How Putin’s web of corrupt allies became Ukraine’s ‘secret weapon’ | Mark Galeotti

How Putin’s web of corrupt allies became Ukraine’s ‘secret weapon’ | Mark Galeotti

this is is one of these classic issues in coov operations for example if Al the Allies could have killed Hitler during World War II should they have done so and the general consensus is usually no before the war absolutely but once the war had started and in a way once Germany was locked into that well Hitler was a pretty bad War leader and the danger is you take Hitler out you might have someone more competent in place actually much the same is true of Putin in many ways Putin has been Ukraine’s secret weapon throughout this War and why would you want to throw that away reports that the cetan warlord ramzan kadirov is terminally ill just remind us first of all why karov is so important and and why that would have significant implications for Putin in many ways one of the events that really made Putin and his reputation in Russia was the second cetan war which started when he was actually prime minister before he was was president but then was was in way the first real challenge of his presidency and look the Russians won but the way they won apart from being monstrously brutal you know we saw the capital of gry pretty much leveled was essentially by Chaniz the conflict finding their own Chens to fight the rebel cin and as a result out from that came a sort of dynastic rule first of all it was actually kadir’s father akmad kadirov who became the first leader of sort of a loyalist chcha and then in due course ramzan kadiro the current one replaced him and what’s really happened is that in the name of subduing chia basically ccha was bought off on a massive scale I mean kadirov basically runs cheter with his own private personal thiefdom with extraordinary brutality and extraordinary levels of corruption over 80% of the Cen budget comes from Moscow is provided by the federal government and every time someone says oh isn’t it time perhaps to cut down on this money so basically kadiro throws his toys out of the pram and must go backs down because frankly I think Putin and his cohorts have convinced themselves that kadirov is the man who’s keeping the lid on Cheta who’s actually through a mix of brutality and local politics is able to actually keep the cze Chens under control and what they’re terrified of especially at the moment is of C once again boiling over because you know Chia it’s a small region but it has periodically rebelled against control by the Russians every time it gets a chance essentially and the cens frankly are hard as nails so I mean for all these reasons there is that sense of look let’s just not rock the boat we know that basically what’s happening in in cheter is Gastly you’ve more or less got Sharia law in contravention of the Russian Constitution and Moscow is having to pay for it as well as a lot of vanity projects but look it’s just a lot easier to keep the status quo going but now if it’s true that kadirov is uh mortally ill and certainly looking I mean he was at the inauguration and looking at this footage that he needed two guys to help him take his jacket off you know he was definitely not looking in in in good shape if it’s true then in some ways Putin’s hand is going to be um you pushed at the very moment when he least needs this to happen because if there is any sort of kickoff in in Chia the question is who would deal with it when his army I think it’s 97% of all operational ground forces are currently deployed to Ukraine the last thing he wants is a third Cen war is there any obvious successor to kadirov in chna well kadirov clearly wanted to keep this in the family uh and he was grooming his sons to to take over but his oldest son is only 18 has no real um credible standing and in any case the law says you have to be 30 to be Chet Chen Leo now again maybe they they they could tweak that a bit but probably not not 12 years and although in the past sort of when kadirov when when Raman kadirov wasn’t quite old enough to take over when his father died they put in a sort of temporary Regent in effect but you know a 12year temporary Regency isn’t possible so there are various candidates the man who Moscow seems to favor is apti alov who is the currently the head of know commanding cetan forces inside Ukraine and to be honest you know is is a bit more Urbane um even to the point of actually he speaks good Russian in the way that Raman Kadir of almost spoke comically bad accented Russian sounded a little bit like something out of alo alo um you know so so they would clearly like Alo dinov to take over but the problem is there’s a whole variety of other Cen bigwigs who also May well feel that they have equally if not better status and standing and you know the big concern is if they try and impose alov are others going to start kicking off and saying no we’re not accepting that and you know in in CIA there is a whole variety of security forces that are notionally Russian controlled in practice they are kadirov controlled and if you take kadirov away these people swear a personal oath to kadirov so if you take him out the picture then the risk is that a whole bunch of different Warlords will have their own readymade armies whilst we’re talking about the mortality of leaders we should come on to the news about zalinsky this week Ukraine says it’s arrested two security officials on suspicion of plotting with Russia to take president zalinski hostage and assassinate him what more do we know about the details of this plot Mark I mean it it’s still quite confused so the interesting thing is that the two individual concerned are meant to actually be Colonels within the security apparatus which you know is saying something a colonel is essentially a fairly senior figure and I mean what it speaks to and again look we have no idea of just how accurate it is and and and more more details will emerge but it’s entirely plausible firstly in clearly the Russians who dramatically underestimated zalinski at the beginning of the war as In fairness so did everyone else no one thought that he would blossom into this extraordinary effective wartime leader um you know I think they’re they’re aware of the degree to which he is an absolutely crucial Factor not just in holding Ukraine together and mobilizing it but also in terms of his capacity to cajo browbeat and charm the West into continued support for Ukraine so you know although I suppose there’s always the the risk of turning him into a mar I can well understand that that Moscow May well prefer him to be out of the picture permanently but also it it speaks to the fact that actually Russia still has continued penetration of the Ukrainian apparatus and particularly the security apparatus I mean I think this is something that we’ve seen even two years on is the the the degree to which there the ukrainians are still finding Russian agents now look in some cases I have a suspicion there is a little hint of The Witch Hunt at work that you know it’s too easy to find someone and decide that somehow they they’re Russian sympathizers because back in 2021 they said oh well maybe Moscow has a case on this point or something but but in in many other cases they are clearly not they are finding genuine Russian agents and in that respect I mean actually for me the surprise is precisely that if they had officers of this standing that they hadn’t basically deployed them already I mean again it’s quite interesting and we don’t know whether it’s because again of political hesitation in Moscow you know that could attent to oh well you know will it actually worsen the situation turn zinsky into a mar push for example the American sort of uh House of Representatives into supporting Aid you know or whether it just simply that just weren’t physically in a position to be able to actually spring their plot but again it it’s a case of the Russians having a powerful asset and wasting it it’s a really good point you you raised there mark because surely if Russia did assassinate president zalinski that would provoke a stronger reaction from the west and maybe escalate this war exactly I think this is this is the problem that the UK the ukrainians have time and time again shown themselves to be very hard to predict for the Russians and in part that you know actually look there there’s a lot of really smart Russia analysts and so forth within sorry Ukraine analysts within the Russian government structure whether we’re talking about the intelligence services or the foreign Ministry or whatever the problem is that the people at the very top Putin and those people closest to him have this extraordinary notion of Ukraine you know it’s clear we’ve seen this from Putin’s speeches and his deeply weird historical essays that as far as he’s concerned Ukraine is not a real country the ukrainians are not a real people you know part of Ukraine Frankle is just a semi- detached part of Poland and the rest really is part of kind of Russia’s cultural space and you know once he’s got that fixed in his mind Putin clearly is not willing to listen to Alternative perspectives and this has been one of the recurring problems for the Russians time and time again that you know it’s not that they don’t know what’s going on it’s that either cannot or will not accept the reality so in this context I think this is probably why it’s such a challenge to try and assess accurately I mean it’s it’s difficult for any of us to have a real sense of whether taking zalinsky out of the picture would improve or worsen the Ukrainian position I think that what we’re now seeing is precisely that um having managed to get Ukraine so wrong so often to a degree the Russians are parti paralyzed by their understanding of the fact that they don’t understand Ukraine and therefore again you know I I imagine that this is quite possibly one of those kind of plots which someone operationally sets up more or less saying look guys boss if you want zinski dead we think we can we we found a way of doing it and yet then the political leadership ums and ARS not out of any kind of humanitarian impulse I mean they clearly did try to kill zinsky at the very beginning of the war after all he so certainly is not humanitarian it’s that they don’t really know they are to a degree Paralyzed by their continued inability to really understand what makes ukrainians tick let alone then How the West might respond it’s fascinating how it’s reported that this was planned as a inauguration gift for Vladimir Putin how much does zalinski personally get under the skin of Vladimir Putin he clearly does and I think again it speaks to a wider issue in some ways the problem as far as Putin is concerned is that zalinski is you know a fairly in some ways or has been a fairly russified Ukrainian you know he he he grew up speaking Russian uh his early career actually took was in Russia that’s when he really began to make his name as a comedian and and then an actor it was on on the Russian scene before he sort of he went home now we know that Putin has this kind of weird way of looking at you the sort of distinction between enemies and traitors enemies you fight with but the point is you may sometimes be able to reach some kind of a deal with them traitors though you can do nothing with traitors except wipe them out whether that means as we’ve seen a Defector getting shot in Spain or I think this is why sort of Putin has trouble with zalinski as far as he’s concerned zalinski is in some ways a traitor because he should be on the pro-russian side of ukrainians he should be as Putin sees it willing to understand moscow’s point of view and willing to accept that Moscow has cultural political historical heg over Ukraine and the fact that zalinski turns around and sort of holds together this extraordinary coalition government um or Coalition of the people really rather in order to precisely resist Russia so effectively I suspect again trying to psychoanalyze Putin is in many ways a a foolish and dangerous Venture but we all do it anyway um I suspect that’s what really gets under Putin’s skin because as far as he’s concerned zinsky is not an enemy but a traitor and as you say we know that Russia have been coming up with plots to assassinate zinski for years now do you think the reverse is true are the gru is Ukrainian Military Intelligence actively planning to assassinate Putin I mean to be honest I’m sure they would have no problems I mean particularly um you know of all the various agencies of the Ukrainian government the military intelligence seems to be the most gung-ho sometimes I would suggest counterproductively in terms of some of the operations they carry out but on the other hand we have to acknowledge that there is a massive security structure built around Putin I mean I remember once I mean this is even before the war um living on one of the big thoroughfares that that head into the center of Moscow and you know the ones that that Putin would take those rare times he was going to the Kremlin from from his Palace outside and you know the for hours before you’ve got snipers on the rooftops and people checking all the manhole covers and people’s being stopped from actually leaving their apartment buildings um and so forth I mean you know it it really was was amazing sort of operation before this huge sort of 60 odd car and motorbike motorcade zoomed along the road and I’m sure that now under wartime it’s it got even more restrictive so I mean I think in that context it would be very difficult for the ukrainians to get at him especially because the Russians have been basically penetrating the Ukrainian political and security structures for years in part particularly benefiting from certain leaders such as the previous leader yanukovich who are actually fairly pro- Moscow and in some ways opened up Windows of opportunity for the for the Russians to recruit agents there’s never been that kind of um similar opportunity or really need up to until recently for the ukrainians to do the same so again I mean you know if if they felt they had an opportunity would would the Ukrainian Military Intelligence take out Putin quite possibly though on the other hand I also suspect that as we’ve seen in the past it will be zalinski who then Reigns them in for fear that something like that would would would lead to some catastrophic escalation and I don’t know nuclear explosions above Kev or something similar so again I’m sure the Spooks would would would love it but they tend to get kind of carried away with their own opportunities I suspect that the Ukrainian political leadership would would ultimately say better not and again it’s it’s sorry I’m rambling a little bit but this is It’s one of these classic issues in coov operations for example if the Allies could have killed Hitler during World War II should they have done so and the general consensus is usually no before the war absolutely but once the war had started and in a way once Germany was locked into that well Hitler was a pretty bad War leader and the danger is you take Hitler out you might have someone more competent in place actually much the same is true of Putin in many ways Putin has been Ukraine’s secret weapon throughout this War and why would you want to throw that away

“If there is any sort of kick off in Chechnya, the question is who would deal with it when his armies, I think 97% of all operational ground forces are currently deployed to Ukraine.”

Putin’s delicate web of allies have a tendency to undermine Russia and underestimate Ukraine says Mark Galeotti discussing concerns that the leader of Chechnya could be dying.

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