Kremlin’s sick logic: Russia has begun to believe its own propaganda & is forcing lies on the world

Ajouté : 2026-05-17

[00:00:11]Thousands killed at the front and in peaceful cities. Tens of thousands missing or buried under the rubble.

[00:00:18]Hundreds of thousands wounded and maimed. Millions who fled the war. All of this is the consequence of the aggression Russia launched against Ukraine. Hundreds of towns and villages have been wiped off the face of the earth. Scorched earth wherever a Russian soldier set foot. Cynical executions and inhuman torture of Ukrainian servicemen.

[00:00:37]Thousands tortured to death in captivity and under occupation. The killing of children and daily terror against civilians.

[00:00:46]Bachmut marupula pin hostimal hark Nepro, Odessa, Leviv, Turnal, Kev.

[00:01:48]and also Zaparisia, Hen, Chernah, Privy, Rigg, Uma, Mikollay, Vinitsa, Pava, and hundreds of other cities, towns, and villages, large and small, that came face to face with the true nature of the Kremlin regime. On trial today is the chief war criminal of our time. The man who gave the order to start the war against Ukraine and built in Russia the most powerful propaganda machine to justify all his bloody crimes and to send Russians to kill in the name of his imperial ambitions. Vladimir Putin.

[00:02:19]In our studio today, diplomat Alexander Levchenko, psychotherapist and criminalist Yuri Erhin, and human rights advocate Yuri Bilowis. Welcome.

[00:02:30]It is the jury, Ukrainians, who today will deliver their verdict on the accused. And a little later, we will be joined by people who know from their own experience what the Russian army is capable of under the command of its bloodthirsty dictator.

[00:02:47]>> We are not going to fight Europe. I have said this a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and starts a war, we are ready right now.

[00:02:57]There can be no doubt about that. The only question is what for?

[00:03:03]>> If Europe suddenly starts a war with us, I think it would be over very quickly.

[00:03:08]This is not Ukraine. With Ukraine, we are operating surgically over there.

[00:03:14]>> Carefully.

[00:03:20]>> Yuri, what do you read on Putin's face?

[00:03:22]What kind of emotions?

[00:03:24]I don't think there's any point in talking about his emotions because his behavior is purely technological.

[00:03:31]He's been wearing this mask for a very long time. So, his true emotions, I don't think it is even possible to read them anymore. Um, this is a face without emotion at this point. What he is portraying is a kind of dismissive, excessive self-confidence in what he is saying. He is portraying himself as the ultimate authority. what he says now, he claims that's how it really is and that there is no other way.

[00:03:59]>> That is precisely this face right now.

[00:04:02]>> And how long ago did he put on this mask you were talking about?

[00:04:04]>> As far as I remember, this was already in the late '9s because from the early 2000s, uh, from the first half of the 2000s, he was already in a specially staged costume, not just a mask. Uh, that is, he is playing a role. He is no longer the bearer of his true qualities at this point. It's like an actor on a stage. What we see and what is portrayed on television screens in the media is performative behavior.

[00:04:34]>> Alexander Putin always talks about the war being forced upon him. He says NATO began expanding that we did not want this but we had no choice. These narratives, why does he need them? And who is he saying them for when it has long been clear to everyone that this war by Russia against Ukraine would have happened even without NATO expansion?

[00:04:55]>> Obviously for the domestic audience maybe partly for the European one. But who else is listening to him over there?

[00:05:03]In case Europe attacks Russia, why would Europe attack Russia? For what? You have to look not just at his expressions, not just at his words. You have to read them in reverse.

[00:05:15]What does he have on his mind? Decode the reverse text in what he is saying.

[00:05:22]An intelligence officer cannot openly say what he is thinking. He always has to camouflage himself. He is a professional intelligence officer.

[00:05:33]He camouflages. He deceives.

[00:05:36]It's a way of life. So you have to read it in reverse and understand that he is ready to attack Europe.

[00:05:44]You have to look at how ready Europe really is.

[00:05:49]He believes Europe is not ready.

[00:05:52]>> This reverse reading you mentioned today we are going to take Putin apart. What he was saying from 1991 when as Yuri says the mask appeared on his face.

[00:06:01]Please >> I will explain why he says this.

[00:06:04]>> Sure.

[00:06:04]>> This is from a legal point of view.

[00:06:07]He is laying the groundwork for self-defense.

[00:06:10]To be clear, the official position of Russia, leaving aside and what he says at numerous conferences, the official position of Russia on Ukraine at the UN Security Council, Russia said that on February 24th, 2022, Putin's speech, the one we heard at 5 in the morning, has been forwarded there in full, and their official position is that Russia is exercising self-defense on the territory of Ukraine. self-defense in the existing world the so-called potam world established after the second world war aggression is absolutely prohibited that is any aggression is illegal you cannot attack someone it is not a method of policy that's why in the UN charter this is clearly written there is an article that says force cannot be used against a sovereign state but states have an inalienable right to individual and collective self-defense And this groundwork that Putin has always laid out regarding Ukraine and is laying out now, this is precisely the setup for the claim that they are exercising the act of self-defense here.

[00:07:17]If you listen to him, he says this politically too. Their official legal position is self-defense. And when he now says exactly the same thing about Europe, he is saying the same thing. We never will, but if they come at us, we will use our lawful right to self-defense. Because when they attacked us on February 24th, 2022, they invoked the claim that they were defending themselves individually. And second, they invoked the claim that they were defending themselves collectively together with the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic. Why? Because they recognized their independence. The so-called LDPR appealed to them for military assistance and together they exercised their right under the UN charter as they see it to self-defense.

[00:07:58]That's why these words of his are a clear setup if we look at it purely through the legal lens. A clear setup for the claim that we if anything happens are ready to defend ourselves against an attack on Russia and what an attack on Russia would actually look like. Well, that you can already guess.

[00:08:13]That's already some next format.

[00:08:17]And to add a few words on the philosophical plane, as analysts have noted, Putin has great respect for the philosopher Dillian.

[00:08:27]If you read this philosopher, his approach and his position is always that Russia never starts anything first and Russia is always forced to take some kind of measures to defend itself.

[00:08:39]So this is also being sewn into the ideological into this intellectual plane that Russia is supposedly always off to the side of everything and it never does anything first. But if it does begin, it was forced to do so and then off it goes. Well, that's Dugan now. Putin's contemporary, a follower of Illion pushing the same narratives. It's curious these narratives about an external enemy, about a fortress under siege. He never lets them go. What do they say about Putin's subconscious?

[00:09:09]Why does he keep coming back to this?

[00:09:11]What is going on?

[00:09:14]>> It's not Putin's subconscious. These narratives have never gone away over there roughly since 1946 to 1947.

[00:09:20]They're baked into the history. The thing is, up until somewhere in the late 80s, you still had living veterans of that meat grinder, the so-called Great Patriotic War, the First World War. My own father fought from 1939 to 1946. He felt no euphoria about victory. He remembered it as black tragedy, as death, as something you don't dwell on, something you don't bring up. Those people were still around. But that very element, once the last real participant was gone, they started using it as a manipulation lever.

[00:09:52]Let's never let this happen again. The narrative back in the 70s and 80s, we must never repeat this.

[00:09:58]This must never happen again. The people who knew it, who saw it with their own eyes, they understood what it meant.

[00:10:04]Now, there's a new generation that didn't see any of it and they take it in a slightly more inflated way. So, it became a manipulation tool. And it isn't his subconscious. It's the subconscious of that pallet bureau, that crowd, that mass of people who pushed him forward.

[00:10:19]and he is voicing what they think. He works on the subconscious of an entire population, an entire people. They have it. It's not his subconscious. But it was on his watch that this narrative emerged. We can do it again. Right. The flip side of never again, but we can do it again.

[00:10:38]Cross us and we can do it again. Right.

[00:10:42]>> Yeah. It was on his watch that this whole thanks grandpa for winning the war thing took off.

[00:10:47]>> Victory frenzy. The cult of victory worship was already up and running.

[00:10:51]>> It really took off in the '90s at the moment when there were no living eyewitnesses left. The cult that had been built up in the 70s and 80s for the new generation began to do its work on a subconscious level. Yuri, I want to come back to Putin's own words about taking a surgical approach in Ukraine going in carefully. The rules of warfare are written down in international law, principally in the Hague and Geneva conventions.

[00:11:17]By those rules, which ones did Putin break? First of all, the body of rules is enormous. There are several Geneva conventions with additional protocols on top. What is this whole thing? The rules of war. Those are the Geneva Conventions. And that is what humanity arrived at in its present form after the horror of the Second World War. There was political consensus. Reaching one today, I think, is not possible on any question. And so people decided, humanity decided that at least some restrictions had to be set even though they had existed before in some form.

[00:11:52]Restrictions are needed so civilians don't suffer. So civilian objects, peaceful inhabitants don't suffer. So those who are no longer fighting don't suffer. They are very broad, very extensive. And when he says they are operating here surgically, that's how it should be. But of course, that is not how it actually is. And in our case, the latest figure I've seen is over 190,000 registered war crimes, which it is impossible to investigate effectively.

[00:12:19]It is not realistic, no matter what anyone says. Not realistic for us, for Ukraine, not realistic for the United States, Britain, France, Germany, anyone.

[00:12:29]>> Because of the sheer volume, >> it's the volume. It can't be done, especially in an ongoing war of this intensity. So these are words, of course, with political weight behind them. He throws out what he is supposed to throw out.

[00:12:41]>> There is no rule of warfare that Putin hasn't broken. All of them have been broken.

[00:12:46]>> Well, yes, I think they have broken them all. But he is guilty of something else.

[00:12:51]He is not the one personally killing.

[00:12:53]He's not the one personally raping. He is not the one giving orders to torture prisoners of war. He is responsible for the most fundamental crime, the first one, the crime of leadership.

[00:13:04]It is also called the mother of all crimes.

[00:13:08]This is the crime of aggression. The preparation, planning and waging or continuation of a war of aggression. The decision to attack another state to mobilize the armed forces, all the various branches and to launch this war that cannot be done by some tank crewman, some pilot, some chchin, some Russian guy from Yaroslav and so on. Only the president of a country and the highest military and political leadership can do that.

[00:13:36]That means the Federation council, their security council, the people who take such decisions. That is what he is guilty of first and foremost because without this crime, the crime of aggression, the start of the war in plain language, none of these other war crimes in such numbers would have happened. That's for sure. So he is guilty of this crime. And he must be tried for this above all.

[00:14:01]And it is important to say that we are in a uniquely placed situation here because since Nuremberg, no one has been tried for this crime.

[00:14:11]No one in the world has been tried for starting a war of aggression.

[00:14:16]There have been some at the national level, minor figures, yes, but a president of a country, a head of state, no such case. So in examining this crime today, we are in a unique position because we are at a unique moment, a terrible but unique moment because Ukraine has come up against this challenge and is rising to meet it in the name of justice.

[00:14:39]And let's also remember since you mentioned 1991 that Putin always lamented in his words the collapse of the USSR.

[00:14:50]On this note, I'd like to say a few words about the tragedy we are living through today. The tragedy of the disintegration of our state. There is no other word for it. I think it was the figures of October 1917 who planted a delayed action mine under that building under the building of the unitary state called Russia. And what did they do?

[00:15:11]They split our fatherland into separate principalities that had never even appeared on the world map before. They handed these principalities governments and parliaments and now we have what we have.

[00:15:26]>> These words of Putin, he is saying them 23 years before the occupation of Crimea and 31 years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So in effect, he had been waiting for this for decades.

[00:15:36]Alexander, I wanted to ask you, look, when the union collapsed, Putin was 39 years old. It seems to me just looking at my own parents, this was a generation that exhaled, straightened their shoulders, and thought, "Here comes a new life, new opportunities." But for Putin, this turned not just into a tragedy, but into a real obsession.

[00:15:58]>> Well, you see, he's being slippery. His official biography on Wikipedia says that the coup began on August 19th and that he resigned from the KGB in protest of the coup.

[00:16:13]But he became an adviser to a leader of democracy, the mayor of Lenenrad, Sochak, the reformer, his boss. And here he is talking about principalities and so on about Lenin who supposedly tore everything down. But in history, he is a zero. As a historian, I'm telling you, he's a zero. Because if Lenin had not given the republic certain rights, the Red Army would have lost everything.

[00:16:45]He should understand that this is what allowed Lenin to hold the structure together by creating national republics by giving them something, delegating and so on. That is how the USSR held together and then Stalin consolidated it further and so on. So what kind of mindset does he end up with? Imperial for him the most important thing is Russia as an empire and in his way of thinking it was a mistake to have given anything to any peoples all of it should be in one fist he essentially sets himself the task of restoring this empire and this whole spirit of imperialism and so on yuri and if we talk about this longunning fixation on total control on suppressing disscent can it tell us something specific about a person's inner world.

[00:17:40]Look, continuing this thread in that footage, very early footage, very good, very informative, he is being slippery.

[00:17:48]That's clear. Um, at the turn of the 90s up to the late 90s, you can read his psychological profile from his behavior.

[00:17:55]Um, because he is being natural there on screen where he is alive. You can still go back and watch it. If you take him to sum him up in a couple of words, this is a modest, indecisive, shy man, very inward with a slight inferiority complex with traces of Napoleonic syndrome. That is what generates the imperial drive.

[00:18:17]The problem is this. Alongside that, he with all his hesitancy and modesty takes far too bold and decisive steps.

[00:18:26]I came to a conclusion back then. The image of a teenager who is brave and decisive only because he has the strong guys backing him up.

[00:18:35]Someone a large group call it some pilot bureau of theirs took him under their wing and set him out front. The idea the framework is not his. Big money started flowing in the new Petersburg gangland feuds. This new wave suited him very nicely. Piles of cash more than he knew what to do with back there. Hardly anyone had that kind of money. And even if you did, there was nowhere to put it.

[00:18:57]He wasn't dreaming of the USSR, but the people who brought him to power, most likely the money was theirs, too. He arrived in Moscow flushed with cash. And just like that, he was in. That is when his rise began. And he proved to be a very effective tool for manipulating the overwhelming majority of the population.

[00:19:14]People who had only just emerged from the Soviet Union. Many were nostalgic.

[00:19:18]They had lost social guarantees. The world had been turned upside down.

[00:19:22]Everything had collapsed. So the message became, remember only the good. And notice those same narratives are still circulating today. We remember only three things. Groceries were cheap, the grass was greener, and gasoline cost next to nothing. But back then, that was real money. A serious amount. And we had more energy because we were younger.

[00:19:44]Because we were younger. There you go.

[00:19:45]His political technologist picked up exactly that and turned it into a manipulation lever. Let's get nostalgic.

[00:19:52]Let's bring it back. But not the repressions, the ones that, by the way, started getting exposed in the 80s and 90s. People were shocked.

[00:19:59]>> No repressions. Those are nothing. Uh, let's remember the good stuff. That tasty ice cream we had, the sausage that actually smelled like sausage.

[00:20:06]>> Drinking water out of a single shared cup. And on this big speculation, all of these tendencies took off. But notice with him, by the way, even today, when he speaks about the USSR, this fox-like sinus spreads, widens his face. He knows he's spouting nonsense and he knows that plenty of people understand it too. But all the same, this is the narrative. Um, we have made our claim. We want to restore this empire. You want to live in an empire, then let's do everything the way it used to be.

[00:20:36]>> Well, you say some pallet bureau took this little figure and installed him with the right narratives. Over these years, over these decades, has Putin come to lead this pilot bureau himself?

[00:20:46]>> Most likely, he simply outlived everyone who was part of it. And he didn't just clean it out. He brought in his own people, loyal subjects, people even more loyal than himself. Let's not forget this is the KGB, the KGB school of the 80s. That is a very strong school. Um they were genuinely trained for this.

[00:21:03]And he wasn't there alone. Most likely there was a a team of his classmates, his cohort who in the '9s were left supposedly with nothing. So it isn't quite that he brought in his own people.

[00:21:14]He refreshed this pallet bureau. And just as he was led around in his time, told to carry the briefcase and he obediently carried it. He carried it very obediently, proudly with a real sense of his own dignity. He carried that briefcase, the classic image, remember Saabch's briefcase.

[00:21:31]He carried it beautifully.

[00:21:34]And he saw this as normal, not humiliating. He carried the briefcase of Saabch, a Democrat. And the Democrat, for some reason, had no problem with his adviser carrying his briefcase for him.

[00:21:45]And that's the kind of people he picked for himself. Now everyone around him in exactly the same way with the same sense of selfworth uh with faith and hope in the bright future he has already promised them. They carry his briefcases for him in just the same way. But it has to be said. You see he has a deceptive look about him.

[00:22:03]Very deceptive. I'd say he looks sort of unambitious. Why was he picked? They needed a man without particular ambitions. Because the people standing behind him, they thought they would manipulate him. You see, Yeltson's circle bet on him as some kind of weakling. But what kind of weakling is he? If he's the head of the FSB, it's deceptive. Look at how thoroughly he managed to fool them on appearance alone. They thought they would manipulate him. He'd do what they told him. Well, no, my dears. With the help of that same FSB, he had them all wrapped up in a minute. and everything turned upside down. So, you see, this is exactly how they recruited for the KGB.

[00:22:47]Blue eyes, transparent like that, an inviting appearance. The kind that sort of isn't laying claim to anything. He doesn't look like a killer, would you say?

[00:22:57]An average statistical kind of guy.

[00:23:00]That's how they operate. Now, we said he was lamenting the collapse of the USSR.

[00:23:05]And 30 years later, on February 21st, 3 days before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin says exactly the same words. He recognizes the independence of the so-called Daetsk and Lhansk people's republics. And the next day, he convenes the Federation Council to legalize military aggression against a neighboring state.

[00:23:24]>> Modern Ukraine was created entirely and wholly by Russia, or more precisely, by Bolevik, communist Russia.

[00:23:34]This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution and Lenin and his associates went about it in a manner extremely crude towards Russia itself by detaching by tearing away from it part of its own historical territories the millions of people who lived there.

[00:23:55]Of course, no one asked them about anything.

[00:24:01]I support the proposal on the entry of the Daetsk and Luhansk people's republics into the Russian Federation.

[00:24:08]We are not talking about that. We are not discussing that. We are talking about whether or not to recognize independence.

[00:24:17]>> Yes, I support the proposal on recognizing independence.

[00:24:23]>> A Freudian slip as they say with Narishka. On February 24th, 2022, Putin delivers his address, invoking the collapse of the USSR, NATO's unchecked expansion toward Russia's borders, and announces the start of the so-called special military operation.

[00:24:42]>> The People's Republics of Donbas appealed to Russia for help.

[00:24:46]In this connection, in accordance with article 51, paragraph 7 of the UN charter, with the sanction of the Federation Council of Russia, and in execution of the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with the Daetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, ratified by the Federal Assembly on February 22nd of this year, I have taken the decision to conduct a special military operation.

[00:25:14]Its goal is the protection of people who for eight years have been subjected to abuse and genocide at the hands of the Kiev regime. And to that end, we will pursue the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.

[00:25:30]>> Yuri, the special military operation.

[00:25:32]What does this term give Putin? Why not declare war?

[00:25:35]>> Internally, it gives him something. Wars aren't declared anymore. That's worth saying. We still even though we did not live through the time when wars were declared in our society there is still this feeling that a war has to be declared officially come out and declare it. I declare war and only then is it lawful complete nonsense. Ukraine did not have to declare war on anyone because we are exercising self-defense.

[00:26:00]Martial law has been introduced mobilization and so on. What Putin did war as an instrument of policy is prohibited. Period. and a special military operation isn't >> well all states world leaders conduct all kinds of military operations everywhere he could have called the war against our country a moonlanding for all I care it wouldn't have been any less of a war for it is still a war an aggressive war which means it is a criminal war period so this whole discussion that this isn't a war but only a military operation that's purely for the domestic consumer over there in Russia and even they have given up on it by now. They use it like a warnout term on the air now. They're saying war, war, war. They don't even hassle each other for it anymore over there. But but wars aren't declared.

[00:26:52]>> But you've already mentioned the pretext under which he announced the start of the special military operation, the UN charter. He cites article 51, paragraph 7.

[00:27:04]I checked there is no paragraph 7 in article 51. I noticed too that he said paragraph 7.

[00:27:10]>> The key thing is to say it confidently.

[00:27:12]>> Article 51 is self-defense.

[00:27:14]>> Collective self-defense.

[00:27:16]>> They have individual and collective.

[00:27:18]Individual they justified with NATO closing in. So they are reacting supposedly preventively some kind of approach somewhere off in the distance.

[00:27:26]And now we'll strike. That's the individual one for them. And collective is the so-called LPR and DPR. Supposedly appealing to them. And collectively they go in together to defend themselves against an aggressive Ukraine.

[00:27:37]>> And first they recognized their independence. And now all three of them together.

[00:27:41]>> It was the setup. It was the legal setup to invoke this right to self-defense.

[00:27:45]And you have to understand special military operation has no legal definition in international law. But war does. If he had said war, that's it.

[00:27:55]They would have to be expelled from the security council. Expelled from the UN because he would have declared war.

[00:28:01]That's it. They're out. They get thrown out of the OCE.

[00:28:05]They are not fools. He calls war a special military operation. Everyone looks up the legal terms. There is no such legal term. Special military operation. Whatever it is, that's the whole point. So they don't get thrown out.

[00:28:21]It's much simpler. Everyone looks up the term aggressive war. In 1974, the UN spelled out what an aggressive war is.

[00:28:28]The use of armed forces on the territory of another state. Missiles. Even the blockade of seapports that can be considered an aggressive war territory used to attack another state Barus.

[00:28:38]Nevertheless, that's aggression. You know it yourselves. To put a block on it, it gets called a conflict in Ukraine. Even with all of that, both at the UN and at the OCE, no matter how much we asked, they don't call it a war.

[00:28:52]And that's why it's an armed conflict. A conflict, not a warl. So that's where the manipulation lies.

[00:29:02]They declare special military operations. They can't be expelled from the UN anymore. So you see those are the kinds of manipulations they use. We listened to part of the halfhour address. If we recall what Putin says earlier on, he says the West deceived us, threw us under the bus in plain language. Card sharp behavior. All of these touches, they forced us to act.

[00:29:27]And it's very interesting that he gets to Ukraine at minute 16. I think >> I went back through almost the entire halfhour speech. This whole con artist routine. They deceived us. They betrayed us.

[00:29:40]Backstabbed us. Is this to lower the temperature? What is he trying to achieve with that kind of language?

[00:29:46]>> It's deliberate. And I think the political technologist worked on this for around 3 months at the very least to arrive at this. This is the construction of an overarching negative narrative, one that triggers a reaction of vengeance. So, it's not just that they treat us badly, not just that someone is threatening us. We have been deceived.

[00:30:02]We have been thrown under the bus. We have been humiliated. We have been trampled. We must take revenge. So, get up, stand up, and go take your revenge.

[00:30:11]But this is for their own people. That's the main message. of course for their own people exclusively to stir up the masses to somehow the population there is rather rigid in this regard especially in the regions each region is its own thing a small detail they have their own regional phone networks uh with one SIM card when you move you have to buy a new SIM or reregister and those little zars there make the decisions so when taking such a serious decision all the regions had to be prepared so they would all close ranks together Um, it's roughly like with Nerishkin, same example. So that god forbid no one would start shaking their head and saying, "Hold on, I missed that. What just happened?"

[00:30:54]So this is a deliberately built narrative, his halfhour speech. By then it was already wrapped as a generalization as an overall summary, but the preparation went on for several years. Yes, you remember the moment with Narishka. Nishkin tried to wrigle out of it on a technicality on the wording.

[00:31:13]He's the head of foreign intelligence, something of an intellectual.

[00:31:18]But Putin said, "Hold on. Hold on."

[00:31:21]You wanted to say something, didn't you?

[00:31:23]He had pulled them all together.

[00:31:26]Collective responsibility. We're all on the hook. Comrades, we are going to war.

[00:31:31]And all of us, I'm asking you point blank. You personally have to answer that. We are going in to fight for these interests and only Narishkin started squirming saying I didn't quite catch that. Then he started mumbling even said more than was required of him because he understood they would finish him. They would simply finish him. End of story.

[00:31:57]So you see Putin made sure every one of them had to back him all of it on television. The entire leadership said, "Yes, we are going in to defend ourselves. To defend Donbos from a criminal regime, and they came to defend it in Kiev."

[00:32:12]>> You see, we're going in to save them.

[00:32:15]Saving the population of Donbas in Sunumi of all places.

[00:32:19]Why did he spend 16 minutes essentially talking to the United States?

[00:32:26]>> Expansion, the evil empire.

[00:32:29]>> It's actualization. Look, Ukraine on its own is not or well, picture the scale.

[00:32:34]I'm standing in front of a map. And Ukraine, it's just not that serious. It poses no real threat. The main enemy for the past 80 years has been the neighboring continent. And Ukraine is the channel through Ukraine. All of it, all the evil of the world, the cosmic evil comes through. So, he framed it.

[00:32:54]Look, evil is closing in on us, a huge black planet like in Star Wars. But it all comes at us through Ukraine. And little by little, he tied every threat to Ukraine. We are coming here to save ourselves, to save our own people who are over there, to stand up for the honor and dignity that have been humiliated, that have been trampled.

[00:33:12]>> I wanted to clarify one more thing.

[00:33:15]You're saying Putin had to prepare all of his people for the idea that this war was necessary. So, he wasn't sure how Russian society would react. But was he sure that in three days they would parade down Prashadic?

[00:33:27]>> That's exactly the thing. He was certain that all of Russia stood behind him because what came before was painstaking drawn out preparation. They reported to him from the regions. Comrade Putin, everything is ready. We are starting and in 3 days we will march down the K of Central Street.

[00:33:43]>> Let's also remember that 10 years ago when Russia was seizing Crimea, Putin wasn't yet so blunt, so brazen. Right up to the last moment, he denied that Russian troops had taken part in the seizure. He stayed quiet, got his story tangled, talked about polite people.

[00:34:01]>> Were they Russian soldiers or not?

[00:34:03]>> Those were local self-defense forces behind the Crimean self-defense forces.

[00:34:07]Naturally, our servicemen took up positions. They acted very correctly, but as I have already said, decisively and professionally. That's a fact. We have never hidden it. our armed forces, well, let's just say it plainly, blockaded the Ukrainian armed forces stationed in Crimea.

[00:34:29]>> And then after the seizure of Crimea, Putin was telling Ukraine, "Don't believe those who say we will go further. We respect your sovereignty."

[00:34:38]And of course, the same playbook was used in Daetsk and Luhansk.

[00:34:43]Yuri, we're seeing a great deal here about how Putin grew bolder because he didn't get a real response from the international community. In legal terms, are there any mechanisms strong enough to stop Putin as of 2014? No.

[00:35:01]As of 2022, no, there were none.

[00:35:05]There is no court anywhere in the world where he can be tried for starting the war.

[00:35:10]That's the reality of the international legal architecture when it comes to the crime of aggression.

[00:35:16]There is no court that can try him. We can't try him. Immunity. He's the president.

[00:35:21]>> He's the president.

[00:35:23]>> Yes.

[00:35:26]The court in the Hague can't do it because Russia doesn't recognize it. At one point they wanted to recognize the International Criminal Court. They wanted to be part of it. The same HG court that issued arrest warrants for President Putin over the deportation of children in March 2023.

[00:35:47]They signed the documents, didn't ratify them, and then in 2015 to 2016, they walked away from the idea altogether.

[00:35:54]They threw out the international institution that could have served justice, that could have answered for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. So as of 2022 and he understood all of this perfectly well, there was no court where he this whole inner click of his could be tried for the crime of aggression. There simply was no such court. Which is exactly why at the very start of the big war in February and March 2022, Ukraine and its allies began first as an idea, then through diplomatic channels to lay the groundwork for a special tribunal for the crime of aggression, a special court that would try one crime only in a very narrow circle of people. The crime is the preparation, planning, and waging of war. And the circle is precisely Narishkin.

[00:36:46]Who else was there? Kak Shyu that whole crowd around 15 to 20 people Matt Vienko those who took the decision and signed off on the deployment of Russian armed forces abroad and so on that's the whole machinery that brought the war into reality the documents were ready and to put those people on trial Ukraine has been working and now there's more practical work underway to get the tribunal physically up and running over President Putin >> over President Putin in literally 15 to 20 people and one crime. Not deportation, not war crimes, just one crime. The preparation, planning, and waging of an aggressive war. Because this gap you see where it looks like you can try them for some things. This gap where you can't try them for starting a war. We are the first to run up against this. We ran up against the fact that there is a crime against peace. The tribunal could have been set up, by the way, by a UN Security Council decision where Russia sits, >> right? The tribunal could have been set up that way. Both the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the tribunal for the genocide in Rwanda were created by UN Security Council decision. It took 3 to four months. They set up the tribunal and it tried those people. We ran into the fact that we need to put on trial the leader of a state, a member of the UN Security Council that vetos the use of force against itself and naturally vetos any move to activate legal mechanisms against the head of state.

[00:38:13]That's why this is being created under the opaces of the council of Europe.

[00:38:19]That's where this court will be a court for war crimes and for crimes against humanity with the special tribunal for Yugoslavia.

[00:38:32]The idea was that you have to make it clear to everyone dictators get the impression that they'll go on this way for the rest of their lives. Killing and so on, looting, calling it not looting, but reclaiming a return to some kind of roots.

[00:38:48]He spins something along those lines.

[00:38:51]Many were convicted over the former Yugoslavia.

[00:38:56]And you'd think that should have cooled things off somehow.

[00:39:01]But Yugoslavia is a smaller scale country.

[00:39:05]This is a country in the nuclear club with ambitions and so on. But the idea of the court has to stand. It has to be carried through and part of it will go through the h.

[00:39:17]The international criminal court is still operating on a number of articles.

[00:39:21]He has to be tried under those articles and on the war crimes once this tribunal is established.

[00:39:29]The Council of Europe has more fight in it. It's very difficult to block Russia there. War crimes have no statute of limitations and so on. You'll be tried regardless. As we already heard at the start, the so-called special military operation under the slogans of denification and demilitarization. And four years into the war, Putin keeps repeating the same mantra about nationalists and Nazis in Ukraine, explaining the reasons for his so-called special military operation.

[00:40:00]When this gentleman was coming to power, he declared he would strive for peace by any means, sparing nothing for it, including his own career.

[00:40:13]But as we can see now everything looks completely different.

[00:40:20]He, like his predecessors, has begun to be guided not by the interests of the people, but by the interests of a narrow group of nationalists, radical nationalists at that.

[00:40:33]And in essence, he is doing their bidding. And this regime in its mentality really is very close to a neo-Nazi regime because the extreme form of nationalism and neo-Nazism are almost one in the same.

[00:40:50]Let me add a bit of context. Putin is broadcasting in India talking about President Zalinski, neonazism.

[00:40:58]Now, there's an interesting picture. The president of one country explaining how to live in another country while in a third country, some kind of diplomacy.

[00:41:08]How was Putin able to build a relationship with European leaders, with Western leaders? that it took bloody events like these in Ukraine for the world to reconsider its relationship with Russia.

[00:41:21]>> Well, you have to understand that war has several dimensions. The ones we often talk about and one of them is theformational dimension. It has a military component, an economic one, anformational one in the broad sense.

[00:41:36]There's cyber, there's psychological warfare, ideological, diplomatic, political confrontations, but it's all broadlyformational.

[00:41:48]So to get something like that out, someone at the Russian embassy has to set things up with the news of India newspaper, find a suitable correspondent, male or female. She comes in, asks the questions, and he already knows what those questions are. You see, that's how it works. You see, and they pour real money into this information war on every front. Their intelligence services are working in coordination with embassies abroad and so on, working with all the media in every country with journalists who write. They can write what looks like an independent article, get money for it, with Kremlin narratives running through it. All of that costs money. But they know the money pays off. Millions read it.

[00:42:41]Millions listen to it. You see, and ideologically, you're working them over. That kind of systematic work is being done. And it works on segments of society, on political parties, on state institutions, and so on.

[00:42:59]So the world has to understand if you want to push back against Russian aggression possibly against Europe and beyond you have to push back on the information front.

[00:43:12]All right theformational and the financial side that's clear that's a KGB network among other things working all over the world. But what image of Putin do they put out? How does he present himself in the west? Before 2022, for example, before BHA, when the world looked at Russia a little differently, what image of Putin was being built? His image is unshakable both for the domestic market and the foreign market.

[00:43:37]Notice he very easily voices opposing contradictory things. Things we would call lies.

[00:43:44]In his narratives, this isn't lying.

[00:43:46]He's voicing the moment. Yesterday it sounded one way, today another. in his slight sinus implies, "Guys, I've already told you more than you actually deserve to know as much as I can voice it for you. Don't forget, I am the president of a very large, vast, powerful country."

[00:44:07]And essentially, the same image is built up everywhere.

[00:44:12]>> But inside the country, look, he's diving over there riding on bears.

[00:44:16]>> In political psychology, this process is called social event direction. When an artificial image of a leader is created, of a charismatic chief, this is his image, an unreal image, there never was any living person there flying with cranes, singing, dancing.

[00:44:34]That's not a living human being.

[00:44:36]Putting on a show, look at me, everyone.

[00:44:38]See what I'm really like. I'm alive. I'm a regular guy. Uh just like all of you.

[00:44:43]I'm the same as you. I'm a man. Uh nothing human is alien to me. That's why he's perceived over there in such a contradictory way. His actions don't square with his outward image. And people ask, well, how did it come to this? But his propaganda, those mouthpieces of his, they explain they serve up the reasons we were forced to take these measures.

[00:45:03]The same Europe, half of America, they listen to it and take it as real arguments.

[00:45:09]They don't know what actually happened.

[00:45:12]He told them there was no BHA, that it was staged.

[00:45:18]What's behind that image? Any inner conflicts? I think he himself happily watches the little screen, sits there and says, "That turned out great. You made a nice little picture about me." No conflicts, I think. Just self- admiration, satisfaction, and the pleasure of beholding more of the same >> and the constant readiness for the next escalation.

[00:45:38]For him, this this is his way of life.

[00:45:40]He's nothing without it now. Right now, if you switched it off, he wouldn't just die. He dropped dead in agony. This is his way of life forever.

[00:45:48]>> Some kind of need >> already at the level of a need. It's a narcotic dependency, an addiction >> on power.

[00:45:54]>> Yeah. Our task here is not to dissect how Putin is over there flying with the cranes and going for swims.

[00:46:00]>> I think a lot of people don't understand how a man with that kind of image was able to build such a colossal machine.

[00:46:05]>> This is a criminal. Why behind this image he keeps inside, what is he doing that is criminal? And why is the war he started a criminal war? Take for example the genocide of Russian speakers in Donbas which is the reason one of the reasons for the war. It's nonsense. It's just rubbish. It's heresy. Even the so-called organs of the Daetsk and Lohansk people's republic say so. They say that civilian deaths in the years before the start of the big war could be counted on one hand. So this is just nonsense. Next argument is NATO. Zero evidence. He says they're attacking us.

[00:46:41]We'll defend ourselves preemptively. But you put it well at one point. You're defending Daetsk and Sunumi. You're defending Daetsk in Kev. You're defending Daetsk somewhere outside Molive.

[00:46:52]What does that tell us? That self-defense, if we step into their logic, and we have to step into their logic, not just say they're bad, the self-defense is disproportionate. If you're defending Daetsk in self-defense, then go in there and defend yourselves like you say. Don't barge into half the country the way they did. Genocide, nonsense. NATO, nonsense.

[00:47:14]attack an aggressive war by Ukraine against the Detsk and Luhansk People's Republic. Nonsense.

[00:47:21]>> Yes, it's obvious to you and me. Why are we even talking about this? Because in 2014, relatives in Moscow called my husband and said, "Come over. Those same relatives who used to come to Kiev and to Crimea on vacation. Come and hide here with us." The question is why?

[00:47:40]Well, they're eating Russian speakers over there. That was the answer of a grown woman. That's why we're talking about this here. Because crimes without propaganda, without the soil propaganda lays down, probably wouldn't be possible. At least not in a country of this scale.

[00:47:57]From a human rights standpoint on everything we've examined and said today, the objective side of the crime stands out clearly. The presence of premeditated intent and design and of clearly formed motivation. This crime was prepared meticulously and in essence it has its preparatory phase, its key phase. The objective side is right there in plain sight.

[00:48:21]>> By the way, there's Putin in camo. He doesn't dress in camo all that often, and he only started doing it sometime later. He's now publicly accepting himself as the commander-in-chief of a country at war.

[00:48:31]>> He looks ridiculous, by the way, >> naturally, because he probably doesn't feel comfortable in it.

[00:48:36]>> How was he able to build a system that wages the bloodiest war in the heart of Europe? He's the alpha primatism from the word primate. It's a state where instinctive forms of behavior dominate over reason when homo sapiens recedes into the wild and the animal comes through a textbook highly primitive personality. Uh so he doesn't need to be a diplomat. He has no need for it. He doesn't need to be a thinker, a scientist, anything else. That's it.

[00:49:01]He's a primate. He's the alpha. He has taken his social status. He has climbed to the top of this food pyramid.

[00:49:09]That's it. Yet the reason of homo sapiens is supposed to dominate to prevail. But there are people in whom the animal nature dominates prevails over reason. Instincts run their behavior. This is exactly that classic personality type. Instincts run behavior. And perhaps just at the moment when emotions are prevailing over reason, it's time to recall how Putin yet again is threatening with nuclear weapons against Ukraine and Europe.

[00:49:37]>> Our triad, the nuclear triad, is more modern than any other triad.

[00:49:42]>> The only ones with these triads are us and yes, the Americans.

[00:49:48]>> Yes, for humanity it would be a global catastrophe.

[00:49:52]For the world, it would be a global catastrophe. But all the same as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state, I want to ask the question, what would we need such a world for if Russia is not in it?

[00:50:08]30 years in power effectively. What does that do to a person? To a person's psyche? It must take its toll.

[00:50:14]>> Not just self-confidence takes hold of him, but hyper self-confidence. He turns into a god, into a deity. He loses his grip on reality. Of course, he doesn't see reality. He doesn't just walk down the street. He doesn't talk to ordinary people. His circle is exceptionally narrow and locked in. He talks only to those people he himself lets in or who have clearance. That's it. Mhm. And now, as promised, in our studio, we have people who know firsthand the price of the Russian army's cruelty and cynicism under a bloodthirsty dictator. Anna Roma, who lost her parents and her home in a Russian missile strike, and Mikail Sava, political scientist, civic activist, and a war crimes document with the Euromaiden SOS public initiative.

[00:50:56]>> Hello, >> Anna. You lived in Sirka with your parents.

[00:51:01]>> Yes. It's a small town not far from Odessa, 70 to 80 km away. Around that, yes.

[00:51:08]>> That day when the missile hit your home.

[00:51:10]>> Can you take us through it?

[00:51:14]I clearly remember that I went out for a walk first with my friends.

[00:51:19]And the whole day, I had this feeling that I wanted to spend more time with mom and dad.

[00:51:25]So, I came home much earlier than I usually did.

[00:51:30]And that evening, I didn't leave their side at all.

[00:51:34]I was right there next to them the whole time. We ate together.

[00:51:39]We watched different shows and films with them.

[00:51:43]And around midnight, our internet ran out and we decided we needed to go to sleep.

[00:51:51]I was helping mom make their bed. And at the moment when I was standing facing the window, I saw the first missile come in on the holiday resort after which mom and dad sat me down in the corridor where there were two walls, covered me with pillows and blankets, and went off to get the documents.

[00:52:16]A couple of minutes after they left, I remember a powerful explosion that knocked me to the floor. And after that I got up and started screaming, "Mom, dad."

[00:52:29]Knowing they were right in the next room. I was calling out to them, but in the end, no one answered me. I felt this terrible fear. I wanted to help them somehow. But my child's mind back then was blowing it all up. And it seemed to me that the room was buried under stones, that I couldn't get in there.

[00:52:52]And I just heard the teachers from the lower floors who lived in our building start talking. I went down to them.

[00:53:01]And after that, a young couple with children from the upper floors took me to the school basement, where everyone we knew was. They were asking what happened.

[00:53:13]My godmother and my classmates's mother found me and then she got in touch with my brother and he came in the morning and took me back to Odiza with him.

[00:53:28]Anya, how old were you?

[00:53:31]>> I was 11 and now I'll be 15. You're telling us about those events and I see what incredible inner strength and courage it takes to share this story. Thank you for that.

[00:53:49]How did you recover?

[00:53:52]At that moment, my brother and his wife really saved me. My brother in particular.

[00:54:00]They had bought a dog who saved me at the time, too. She was always near me.

[00:54:05]She'd lick me. I'd take her out for walks and because of that she was constantly distracting me from all of it.

[00:54:13]I went to different camps spent time with my friends and gradually somehow the absence of my parents stopped pounding so hard in my head and I started getting away from all of it. And I realized that regardless of the fact that I was left without mom and dad so early, I have to keep going because I'm more than 100% sure that they would have wanted me to keep moving forward. not to cry, not to grieve over them.

[00:54:46]>> Anya, you mentioned the children you talked with at the camps. As I understand it, every one of them, everyone you talked to has their own terrible story in this war. Yes, there were a lot of different situations there. And honestly, I met very few children on my path who had been through the same kind of situation as me. But I can say more that even though I went through what I did, The children who lost either a mother or a father >> suffered far more psychologically than I did. Probably >> you're a very strong girl. What do you dream about?

[00:55:28]>> My mom and dad had a dream of going to Spain or Greece.

[00:55:33]And at every interview where I'm asked what I dream about, I say I want to fulfill their dream and travel to those exact countries they wanted to see. As for material dreams, I don't really have those.

[00:55:49]What I want is, you know, more to see what not everyone gets to see.

[00:55:57]I want to travel to different countries, see different nationalities.

[00:56:02]Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story.

[00:56:06]>> You've been an incredible inspiration.

[00:56:10]>> Keep working. Keep living. Keep believing in the best.

[00:56:15]>> MK, thank you for being here. You left Russia because of political persecution.

[00:56:22]>> Yes, that was a long time ago, more than 10 years ago.

[00:56:27]>> What about now? What are you doing? You document war crimes among other things and I know you became a direct witness to those crimes. Can you tell us about it?

[00:56:37]>> Yes, I received my certificate as a war crimes document from the public initiative Euromaiden SOS on February 24th, 2022, the first day of the start of the full-scale aggression. That evening, the experts of the Center for Civil Liberties met online and agreed not to leave. The Center for Civil Liberties had been documenting war crimes since 2014.

[00:57:05]The first people to do this work in the deoccupied Donbass were our people and we returned to it. I stayed in the combat zone in Kiev region. It's now BHA district back then K of Spatoshin.

[00:57:24]And yes, on March 3rd, right in front of my eyes, a Russian military column killed people. I saw it from a distance of, I'd say, around 300 m. Yes, this is what I managed to photograph on the highway. Two civilian cars were just driving out from the direction of BHA or Pin.

[00:57:47]They needed to cross the Jtomer highway and they would have been safe. But at that moment, a Russian military column was moving along the highway.

[00:57:58]At the front was an infantry fighting vehicle and it opened fire. At first, I couldn't believe my own eyes. Right in front of me, soldiers were killing civilians. Did they clearly see those were civilian cars?

[00:58:14]Without a doubt, those were civilian cars because I saw the same thing. They simply needed to cross the highway.

[00:58:22]white smoke, the sound of shots. I understood that the people in there had died. The IFV has a 30 mm cannon. When it hits a car, it tears it apart.

[00:58:36]But I remembered that we were documenting war crimes and one had taken place right in front of my eyes. In war, it is critical to document quickly because war erases the traces. And literally an hour before the next Russian column came through, I managed to photograph what was left of those people. Literally fragments of bodies.

[00:59:01]In the cars, only the legs remained. And only by those legs did we figure out that in each car a child, a woman, and a man had died.

[00:59:12]We managed to find the license plates.

[00:59:16]>> Then in the course of a brief investigation, it turned out these were most likely KIA volunteers evacuating people.

[00:59:26]But who exactly they were evacuating, we still don't know. We recorded the fact of the crime.

[00:59:33]After that, I recorded dozens, maybe hundreds of such cases. I was living at the time with friends in the village of Spitki.

[00:59:44]It was right in the combat zone. And literally every night the neighbors would call me and I'd drive over to record where shells had hit, where grads had hit. The Russians were shelling a populated area where there weren't even Ukrainian armed forces.

[01:00:05]There were only locals there.

[01:00:08]This is beyond any doubt a crime against humanity and I saw a great deal of this after Kiev region was deoccupied.

[01:00:20]I documented in McCarth district. There were photographs there including of looting and that surprised me too.

[01:00:30]Russian soldiers would take a car from the locals, spray paint a V on it, and just joy ride around until they smash the car up or sank it in a lake.

[01:00:44]>> Just like that for kicks.

[01:00:46]When one of the locals asked, "Why are you doing this?" The soldier answered, "What? You think only you should live well?"

[01:00:55]That was a new feature of the Russian world for me.

[01:00:59]That was in BHA. Yes. By the way, picking up on what Mi said, the widespread story of civilian cars being shot up even when they hadn't run into convoys at all. Here, those people were unlucky enough to run into a column.

[01:01:14]I represent victims in court against the Russians from Hostamel on the morning of February 25th. People were just driving in civilian cars into Hostamel. There was no military equipment on the road.

[01:01:25]They were simply shot up. I represent a woman who was at the wheel with an 18-year-old boy sitting next to her. He was studying to be a doctor. His mother is disabled. She can't walk. He had gone to study at Bahomeitz here in Kiev.

[01:01:42]Right in front of her eyes, a sniper shot, killed him, wounded her. The car, of course, was finished, but she's alive. I represent her in court today.

[01:01:51]And these Russians have been identified.

[01:01:54]As for the looting, this is about the cars in Macar district in BHA district.

[01:01:58]They would take them, mark them so their own wouldn't shoot at them, and then they'd drive around, run out of gas, abandoned them. I documented a man whose car they just drove around in, and then drove over with either an APC or a tank, drove right over it, abandoned it, so they had their fun, and tossed it. By the way, his house got hit, too. He was left with no home. There was just a foundation in the literal sense of the word, and a car run over by an IFV or a tank. This is not an isolated case of some mad man. He got drunk, lost his mind, started doing things. This is widespread practice. This is the face of the Russian army in Ukraine.

[01:02:36]Mihil, when we talk about Russia, you said you left 10 years ago and you surely follow what's happening inside Russia. If we look at Russia from 2014 to today, how has the internal machine changed?

[01:02:50]The war machine, how much stronger has it become? What's keeping it going?

[01:02:55]We're talking a lot about that today.

[01:02:59]The country has changed a great deal.

[01:03:02]And it has changed first and foremost under the influence of two main factors.

[01:03:07]The first is politically motivated repressions in Russia. This practice has grown by orders of magnitude. And the second factor is propaganda. Russian propaganda is a unique phenomenon.

[01:03:24]If you set North Korea aside, because it isn't just on a mass scale, isn't just pouring at people from every faucet.

[01:03:33]It also has no alternatives because everything else has been strangled. Any other point of view is simply criminalized, banned, gone.

[01:03:44]on propaganda. We put together a series of programs, closing it with Putin.

[01:03:49]Thank you so much for being able to come into the studio today. Anya, thank you.

[01:03:55]Mi, thank you. And before we move on to the vote, I'll ask you to sum up. You've already spoken about the crime of aggression as the highest form of crime.

[01:04:06]I'll ask you to lay out which articles we all want and on which Putin can be tried in the framework of the special international tribunal that professionals are working on creating today. The special tribunal can only try the crime of aggression that is the start of the war. One crime one a very narrow circle of people and of course Putin is the most important. The maximum that can be obtained is life imprisonment. But the International Criminal Court in the Hague can try him for the deportation of Ukrainian children. The arrest warrant has already been issued. This can even be qualified as genocide even though there is no such qualification yet today.

[01:04:47]And the evidence matters. War destroys evidence on the ground. That's true. But also gaining the access to draw this line from the lowest crime, capture the scale and reach all the way up to the highest figure. That is far from simple.

[01:05:01]Well, on the deportation of children, they essentially documented themselves on air and by signing decrees. On the other crimes, Putin is unequivocally guilty. The question is how to find the evidence and how to bring his guilt all the way to an indictment.

[01:05:16]So, the main thing is the aggression of starting the war and the deportation of children is also in the focus of the main court, the international criminal court and the H.

[01:05:28]Now, we move on to the vote. Is Vladimir Putin guilty of crimes of aggression against another state, of crimes against humanity, and of genocide of the Ukrainian people? Please vote.

[01:05:42]Unanimously guilty. Kaakalis has said that over the past 100 years, Russia has invaded 19 countries that never attacked it. In Putin's 25 years in power, Russia has carried out five military interventions. The current Russian president already has an arrest warrant from the international criminal court for the abduction of Ukrainian children.

[01:06:02]And today, the international community has put in place a mechanism that makes it possible to try Putin even while he holds the office of president. This was the public television tribunal. I'm Daria Kurimova. See you next time.