Page 33 - Strongmen News Today

And make the system run, the second leg of the stool. but the third and increasingly more important leg of the stool is whats known as the siloviki, literally the strongmen. these are people from the intelligence services, the security agencies, the military, and i think what has happened over the past few years that i hadnt appreciated, which is why i and, ironically enough, most of the people who know russia best were taken by surprise, or thought they knew russia best, is that the siloviki ha...

First groups — the oligarchs and the apparatchiks, - the strongmen, is much strongen _ really, the key questioni is what are they thinking and i dont know what you think i but i dont think anyone reallyl knows. first of all, i would like to say that the that the state, the regime created years ago — in 2014 — they created not an existing world for the audience, for russian viewers and then believed in this non—existent world. i think they started believing of their own propaganda — tha...

With us, professor of history at new york university and the author of "strongmen". coming up next a live report from the member of the kyiv independent whos on the ground in ukraine. its become increasingly difficult and dangerous to report out of ukraine to bare witness to the horrors of the war so the world can see whats going on. three fellow journalists lost their lives in the past week doing just that.

Orwellian propaganda that they are putting out. or to what extent... what sort of numbers are we talking about? is it sort of a couple of dozen, 100? i would say more in the region of a couple of dozen. - i mean, this is in flux. but its shrinking, right? so, i always used to think of putins powers restingl on a three—legged stool. so you had the oligarchs, - the money men, the technocrats — people like sergey lavrov, who are basically career - politicians, make the system run but essentiall...

Theyre also looking at the indian government, and they are looking to africa to find other places to put their oil. we could cut off the escape routes for that moment of decision for putin where he is nowhere else to go but to withdraw his troops. that then in the long run, why not learn a lesson here and allow russian to become so powerful based upon one principal source of revenue, and that is their oil and gas. russia built up this army through anything other than the sale of this fuel to the...

Im not sitting here saying we should, oh, obviously do this. you just want someone with good, prudential judgment, above all else. right? >> so, donald trump was the most prodigious liar in the history of american politics and yet he was also the most credulous person when it seems that there was anything that dictators or strongmen would tell him. he would repeat. it so, when it came to putin, you know, he wound up being putins best spokesman. he talked about the little tiny country of monteneg...

He reupped some of the propaganda claims about the false idea that they are denazi fiing ukraine, a western democracy that has no links to naziism and is head bid a jewish president if you want to bring up nazis. there is also a performance of the song "made in the ussr." the lyrics there were "ukraine and crimea, belaruse and moldova, its all my country." so thats how the leader of russia is rolling today. meanwhile, in america, president biden held a two hour call with the leader of china, war...

Friday he staged a so-called patriotic rally with flag-waving russians many state-employees forced to tend by their bosses and he quoted word from scripture to talk basket invade d scripture to talk about the invading army. e invading army. joining me now, a new york university professor of history and author of the book "strongmen". at this rally yesterday putin claimed ukraine committed genocide full of neo-nazis claims we know are lies. he also als

Into a room and say, "vladimir vladimirovich, "thank you for your 22 years of service, "your car is waiting" or something... ..some variation on the palace coup. and thats how you know that a lot of preparation had gone into this, because he has made sure theres no potential challenger, there is no potential force that could unseat him. hes... hes a towering presence. but there was a moment where i thought, all of those people around him, the sort of three legs of putins stool of power — the o...

While getting quite rich at the same time — and then, there were the siloviki — - the strong men, right? the people from the security apparatus and all of that. - and i always thought of putins power resting on those three l legs, but i think what we have| come to realise in the last two weeks, 2.5 weeks is that. the influence of those two first groups — the oligarchs and the apparatchiks, - has lessened. and the influence of— the strongmen is much stronger. so, really, the key question ...