What Next: Putin Alone

Slate Daily Feed

Slate Podcasts

News, Business, Society & Culture

4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

No one knows what’s going on in Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s head – and while that’s a worrisome idea during the best of times, it’s an especially grim one during a war of his own creation. Putin is increasingly isolated, away from his inner circle and the oligarchs who once had some influence with him. Guest: Ben Judah is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of This Is London and Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Connect with your customers in a whole new way with Salesforce Customer 360.
0:06.0	Harness the power of Trusted AI to enhance your customer experience
0:10.0	and unite your teams around a single shared view of every customer in your business.
0:15.0	Empower teams with Trusted AI from a secure, scalable platform.
0:20.0	With Salesforce Customer 360, now everyone's an Einstein.
0:24.0	Go to Salesforce.com forward slash 360 to learn more.
0:30.0	Back in January, there was this moment where Ben Judah thought there is something wrong with Vladimir Putin.
0:44.0	Ben has written a book about Putin.
0:50.0	So he was watching official Kremlin video of the president celebrating Orthodox Christmas.
0:56.0	The video shows only Putin himself, totally alone, listening to a religious service, lighting candles.
1:05.0	And it's really a haunting video that we will see in many documentaries far into the future of this one man completely alone in a gold-clad chapel.
1:17.0	His legs buckling slightly as if he's unwell.
1:23.0	He kind of gulps. He like gulps and his face is red.
1:29.0	And his face twitches very strangely.
1:34.0	What stood out to Ben was how isolated Putin looked.
1:38.0	Ever since the pandemic started, Russia's president has kept to himself.
1:42.0	You might have seen those pictures of him, meaning with other world leaders.
1:46.0	Putin's on one side of an extremely long table. His counterparts are yards away.
1:51.0	Has Putin always been alone like this?
1:54.0	Are the answers no?
1:58.0	Vladimir Putin has been in power almost 23 years.
2:03.0	That's a generation. There are millions and millions of Russians that have never known the country without him.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.