secondary to our passion for secrecy and ministries do not want to share information. >> thank you so much. let's think our panel. [applause] -- thank our panel. we now have lunch served outside the room. grab a plate and intermingle here. we shall start at 1:30. we have cameras out there. we will all be seated by 1:30.

people died on palm sunday. >> each speaker has up to 12 minutes. there is a little bit of flexibility. i will show you some signs that time is up. the first presenter is from the university of helsinki on why the kremlin has not achieved its goals. >> does this work? yeah. let me start from my great

appreciation of the entire gw team for organizing this excellent conference. you have done a great job of keeping the discussion on a professional level and i hope that my contribution will add some important notes in this respect. how to proceed with this? >> you have to press the key down. vladimir: ok. can you do something? actually -- [laughter]

this is me. my presentation address to one of the most puzzling questions of our time. basically, why russia has not achieved its goals in ukraine from february 2022. we go back to numerous predictions and expectations of february 24 of 2022, you will find out it was a mantra. kyiv will fall in three or four days. many analysts, experts argued that because of military might of russia, overall prevalence

and technologies, manpower, and so on and so forth, the outcome of the military operation is inevitable. however, it did not happen in three days, it did not happen in three years and i would say the fall of kyiv is a highly unlikely outcome of this special military operation, even by now. we need to explain why. why such an effort -- not completely -- it has not brought a desired outcome. i would say this is a very difficult question to address nowadays. we have to rely upon imperfect

and incomplete information. we havno access to whatever classified materials a very often have to use some journalistic accounts, some memoirs and so on. in my view, there is not much specific to the current tuation. in the past there were plenty of examples of brilliant analysis made upon very much imperfect and incomplete information. a classical account of international relations is a study of the cuban missile crisis by graham ellison, based upon imperfect if not biased sources. however, ellison made great

research on foreign policy decision-making. this is why students still use it now and welcome more sources as they became available. in my view, we can address situations using imperfect and incomplete information. this is how we may proceed further. there are two basic explanations of why russia has not achieved their goals. both of them are imperfect. one is offered by military analysts who poied out the russian assault on ukraine was a replica of 1968 soviet

operation. in went wrong due to poor implementation of this plan. another approach is deep and addresses iuevery much beyond technogical matters, such as spirit, morale. it is a replica of the argument in "war and peace." for good or for bad, explanations like that do not work well. more importantly, this approach

is being very different in many ways. it addresses symptoms rather than causes of this mismah between expectatio a reality. instead of dealing with paramilitary efforts, one issue follows in the footsteps of the continuation of policy. instead of focusing on implementation, we need to address matters of policy adoption. this is in my view the key for explanation. my explanation addresses traps

of decision-making and first the trap of the italian regime. second is a trap of bad government. the third is the trap of misconceptions. finally is a trap of previous impunity. how the previous success turned out to be the source of failure. let's address these traps one by one. the key difference between the soviet regime, which performed successfully in czechoslovakia in 1968 and the russian regime which performed not so spectacularly in ukraine is a

difference between nature of the regimes. soviet regime was partly based, highly institutionalized, based upon collective decision-making. there was an excellent study of soviet decision-making in echoslovakia in 1968 but a famous cold war historian from harvard. he analyzed six meetings and negotiations between soviet adership and the leadership of the warsaw pact countries. this led to ver much efficient prepation of decision-making. and the successful implementation. nothing like that was observed

in russia in february of 2022. it was far away from collective decision-making. it is a matter of institutionalization. institutionalized regimes operating not so quickly or decisively. much more effectively. the problem with regimes is that are well known for their decisiveness but the arbitrariness is on the other side of the coin. the personalization of the russian regime skyrocketed after 2020, which immensely increased the time horizon for russia's

leadership but also to undmine some sort of mechanisms of decision-making. this is important for our understanding of the logic of decision-making. the second is a problem of bad governance. this is the subject matter of my previous book which was sent to the press weeks before the start of the military assault. following a presentation. one of the problems of bad governance in russia in general and foreign and militaryolicy

is the lack of technical foolproofing. there was an important matter. it is a huge difference between civili sectors of the russian government and the lack of technocratic foolproofing. there is corruption and mismanagement, accusations toward the minister of defense. it is very much reasonable. i would say the problem is much deeper. the deficiencies of quality of governance. pockets of efficiency like the whacker group -- wegner group.

falling into the trap of misperceptions. international relations. misperceptions led to -- the case of russia'spproach toward ukraine. it was a number of underestimations. risks were not taken seriously enough. the kremlin uertimated. a matter of special discussion. finally, experience of

successful annexation of crimea in 2014 made the kremlin a victim of previous success. it is a sort of scaling up of a relatively minor episode. much bigger. this respect, such a expectation, played a very negative role. what went wrong? summarize. former students in this conference. all of them know i requested students to summarize answers

and one or two sentences. i summarized my answer in one quotation from the bible. he will be humbled. this is the shortest possible answer. those interested in longer answers i would suggest to read the book entitled "russia's gamble." it will appear two months from now. thank you for accepting my selfish self-promotion. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, vladimir. you were one minute ahead. [laughter] setting a good example. our second speaker is from the

swedish institute of international affairs. how the russian army is pushing toward certain models. >> thank you so much. it is an honor to address such a knowledgeable audience. a great honor. i mean to continue vladimir's presentation. i can suggest my view on the operation. we are speaking about the level of the russian invasion of ukraine.

it was a total catastrophe in terms of military expertise. i am sure of what i am speaking about. none of the prognosis was realized. let me remind you of a few facts. a few weeks before the invasion, americans tried to prevent the invasion. they made intelligence leaks in press, publishing possible scenario of russian operation. when you have 200,000 troops, you cannot invade in a certain direction. [laughter] next, people say, ok, russian military technology superiority

will lead us. kyiv will fall within days. the same people began to write that now we see the corruption problems and decision-making, blah, blah, blah. one of the experts wrote russia lost capability. 2023 came, ukrainian advance was not very successful. people turned around. now we know that russia has its capabilities. it is endless.

i agree with political reasons that vladimir mentioned. my feeling is that people who made such predictions based on common sense and a second on traditional pardons, making no difference between countries. why russia, ukraine. it is a lack of knowledge of history of russian military buildup. for 170 years, the basic concept of russian defense was mass mobilization of armed forces.

the idea was that the country is a military camp. in case of emergency, military authorities should have capability to call on millions of people. in the soviet union, this system reached its peak. it was the ideal mobilization system. what does it mean? soviet army was huge. 5 million people. all private insurgents were not professional soldiers, they were draftees. the idea was to train them in one or two years, make them

reservists that can be called upon in an emergency. the second part was industrial mobilization. all soviet enterprises had so-called mobilization tasks. the point of view of the economy. keeping reserve production lines to produce something you absolutely do not need. soviet leaders, other possible adversaries have the same way of thinking. they knew for sure that american and european industry are much more effective. you should do as much, make as much military improvement as

possible. soviet union has 63,000 tanks. three times more than the states had and two times more than all other countries in the world. it is absolutely clear that the system -- honestly speaking, generals were powerful enough to keep the image of this system for the next 10 years. only in 2008 with a new defense minister, he understood the problem. mr. putin at the end of the day received armed forces that can

solve some military problem. hours or days. the biggest success of russian army was february 26, 2020. more than 40,000 troops were deployed along the russian-ukrainian border. let me remind you that a few years before when the chechens invaded dagestan. unfortunately or unfortunately, the main problem in february

2022. was that troops received an order they could not fulfill. you cannot occupy countries with 200,000 troops. it is totally nonsense. in the russian system they could not say mr. president, we cannot do this. so they preferred to behave as if they really trusted reports that ukrainians would meet russian troops with power. what happened then? autumn of 2022, i suppose putin asked advice and generals can

give the only advice they know. it happened during the so-called mobilization. it was a total shock for the russian system. a clear redline. the kremlin understood. it cannot conduct mobilization at that particular point. a real revolution in russian military thinking. look. it has never happened in soviet history. all families of mobilized soldiers received money. absolutely unbelievable.

it leads to changes of social structures in a russian village. wife of soldier, there was nothing. suddenly this woman received huge money. women said i want -- of course. it ended with a lack of products and inflation. but putin took the system and it is very workable. now we should understand that the recruiting is rather effective.

authorities recruit something like 30,000. it is real mobilization. you can name it market mobilization. the whole market appears. all regions have corridors for those who will sign a contract. they pay different money. if a guy wants to be recruited, what regions? sorry. the biggest question now, and we can turn to this point -- what happened then? i think in this situation,

military will suggest mr. putin that this particular type of conflict will be the model for future conflicts. if it happens, putin will stand before the very difficult choice . the porting of all soviet tanks are more or less exhausted. badly needing to return to the soviet system of military production. if you want to have such a system, it means you should return to the soviet economy. it was the reason for the call -- collapse of the soviet union. it will be a difficult choice.

according to my accounts, approximately 200 enterprises in 2024. putin is moving to restore soviet military system. [applause] >> thank you so much. perfect timing. and finally, we have two presenters, matthew from the norwegian institute of international affairs, and alina from washington state university, assessing critical patriotism and the imperial nationalist imagery in war-time russia. the floor is yours. 12 minutes. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. sorry.

so. this presentation is part of a larger project involving some other labs that are studying changes in war-time russia and our focus was on nationalism. nationalisms in the plural. the transformation of russian nationalism in war time, war and nationalism historically transforms society, countries, regions. so -- but at the same time nationalism is mull day facetted and a -- is a multifaceted phenomenon and no state can hope to have it under control forever in perpetuity. the putin regime has had an ambiguous and complex relationship with nationalism. often the approach is to allow a great deal of venting and a great deal of that to be elaborated and allowed in

comparison to liberal opposition groups. so just to say about the context that got us moving into this -- how we decided to go with the lab. our first article that we right to to write was this context of of course -- that we tried to write was the context of shrinking space in russia. the censorship laws, the sebs of that -- sense of that. and there's no space fordy september in the old way -- for dissent in the old way. then we have the explosion in telegram usage during the war. and the sense or the national patriots, they called themselves, have stepped in to perform this role and the way they do it is to agree with a large amount of the regime's ideological positions while finding spaces to -- [indiscernible] -- government performance for decision making and so forth. we also point out that, our starting point in the context is that systemic opposition during the war has become more -- [indiscernible] -- covers that

and that also we have of course the -- [indiscernible] -- so we have two concepts moving around in our paper and some might say that's too much and we should write two papers. critical patriotism which we define on two levels which i as i just mentioned, this type of dissent that basically is involving c groups and midlevel actors who areovering their dissent up and the other part of our meaning is that it's a segment, a value cluster which has been identified asn research such as -- lab also discovered this segme of nonstate patri people who call themselves patriots butreery critical of the regime a't accept the propaganda that's fed to them. other major concept we have is nationalism. now, many people i room

might think they're not mutual, they're exclusive, they can't b combined but there is a body of scholarship that shows in the 19th century, they reinfor each other and there's a sense that's happening in russia again. the nationalist imperative of self-determination, merges or fuses with expansion and this time in the 21st century and the idea of being that maybe this applies to other countries like china and india and turkiye and even america. so, those are the conceptual realm and we're kind of arguing that there's a relationship between critical patriotism and imperial nationalism. imperial nationalism for the groups we study is a kind of social imaginary, geopolitical imaginary and nationalist and populist imaginaries that kind of overlap with each other. at the same time the critical patriotism is a way of mobilizing frame. for communicating with society. so the two kind of interlink that way. ok. i will now pass it over to my

co-altogether who are is going to take us -- co-author who is going to take us into thing meed odds and the -- into thmeth -- into the methods and the data. >> while in the u.s., it's mostly perceived as -- in russia -- [indiscernible] -- all of our tell gram -- [microphone warping] [indiscernible] the first one is one too many broadcasting channels where hosts can create their own content and also have messages from other channels and this is a top-down political mobilization but also they can perform as an independent media too. because some of them have more

than several million subscribers. at the same time, telegram provides opportunities for -- [indiscernible] -- any user can be private or public chats where member can communicate with each other directly. and together this creates ground for digital political communities and while field work in russia is especially problematic right now, digital telegram can be -- an alternative. what exactly do we do? we selected four so-called telegram channels that best direct -- [indiscernible] -- and imperial nationalism and then we added the channels whose messages were visited most freakily. then we did the same process with this newly added channels too.

and as a result the exponential sampling gave us -- [indiscernible] -- nine to 10 sell gram channels and we collected all messages since the beginning of the war and this database -- [indiscernible] -- so today we have over 770,000 messages there. and we use this data to build the network where every note is a telegram channel and every -- [indiscernible] -- represents that messages go forward. and after that we applied the algorithm -- the most connected group of channels, which also can be described as different groups or kinds of national imperials. the blue one is white imperial nationalists. [indiscernible] -- and all of themostly share -- [indisceible] -- russian empire and would like to restore its historical glory. the second cluster is the red one, anti-semitic nationalists

and this mostly contains -- [indiscernible] -- and its regional branches. the biggest cluster is the een one and includes radical conservative-orthodox patriots -- [indiscernible] -- and we have several -- the same cluster, what's more important is that year by year network analysis demonstrated that subgroups began to drift apart, forming two separate clusters by 2024. and to make sense of this shift, we treated them as two different subgroups as the next stage of our analysis and we were also wondering, do these critical patriots actually criticize russian authorities and rush yab

government? -- russian government? soviet -- [indiscernible] -- to tr how open they feel all the time. the two reallrtant points about this graph, the first one is that we see nice spike increases in 2022. that w just after the announcement of -- [indiscernible] -- it was widely by critical patriots as incte and insufficient -- ineffective and insufficient. th wld like to see full scale mobilization instead of part. xt spike followed the first successful drone strikes on rus military infrastructure deep within russian territory. the second point -- [indiscernible] -- was march for justice or wagner group -- [indiscernible] -- looks like imperial nationalists saw it as a window of political opportunities for them but also

note that when this brel onwas shut down and, for example, -- rebellion was shut down, and someone was arrested, this dropped. but this led to the divergence of how these -- [indiscernible] -- for example, the red line here became evenore radical while orthodox conservative, the green line, toned down their criticism, possibly to demonstrate loyalty to the regime. didn't do so, so maybe this could be one of the reaso why they formed two different clusters lat butore idea here that they choose different strategists to respond to the increased threat of governmental repressions. so now we know -- when they criticize russian government and the next question was how they criticize russian government, what value they promote. and we used all this data, the

most critical message hosted by the most influential telegram channels and i can go into more at the tails in that in the q&a session but the core idea here that 300 messages for qualitative analysis. [indiscernible] we have eight core frames of critical patriotism and imperial nationalism and also we created the least of key words for each frame and used them for kwan tative -- quantitative analysis created by all channels. you can see results on the slide. it's distributions of cluster and now i hand it off to my assistant so he can tell you more about our results. [laughter] >> yes. spending three days on 700,000 messages. i spent three weeks looking at just eight channels. so that's how it works to be quantitative and equaltive.

to wrap up some findings that we have based on the coding and the equaltive reading and quantititive data. there's much unity in the presentation of these themes of imperial. the attempt to recapture and create a larger russian statwhh the kremlin doesn't articulate in the ways that these groups do. an the common theme of nationalist reunion, all the people that have to come back together and live in the same states. also the eth know sent rrism and native -- centrism and nate iivism. the need to tackle immigration. so the unity and imaginaries and the commonality, there's a lot in common. not so many areas where they were at odds. there's also unity about the presentation of the war being an existential war and therefore must be fought in the most extreme possible way which is kind of like a logical conclusion if you say it's an existential war.

why don't you fight it like that? that's the point they make repeatedly and they've put themselves in the position of the party of war who will be able to make these claims of a stab in the back if the peace deal is not to their liking. so those two points of unity you consider about a nall findings, we know that. but there's key differences in the stance of the regime and in terms of their mobilization frames. and so as alina already indicated, there is a sense that the cluster and military bloggers have moved themselves closer to the options for corporation and getting resources and getting occupying niches in the ideological ecosystem. and they have toned down their dissent. whereas others upped their dissent. but the key point is that the social -- the discourse which is really key idea of critical patriotism, they very much use a

similar discourse like navlni did. you'll find the imperial nationalist kind of imaginaries utterly divide the two. when it comes to their social poply. there is some similarities how they talk about elites and the need for fairness. red line, when he decided to actually form attempt to enter politics. after they refused to allow him to form a volunteer battalion, he announced the club of angry patriots would try and enter politics and engage people and having them live. final point, our work definitely underlines, there's agency amongst these groups, they're choosing between doing things th mht enrage the authorities, but raise their cribility. it is very much possible that the credibility hasee increased. hisatotic mythology has been underlined by his bravery and actions. whereas deugen and others are hoping to reap the benefits of a

new russia after the war where they've positioned themselves in better place. ok. if only we had more time to talk about future directions but i will leave it there. thank you very much for your attention. [applause] >> thank you so much for your very thought-provoke presentation. now i'm hoping the floor for the questions and comments. please. don't forget to introduce yourself and wait for mic, please. questioner: hello. my name is dan. i have a question for you about ideologies. and you laid out these various ideologies. what role do you think the state ideology, say as embodied in caragonov and this notion of a

conservative russian response to western imperialism that poleses ukraine as -- poses ukraine as a fight of a bigger fight of the opposing western imperialism and the unity of russia with the world majority, with china and the global south? and i -- this just doesn't appear anywhere and i understand why it wouldn't, because it's not a dissenting appearance. but i don't know whether there's any residence in the population for this -- these -- this ideology that's being created by the people at the higher school of economics. >> thank you. let's collect them all. questioner: you have looked at how these groups have responded to the most recent peace

negotiations? questioner: question to alexandr. could you comment more on how the return to the soviet way of conducting war may have affected the way in which the russian military's actually conducting its operations on a day to day basis? >> thank you. so maybe let's collect one more. there was a hand in the back. questioner: i have two questions. the first one to matthew and alina. i'm wondering about the killing of someone. was it like influential in the silencing of criticism of the state for which of the groups? and second one is for alexandr. you were saying about that the russian state is going -- just

doing state soviet military -- just economic approach. but you were at the same time showing that just russian state was very creative in using market to avoid mobilization. so why you're not just thinking about the opportunity of a greater way to use market to avoid the mobilizational economy that was in the soviet times? questioner: so two quick questions. one for the professor. there's obviously not a great deal of public information about this. but speaking kind of continuing to talk about the need to rebuild a larger almost

soviet-style military industrial base, what are some of the -- how feasible do you think that is given the -- especially for certain military products that have not been made in many decades? what kind of timeline, just to put a general -- you don't need a specific number, but what kind of timeline and resource investment would be needed to recreate that? and then quickly for blackburn and alina, what -- based on what you've seen with the sense of analysis of various messages, is there a sense -- between these groups, is there a sense of unity amongst them? do they bicker? what is the level of -- if not formal cooperation, alignment or do they break into factionalism? >> there was. also if you don't mind, let's collect a final question for this first round and then --

yeah. questioner: thank you. a question for alexandr. absolutely fascinating. we'd just like to ask, i mean, my conversations with ukrainian veterans, observation of the battlefield, has suggested that these reports of russian so-called meter tax or human waver tax are false. you cannot carry out such attacks at present because of the nature of the weaponry. but also from what you say, because the russians, they don't have enough troops for that. but also of course, to get soldiers to carry out such attacks with such casualties would also require a degree of either discipline or motivation or terror. do you think that russia today is capable of that kind of -- that kind of strategy? that kind of spiritual military mobilization? and if so, what are the implications for the future of this war? thank you.

>> so now we're done with the first round. thank you. let's start with alexandr, please. >> ok. tough question. how this turn to soviet strategy and military buildup reflects regular activity of russia. ok. this return is very complicated. i can give you a few examples. for example, russia now rejected the idea of brigade division to division level and it's very in the path of mass mobilization. also, repairing of reservists. they took simply soviet manner,

they organized nine reservists units on each -- for each direction. for each front. in ukraine, where they in a few weeks they prepare these reservists. so it's interesting, i cannot answer in one minute. but one of the failings of military analysis was that this war has nothing to do with libraries of books about future warfare. nothing. the biggest example, the closest example of this warfare is first world war. positional warfare. and from this point of view,

there is no -- absolutely no sense for this so-called meet storm. because what russia -- russia repeating the strategy of first world war is doing -- this strategy. 100 meters, one kilometer, then stop, make defensive -- build positions. so for this reason, they are repeating -- of course we cannot speak, they are repeating soviet strategy, with i was based on -- which was based on strategic throwout. but nevertheless, it's totally -- let's say it's totally soviet approach.

second question about can -- expanding military industry. can russia use market loss? my answer is no for obvious reasons. russian mill industry, so-called mill stray --tary industry, -- military industry, reached the peak of production and it cannot be profitable afterwards. ok. now russian industry is a driver of russian economy. but it will not be last forever. but in case russian leadership will take this conflict as a model and stop to prepare country and army for a long

conventional war in europe, for example, there is no other way out. but to restart an effective soviet economy which was ideal from point of view of construction of weapons. it was ideal system, if this system had no goal to receive profit, benefits, the single goal was to build as much tanks as possible and if mr. putin keeps such model in his mind, ok, it will be the single answer i can imagine. again, answering the question

about these storms and everything. ok. as i said, there is no need for that storms but it doesn't say that russia has low losses. the losses are very high. for this reason. russia attacks, russia is advancing. when you advance, you have much more losses and, again, the goals of these advances are more political than military. ok? from a military point, there was absolutely no sense of this operation in general. but also it has very few military sense, if any, in these advance. i hate, honestly speaking, i

hate reading of colleagues, their tragic stories that today or tomorrow ukrainian front will be broken. it was broken several times. the basic problem of russia is of russian strategies. they have no reserves. according soviet manuals in order to move to 60 kilometers, honestly speaking, i suppose that russian generals have the same idea. the same menu. you need fresh army group. so something between 30,000 to 40,000 men. these volunteer mobilization gives enough troops to replenish

those who were lost. no more. >> ok, thank you. matthew and alina. >> yes. is this working? the first question about ideology and the kind of sanitized version of russia's war ames and what they're doing -- aims and what they're doing. absolutely agree that they paint it very much as if they're the normal ones, they're the pragmatic ones and the west are the ones who are ideologically possessed. it's counterideological frame wig is very much designed to go to the global south audiences. if you're in hsc and you talk about russian ames and you go to the university of india, you talk in these terms. how does it compare to the groups we study? they have a radical liberalism which pull noes punches and basically they get right into every single -- if we use the term empty signifier, a phrase like traditional values or existential war or civilization

state. these groups that we studied, they fill it with very powerful meaning and they basically make really clear visions of war nationalism and visions of imperialism, which are frankly taboo to openly advocate imperial. no, of course not. so they do it. and i hope that answers your question. satisfactory. but just like the theory of anti-signifiers have to be filled with content. they do or they don't. these groups are doing it. what does that mean for them in the future? we'll see. the second question is about the death of prigojan. it was interesting to look at the difference. the national bolsheviks, they have an elaborate conspiracy theory which says he was in league with the west and they wanted to overthrow the russian government and free navalny from prison and create a new liberal regime. part of the traitors inside the russian elite, the so-called liberals, what they call liberal.

duggan also believes, he stopped talking about the language of column, to a significant degree and according to our data. and of course the interesting thing sort of -- the military bloggers are positioned to know most about this. the best informed. and we didn't find them talking too much about this. it's almost as if they decided to be quiet as well. and of course the cooperation of the military bloggers happened before that, i think. they were the meetings toward the end of 2022 in moscow where the most prominent military bloggers came to the kremlin and had these meetings and were given this award ceremony. ok. third one before i as if to ali in, a, was -- alina was unity amongst the groups. so we found that some refer to each other and repost a lot of their own material between each other. and they both have a mythology kind of account of their movement for the national bolsheviks it's one.

this is a big mythology of key events and really just based around these personalities, these powerful personalities, who have always been patriots, according to their narrative. they've always been on the right side of the patriotic camp and always led the way and always been right. and so there's a little bit of that kind of big personality focus and leader focus. of course the other major cluster of groups are more diverse and others have cemented in their relationship in the war. they have a media institute and a club for academic discussions. and books. but just to make a final point. avoiding social populist

discourse amongst the military bloggers, the only area they talk about is immigration and then the chaos within immigration and the need to clean that up. and bring order to the cities and to end all the immigration chaos, they call it. otherwise they avoid criticizing, naming and criticizing people in the authorities or in the elites. they used to do it more. before the war. during covid, for example, they were much more vocal. and in fact all these groups were working together during covid, which culminated in protests that were rather understudied in november, 2021, there was a number small scale protests and they repealed the q.r. code legislation which they said was a digital concentration camp that the kremlin wanted to install on russians as part of a globalist conspiracy. it was successful, they repealed the legislation and their resistance, it was before the war. i'll pass on. >> i just have one thing to add about similarities and

cooperations among different clusters. because it was interestingly enough that white imperialists were much closer to red nationalists than to orthodox conservative patriots. especially after the arrest. because this act of governmental repression maybe provoked the sense of solidarity between them because they repressed a lot even before the onset of the full scale invasion of ukraine and especially after the invasion of ukraine because they also tried to protest for more hawkish policy. the other important thing is about the question on their peace negotiations and peace talks. they also have a conspiracy theory about that because from their perspective, all these peace talks, especially peace talks with the west and with trump, is just a plot of this six column or this part of

political elite and they just try to -- sometimes they try to fool putin, sometimes they try to fool the russian nation in general but they think about it negatively, of course. >> ok, great. thank you so much for very detailed questions. we have also one hand. so in the back. the gentleman over there. questioner: thank you. i just want to continue this debate between alexandr and i also see contradiction in what you're saying about the capacity of military plans in russia to produce any more tanks that thielly produce now. which is a very low number, right? they never refelonyish what they lose -- replenish what they lose. what you're saying is that in fact if they now renationalize the other plants and produce

more, they maybe can succeed. but it seems that this whole group are very ineffective managerially. the question is, why bother? i think this is something that ilya also meant when he was asking, why not buy rockets from north korea and drones from iran, which they already do, and they have so many other friends among authoritarian regimes that can sell stuff and the question here is, are there any markets where heavy tanks and other machines can be bought? because we know that -- like with rockets it worked out with. with drones it worked out. but can it work with anything bigger? thank you. >> two hands. questioner: so quickly following up on your points about reindustrialization. while there is kind of a push

within russia to renationalize and produce a greater volume of equipment, i think that it's also worth noting that in the leadup to the war, there was a lot of push within russia to remodernize its equipment, to get it up to standard with what is being used in the west. and i think that the ukrainian war has kind of proven that the model of simply just throwing down numbers does not necessarily work. we see cases where the russians will fire 2 shells at something to kill it where's the ukrainians only need one. considering that inefficiency in production that's currently the case, would you necessarily say that another solution other than nationalization might be to embrace modern technologies like precision guided munitions and so on and so forth? questioner: i just wanted to add to the why bother part. jamie keeps talking about dual use technology for bioweapons. you can make bioweapon for the

price of one tank. and k.e.i. had a talk a couple days ago about economic policy between korea, japan and china. and all of them make tanks too. probably a lot cheaper. >> ok. so also there were -- >> i'll give it to anders. >> ok. questioner: thank you very much. i wanted to ask about the other side. the ukrainian side. and charles told us that war forms states and this is very much what we have seen now in the ukraine. the ukrainians have nowhere to go but to the grave or to the west. and therefore they are fighting

bitterly. something that is not much noticed is the military budget. ukraine's military budget this year and the last two years has each been about $100 billion. half of g.d.p. russia's military budget this year is up to 9% of the g.d.p., officially $180 billion. and this is disgust in -- discussed in russia as a big problem. in ukraine it's not discussed as a problem. this is something that we have to do, the ukrainians say. and therefore i think that the ukrainians will win and it doesn't really matter what the russians do. the question is, when will russia have had enough? in the afghanistan war, it took 10 years. and officially 15,000 dead. now already we are seeing probably 200,000 dead.

you're welcome to correct me if i'm saying it wrong. probably 600,000 injured. this is messy, but it takes time and i see on the reports the mood is changing. so i would really like to put a different question, how long can russia continue this mad war? thank you. >> thank you so much. very important questions. questioner: i have a very short question. do you see any illiberal thinking coming mostly from this country simmering, i mean, because this country produces very strong liberal ideological thinking right now that resonates through europe. do you think -- see this entering the russian discourse? do we see -- i mean, russia is often receptive to western ideological production.

can we see californian liberalism, tech liberalism appearing in the discussions in russia? >> ok. questioner: i also had a question for alina and matthew. i was curious about how in your data these different rhetorical communities are discussing or not discussing the fact of the multiethnic nature of the russian federation and also the outsized role that national minorities are playing on battlefield, you know, fighting for russian society in ukraine as well. thank you. >> great. i don't see any other questions so now it's back to our presenters. >> thanks for referring on the approach to the role of wars in state building.

in my first coming book there is a paragraph called when war unmade the state. and this is exactly about russia -- the last three years greatly increased state course of capacity for apparent reasons. have it not much improved state building. because artillery russian addressed as an issue of replacement of rulers and elites in the wake of longstanding wars. and this is quite the opposite what we observe. ongoing military assault is a mechanism of preservation of political status quo. this is why -- ex teption of

this process -- extension of this process will probably take place at least as long as the current russian leadership is in power. it's hard to predict in numerical terms, it may be one months or one decade or even further. but i don't see any prospects for changes under the current russian leadership and that's it. >> ok. speaking about military industry. we should understand the specificity of this conflict. again, it has nothing to do with all this scenarios about future, high-tech warfare. look, in such conflict, quantity

matters much more than quality. i was shocked to read an article about how good -- [indiscernible] -- is. the production of this was stopped in the middle of the 1950's. now t-55 produced 70 years ago are the main fighting tank on ukrainian front. in this reality, let us accept two or three, better three, t-55 is much better than one abrams or one -- [indiscernible] -- what's going on? as i told russia, soviet union

fueled huge stockpiles of weapons and before 2014, nobody knows, it was a huge problem of all russian government what to do with the heaps of metal that looked totally useful -- useless. now they found a way to utilize all this stuff. and the problem that can be foreseen that in a rather small period of time, these stockpiles will be empty. to be concrete. let's take tanks. one is ready to produce 300 new

tanks a year. russia loses approximately 1,500 tanks each year. 80% -- and it managed to replenish it with not new tech, but these t-55 taken from deposits. if trust military balance, now russia has something between 2,000 and 3,000 old tanks in each deposits. it means that russia has no -- these deposits will be empty in two years. i'm not speaking that, of course they took more ready tanks from

deposits trust and god knows what is now in these stockpiles. so it means that like putin or not, he badly needs to expand military production. the level of russian military industry, as i said, reached its peak. they need new, not new, but some enterprises where they can start production. for this reason, i am speaking about renaissancization. speaking about free markets. such market doesn't exist. look, russia uses something like

four million shells a year. all -- according to south korean intelligence, all northern korea has less than five million shells in its stockpile. it gave russian, according to some estimations, something like one million shells. that's all. the same we can say about iranian capability, to build drones. it doesn't work. for such type of attrition warfare. we know pretty well that countries which really want to support ukraine has unbelievable difficulties in military production. so we know about this $800

billion european plan. for god's sake, nobody knows how soon this production can be started. so it's a huge problem, not only for russia, but i suppose that russia is -- will take these old soviet models to replenish its military equipment. the last point, how long -- and it coincides with your question, it's more or less clear that the russian concept, military planning, has a few bottle necks. the biggest one, as i mentioned, is a military industry. another, it's the lack of train

grounds and reserve divisions. you have no capability where to train new soldiers. and it's also will be big problem. again, i can presume that mr. putin will take this way of military buildup, but who said that this decision will stick? >> thank you. we still have 10 minutes. >> yes. start with the first question about this sort of cross fertilization of liberal thinking and discourses between russia and america and certainly we obviously know that tucker carlson got a lot of attention and a lot of his clips of his interview with putin got rehashed and spread around our groups. but there is a kind of sense

that there's a strong anti-westernism in the audiences of these channels and we all know what social media's like in terms of being an echo chamber. so there's not really much sympathy with the idea that we should be getting our intellectual fruits from the americans. instead there's the idea that -- there was kind of a disbelief in trump and the groups we studied that said maga isn't even real and the deep state controls everything so it's not going to work. since trump has come into office, i think duggan has changed his output. there's now an a.i. dugga who speaks very good english. it's scary. that's all i'm going to say. it's scary. [laughter] there's separate media projects running on telegram that's all about translating this stuff into russian subtitles and just giving that audience. but i wouldn't say it's so important. what's most important is just the kind of picking up -- cherry picking certain articles that come out in german media, french media, u.k. media, american

media that they debunk or they use -- here's a western who are says this, who says our version of the reality. so it's kind of information war, debunking and showcasing the contradictions and just information warfare from the military blogger bloggers a lot of the time. i'll say a few things about the national minority and then pass it on. the same theme continues with the national minorities and the idea that the west has got this propaganda obsession with the national minorities and west keeps claiming that they're being -- and they try and debunk it and they say, there's an incident that was overplayed and it's a lie and all this kind of stuff. so again, but on the other hand, i couldn't find any rich content that tried to do something else like, for example, talk about the unity of muslims and christians, said something positive about elite troops and things and they tried to talk up

this multinational russia. i didn't find this material in our analysis. but we did, of course, find, especially with the trigger, a very kind of xenophobic discourses. and of course this actually has 2021 precursor. this was going on in 2021 before the war. there was a spike of xenophobic activity in the groups. spurred by the state. the state gave the green light. they had a couple of things that happened. a modern version of the -- [indiscernible] -- has grown. i'm not a historian. but -- and of course there's a creator in all of this. a patron in all of this, the head of a committee. so that's -- who has taken up more interest as his career has developed and now he's more interested in the question of ideology. and he's interested as well about this idea of dealing with illegal immigration which isn't really the main function of the investigative committee. i think it's about primarily about police corruption and security and other things like that.

but anyway. i'll let you continue. >> i totally agree with matthew. the first question about russian and american nationalist and it's really important that probably they don't even know about the existence of, for example, dark and light movement in the u.s. they have really simplified image of the united states as a liberals who lack traditional values and for them, the distwings between republicans and democrats or maga movement or black lives matter movement is not so clear. for them american society looks home genus. like for most americans russian society looks the same. as for the second question about ect knick nature of russian federation an troops. i would say that sometimes we can find negative sentiments about -- [indiscernible] -- as a part of russian military.

but also it's not the biggest part of their agenda. by the way, maybe it's also addressed your question about the vision of the -- the problem with that for imperial nationalists especially, their cooperation with north korea was really problematic because on the one hand, it was the sign that now we are the global power again, we have he some people from other countries in our troops, but at the same time it was problematic because that means that we are weak or being on the russian -- the russian army isn't enough and we need someone else. for example, north koreans. so this also took place. >> we still have a couple of minutes left. if there are some burning questions. questioner: do i have a burning question. i have to ask it. the question, i'm going to

disagree with the way you posed the question at the beginning of your presentation. the premise of that question, right, so you took it as puzzle that putin, the kremlin did not achieve its goals and you had the goals, demilitarization, which presumes that there is a puzzle. why it hasn't achieved those goals. i remember my reaction in march, 2014, i remember my reaction in february, 2022. we can rationally say that bigger countries might sub due smaller countries to achieve some goals. but for many, many, many people, you know, there was no expectation that kremlin is in the position to achieve any of its goals and the problem was with those expectations to start with. that those expectations, that the kremlin might conquer

ukraine in three days were there to start with, those were problematic. that was then discussed and considered for so long by the media, by the ukrainian scholars, by the russian scholars. so when three years into this war you bring such a question, why kremlin has not achieve these goals, to me it's -- it brings, you know, it brings something out of me that's like almost like morally -- i become almost enraged by the question and by the premise. and maybe i'm wrong in this. but it's the world we live in, in war. but you somehow -- not normalize but there is something happening with the research question, the way you posed it. and so i wanted to raise that. thank you. >> thank you. here and then that's probably the last one. this is going to be the last,

last question. if there are any other questions, feel free to approach. questioner: this is a question for alexandr. in terms of the beginning of the war, i'm a prisoner of the sources of information that i listen to. so i listen to war on the rocks. and i have no idea what your opinion of them as a source is. but they did a detailed case study of the initial days of the war in which they say the plan was to take an airport close to kyiv, fly in special forces, quickly depots the leadership and in that case the plan for 200,000 -- and that the population would rally to their side, all mistakes. but still, they were stymied by a combination of circumstances that the ukrainians stopped that initial plan to decapitate the leadership and kept them from landing in that airport with

those special forces. and so there was a rationale that changed in the course of the war, that they continued to follow for some period until they got those military convoys, you know, destroyed on the road because they never thought they would be in that position. so there was a rashality to it that was -- rationality to it that was different than what they ended up having to fight. so, that's -- i don't know if you accept that. and i don't know what you think of that kind of analysis that was done by the war on the rocks folks. >> we have two minutes left. i don't know what extent it's fees to be respond very quickly. >> yeah. my approach to -- well, what happens in february, 2022, is mostly positive enormity.

we all agree about condemning of kremlin's actions. but addressing the question from my perspective is very much, well, similar to how, say, sport analysts analyze how it happens that one strong team didn't win the game. it's done to our sympathies to whatever sports team. so this is why in my view, addressing the question in such a way is quite legitimate. similarly to how we analyze,

say, wars in the distant past. >> i don't think there is contradiction here. in my mind the idea to -- [indiscernible] -- ukrainian -- ukraine is -- and get rid of its leadership, it's totallied a adventuristic. just from mailtary point of view, you deployed two par troop brigades, trying to invade two million seats here to reach, they should pass through the streets. it's hardly possible -- if to take this plan as a real plan, i would say more of a

hollywood production. [laughter] >> thank you so much for being brief and so efficient. it is 3:00 p.m. sharp.