A Journey Through Putin’s Russia

I'm Carol Rosenberg from the New York Times. Right now I'm sitting alone in the press room at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay. I've probably spent around 2,000 nights at this Navy base. I've been coming here since four months after the 9-11 attacks.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernissi, and this is The Daily.

Well, Sabrina, these elections are set to run Friday to Sunday. Twenty-nine regions are voting online, and some of them have already started. And it's a big event for Putin, but you and I both know very well that elections aren't necessarily the best measure of the people's choice. in Russia. Putin is running once again without any real, genuine competition.

The voting.

Because it's not really an election.

People are going to vote, but it's not truly a choice.

Exactly. So. Putin is expected to just glide to another six-year term, his fifth, and that puts him on a path to becoming the longest-serving leader in Russia since the Russian Revolution, more than 100 years ago. And what's so remarkable is that this isn't just a story about an autocrat extending his reign. This is a leader with pretty sky-high polling numbers right now and seemingly broad support.

So tell me about that. What is that support?

I mean, Sabrina, you and I both know that opinion polls are to be taken with a grain of salt in Russia, especially in a time when repression has become very intense and is only getting stronger by the month. But, you know, polls conducted by independent pollsters like the Levada Center, which use focus groups and really big sample sizes, show that Putin's approval rating is at 86 percent, the highest in nearly a decade.

Eighty-six percent.

Yeah. And even the more general question, is Russia going in the right direction? That answer has really shocked me. It's 75 percent right now. It's the highest it's ever been since a pollster started asking the question in 1996..

That is incredible. I mean, the highest number since the beginning of polling, basically.

Yes. And, you know, for me, that's really so incongruous, because, remember, you and I were on the ground in Ukraine when the war started and Russia began being deluged with Western sanctions. You know, one company after another announced they were pulling out. And then, slowly, it became clear that this war was going to last much longer and be far more deadly than anyone originally expected, I think, including Mr. Putin himself.

So where did you start?

So, a few months ago, I decided to go to the ninth largest city in Russia, Samara. It's a city on the Volga River. And I was interested in Samara because it's a pretty big industrial city. And I really wanted to see how ordinary people living there were feeling about the war and were experiencing all these changes to Russia's economic life. I mean, again, this was one of the big questions hanging over the war.

Valerie, you are a Russian mall expert, also a Russia expert, but a Russian mall expert. Continue. What did you see in this one?

This mall was really interesting. You know, I saw a lot of activity.

And these were departures of Western companies because of the sanctions.

Absolutely. And you would go to malls and it would just feel like a dead zone. Stores shuttered, dark hallways. You could see what was no longer available to you as a Russian consumer. And now all that has changed.

And for the uninitiated, Dobra Cola means?

Good Cola. Right. Cool Cola. I mean, yeah, I've seen various translations. Good Cola, Cool Cola.

I don't think so. So what is good? Cola taste like?

Pretty much like the real thing. Maybe like a normal knockoff Coke. Do you think there's any difference?

A little bit. Really?

I don't know if Coca-Cola took their secret sauce when they left or not. But I don't mean to paint a picture of a mall full of only knockoffs, you know. I think, frankly, I was astonished by the amount of Western goods still available. There were still Chanel. All of the luxury cosmetics and perfume are widely available in Russia.

So, really, what you're seeing is a mall that has actually returned to some semblance of economic normal.

Yeah. In the past two years, Russia has been able to really successfully reorient its economy. Consumers clearly still have the money to buy expensive Western products. So they're often paying a huge premium, importing them from China, from Kazakhstan, from Georgia, Armenia and the neighboring countries through middlemen. Oh, let's talk to the Apple people.

products. So tell me about that shop.

So it looked like an ordinary Apple store. They had all the MacBooks and MacBook Pros and accessories, iPhones. And, in fact, when I first went in just to inquire about the price, the salesman that I talked to was really proud to say that it wasn't that much more expensive than the West and that actually, they had gotten the latest iPhone model in stock three days only after it debuted in America.

Interesting. So what did the guy say?

He kind of shrugged his shoulders about the economy, about the sanctions. He said, you know, we have no problems getting any of this stuff in. People are still able to buy it. And he told me that he actually felt very confident that Russia would be able to survive and maybe even thrive economically.

So this is one of the keys to Putin's success, right? Keep the people happy with iPhones. Have the stuff still come in. Make sure that they're not cut off from the world in terms of the stuff that they.

want. Exactly. Standing in this fake Apple store in the Samara Mall, the war felt really distant to this guy. You know, he's injured, so he couldn't be mobilized, although he does feel bad for some of his friends who are fighting. But he said the war is not really this immediate presence in his life and that his life really hasn't changed at all.

We'll be right back.

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Well, yes. I mean, in Russian it's Ovsianka. It was a collective farm back in the days of the Soviet Union. In some of the open fields, you can just see like the remains of collapsed infrastructure. But the village of Ovsianka itself provides almost no jobs.

So really kind of a classic post-Soviet, you know, economically depressed landscape, a place that had been this large functioning farm, this collective farm, with the whole village employed in working it. And after the Soviet collapse, that just died.

Right. I mean, this is a place that really hasn't seen any of the fruits of Putin's economic success story. And these small, depressed villages are the kind of places that have sent a lot of people to this war.

So what did the family make of all of this?

Well, despite the fact that they had lost their son, their brother, in the war, despite the poverty and pain of this small village community.

Wow. So extremely meaningful for a family like Vyacheslav's.

Absolutely. You know, this is a place where, presumably, people are, you know, living on maybe the equivalent of a hundred, a couple hundred dollars a month. So these salaries are an incredible boon. And in fact, you know, Putin, in his most recent State of the Union speech last month, actually talked about wanting to elevate the role of soldiers and veterans in society and give them more leadership roles and more opportunities. And, you know, this is widely perceived as an attempt by Putin to kind of reengineer a new middle class comprised of people involved in the war effort.

Wow. God, I mean, it's very dark, but it's also quite cunning of Putin, right, that there is an economic element to this war for the people who are dying. And that is something that can blunt any potential political opposition to it. So the people doing the dying are not going to be the people asking the questions, in part because this money is coming in. And he knows that.

Yes. And I mean, Sabrina, I've spoken to other family members who have lost their sons and husbands in this war, and they all say that no amount of money can can bring back their son. But it does have an effect of making these families far less vocal and far less prone to uniting in some kind of a protest movement that could challenge Putin.

So tell me about those people.

So I had this really surreal reporting experience. after this military honors ceremony. The crimson military issued casket was actually brought into the house where, according to local custom, Vita was to spend one final night at home before being buried in a nearby cemetery. And as members of his family gathered around his coffin, they got into a debate actually about why he died. You know, they're gathered around his casket.

Wow.

And then he said, what, defending the motherland from whom?

Amazing.

There were other people around who chimed in.

I mean, these are very brave questions, right? You know, saying this also to you sitting there, an American reporter, like this is the thing Putin has really been focused on, that people not say things like this, right? And and yet there they were saying these things against the war.

There's no doubt this is a really dangerous thing to say to a journalist at a time when the Russian government is really policing all kind of dissenting voices on this war. And the extent of repression in Russia now is so strong that even whispering about them can get you in huge trouble, can land you in jail, can land you with a fine. You know, with my colleague Anton Traynovsky and other members of our bureau, we've been reporting on the way that, you know, people have been fined for anti-war scribbles on a bathroom wall or a simple, you know, request to a DJ to play a song by a Ukrainian musician, not to mention people who take the risk of standing in the street with an anti-war slogan.

Right. Boosting the economy and paying off soldiers is one thing, but repression is really the foundation of what Putin has been up to here.

Absolutely. I mean, that's what holds this whole system together, right? You know, there are a lot of people in Russia who share anti-war views and who are fed up with more than two decades of Putin in power, but they have very little recourse to do anything to change the situation at this point.

So, Valerie, to answer the question you started with, you know, how has Putin managed to keep such a tight grip on things? Repression is still central to how he's doing that, but he's also worked extremely hard to keep people happy, right, in malls, with their iPhones, keeping the economy going and also paying out those bonuses to soldiers' families in these very poor areas. And at this moment, heading into his reelection, that's all basically working.

That's true, Sabrina. But these are a lot of plates he's spinning, you know, trying to keep the economy afloat while paying huge salaries to military personnel, and, you know, revamping the entire military industry. The Kremlin has dipped into reserves to make these financial payments. The economy has changed so much and no one knows how it will be affected in the long run. The oil price could change.

Interesting. So, you know, he's, of course, very much in control, but it's tenuous, right? I mean, for it to work, Putin really needs to keep his eyes on all of these areas at once.

Absolutely, Sabrina. I mean, it's a precarious balance.

Valerie, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina.

Alexei Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has called on Russians who oppose Putin to show up at the polls at noon on Sunday as a sign of collective protest. Earlier this week, Navalny's top aide, Leonid Volkov, who was helping lead that call to action, was beaten and sprayed with tear gas near his home in Vilnius, Lithuania. Just hours before the attack, Volkov had given an interview in which he expressed concern for the safety of Navalny's supporters, saying, quote, the key risk is that we will all be killed.

I believe in his heart. he has. his highest priority is the security of Israel.

However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way. Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, said that he believed that Netanyahu had chosen himself and his ambition as a politician over his country. Schumer also said that Netanyahu had allowed too many civilian deaths in Gaza, which he argued had reduced support for Israel around the world.