Llibert Ferri: "Putin is a dictator and we don't know if we'll have to say the same about Trump"

BarcelonaLlibert Ferri (Barcelona, ​​​​1948) is one of the European journalists who best knows Vladimir Putin's regime. As a correspondent for TV3 he covered the collapse of the former USSR and has been a careful observer of the post-Soviet world in the pages of this newspaper since its birth in 2010. He has just published Putin is watching us (Pagès Editors), where he makes an unusual exercise in these times. He recovers a selection of his articles from recent years and adds comments, clarifications and, when necessary, amendments. His texts of daily analysis of what was happening in Moscow and Eastern Europe have stood the test of time with solidity, and he has no problem pointing out what he did not see coming or what needs to be clarified today. The book takes us to the disturbing question of what might happen if a Trump fascinated by Putin prevails.

It is not easy to reread oneself, fleeing from complacency, in a world where everything seems ephemeral. In the talk shows it seems that it is free to say one day white and the next day black.

— There are things that have worked out, and there are things that have not worked out so well. But I have never wanted to be a fortune teller, or a herald of doom or war. We are in a process that is taking place, that is still taking place, and we still don't know where it will go. I wanted to include in the book Trump's inauguration on January 20. That day something similar happened to February 25, 1933, when Göring, Hitler's strongman, called the big financiers and businessmen to an apartment in the Reichstag to tell them that, if they had a good relationship with them, things would go well for them. These analogies are important.

Can Trump and Putin make peace in Ukraine?

— I agree with the analysis of Carme Colomina from CIDOB: there will not be an immediate peace process, in any case there may be a ceasefire, a truce, and quite a bit. And that pause will be stretched out like chewing gum. Trump and Putin are friends, but for how long? And who is going to break that friendship? And it is possible that Putin will break the friendship, because as people from the Russian opposition say, who know him well, he is not a very reliable person. Putin is the expression of an empire in a phase of decline, but he believes he is in an ascending phase. And for the moment, Ukraine is doing very well. And it is doing very well that Trump is withdrawing all aid from Ukraine. So, what does that cause? It causes Europe to try to recover. And I think it is very good that it does so, but they should also explain why for so many decades Europe has been subordinated to American interests, devices and mechanisms, even technological ones.

He explains Putin's regime as a combination of three factors: the legacy of Tsarism, that of Stalinism and resentment over the destruction of the former USSR.

— There has never been a democracy in the Russian Empire. When Putin says that Russia, the Russian Empire, is more than just a state, it is a spiritual space, that is all there is to it. It is the sense of servitude, of salvation, of messianism, and here comes fear, lies, war, all the instruments that he uses to maintain this empire.

In the book you say that Putin is a dictator... it is difficult to hear this word in the European media: we are talking about an autocrat, the owner of the Kremlin.

— I have reached a point where I say, yes, he is a dictator. And those who suffer from him know that he is a dictator. We do not know if we will have to end up saying the same about Trump: he feels unpunished before the judges and for the moment there was already an attempted coup on January 6, 2021.

He explains that there are cracks in the post-Soviet world, made up of state capitalism and kagebism, but they are not yet deep enough to bring about change. Even before the murder of Alexei Navalny, he predicted that the Russian opposition would have a few years of wandering in the desert.

— Changes in Russia are always unexpected, but there must be a whole process behind them. I think that the attempted rebellion by Evgeni Prigokhin, by Wagner's mercenaries, wasted its chances. At a time when the hard-core Kremlin apparatus had begun to waver, and some were even fleeing, Prigokhin's failure gave them breathing room. And the mixture of state capitalism with a police state is working for the moment.

Why? Is it fear, lies, resignation?

— It is a mixture of fear, ignorance, indifference and resignation. All of this creates a mood, an emotional state, a mental framework, a vision of how things are and the reality that permeates the whole of Russian society. If we have to put numbers, as Navalny said, we are in a country of 30-70. People who want change, with a democratic vision, are 30% and the rest are afraid, resigned, and think that rather than rebelling it is better to be on good terms with the master, be it the Tsar, the Central Committee or the current structures of police state capitalism.

Was Navalny wrong to return to Russia after being poisoned? Or did he do the only thing he could do if he wanted to continue playing a role?

— Hours before he was discharged from the hospital in Berlin where he was admitted, Angela Merkel went to visit him and told him not to rush back. It is also necessary to understand the Russian opposition's soul of wanting to return and face the situation. He did not think he would be arrested. He was arrested immediately, and he went to prison immediately. Putin acts in a very, very direct way, without filters and very uninhibited. He does not care about the protests, or that the world was horrified by his ruthless imprisonment. Was he wrong? I cannot judge him. I do not know what I would have done. What would Navalny have done if he were just another leader in exile like Khodorkovsky or Kasparov? Nothing is done in exile. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, is trying to encourage the exile, but other forces from within would be necessary. And now there is no movement. The demonstrations that were held before have not been held again. There is a lot of fear. And war has served to increase fear, intuitively. War is one of the elements of fear.

In the book he also talks about fear and the central role of lying.

— Lying is at play in all spheres – in all political contexts. These days we see it in all the speeches and choreography of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. In the case of Russia, lying has always been present: people lie to protect themselves and the state also lies to them. And now it is spreading. In the interview with Elon Musk, the leader of Alternative for Germany, Alice Weidel, said that Hitler was a communist! Or Jordan Bardella, who left the ultra-conservative conclave in the United States because Steve Bannon had made the Nazi salute. They lie to hide the fact that Marine Le Pen also received funding from Russian banks.

And now the lies are amplified by the cacophony of social media. In this book and in others, you quote Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered for her investigations into Chechnya. What should we journalists do in the world of lies and disinformation?

— To continue reporting, to say what we consider to be true, even though we know that it is not an absolute concept. And at the same time, to continue monitoring. Monitoring all these networks and these youtubers that appear, and that many young people listen to. They are listened to because they are suffering personal, work, and housing situations, which provoke a lot of anger and hostility towards the institutionalized world, the political world, which they see as an enemy. This is also where far-right or directly fascist organizations are nourished.

You say that Putin is not stopped by concessions because he interprets them as weakness. And isn't that exactly what is being talked about in Ukraine right now?

— This is Trump's plan. But security guarantees are needed. And if European troops are sent to Ukraine, in whose name will they be sent? The European Union? NATO? Will NATO even exist? Elon Musk has already said that he is in favour of the United States leaving NATO and the United Nations. So what will be left? And what devices can be deployed if almost all the logistical mechanics are in the hands of the United States? All European systems depend on a whole mechanical, telematic, digital assembly, which is in the United States. Are they fixing this right now? We don't know.

Are you optimistic?

— I am an optimist in the sense that I believe that Europe has always ended up moving forward and I believe that attempts at dictatorial coups, whether fascist, red fascism, which is Putin's fascism, have always failed. I do not believe that the ultra-fascism that we have within the European Parliament, with Patriotes, represented here by Vox, nor that fascism, that of Vice President Vance, will succeed. We will suffer, we will see things that we will not like, but I believe that the situation that they want to put in place and that they want to deploy is not sustainable. It will end up being a bummer.