4 October 2022*. Updates on Russia, corrections
Russian opposition // Putin’s speech // Vehicle impacts // Hemingway
Although I try to publish Just Two Things three days a week, there are sometimes updates to recent pieces and corrections to fit in. This is one of those days, marked with the asterisk by the date. A reminder that if you don’t see Just Two Things in your inbox, it might have been routed to your spam filter. Comments are open.
1: Russia: being in opposition
Following some of the links about Putin’s recent speech, in which he announced the annexation of the four oblasts they still have troops in, I ended up at a long interview with the Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza in The Independent.
He’s survived two poisoning attempts, almost certainly at the hands of FSB agents. Inevitably, he’s currently in jail awaiting trial, and could face a fourteen year sentence. The interview was conducted by letter, in English, through his wife. It took place before the partial mobilisation. There were two things that jumped out from the interview at me.
The first was the section where he talked about the response by Western politicians after the invasion of Crimea when he urged them to do something about it:
(F)rom the very beginning, (Putin) began to dismantle the fragile institutions of Russia’s nascent democracy; shutting down independent television channels, fixing elections, turning parliament into a rubberstamp, muzzling and imprisoning opponents. Yet Western leaders continued to seek friendship with Putin, invite him for visits and summits, bestow international legitimacy on his regime, and allow his cronies to use Western countries as havens for their looted wealth...
Nor will I ever forget my conversation with a British MP in 2016. We were meeting just a few hundred yards from the spot where Nemtsov had been murdered a year prior. I was limping with a cane, still recovering from my first poisoning. But when I mentioned the need for a Magnitsky law in the UK that would bar corrupt Russian officials and human rights abusers from the British economy, the MP began literally shouting at me – something to the tune of: “Why should we damage the profits of the City of London over some human rights hearsay?”
Sadly, the meeting took place under the Chatham House Rule, so we don’t find out who it was.
His wife and young children are no longer in Russia, for their own safety. Rob Hastings, who did the interview, asked him why he stayed in Russia when the costs were so high:
It is a matter of principle. The biggest gift Putin opponents could give this regime would be to pack up and leave – this is exactly what they want from us. The most effective way to neutralise political opponents is to get them out of the country...
But even if the cost of opposition is high, the cost of silence and complicity would be unacceptable. (Boris) Nemtsov liked the old saying, “Do what you must and come what may”. This is the only principle possible in our situation. If everyone only thought about their personal safety and comfort, nothing would ever change.
2: Putin’s speech
On his newsletter, Lawrence Freedman has analysed the rambling speech that Putin made when he announced the annexation of the four Ukrainian provinces.
As (Putin) ranted about the west, denouncing it in lurid terms for a range of evils, from imperialism to satanism, it seemed, as Mark Galeotti observed, that he was trying to convince himself as much the outside world about this grand civilisational struggle with the West. The rant had a purpose, which was to demonstrate the irrelevance of legality.
However, along with other commentators, Freedman concludes that the speech was a sign of weakness, not strength. But this has potentially disastrous consequences. The annexation has closed down some routes that could have led to an end of the war.
Putin has boxed himself in with these moves. Before it was possible to imagine, if always unlikely, that there could be some diplomatic means to bring the bloodshed to an end, for example by discussing forms of shared citizenship for those who wished to be attached to Russia or new forms of security arrangements. That path has now been blocked.
I’m planning to come back to this question—of paths to an end of the war—later this week.
Corrections
Cars
When I wrote about cars on Saturday, I underestimated the impact of the weight of a vehicle on the road surface. It’s the fourth power of the weight, not the cube. Memo to self: don’t write quickly late in the evening, even when sober, since your memory plays tricks on you.
Harry Rutter at Bath University kindly put me right, even sending me a spreadsheet comparing the impact of a bicycle with a Ford Focus and with a truck. The green cells show the ratio of damage between each of the pairs of vehicles.
(Source: Harry Rutter)
Hemingway
I was also way, way off in my paraphrasing of Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy on Saturday, even if the sentiment was right:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
“What brought it on?”
“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
It’s from The Sun Also Rises. The character Mike Campbell is asked about his money troubles. Thanks to Quote Investigator.
j2t#376
If you are enjoying Just Two Things, please do send it on to a friend or colleague.