Writer Anna Arutunyan, author of “The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult” (2014), has a new book out about the early pivotal years of Russia’s invasion of the Donbas, titled “Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine.” A longtime journalist, former International Crisis Group senior analyst, and now a Wilson Center global fellow, Arutunyan draws on interviews, reporting from the warzone, and other research to reconstruct the relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that developed after Moscow annexed Crimea and began its intervention in the Donbas that spiraled into the godawful war we see today.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:24) Is “hybridity” still a meaningful research topic in the war today in Ukraine?
• (5:56) Is Vladimir Putin’s “power vertical” a myth?
• (10:48) Has Putin’s ideology evolved over the past two decades or is it all improvised?
• (15:08) Does Putin still have the flexibility as a leader to backtrack in Ukraine and end the war?
• (19:39) What a sense of disenfranchisement and victimhood can do.
• (25:30) What’s the use of empathy?
• (28:42) Vladimir the Bureaucrat.

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