a political observer from the state of israel , thank you very much, now we will have a little bit of advertising and a little bit of plot, you know, i will tell you honestly that there are at least two scumbags among journalists, one of whom we know, he worked in russia, we know that for a long time savik worked in russia and then in ukraine, and simon schuster works for the americans and just wrote a book about the president , president zelenskyi, so... we decided that in addition to advertising, we, you will be interested to listen and see what is written in this book this simon schuster, who actually wrote this book speaking, with the support of the presidential administration of ukraine, the office of president zelensky, and wrote this book, so now we have about two minutes of advertising and 10 minutes of plot about this book. oh yeah.

the perspective program is on the air. approaching the second anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russia into ukraine, today i have the honor to talk on the air with a person who probably understands more than others what happened and is happening in the ukrainian ruling elite. a person who knows about the course of thoughts of president volodymyr zelensky, perhaps more than anyone else simon shuster, russian american of ukrainian descent. background, he is a senior correspondent for the magazine and has spent the past few years monitoring the situation in ukraine, with unprecedented access to zelenskyi and his team. his book , called showman, is about the invasion that shook the soviet union and made volodymyr zelenskyi the leader. thank you very much for joining us today. first of all, tell us what kind of access you had to volodymyr zelensky and how you could get it. i got acquainted with president zelensky even before he became president. namely, in the spring of 2019, in

the midst of the election campaign. i was preparing a profile of his candidacy. at that time he was a comedian, an actor, a showman, and i happened to go backstage at one of his comedy shows, which was, in fact, his campaign rally. we got to know each other during the reporting and i stayed in touch with him and his team as they continued to run the country after he won the election. and when the invasion began, i fell a unique opportunity to meet him and say: "listen, it's happening around us." historical events, i would like to write a book about it, and he said: come on, i don't have time to write a book, but someone should do it, you say that zelensky was a showman, or is he still a showman, i think that this his superpower, in the skills he has honed over 20 years as an actor, television producer, director, screenwriter, that have allowed him to capture and hold the world's attention in a way that i believe few other leaders, let alone anyone, could do in this the situation, and the nature of this... war really

required ukraine to keep the west and world democracies on its side, and not only the leadership, but also the people in the democracy, this is what zelenskyi does a great job with, but is this enough, we have seen as cracks begin to appear in europe and the united states, for example, in terms of funding , is that going to be enough for him to continue this thing, do you think, from the very beginning of the invasion, he understood how important it was to keep the world's attention, he admitted that with sometimes this attention can russia... and felt his mission in trying to draw attention to the real picture of the war, which he considers so that the whole world can see and thereby ensure support for ukraine. but he understands that time is running out, and in time other crises may arise, such as the war in israel, for example. he did not foresee this, but he thought that some other crisis would divert the world's attention from the ukrainian issue. and this is really happening now. every day he faces challenges, trying to find new ways.

attracting attention, because other crises compete for the world's attention, and this complicates the task. there is a strong concern not only for the sad president, but also for the ukrainian people, right? yes, it is a fact, and we are approaching our second anniversary, as you rightly point out. now people are showing more and more fatigue, which is becoming evident on the streets of kyiv. it is noticeable from the conversations. at the beginning, president zelenskyi and many of his close advisers promised that there would be a victory, that there would be no war. take that long actually when we first talked to him about it i said my book is coming out in about a year he said do you you think the war will still be going on a year from now, we are now approaching two years, the death toll continues to rise, as does worldwide disillusionment, weariness and the desire for the war to end. you mentioned what happened two years ago, when we were in a situation where russia had amassed troops on the border. and many people said that

they were not going to actually attack ukraine. what do you think was going on in zelenskyi's head and in the corridors of power in kyiv at that time. the book is very attentive. that is considered the moment that led to the decisions that zelensky made, in essence, to tell everyone to stay calm, that there would be no large-scale invasion, and that's what he was telling the ukrainians. the reason was that, as he describes, he ran into different intelligence. the americans presented a very extreme picture of the invasion, that in essence russia was planning to take over most of the country, if not all of it. at a time when european special services, european leaders, were telling him that the americans might do something... and when it did happen, was there panic? yes, of course i have meaning that if you're faced with a full-scale attack by a nuclear superpower trying to kill a country's leaders, take

them hostage and seize power, you can't help but panic. there was panic in the streets. do you think it was just a coincidence that the first days of the invasion were a fiasco? i mean that at the beginning everything was very unfavorable for the russian side. the book traces the preparations that took place at that time. the military in ukraine was preparing, and i also spoke with military commanders, who were responsible for this effort. so it's not about chance or providence. the americans told the general in one phone conversation described in the book, "you're very lucky not to have been captured in the first days of a full-scale invasion," to which he replied that it wasn't just luck. but also the training plan and strategy. some of your work has been controversial in the past. last year, you published an article in time in which you argued that zelenskyi felt his allies had failed him because of insufficient support for the struggle of ukraine. it's true. that's what i heard from his close advisers. i

spoke with all of them in kyiv. i met with many of them throughout the invasion and the mood definitely changed, because the context of the war also changed. one of the advisers said that we are not winning, while president zelensky continued to promote his message of victory. he refused and still refuses to acknowledge some of the difficulties on the battlefield that his own advisers and military commanders are talking about. he is everything pushes this message, promising his people complete victory. was zelenskyi satisfied with your article, did you talk to him about it? not really, because it kind of contradicts the message he 's trying to convey, but he understands that i don't work for him, i'm an independent journalist, and his team respects that too. my conversations with him are ongoing, i spoke with

him this week, so the article didn't cause a long rift. you also talked about the psychological state of volodymyr zelenskyi, isn't he getting better? perhaps a little too dependent on power. this is something that ukrainians and the world should pay attention to. as history shows, it is very difficult for a leader who has gained extraordinary powers, especially during war, to regain them. there are historical precedents on both sides, but overall this is something that should be a cause for concern. in the conditions of martial law, during the last two years, president zelenskyi has had extraordinary powers, which essentially allow him to rule with the help of decrees and orders. under martial law he has almost complete control over the means of mass information in ukraine, which is not easy to give up. this will determine what kind of ukraine we will have after the war, whether it will continue to be a democratic country, that's what really matters. and about the end of the war. as we

said, no one expected it to last this long. are you still convinced that ukraine can go through this and win? i think so. a lot of pessimism, unfortunately, overshadows where it all started. russia started a war with the aim of capturing the entire country and removing zelensky. they clearly failed. ukraine resisted, and therefore russia failed in its original objectives. but i also think that ukraine's ability to withstand this war, even in the face of declining support for the west, is largely underestimated. they work through contingencies, develop different strategies to continue to fight and push back the russians. the main one is related to the increase. own in-house weapons production, and they 're doing great, especially when it comes to drones. we see how they attack russian territories, last year they even reached the kremlin, so the ukrainians are moving forward thanks to weapons of their own production, and the idea that the west can turn

the switch and force ukraine to negotiate or capitulate is simply naive. ukrainians can and will continue to fight as long as they believe it is worth it. glad to see you on the program today, thank you very much, it was simon schuster, a russian-american of ukrainian origin, a senior correspondent for the magazine, talking about his book showman, inside the invasion, which shook. everyday life is full of stress and anxiety, melamach b6 will help to cope with these challenges. melatonin, magnesium and vitamin b6 contribute to a full rest and restore strength. full sleep and recovery from bhfz. there are discounts on

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good health once again, we are working before 8 p.m. while you were watching the plot, we were discussing here and the wonderful oleksandra, my

editor, said, well, what are we going to spoil russia? well, just for this we have oleg magaletsky, a researcher of regionalism in the russian federation and co-organizer of the "free peoples of postrosia" forum. just then we ask him whether it is possible to destroy it, what these bashkir protests mean, how serious it all is. if i see him now, mr. oleg, i will be wildly happy, because they say that he will be now, that he is on the way to join us in the regions of russia, very cautious form, researcher of regionalism, that is not separatism, because separatism in russia is such an insult, as they have such swear words as separatism, nationalism. this is perhaps very bad, although

it is not even known what country russia is not nationalist in the worst sense of the word, but i am at least absolutely convinced that there is a huge truth in this, that this is a real such-and-such country. so, oleg magaletsky, a researcher of regionalism in the russian federation, co-organizer of the free peoples of postrossia forum, good health, mr. oleg, thank you for finding it. it's time for us, good luck evening, well, look, i'll tell you honestly, i'm a big skeptic, i see some flashes, nazi'? this is the case in russia, in russia in the caucasus, and now we see, in the southern urals, you can say that, but i do not see such large forces there, i once even counted to myself that nine or eight subjects federations, if

they can be called a federation, only indigenous peoples prevail there. the rest there are the majority of russians, and it is difficult for me to imagine that russians somewhere there will start an uprising against the central government of russia imagine, therefore, and you are directly engaged in this, so tell us, am i wrong in my skepticism, or are you right in your optimism? only time will tell which of us is closer to the truth today, in my opinion, the point is that the things about... that we talk about are very non-linear, for example, the first stage of the collapse of the russian empire, yes, the one that today exists in the form of the russian federation, began in 1917, and at that time, six months before, in 1916 , there were even fewer signals that it would happen, those people who became the creators of an independent

manorgame of finland, as the person who, unfortunately, did not become, yes, the father, the founder of the restored ukrainian statehood of skorop. they were generals of the imperial army and were imperialists to the core, in the autumn of the 16th year, the brusylov breakthrough continued, and the russians, if you read, wrote that we will meet in constantinople in the 17th year in our possibly renewed capital there, and because of the tsar was gone for six months, then the bolsheviks and so on. from the point of view of the 80s, the 85th-6th year imi-6 and the cia wrote that the soviet union what a disintegration there, andropov. about planned to abolish the republics and the soviet republics based on their national identity, which they were, then they became independent, to make a reform based on an economic format, fortunately it did not happen, because andropov died, but who knows if history would have gone, so when we talk about these today processes and whether the number of non-indigenous

peoples is important again, first of all, we are talking about captive nations, occupied nations, because tatars, bashkorts, and boryats are in... the status in which estonians latvians, ukrainians, georgians were there 30 years ago, yes 33 years ago, so it is not a question of optimism or pessimism, it is a question of project management, what should we do to increase the chances of this scenario, what concrete actions should be taken, which will speed up this process, which from the point of view of the logic of history, and russia is the last, well, muscovy is the last european colonial empire. which did not go through the process of imperialization, how to make it happen in 2024-25, and not in 35? see greater russia in geographic sense of the word, it helps who? nationally liberated movements, putin, ukraine, well, that is, many people say that in russia revolutions happen only in capitals,

regional nationalism rears its head, that is, everything is fine in the capital, everything is wonderful there. and in moscow, and in st. petersburg, and there in nizhny novgorod or somewhere else, and he says: well, where is bashkirtastan, they are far away, until they reach here and there, but we are seeing exactly these events now, he is seeing the russian riot , and who beat people there and poisoned them with gas, well, in short, as omon always behaves all the same, the question is whether it is good or bad, who helps. huge , huge hundreds and thousands of kilometers of russian territory, again, each thing has its different sides, and what today is a colossal resource, yes, of this moscow empire, its huge exchange and its huge resources, they are at once what is its minus, because

in the process of various disintegration tendencies, which can intensify very quickly. it can be instantaneous, yes, not only as it was in 1917, when at the end of february out of nowhere the revolution began, or in august 1991 , when precisely in the heart of the metropolis, yes, in essence , yeltsin confirmed what the azerbaijanis, lithuanians, estonians, ukrainians were doing with this, those things related to the hccp, and even gave the soviet union a chance finish sooner, it can happen now, but given their scale, it will be very difficult to stop. troops, even more so, this rosguard and other punitive russian so-called security forces, yes, security forces, there are many of them, well, they are forced to be now in the occupied ukrainian territories, and in much smaller purely. human potential, considering that it is hundreds, and sometimes thousands of kilometers, then any sabotage, any attempts to block them, they can be very effective, especially considering that russia as

an empire did not develop its own, these are not provinces, yes, these are not republics, these are colonies, because in fact today it connects, for example, buryatia, sakha and so on, i am already silent provodyvostok and khabaras with russia, well, from the empire to moscow there are only two transport highways, and when the ukrainian sbu very recently made a diversion in to one of... with tunnels in buriatskyi, it paralyzed logistics for a certain rather significant time, in those situations when it will not be a matter of weeks, but of days and hours, this is an extremely important factor, and returning to your question, key factors are also important cities, since we live in a post-industrial world, any real change happens in the main cities, so although today it seems that in moscow or especially in st. petersburg, which can become part of an independent. and everything is calm, considering the dislike of, for example, yekaterinburg, st. petersburg, namely novosibirsk, khabarivsk to moscow, at some point it may play its role, and again,

the task for us is to make it happen sooner rather than later. mr. oleg, but the people themselves, the nationalists themselves, these kazakhs, tatars, bashkirs, tsakh yakuts, they... know what they want, they have, because it happens that, for example, i remember , not like today, but i still remember when after, when gorbachev came, in every kitchen of the soviet union, they roughly understood what they wanted, there were no leaders, the leaders still sat in prisons, and lukyanenko, and chernobyl, and sakharov was in exile as a russian , and so on, and so on, but i don't ask anyone, it is necessary that... there should be a junior general secretary so that he knows how to speak, to finally tell the truth, that we have problems

, that we have accidents, and in short, there were 10 questions that just about every citizen of the then ussr could tell you in estonia, in central asia, then, in central asia, in ukraine, in transcaucasia, everywhere, everyone understood that, but these people have in their heads, okay, tomorrow is weak. the central government in moscow, and the day after tomorrow we will do the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or there is no such thing, it is already weak, yes, which very nicely confirmed this paradox prigozhny, whatever these events were in june of last year, they are a very clear indicator of the maximum brittleness of the system. as for your question, most likely the situation we will observe in the coming years will be more similar to the events of 1900. 17th 1919 than 1991, because the process of dismantling the soviet union took place when the empire was weak and transitioned from authoritarianism to

some kind of, well, more or less democratic system, in the 17th year, when there was a war, maximum censorship, there were much weaker movements, there was no understanding of how this empire would fall apart, yes, because with the soviet union , it happened outside the administrative boundaries of the soviet republics, so most likely the masses were there too. less passionate, unlike in 1991, when 3-4 years of ownership there gave the opportunity to form a popular movement in ukraine, to form movements for independence in lithuania, estonia, sakartvela, azerbaijan and so on. therefore, we are not talking about the masses here , because in russia, in these territories of the so-called russian federation, yes, and it does not matter, we are talking about sakha bozh kurtazstan, ingria there or the smolensk region, there will be no maidan, no boo, there is no civil society, it, all its roots were destroyed by putin. there is actually an authoritarian regime, which is turning into a totalitarian one, into such a cross between the dprk and iran, the orthodox taliban, and the fact is that the important decision

will be made by a passionate minority, this literally not even 2-3% of the population, but 01.02% of the population, somewhere this is an administrative vertical, so they are these officials of the united russia conditionally, as they did, in particular, in central asia, the first secretaries of companies who did not even oppose the kkchp, they waited. and then changed the icon of the soviet union to the icon of independent kyrgyzstan, tajikistan or turkmenistan, somewhere it will be, somewhere it will be dissidents, somewhere it will be an economic bloc, somewhere it will be possible even today's employees of the fsb or the so-called former hush, somewhere these will be people who will unexpectedly take to the streets and, together with dissident support, will give results, here again it is important for us to understand that... these processes are quite unpredictable, and today we should not measure only by the models of ukraine, yes, that is, how it happened in our country and what was our

experience of the revolution. these situations for each of these regions, they are very different, because for example, sakha is a republic with 3 million square km, with resources that allow there gold, diamonds, coal, oil, that allow it to be the northern qatar at the population is just a little less than a million people, but they live and literally today cut the ice from the year, because they do not have sewage and water supply, that is, there is no other option to get water in winter. the question is whether the masses understand that this is bad, yes , somewhere on an intuitive level they understand, but they are used to living like this, and here the question is whether we can reach out and form a request in that retired minority that is beneficial to them when they will feel this weakness of the system, and they clearly feel it, because no one else does wants to go all the way with putin, and if the hague is lit for some of the elite and war criminals, war criminals, terrorists, then they will not

have the hague, they will either be in... a corner somewhere on a stake, or lying dead in ditches altogether, they will lose no only there is its power, its lies, look, i understood you that the future of ukraine, the future of the russian federation, is not the strength of the colony, the weakness of moscow, it is not because the colonies are russian, the same sakha, the same kazan, are becoming stronger , but the center simply declines and thus, a political vacuum appears, where are these nationalists getting into, but my question is different: what does the west think? in the west , there are not even many experts on this issue, there is one, i read one american of polish origin, well, with a polish surname, who really investigates these processes and is very interesting, just such a detective, but do people in the west seriously understand this? do they give

themselves a report that this is one of the possible ... for which we must prepare, because it cannot be that there are 15 nuclear missiles left in sakha, and 24 in bashkir, and seven in kazan, it somehow does not matter to anyone i like it, i think so for some reason, yes, this is an extremely important element, tactical, achieving strategic success, it is clear that the west is the same cliché, and there is a collective west, like the global south. in the west, moreover, in each of the countries, the united states of america, france, the netherlands, britain, there are different factions, there are different services, there are different state and diplomatic departments, where people with different visions work, i am glad that thanks to our work , and this is again our task, thanks to your mentioned expert, this janusz bohajski, as far as i understood, who worked and researched this moscow empire since the days of the soviet union, he was ... and is

a consultant to the american special services including in the past, at least the pentagon, and the cia and so on, together with his friend paul goble , this is also a telling example, since janusz and paul are people who are about 70 plus or minus years old, they are actually the only experts on imperial russia in the usa today. after the collapse of the soviet union, the u.s. finished fully exploring this empire believing that mir-friendship is chewing gum, yeltsin and so on. and not only in the usa, moreover. vacuum, expert, political, military, regarding muscovy in all the key countries of our partners, and our job is just to wake up all the neighbors on the perimeter of the so-called, so -called this russian federation, from japan, mongolia, kazakhstan, norway, finland, yes, that is global centers of influence, such as nato, the eu, to understand that this process will happen anyway, it is already happening, this final stage of russia's decolonization, the question

is that either we hide our heads in a pigtail. and then there are a lot of risks of additional , yes, conditionally speaking, partial bosniaization of this territory, if the former metropolis is not pacified, yes, as it was not done with muscovy twice in the 20th century, as it was not done with germany after the first world war, or as it they didn't make serbia in 91, and then the former metropolis doesn't matter, it may not even be moscow itself, the center of revanchism may become some other neighboring region, i don't know nizhny novgorod, as it was in 1612 . so we don't go into history, we go to coming to power of the romanovs , it’s a long way off, 1612, 13, that’s where we are, thank you very much, mr. olezh, excuse me, but oh well, my life is so complicated, oleg magaletskyi, researcher of regionalism in the russian federation, co-organizer of the free peoples of post-russia forum, and now from russia to ukraine, because we are starting...