anne applebaum. _ interesting a proposal. anne applebaum, what _ interesting a proposal.atility mean? you applebaum, what could this period of volatility mean?— volatility mean? you have heard several guests _ volatility mean? you have heard several guests say _ volatility mean? you have heard several guests say this - volatility mean? you have heard several guests say this is - volatility mean? you have heard several guests say this is a - volatility mean? you have heard. several guests say this is a period of volatility that many people try and take — of volatility that many people try and take advantage of. i think one thing _ and take advantage of. i think one thing that— and take advantage of. i think one thing that is important to remember about_ thing that is important to remember about russia is that it is not only about russia is that it is not only a question— about russia is that it is not only a question of who would succeed putin _ a question of who would succeed putin the — a question of who would succeed putin. the question is also, who chooses — putin. the

. >> anne applebaum is asking whether this is putin's czar nicholas. >> he has brought up what happened previously with russia. his knowledge of history notwithstanding, what do we know about -- and look, getting in the mind of vladimir putin, you and i have talked about this many times, is risky business, but when he's backed into a corner, what's the natural reaction? >> reporter: well, when he's backed into a corner, that's when he becomes the most dangerous, right? i mean, he learned that as a young kid in the streets of st. petersburg. he tells a story of being at a community apartment where he grew up and a rat was cornered and how it leaped out at him, and that was a lesson he took, right? never corner a rat because you don't know what they're going to do. and that's where he is right now. and he is at this point potentially in an erratic or volatile moment. that's the fear in the west. what does he do in this moment to reassert himself, to a show he is the czar, to show he is the boss in effect. does he do something in ukraine, something he might not have cone before. that's whe

i'm joined now by anne applebaum, russia expert, author, and staff writer at the atlantic.en a bit of a whirlwind. you tweeted that things aren't going to go back. tell us a bit more about why you think that, and what we should be watching for over the next couple of weeks. >> you are absolutely right. to start with, 1917. the person who brought that idea into the conversation yesterday was putin himself. he gave a short speech in which he portrayed the idea that this was a national emergency, that's yevgeny prigozhin who is marching on moscow was an enemy of the people. he was a trader, he had to be arrested and crashed. people must not join him. they must stay away from him. and then some powers later, after our processes that were opaque and difficult to foresee, after prigozhin had already moved 500 miles into russia, had taken over a town, had occupied the military headquarters, an important military headquarters in southern russia, after that, after all, that suddenly it was fine. it was all over, and prigozhin was being forgiven in moving developers. there is just a

anne applebaum is a pulitzer prize-winning historian and a staff writer for "the atlantic" and marciaaff writer for "the new yorker." marcia, what is the main conclusion you draw from the e ve vents of the last 48 hours? >> this is the biggest crisis the putin presidency has ever faced. in 23 years in power he has not faced this kind of challenge to his monopoly on political action and his monopoly on violence. so it can't be underestimated. granted it is a coup that failed and most koos failed and another thing is that prigozhin never said he was going up against the president. his march was to the president and very much sort of maintains the narrative that if the president is doing something that he doesn't support that the people don't like and the people he claims to represent, then it's because the president doesn't have the right information. the president himself is beyond assault. >> anne, to me the most significant thing prigozhin said is something that you allude to in your atlantic piece had is he directly and frontally criticized the entire rationale for the war in ukrain

joining me now are anne applebaum and alyssa lucevich and a staff writer for "the atlantic." is the head of the forum at chatham house. and you say that the purpose, the real purpose behind this ukrainian counteroffensive or the larger purpose is not -- [ no audio ] >> the counter offense sif to create a political change in russia by which i don't mean regime change. there has to be a moment when the russians decide that the war is not worth fighting anymore and they take their troops and leave. it's the kind of decision that the french made in 1962 when they decided to pull out of algeria. the british made that decisions a number of times. in their empire, there is a moment when their empire ends and the ukrainians will use both military tactics as well as political tactics to convince the russians to leave. the war is over when the russian goes home. ukrainians don't have to occupy moscow and they don't have to get anybody to surrender. all they need to do is get them to leave and so what you will see over the next few weeks is both the kinds of shaping operations we see no

joining me now is anne applebaum and or issia lutsevych, head of the ukraine format chatham house. n, you say that the purpose, the real purpose behind this ukraine counter offensive or the larger surprise is not murely military. explain what you mean. >> the real purpose is to create a political change in russia, by which i mean regime change. there has to be a moment when the russians decide the war is not worth fighting any more and they take their troops and leave. it is kind of decision that the french made in 1962 when they decided to pull out of algeria, and the british made that decision a number of times in their empire. there is a moment when the empire ends. and the ukrainians will use both military tactics as well as political tactics to convince the russians to leave. remember, the war is over when the russians go home. ukrainians don't have to occupy moscow or get anybody to surrender. all they need to do is get them to leave. and so what you're going to see over the flexnext few weeks is shaping operations with he see now, attempts to cut off railway links and so on.

. >> kim, so interesting when anne applebaum said to us last hour based on the little resistance, ife wagner faced over the weekend, we got a very rare lens into the real russia because state media is so government controlled no, reliable polling, this is was a real lens. do you agree? >> absolutely. prigozhin managed to create a popular following. he's the every man of russia at the front lines speaking for them. some people within russia are hearing from their troops at the front lines that they're not getting enough supplies, that they don't have enough air cover, itself. and prigozhin gave voice to all of that. and the lack of resistance was a message to putin that we have to tear this guy down. and you're starting to see that. some of moscow's mouthpieces have started going on radio tv talking about prigozhin's past as a criminal, how he ended up spending 13 years in jail because he joked a woman and one of these mouthpieces said that's all you need to know about prigozhin. they're going to start laying out his crimes so that the public sees him as a criminal, not as a challenge

russia and what it all means i am joined by an expert panel with a lot of russian experience, anne applebaum"twilight of democracy" the seductive lure. admiral staff rides. peter baker with the new york times and he was also a moscow combur owe chief and danielle pletka, senior fellow and before that she was a longtime staff or the senate foreign relations committee and i am ecstatic about the amount of russian intellect we have here. anne, let me start with you. is this putin's twilight? >> twilight is too early to talk about twilight, but it is certainly a kind of turning point. to me, the most interesting thing about yesterday was the way that ordinary people in the city of rostov reacted to wagner mercenaries. they came up to them. they smiled at them. they had selfies with them. they waved them good-bye when they left the city in the evening. these were not people that were upset about violent nears carrying out regime change in their country. these are not people who are going to defend putin. many of our assumptions about his longevity and his popularity may have just been exploited b

and staff writer at the "atlantic," anne applebaum. , "putin is caught in his own trap." you write, democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote, but a certain kind of autocrat of whom putin is the outstanding example seeks to convince people of the opposite. not to participate. not to care. not to follow politics at all. the propaganda used in putin's russia has been designed in part for this purpose, the constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies, the famous firehose of falsehoods, encouraging many people to believe there is no truth at all. the result is widespread cynicism. if you don't know what's true, after all, then there isn't anything you can do about it. protest is pointless. engagement is useless. but the side effect of apathy was on display yesterday, as well. for if no one cares about anything, that means they don't care about their supreme leader, his ideology or his war. russians haven't flocked to sign up to fight in ukraine. the

. >> doris, i remember after january 6th, anne applebaum writing a column in "the atlantic," saying, to figure out how to deal with trump supporters, 77 million people. we have to figure out how to bring them back into the mainstream of american political thought. it sort of, you know, like abraham lincoln in his second inaugural, talking about with malice toward none after the south had been responsible for the killing of about 650,000 americans. anne got absolutely eviscerated by people, talking about how naive she was, that we can never forgive, can never forget. we can never deal with these people again. it's a good thing joe biden agreed more with anne applebaum than her critics, because a hell of a lot has been done just because joe biden believed, well, in the good heart of a lot of americans. >> and, you know, joe, what you and willie have both said, is you have to believe it's possible to make it possible. maybe the fact that he was there, so the many years ago when it did work, allows you to believe it can work again. so many people in congress in the recent years have only

i go back to an ann applebaum column soon after january 6th, uncomfortably close to january 6th. she said we have to figure out how to get some of these people back into the main stream of american politics. we have to keep the door open to them. so my only point is to -- to anybody out there, and we had dan yesterday saying don't isolate the conspiracy theorists like in your family. bring them in, let them talk. have polite conversations. we have to draw them in. they have to be deprogrammed. i just say our goal maybe it may not be a bad thing, to show grace whenever we have the opportunity to show that grace. because, as we talked about on the show, this isn't going to happen overnight. it's going to happen one convert at a time. it's going to happen like 0.1% of the electorate at a time. but over time that adds up to 1% and 2% and 4%. and suddenly, the states that matter the most start falling away from donald trump and trumpists. >> i hear you on that. we're going to continue this conversation. jon meacham thank you very much. still a lot more to get to really quick -- >> one

you know, this goes back to what anne applebaum wrote about when she was talking about authoritarianshat with donald trump. he surrounds himself with people who are more loyal, less equipped, and immoral. >> those people were loyal foot soldiers also in the attempted coup against the united states government in the 2020 election. you better believe that donald trump, if re-elected, would put in place an attorney general who would make all his legal trouble go away. let's bring in contributing writer at "the atlantic," a fellow in governance studies at the brookings institution and senior in law. let's read your piece, "trump can't bluster his way through court." quinta writes this, the courtroom is an inhospitable space for bluster. it is for careful evaluation of meaning and argument. in court, trump is no longer on his home turf. in that sense, the mar-a-lago indictment represents the latest collision between the legal system and trump's insistence on defining the terms of his own reality. for all trump loves to file lawsuits against those he claims wronged him, the courtroom repres