'North Korea the country you go to last': Russian propaganda 'downplaying' Kim-Putin 'collaboration'
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Transcript
00:00 Joining us is Anton Barbashin.
00:02 He's editorial director of the news website magazine, Riddle Russia.
00:09 Thanks for joining us.
00:10 Thanks for having me.
00:12 Welcome to Paris.
00:13 First off, your reaction there, you heard Vladimir Putin saying that Russia is not going
00:17 to be violating any UN sanctions when it comes to North Korea.
00:21 Well, look, I mean, the words play a significant role in trying to frame Russia's policy for
00:29 domestic policy, for domestic audience.
00:31 Mostly, I don't think this should be treated any, any way that you treat other things that
00:37 Putin say, as I've said lately.
00:40 So what are you saying?
00:41 There's not going to be a deal for ammunition in exchange for military technology?
00:45 I mean, look, there's no details.
00:46 We know that they're on shells.
00:48 They want some North Korean labor.
00:51 But so far, there's not been enough substantial proof that actually it is in the making.
00:57 And ordinary Russians, what do they make of all this?
00:59 Look, North Korea has been a rogue state for a while.
01:03 Russians know that North Korea is not the best example.
01:06 It's not the best friend you want to be kind of acquainted to.
01:09 So the Russian propaganda is actually like on the expert level is downplaying the importance
01:13 of this collaboration, because North Korea is a country you go to last.
01:18 We have no other options, nowhere to go to.
01:21 And the Russian media, you've been talking about them.
01:27 Of course, there's still a Russian independent media.
01:29 A lot of it is in exile.
01:32 And we have seen reports surfacing in the last couple of days about Pegasus spyware
01:38 affecting, most notably, the news outlet Meduza.
01:42 Pegasus is Israeli-made software where you can spy on people's phones without them knowing
01:47 about it.
01:49 Your reaction to that story?
01:51 That's just sad.
01:52 That's bad, because we know for a fact that Russia has no access to Pegasus.
01:56 So whoever was interested in spying on those journalists most likely is EU-based.
02:02 Now these journalists, there are two cases that are confirmed, and they're both telephones
02:10 out of the Baltic states, Latvia.
02:13 But we don't know whether it happened in Germany.
02:15 We don't know where they were infected, those phones.
02:17 Yeah, exactly.
02:18 I mean, it's unclear so far, but I mean, investigative journalists are pretty good in getting in
02:23 detail.
02:24 So I think we'll know it pretty soon.
02:26 Where do your suspicions lie?
02:28 I don't know.
02:29 I don't want to put my guess.
02:30 Maybe it's the Baltic governments.
02:32 They have a sort of suspicion towards the numerous Russian exiles that come into their
02:37 countries.
02:38 They fear that some of them might be linked to security services, which is bogus because
02:43 these journalists who have been pushed out of Russia, some of them were poisoned and
02:47 some of them, well, ended up dead or in prison in Russia.
02:52 Anton Barbashin, what is the state for independent media in Russia right now?
02:58 For instance, at Riddle Russia, are you getting more viewers or is it basically the clicks
03:06 coming from inside your echo chamber, shall we say?
03:11 Well, it's slightly problematic for us because we were blocked in April of 2022.
03:17 In December, Riddle was recognized as an undesirable organization.
03:20 So basically sharing our content is criminally punishable.
03:24 We do still get clicks from Russia, people that use VPNs and other services, but it's
03:29 very hard to track them.
03:32 But again, for the Russian independent media, this couple of years has been horrible.
03:37 There are none of them left in the country, but plenty do still survive from out of EU,
03:42 from some other regions as well.
03:45 And when you see that the slow progress on the battlefield by the Ukrainians, what's
03:51 the prognosis?
03:52 What's the outlook like?
03:53 Well, it looks like the war is going to go well into 2024, maybe 2025.
03:59 I mean, it's hard to make any prognosis.
04:02 We don't know exactly the details of the planning, the amount of resources.
04:07 For the Russian part, it is clear that the Russian economy is moving more and more into
04:12 the direction of kind of military economy, adding new, basically new factories, new capacities
04:18 to produce more tanks, more guns.
04:21 But the problem is people.
04:22 Mobilization is hugely unpopular in Russian society.
04:26 So it's very hard for Russian military to recruit new men for war.
04:30 Hard to recruit, but judging by history, Russia is used to having a military economy.
04:36 Well, not necessarily this one.
04:39 The economy that Putin has built was made to make money.
04:43 I mean, the juice of the economy is corruption.
04:46 I mean, we've seen that many times in the course of this war, that a lot of the things
04:50 that were supposed to be working were not working.
04:53 Generally speaking, the number of rich Russians you have across the board is kind of indicative
04:58 what this economy was about.
05:00 It was not planned for war, and it's very hard to restructure it in the way that would
05:04 be functional long term.
05:06 But it sounds like those oligarchs you allude to are kind of expendable.
05:11 They are, of course they are.
05:13 All of them are.
05:14 I mean, it's a crazy dream of one person in the Kremlin who seems to himself as a new
05:19 Russian quasi emperor who thinks he is, you know, getting all those lands and he's going
05:23 to be in the books forever.
05:25 But the economy, the people who manage the economy are kind of managing a crisis daily.
05:33 And it's getting, it's having its toll, essentially, on all of them.
05:38 Tell us about your daily work at Riddle Russia.
05:40 What do you, Anton Barbashin, how do you go about these days getting opinions from that
05:47 other side of the divide?
05:51 Well, you know, this year, essentially, this decade is so full of technologies that allow
05:59 us still to communicate from people within Telegram, the network that operates.
06:05 We have still people who cover some of the stories from Russia.
06:09 We mostly work with analysts and academics who then interpret that information.
06:14 Some of them work in or around Russia, I would say majority already are in Russia.
06:20 It's hard, of course.
06:21 The biggest challenge here is, you know, I mean, looking at so much information, so much
06:25 details, so much data to actually figure out which one, which of that set is actually worth
06:32 analyzing, worth developing into a story.
06:36 But we are fortunate to have a strong team of committed analysts and experts.
06:41 And as a Russian visiting Paris, your thoughts on the resolve of Ukraine's allies as we head
06:48 into what's going to be an election season here in Europe.
06:52 Is a EU elections taking place?
06:54 And of course, over in the United States with the presidential race?
06:57 Look, Ukraine clearly needs more arms.
07:01 It's a question that has been number one question since day one.
07:04 I mean, the only way to end this war is to make Ukrainians win on their territory.
07:10 So they need more supplies.
07:13 They need more money.
07:14 I mean, I get it that it's a problematic topic for some of the European countries, but there's
07:19 no way out of it.
07:20 I mean, Ukraine has to get more arms, more supplies to stand their ground.
07:26 And are you feeling that resolve wavering, starting to perhaps start to waver, or is
07:34 it still as strong as it was 18 months ago, 19 months ago?
07:38 It's a good question.
07:39 I mean, there are various signals we can interpret, but looking at sheer numbers, it's more than
07:45 some would have expected in the beginning of the war.
07:47 Certainly less than the Ukrainians want, but it's still not nothing.
07:51 I mean, they are very reliant on Western supplies of arms.
07:56 So far, they are capable of defending their territory to a certain degree, not allowing
08:01 Russians to destroy Ukraine as a state.
08:05 All right.
08:06 I want to thank you so much, Anton Barbashin, editorial director of Riddle Russia, for stopping
08:11 by and seeing us.