Jade McGlynn | The Spectator columnists & writers

Why more and more Russians are backing the war

O, do the Russians long for war? Ask of the stillness evermore, Ask of the field, or ask the breeze, And ask the birch and poplar trees. So begins a famous Soviet-era song and poem, written by Yevgenii Yevtushenko during Khrushchev’s Thaw. Volodymyr Zelensky cited the poem in his eve-of-war address to Russians, hoping it would rekindle these pacifistic sentiments and encourage resistance against the Kremlin’s imminent invasion. Apart from a relatively few (very) brave souls, Russians did not rise up. Opinion polls in authoritarian states must be treated carefully, but the absence of large-scale protests, combined with polls suggesting that 71 to 81 per cent of Russians approve of military activity in Ukraine, provide a fairly definitive answer to the question posed in Yevtushenko’s poem: yes, the Russians do want war.

Who poisoned Roman Abramovich?

Russia is now 33 days into a war it expected would last 72 hours. Given the relative failure of the invasion, it is surprising anyone in the Russian security establishment has much time to spare for side projects. Yet, yesterday’s news that the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was poisoned during informal peace negotiations with the Ukrainians would suggest otherwise. While details are murky, according to the investigative journalism collective Bellingcat, billionaire Abramovich was engaged in shadow negotiations in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, earlier this month when he and his two Ukrainian interlocutors fell ill. The men later received medical treatment in Istanbul. Since the story broke, there has been a heady mix of clarifications, confirmations and counter-accusations.

Spectator Out Loud

Damian Thompson, Jade McGlynn and Nick Newman

24 min listen

Spectator Out Loud

Damian Thompson, Jade McGlynn and Nick Newman

24 min listen

On this week's episode, we'll hear from Damian Thompson on the Patriarch in league with Putin. (00:58)Next, Jade McGlynn on how Russian TV is presenting the war to its people. (08:46)And finally, Nick Newman asks how should cartoonists respond to war? (17:35)Produced and presented by Sam Holmes and Max JefferySubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

What TV is telling Russians – and why they believe it

If you want to understand how Russians see the world, it helps to watch Russian TV. The Kremlin’s control over the airwaves permeates every part of Russia’s television schedules. There are no longer soaps or series during waking hours, just relentless TV shows about Russia’s place in the world. The popular and execrable ‘news’ discussion show 60 Minutes now often lasts two to three hours. It is as if EastEnders and Coronation Street were replaced with 200 minutes of state propaganda. Such shows depict Russia’s horrific assault on Ukrainian towns, cities and people as a special military operation. They are punctuated with clips of Vladimir Putin celebrating a successful and pre-emptive mission to free Donbas from genocidal Ukrainian butchers.

The Edition

The Western Front

45 min listen

The Edition

The Western Front

45 min listen

In this week’s episode: Has Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the West’s weakness - or its strength?For this week, Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian writes about the draconian anti-war measures that Putin has imposed in Russia. He joins the podcast along with Dr Jade Glynn, a specialist in Russian memory and foreign policy at the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies. (01:00)Also this week: has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlighted the hubris of the West? While Western countries unite in a chorus of criticism against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rod Liddle writes that the invasion only highlights the impotence of the West. He is joined by James Forsyth, The Spectator’s political editor. (18:20)And finally, what’s happened to Durham University? Has its reputation plummeted?Nathan Risser writes in The Spectator this week about the decline of Durham University.

Putin’s Kremlin is obsessed with world war two

Putin's claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended to 'denazify' the country looked absurd when he made it last week. In the days since, as Russia adopts a more aggressive military response with cluster bombs reportedly being dropped and children caught in the crossfire, his ludicrous justification has been exposed for what it is. But for many Russians, who have not seen the horrific images emerging from Ukraine, Putin's claim is unlikely to seem so fanciful. While it seems darkly ironic for Putin to call Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky – who is Jewish – a neo-Nazi, there is nothing new about this false parallel being made. The idea that fascists control Ukraine has been a mainstay of Russian propaganda ever since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which overthrew the disgraced president Viktor Yanukovych.

Is Russia ready for life after Putin?

When Russians headed to the polls last week, the Duma election results were never in doubt: Putin’s United Russia party won two-thirds of the seats, while the rest went to the tame ‘systemic opposition’. But even if the outcome wasn't a surprise, the manner of Putin's victory should ring alarm bells about what happens in Russia when he eventually departs. The Kremlin ‘won’ the Duma elections insofar as United Russia received the number of seats it wanted. It did this on just 50 per cent of the vote, down on previous elections, with widespread violations, and at the cost of what little credibility the electoral process still enjoyed. In regimes like Russia, elections are not for the people, but for the autocrats.

The Kremlin’s plan to destabilise the West

On Sunday, Russia released its new National Security Strategy. In many ways, it picked up from where the 2015 version left off — on a crusade to politicise and polarise every aspect of Russian culture. This is not a strategy for the country’s security but for the government: the document sets out to mobilise the Russian nation, even Russian identity itself, against western bogeymen at home and abroad. Apart from some more sober references to ecology and partnership with China, most of the strategy reads as a paranoid diatribe against Russia’s oft-cited ‘internal and external enemies’. They loom large on nearly every page, lurking within discussions of national interest, societal cohesion, economics and strategic stability.

The Belarus hijacking reveals the West’s complacency

On Sunday evening an act of appalling state kidnapping took place over the skies of Europe. Four alleged KGB officers and a Soviet-era MIG-29 fighter jet forced a Ryanair flight, travelling between two EU capitals, to divert to Minsk. The hijacking was a carefully planned, outrageous operation. The Belarusian KGB (sadly not an anachronism) had claimed there was an explosive device onboard, but their real target was Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old journalist. Protasevich is the founder of the NEXTA telegram channel, which supported and covered the anti-government protests that erupted in Belarus last August after falsified presidential elections. The journalist was arrested alongside his fiancée, with footage emerging late Monday evening of a shaken Protasevich bearing strange marks on his face and admitting to crimes that carried a 15-year prison sentence.

How the West can respond to Putin’s military build-up

In the last few weeks, Russia has been flaunting its military build-up in and around Ukraine, sending 20,000 extra troops, artillery convoys, and trains heaving with weaponry to Crimea. To avoid this escalating into full-scale war, a more robust and consistent response is needed from the international community, as well as new fora and strategies to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, France and Germany have assumed leading roles in mediating the conflict. They are part of the ‘Normandy Quartet’ and mediators for the Minsk Protocol. But both of these initiatives have floundered and the Franco-German failure to stand up to Russia is partly to blame, following Macron’s self-serving attempts to ‘reset’ with Russia and Germany’s enduring commitment to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Boris’s Russia review will delight Putin

The strategy outlined within the integrated review lacks the urgency, agility, and need for ambiguity needed to take on the country it deems our ‘most acute threat’: Russia. Described as the ‘biggest review of our foreign, defence, security and development policy since the end of the Cold War’, in fact — when it comes to Russia — much of the IR reads more like a literature review than a 21st Century ‘Long Telegram’. Russia is referenced only fourteen times directly, and then with a great deal more descriptive analysis than comprehensive plans of action. Much of the content is welcome: one section deals with Russia under the new term of ‘state threats’. It reiterates the government’s intention to introduce Counter-State Threats Legislation (including a new Foreign Agent’s Registration Bill) and the Online Harms Bill.

How Putin reacts in a crisis

Despite its evident distaste for fair elections, the Kremlin is highly sensitive to public opinion — Vladimir Putin even has his own secret service polling agency, which he uses to weigh up policy decisions and gauge his popularity. The Kremlin combines these tools with state-of-the-art propaganda to promote Putin’s cult of personality, which naturally imposes on Russians his singular ability to protect them from internal and external enemies. Whenever Putin’s popularity is threatened, state media amplifies and heightens such narratives. We have seen that in the last couple of weeks, as Russia has been gripped by nationwide protests against corruption and in support of opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. With the courts sentencing Navalny to two years and eight months in a prison camp on Tuesday, more protests are expected and the pressure on Putin will mount.

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