The descent into madness under Putin
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When The Times foreign correspondent Marc Bennetts moved to Russia in 1997, there was hope for a new future for the country. But over the next 25 years, he witnessed the rise of Vladimir Putin and the erosion of civil liberties. In his new book, The Descent: Witnessing Russia’s Spiral into Madness Under Putin, Marc charts how one man remade Russia in his own paranoid image.
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Guest: Marc Bennetts, foreign correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Micaela Arneson.
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Read more: Lies and fear: my life under the Kremlin’s propaganda machine
Further listening: ‘I took a grenade blast to escape’: Russian deserters speak to The Times
Clips: Channel One Russia, Educational Video Group, NBC News, ITN, Times Now World, Dot’s Eye.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:08.5 | I'm Manvine Rana. |
| 0:13.5 | I first met my future mother-in-law in 1999 or 2000, I think. |
| 0:19.0 | And at the time, she wasn't at all opposed to the fact that her daughter was going out with a British citizen. |
| 0:26.9 | She even said to us, why do you want to stay in Russia? Why don't you just move to Britain? |
| 0:29.4 | There's nothing good as ever going to happen here. And she was even angry. |
| 0:32.5 | And we said, no, we want to stay. We like you here. It's interesting. |
| 0:36.3 | That's Mark Bennett, a time's foreign correspondent and dream son-in-law. |
| 0:41.8 | He lived in Russia for 25 years. |
| 0:44.5 | He got married out there, had a family, and was our Moscow correspondent |
| 0:48.5 | before he was forced to leave after the war in Ukraine began. |
| 0:53.1 | Over those 25 years, he witnessed the country change. |
| 0:59.3 | As the years went by, state media, |
| 1:02.0 | Russian state propaganda began to kind of ramp up the hatred, |
| 1:07.1 | the kind of sheer lunacy of their reporting, |
| 1:09.9 | and especially about Ukraine, but also about Britain, about the West, telling Russians that the West was this kind of hellhole where children were forced to call their mothers and fathers, parents one and parent two, where in Scandinavia sex with animals was legal and was encouraged |
| 1:28.6 | and there were special brothels for people to go and have sex with animals. |
| 1:32.0 | Just like horrendous stories. |
| 1:34.0 | Russian media didn't just demonize the West. |
| 1:37.0 | They were also building up a cult of personality around Putin. |
| 1:41.6 | Putin was seen as this kind of leader who'd saved Russia. Russia is surrounded by |
| 1:47.1 | enemies. The West hates us. The West is evil. Putin is your savior. And it's just constant. |
... |
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