Episode Details

Russia has crossed the threshold of losing more soldiers than it's able to mobilise. Some troops are paying their commanders to get a spot at the back of the Russian forces. Others are deserting entirely. And when soldiers do return home, they often bring the violence with them.

President Putin controls a powerful pro-war narrative, which helped rationalise this war of choice to his people. But are the effects of this propaganda beginning to wane? And after a harsh winter, what has changed within Ukraine?

As Russia fails to bring this war to a close, and the world moves to phase out fossil fuels, Russia's main export, how much longer can Russia hold on to the pretence of global superpower status?

Guest: Peter Pomerantsev -- Kiev-born writer; political analyst; senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University; co-director of the Arena Initiative; co-founder of The Reckoning Project; author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda.

Geraldine's further reading recommendations:

• The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin's Ideology Took the Nation Hostage, by Andrei Kolesnikov.
• Inside the belly of the beast, by Noonie Minogue.
• Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire, by Howard Amos.

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