Know him pretty well is the putin of 2000 different from the putin of today thats a great question my answer is yes and no putin was antidemocratic that year he was not like that from the beginning, i wrote my first article about putin in 2000, warning the world about his antidemocratic actions. He has always been an imperialist , he paid for the collapse of the soviet union. His life defending the soviet empire, but 20 years ago he was much more promarket and prowestern about market reforms, he lowered the individual income tax and moved russia to a flat tax of 13 , he lowered corporate taxes and respected private property, not so much, he restored the strict stroi states over the economy, especially after the invasion of your country for the second time. Once he was open to interaction with the west. He even talked about russia joining nato. By the way, let me remind you that today he says that in everything you are not nato and he was forced to invade ukraine due to the expansion of the north atlantic alliance, but 20 years ago he was not afraid of nato, he wanted to join the alliance and even said about ukraine in 2002 that if ukraine wants to join nato, that is their business and not ours, so that in these two aspects he has significantly changed his thinking and the latter has become a much more nationalist patriot who allegedly professes conservative orthodox religious values, i would not call it conservatism, but it is something that was not 25 years, but why did he change . I think that one of the main drivers was that he became more authoritarian, more afraid of his people, and therefore he needed an external enemy to justify his authoritarianism, anti western, antiukrainian, secondly, he is afraid not of nato expansion, but of democratic expansion in 2000 for georgia in 2003, the most important thing was the orange revolution in your country, it was a threat to its authoritarian way of ruling, and of course later the revolution of dignity became an even greater threat, but not to russian security, and here i want to make it clear clarify in 1941 when hitler invaded the soviet union there was no military threat from the west against russia none but the expansion of democracy threatened putins rule inside russia among its people that russians need a strong state russians do not need western ways of governing because they are different i remember i remember how in 2011 i was at a meeting with him and the then Vice President biden, and he talked for a long, long time about the fact that russia is not part of europe, is not part of the defense, he says that ukrainians are not a separate nation that you are just russians with an accent or a historical coincidence that ukraine became an independent state is another one of his very strange arguments that if ukrainians practice democracy i slavic peoples can do it for free his obsession with your country in the first place turn and also regarding my country an enemy from outside in order to legitimize his dictatorship at home and he found this enemy unfortunately uafeng you are often called the architect of president obamas reset policy regarding russia it was another 1015 years ago, you really believed that relations with the kremlin at that time could be changed. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of what we were trying to do then in 2009, we sat in the white house and determined our National Security interests and highest priorities , one of such priorities was the need to cooperate with the kremlin, the then president medvedev kuda davai in 2009 was radically different from the crazy medvedev that he has become today, it is very important to understand that he was completely different well, i will give a few for example, in 2009, the treaty on the elimination of medium and shortrange missiles expired and president obama decided that the Missile Defense system is in the National Interests of the United States and that without the russians it is impossible to negotiate about control weapons, so he said that we need to enter into negotiations with them, and the plane signed a new one treaty on sno3 dsn o in 2010 reducing Nuclear Weapons in the world by 30 second he decided that you should stop iran from maintaining Nuclear Weapons and for this he wanted to introduce multilateral sanctions against iran can discuss that it was the right decision but in obama wanted to impose a lot of foreign sanctions for this russia had to vote together with on what they did by the way at a meeting of the Un Security Council in 2010 we decided to lead our troops into afghanistan in an effort to defeat terrorism there we were also going to fight terrorism outside of afghanistans borders, including in pakistan 95 of our supplies went through pakistan so president obama had the idea that we needed to diversify our supply routes to afghanistan and that meant going through russia through the socalled Northern Distribution Network we had to negotiate with the russians and by the way we violated pakistans sovereignty in 2011 and killed bin laden himself we could only do this through diversification i think many people misunderstand our desire to have good relations with russia, although other wars are possible. I dont even believe that the allies believed in this , as for me. We should not choose mood music or a positive attitude towards the country as our goal, the goal should be specific tasks that promote National Interests, in the case of my country, the interests of the United States of america, so for a while we did this. This is how it ended, of course, for two reasons firstly, putin returned and he was not interested in cooperating with us, and secondly , mass demonstrations against putin regime in the 11th and 12th years, and putin blamed us and me personally for these demonstrations, as a result, cooperation on other issues such as iran or north korea or even syria, which was being repaired in the 12th and 13th years , turned out to be impossible with putin, who was in the kremlin because you know them very well since you lived in moscow for 4 years why according to some estimates 8590 of russians support putin is it because they are afraid of him or maybe they are fascinated by his imperialist ideas or maybe they just dont care why is it difficult to answer your question because its hard to understand what people really think in authoritarian countries its possible to remember that you cant do a real poll in a country like russia or any dictatorship because people are afraid to say what they really believe they have no incentive to say what is on their mind. Secondly, i got the impression that putin and his terrible barbaric invasion of your country enjoy considerable support. To be honest, i am not surprised, but deeply disappointed, this is not just putins war in ukraine, it is the russians war in to ukraine, we must admit that this is not a oneman war so that putin does not instigate everything in it. Putin does not kidnap your children, he does not rape your daughters and mothers. I think it is very important to understand that it is the russians who kill and russians commit these crimes against humanity and not only Vladimir Putin regarding your other question. It is definitely true that propaganda and repression work well. Yes, there were some of them. Here are the ones that were protested at the beginning. Among them are 25year prison terms, for example, volodya kamurza whom i know well ilya yashin they criticized the war and now they are in prison and this scares other russians from protesting there are russians who support this war and imperial ideas then when i live in russia in the 90s i would never thought that they are capable of revival of stalinism propaganda from putins side, this is not deeply disappointing, but there is another segment of Russian Society that simply lowered its head, it does not support the war, but it is not against them either, but they just try to stay away and these people instantly change their minds if will change the condition if putin says to end the war, it is interesting where russian potion said in an interview with a ukrainian channel that russians are unfortunately getting used to war used to the war and yes support it and putin present putton of course we will win in a while putin will lose, but those russians who are used to war will remain. Do you think this could become a problem for both ukraine and the western allies . I think this is a big problem. And thats why i think the western world , the democratic world, should do much more to make them pay the price. In support of this war i work with Andriy Yermak from the office of the president in the working group on International Sanctions that the western democratic world should increase sanctions so that people feel the war more directly, in particular , it is about the fact that there are too many components from the west is involved in the production of weapons in russia and this must stop too Many Russians who have not been sanctioned work for a company and a Political Party that supports the war, therefore the sanctions need to be expanded it is too comfortable for russians to travel to supposedly enemy countries this world stop 360 billion dollars that were frozen in the Russian Central Bank , it is necessary to transfer for the reconstruction of ukraine so that the russians feel the consequences of the war that they support. So, in my opinion, this is the first step, then in the long term the defeat of putins army in your country so that people finally rejected their imperial ambitions, and sometimes in 1991 they failed to do this, there is a big difference between germany in 1944 and russia in 1991, then Boris Yeltsin tried to put the communist party on trial, but it was not enough support so they never had remorse , they never had an awareness of the evil that soviet imperialism carried. Unfortunately, until putin loses this war inside russia, this process will not begin, which is the most likely to fear putin i mean what could be the weakness of his rule and again a great question to which i unfortunately dont have a great answer but i think there are a few important things i would like to say about putin and his shortness that putin is such a matchup you cant corner him, he needs space, he needs Ukrainian Land to end the war, i dont agree with that later hes not as desperate as people think of him, several examples come to mind when he was pressured, but instead of escalating, he retreated only in that the turkish president warned putin to stop flying his planes to syria through turkish territory, in the end the language got tired of it and he shot down one of these planes. Putin said a lot then, but as a result , he did nothing. Putin sent lavrov there, and he himself spoke online shows that he is afraid of the International Criminal court of the un, who challenges the measures, we see a coward who is afraid of the measures , it should reach us so that putin should not be afraid if you can boldly challenge him and in the end, drive him out. So, what is the answer to your question . I think that he is most afraid of losing crimea, he is afraid of the transfer of the war in crimea to your country and not to his , this is what he is most afraid of, because it would undermine the legitimacy of his war in russia and lead him to a dead end kut amen ability to get crimea became a threatening consequence for his regime another question about the Chinese Government because their attitude towards the russian war in ukraine at certain moments is very unclear and ambiguous of time what do you think why this yes, the durability of the relationship for quite a long time, what an Autocratic Alliance against the democratic world, of course, it is not about a formal alliance, but about a partnership that is primarily fueled by antagonism towards the United States of america , i am amazed at how moderate chinas support for russia was, all the bells and whistles do not support the war, they supported putin and russia at the un general assembly, and china was not among them, he abstains from military aid. He behaves very cautiously because he wants to avoid sanctions we need to do more in this direction, however, considering that the chinese i did not even recognize the annexation of crimea in 2014 , how little china has done for russia is surprising. Received a measure and condemned this war. I think that it will happen, however , maintaining chinese neutrality is a very worthy goal that ukrainian diplomacy managed to achieve. And the last question for today, i want to thank all americans to all to the european allies with the help of the support that we receive from you thanks to this help and support, our courageous soldiers are fighting on the front lines and recapturing our territories. But we often hear calls from the west about the need to sit down at the negotiating table with the russians. Tired of the war in ukraine, we need to find out what is included in the concept of protecting europe, they support you much more than others here in the usa, the president is poor , his administration is very supportive of your government and your military efforts, and they dont tell president zelensky to negotiate with the russians. Im not talking baban look in the usa and they are criticizing for providing too much support to ukraine. Dont forget that next year we have president ial elections, all the republicans who will run against the President Biden will be actively criticized , and donald trump is now the leader of the republicans. Hors is max, of course , they support financial and military aid to ukraine much less than President Biden. That is, you touched on an issue that also worries me. What to do . And you, you need to do more than more weapons better weapons and as soon as possible this is the fastest way to end this war i would say the same about sanctions more sanctions stronger sanctions and as soon as possible this is the way to victory how can you speed up the process of ending the war guarantees a delay war when i hear lets do more now to hasten the end of putins barbaric invasion ukraine thank you very much mr. Ambassador for taking the time for us thank you for answering my questions this was Michael Mcfall director of the freemanspole institute of International Relations at stanford university, the Us Ambassador to russia in 201114 talked about many things, but mostly about russia, about our victory over the aggressor and how they help us bring this victory closer, this was an exclusive interview on espressovat yuriy fizer see you there is a cough, there are discounts on mukaltin 15 percent in podorozhnyk pharmacies bam and savings there are discounts on spazgom tablets 10 in podorozhnyk pharmacies you and savings every week saturday Political Club helps to understand the processes taking place in ukraine and the world vitaly portnikov, host of espresso and invitations, experts based on facts give their assessment and forecast of the development of events, you want to understand how our today will affect our tomorrow, see the saturday Political Club, what saturdays are on espresso. 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I see very clearly that Russian Television says something bad about ukraine or nothing, and studying history, it just all came together, the same island of tuzla, then do you remember it was already going then, besides, the reaction was simply they were punching us on on on thats all it went on and then i got in patriotic youth organizations, the youth nationalist congress, if we take this as the beginning of the voluntary movement, and the maidan was organized by people who passed the patriotic only when the organizations plast alliance mmk kryzub, well, even well, there are a lot of such organizations there, there is a falcon, there is a crane. That is, it was, and was not random people, the leaders of the maidans, about a hundred it was not random , nor were there random people at the beginning of the voluntary movement, it seemed so to everyone, well, these people had already lived and breathed ukraine for dozens of years in this beautiful a romantic time, we knew that we were still fighting for a european country, and in principle i am not ashamed of any of them on the maidan. On february 20, i became a centurion of the 35th volyn sich hundred. Shooting on the maidan well, everything became clear, everything became obvious, the annexation of crimea began, and for me as a historian, as a person who understood what was happening, everything fell into place and the enemy was obvious, only weapons could stop them, we then began to demand from the leadership there is a new leadership of the maidan and of ukraine, what are you doing with a volunteer battalion and we will go to defend crimea, but you understand the statist approach, it is not like that, they took us to the initial center of petrivtsi and on the base of the internal troops, they recreated the national guard, restored the national guard, because of the Previous National guard, which kuchma canceled it. She was very popular among the people. She was proukrainian. She was very clear. It was prestigious to serve in the national guard. We understood then that sooner or later, they will be for the people, not for his regime, and he destroyed it little by little, making the internal troops obedient. To defend ukraine with weapons, that