194. Is Putin Losing His Grip on Russia?

24:24We see more NATO now on Russia's borders. Finland and Sweden subsequently became members of NATO. This is the result, I think, of this decision taken by Vladimir Putin to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But he thinks in terms of not of technological development, he thinks in terms of Russia's power and influence. And certainly, I think he cannot imagine a sort of great Russia without Ukraine being part of that and Belarus being part of that. I think it's very difficult for him to think about that. There was an article he wrote, I think it was the year before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, about Russians and Ukrainians.

25:05And he sees them as one people. But the result of the last four years, it appears, has been to push Ukrainians further away from Russians. Yeah, it doesn't appear that he's achieved his aims. One of the things that we've sort of grown used to, and it's almost been normalized, is the killing of his opponents, you know, including, you know, on our soil. They got the wrong people. There was a Brit who got killed, but including in Salisbury. But I mentioned Navalny. I mentioned Litvinenko. And you keep reading little paragraphs here and there of people falling out of windows and what have you. I just wondered, as a journalist, what it's like for a Russian journalist in Russia.

25:50Do you feel that as a BBC guy, even though there is this anti-British feeling occasionally, but you don't confront it very often, but what's it like for the Russian who's trying to speak truth to the power of Putin or do they just give up? I think independent Russian journalists who are critical of the authorities are very much on the front line, putting themselves in a lot of danger. And, you know, we've seen cases over the last four years of journalists across the country being arrested and put on trial for a number of offences. It's a very difficult situation. I talked about the repressive legislation that's been introduced over the last few years, and that is used to silence critics of the authorities.

26:33What would happen if you did report a drone attack on the apartment block next to where you live? Who knows? You know, it's a bit of a grey area. As a foreign journalist, if I reported that, my report is going not to a Russian audience, but it's going out of the country. So maybe that would, you know, be seen differently. I don't know. So, you know, it's like walking this minefield. You don't exactly know where the mines are. And you're kind of trying to navigate yourself around this kind of all these problems, all these issues. You know, it's quite difficult. I give an example, actually. I was in St.

27:10Petersburg recently for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and trying to chase kind of movers and shakers and officials and businessmen. there. But at the same time, we were being harassed by the Russian media and sort of slagged off by certain Russian officials and tried to sort of defend ourselves. So it was a bit like being in the trenches. So you've got all these different things going on and try to choose. When you're doorstepped by Russian state television or, you know, pro-Kremlin bloggers, you have to think very carefully, think very quickly on your feet about what you're going to say.

27:43And it's quite tiring in that sense. It's quite tiring coping with all that, trying to gather and tell the story, but also trying to be aware and be ready for these kind of moments.

27:55Rory Stewart:It's very weird, isn't it, Steve? Because it's more like being a politician. I mean, this idea of being doorstepped and suddenly ask questions. Journalists normally ask the questions. You must have developed a whole different skill set to work out what you do if Russian state television stuffs the camera in your face and asks you something. What sort of questions do they ask? I mean, what are they doing when they're harassing you? It depends. If a particular event has happened just before, you know, your doorstep, they may ask about that. So, you know, every time you go to an event where you think state television might be at and might doorstep you, you have to think what they might ask you, what you're going to say.

28:32Rory Stewart:Give an example of a moment where you felt particularly surrounded by people and they were particularly excited by a particular issue. Oh, I mean, there are so many. I mean, one of the most common questions I get asked by Russian television is at the Putin press conferences. Why is it that you're allowed to come to these press conferences and ask questions to our president and Russian journalists are not allowed to ask questions to Keir Starmer? That's a common one. And is that true, Steve, that Russian journalists are not allowed to ask questions to Keir Starmer? Well, I don't know what the situation is in the UK, whether Russian state television is allowed to go to these Downing Street briefings.

29:10I mean, I'm glad that I have the chance to go to the Kremlin ones. And there's no guarantee that I get a question, but I've been lucky in the past to get questions. And I'm grateful for that because it's a chance to ask something that perhaps President Putin doesn't get asked normally.

29:27Rory Stewart:I mean, superficially, it sounds like a pretty fair point, doesn't it, for the Russians? How come you're allowed to turn up? They're not allowed to turn up. So what's the answer to that as somebody who used to do this stuff? The answer right now is you're not going to have many situations where Russian media are attending a Keir Starmer press conference because he's not going to be standing alongside Vladimir Putin. We did have, we had several press conferences with Putin. And we used to go, you know, Britain, Russia, Britain, Russia, occasionally American, whatever. So there was never, the only person, I'm ashamed of this, the only person I ever stopped asking a question at a press conference was John Sweeney.

30:01Because I knew he was going to give Putin a really, really hard time. where we didn't want that at that particular time with the relationship we were developing. But no, I don't, and we've done interviews. Tony did interviews in Russian television. We even appeared on a Russian radio soap opera. Get this, Steve. I said, we're only doing it if he can say the line. My three priorities are obrozovania, obrozovania, obrozovania. How about that? Oh my goodness. Alistair, excellent pronunciation there. Thank you. Education, education, education. There you go.

30:31Rory Stewart:Very good. That's a really good hook to take us back into the deep past of Steve. So you are somebody who developed a fascination with Russia, right? But you're not, you know, you're a Brit from Chinkford and Essex. North London, North London, Rory. I have to say it used to be Essex. Yeah, it became North London. All right. Give us a glimpse of your childhood in Chinkford, the young Steve Rosenberg, what this world was before you became an almost full time Moscow resident. I used to watch a lot of television, you know, a lot of television. I sat there glued to the screen and I used to watch everything, you know, whether it was news or children's programs or music or whatever.

31:14So I kind of fell in love with TV.

31:16Rory Stewart:And your parents, Steve, didn't try to stop you? I mean, they didn't say, Steve, stop watching so much television, get on and read a book? No, they were quite happy for me to watch television. Absolutely. Yeah. And in the end, I think it worked out OK. What did your parents do, Steve? Who were they? So my dad, who's sadly no longer alive, he was a dentist, my mum a housewife. Yeah, it was a sort of typical Chingford upbringing for me. But I remember watching, you know, in 1980, it was just before the Moscow Olympics. And just after Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan. And the BBC, what timing, the BBC broadcast their first Russian language course on television, I think it was on Sundays.

31:56And I sat there transfixed watching this Russian language course. It was amazing, all these strange letters and pronunciations. And they had little films about life in the Soviet Union, you know, this mysterious country I, you know, knew nothing about. I thought it was really interesting. And then our French teacher at school, it turned out, spoke a little bit of Russian and taught a few of us a little bit of Russian in the lunch hour. So when I was thinking about going to university, I thought, well, I'll do French and I'll do Russian kind of from scratch. And the Russian was so interesting, the Russian department up in Leeds, that I dropped the French and just did Russian.

32:36And I was just fascinated by the place. And every lunch hour, they used to wheel this television, this satellite TV into the department foyer. And you could sit down and watch an hour of Soviet television, kind of Gorbachev TV. And it was amazing. All these programs about Perestroika and Graznost and the Soviet TV news bulletins, which were like nothing like, you know, the nine o 'clock news as it was or the news at 10. And I just thought, wow, this is a place I'd like to kind of spend a bit of time in, just find out more about. It's 40 years ago this year that I started learning Russian and that I went to the Soviet Union on a tourist trip and just thought, really interesting place.

33:17Russian is in your background, in your family background. Do you think, is it as romantic as that, that there was something kind of deep in you that was calling you almost? Yeah, my great grandparents came from the Russian Empire, like from Belarus and modern day Belarus and Ukraine. They left at the end of the 19th century. But interesting, I didn't know that actually when I sort of started, you know, took the first steps learning Russian. My grandma then found a box with old documents in it, including my great-grandfather's passport that he used to exit the Russian Empire in 1894. And it was in pristine condition.

33:58And I really wanted to kind of work out what was written. And so that kind of pushed me a little bit to get on with the Russian lessons.

34:07Rory Stewart:Why didn't you know this, Steve? What did you think your family were when you thought about your grandparents and great-grandparents? What was it you imagined? It wasn't talked about very much, you know, what the background was. My grandma didn't talk much about it. But when she found the documents, then we started talking about it more. And I got really interested. Interestingly, one of the little towns, the shtetls that one of my great grandfathers came from is called Shklov, which is where Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, kind of grew up. It's the cucumber capital of Belarus. There's a big cucumber statue there.

34:44Bizarrely, I've been to Shklov since, yeah. You've interviewed him as well, haven't you? You've interviewed Lukashenko. I've always imagined he's, I mean, he strikes me as, well, you tell me, you've met him. I've never met him. Tell me what you make of him. Yeah, I've done two big interviews with Alexander Lukashenko, one of the most memorable interviews I've ever done. Quite a difficult interview because, you know, he spent half of it being the bully trying to put me in my place, threatening to end the interview at several times. But the other half, he was being, trying to be charming. And so he kept switching between the two.

35:19And I just had to sit there, you know, be like a brick wall, as calm as possible. But the interesting thing about Alexander Lukashenko, he was prepared to sit there for as long as he wanted and answer any question, you know. He didn't agree the questions beforehand. He'd answer anything. And that's, I think, different with Vladimir Putin. I still haven't managed to organize a sit-down interview with Vladimir Putin. You know, I've managed to ask him questions, single questions at press conferences, but I'd love the opportunity to have a, you know, a detailed, deep conversation with him about everything.

35:55I think he's coming on the rest of his politics before he does the BBC. I really do. Hang on. Next time you talk to Lukashenko, we'd definitely have him on as well. Get in the queue, Alistair.

36:06Rory Stewart:Steve, let me take that as an opportunity for you to tell us a little bit about, and you also have interviewed Gorbachev. So give us a snapshot of the difference in personalities between Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Lukashenko and Putin and what it tells us about Russia. Gorbachev, very different kind of person. Yes, I've interviewed Gorbachev five or six times. I found him to be a very warm-hearted man, someone who was a family man, someone who loved deeply his wife, who died before him, and he couldn't get over that. And he was always talking about Raisa, his late wife, and his children, and a very warm-hearted person.

36:50And after one of the interviews, quite bizarrely, there was a piano in the corner of his office. And he said, do any of you play the piano? And I said, yeah, I play the piano. And he said, sit down and play the piano. So I sat down and started playing the piano. And he started singing. I was playing Russian folk songs. And he sang. And that, to me, showed he was a very emotional, nice guy. Yes, he made mistakes. Politicians make mistakes. And I think probably he made a whole string of mistakes. But I think his heart was in the right place. He wanted to change the country for the best. I think he lost control of his reforms and the Soviet Union kind of fell apart.

37:33I think Vladimir Putin is a very different kind of character. Vladimir Putin obviously comes as his KGB background. That was different from Gorbachev. Obviously, the background, I think, influences what someone is like. Lukashenko, yeah, doesn't have the KGB background. He was a collective farm boss. Maybe that explains why he's, you know, he's quite familiar, quite friendly at times, sometimes bullish. They're all different in their own way. I never interviewed Yeltsin, but the thing about Yeltsin that I think makes him very different from Putin, Yeltsin was quite thick skinned. You can criticise Boris Yeltsin for many things, but he could take criticism himself.

38:20And in the 1990s, there was a TV channel that was very critical of Boris Yeltsin. He didn't close it down. There was a Russian version of Spitting Image, Kukli, which made fun of him. He didn't close it down. He could take that, I think. Vladimir Putin's a different kind of character, you know, perhaps not as thick-skinned. Although I think Yeltsin was, I mean, Yeltsin always struck me, no jokes about tired and emotional, because he did clearly drink too much, but very, very emotional. I mean, I saw him several times where he, you know, would almost move himself to tears by the way he talked about his own life or the country.

38:54Okay, sometimes under the influence, but very, very emotional. Yeah, we don't see that with Vladimir Putin so much. No, no, he certainly don't. keeps himself to himself, keeps his emotions locked inside. And of course, Vladimir Putin saw what happened with Gorbachev. He saw that Gorbachev tried to reform, tried to open up the country, and the country collapsed. And the last thing that Putin wants to do is to go down as a second Gorbachev. That's why it's hard to imagine Vladimir Putin opening up the country again. And he saw what happened with Boris Yeltsin and the chaotic 1990s. So I get the feeling that Putin has decided, no, the way to rule Russia is to maintain control, to have complete control in the Kremlin.

39:38Rory Stewart:Stephen, Alistair, let's take a quick break and then back for more. This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall. Electric cars have become part of life on the road and Vauxhall is supporting the UK's transition to electrification. Well, how are they doing that? Well, to start, their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on-street charging infrastructure. And it's exactly what you want to see from Vauxhall, which is of course a British brand, a proud partner of Team GB. Vauxhall's also supporting the next generation of athletes on their journey to the 2028 Olympics.

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43:37society and into our national life. That was also a, yeah, that was a rare interview. That was the first interview, I think, that first TV interview that Roman Abramovich had given just after he bought Chelsea. Yeah. And it took a lot of persuading to persuade him to sit down. We flew to the end of Russia, to Chukotka in the far East, where he was the local governor and spent a week running around after him, trying to persuade him to speak to us. But yes, you could say that there was a lot of naivety going back a quarter of a century on the part of politicians, on the part of journalists. We still believed that there could be a good, beneficial relationship with Russia.

44:18I couldn't have imagined 25 years ago what would be happening now, to be honest. I couldn't. The fact that the relationship has broken down to such an extent that we have this huge war in Europe, I could never have imagined that. sitting down chatting to Roman Abramovich about football, that 25 years later, Russia would be accusing Britain, NATO, Europe of waging war against Russia, that we'd have this terrible

44:48Rory Stewart:war in Ukraine. How on earth did we sort of normalize figures like Roman Abramovich? I mean, And remember, this was a guy who, although he absolutely denied it, was sued by Boris Berezovsky, another big oligarch, in the High Court in London, in which there were extraordinary allegations made. And the story of the way in which these people made their money, which has been documented so often, is, to put it mildly, pretty eye-raising. Now, I have to say for legal reasons, and I'm sure you'd say that, you know, these people deny all allegations, but it's pretty fruity, the context from which these people come.

45:30Rory Stewart:How do we possibly think it was suitable for them to take over a British football club? I suppose the answer to that is it's easy to be wise after the event, isn't it? I suppose going back to the 90s, which was as a chaotic period, and so many Russians fell into poverty and this small group of tycoons struck rich, the oligarchs made huge fortunes. I remember people saying at the time, well, it's like, you know, America in the 20s or the 30s, you know, there were people who maybe made money through illegal means then and became accepted members of society. And, yeah, people turned their eyes away from that because I think people in the West still wanted to have a good relationship with Russia and still believed it was possible.

46:21The command economy had collapsed. You now had this sort of crazy market economy that was sort of developing in Russia, something that people in the West could associate with more than what came before it. And so I think there was hope that actually this would lay the foundations for a decent relationship between businesses and between governments.

46:45Rory Stewart:But Steve, sorry, maybe I'm being naive, but looking at these business people, they're not business people. They're not equivalent to American business people in the 1920s. I mean, you know, you can see when Berezovsky and Abramovich start suing each other in the Supreme Court, they're talking openly about kind of mafia codes, godfather oaths of loyalty. some of these people end up getting murdered you know it becomes clear that they've built their empires partly around huge armed groups defending their factories and attacking each other's things i mean was it that we weren't aware of that at the time or we sort of shut our eyes to it were russians aware at the time how these people made their money i think we turned a blind eye i think some people did turn a blind eye to it probably uh as i say thinking that it's it will work out okay in the end and that there was a lot of money to be made by doing business with Russia.

47:40And there's no doubt that I think that there was a degree of that. Some people did raise alarms at the time, but going back to the late 90s, the early 2000s, there was still hope that this relationship would work out for the best, you know, and with hindsight, you know, it didn't work out like that. But there was no kind of instruction booklet for people in Russia or people in the West what to do when a Soviet superpower, a communist superpower collapses. You know, if Gorbachev could have gone to the library or Yeltsin could have gone to the library and taken a book out, what to do, how to kind of switch to a normal economy and a normal country, then that would have been absolutely wonderful.

48:26But there wasn't. And so Russia kind of stumbled its way through the 1990s. The leaders made lots of mistakes, trying to keep the country afloat, trying to... There were many people who didn't get their wages or pensions for months and months and months. It was a very difficult decade. But Russia stumbled its way through this decade, got to the end of the 90s, then Putin came in. And I think many Russians, certainly, in the early 2000s were grateful for the stability, the early stability that Putin brought. And he was genuinely popular in those early years, in the early 2000s. And he kind of did this deal with people, you know, you don't get involved in politics and we'll make sure you have a decent sort of level of prosperity.

49:19And that suited a lot of people after the chaotic 1990s. If he did welcome you into the inner circle, or when he's sitting down with his inner circle today, and they say, come on, Vlad, what do you really think of Donald Trump? What do you think he would say? I think he'd be disappointed. I think he'd express disappointment. I think last year, the Russians had high hopes for Donald Trump. I thought that they thought that he was the man to deliver the kind of peace deal that the Kremlin wants on Russia's terms, that he would be the US president to put pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky to give up, to make the territorial concessions that Russia wants.

50:00You know, Putin had many meetings with Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and we had the Alaska summit. And it seemed as if, you know, the Russians started talking about the spirit of Anchorage, the spirit of Anchorage, as if some kind of deal was done or some understanding was reached with Donald Trump there, that America would help to end the war in Ukraine on Moscow's terms. And it hasn't happened. And so I think Vladimir Putin will be quite disappointed that things have worked out like that and that we're now in the fifth year of the war and it hasn't ended on Russia's terms. That's interesting because we both, Roy and I both think that he's effectively on, Trump's on Putin's side, but Putin doesn't think that at all.

50:39Rory Stewart:Or maybe he's on Putin's side, but he's not as powerful as Putin hopes. I mean, one of the interesting things is given that Trump hasn't exactly been very helpful to Ukraine. I mean, he cut$50 billion worth of funding. He's firing Patriot missiles as though he's on a drunken conspree in a Dublin bar in the Middle East, which could be used to defend Ukraine. He's threatened to turn off satellites. He's played footsie with Putin. He's sent Wyckoff out. He's tried to put forward. Why is it that Trump has been unable to deliver the sort of peace that he was consistently talking about from before the election?

51:13Rory Stewart:What is it about Ukraine which makes it difficult for Trump to deliver that kind of peace? Well, it seems that despite Donald Trump saying that President Zelensky doesn't have any of the cards, he seems to have some cards. And he seems unable to put pressure on the Ukrainian president to do a deal that would suit Moscow. And that has surprised people here in Russia. I remember last year, lots of articles in the Russian papers almost crowing about Donald Trump. that our Donald has come into power in the White House, that NATO was about to collapse, that everything was looking good, basically, in the US-Russian relationship.

51:58And if everything was good in the US-Russian relationship, that would almost certainly deliver a peace deal in Ukraine on Russia's terms. And it just hasn't happened. And so now you're getting disappointments being expressed here openly.

52:12Rory Stewart:Part of this, I think, is that the US administration, or some of them at least, and J.D. Vance sometimes spoke like this, convinced themselves that the only reason why Ukraine was surviving was because of American support. And therefore, it was logical to them. We take away our$50 billion worth of support, Ukraine will collapse like a pack of cards. Ukraine's only fighting Russia because of American support. Europe will never be able to fill the gap. Ukraine will never fill the gap. But presumably, what we've learned is that actually it wasn't true that the only thing keeping Ukraine standing was American financial support.

52:44Yeah, I think the Russians are particularly furious with Europe. When you listen to Russian officials, you read the Russian papers here, they are spitting blood about Europe and European support for Ukraine. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, it's Europe which is prolonging the war in Ukraine. If Europe, if pesky Europe wasn't there supporting Ukraine, then the war would end much more quickly. And so I think the Russians are surprised that even though America has reduced its support for Ukraine, the war hasn't ended and Ukraine has been able to carry on. Now, we don't know what lies ahead. Certainly, the last few weeks have been difficult, I think, for the Russian army.

53:28And Ukraine seems to have stabilised, at the very least, the front line. But, you know, judging by what is being said, even in the state media here, there is, I think, a disappointment that this war continues. And, you know, Russia hasn't secured victory yet. What do you think, if you were in Xi Jinping's inner circle, when he kicks his shoes off, what do you think he thinks of Putin? I suspect as a junior partner, there's no doubt that even though Russia and China talk about their partnership and their friendship, and they were talking about a no-limits partnership, weren't they, not so long ago, there are limits to it.

54:09And Russia has become increasingly dependent on China because it sort of burnt its bridges with Europe. That makes Russia, I think, to a large extent, the sort of junior partner of China. And last year, there was this quite an amazing image when Vladimir Putin went to Beijing. Do you remember? Xi was walking in the middle. On one side, you had Vladimir Putin. On the other side, you had Kim from North Korea. And clearly, the Chinese leader was there. Yeah, he was calling the shots. He was in the middle. And I think that causes a little bit of unease in some quarters here. The fact that Russia has become quite dependent on China, on China buying Russian goods.

54:55And as I say, most of the people that I talk to and meet on the streets feel European and still see Russia's place in Europe and not in the East, despite officially the country sort of pivoting to the East.

55:08Rory Stewart:When we think about great power competition, we tend to assume that in the long run, it's the economy stupid. We look back in time, we tend to assume that the reason why Germany and Japan did what they did and Britain did what it did is their economies take off. And the Russian economy remains tiny. The Chinese economy is 10 times the size of the Russian economy. The European economy is 10 times the size of the Russian economy. The American economy is 15 times the size of the Russian economy. So if Russia really wants to be a global superpower, it's got to sort its economy out. How's it going to do that?

55:42Rory Stewart:How's it going to become competitive? How's it going to become productive? How's it going to develop technology? How's it actually going to have its moment that Japan or Germany found at the end of the 19th century or Britain found in the 19th century, which is really going to allow it to be the kind of superpower it wants to be? It's a really great question. And it's a question that if Vladimir Putin was sitting here, you should ask him. Because it's the key question, isn't it? You know, Russia is spending so much money on this war, so much money to try to ensure that Ukraine remain, you know, comes back into Russia's sphere of influence.

56:19And at the same time, and again, the state media confirms this in newspaper articles regularly, Russia is falling back technologically. And so logically, the question is, how can a country build a stable future as a great technological superpower if it's falling back? and the distance between Russia and countries in the West is growing larger. Vladimir Putin's argument, I suspect, because he said that to me in a press conference, is, well, at least we've become sovereign. And he talks about Russia becoming a sovereign nation. This, he believes, is Russia's greatest achievement over the last four years, that Russia had become too dependent on the West.

57:03It had been deceived by the West. And what Russia has shown over the last four years is that it has broken free of the shackles and is now sovereign in so many words. Now, I'm not sure. I don't know what exactly that means, because Russia was an independent, sovereign country before that. But he believes Russia become too dependent on the West. Well, those bonds, those links have certainly been broken now. And as I say, Russia's become more dependent on the East. But it's falling back technologically. And yes, there are big questions about Russia's future. When I ask people, I often ask people on the street, how do you see Russia's future?

57:44How do you see your future and the country's future? And most people don't answer that or can't answer that. They think maybe a week ahead or a month ahead. They don't know what's going to happen here further down the road because things are so unpredictable. And if people can't think long-term about their future and where Russia's place in the world will be a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, that's a problem, I think, for the country. Finally, finally, finally, Steve, one thing you and I have in common, we both saw the advent of ABBA at the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton as one of the seminal moments in European history.

58:25We don't need to talk about our obsession now. But one thing that people do know you for is this extraordinary ability you have on the piano. And every year you weave the songs that are in the Eurovision Song Contest into one kind of mellifluous piece of music, which is absolutely brilliant. But the one I want to talk to you about, I think, in fact, I'm going to make an executive decision here, Rory. I think we should end this program when we put it out if we get the copyright sorted, Steve, with you playing the piano and the BBC singers singing that extraordinary song you wrote for the woman in the newspaper kiosk, Valentina.

59:05Just tell us that story because it's the most, with all due respect, it's not Paul McCartney, the lyrics, it's not John Lennon. They're very mundane lyrics, okay, but it's a beautiful piece of music and the BBC singers did it so well. Thank you. So I used to buy the newspapers from the kiosks down the road and Valentina, this great babushka, sold me the papers. And we struck up a really nice friendship and she used to talk about her life, which was very dramatic. And I used to recall our conversations. She used to film on my phone with her permission and make little videos on a Valentina's kiosk.

59:42And I loved it because it was a constant reminder to me why I'd fallen in love with Russia in the first place. You know, she kind of symbolised for me, Mother Russia, all the good things, all the positive things about this country. She left Moscow in 2022, went back to live in Kursk on the border with Ukraine. She got sick. She got cancer. And I wrote her a song. Yeah, I wrote her a song to cheer her up, Valentina's song. And the wonderful BBC singers who apparently were following these Valentina Kiosk videos online. They wrote to me and said, we'd like to do a little collaboration with you. Have you got any ideas?

1:00:23I said, well, I've got this song for Valentina. And they said, oh, we watch Valentina's Kiosk. We'll sing it. So I went over to London on my next trip and we recorded it with the BBC Singers. Well, it's brilliant. And I sent it to her on WhatsApp. And I was waiting. And five minutes later, the message came back and she said she was very moved by it. And she kept watching it. But the interesting thing after that was it got picked up by media inside Russia. So a lot of the kind of channels that are normally full of anti-Western bile and criticizing the BBC, for one wonderful moment, They were just reporting that a British journalist had written a song about a Russian newspaper kiosk vendor who wasn't very well.

1:01:13And they were reporting it kind of positively. And I thought, well, I'm always looking for the hope. I'm always looking for the optimism. And to me, that was an optimistic sign that actually, despite everything, you know, we can rebuild a relationship with Russia, despite all the things that have happened in the last four and a half years. and I still keep in touch with Valentina and touch wood she's feeling better she's learned English I mean how many Russian babushkas start learning English you know in their late 60s and she she's an amazing person well tell her that she's going to be discussed on the UK on the UK's number one podcast thank you very much indeed thank you it's lovely chatting to you both thank

1:01:52Rory Stewart:you Steve very much

1:02:04Thank you.

1:02:39Thank you.

1:03:02Rory Stewart:Yes, yes, yes.

1:03:33Thank you.

1:04:02Thank you.

1:04:32Thank you.