Evgenia Albats: The end of the political season turned out to be hot. And it's not a fact that the following months will be less turbulent. Although who knows, maybe even in Russia the leaders will go on vacation, and then there will be less killing of people in Ukraine. Because Russia has launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities in just the last few days. People died again, children died again. And this nightmare does not stop.
Another recent news is the funerals in Iran following a 12-day war, which turned into a celebration they call the "Victory Celebration." These funerals once again demonstrated how internally incompatible Western and these theocratic Eastern civilizations are, where death is an achievement, the crown of life, a justification for murder, a sacrifice to the Creator. This is a terrible philosophy, a philosophy of death, which has become fundamental in Putin's Russia. He endlessly talks about immortality, about the importance of dying for Russia, by which he primarily means himself. It is no coincidence that Putin's Russia and the Iranian ayatollah regime are allies.
The Russian economy is exhausted, it needs investments. But what kind of investments in a country that has been killing people for more than three years, including women, the elderly, and children, just because they are Ukrainians or live on Ukrainian land?
One of the discussed news of recent days is the statement of Russian technocrats, who were once called the "liberal tower" of the Kremlin. The regime in Russia is an alliance of security officers and technocrats, the task of the latter is to support the economy that would provide resources for the criminal Russian regime that kills people in Ukraine. The chief banker of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina, warned the political authorities that the Russian economy is exhausted, that it needs investments, otherwise it will not be able to move forward. But what kind of investments in a country that has been killing people for more than three years, including women, the elderly, and children, just because they are Ukrainians or live on Ukrainian land? We must forget about euphemisms. The authoritarian regime in Russia is a classic fascist, that is, a corporate regime like the one that existed in Italy during Mussolini, in Portugal during Salazar, and in Spain during Franco. When everything is inside the state, no one is against the state, no one is outside the state (this is a quote from Mussolini). This is exactly the regime in Russia now.
An event was the interview given by businessman Michael Calvey and banker Oleg Tinkov* to the founder of The Bell* Elizaveta Osetinskaya*, it was published under the headline "You have to live today." A big discussion on social networks was caused by the words of Oleg Tinkov, who was especially categorical at the end of this YouTube interview. He called Russia "a cursed land" and said that he advised his son never to return to Russia for beautiful women, money, or a 500% profit. That's roughly how he put it. Even when a window of opportunity opens again in Russia, some kind of normal economy and a more or less liberal, at least economic, regime begins again: "Never. Cursed land."
What happened in New York in the mayoral elections?
Evgenia Albats: First of all, there are no mayoral elections in New York, they will only take place in November. The Democratic Party primaries were held in New York, where a ranked voting determined the Democratic nominee for the General Elections, the general elections in November 2025, when the mayor of New York will actually be elected. Such elections will be held in many cities and states, there will be by-elections to Congress, the Senate, etc. Unexpectedly, the Democratic Party primaries were won by 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who is not only a member of the Democratic Party but also one of the leaders of the Socialist Democratic Party of America. A typical left-wing populist. To the same extent a left-wing populist as Donald Trump is a right-wing populist.
Zohran Mamdani's parents are from India. His father is a Muslim, and in predominantly Hindu India, Muslims are a minority and often an oppressed minority, especially in recent decades when Hindu nationalism has been strong in India. And life for Muslims there is extremely difficult. At some point, the family first moved to Uganda - it was in Uganda that Zohran Mamdani was born, but they did not live long in Uganda and then moved to South Africa. When Zohran was 7 years old, they emigrated to the United States of America. Mahmood Mamdani, Zohran's father, is a professor in the field of postcolonial studies at Columbia University, where there were particularly strong anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic protests. Zohran's mother makes documentaries and is quite successful.
Zohran Mamdani himself graduated from a liberal college in the very democratic state of Maine. For some time he was a housing consultant, then became interested in hip-hop music, and then went into politics and was elected twice to the New York State Assembly. He has no other experience in business, city, or even district management. At the same time, he is, of course, a very talented populist, he had a brilliant campaign in the primaries, he came forward with a program that primarily appealed to New York minorities, to people with low income. A lot of young people voted for Mamdani, including middle-class youth, who also suffer from the fact that it is insanely expensive to live in New York. This is a city that offers a lot, gives a lot, it is insanely interesting from all points of view, but at the same time very expensive. In Zohran Mamdani's program, with which he came to the elections, is to make buses free for everyone (public transport in New York is generally amazing), to make kindergartens free (this is indeed a big problem for young people with small children, kindergartens and nurseries are very expensive). Zohran Mamdani talks about introducing rent control, that is, freezing rent growth (every year it grows by 10-20%). By the way, in Cambridge, for example, which was once called a socialist city, the restriction on rent growth was lifted in 1995 because it turned out to be ineffective, and besides, it is a rather corrupt area. He also promised a minimum wage of $30 an hour, which is about two and a half times higher than it is now in New York.
When journalists asked how he was going to pay for all this, Mamdani very specifically said that he was going to introduce an additional tax on people with an annual income of over a million dollars a year (I know people in New York with such an income, and some of them say that this is actually the right measure). But he also proposes to increase the so-called corporate tax to 11.5%, increase the property tax, primarily in white areas, and not introduce this tax in areas where ethnic or racial minorities live. These completely populist ideas are classic of the genre: "I will feed the family with loaves for everyone around".
Unfortunately, in the United States, the results of such left-wing populism are especially visible in California, in San Francisco, where the streets are literally occupied by the homeless, who are homeless not only because they cannot find work and housing, some of them are simply adherents of the hippie life, who connect to the taxpayers' electricity meters in San Francisco and simply steal electricity from them, which those same taxpayers pay for. And, of course, it is impossible to walk through the center of San Francisco at night, and even in the evening, it presents a rather frightening sight. This is also the result of left-wing populism, as American media write about it.
What are Zohran Mamdani's chances of winning the election?
Evgenia Albats: Many analysts believe that he has quite good chances because he outperformed such well-known Democratic candidates in the primaries as former New York Governor Cuomo, who was forced to resign when it turned out that he was engaged in harassment everywhere. He also won against the current mayor of New York, Adams, who ran as an independent candidate - he did not run from the Democratic Party because a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of corruption, and the case was closed when Adams made a deal with Donald Trump, because New York was, as they say, one of the shelter cities, that is, cities that provided shelter, including for illegal immigrants. Will Cuomo run as an independent candidate? The chances of a Republican candidate are very few, although many analysts say that Zohran Mamdani's success directly depends on the successes of the right-wing populist Trump. The more Trump gives out all sorts of terrible promises that scare not only Democrats but also traditional Republicans, the more chances Mamdani has to win. It is quite obvious that Zohran is a very talented political populist, and he has a very good team that managed to attract primarily young New York voters to their side.
Russia is paying
Tinkov said in an interview with Osetinskaya that the Russian people do not want democracy, that the departure from democracy is not only Putin's desire, he is just a good marketer, that is, he captures the mood of the broad masses of the population well. Do you agree with this statement?
Will there be a new window of opportunity in Russia? Definitely. Will it be an easy exit from the current fascist regime? No. It will be very difficult, it will be significantly more difficult than it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed
Evgenia Albats: No, I categorically disagree that the Russian people or any other people want or do not want democracy. People always want one thing - they want to be happy. To be happy, they need to have something to feed their family, to be able to raise and educate their children in peace and prosperity. In Russia, people, especially those living outside big cities, often cannot boast of such conscious happiness. In Russia, there is a high level of alcoholism among the population. In the Soviet Union, there were 30 million alcoholics. About 10% of the adult population. These are colossal figures. And this was primarily due to the fact that people felt unhappy, people could not realize themselves. So this has nothing to do with ethnic, religious, or national qualities. The truth is that colossal mistakes were made during the reforms of the 90s. First of all, the institutions of the state were not reformed, and as a result, the most repressive institution of Soviet power, people from the KGB and other political police of the Soviet Union eventually took power when Yeltsin's family named Vladimir Putin, a native of this very KGB, as a successor. He, in fact, brought this corporation to power. Russia is now paying a heavy price for this.
Do I agree with Tinkov's statement that Russia is a cursed land? No, of course not. Oleg Tinkov was forced to emigrate, his business in Russia was essentially stolen, and besides, he suffered from a severe illness, so his pessimism can be understood. Will there be a new window of opportunity in Russia? Definitely. Will it be an easy exit from the current fascist regime? No. It will be very difficult, it will be significantly more difficult than it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Has your forecast regarding the timing of regime changes in Russia changed? How many years, decades will it take for liberalization to be possible in Russia?
Evgenia Albats: Honestly, I think the question is not about decades. I think it will happen in the next 3-5 years. However, it is completely impossible to make any forecasts because we see that the technocrats of the government have managed, at least, to hold the economy. The West was afraid to impose real sanctions against Russia. These are primarily sanctions on Russian oil. (Russia lost the gas market itself, "Gazprom" is now a bankrupt company.) And therefore Vladimir Putin had the necessary 300 billion dollars a year to wage war in Ukraine, to pay the contracts of those who go to kill Ukrainians for money.
In this sense, of course, the policy of the West, primarily the policy of the previous administration of the United States of America, was extremely unwise. This is to say that we absolutely cannot imagine what will happen in the coming years because the world has entered a situation of absolute uncertainty, nothing can be predicted. No one could have expected that a 12-day war between Israel and Iran would begin. Even if it could have been assumed, because Prime Minister Netanyahu has been talking about it since the early 2000s, but the fact that the United States would join this war and use B-2 bombers and the famous deep bombs, which no one else has, was rather unexpected. It's not just about uranium enrichment and the work of centrifuges, which were also in the now destroyed underground complex of Fordow. The fact is that the Israelis, with pinpoint strikes, destroyed the entire scientific and technical leadership of the nuclear project. And this is very important. It is no coincidence that when Iran began to create its nuclear weapons, in the 90s, with the help of the FSB, it brought Soviet scientists to Tehran, who previously worked at super-secret facilities of the Soviet nuclear complex. The work of Israeli intelligence and the pinpoint strikes of the Israeli Air Force deprived Iran of many developers of the nuclear program. Without professionals, it will take several more years. In this sense, maybe Trump is right when he says that Iran's nuclear program is "destroyed": it's not just about the enriched uranium, but primarily about the brains.
Why don't you go on air with FBK** now?
Evgenia Albats: FBK stopped inviting me as soon as I gave a critical analysis of Maria Pevchikh's* famous series "Traitors." I analyzed the mistakes in this film in detail, in three large posts. First of all, factual errors: it is clear that Maria has not lived in Russia for a long time and many things she has not studied and does not know. But it doesn't matter, right after that I was supposed to be on the air of "Popular Politics," it was canceled, and after that, they don't invite me. To be honest, the channel is clearly not for me. It has a very strong propaganda streak. Not that I am strongly against it, I understand that it is important because they are engaged in politics. But I am primarily interested in podcasts, to a lesser extent channels and articles that carry information or good analytics.
Freedom of criticism and recognition of facts
Your opinion on the interview with "Le Figaro" by Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna. She believes that you should not leave the country, you need to have a dialogue with the authorities.
The support of an authoritarian regime by the great Solzhenitsyn was a monstrous thing. Especially from a person who wrote "The Gulag Archipelago"
Evgenia Albats: I have not read this interview, I generally do not read interviews with Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyna. I remember well how both Natalia Dmitrievna and, above all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn himself embraced Putin. The support of an authoritarian regime by the great Solzhenitsyn was a monstrous thing, in my opinion. Especially from a person who wrote "The Gulag Archipelago," "In the First Circle," "Cancer Ward." But at the same time, Solzhenitsyn was a great writer. He was a great observer. He was the first to tell the country and the world the truth about what was happening inside Soviet concentration camps. Of course, Anne Applebaum's book "GULAG" (it has been translated into Russian) gives us significantly more information about what was happening and how this terrible GULAG was created. But Solzhenitsyn wrote his book in the Soviet Union based on the testimonies of people who came out of the GULAG. He himself went through the GULAG. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" changed society, told the country a lot about what it did not know at all or did not want to know. I repeat, Solzhenitsyn was a great writer, and he will remain so in history.
The motto of the newspaper "Le Figaro" is "where there is no freedom of criticism, no praise can be pleasant". Freedom of criticism and critical analysis is an absolutely important thing. Therefore, I think that people who criticize the Israeli government for what is happening in Gaza have absolutely their right to a point of view. But it would be good to know the facts. I remember, in Massachusetts, there lived a famous feminist Mary Daly. She taught at Boston College and wrote, in my opinion, a very important book Beyond God, beyond the concept of God-man. We talked a lot with her, she was a terrible anti-Semite. Her main thesis was that all Jews from the Middle East and Israel should be expelled back to Europe. The Palestinians did not organize the Holocaust, the Holocaust was organized by Europe, so let them solve this problem. Mary Daly, like many others, simply did not know that when the Jews, those who survived, came out of the German concentration camps and some of them tried to return to their homes, they were not allowed in, and if they tried to insist, they were simply killed. And there were pogroms, terrible pogroms, for example, in Poland. It became clear that the Jews simply had nowhere to return to because people in war-torn Europe did not want to give back either Jewish apartments or Jewish property. The horror of the Holocaust remained forever with many residents of Israel, for them, October 7, 2023, that terrible massacre that was arranged in the south of Israel, when 1200 people were killed, raped, mutilated, became a reminder of the Holocaust. And therefore many people who are now writing about the war in Gaza, and very often rightly write about the war crimes being committed there, but at the same time completely forget that HAMAS could have already handed over all the hostages a year ago, and the war would have stopped.
Many of those who are now writing about Israel, about anti-Semitism, who say that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism cannot be equated, simply do not understand what they are talking about. In the Middle East, there is the only more or less democratic country - this is Israel, at least for the Jewish part of the population and for Israeli Arabs, it is a democratic country. So, in the Middle East, power is an absolute value. That is why HAMAS killed, mocked, and raped Israelis so cruelly and demonstratively on October 7. I understand that Palestinians can hate Jews. I even understand why. I understand their reasons. But why such barbarism? One professor told me that in the Middle East, rape, including the rape of men, is a demonstration of dominance, a demonstration that your nation, your ethnic group, people of your religious culture dominate over people of another religious culture. This was exactly what was demonstrated to the Israelis on October 7. It seems to me that people who write, and very often rightly write about the war crimes that are happening in Gaza, forget what the people of Israel experienced on October 7, 2023. And I am surprised that they do not consider it necessary to at least learn something about it.
A Question for Golda Meir
If you had the opportunity to interview Golda Meir, what question would you ask her first?
Evgenia Albats: I would ask her: Golda, how could you have built relations with the Arabs so incorrectly at the very beginning, after the declaration of Israel's independence in 1948. How could you make this monstrous mistake when Arabs were expelled. Yes, Jews bought a lot of land in Palestine. People like Rothschild gave special money for this. They bought land from owners, landlords who usually did not live in these villages, about which the peasants might not even know, and then they were simply thrown out. I talked about this with people, with Arabs in Haifa, who experienced this, who stayed in Haifa, but many of their neighbors were forcibly expelled. Nakba (catastrophe) is a real thing that the Palestinian people experienced. And I would ask Golda Meir: Golda, how could you and Ben-Gurion make such a mistake in the decision? Yes, the Arabs declared that they would send all the Jews into the sea. Yes, there was a war for independence, seven Arab armies came to kill Jews. And yet, with our history, with our memory of what Jews experienced all over the world, with their experience of exile, you should have foreseen this problem and solved it then.
HAMAS is precisely the organization that stopped the process of normalizing the life of Palestinian Arabs, the movement from autonomy to statehood in 2005. Were the Fatah members ready to make peace?
Evgenia Albats: The FATAH movement lost the elections in Gaza. In the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, the FATAH movement is still in power. HAMAS dealt very harshly with the Palestinian opposition, people were simply thrown off the roofs of houses. The person I interviewed in Gaza in December 2023 (he was in Gaza at that moment, I spoke with him by phone through a translator while I was in Israel), said: you cannot imagine what HAMAS did to us. We must also admit that when Qatar was financing HAMAS, as many Israeli media wrote, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not hinder this at all, but even supported the financing of HAMAS, believing that it was only to Israel's advantage, "divide and rule." In fact, what happened on October 7, 2023, is also directly Netanyahu's fault.
Shemite is a term for the Arab peoples of the East since the 18th century, Jews also belong to the Semitic group of peoples. Why does no Arab country want to accept Palestinian refugees?
Evgenia Albats: Because these are people who have been living on charitable aid for many years. The job situation in Gaza is terribly bad, many people from Gaza went to work in Israel, to get treatment too. By the way, people from kibbutzim near Gaza helped the Palestinians a lot, took them for treatment...
According to official German police statistics, attacks on Jews have increased in Germany over the past 5-10 years.
Evgenia Albats: Unfortunately, attacks on Jews have also increased in France. Just the other day there was a concert in the UK where they shouted from the stage "Death to the IDF", that is, the Israel Defense Forces. In Amsterdam, we remember, there was just a pogrom after a match...
Juntas don't last long
It seems that the regime in Russia is only getting stronger. Even if the fighting stops, the dictatorship, like under the communists, will remain for a long time.
Evgenia Albats: No, it will be a very short-lived junta. I specifically travel to Latin American countries and study how these juntas collapsed. It will be a short-lived junta.
Do you think there will be another war after this one? The impunity of the dictator will generate a desire for new conquests. I wonder who the next victim is? Kazakhstan, the Baltic countries, or Georgia again?
Evgenia Albats: Well, we see that in Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is actually the real ruler of Georgia, is turning the country back to Russia, making Georgia once again a vassal of Putin's Russia, unfortunately. This is a terrible tragedy. Last week he sent the leaders of the Georgian opposition to prison. As you know, the opposition takes to the streets in Tbilisi every single evening, but unfortunately, the successes are minimal. Who is next? I think that the Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, and Poland, despite being NATO members, are under threat. Northern Kazakhstan, of course, where there are a lot of Russian speakers, about 40% of Kazakhstan's population are Russian-speaking people. In general, Putin's Russia poses a real threat to both the post-Soviet space and the European space.
If you were offered to become the Attorney General of Russia and it was possible, would you agree?
Evgenia Albats: No, of course, it's not my job, I don't know how to do it.
Tinkov wanted to crown Putin, Nevzorov was Putin's confidant. On "Echo of Moscow," some programs were against Navalny, and so on. I don't want to listen to all of you.
Evgenia Albats: Well, don't listen, what can I say? Alexander Nevzorov, by the way, interests me a lot, I have asked him for an interview many times because I am terribly interested in his evolution. He himself said that he was a "Russian fascist." We remember his reports "600 seconds," when he was against democratization, the movement for the independence of the Baltic countries, supported OMON, and so on. Who didn't buy him! He was a close friend of Zolotov, who now heads the Russian Guard. He generally felt quite well in Leningrad during Putin's time. He fought with Sobchak, and so on. Unfortunately, Nevzorov does not give me an interview, he gives various other interviews, in which he very carefully avoids questions about his divorce from Putin's guys. In one interview with Yevgeny Kiselev a couple of years ago, or in his stream still on "Echo of Moscow," he said that he fulfilled all his obligations to the Kremlin, complied with the agreements. I would like to know what these agreements are, but Nevzorov does not want to answer my questions.
Regarding Russian aggression to the West. A person from St. Petersburg will never attack Finland. And Russia doesn't have enough strength.
Evgenia Albats: Just as we thought that a Russian would never kill Ukrainians. And now they have been killing for three and a half years. And it's not about "strength." Putin doesn't care how many people he lays down. According to some estimates, already a million Russians are killed, wounded, or missing. A million! The Great Patriotic War lasted a little over four years. And this war has been going on for three and a half years. He doesn't care at all how many people he kills.
Why is there such high sympathy for HAMAS in Europe now?
Evgenia Albats: This is not exactly for HAMAS, people just see the picture from Gaza, which is now completely destroyed. This is a very, very difficult story, as difficult as in the Chechen wars. Few Western journalists work in Gaza, mostly freelancers work there, these are Palestinians who, for the sake of survival, are forced to be loyal to HAMAS. There have already been several demonstrations against HAMAS in Gaza, and after that, people were killed, the leaders of these demonstrations HAMAS simply liquidates. There is a terrible, completely inhumane regime. Everyone sees footage from Gaza, which is just turned into another Stalingrad, Grozny looked the same in 2002 when I was there, it causes completely understandable sympathy and a desire to stop it all. Children are dying there, a lot of children, old people and women are dying there. HAMAS built its tunnels with exits under hospitals. With the money spent on building these tunnels, the residents of Gaza could have been enriched - there turned out to be significantly more tunnels than the Israelis suspected. But nevertheless, people are dying, and this causes horror among people in the West.
What do you think about the federal investigation that found Harvard violated the Civil Rights Act?
Evgenia Albats: At Harvard, as in many American universities, there were very strong pro-Palestinian sentiments. I experienced this myself. Many of the protests were under the slogan "Zionists out." I regularly saw such a poster on my way to my favorite Widener Library. I asked the question: why can these people tell me where I should live? Putin, his power does not allow me to live in Russia. Now the Palestinian Students Association has decided to do this too?
What would you do if you were at the head of Channel One?..
Evgenia Albats: Even to make such assumptions is impossible because I would never be at the head of any Channel One. And what would I do - I would just close it altogether...
Look, when after eight years of right-wing rule in Poland, the "Law and Justice" party (this is the same law and order as in many other similar right-wing regimes) the parliamentary elections, thank God, were won by a coalition of liberal democratic parties, the first thing the Polish government did was to abandon all state media. There can be no state media! State media inevitably become a mouthpiece of propaganda from the side of the force that comes to power. Therefore, I would first of all close the so-called first channels.
Video version:
* Evgenia Albats, Oleg Tinkov, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Maria Pevchikh have been declared "foreign agents" in Russia.
** FBK is recognized as an "extremist" organization in Russia.