Transcript:
Zyuganov: Capitalists are not only deadlocked. They are going mad. There is only one antidote, because capitalism only creates Nazism, fascism and Bandera movements. Nothing but socialism can defeat it. That is why I expect that in your next speech you will set socialist goals. I think even United Russia will support it. Vyacheslav Volodin is smiling, I can see he likes the idea.
Putin: Regarding the socialist idea, there is nothing bad about it. We should flesh out this idea, especially in the economic sphere. Some countries have given it substance, and this is linked with market regulation forms, etc. The idea is working quite effectively. We need to look into this.
I think this take fundamentally misreads both the Ukraine war and Putin’s position. The notion of a stalemate in Ukraine keeps getting repeated by Western reporting but in reality there is no such stalemate and Russian advances, on average, have accelerated as Ukraine’s attrition and lack of material has increased. The prolonged war has paradoxically made Russia’s armed forces and military industry far stronger than they were in 2022. The outcome of the war is going to be more favorable to Russia in terms of balance of power than it would have been had Kiev surrendered in 2022. The hostility of the West toward Russia has been exposed in a major way which means the population in Russia is more on board with fighting until victory now than they were in 2022, but the longer this goes on the weaker and more divided NATO gets and the more broke Europe will be.
In my assessment there is zero chance of Putin leaving United Russia for the KPRF, especially since he is probably set to retire in a few years. Nor is United Russia in danger of losing majority public support any time soon. Its support is not based on Putin alone. UR has entrenched itself across many levels of Russian society, and the networks of political support they have built will continue to exist after Putin. The elections are not entirely clean, but the notion that there is massive ballot stuffing taking place cannot be squared with the level of genuine support that all polling indicates. As much as we would like to see the KPRF gain power, we can’t lie to ourselves about the facts. However it is very likely that Putin and UR will adopt some of the KPRF’s policies as doing so will undercut the support of the opposition.