FN. Russia, as everyone knows, is fundamentally unknowable.

And Russian politics is bleak, relentlessly depressing.

Ruled by tyrannical despots through its entire history, the Russian soul is consequently dark, fatalistic, born to suffer pointlessly and die young.

This is of course a silly caricature, but it's really not that far from the general idea people in the West often seem to have of the country.

And with the recent murders of Alexei Navalny and of Guinea-Pegotian, both seemingly by the Russian state.

It seems the more changes, the more things remain the same.

Ryman Putin has once more emerged as an unassailable figure in Russia.

Talk of his ill health seems to have been ever blown.

Talk of his imminent defeat in the war in Ukraine.

Likewise.

And talk of his mercurial global influence over the election-heavy year of

2024 is just ramping up again.

It's all shrouded in mystery, conveyed only by rumor. But one thing is for subtle. There's

been talk of Putin. In fact, we hear little else about Russia than the

dominance of this single man. Today's guest on Navarro

is Tony Wood, who's 2018 but Russia without Putin argued that our focus on Putin distorts our conception of Russia

and prevents us from seeing the structure in which she works.

Just over five years ago, he spoke to James Butler on this very program about that structure.

You can find that episode linked in the shownuts.

But since then, a huge amount has changed. A catastrophic pandemic that saw by some counts

upwards of a million excess deaths in the country, followed by the invasion of Ukraine, the rise and calamitous fall of

Evgenia Blogne and the murder of Alexi and Valmy.

...