Valdai Discussion Club

Ukraine snaps Putin's Donbass pincer closed and starts to prove that an army that invests in machines and can intelligently deploy them can outmaneuver an army that has an advantage in human resources but spends men as if they are worthless and disposable meat.

Last week at the Valdai Club, Vladimir Putin told the world that Russia now holds 89% of the Donetsk region.

The Institute for the Study of War checked.

The real figure is no more than 81%.

Here's the follow-up.

Did the Foreign Office tip off counter-terrorist police to arrest me? My correspondence with the Foreign Office prior to attending the Valdai Discussion Club.

Goodness.

Welcome back to the show.

The event itself, however, was very good.

[laughs] All right.

Well, so what's the Valdai Discussion Club? That's not a nest of spies and traitors.

No, it's an academic, uh, group, and it's literally academics from all over the world, from China, India, Brazil, Argentina, the Middle Eastern, uh, countries, European, uh, countries, USA as well.

In other words, the main aim is money, and to sort of generate, you know, an industrial structure that people can make money in, um, and to, to suggest war.

Well, they may end up with it because, uh, we saw that very significant, uh, statement by, by Putin at the Valdai in the last few days when, you know, the, the Europeans have been continually threatening and saying, "Look, the Kaliningrad, um, peninsula isthmus there, um, we're doing an exercise.

We're doing training exercises around it, and we could take it in a day." And Putin said, "You should just understand that if there is any attack on Kaliningrad, we reserve the right to use our full range of weapons, including nuclear weapons." First time Putin has made this explicit, and I think Medvedev has said something rather similar.

They are saying that if there is an attempt by Europe or if Europe goes on, there's talk now again of Tomahawk missiles.

But I think it's, what's the word? How do you think it plays into the broader situation we've seen with Russia in the past couple of weeks, we've obviously had the fallout from the elections, Putin's, I made a video on the state, the state budget, the projections, you know, a third of the federal i think it's going to be going there now just saying some of these numbers putin having uh he was at that valdal forum whatever it is a couple about a week ago and you know he's having to admit again that the ukrainians have cost russia or his war has cost his economy one percent of gdp which is kind of nuts um how do you how do you weave in all those elements as well to current dynamics

Well, his performances at Valdai have got less and less compelling as the years have gone on.

And in the war period, the format has changed somewhat.

He's far less open to public questioning and scrutiny.

And here's the part, one of the parts that matters a lot.

On the first of October at the Valdai Club, Putin said Russia had tried to enter, as he put it, "the family of civilized peoples," and had been pushed out.

Five days later, the plague story offered a way back in.

Cooperate.