG he worked with the gulag papers and archives he knew where everything was um I mean he was he he he died a few years ago I mean he was a little weird as you would be if you spent your life in the gulag archive he was also an alcoholic um so periodically I would go to Russia and I would have go to Moscow and I would have a you know an appointment with him and he wouldn't show up and then I would call him and he would be slurring his voice on the phone actually the first time it happened I thought he was Ill you know and I had a friend of mine call him and she laughed at me she's like he's not ill but he but he but he was really a wonderful person and he helped helped me locate things but I also traveled around the country which was also possible then and worked in archives in corelia and which is where the White Sea Canal is is in in uh svar which is in the Far East um um in I went to vuta I went to a lot of the sites of the camps and I met there were at that time there were a lot of Russian historians working on working on the gulag and they had access to archives and they' written things I mean there was actually a little mini industry of people who did it and who knew about it I expect it's mostly gone um and a lot of the archives that I worked in are now closed you couldn't do it again I me so in the in that little window quite a lot of good things were written there were a lot of really good books written at the time you know Katherine maridale I mean there a bunch of British historians who Robert CIS worked there um and did and did good work um but I think it's over for the moment and that what happened when Putin came to power in in the 2000s was he repoliticizing about who could use archives and Anthony Beaver got kicked out of the military archives and that that that that happened um but my I mean in a way the more maybe the more relevant to your question book is my second history book which was about the Soviet conquest of Central Europe and how Central Europe was sovietized book called iron kurton and that was a book that tried to explain how it happened and anyway that's the you I strongly recommend this book by the way in a sense you know that's I've been sort of doing that ever since and then when I when I saw some of these things come back you I mean I we were just I was just describing when I watched the invasion of Crimea um in 2014 my reaction was oh that's how they did it you know it was so exactly like what the Russians did in eastern Poland you know in 1944 with sort of fake you know Russians in in the wrong uniforms and getting local criminals to run stuff and making them the new leaders you know it was a it was literally some some of the same things they did um and so then you when you begin I originally thought that I was writing books about the long distant past and things that would never happen again and then I began to understand that some of it came back and so a lot of my recent journalism is about that that's it now I I was saying I I very much recommend I recommend uh most of an books um the one I can't recommend is the one on cooking because I didn't read it um it's the best one it's that's right nor the an apple Bal guide to central European golfing I haven't managed got to go get I don't know how to play golf no I did write a cookbook it's called from my polish country house kitchen and so it's out of print and told me that the soups are very good but the desserts don't work don't make the cakes okay um uh but the uh when you were talking in when you in Iron Curtain you describe how essentially the domestic Communists in these countries imported wholesale um the Soviet security apparatus into them uh and so which I thought was absolutely fascinating so that when I also saw what was happening I I I I was booked to appear on question time on in the week that Russia um uh essentially went into crime a in 2014 in 2014 and I found myself in the opposition of being the only person on the panel who firstly and please take this in the right way seem to know anything about it um in historical terms uh and secondly was was bothered by it so Michael hlin was on the program he said well I don't think we should get our in a Twist about this you know Ukraine's uh crime has always been a bit of Russia really uh the labor politician didn't like it but really didn't know anything about it and then there was a Russian journalist called niov on the program who was just vile one of the viest human beings I've ever I mean I remember this per really I was here then I was living in London then and I remember there were these endless programs and I started to say if there's a if there's a Russian journalist from Russian State media on whatever it is the panel I won't be on it I stopped doing it because you know I'm not going to have an argument because they were they were arguing at that time that it's not an invasion that it's this is a separatist movement that has arisen to take over Crimea um and as we know you know months later Putin gave medals to all the soldiers who had been part of the invasion um but there was a point at which I wasn't going to go on TV and have an argument about what was happening you know I could I knew what was happening I mean we can argue about how to interpret or what to do about it and that's fair but not whether it's an invasion I it was an invasion anyway yeah the other thing that was fun in that respect was when the exchange uh recently happened of prisoners between uh Russia and the West some people in the west saw some people they thought had been their friends suddenly met by Putin at the airport there was one particular journalist actually who had lived in Poland for while it's a sort of Spanish so-called Spanish journalist who was KGB or whatever it is called FSB uh right I think it's nearly time in fact it probably is time to take some questions um uh can I just say yeah there is a micro the microphone is over here um and you'll be choosing not me because I I don't I don't know the here um questions please not great statements if you have had huge experiences and lengthy experiences in these various countries write your own book um and we'll start and the Publishers are here so they will hear that you've got the approach them afterwards but we're here for questions thank you yes um good evening thank you very much um to both of you uh my name is Sophia I've got a background in journalism I was in Russia working for a US newspaper in 2004 2006 um my question is to you an um despite the fact that we knew what was going to happen and I remember human rights activists warning us and in 20034 where Putin is taking the country but when you think about the security council meeting in February 2022 and how Putin had to really press them all against the wall and people like nushin and patv didn't seem to really possibly like the idea the Russian Security Council not the UN The Well of course sorry the Russian Security Council February uh 22 with Putin um how he it seemed had to really press people against the wall and insist on invading Ukraine um do you feel were you surprised by it how reluctant some of some of these people were who seem to be in Putin's in a circle thank you you know it's very hard to know how sincere are the facial expressions of members of the Russian Security Council when Putin is standing in front of them and they're being filmed so I don't have any I can't offer you any great Insight I don't know what they were really thinking um I do know that at the time a lot of the Russian Elite was genuinely surprised um lavro for example the Russian foreign minister was surprised um and had had off had had been denying it you know an hour earlier and um and and others were too and they they didn't expect it they were then forced to come up with justifications for it um and you know you know it wasn't it wasn't popular although you know you have to be care a lot of people always ask is the war popular or not popular in Russia I mean remember that in Russia there is no public conversation so talking about it's there's there's you it's not like you could walk into a pub and and have an argument about the war in Ukraine and a you know if you if you're against it you could be arrested so um so there is there is no popular conversation and people aren't given an alternative like you know we could have it or we could not have it they don't have any choices so it's um but you know it's one of the interesting questions in Russia is how long the elite especially the security Elite will take the destruction of the army and so on and and I don't know the answer to that it does take you back a bit though doesn't it I mean this examination of faces to the old days of the Soviet Union when you literally used to try and work out by the position of people on Lenin's mosum on Victory who was up and who was down and I remember as a young journalist on Weekend World being requested by the editor to make definite judgments about it from London um not one of my less Great Moments yeah please hello um it was interesting to um hear the parallels of politics with energy uh whether it be oil from Venezuela which you mentioned and gas from Russia how do you see the intersection of climate change and the global dependence on fossil fuel reducing over time uh in connection to that and with regards to China we're increasingly dependent on China for products that enable a net zero transition should we be cognizant of the dependency issue so um youve come you haven't quite said it but I you've come to one of the themes that I like a lot which is that the climate change activists and the people who are worry about autocracy and should be working together because so many of the autocratic states are petrol States fossil and fuel States and that's not an accident because if you have a one huge natural resource and one small group of people control it then it lends itself naturally this is the huge exception being Norway um maybe because they or maybe Scotland um um but um you know no I'm not sure about Scotland but the but the um you know the the you know you seems to me that the the people who oppose Putin and the people who want um to do something about stop you know use of fossil fuel should be on the same team and working together whatever whatever that looks like in in campaigning um I mean on a in a broader level I mean I do think that you know I mean climate climate change well no let me answer it differently um you know thinking about climate change is something that we should do with all the countries on the planet so I'm not against discussing it with China or even discussing it with Russia although I think the Russians are in favor of climate change because it means the Arctic will melt and they want that um so that I'm no I'm not that's not a joke that's that's that's that's true um so we should be working together with them but we should also be in the case of china cautious about becoming over-dependent on them in exactly the technologies that you describe um because if those become strategic Technologies whether it's electric car batteries or whether it's um whether it's solar panels um then we could find oursel at some point at a disadvantage if they want to cut us off offer you know so so so these questions I would say they they're not the same but they intersect which seems to suggest that the um Biden inflation reduction act which is actually largely a build your industry up against the possibility of the Chinese dominating the Green Market Act was quite a good move it was the beginning of a shift and it and it and it did come from Biden's understanding of this vague vaguely of this kind of threat that the that the US needs to be economically independent of China in these few key Industries yes so it was it was one of the first shifts that began hi um I'm Christina Lamb I cover a lot of these bad places I am um thank you for your fascinating conversation I wanted to ask you um what you would say places where the West has intervene to remove autocrats or dictators in recent years so Iraq and Libya many of the people I meet there say things were better under those dictators because of the complete chaos that has followed so what would you say to those people the other question which is sort of linked is I get the impression if bad guys stay around long enough that they then become normalized and look at Assad for example in Syria who's now being sort of welcomed back into International Forum so first of all my book is not an argument that we should remove dictators by force I mean I don't think that was successful um and actually most of the people who do you know were involved in democracy promotion you know in the past also never wanted that um so I'm I'm not not not not in favor of that um you know people who live in situations of chaos and um strife and Civil War you know do usually want some single authority to come and replace I mean if you look at France after the French Revolution I mean it's not a it's not a surprising phenomenon I mean I actually think some of the um forgive me for making this leap but I mean some of the attraction of autocratic thinking in um the European you know Europe and America comes from the fact that we live now at a moment of really rapid change you know demographic social economic political um in in information and so on and at moments when you have even that kind of it's not even necessarily violent change you have this long you know I just want the caffin to stop and I want to have one leader um and so that people would want that in Iraq doesn't surprise me at all I mean it that seems that seems um understandable to me um what was what was the other question it was about oh yeah I mean um that was the purpose I mean the purpose of Putin intervening in the Syrian War um was to keep Assad and power um and to renormalize him and yes he's recently this might even be in my book he was recently let back into the you know the you know the leaders of the Muslim world have invited him back into their various fora um having excluded him and they've got used to the idea that he murdered a lot of people and created millions of refugees um but that's that that was one of Putin's goals he wants that kind of behavior to be normal you know that it's okay you know and he's doing it again in ukra actually one of the things I think is happening in Ukraine right now the destruction of the power grid and of Ukrainian um energy part of the purpose of it might well be to create a new Refugee wave because ukrainians are not going to be able to live in Ukrainian cities in the winter if there's no power and no heat and no water um and so he you know he having successfully destabilized Europe with a wave of refugees in 2015 he's may be doing it again so yes the purpose is to renormalize them just an interesting wrinkle on that Christina um you'll recall that in 2013 when uh Assad crossed Obama's red line with the chemical uh attack on Guta uh the approximate reason why he didn't actually do anything was because the British government wouldn't support him and the reason why the British government wouldn't support him is because the opposition um uh voted against it and some Tory MPS with them um in that uh Autumn I was on a coach trip with Douglas Alexander who' been Shadow was Shadow forign secretary and I asked him why labor had taken that line and what he thought would happen he said we think that Putin will help sort out the situation in Syria um and it's interesting the degree to which I mean that's for the want of a horseshoe nail argument Etc but that's how partly how that one played out and the result was that non-intervention you could argue was catastrophic a question at the back sorry hi and thank you it's yeah of course I'm and thank you it's always fascinating to hear you speak uh I'd like to ask if I may uh what is your thinking about why some autocracies consider it important to retain a vestage of democracy why did the likes of Putin and Maduro bother with elections um there there are slightly different answers in those two cases Maduro according to my Venezuelan friends held the election because he thought he was going to win he didn't think he was going to lose um and so and actually um well you know if you if you if you he was very arrogant and he believed his own opinion polls or whatever they were and he thought he would win um you know in the case of Putin um you know Putin has used and this is actually even before his regime became more extreme over the last 25 years Putin has consistently used kind of fake or managed they call it managed democracy as a way of um enhancing his legitimacy so there there have been elections in Russia with kind of handpicked opponents you know who aren't the you know real opponents go to jail but there are these kind of created opponents who are allowed to compete and there has you know there's been a kind of fim kind of um facade rather of of democracy and that's part of what he's used to maintain his legitimacy so he actually takes the fact of Elections very seriously when he wins them he celebrates you know and and and that's part of um you know his argument that he's legitimate President of Russia um and that's actually true in a lot of regimes you know that there is some element of fake or managed or controlled democracy um that is meant to ex you know I mean it's also true that democracy is a very powerful idea so even if we all hate it and we don't like our society and so on and we are unhappy with the way it works the idea that Ordinary People should be able to have some influence over who their government is they want to somehow steal the idea and use it for themselves they don't want it to become a tool of the opposition you know a tool of their their opponents so it's it's it's actually quite for dictator dictatorships to organize organize elections I mean um you know you know another version of that is is I mean of course their elections in Hungary as well it's just that they you know Orban does what he can to I mean Jerry mandering isn't quite the right word but to change the way who's allowed to vote and who isn't and um you know control the voting count process and of of course the you know the the the media is controlled in the runup to the election and you know people are given only one view of of who should win and so so there you know he does various things to to to stay in charge but he does have the elections it's important to him to you know to to maintain them and that's true in in many it's very common also the government governments have the power to bribe uh electorates funny enough or key sections of the election sometimes they even do it in healthy democracies they sometimes do please should we regard it as sign significant or concerning the the long-term mentor of a very important group of British interests is now a full-time Orban employee if you no I know this you know because this is this is one of my pet um uh Fascinations no we're talking about um Frank fared oh yeah we're talking about Frank fared who was the leader of the Revolutionary communist party um when it split up which was very very radical baroness Fox was also a member of this Etc um they eventually became via a major liel problem uh they became spiked online um and he has now gone to Brussels as the head of the Orban eist MCC Matias corvinus collegium uh to to do yeah to do it to influence it and um uh essentially what p i Peter thank you very much for sharing my obsession of which more somewhere else and on so if you'd like to share it too and he's one I mean there are others um uh so one of the weird ones for me is Jon O Sullivan who was Mrs Thatcher speech writer um has for many years run a think tank in Budapest called The danub Institute which functions as a um it's a kind of I mean it's a you know it's it's a way of invi inviting intellectuals to Budapest you know they'll give you a nice tour you can stay there you can meet nice people it's a way of sort of soft soft promotion for the uh for for the regime that that to me is the is the very weirdest um of all those things and um and there there are others there's another American called Rod Dr Who's gone there so there's a there there there have been a series of people who've been attracted to to to to that regime for for a long time and they have somehow there good reasons maybe some have bad reasons actually this was one of the themes of my previous book not to do that annoying thing of saying read my previous book but um you know it's still available and you pe people are legitimately not well legitimately people are there are people who are attracted to orban's idea you know he did something that was revolutionary he was democratically elected he took over the state you know he created a you know a system in which he can't be deed he took over the media he got rid of all those nasty um critics um and and he's anti-muslim anti-muslim even though they don't have any Muslims there and he and he's and and a lot of people find that that idea attractive and they would like to be able to do that in this country or in the United States you know so um so they admire him um you know and I guess Frank is the Revolutionary communist version and John is the thatcherite version there's a question and then um hey thank you so much for uh the talk so far I was just really interested in the way you portray a world that is split into these two camps between or top there's not two camps okay many camps okay but that but there is a there's a sort of fundamental dividing line there's a war of ideas right and there was autocracies on one side and democracies on the other some yes and some others too okay well thank you for the real time factchecking um but and and it's it's relevant because I think the this sense of there being a kind of a rule of law a respect for human life um Democratic principles in the kind of us side of that equation and you know rule breaking and a lack of democracy on the other I'm just curious as to how many countries that are in the constellation of us geopolitically like Egypt for example like a brutal dictatorship um but that is a firm Western Ally or indeed its neighbor Israel that is you know is ostensibly a democracy but denies Democratic rights to millions and is currently you know laying waste to civilian life how does that fit into your kind of categorization so so the so um you know my argument is that we should fight not you know this isn't a g you know it's not a it's not a it's not a it's not a cold war there aren't two sides um what we should be fighting are autocratic behaviors including the ones here and I that's why that's how I got to kleptocracy and money laundering and Anonymous property purchases um and we should fight those things here and we should fight them in other places I mean so it's not a it's not an argument for lining up one group of countries against another group of countries and I also think there are a lot of countries that play both sides or or have ambivalent or ambiguous roles I mean the the one of the more interesting you know examples for example is Vietnam I was there a few years ago Vietnam is a dictator ship it's a communist run by the Vietnamese Communist Party um nevertheless Vietnam is not seeking to undermine American politics it is not trying to enhance extremism um it is not trying to overthrow um the the the world order and whatever that means um it has it's a you could call it a status quo power whatever political science language you want to use but it is not it's not really part of this network of countries that have malign intent and of course you could look at the you know the Arab monarchies have have ambiguous roles including the Gulf States Saudi Arabia but also Morocco and others um there are a lot of countries in between and who have who do you know different things so so I'm not I'm not I'm not this is not good guys versus bad guys um sadly because that would be much easier to explain well also it gives you some it it leaves out some kind of difficulties because you could argue the same about Taliban run Afghanistan which is it doesn't particularly want to be on on a side but my goodness um anyway uh yes the last question here please thank you um the longest to ask I I well I mean well I'm not sure about that but it's pleasure to see you again and thank you very much both uh I actually graduated from SC about two months before you joined uh so really sad I didn't get to engage with you more but um my question is multipronged I'll be as succinct as I can firstly we talk about Putin and lot a lot of rhetoric is about a PO postpin Russia the problem is that are people who are even worse like the late Vladimir zeroski and systemic opposition right so we can get rid of Putin but unless there's an effective transition of power like there is a opposition in Venezuela which is ready to take control how do we ensure that it doesn't get worse better the devil you know um equally you mentioned about the statements that were given by um XI and Putin about and that was including No Limits uh partnership that's since been removed so how can we as the West undermine the strategical relationship between those two and the last one is you mentioned about the relationship of different kinds of countries that we have to pragmatically get on with isn't it just time for the West to be more transactional in its foreign policy instead it's value based that was cheating that was three questions I know it was quite a good cheat though because there were three pretty good questions okay so don't you pick you know I slightly feel we're running out of time so I'll try and be brief those are particularly the last one is a complicated um uh in terms of Russia Russian succession you know Putin has created a system whereby it appears that there is no alternative he has eliminated any system of succession so it isn't just the question of like we don't know who would follow him we have no idea how that person would be chosen so if he like falls out of a window tonight we don't know what process by which they'll choose the will die even Putin will die eventually but but but it but that's a but that is a deliberate decision and and that's one of the things that's confusing about Russia so Russians it's not like Russians are given an alternative you can have Putin or you can have this thing and and and you can have a choice they don't see any alternative and they're deliberately deprived of an alternative because they nobody you know you're not meant to think about the alternative um this is it you know you're you're stuck with um with with this um in terms of you know who would come next and would be better or worse obviously I have no idea because I don't know by which what process would would choose this person I mean my instinct is at this point in time there's really nobody worse than Putin because um you know first of all whoever comes next whoever he or she is he most likely um he he will be he will be less he will have less legitimacy he will have less security he will immediately be the focus of all kinds of plots and conspiracy theories probably um and I think that's good you know so secondly whoever comes next would at least find it easier to end the war you I'm not saying they will end the war you but they would find it more politically easier because it would not be their war that they started for their own egotistical reasons um so so I'm highly in favor of leadership change but I I I don't that doesn't mean I'm carrying it out myself or that I know how to do it you know soorry I don't know how to you know I'm not I'm not and I'm not advocating that we invade okay that not not re Christina's question um so that so so that that's that's now I've forgotten what comes next um I think actually that's fine you can take up some of the r you you admitted that you pulled a flanker there and we do have to finish so know I mean finally you know there's a um you know there level you know all iy involves some dealing with people you didn't like right um so I'm not saying we we can have a pristine life in which we never talk to bad people I mean even real life involves dealing with people we don't like right don't look at me I was thinking Coles you don't like you know then you know or you know so I'm not that's not what I'm arguing but I am arguing that if we want to preserve our systems as you know or you know or make them resilient or um make them continue then we then we should be more aware of the people who are trying to undermine them and that that should be a part of our diplomacy as in the case of you know and our in our internal politics not just about diplomacy as in the case of the Biden you know Biden Administration it already is beginning to be you know so so this is it's not an argument for not speaking to people it's an argument for um resilience for thinking about it for understanding what are the consequences of trade with you know I started out by talking about trade with um with with dictatorships understand what the consequences are be aware of them um don't pretend that there's some neutral World in which we're all just interested in money and nothing else matters because that's not true yeah as ever and it's in all your books it's an argument for Clear sightedness uh above all um uh before we thank an can I just say from an and I to thank you very much for a being here uh and being really brilliant questions really really good questions um you've done you've done yourselves proud it won't earn you a free member next year's membership but it's uh you've done yourselves proud thank you all very much for coming I really appreciate it h and my thanks from all of us to Anne for being here this evening she'll be signing books at the back later no they' signed them already oh they they're pre-signed she won't be signing them no they're pre-signed but they they're for sale uh uh uh but anyway many thanks to for being here thank you