The Russian Opposition and Ukraine: A Conversation with Vladimir Milov 

>> H.R. McMaster: America and other free and open societies face crucial challenges and opportunities abroad that affect security and prosperity at home. This is a series of conversations with guests who bring deep understanding of today's battlegrounds and creative ideas about how to compete, overcome challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and secure a better future.

I am H.R. McMaster, this is Battlegrounds.

>> Jenn henry: On today's episode of Battlegrounds, our focus is on Vladimir Putin, the state of political opposition in Russia after the murder of Alexi Navalny, and Russia's war against Ukraine. Our guest is Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition politician, publicist, economist, and former advisor to the late Russian opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Alexey Navalny.

Mister Milov served as Russia's deputy minister of energy in 2002. In 2003, he founded the Institute of Energy Policy Think Tank. Mister Milov is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and the hyper-nationalist group of leaders who dominate the government. Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, he has been obsessed with tightening his grip on power and restoring Russia to greatness.

He re-established a soviet style police state to preempt challenges to his authority. The Qatar revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005 heightened Putin's fears of former soviet republics, aligning with Europe and diminishing Moscow's influence. Putin combined political subversion, cyber-enabled information warfare, assassinations, and conventional and unconventional military capabilities to intimidate neighbors and subvert Western democracies.

Russia's reinvasion of Ukraine fits a pattern of Russian aggression visible from the early 2000s. In 2004, the Kremlin attempted to assassinate Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. In 2007, Putin's intelligence organizations incited riots and initiated a major denial of service attack against Estonian banks, government bodies, and media outlets.

In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and changed European borders by force for the first time since World War II. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and forced the de facto annexation of Crimea through an incursion of little green men. The ukrainian people have courageously resisted Russia's invasion for nearly a decade.

Since the massive Russian reinvasion in February of 2022, Ukraine has reclaimed 56% of its territory. But the disappointing results of the Ukrainian counter offensive in the summer and fall of 2023 and recent Russian territorial gains, along with the failure of Congress to approve continued US weapons and ammunition support, has shifted momentum in the war.

Ukrainian defenses are holding, however, and the Ukrainian military has inflicted significant losses on Russia's Black Sea fleet while conducting raids on infrastructure in Russian territory. Putin appears strong, but his government and military struggled to stop an uprising by the mercenary Wagner group in June 2023. And his brutal repression of opposition reveals his insecurity.

A month before being re-elected in a sham election with 87% of the vote In March of 2024, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was found dead in Russian prison. Russian police arrested over 400 people simply for laying flowers to mourn Navalny's loss. Then Navalny's longtime ally, Leonid Volkov, was attacked with a hammer and tear gas outside his home in Lithuania one month later.

We welcome Vladimir Milov back to Battlegrounds to discuss the war in Ukraine, the status of Russian opposition, and the prospect for change and the restoration of peace.

>> H.R. McMaster: Vladimir Milov, welcome back to Battlegrounds. It's great to see you, my friend. And I've been thinking about you, obviously, with everything that's going on in Russia and with the recent murder of Alexei Navalny.

I hope you and your family are well, and it's great to see you.

>> Vladimir Milov: Great to see you, general, and many thanks for having me back.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, well, I'd like to just first ask you about this so called election, right? I mean, gosh, Putin must be so popular, right, 83.6% of the vote or something.

Could you maybe explain to our viewers what matters about the election, what it reveals, and what doesn't matter about the so called recent election in Russia?

>> Vladimir Milov: First, I would say we back full 40 years because this really looks like the last totally controlled soviet election in 1984.

Not the Orwellian 1984, but Konstantin Chernienko, 1984, one of the last soviet leaders when they had, like 99.9. Putin did not yet reach that level, but he's on his way. 99.9 for communist Party, everything flat, calm system, totally controlled. But you obviously remember that in a couple of years time, things have started to really shake.

We are exactly at the same point now. I think all these Turkmenistan North Korean figures are basically necessary for Putin in his psychological PR offensive to demonstrate how strong is his grip on power. But if you scratch this surface, basically, you would see that there are many signs of uncertainty about the future, signs of insecurity.

We can talk about this in detail, but there are many troubles in the economic area. There are many troubles with the Russian military and military industries, where the production is peaking. And we can also touch upon that as well. There is a very significant problem with the public opinion because public opinion trends in Russia have been clearly indicating recently that majority of Russians want to end the war as soon as possible, which is clearly not something that Putin wants.

The other thing is this general and accelerating conflict between Russians preferring the government to take care about their living standards and people being concerned about raging inflation, about low salaries and pensions. And Putin instead is focused on geopolitics, history, whatever subjects he likes to discuss. So you see that there's a very significant gap between public perception, and what the government should be doing, and the actual very serious problems that Russians experience and Putin's focus on geopolitical and the war.

So, I think this is why many things happened. Obviously, not only the murder of Alexey Navalny, but we clearly had an acceleration of repressions in the past couple of months, new harsh prison terms, many new criminal cases. Putin and his lawmakers hastily adopted the legislation about confiscation of property of traitors.

Basically, guys like me, they can now confiscate my apartment in Moscow because I said something about the war that they don't like. This is now legislation which was hastily adopted and sealed in just couple of weeks in January. So many stuff is happening which shows that Putin really is not happy with the trends in the society, and he wants to tighten the grip that clearly goes against that 87% that he has drawn up.

As a matter of fact, pretty interestingly, unlike what happened six years ago. The previous election, we didn't see any massive turnout for Putin. Six years ago in 2018, there were people, a really sizable number of people, who came and specifically said, yes, we came to vote for Putin, not now.

We didn't see, there was three day voting, and we didn't see these mass crowds of folks asking the question, where can I vote for Vladimir? Vladimir, nothing happened. Instead, you saw people queuing at noon on Sunday, answering their positions call. So there's this result matters less and less because of this general feeling of insecurity for the regime that is mounting.

And just like the 1984 Chernienkas result, I would bet that very soon it will be forgotten, how many percentage points he got in March 2024.

>> H.R. McMaster: Vladimir, you're making some really important points, because, what we hear is we hear what Putin wants us to hear a lot of times.

That he's popular, that the war is popular, that he's in a position of strength. But, it doesn't look too strong to me, that he murdered Navalny after the previous murder attempt and the hell he's put him and his family through. It doesn't look strong to me, that they're arresting people for laying flowers to express their sympathy for Navalny and his family and to offer their condolences to the family.

So, could you maybe explain what you think the significance is of this latest murder, the other acts of violence against opposition figures. And what you think is likely to be the result of, really, the martyring, I would say, of Alexei Navalny?

>> Vladimir Milov: First, I have to say it's definitely not a coincidence that the murder of Alexey Navalny happened exactly one month before the actual voting day.

And exactly on the day of opening of the Munich security conference. I'm firmly convinced that this was not a coincidence and the message to the Russians was, resistance is useless. I'm gonna shut you down, kill your leader, and kill all your hope. And the message to international community was, I can do whatever I want, and you will not be able to stop me.

Because many international leaders have sent a very strong message to Putin, that if something happens to Navalny or he dies in prison, there will be consequences. So putting his messaging back, I don't care, whatever you do. Here's the show of strength. However, I have to say, the subsequent events.

First, massive turnout of people at Navalny's funeral. Second, the fact that the movement continues despite Navalny's death. And Navalny's wife Julia, came into the spotlight, actually picking the banner and announcing that she will now enter politics. Opposition carrying out an unprecedentedly successful action of noon against Putin on March 17.

Because we really haven't seen that big turnout across the country and abroad for two years, essentially, since the war began. So, here are the signs that Putin was not able to shut the movement down. Which means, unfortunately, and also these are alerting news for us, he will accelerate the attacks on all the figures who are currently exile.

There was a hammer beating of Leonid Volkov, Navalny's chief of staff, right here in Vilnius, just a week ago. And also the political prisoners who are there in Russia serving their terms, they're really under serious threat. And I'm very concerned about Ilya Yasch and Vladimir Karamurza and so on.

So, you know what is happening. Putin is looking for that just one button, which he can hit, to shut it all down, shut all resistance down, shut all the opponents down. He's desperately doing. He killed Boris Nemtsov nine years ago. Now he killed Navalny. He was poisoning people.

He's beating Navalny's team right here in exile in Europe. So, he's desperately looking for, how can I find this one thing, which I can switch off? And the resistance movement will also be switched off. He just does not understand that he cannot kill an idea, an idea of a normal, peaceful, democratic Russia.

Which is at peace with everybody and where there's an accountable government and the rule of law, and people have a say, people want it. So, whomever he kills, he cannot shut it down. But I think that this is something that he cannot grasp. He just cannot understand that this idea is more powerful than all his thugs with guns.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Vladimir, I think it combines elements of his personality. I see him as kind of a street thug and a coward at the same time. And so, I wonder if you might just make a projection into the future, maybe talk to our viewers about what you're doing as part of the opposition movement.

What your vision is for the opposition movement, what you think the prospects are for the opposition, and, of course, the implications for Putin's grip on power.

>> Vladimir Milov: Well, first, general, I have to agree that whatever he does clearly follows into a pattern of behavior of organized crime groups.

This is exactly what Yulia Navalnaya has been saying in her recent op ed in the Washington Post. Treat him as who he is, a leader of the biggest organized crime group on the planet. And, I mean, the world is very proficient in tackling the organized crime. It has been studied, there are patterns, there are methods and so on.

Why not apply these methods here? Because we can clearly see that this man and his inner circle. They are following the blueprint of behavior of organized crime groups. Now, a few words on what we are doing. First and foremost, we broadcasting heavily onto the Russian population. And the extent of our outreach and audiences in Russia is so significant that we really compete with state television.

Just to give you a few figures, the permanent audience of various Navalny team, YouTube channels and telegram channels, is from 10 to 15,000,000 people in Russia. These are spread out across the country, definitely mostly concentrated in like, top 30, top 40 big cities, but not limited to just big cities.

And the total outreach, unique viewers per year. Like, if we're talking to 2023 numbers, that would probably be between 30 and 35,000,000. This is how many people inside Russia ever come across to watch our channels and read our content? This is a lot. This is a far bigger audience than the western radio stations have reached at the height of the Cold War.

Voice of America, Radio liberty, Radio for Europe. As a kid in soviet school, I remember listening to this in the 80s, but it was difficult because they also tried to shut it down. But I think our audience currently is much bigger by order of magnitude. And we clearly see in opinion polling and media analysis that the viewership and trust in state television is on big decline, whereas independent sources of information are on the rise.

So, one of the important things that we are doing, we are connecting every day with the Russian society, and telling them the message of freedom, the message of peace. That if we withdraw our troops from Ukraine and end this bloody war, you will not have even a fraction of these problems that you experience right now.

So, this should be done. We should come back to obey the international rule based. Order, we should respect the sovereignty of Ukraine. And this also has a lot to do with destruction of democracy and institutions in Russia, because people are powerless and they have no rights. Because Putin imposed the same totalitarian grip on Russians long ago as he wants to impose on Ukraine and maybe other countries, so it's all connected.

This lawless behavior began at home, now Putin is trying to export it, this is why all your problems. We see that this message resonates significantly, so you saw the picture of many Russians coming out protesting, that means that what we're saying really has a significant response. And we think that on the background of multiple economic difficulties and deteriorating living standards and Russia's isolation.

More and more people would understand that they need to join the opposition movement. It's difficult to go ahead in the face of such a brutal repression because we now have, according to memorial NGO, about 700 political prisoners. This is about three times bigger than we had in the last couple of decades of the Soviet Union.

But we also have feedback from Russia when people are saying, we kind of tired of being scared, we want to go out, we can't stand what is happening anymore, we want to go out protesting. And you saw that, and actually what we wanna do is to open a third front against Putin, together with Ukraine bravely resisting his aggression, together with western sanctions.

We also want free Russians to join this global fight against Putinism and to turn fortunes around for Putin domestically at home.

>> H.R. McMaster: I wanna talk with you about the economy, and I really enjoy your newsletter where you analyze the Russian economy in a way that you don't see in a lot of other reporting and analysis.

But first, I just wanna talk about the effect of the war in Ukraine. We've seen some of these gains by Russian forces, small gains and very costly gains. Some estimates are that there are as many as 900 casualties on single days in the fighting around Adivka and so forth.

What is the effect on the Russian people? I just think of the massive number of casualties that they've suffered now, killed and wounded. And I remember back when I was national security advisor in 2018, and we had this clash with the Wagner group, and we killed about 300 Russian mercenaries.

And Putin went to great pains to hide those casualties. What's happened? I mean, how can, what has the effect been on the Russian people and on Putin's grip on power as a result of these massive casualties they've suffered in this so called special military operation. That is now going on for over two years?

 

>> Vladimir Milov: Well, the effect on the russian public is significant already, even when Putin was holding his press conference in mid December before the new year. The Kremlin host, very loyal to Putin and totally controlled. He said, Vladimir, Vladimir, we received a flurry of questions about the war, with the main one being when this whole thing will end.

There are many other, I mean, Levada center asked an open question to Russians, what would you ask Putin at this press conference if you had a chance? Clear majority is dominated by the question when the war will end. The other pollster, Russian field, asked people in December, what will be your New Year's wish to your compatriots, to other Russian citizens?

And usually it was dominated by the wish of health, but now health has fallen to a distant second place in this hit parade, majority of people say they want to see the war ended. There is also polling which says that basically there is barely any Russian left who does not know a person who has been killed, wounded, or being sent to fight in Ukraine.

So this is essentially, that's a tragedy that is coming into the home of every Russian, which fuels the anti war sentiment and which definitely will fuel the protest sentiment and resistance. I would say, though, that Russia is a country of big inertia, there's this perpetual problem, things never happen fast.

Unfortunately, I would prefer them to unfold faster. But because of hundreds of years of very brutal oppression, Russian people generally are used to sort of adapting until the very last moment, until it's no longer possible. So that's the field that we are trying to shake up at the moment, and somehow it works.

Of course, we want this connection between all the difficulties from the war and protests and resistance to happen faster. But we got what we got, and we already see that the grapes of wrath are brewing, let's hope these processes accelerate further in 2024 and further into the next year.

Interestingly, I have to say there are many points you also asked about economy, there are also issues with extreme exhaustion of manpower at the battlefield. There is the issue of picking military production, because, like last summer, weapons, ammunition, tanks, airplanes, what they call finished metal products and other transport vehicles.

It was growing 30, 40% year on year, every month, it is down to just 8, 10% now because Russia has a problem of lack of high precision machinery to produce these weapons. And it was all imported from the west, they had to import clandestinely from Taiwan, the reports about which surfaced recently.

But if it all is being shut down, if the western governments, the Taiwanese government, really take serious measures to shut down the supply of machinery, technology, component parts. Putin will have a very serious blow to his military production. The other thing is that financial resources are being exhausted.

When the full scale invasion broke out two years ago, the liquidity part of the National Wealth Fund, the actual cash on the ministry of finance accounts. This cash surplus was sufficient to finance the military budget for 30 months. It's just down to four months now, so a lot of cash is spent, the military budget had skyrocketed, so what is happening?

That's a pretty interesting situation. If we look at what happens a year from now, since the beginning of 2025, corridor is narrowing for Putin. He will be in a much more difficult condition in terms of money, manpower, military production, public opinion and so on. So you said that they trying to advance with great, great human cost at this human wave attacks.

I read it as a last resort push before things will start to get really difficult. He wants to take some gains and he wants to also launch a PR offensive against western politicians and public opinion, portraying things like, listen, I'm winning, you have to give up. We got to have peace talks or whatever.

Don't fall for it, he will be in a lot more trouble a year from now, we just need to push a little harder, or a lot harder, as I would prefer. So the corridor for him, the corridor of opportunity is narrowing for him on all dimensions. Including the Russian domestic situation and public opinion.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: This is really important, I think, for our viewers, and just a really important argument for sustaining the support for Ukraine. And, of course, we've heard about Ukraine's manpower constraints and Ukraine's munitions constraints now largely associated with our inability to sustain us support for Ukraine, even as Russia's getting support from North Korea and Iran and from China.

So, I think it's really a critical point in the war, and as you're mentioning, sometimes we buy into Putin's propaganda. I want to talk with you a little bit more about the economy and the perceptions, of course, we've seen the effect on the Black Sea fleet. We see some attacks now in Russia against Russian infrastructure by Ukrainian long range systems.

Could you maybe just talk briefly about what you think the effect of that is, the inescapable conclusion that the Black Sea fleet cannot operate anywhere near Ukraine to suffer tremendous losses. And these recent drone attacks, for example, on oil refineries in Russia, what effect are those longer range attacks having?

 

>> Vladimir Milov: Well, first, all this shows that Russia has multiple vulnerabilities. So clearly, we see that not only the Black Sea fleet, but should Russia enter a much bigger scale conflict, not just with Ukraine. We see that most of the Russian fleet will be very vulnerable to just very simple marine drone attacks, they can do nothing about it.

Also, refineries, pretty interestingly, because we have a very finite number of really big refineries. We're talking, like, 2030 big installations, which are so difficult, so complex, and so large that you cannot only see them from space, but you will be able to see them from Mars. So very easy, you saw these pictures of these catalytical cracking units burning.

This is a very vulnerable target because it's very difficult to miss for a Ukrainian drone. And I will have to say, just to give you an idea, one large Luke oils refinery in Nizhny Novgorod, which was hit and was forced to half its production to shut, 50% of production down.

It produces 12% of the total Russian gasoline, over 20% of gasoline in the European part of Russia, and about a third of high octane gasoline, we're talking 95, 98. This is just one refinery, general, just one refinery. So if you hit several others, that will create enormous pressure on the Russian fuel market and the government have already prohibited gasoline exports.

I think the situation is so bad that they will do more. They will go for a full redistributive regulation, like soil, soviet style quotas, who gets which quantity and under which price. So Russia's fuel market, just because of the recent series of attacks is moving in this direction.

Also, I wanted to say on the economy, I don't know why, but in the west, there are really many voluntary Putin's helpers, who are running around and trying to portray that the economy is really not doing that bad. It is doing pretty bad. Central bank has been maintaining prohibitive interest rates for the past seven months, but they were not able to cool down inflation, which is still raging.

And the only thing they achieved is cooling down domestic demand and entrepreneurial activity with 16% interest rate. Now, Putin is announcing sweeping increases of taxation. Investment has been drying out, there's been zero investment entries since the beginning of the full scale war from investors from China, India, Turkey, Middle east, nobody is coming.

Everything is hanging only on budget spending, which might produce a beautiful figure of GDP growth. But the military sector, with it's all connected is only 6% of GDP, and you have another 94%, which is pretty depressed. Real sector is down, agriculture is down, cargo turnover is down, all non military industries are either near zero or also down.

So, if you split this military related economy and the civic economy, you would see that the civic economy is so much bigger and not doing that well. And the military economy is only sustained by budgetary spending where money are finite. We can see the light at the end of this tunnel, we can see when they would expire.

So that's not a sustainable economic model. China is not coming to help us, investments are not working, import substitution is not working. Where is this all the rosy economic picture that the International Monetary Fund is talking about? I truly don't know.

>> H.R. McMaster: I'd like to ask you, speaking of people who are useful idiots for Putin, who praise him and talk about how great the economy is and maybe marvel at subway stations and the produce available in markets.

I'm thinking, of course, of Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Vladimir Putin. Would you mind, share with our viewers your reaction to that interview and what your analysis of that was and the way that Putin just played this kind of useful idiot in his long discourse on Russian history and so forth.

Could you maybe respond to that so our viewers have your perspective.

>> Vladimir Milov: General, this was so pathetic, I mean, I'm a person who was fascinated with America since I was a kid, right. And I love America, and this is just such a contrast when America is shown to Russians being impersonated by guys like Tucker Carlson.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Supplicating to the Tsar, yeah, exactly.

>> Vladimir Milov: Yeah, this is so, well, America is not like that. A normal American journalist would challenge him on every single word he says. Like you remember he brought these letters from Bagdan Khmelnytsky, who was asking for Ukraine to join Russia, right.

Which, if you were a guy who knows just a little thing about history, you would say, okay, yeah, Ukraine joined Russia on a condition of strict autonomy and the Institute of hitmanship. A hundred years since Catherine the great abolished getmanship, abolished Ukrainian autonomy against all the agreements that were signed, Putin does not mention that.

And the Catherine the great began the policy of subjugating Ukraine, prohibiting Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language. That was so very different than what happens in the time of Baghdad Khmelnytsky and his letters. But Putin does not mention that and Tucker somehow did not dare to ask him. So this whole story, I mean, could be easily challenged by a first grader.

So like anything, whatever Putin says, Putin says to Tucker Carlson, our trade with China is so perfectly balanced. Now, come on, give me a break, we only sell like over 90% of Russian exports to China are mineral resources and raw materials which are sold at a discount, near zero profit.

And China is selling us only sophisticated finished products at a premium. Cars, China now has 95% in the share of Russia's imported cars and since that began, according to Russian statistics. Agency in two years, the price of imported car, average price had doubled. Now, how balanced is that?

I don't know, listen, this is why Putin only gets guys like this through to be allowed to interview him. If I was there in the room, I mean, Putin would not pass the exam, but this is why he would not let me, and he instead sentenced me to eight years in prison in absencia.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Right, Vladimir, I'd like to also just ask you about Putin's recent threats as well. So you've talked really about the dire situation he's in. We've talked about really, how this appearance of strength really belies profound weakness on his part. And of course, when he feels, I think, particularly desperate, he rattles the nuclear saber and makes other threats.

How do you assess these recent comments, and how do you assess the threat of vertical escalation, maybe even the use of a nuclear weapon, which he's threatened directly in the past?

>> Vladimir Milov: Well, first, I think that practically it means that Putin at this moment assesses the probability of a direct military confrontation with NATO countries is very high.

And as we saw from recent remarks by Emmanuel Macron and some other leaders, they also are pretty open minded about this. I mean, if it has to be, it has to be, right? He is very afraid of that, because he knows that a war with NATO, he would lose, which means that what he's doing, nuclear threats, is the issue of last resort.

Like, a very, very last resort. To me, this looks like another sign that he doesn't have many other options left, if he's back talking nuclear. And you remember, we discussed this already at your podcast last time, and the thing is that, whenever he escalates nuclear rhetoric, his new friends in Beijing don't like it.

China doesn't want a global nuclear war or even the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. So the fact that he risks talking like that, even defying China's red lines, it means that he's really scared of a military confrontation with NATO. I like the line that old, new minister of foreign affairs of poll and Mister Radek Sikorsky said, we should be defining red lines, not Putin imposing them on us.

And this is, I mean, what I'm saying, you said about useful idiots, I think we also should not be too rosy and optimistic in terms of defeating Putin. He's a big beast, difficult to strangle. He's still got a lot of strength left, still got a lot of resources.

But we should not embrace all this defeatism, all because he still got something, because two years have passed and we didn't win, because he's advancing somewhere, we shouldn't buy it. We should really look at his vulnerabilities, and there are so many that he cannot win this fight, right?

And we should use all our force, all our potential to crack on these vulnerabilities and defeat him. Might take some time, might take some effort, but again, I think what is important, what we're having now is a psychological warfare. Putin is trying to convince the free world that it is hopeless to fight him.

It is not, we should really look at the numbers, look at the trends, and see that he's building this big Patiomkian village of strength. Strength is there to some extent, we should be realistic about it, but there are also weaknesses, and these are for us to exploit and achieve a victory for Ukraine and victory over Putinism.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Vladimir, well, this has been just a tremendous conversation, like all of our conversations. It's great to see you. I'd like to ask you one final question, why is it so important? Why is it so important to defeat Vladimir Putin? You've seen what's happening in the United States with these debates about the sustained support for Ukraine, for example.

Do the American people have at stake, and what does the free world have at stake in connection with the threat from Putin and the importance in particular, helping the Ukrainians prevail in this fight?

>> Vladimir Milov: Putin is trying to challenge and redraw the whole international global order, no less.

And as a matter of fact, while he's conveying this message to America's like, listen, this is an old family thing between us and Ukraine, we have history. We have Baghdad, Khmelnytsky, this is no business of yours, leave it alone. That's what he says. As a matter of fact, if you listen to what his officials say, what his propaganda says, what his pundits are discussing on television is going further.

Baltic states, Poland, Moldova, and so much more, he wants to install a new international order where might makes right, where borders can be redrawn by force. Where rules mean nothing and can be easily ignored at will by strongman dictators. Well, you know and I know and many reasonable people know that this will be a nightmarish hell if we will ever return to that.

We already had two devastating world wars because of these international orders where great powers had competed unrestrained. We don't wanna go back there. We established rule-based international order after Second World War, and particularly after 1991, right? We need to defend that, or we will all be at war at some point.

And it is pretty naive to think that this guy, who many times, he's quarter of a century in power. He has proven that when he achieves certain goals through force, through murder, through intimidation, he just never stops. He goes, next stop, Chechnya, then Georgia, then Ukraine, if he really manages to.

I don't believe so. But hypothetically, if he wins over Ukraine, he will go further. They openly say it. They say it out in the open. I think we also should do more to demonstrate all these quotes and sayings to the American public, because people are just simply unaware that this is not about Ukraine.

This is about Putin's endless desire to go further and grab whatever he can. So this is actually why it is very important to defend rules-based order, international peace based on international law and obedience of recognized borders. And Putinism is everything that goes against that. He wants to smash the rules.

He wants to install the power of the mighty. We should not let him otherwise. Today, many people say it is only Ukraine's problem, it will be American problem tomorrow if we allow Putin to expand and achieve his goals.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, I can't think of a better place to end.

Thank you, Vladimir Milov, great to see you again. Be well. Be safe, and thank you for helping us learn about a battleground that is so critical to restoring peace and to ensure a better future for generations to come. Thanks for being with us.

>> Vladimir Milov: Thank you, Jenn, always a great pleasure talking to you.

 

>> Jenn henry: Battlegrounds is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.