Is Russia Headed Towards Collapse?

Gaslit Nation

News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Putin is weak and getting weaker. In this special live taping of Gaslit Nation, Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman, who has a long history of investigating and exposing the Russian mafia state’s active measures in the U.S. and Europe, joins Andrea to discuss where things are headed in Russia’s escalating power struggle, what it means for Ukraine, and how the world needs to start preparing for a post-Putin Russia.

“Putin is finished,” Olga warns in this urgent discussion. Putin may be forced into retirement in a dacha on the outskirts of Russia or “die in his sleep,” with Shoigu or another tool of the Russian security forces becoming the new strongman. Prighozin’s attempted military coup was the inevitable escalation of growing tensions between warring factions, but as Olga points out, the siloviki–the ruthless, imperialistic, genocidal security forces–are in charge, and always have been, even during the collapse of the Soviet Union. They are the kingmakers, and it’s clear that they want Putin gone. Prigozhin served a purpose of striking Putin with a fatal blow, and the months ahead will continue to weaken him as Russia continues to lose an unwinnable war in Ukraine.

Our bonus episode this week includes our extended audience Q&A at our live taping, with a focus on Russia’s influence campaigns in U.S. elections. As mentioned in this week’s show, there’s going to be a special live taping of Gaslit Nation held in New York City at the Lower East Side venue Caveat, hosted by Kevin Allison of the popular and provocative storytelling podcast RISK! on Saturday August 5th at 4pm EST. The discussion will include the making of the brand new Gaslit Nation graphic novel Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think!, and include an opportunity to order signed copies. For tickets to join the event in person or wherever you are by watching the livestream, get your tickets here!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa. And we are joined today by a special guest,
0:20.0	Olga Lotman, the wonderful Olga Lotman, one of the world's foremost experts on the Russian Mafia.
0:27.0	And when we mean the Russian Mafia, we're really talking about the Russian Mafia state,
0:34.0	politely known among the appeasement set as the Russian Federation. But it's straight up the Russian Mafia state of warlords.
0:41.0	As we saw, or reminded of very dramatically this weekend with provisions attempted military coup, we will get to all of that.
0:49.0	I have a whole list of questions for the folks here joining us live. And I know you guys do too, so drop them in the chat.
0:56.0	And yeah, we're just going to go at it. But first, there's some exciting announcements I have to get through.
1:02.0	We are having Gaslit Nation has been organizing a big old summer series called The Future of Dictatorship,
1:13.0	featuring leading experts on AI, how tech is disrupting our lives, how the oligarchs are using technology to try to escape from us.
1:24.0	And some of these experts in this big old summer series on the future of dictatorship are Douglas Rushkopf,
1:30.0	who wrote some extraordinary must read books like Team Human, Corey Doctoro, the science fiction writer, who's out with a new novel,
1:37.0	Cindy Cohn, the electronic frontier foundation, all about how to protect yourselves from corporate surveillance and dictatorship surveillance,
1:46.0	Josh Chin and Lisa Lynn, who wrote surveillance state, inside China's quest to launch a new era of social control.
1:53.0	These are big conversations with big experts running all summer long. I cannot wait to bring this to you. We're working really, really hard on it.
2:00.0	I learned a lot from these conversations. I thought the future would be a lot more bleak than some of our experts made it out.
2:09.0	To be it, guys, expecting just this dismal dark night of the soul, slumber party discussion, but some of our experts provided some interesting silver linings of hope, room for hope,
2:19.0	and what I presume to be just a dark Mad Max future. So you can hear all of those provocative conversations, their insights and comment,
2:28.0	and share your comments and questions as the series continues all summer long.
2:32.0	And another final big announcement that we're going to get to Olga and our deep dive conversation on what the hell is going on in Russia,
2:38.0	where is Russia headed? Is it headed for collapse? What does that mean for the rest of the world? How should the democratic alliance respond?
2:44.0	But so my final big announcement before we get to all that is there's going to be a big night out for gaslit nation listeners and myself,
2:52.0	and maybe Olga if she can make it.
	...

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