onsumers of news depend on a small group of international correspondents to understand the latest developments from around the world.

Today's guest is one of the best, providing important coverage of Russia as the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches.

He's Anatoly Kurmanaev.

This week, on "Story in the Public Square."

(uplifting instrumental music) (uplifting instrumental music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square".

where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Anatoly Kurmanaev, a reporter for "The New York Times" covering Russia and its transformation in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine.

He joins us today from Berlin.

Anatoly, thank you so much for being with us.

- Good morning, Jim.

Great to be here.

- You know, there's a ton that we wanna talk to you about, including your great career as a reporter.

But let's start with the conflict in Ukraine and your assessment of the current state of the war and Russia's conduct of it.

- I think everyone agrees that we are at a crucial stage of a war.

There's a lot of expectation that the incoming Trump administration will offer some sort of a ceasefire plan that will try to end the fighting this year.

And both sides in the conflicts, I think right now, are really going all out to try to improve their negotiation position ahead of this perceived peace deal, or peace offer.

So, we've seen Russian offensives intensifying, arguably being at the kind of most intense since the early days of the war.

And we also seen Ukraine, you know, doing everything they can to not cede territory, to not be perceived a weak, to not be perceived as a losing side.

So, you know, even as we enter the third year of the war, this is now quite an established, or sort of prolonged war, a war of attrition.

We are paradoxically seeing some of the most intense fighting, some deadliest fighting of the war so far.

- Yeah, do we have a sense, I've seen some numbers from Western sources, but do we have a sense of the size of the Russian losses, both in personnel and material in this conflict?

- Yeah.

Yeah, there are certainly estimates.

That is something we have looked in at detail.

Obviously, both sides treat their casualty numbers as secret, but there are different means of trying to estimate losses.

And there have been investigative journalists from Russia, academics, analysts who have done a lot of really kind of original work to try to estimate those losses, based on demographic data, a register of inheritance cases, that's families of deceased soldiers.

Go to all social media, all sorts of statistics.

And I think the bottom line is that, you know, somewhere between 150,000 to a 100,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the war.

And in terms of irreplaceable losses, so these are people that will never see fighting again.

- Yeah.

- We're talking about 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers dead or severely wounded, which makes it by far the deadliest conflict since World War II for any industrialized nation.

- Yeah, it's- - But of course- - Yeah, thank you.

- Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, those are staggering numbers.

We think about in the American context, the Vietnam War, 50,000 over a decade, right?

A 100 to 150,000 in a couple years of fighting, I guess, A, reminds us about just how violent industrial warfare actually is, but also what is what, I guess I wanna ask, what is the political consequence of those losses for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, if any?

- That's a great question, Jim.

The success of Vladimir Putin in terms of prosecuting the war, his ability to continue fighting in this war, despite the initial setbacks, and, you know, the tremendous pressure he faces on the international front has been sort of an achievement of his government to outsource fighting to the margins of society.

So, it's a, you know, a friend of mine, an analyst, kind of gave me a kind of a, you know, a good way of looking at it.

It's an 80/20 society, right?

So, the government can kind of forced, co-opted, bought, you know, 20% of population to be fully engaged in the war, to like dedicate their entire life over to the war.

These are people that are fighting, these are people that are working in the Armand plans for, you know, secondary roles, et cetera.

And they are out there dying, you know, being injured, you know, their entire life is focused on war.

At the same time, 80% of population is able to just live out their normal lives.

And because of salaries are rising, because the economy is growing, because of military spending, the paradox of this war is that if you are a Russian citizen who's not being directly impacted by the fighting, chances are financially you're better off now than you were at the start of the war, right?

So, that 80% of population, you know, is able to continue going on holidays abroad, is able to have a, you know, have a good job, you know, get better salaries, enjoy themselves without war impacting that daily life in any way whatsoever.

And that obviously keeps them content, keeps them from questioning why we're fighting this war from protesting, and, you know, this model has allowed the government to expand this massive amounts of human resources without a social backlash.

- Wow, so, so many people, so many Russians, regular people must know or have been affected directly by the staggering, horrific casualties there.

And so whether they're going about their daily lives and what you just described, there must be many private conversations about just how horrible this is.

Do you get any sense of that?

I mean, just, you know, kind of, you know, word-in-the-street type thing?

- Yeah, I mean, you're right Wayne, when we're talking about up to half a million dead and severely injured, man, we're talking about millions of families that have been directly impacted by the war and have lost a loved one.

You know, to emphasize my previous point, these men tend to come from poor backgrounds.

They could be, you know, they predominantly come from smaller towns around the country, from remote areas.

There's been, you know, disproportionate amount of convicts of, you know, people from the very margins of society, you know, debtors, you know, people with criminal records in the past, foreigners, which includes people from sort of the, you know, far away from foreign countries in different continents, but also immigrants living in Russia who sign up to fight.

So, these are people who certain, whose families very much feel the loss of their loved ones.

But these are the most sort of disfranchised, most marginalized members of Russian society with least access to, you know, mainstream public discourse or ability to influence mainstream public discourse.

So, the conversations you are referring to in the kitchen, they don't tend to resonate that much in the kind of broader mainstream Russian society, which by and large prefers to ignore the war.

You know, it's some noise, they're tired.

They just want their life to just kind of, you know, they just like don't wanna be reminded of a war.

And, you know, I think an average middle class person in Moscow, just, you know, instead of sort of taking stock of what's happening is trying to escape it by any means possible.

- So, what you're describing is really a class society, and that's the very antithesis of the founders of the Soviet Union, Lenin and Trotsky.

And I realize the Soviet Union is gone now, but that is the legacy and the history.

How do, not you, but how do people put those two together?

You know, there's- - Absolutely.

- Go ahead.

Sorry.

- No, I think, you know what, I'm not sure it was a conscious decision for the start of the invasion, but the reality is that at the very broad level, Putin has been able to exploit the inequality, the deep inequality in Russian society to basically put on the burden of fighting to be the marginalized groups of Russian societies that don't really impact the broader public life.

And of course, you know, warS have always been fought by the poor for the richer, you know, throughout history.

- True.

- You know, in US military obviously there's gross, you know, inequalities in terms of military service as well.

But, you know, Russia has taken that to the extreme, and has been, you know, that's, as I said, that has been sort of at the heart of its success in staying in the fighting and gradually kind of inch in towards the victory.

- You know, Anatoly, there's a lot of questions that I sort of have about you.

So, we mentioned at the top that you are based in Berlin, reporting on Russia as part of "The New York Times" team.

- Mm.

- That's the Moscow Bureau is now in Berlin.

You know, for folks in the states who might not understand it, A, why are you in Berlin?

And then how, what are the challenges and the workarounds that you have to actually do the reporting on life in Russia, if you can't actually be there?

- Yeah, because of new restrictions on reporting that have been put in since the start of invasion, it's very difficult to continue to report in Russia from inside the country.

I'm a Russian citizen, therefore face suppose particular risks.

So, there have very few, very few, you know, independent reporters still left in Russia, but they do exist.

But the majority of journalists, both foreign correspondents, like me, as well as Russians working for local outlets, have left the country.

And Berlin has become arguably the biggest hub for them.

In terms of our ability to cover Russia, it's obviously very challenging every time, as you, you know, as a journalist, you don't have access to a topic you write about, a place you write about, it's always extremely limiting.

You know, you need to be in a place and just feel the temperature, feel the vibe, hear the conversations in public transfers and cafes, you know, just see around you to really get a feel for the place, and that is obviously very limited right now.

At the same time, I would say, you know, necessity is the mother of invention.

- Sure.

- I genuinely believe that since the start of the war, Russian journalism has seen tremendous growth in terms of its ability to use technology to continue to report.

So, you know, some of the best data journalism, you know, use of AI, machine learning, you know, different techniques, you know, have advanced statistics, have grown tremendously since the invasion with local journalists, you know, trying to use these skills, the new technologies, via new methods to see what their eyes can't really see.

And there has, still is a surprising amounts of data published inside Russia.

You know, ironically there's actually more statistics and government data available in Russia than in Ukraine, which is a democratic society, you know, but so there's still a fair amount of economic data being published.

There's still a lot of databases, like core databases that are still online and publicly available, and are kind of periodically kind of downloaded by various journalists and activists for their use.

So, we can work with certain data sets to try to see trends, and try to kind of tell the story of where is Russia today, where it's heading based on the data.

Social media has been crucial.

Russians are avid users of social media.

So, in terms of seeing what conversations people are having, what they're talking about, and obviously, you know, and finding what we call heroes, you know, characters in our stories we rely heavily on social media.

But, yeah, does it make up for an ability to, of being, an ability to be in the country?

Of course it doesn't, but you know, we do the best work we can to, you know, because I genuinely believe it is important to, for the global community to get a sense of what's happening in Russia to understand this war.

- So, Anatoly, in terms of what's happening in Russia now, what is the state of the opposition to Putin?

Obviously the death of Navalny was a critical event, but what is going on with the opposition now?

Do you have any sense of that?

- Yeah, you know, I would say it's just not a factor in a average Russian person's life.

I think Navalny was a very charismatic figure who spent years building a genuine grassroots national movements, in Russia.

But, you know, keep in mind that even at the peak of his movements, his, you know, he reached a minority of Russian society.

His death has galvanized millions of Russians to kind of, you know, to, you know, if not come out on the streets to show solidarity or certainly show support for his work.

And I would say his movements has not been able to exploit without Putin's support.

So, basically the, you know, the only leader, the only credible national leader that the opposition had, has been lost, has died, and there's no one to replace him.

And the opposition, which is, you know, overwhelmingly now in exile has kind of descended into kind of internal squabbles, and, you know, kind of, you know, very arcane, online discussions about topics that have absolutely no relevance whatsoever to an average Russian.

And, you know, as as often happens with exiles, political movements, you know, the kind of conversation turns on themselves, you know, they forget what the focus is, which is to bring political change to Russia, to speak for Russians that don't have a political voice inside the country.

So, yeah, but the state of a Russian position, frankly, is very diminished, and it's not in terms of how Russians have, you know, evaluate their future and how they see sort of change.

It's not through organized political opposition to Putin, let's put it this way.

- Yeah, Anatoly, how is it that now almost three years into this conflict with all of the sanctions that have been played by Western states on Russia, that the Russian economy still continues to produce?

- That's also very good question, Jim.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons for it, but, you know, I would just focus on one, you know, the overwhelming reason why Russian economy still functions and still continues to finance the war is that, you know, the West and primarily the US, you know, they wanted to punish Russia, but they never wanted to punish it deep enough for that, but it hurts domestic economies.

So, Russia was allowed to continue selling its oil, which has been and remains the biggest source of its revenues.

US and western countries have put a sort of price cap on the price of oil that Russia can sell.

They try to kinda make it less profitable for Russia to do so, but they have not taken the extra step of actually banning this, the, you know, Russian oil on the market, which allowed Russia to build this alternative system, alternative means of selling its oil, primarily to Asia today.

And yeah, that was because at the time the Biden administration was worried about inflation, which is, we've seen has been a big factor in your last election.

They were worried about the price of gas for pumps, you know, these were all, you know, politically, but were all, you know, reasonable concerns to have.

But the effects of this reticence has been that Russia continues making money from selling the one product that always sold to make money.

That's, you know, everything that, you know, I can give you a lot of other reasons why Russian economy is state of law.

But that's, you know, if you can continue making money in the way you've always made money, then you can just carry on doing what you're doing, right?

So, that's the hard reality really of it.

So, you know, the sanctions, we never went deep enough to really hurt Russia's economic potential, in the short term, yeah.

- So, Anatoly, by the time this airs, we will have Donald Trump as president again.

He will have been inaugurated and he'll be the president.

Any thoughts on how that will affect relations between Russia and the United States?

- There's obviously a lots of expectation in Russia that relations will change, that Trump will change upend the status quo in the war in Ukraine.

I would say that the kind of expectation or the kind of analysis you hear in the West, particularly from the liberal segments of the United States, that, you know, Trump will just, you know, his best buddies with Putin will just make a deal that benefits massively Russia.

That, you know, he'll end the war on Russia's terms, et cetera.

I think that is a possibility.

I think that's not how people in Russia see it, how officials in the government see it.

There was a lot of expectation in Russia during Trump's first term, but his time in power would be favorable to Russia, but frankly has not happened.

You know, there's been some rhetoric that appeared to benefit Putin, but if you actually look at policies enacted during Trump's first term, it's been more sanctions and been worsening relations.

So, I think there's a lot of, you know, there's, you know, the expectation in Moscow is gonna wait and see, you know, see whether he actually does something instead of merely talking about ending the war, or, you know, speaking to Putin, et cetera, being a bit more cautious about that.

But, you know, there isn't, but, you know, relations are very bad right now, and everyone expects Trump to just append the status quo to completely just reshuffle everything.

So, suppose any change is seen as welcome in Russia, even though it may not immediately lead to outcomes that are beneficial to the Kremlin.

- Yeah, Anatoly, at various points in the conflict with Ukraine, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has rattled the nuclear saber.

He's made oblique, and sometimes pretty clear threats to Western countries that they could face nuclear retaliation if they were to interfere directly in the conflict in Ukraine.

By and large, those threats have not really resonated in the Western public, certainly in the American public.

And maybe Western Europe's been a little bit different.

But I'm curious, what do you make of those threats from the Russian president?

- I, uh, I actually think Western kinda public discourse does not give them, does not pay enough attention to these negative scenarios.

And that's not the same as just taking Putin at his face value, and, you know, being afraid of his retaliation and limiting your action.

But I just don't think there's enough discussion of how things could go badly wrong, and, you know, what consequences certain actions could have.

You know, a good example of that is Putin has repeatedly said that, you know, his red line is firing of long range American weapons deep into Russian territory, into kind of Russia territory proper, which Biden administration after lots of reticent decided to scrap and allow Ukraine to fire precisely such weapons.

And Putin responded by firing this weapons, this missile called Oreshnik into Ukrainian arms factory.

And you know, if you see the images of it, you know, you frankly, to me personally, they do look kind of apocalyptic scenes of this, you know, flashes of light like falling through clouds at previously unseen speeds, certainly unseen in real, you know, in life, real life situations.

This was the first time that a hypersonic weapon has been used during the war, in human history.

And, you know, the discussion afterward has kind of focused, Western discussion has focused on, well, what is this weapon even new?

Is it old?

You know, did it even do any damage?

Because, you know, it meant to carry nuclear warheads, but it didn't, and he vowed nuclear warheads.

It's kind of useless.

And how long can it actually strike?

Is it what Putin says it is?

But you know, yes, this discussions are think important for the policy circles, but, you know, again, like you look at these images of frankly, you know, a previously unseen size of, and you see potential for immense destruction.

which has frankly just hasn't been I think factored in into the way that the West thinks about this war.

And again, I'm not saying this should lead to sort of changes in, you know, Western policy or support for Ukraine, but I think that it would be more honest to have more of discussion of what's the gradual melting away of guardrails meant to prevent a nuclear holocaust and what does that mean?

- And I guess I wanna follow up on that by asking very pointedly why is Ukraine so important to Vladimir Putin and to Russia itself?

- Oh, Jim, I mean, I can go.

(Anatoly laughing) (Jim laughing) - We have two minutes left.

(Wayne and Jim laughing) - This very long terrain.

I mean, you know, A, all Russian nationalists see Ukraine as part of its body, sort of politic, as sort of, you know, as integral part of, of Russia, at least certainly eastern and central parts of Ukraine.

And, you know, I generally believe Putin thinks, you know, in his view, he sees Ukraine as a state that's been captured by Russia's enemies, and that has been sort of turned around, you know, sort of a brotherly nation that has been sort of in...

This is completely, this is Putin's worldview.

By no means do I imply that I believe the same, but I believe a Kremlin thinks that, you know, The government in Kyiv has been kind corrupted by the West and turn against Russia to destroy Russia.

Therefore, he has come over the years, he has come to see Ukraine, Westernized Ukraine as an existentialist threat to Russia.

And he has decided to gamble everything, basically gamble Russia's future, its place in the world, its society on this attempt to what he sees, as, you know, last chance attempt to preserve Russian statehood.

So, you know, very kind of dark, apocalyptic worldview, frankly.

But, you know, unfortunately, this is where, you know, Putin's thinking has devolved over the years.

- We've got literally about 15 seconds here.

If there's a negotiated settlement, does this just become a frozen conflict?

Well, I guess what I'm asking is, is the end of fighting in the near term portend to actual peace?

Or is it just a catching of one's breath, as it were?

- Well, neither sides, or both sides have been very clear that they will not stop fighting unless there's a durable agreement.

Neither side thinks it's for their interest to lay down their weapons without extinguishing a long-term threat.

So, you know, we don't know what Trump's gonna propose, but it, you know, if he just says, "Stop fighting, and, you know, let's all be friends," that's not gonna be accepted either by President Zelenskyy of Ukraine or Putin in Russia.

- Anatoly Kurmanaev, this has been a great conversation.

Folks can find your reporting in "The New York Times."

Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

That is all the time - Yeah.

- we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

(uplifting instrumental music) (uplifting instrumental music continues) (uplifting instrumental music continues) (uplifting instrumental music continues) (bright instrumental music)