Russia: State of the Nation
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It is two years since Russia began its costly conflict against Ukraine. How does it fund its war effort, how do sanctions impact that and how tight is Putin's grip on power?
Guests: Sarah Rainsford, BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent Maria Shagina, Research Fellow for Economic Sanctions, Standards and Strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Isaac Levi, Europe-Russia Policy & Energy Analysis Team Lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air Mark Galeotti, Writer on Russian security affairs and director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence
Production team: Nick Holland, Kirsteen Knight and Ben Carter Production Co-ordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound engineer: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.7 | Two years ago this weekend, Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine, clearly anticipating a quick victory. |
| 0:15.3 | Instead, it got a bloody attritional war in which tens of thousands of its soldiers have died, |
| 0:22.6 | and it has faced unprecedented sanctions from the countries of the West. Last week, almost as if to mark the approaching |
| 0:28.4 | anniversary, Russia's leading dissident Alexei Navalny died suddenly in a remote labour camp. |
| 0:35.3 | So what? Two years on is the state of Russia and what is the state of the |
| 0:39.8 | opposition to Vladimir Putin? To what extent are the sanctions working and how tight is Putin's |
| 0:46.6 | grip on power? Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:01.0 | First, I want to understand what the death of Alexei Navalny means for the opposition in Russia. |
| 1:06.5 | The BBC's Sarah Rainsford reported from Russia for more than 20 years before being expelled from the country in 2021. She's now the BBC's Eastern Europe correspondent and is speaking from |
| 1:11.9 | Poland. Sarah Rainsford, how popular was Alexei Navalny in Russia? Well, in a completely controlled |
| 1:18.2 | political system, it's impossible to be sure. The only real measure we had of that, I guess, |
| 1:22.9 | was back in 2013 when he ran for mayor. At the time, he'd just been convicted in a Russian court |
| 1:30.3 | of embezzlement, but a prosecutor intervened and allowed him out to run for election. And he |
| 1:35.8 | almost forced the vote to a runoff to a second round. He got 27% of the support in Moscow. |
| 1:43.1 | The only other kind of visual measure of that is how many people he could bring out onto the streets in protest. |
| 1:48.8 | And it's definitely true to say he was the one man and his organisation was the one organization |
| 1:54.1 | that could really bring out substantial crowds. |
| 1:57.2 | Essentially, that was repressed, wasn't it, by firstly his imprisonment then he was taken abroad after |
| 2:05.1 | the poisoning went abroad after the poison and then voluntarily came back and then was imprisoned again |
| 2:09.6 | and has now died how much influence during that period when he was behind bars was he able to |
| 2:15.5 | have it was extraordinary that he managed to continue to communicate, even behind bars. |
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