Russia Decoded
Temporada 1
por Center for the National Interest
Russians went to the polls on Sunday for the first nationwide elections since the launch of the "special military operation" in 2022, choosing a new parliament and regional and local officials, even as thousands of Ukrainian drones attacked across the country. On Vesti Nedeli, the Kremlin's talking heads celebrated the vote as a triumph of stability and a mandate for Putin's war. State television shows victory on every front: Germany's governing coalition continues to get battered at the polls and Kyiv is reeling from yet another corruption scandal. But what will "victory" really look like after years of war? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
When Vladimir Putin traveled to New Delhi for the annual BRICS summit, viewers of Russia's flagship Sunday news program might have expected lavish coverage of the president holding court with world leaders. Instead, Vesti Nedeli relegates Putin to second billing and places the war in Ukraine front and center. It's a curious choice given that Russia's parliamentary elections are just days away, but it sends a subtle message that Putin isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Throughout the broadcast, colonels and war correspondents take the spotlight and presenters keep returning to the same question: "Why are we fighting?" In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
At the SCO summit in Bishkek, Narendra Modi did something no one does to Vladimir Putin in public: he lectured him, urging him to move from "endless war" to "the end of war." Putin sat and swallowed. Russian state television declined to show the moment, offering viewers a warm portrait of Russian-Indian friendship instead. Why does it matter? Because pressure is supposed to flow the other way. Sunday's Vesti broadcast lingered over Putin's meeting with Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan at the SCO summit, where the Russian president squeezed Armenia to choose between the European and Russian markets — a familiar spectacle presenting Putin as the big man watching smaller leaders squirm. In the same episode, he is shown receiving Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at a gaudy red table resembling a poker game, implying that Putin holds all the cards. In reality, Russia has been reduced to a supplicant to China. Putin continues to court Xi Jinping, who flaunts nothing, promises nothing, commits to nothing, and lets Power of Siberia 2 hang unsigned. In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
At a Moscow university on Saturday, Vladimir Putin told a room of educators and students that packs of orcas sometimes hunt and kill polar bears. "Children should be told about this," he explained, "so that they understand what kind of world we live in and why we are conducting the special military operation." State media parrots this "law of the jungle" narrative, depicting Russia as both prey and predator: Britain sponsors Ukrainian deep strikes into Russia and Finland dreams of conquering the Urals, while simultaneously, Europe's leaders face electoral defeat and Ukraine's military is on the verge of collapse. At home, Russia is seemingly continuing its transition from a soft to hard authoritarianism. Dmitry Kiselyov, the charismatic and long-time host of Vesti Nedeli, has been sidelined from the Kremlin's flagship weekly news program. Why did Kiselyov's trademark style become a liability, and what kind of voice does the Kremlin want in his place? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
Last week, Vladimir Putin sat down for an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin, where he warned that Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy and logistics infrastructure had “opened Pandora’s box.” Moscow, Putin promised, would respond with devastating force. Kyiv’s deep strikes this summer have turned the war into a central political issue for everyday Russians, and with legislative elections just weeks away, Putin’s interview acts as campaign material. His threat of retaliation is echoed throughout Vesti’s Sunday broadcast. Britain is named as the European villain-of-the-week over its drone deliveries to Ukraine, and the program declares factories on British soil as fair game in the Kremlin’s retaliation. Has Moscow given up on cultivating Europe’s pro-Russian political parties in favor of open military threats? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
This week’s Vesti broadcast gave viewers little to celebrate except the destruction of Russia's enemies, with the Kremlin gloating over the "liberation" of destroyed, abandoned villages in Ukraine while ignoring the harsh realities of life in Russian-held territories. Added to this unrelenting grimness was Vesti's other tale of "triumph" in the Russian Far East. Last week, Vladimir Putin became only the second Russian leader to visit the disputed Kuril Islands, a direct provocation aimed at Japan. By flaunting Russian naval strength and tightening its axis with North Korea and China, is the Kremlin now threatening to open a "second front" against the West, isolating Japan and South Korea while the U.S. remains bogged down in the Middle East? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
This week, Vesti devoted its Europe report to a single accusation: that a failing European political class blames Moscow for every crisis that it has created itself, from migrants surging into Ceuta to vineyards burning in France and Germany's self-imposed energy shock. All of it, the program insists, is unfairly laid at Russia's door by leaders whose own coalitions are crumbling. But is Vesti projecting? What does it mean that the Kremlin's own account of the world runs on the same conspiratorial logic, with hidden hands, foreign plots, and adversaries credited with supreme powers? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
The Russia-Ukraine war is no longer contained to Ukraine, and the number of theaters now capable of pulling in one another, from Kyiv to Tehran, is growing faster than anyone's ability to manage them. Was Ukraine's recent strike on an Iranian vessel intended as a message for Donald Trump, and why did it fail to get the U.S. president's attention during Zelensky's Washington visit? Why has Vesti Nedeli had so little to say about America's war in Iran? And what should we make of a mobilization denial slipped into the final seconds of the Sunday broadcast, the same week a deputy defense minister suggested Russians who don't want to fight shouldn't be allowed to leave at all? In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
This week's Vesti Nedeli broadcast focused not on victory but on hardship. Russian correspondents fanned out from Volgograd to Vladivostok to report on fuel shortages, ten-day blackouts in Crimea, and the sixth successful Ukrainian strike on the warehouses of Russia's largest online retailer. After four years in which most Russians have experienced the war only at a distance, the drones now arrive daily, and Vesti's decision to show it in full, grim detail looks less like candor than an attempt to make Putin's war everyone's war. Excluded from the broadcast was perhaps the week's most extraordinary moment, when Kazakh President Tokayev, seated beside Putin with cameras rolling, stated plainly that he does not understand what the point of this war is, and proposing a ceasefire. In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.
With Dmitry Kiselyov away on vacation, the latest Vesti Nedeli fell to a substitute host, Yevgeny Popov, and the resulting broadcast felt like a different show entirely. Gone were the familiar tropes, the bandits and fascists and postmodern flourishes, replaced by a stripped-down, fact-heavy recitation of the news. As Kiselyov's propaganda machine idles in neutral, Popov is letting the West's own weak spots speak for themselves, from Zelensky's unpopular government purges to Europe's faltering support for military aid to Ukraine. In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Vladimir Putin and Russian elites understand the world, and how they seek to influence it. Have feedback? Email us at RussiaDecoded@cftni.org.