Conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen: Kremlin hawks demand escalation against Ukraine and retaliation against Europe

I strongly recommend this 45-minute interview to the Community. Although the questions were many of the same that I have discussed on other major podcasts in the past couple of days, we had the time and Professor Diesen has the in-depth knowledge of the subject matter to pursue with me points from the Russian and Belgian publishers and broadcasters that colleagues in the Alt Media do not receive for lack of language skills and for lack of attention – they are all too busy listening to and parsing what President Putin says in his daily speeches and press conferences to be bothered with real world news.

As I say at the beginning of this interview, for more than a decade I was following closely Putin’s speeches and his appearances on his annual Direct Line Q&A with the Russian public or his Plenary Session talks at the Petersburg International Economic Forum and at the Valdai Discussion Club. His speeches were brilliant, his grasp of detail on all manner of public issues was encyclopedic and unrivaled among international leaders. There was much to praise. Moreover, the Russian economy was going from strength to strength and the Russian military was restored to its rightful place in Russian society and in the global military rankings.

However, those days are long gone. Vladimir Putin is now in a phase like Gorbachev’s final years in office, when he is speechifying daily, basking in a cult of personality whereby his every utterance becomes breaking news on Russian television that every news bulletin and every talk show must open with, even if the content is just more blah-blah. As with Donald Trump, I no longer listen to what Putin says; I am only interested in what he does, which frankly, so far has been utterly inadequate as regards responding to the ever more brazen Ukrainian and European provocations. And that very inaction has been destroying Russia’s perceived deterrence, meaning undermining its national security.

By small tidbits worthy of notice and explanation, I cite the following from this interview.

Yesterday’s news digest on Dzen.ru tells us that gasolene canisters are being sold out all across Russia. What does this mean? It means that average Russians are storing up gasolene against shortages and or possible rationing measures that may be introduced to deal with the consequences of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries and storage facilities.

A day earlier, the news digest reported that Deputy Prime Minister Novak just told the press that the situation with respect to fuel is ‘difficult but manageable.’ I would put the emphasis on ‘difficult.’ Coming from the man who ran Russia’s Energy Ministry for more than a decade, this is very disturbing news.

Yesterday’s news digest also notes that there are more than one thousand cars waiting in line to enter the Crimean bridge from mainland Russia to the peninsula. This means that there are closures of traffic implemented due to dangers of drone strikes.

Meanwhile Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian oblasts of Kursk and Belgorod, which border on pre-2014 Ukraine, have been making life miserable for the local residents. Remember, this is not Donbas but true RF oblasts that are now under fire. That is a worse situation than before the Special Military Operation began.

In this podcast, I also say that the only “poll” on Putin’s support in the population worth talking about will come on 20 September, when Russia holds its elections to the legislature (State Duma). I am predicting that the ruling United Russia party will suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Communist Party (Left) and of the LDPR Party (Right). That United Russia is running scared was shown in the past week by a bit of news that you have heard nothing about in Major Media: one United Russia deputy told the press that during a speech to parliament Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov had said that the bank time deposits of Russian citizens and businesses should be confiscated in order to fund the deficit in the budget. He allegedly said that these time deposits (вклады) are just enriching the banks and not doing anything to help reindustrialization and the war effort. The next day, Zyuganov threatened to take the deputy to the courts for defamation, for distorting what he had said in parliament. Shortly afterwards, the said deputy publicly apologized to Zyuganov. But the malicious public attack had done its work – to discredit the Communists ahead of the election in what will be a close contest.

*****

Professor Diesen presented me with a couple of possible scenarios for the end of the war. I put my money on his first scenario, that Russia destroys Ukraine as the European proxy, thereby depriving Europe of the ‘fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian’ strategy that they picked up from Biden’s USA. I see no need for Russia to think about bombing European arms plants or other infrastructure at this point, since it would involve more risk-taking than the Putin government seems capable of accepting.

After all, the war will not end when Russia reaches the Dnieper River. Two thirds of the original Ukrainian territory will still be under the control of Zelensky and his Western backers and they can continue to provide him with arms and money to keep Russia tied down and hemorrhaging from long range drone strikes until 2029 when they are ready, they believe, to engage Russia in war openly and with full power. For reasons unknown to me Colonel Macgregor and the other prominent military experts in Alt Media seem blind to this scenario in progress.

Professor Diesen also raised with me the question of a possible Belarus-Ukraine war following from Zelensky’s threats to attack Belarus if it does not deactivate the drone guidance installations at the border used to send Russian missiles onward to targets in Western Ukraine. As I noted a couple of days ago, Lukashenko did not respond at once to the threats. However, on Thursday he did speak to a couple of emissaries from Zelensky and told them that if Ukraine drags Belarus into the war, then that will change the character of this war entirely. I see that intentionally coded message as three dots which may be deciphered as follows: Lukashenko is saying that he will not respond cautiously as would Vladimir Putin but will instead use the Wunder Waffen Oreshniks and other attack systems at his disposal to decapitate the Kievan regime. Bravo! I think this message to Zelensky put an end to any idea in Kiev of attacking the Belarussians.

Enjoy the show!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

Postscript: It is not my custom to promote podcasts of Alt Media stars whose claim on their audiences has been Putin fan worship, however, after my own recording with Professor Diesen was done yesterday morning, in the evening I came across an interview Glenn must have done with ex-CIA employee Larry Johnson the day before and posted with some delay. The piece is astonishing for the way it shows how those who swore to Putin’s being the only Adult in the Room, who praised his prudence in not responding to Western provocations, and who denounced my criticism of the gently, gently conduct of the war and of Putin himself for timidity verging on cowardice, calling me openly an agent of MI6 on the pages of his website, now has seamlessly changed course. In this interview Johnson tells us that the whole Russian people are now against the way the war has been conducted and are seeking much more powerful strikes against the Kievan regime. He also seeks to build up Russia’s image of strength by claiming that the Kremlin will attack the West European countries that have been supplying latest arms to Zelensky, when, for those same reasons of timidity at the top, I say that such attacks are most Improbable.

See

I bring this out not because of any personal antagonism with Larry Johnson, but because in this podcast he is preparing us for what will be his condemnation of Putin for treason and betraying Russian national interests the day after Putin is removed from power. He will be saying ‘finally they got the SOB’ if Putin is taken from office feet first, just as three decades ago I heard my Swedish fellow workers in ITT say this about Olaf Palme the day after he was assassinated. These same colleagues had never said a word against their premier in our many meetings in the past, but his murder loosened their lips.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how history written after the facts gives the reader a wholly distorted vision of what people were thinking and expecting before the scene on the stage played out. It is the best recommendation I can find for your acquiring and reading my three volumes of War Diaries, which presents history looking forward, not back.

Postscript 2, 30 June: Two hours after Glenn Diesen posted our Saturday, 27 June chat, one rutube channel reposted it already in Russian voice over on their platform: See По ту сторону-мировая политика в переводах - Гилберт Доктороу: Кремлевские “ястребы“ требуют эскалации конфликта. [Kremlin ‘hawks’ demand escalation of the conflict] https://yandex.ru/video/preview/6740317716865408072 The visitor count was not shown.

Today I see that another rutube channel Река перемен has also posted the podcast in Russian and already has 5,900 viewers, which is pretty good for these small channels. See https://yandex.ru/video/preview/7374763799177143380 Пиррова Победа: Россия Не Может Остановить Атаки Украины - Профессор Гилберт Доктороу [Pyrrhic Victory: Russia Cannot Stop the Ukrainian Attacks]

This demonstrates that even the frank criticism (Pyrrhic victory is as frank as you can get) does get a hearing in Russia now.

I also note that the English original of the podcast has done pretty well, hitting 120,000 today. More importantly, the Comments section has changed entirely from where it was on our chats a few months ago. The Putin skeptics now outweigh the Putin cheerleaders. That is a sea change.