Political strategist, publicist and blogger Mikhail Sheitelman, in an interview with , spoke about the coming troubled times in Russia and assessed the likelihood of an outbreak of civil war, and also commented on the West’s readiness to send troops to Ukraine and much more.

A new raid by Russian volunteers is the hottest news for the rest of the week. It looks like they got serious. Not like the last time they came in and out. This time with tanks and artillery, there are statements that they want to stay there longer and go as far as possible. How do you rate this raid?

I remember their second approach, when they also fussed there for quite a long time, and the Russians tried to knock them out for quite a long time. Putin also boasted about his exploits; the Great Patriotic War against the Russian Volunteer Corps was then going on in the Belgorod region.

Now, at least, we know exactly what goals the volunteers are pursuing, they directly and very openly named them: participation in elections. Therefore, I think that they must hold out at least until Sunday in order to completely ruin the elections for Putin, to show that he does not rule this country.

Why did the Kremlin take water in its mouth? Is this expected for you or not? There are reports that even two regions have already been prohibited from publishing any information, much less accompanying it with photos or videos about events in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

The Kremlin hasn’t quite gotten its fill of water. There were two messages. First: that in fact everyone is lying, and there was no breach of the border. This was reported by the Russian FSB. And the second: that in the process of eliminating the breakthrough, the FSB destroyed 100 pieces of equipment, so many soldiers, and so on. Self-contradictory messages to say the least.

They need to sit quieter and lower than the grass. What should they say? That “we are heroically repelling the attack”? Whom? What kind of volunteers? Who are they? What can the Kremlin even say about this? They have a real problem. They dreamed of holding elections so that everything would be quiet. This was their main dream. The quieter they are, the better in these elections. So that no one will even notice that there are elections. This is their main task. And now suddenly everyone is like, “What’s going on here?”

The Ukrainian Armed Forces woke up half of Russia. Eight or ten regions were bombed by drones in one night alone. Nobody even knows for sure. And this is happening separately from the offensive of Russian volunteers in two regions. Plus there is still an incomprehensible story with the plane. What is this? Coincidentally, on exactly this day, an Il-76 military plane caught fire, which was also flying to the airfield where the A-50, some instructors, and so on? Did he catch fire himself? I also think that these are ours. Unlikely a drone. I think someone planted a bomb there. It’s hard to believe that it turned out so beautiful by accident.

PUTIN WAS EXPOSED TO BE A COMPLETE LOSER

You listed it all like this, Putin really should be enough for Kondraty.

Putin personally – okay. What’s more important here is what his team thinks now, what his elite thinks. The same governors. They are important people. Should have been. Where should they go now? What should they tell their population? How should they answer for all this and to whom?

In this situation, Putin was presented as a complete loser in front of his entourage. If you look at the political task of the war. The electorate is not important to us, we are not interested in what 140 million people think, what is important to us is what 1-2 million of the real elite of Russia think.

And, most likely, the fighters of these battalions do not need to achieve the goal that they voice – a campaign against Moscow. It seems to me that a revolution in the Kremlin can happen much faster – if volunteers move deeper and deeper within a week or two. But they can advance. Look how the Russian army runs. After all, practically no one resists. Entire checkpoints there fled. Question: why is everything left to chance?

And the answer to this question is the simplest: they simply have no one. The entire Russian army is in Ukraine. Everything else is just some kids who don’t understand how to fight. And professional soldiers came against them. Of course they will run away.

There is no army inside the country. It is a fact. Today Russia can be taken with bare hands. If NATO had decided to capture Moscow or St. Petersburg, they would have taken it without losses, coming from Finland, Estonia, and Latvia.

But let’s be realistic. There are too few of these guys to reach Moscow. If there were several thousand of them, they could have reached Moscow. I’m also not ready to say now that power in Russia will change tomorrow because of this. But this is not the end yet. Elections on the 17th. What do we have in stock? Where is the intelligence department (GUR)? Which bridge is it going to blow up on the 16th? We don’t know. Somebody can, that’s right. And you can still arrange a lot of things during this time.

I assumed that the command would organize some actions specifically for Putin’s elections. Now the effect is doubled. Each drone functions as both a military machine and a political program. Therefore, we will still see what Putin’s authority will be after this, how his entourage will look at him, how the governors will react.

By the way, drones bombed the Lukoil oil refinery. And it is very difficult to restore damaged towers at the factory; they cannot be built tomorrow. Russia doesn’t even know how to build such towers; it needs some international specialists, and then – sanctions. And Lukoil is a very big company, there are big people with big interests.

The owners of such factories chose Putin so that he would be the guarantor of their safety, earnings, and access to world markets. For example, Putin guaranteed that the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant could sell steel to America, and Lukoil could sell oil to Europe. But today all this cannot be done. So why do they need Putin? There must be some practical meaning. These people are not idealists. Grandmothers in front of the TV believe in Putin, but for the elite he is a profitable tool. And as long as it is beneficial to them, they need it. When does it become a hindrance… These are the gradual changes that can happen in Russia.

The problem is probably that they still don’t trust each other and can’t unite against him.

They can’t, that goes without saying. Such dictatorships do not fall because everyone sat down and agreed. No. Here a domino effect should happen: something happened somewhere, then it went somewhere else. And the Russian Volunteer Corps could become the first domino, followed by the same refineries. We need a civil war in Russia. This is our Ukrainian interest. And the civil war does not start by agreement. It starts with some kind of shooting at the station, relatively speaking.

RUSSIA IS AWAITING VERY DARK AND TROUBLED TIMES

It also seems to me that the “cherry on the cake” of this “series” dedicated to the pseudo-elections in the Russian Federation will be the undermining of one of the bridges, as you say. How will this affect the elections?

Everything is exactly the same. We show: “Guys, you are not protected in any of your areas. We will beat you, bomb you and kill you. If you like that you have Putin, we will kill you.” We report this to the local elites. For any of their arguments in favor of Putin, we must have an argument against. That’s all. This is our dialogue with them.

It is useless to negotiate with them, sit down, discuss and talk. These are still semi-bandits. The entire Putin elite is like this, there are no others there. And they only understand this kind of language. And if Putin built a bridge and we blew it up, then we are cooler. And why do you need President Putin, whose neighboring country, which is relatively small compared to Russia, turned out to be cooler?

How do these trips to the West affect our partners? Will “peacekeepers” appear there again, who, as last time, will condemn the actions of both the RDK and the Freedom of Russia Legion and urge not to anger Putin?

I think times have changed. There is plenty of evidence that we live in a completely different time. I think the last RDC offensive was about a year ago. And, of course, if you surveyed European leaders back then, only a few thought that Putin and I were not going to negotiate in the future, but today this is the mainstream. There is a general understanding that there will never be any more dialogue with Putin at all. There is no turning back for Putin. There is no way to bring Putin back. This means that you can finish him off by any means.

Moreover, it seems to me that now we are even slightly at the next stage. No longer only with Putin, no one will talk to the Putin regime. His entourage is already on the international wanted list in The Hague. But this cannot be simply abandoned; no peace agreement can cancel it.

This does not mean that Europe is ready to conduct a dialogue only with the beautiful Russia of the future. No. With some completely different internal party of conditional governors, the same murderers and accomplices of today’s crimes – yes, but not directly with Putin’s gang.

This is already progress. So it will come to the point that Europe and the United States will not be against the collapse of the Russian Federation.

No one will need this. They will never be for it, but no one will ask them.

The collapse of the Russian Federation is a process so objective, so independent of anyone. There is a general trend where this is all going. This trend is more or less clear. Unfortunately, this does not automatically mean our victory. But it is obvious that very dark and troubled times await Russia in any case and under any circumstances.

THE KREMLIN HAS NOTHING TO RESPONSE TO THE ENTRY OF WESTERN TROOPS INTO UKRAINE

How serious is Macron, who announced the entry of Western troops into Ukraine? Does he want to bring this story to an end? Or is PR more important to him, and is he primarily pursuing some of his own political goals?

No, this is not PR at all. The whole story he initiated did not happen out of nowhere. This is a response to the actions of the Russian Federation, to the murder of Navalny and numerous, consecutive statements by the Russian Federation at the state level that their goal is to destroy Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. They sounded in one way or another in different formats from Medvedev, from Nebenzi, from Lavrov. This marks the first time Russia has openly admitted that it has set out to commit genocide. Macron had to react. In principle, any world leader would have to react, but Macron decided to take the initiative.

And at first he voiced the general concept, but two weeks later he gave an explanation: that if Russian troops break through to big cities, that is, Ukrainians are threatened with genocide, then coalition troops will be brought into Ukraine. There is logic to this. When, for example, the Russians captured Avdeevka, they captured nine people there; French troops would not have been brought in for this. And for the sake of a million people who are at risk of mass murder, in such situations civilized countries send in troops. And Macron became the leader of this. He doesn’t need to send in troops now. We need to form a coalition, write a plan in which everyone will know who is sending how many troops.

And Macron has already assembled a coalition: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, and to some extent Canada. This is a lot, this is already enough for such a serious coalition. The tasks have been set, everything is there.

And note that, unlike the story that is happening today, the Kremlin is not silent. He constantly says something about it, asks questions. Because the Kremlin has nothing to answer from a legal point of view. As Peter Pavel said, such a deployment of troops is a legitimate action within the framework of international law. And Russia cannot make any claims. And if she decides to shoot at these troops, this will be a declaration of war by Russia on these countries. And the Russians have a very difficult situation.

THE FRONT IN UKRAINE IS NOW STABLE

Judging by the fact that Putin has started shouting about nuclear weapons again, they are taking these threats very seriously. As well as the Czech Republic’s initiative to transfer 800 thousand artillery shells. According to military experts, if you look hard enough, there is absolutely no shortage on the global arms market. There would be money. And it seems that Europe has found a way to at least stop the Russian army on the battlefield.

Judging by Zelensky’s statement yesterday, this is true. He explained that the front is now stable. Probably, without the shells this could not have happened.

We are talking about a lot of money. 800 shells, of which 500 thousand are large-caliber 155 mm, 300 thousand are 122 mm. Before the war, a NATO caliber shell cost 3 thousand euros. Since the beginning of the war, its price has risen by 20%. Roughly speaking, one such projectile costs 3.6 thousand euros. That is, they found 3 billion dollars. Let me remind you that all European military assistance to us amounts to 20 billion euros a year. And they found extra money.

And Europe also allows interest from frozen Russian assets to be spent on the purchase of weapons, and not, as before, on humanitarian issues, on the restoration of Ukraine. Apparently, everyone has already seen the light.

There are three different cases there. One case is $4 billion in interest from Russian assets. Second, Great Britain is ready to transfer to us not interest, but the assets themselves, as Foreign Secretary Cameron said. And there are $30 billion in assets there. And the third case – the Swiss Senate also voted on the transfer of assets, there are more than 10 billion dollars.

Moreover, the British give us this in the form of a loan guaranteed by reparations to Russia. That is, if we receive reparations, we will return them. Handsome men.

Republicans in the US Congress also started talking about the loan. For you, is this story with their separate bill a delay for time or can they still accept military aid?

Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic here. Mike Johnson, obviously, categorically does not want to confirm all this in any way. Therefore, all the words that we hear from him are all a waste of time in its purest form. We understand this. Now the game is as follows: there is an initiative by some Republican to collect 280 signatures in order to bypass Johnson and vote on this package. This is theoretically possible. And then Mike Johnson has a problem: if the package is voted on without him, then who is he? And he has elections in the fall. And this will greatly damage his reputation. Therefore, he always keeps some kind of reserve.

Now the IPSO is very actively spreading all over the world that Putin is a great geostrategist who has read everything three moves ahead, that Ukraine is shaking, and that he just has to put the squeeze on it just a little. Plus nuclear threats and the sudden activation of “peacekeepers” who create “platforms for negotiations.” Don’t you think this is being done out of despair?

Yes, absolutely. This is a working scheme. Another wave. The first wave was in April 2022, when they published their peace plans in American newspapers under the names of some American generals. Then there was a huge wave when they published something in Swiss newspapers. Last summer they sent us just a whole gang of all sorts of different people. Everyone, anyone, offered us peace here, but we sent everyone away, we fought off everyone. And they have nothing new to offer. Therefore, it seems to me that now it has become much easier. There are no longer those who would put pressure on us. So far, at the moment, there are no real, important forces in the world that would invite us to participate in some kind of negotiations.

The United States announced a new aid package for Ukraine worth $300 million. And it was reported that it could carry ATACMS missiles. As Andrei Piontkovsky said, the United States stores weapons in Pentagon warehouses that will need to be written off, and they can discount them. And one can imagine how much could be transferred to Ukraine under this arms scheme for the same 300 million.

Andrey Andreevich is right. Remember, a story surfaced about the extra $4 billion that appeared in the Pentagon budget. The thing is that they gave us weapons at the manufacturer’s price, and not at the price after depreciation. And indeed, you are right that if they sell us old ATACMS, then they can value each one, for example, at 5 thousand dollars, and then a lot of them can arrive.

Regarding the threat of terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation, all these intelligence reports. Do you think they can also “impose” themselves into the information space?

Yes, most likely it was. After all, there was only a formal statement from the US Embassy. Where does this come from? The FSB of the Russian Federation officially reports to the embassy through the official channel: “We have information that terrorist attacks will occur in Moscow in the next 48 hours, so we suggest you warn your citizens.” Maybe the FSB could give this? Maybe. And the ambassador is obliged to publish this. That’s the whole procedure.

Why did the Russians do this? By the way, it has already given them a positive result. For example, a rally for the wives and mothers of those mobilized was scheduled for Saturday in the Russian Federation, and they canceled their rally because of these “terrorist attacks.” So, this is what they could be afraid of. Any demonstrations, rallies.

Therefore, I think that this was an election campaign by the FSB so that no one would go anywhere.

Action “Noon against Putin” by the Russian opposition. How do you feel about her?

Very often, the Russian liberal opposition gives direct advice to Ukraine on many issues. It is rare that a Russian oppositionist has not yet given advice to Ukraine on how to fight, that it needs to go on strategic defense, dig the best fortifications, where to buy shells… We have heard a million things. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t give advice to the Russian opposition. This is not good. Here we are at war with them, we can discuss with them only one issue: war and peace between us. And their internal affairs, how they will overthrow Putin, let this be their business and initiative. And we’ll just watch here.

Katerina Schwartz, Alexey Likhman