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US-based historian Yuri Felshtinsky, best known for his book «Blowing Up Russia» about how Vladimir Putin became the ruler of Russia, co-written with Alexander Litvinenko, visited Tallinn last week.
Felshtinsky says that after Putin came to power, Russia became the only country in world history that is ruled by a security service. Felshtinsky also has a solution for how Russia could be defeated – Ukraine should liberate Belarus and attack Moscow with long-range weapons.
You have published dozens of books, but you said before the interview that you yourself consider the most important of them to be «От Красного террора к мафиозному государству» («From Red Terror to Mafia State»), which, unfortunately, has not yet been published in Estonian. What exactly is this book about?
The book unravels all the problems currently faced by the Russian Federation. I describe the countless attempts of the state security service as an institution to usurp power – first in the USSR, then in the Russian Federation. I try to show that in 2000, the FSB put its own person in the presidential office; that since 2000, Russia has been ruled by the FSB as a corporation. This is a phenomenon the world has never encountered before, and that is why for years no one could understand what was really going on in that country.
We are used to situations where countries are run by dictators or political parties, there are ideological regimes, communist or fascist for example, but never in the history of humankind has a country been run by a security service. There are no more examples: the first – and I hope the last – is the Russian Federation.
The KGB existed in the Soviet Union under the political control of the Communist Party – although it was Communist Party, it was still about political control. While the KGB commanded a huge budget in the USSR, it was still a budget that had been approved by the Communist Party. Today the KGB, or the FSB, heads Russia without any political control, and its budget is the entire economy of the Russian state.
You say the KGB/FSB has absolute power, but what is their task?
The task of this structure is to complete – this may seem strange and even idealistic to you – what was started in 1917 with the slogan of world revolution.
In the final years of the USSR, starting from the time of Yuri Andropov, the KGB began to believe that communists were too weak and therefore this goal would not be realized. It was thought that power should be taken away from communists and the goal should be realized by other means. At some point, the Soviet government, due to the existence of nuclear weapons, began to pursue the concept of peaceful coexistence, which stipulated that small clashes with the Western world were possible and desirable, and the USSR tried to create socialist governments in Africa, Asia, and even Cuba. However, the concept was that a nuclear war can not be won, and therefore the principle of peaceful coexistence has to be followed.
It was genuinely believed in the FSB until 2022 that they had a realistic chance of establishing control over the whole of Europe.
As we know, today's Russian leadership has abandoned this concept, and Putin has formulated a thesis since 2014 that Russia will win a nuclear war. So the concept has completely changed, and it was genuinely believed in the FSB until 2022 that they had a realistic chance of establishing control over the whole of Europe. All this did not turn out to be quite true because the 2022 operation, planned as a Blitzkrieg, failed. And here's an interesting aspect.
The failure did not occur because of the West, NATO, or even Russia, but because of Ukraine. The original plan was that within three days or three weeks, Ukraine would cease to exist, that it would capitulate. And frankly, everyone expected just that – that Ukraine would surrender and the West would shrug its shoulders and say: «Well, what can we do?!»
Just as was the reaction to the annexation of Crimea?
Yes, in exactly the same way. «There's nothing to do about it – Russia captured Ukraine in three days, Ukraine capitulated...» Ukraine did not capitulate, and then the West had a problem: what to do now? And if the West had consisted only of Germany, France and the US, the solution would have been to simply look and wait. However, since the West also consisted of, among others, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland, i.e. countries that have experienced Russian occupation first-hand, and since Ukraine resisted, they began supporting Ukraine.
There are different ways to approach this aid – I of course believe that it is not enough and that with sufficient aid, this war could have been won in two weeks or a month back in early 2022. However, thanks to the aid provided so far, Ukraine is holding on for the third year. What is the problem with the Western standpoint? Primarily, the West is not united. Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, and Sweden have an adequate understanding of the threat posed by Russia. We saw how quickly Finland and Sweden reacted and joined NATO. The strategic-conceptual problem is that in the West's view, Russia must not be defeated in this war, but Ukraine must not win.
Why does the so-called West fear Russia's defeat?
In the US, and also in some European countries, there is a great fear that Russia will lose this war, and as a result will break up into several independent states, which, instead of one big problem known as the Russian Federation, will create several new problems, which the US and Western Europe will not know what to do with – that this war will not be over. And if you find that Ukraine can continue to fight this war in a similar way for ten more years, you can go on sleeping in peace – by this I mean the US, Germany, France, Western Europe.
The problem is that apparently Ukraine has limits on how long it can endure this blow in the way it has been doing so far. The country is not very big – it is a relatively large country, but not compared to Russia. Russia has obvious advantages, and the main advantage is unlimited human resources. Not in the sense that Russia is boundless in terms of population, but in the sense that, by a long-established tradition, in Russia human life costs nothing – neither for the state nor for the population.
Yet many analysts claim that Putin is afraid to announce a new mobilization?
He is not afraid of a new mobilization. First, he just announced a new mobilization: 180,000 people. But before that, in September 2022, a mobilization of 300,000 people was announced. At the time, many people ironized and joked that all those 300,000 left the Russian Federation the next day – they didn't rush to overthrow the government, they ran to the airport/railway station or rushed towards the border in their own car.
It is also interesting that, after all, they still haven't closed the borders in Russia. This demonstrates that the most important thing for Putin is not to keep people in at all costs, including young people, but to leave only those in the country who are willing to stay and fight, knowing that there will be a new mobilization anyway. Unlike Stalin, who fought the war having closed the borders and applying the death penalty – who took the opportunity to introduce and carry out terror – Russia currently exists with open borders and without the death penalty.
For Putin, this has its downsides: people who don't want to fight are leaving, but the upside is that all the pressure doesn't stay in the pressure cooker, threatening to explode, but will dissipate. That's why we don't see a real opposition in Russia – we see individual people protesting, but they don't form a critical mass and, consequently, there is no threat of explosion.
Is it possible for Ukraine to win this war?
Ideally, of course, if the West changes its strategic view on the war and concludes that Russia must lose, there will be a possibility to win this war very quickly. If Ukraine is immediately provided with the weapons it needs – right now we are talking about long-range missiles, whereas previously we were talking about tanks, for example – and is given permission to use these weapons to strike Russian territory, including Moscow, Russia will lose this war very quickly – without Ukrainian forces invading Russia, without capturing Moscow, and without the use of NATO troops.
Russia is a one-city state. This became evident on June 24 of last year, when Prigozhin tweeted that he was on his way to Moscow. We could see what happened to the country then, not just Moscow, but the state: Putin and Medvedev immediately left the capital, all of Moscow came to a standstill, and not a single government official made any public statement in defense of Putin or his regime – everyone simply shut down and waited to see what would happen. Since nothing really followed – Prigozhin didn't even go all the way to Moscow – everything returned to business as usual.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky expressed support for Prigozhin and received a lot of criticism from the exile community for it.
Khodorkovsky rushed to speak up for Prigozhin, and that's another topic. But the point is that Moscow is a very vulnerable place. In Russia, absolutely everything is concentrated in one city, Moscow – 99 percent of Russia is Moscow. All the money is in Moscow, the leadership is in Moscow, business is in Moscow, entrepreneurs are in Moscow – everything is in Moscow. That's the first point. The second point is that the rest of Russia hates Moscow because Moscow thrives at the expense of the rest of the country. And it has always been that way.
But Moscow does not grasp the war at all. It is not for nothing that Muscovites are not mobilized into the army. Residents of Moscow do not feel that a war is going on. This is sometimes difficult to understand, because Russia seems to be at war for the third year. That there is no sense of war is true of a much larger part of Russians than Moscow: there is no war – «somewhere far away, in Ukraine, and that is another country, there are some military activities going on, but they have nothing to do with Russia.»
For Russia, only Moscow matters, and the provinces have never interested anyone in Russia.
When Ukrainian forces entered the Kursk Oblast, it was a significant operation from a military, ideological, and moral standpoint, as it kind of let residents of Russia hear that military actions were being conducted on Russian territory. However, there's a crucial nuance to this too: for Russia, only Moscow matters, and the provinces have never interested anyone in Russia. Those who have visited Russia know the vast difference between Moscow and the rest of the country – the provinces could literally vanish tomorrow and no one would notice, as they play no role whatsoever anywhere.
So you don't think that what is happening in Kursk has any particular significance?
The Kursk operation is very important – first and foremost by demonstrating that there are no longer any red lines that the West should be afraid to cross. Putin has been constantly trying to draw red lines. By now, everyone has forgotten that, at the very beginning of the war, Putin threatened that if the West were to provide any military aid to Ukraine, it would be a red line. The West started to provide aid and it turned out that there was no red line.
Then there was a red line in relation to tanks, Leopards, then aircraft, etc. Now a red line was drawn with respect to strikes of long-range missiles on the territory of the Russian Federation, and so far it is working.
Putin began to threaten with nuclear weapons, and everyone was startled because the nuclear weapon, yes, is feared. This red line is still working. I think it is a bluff, but there are different views and takes on this subject. However, the Kursk operation demonstrated that there are no red lines in relation to the transfer of hostilities to Russian territory, and this is a very important aspect. There is only one red line left – the threat to use nuclear weapons.
So you believe that Russia might actually use a nuclear weapon?
In reality, we know that if Russia loses this war, or feels that it is starting to lose, it will escalate the war to a nuclear conflict – this is generally an old topic. Lukashenko held a referendum that removed Belarus from its nuclear-free status at the end of 2022 – right after it became clear that Ukraine will not capitulate. The idea was that Russia would deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus – which indeed happened a little later.
But there is no clear evidence that nuclear weapons are actually located in Belarus?
There isn't, but there is a presumption that the weapons are there. My concerns regarding nuclear weapons do not stem from the idea that Russia would launch a nuclear strike from its own territory, because if that were the case, the nuclear weapons would have been deployed not to Belarus but to the Kaliningrad Oblast. The Kaliningrad Oblast is part of Russia, and strategically and geopolitically, its position is much better than that of Belarus. The fact that nuclear weapons were presumably deployed to Belarus rather than to Kaliningrad only makes sense in one case – if a nuclear strike is being planned against Eastern Europe from Belarus.
In such case, a counterstrike would be directed at Belarus, not the Russian Federation. This is the only risk I see associated with Russia using nuclear weapons. I truly rule out the possibility that Russia would launch a nuclear strike from its own territory. That's precisely why, when Putin announced the deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus, I wrote several articles and gave interviews suggesting that the West should discuss with Ukraine the possibility of overthrowing Lukashenko and invading Belarus. Nuclear weapons in Belarus pose a real and major threat to Eastern Europe. At the same time, the loss of Belarus would lead to Russia's defeat in this war, as it cannot win without controlling Belarus.
Who would be prepared to occupy Belarus now, that is to say, to liberate it?
It is clear already now, after two and a half years of war, that the main military force in Europe is, of course, the Ukrainian army. Not to mention the fact that in the composition of the armed forces of Ukraine there are Belarusian units that have long sought to be sent to the Ukraine-Belarus front. It is just Ukraine's position today that they do not want to overthrow Lukashenko. Why it is so – I don't know, there are apparently certain considerations. But it is clear that by losing Belarus, Russia will lose the war. It is very difficult to answer the question of how exactly Russia can lose the war to Ukraine, but for me the answer is clear: loss of Belarus and strikes on Moscow.
Who else besides you thinks the same?
No one. In 2015, I published a book titled «Третья мировая. Битва за Украину» («World War III. Battle for Ukraine»), and I wrote back then that it was necessary to keep an eye on the Russian troops in Belarus. That if we see Russian troops moving in Belarus, it means that Russia is planning an attack on Ukraine. You don't need to be a great strategist for that, a glance at a map is enough.
If we look at the map, it is clear that Russia can threaten Europe only when being present in Belarus. Then there's a threat to the entire Baltic region, Poland, and Kyiv, as well as to Ukraine from the north. However, from the east – as we saw in 2014 – Russia attempts to intrude into Ukraine via Donbas. For all of us, the war began in 2022, but in Donbas, it started eight years earlier – they haven't been able to get through that area for ten years. And they will stay fighting there indefinitely. If there is no threat to Kyiv, the war is certainly a regrettable fact for Ukraine, but strategically, Russia will not win it.
Now, the eyes of the world are on the other side of the pond, so to speak. You are a US citizen, and having heard you on various programs, I understand that you are certainly not keen to see Trump winning. In his past term, things were not so scary because Trump was surrounded mainly by people with a sense of responsibility...
I believe the point was not that last time there were people with a sense of responsibility around Trump, but it won't be the case this time. I think that back then, due to the accusations that Russia influenced the result of the presidential election, a lot of attention was focused on Trump, which tied his hands and prevented him from fulfilling all the promises he had made to Putin. Now, the game is being played with open cards – maybe Trump will lose, maybe he will win. Unfortunately, the balance of power in the US is currently 50:50, and until the very last moment, we don't know who will be the next president.
In this election, it seems like foreign policy issues, including Ukraine, are in last place?
According to polls, foreign policy issues interest voters the least. It puzzles me, but that's the way it is. Unfortunately, if you turn on CNN in the US, you won't see the topics that are on the program of CNN in Europe. There's a minimal amount of foreign policy – no doubt the Israel-Palestine/Iran issue is present there at the moment, but the topic of Europe is absent from US television. This has always been the case, it is not news, but it is the answer to the question of why the topic of foreign policy is in last place.
Trump's problem regarding the Russia-Ukraine war is the following. In his very first foreign policy speech at Mayflower Hotel in 2016, Trump referred to NATO as an outdated organization and essentially called for its dissolution.
You've said that this text sounded exactly as if the Russian security service had written it for Trump?
Yes, I have. And in 2018, I published a lengthy article on the subject that Dmitri Simes, who was the initiator of Trump's aforementioned speech, is a Russian agent who was sent to the US back in Soviet times. In August of this year, six years later, a criminal case was opened against him in the US and he was essentially declared a Russian spy. But he's already back in Russia and has his own propaganda show on the Rossiya-1 channel.
What happens if Trump becomes president again?
Some things we already know – he will undoubtedly stop assistance for Ukraine, and he will find a way to do so on the very day he wins – not on January 21, 2025, when he moves into the White House, because this is his primary obligation to Putin. We need to understand that Trump has specific obligations to Putin, and this is obligation number one.
Books by Yuri Felshtinsky published in Estonian translation (listed by the short versions of their English titles):
«Blowing Up Russia» (Eesti Päevaleht, 2007)
«The KGB Plays Chess» (with Vladimir Popov; Tammerraamat, 2016)
«USSR – Germany 1939–1941» (Tammerraamat, 2017).
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