Russia casts itself as both the West’s victim and the world’s vanguard. Scholar Hanna Notte explains why that story sells.

Why does Moscow’s account of its war against Ukraine resonate with some audiences far from the fighting? For her new book, foreign policy scholar Hanna Notte spoke with people sympathetic to Russia’s view of the war and with people harmed by Russian power, reporting from more than a dozen countries, from South Africa and India to Finland and Kazakhstan.

The Naked Pravda speaks with Notte about “We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West” to ask: Why does Soviet support for the fight against apartheid still earn Moscow goodwill in South Africa? How can the Kremlin’s foreign policy be simultaneously nihilistic in its methods and messianic in its ambitions? And what does it mean when prominent Russian analysts call for nuclear strikes on Europe and the United States?

Hanna Notte directs the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, and is a nonresident senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She is based in Berlin.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (03:50) Is Russia’s global influence really “deliciously attractive”?
• (08:07) How do you separate a country’s national interests from personal gratitude toward the Soviet Union?
• (14:34) How does an RT journalist justify her work to herself?
• (17:24) Is whataboutism a weapon of the weak, and will the rest of the world start sounding like Russia?
• (24:05) How can Russian foreign policy be both nihilistic and messianic?
• (28:38) Is “We Shall Outlast Them” a warning to the West?
• (33:39) How should outsiders read Russia’s foreign policy debates?
• (40:28) Was Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling as novel as it looked?

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