What Putin Fears More Than War

Audio editing by Eric Schneider
Motion graphics by Vincent de Langen
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
Writing & Direction by Evan

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Video supplied by Getty Images
Maps provided by MapTiler/OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3
Select footage from the AP Archive

[chatnoir]

I was independent observer on Moscow mayor elections in 2013, when current mayor Sobyanin competed against Navalny (yes, that Navalny). One of the task was to be a part of "mobile group" and visit old people who couldn’t walk to the election station so they can vote using "mobile voting box". Every single elderly person told that they received "gift from Sobyanin". "Gifts" was delivered by government social worker. Soviet boomers are the backbone of Putin's regime. They will support it till their last breath.

[Blex_]

As a German, it's quite the curveball to see the colors of the German flag there at 6:30 in the middle of the protest until I saw the symbol and realized, it's the flag of East Germany.

[archipiratta]

Imagine being age 49 in 1991 having just worked 20+ years in a Russian mine with the view of getting a sweet pension only for the rug to be pulled out from under you 😤

[erloriel]

What Putin truly fears the most is a reasonably-sized table.

[MrThatguyuknow]

I had a coworker who grew up in Norilsk. He used to laugh about how unbelievably terrible it was there. If it was any less, I'm sure he'd cry, but It was so ridiculous he talked about it like he was pranked.

[jameswarrington]

A war often stirs patriotism and makes a politician temporarily more popular. But only briefly. Especially if the war is lost.

[Ynhockey]

As someone from the Soviet Union: few in the West realize just how much "the government will take care of everything" mentality is ingrained in the Soviet psyche, especially in Russia outside of the two big cities. Long past the collapse, parents still recommended their kids to have careers with poor pay and prospects, but with government benefits like housing, i.e. work 20 years and get a free tiny apartment. The video is totally right that it was the most fundamental social contract, and large parts of it remain to this day. Maxim Katz made a video recently about Peskov where he talks about it briefly but clearly (there are English subtitles). The war has made the situation much worse in Russia too, because so many young people left, either being drafted or escaping the draft.

[harshithareddy]

"He might find some solutions with the help of ChatGPT" I chuckled at this.
Excellent video, love the buildup initially and finally dealing with the main concept.

[dkaloger]

This video is so well researched .I would never have thought of pensions as one of the key pillars of the Putin regime .Very interesting insights .

[jessemercado]

One of the most well put together presentations I have seen in a along time. Keep up the amazing work!

[jumpdawg]

Don't think of it as falling out a window, think of it as Concrete Poisoning.

[Iknowtoomuchable]

"You heard that right: Between 1960 and 94, the average Russian lost 3 years of their life."

That's pretty impressive, though. In that same period of time, the average person in any other country lost 34 years.

[henriquek.]

Amazing analysis!

Small piece of advice from a data analyst: you might wanna consider presenting the graphs in the same order as you narrate, to make things smoother. Eg: in the section of % of total workers employed by the state you could start with the 20%, followed by the 12%, and then the total.

Thanks for the work! I truly enjoy all your videos 🚀

[magnvss]

If your house is on fire and you "solve it" by buying an electrical fan to throw the smoke out of the window while trying to make it as if nothing happens, the problem doesn't fix by buying an even bigger fan when things get worse. Sooner than later the fire will catch you.

[marcobonesi]

same here in italy . The pensioners would kill any italian under the age of 40 to raise his/her pension. We already hve the highest labor taxes in the world to pay such an obscene expense for pensions and we have accumulated a huge public debt mainly to pay generous pensions. In the coming years it will be us or the pensioners. There is not enough for both of us.

[nicholasconder]

There are a number of places like Vorkuta in Canada and Alaska. Remote communities based on single industries, or remote First Nations communities. Trying to maintain many of these communities can be extremely difficult. Indeed, several of these communities can only be reached during winter over ice roads, or by air.

[danopticon]

Regarding Vorkuta, as a child in a developing nation of the global south in the ‘70s, me and my classmates and indeed much of the world rather admired the Soviet ability to venture out into the middle of nowhere … and somehow get a railway and supply lines and a radio station and a research outpost and then a whole city going. In hindsight, the environmental consequence of these excursions was quite dire. But I promise you, we may be painting those towns as hellholes today, but — just as the U.S. has always portrayed its lawless and deadly western frontier of the 1800s as “romantic” — the moment we start really building on our moon and on Mars and losing scores of colonists in the process, we’re going to start painting such losses as “romantic” again.

[OmerE.C]

I wish I was affluent enough to be able to donate, this is one of the best channels on YouTube, and one of the most underrated.
A student from Ethiopia ♥

[RH-plyb]

“Vorkuta has no roads in and out and is only accessible via a 40 hour train ride”

Thank you for confirming the legitimacy of the Black Ops 1 Campaign as a historically accurate source for geopolitical research.

[TheDennys]

I just got a flashback from 2010 when i played Black Ops and i can still remember how Reznov shouted: now, we take - Vorkuta!