Chuck Darwin<p>Should we be careful what we wish for in cheering Putin’s demise? </p><p>“Putin is really not our problem,” Historian <a href="https://c.im/tags/Tim" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Tim</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Snyder" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Snyder</span></a> asserts. </p><p>“I mean, the last 30 years have shown quite clearly that we don’t actually have much ability at all to influence Russia . . . time after time we have demonstrated we don’t change anything inside Russia.”</p><p>He continues: “I find the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Prigozhin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Prigozhin</span></a> interlude honestly quite <a href="https://c.im/tags/reassuring" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>reassuring</span></a>, because it shows us that there are Russians who perfectly well understand the situation in Ukraine; that Russians are also capable of completely <a href="https://c.im/tags/forgetting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>forgetting</span></a> about <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ukraine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ukraine</span></a> when there’s a <a href="https://c.im/tags/greater" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>greater</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/stress" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>stress</span></a> — when there’s an actual succession struggle going on, all they talk about is themselves.</p><p>“We drive ourselves round and round in anxious circles about what Russia is thinking about this war, and we’re not letting ourselves realise that the Russians will find ways out for themselves . . . They don’t need for us to have our focus groups and our studies and our exit ramps. Anthropologically speaking, our exit ramps are not applicable to their highways, if you’ll forgive that stupid metaphor?”</p><p>He quickly alights on a more elegant turn of phrase: “It’s two different fairy tales, as the Poles say.” </p><p>In Russia, the west seems to forget it is not seeing a mirror nation-state to its own. It is a different <a href="https://c.im/tags/paradigm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>paradigm</span></a> of <a href="https://c.im/tags/power" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>power</span></a> altogether, driven by “Weberian notions of <a href="https://c.im/tags/charismatic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>charismatic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/leadership" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>leadership</span></a>”, says Snyder.</p><p>“The thing is, Russia can’t have a domestic policy,” Snyder muses. “The elite have stolen all the money, all the laws are corrupted, and there’s almost no social mobility or possibility of change in most Russians’ lives, so foreign policy has to compensate and provide the raw material — the scenography — for governance.”</p><p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9a23b1a7-da4e-466b-99f4-9f7f369fe128" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">ft.com/content/9a23b1a7-da4e-4</span><span class="invisible">66b-99f4-9f7f369fe128</span></a></p>