Politics
‘Everything is Aimed at Making Sure that We, our Readers, and Viewers Know Less About What is Happening There’
August 27, 2025
-
Roman Badanin
Journalist -
Mikhail Morekhodtsev
Journalist
In an interview with Republic, journalist Roman Badanin talks about his recently published book The Tsar in Person, the prospects of Putin’s regime, and those among the Russians who left the country and now claim to represent the interests of Russian citizens.
The original interview in Russian appeared in Republic. Fragments are republished here with their permission.
Cover of The Tsar in Person, a book by Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin.
Can your attitude toward Vladimir Putin and his regime be described as “hatred?”
Hatred? No. It is more that he makes me angry.
Did this anger interfere with your work on the book or did it rather drive you?
Both. Without anger, we would not have sat down to write the book in the first place. That is the first point. Secondly, anger is a feeling that colors everything. We acknowledge this. But we also try to resist it. This book is precisely an attempt to step away from the conventions in which we, as journalists, have lived for many years. We do not want to frighten or torment the reader with the style we used to use when writing in the media.
Do you already have a sense of how readers are reacting? For example, those who appear in the book?
It depends on whom you mean. If you mean our sources whom we drew on in this work, then many of them were aware of the content from the outset. We spoke with them at length, often many times. Sometimes we met in person, visited each other. Then they verified their quotes. So they understand, more or less, the context in which we are speaking. They are aware of the work. Of course, I cannot know entirely, but it seems to me that this is the result they wanted and that they should be satisfied with it.
Did the hypothetical Mikhail Prokhorov, mentioned in the book, respond to the text written by journalists from his former media? Or did other well-known people?
No. Such people now rarely respond to the media, even after the fact.
The book begins in 1999. I was 17 at the time. I remember clearly how my father told me that bringing Putin into the leadership was a mistake, because he was a KGB officer. He said: “the problem is that KGB officers, by definition, are beyond the law.”
You had a good father.
At the time I did not understand what that meant. I understood only in 2004, after Beslan… When did you understand that the head of your state lacked empathy, that human life itself meant nothing to him? People began to speak about this after the apartment building bombings in 1999.
I am partly ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I, as a journalist, as someone I consider to be well read, educated, intelligent, for a very long time treated Putin far too superficially. I did not fully grasp the horror emanating from him.
Hatred? No. It is more that he makes me angry.
Did this anger interfere with your work on the book or did it rather drive you?
Both. Without anger, we would not have sat down to write the book in the first place. That is the first point. Secondly, anger is a feeling that colors everything. We acknowledge this. But we also try to resist it. This book is precisely an attempt to step away from the conventions in which we, as journalists, have lived for many years. We do not want to frighten or torment the reader with the style we used to use when writing in the media.
Do you already have a sense of how readers are reacting? For example, those who appear in the book?
It depends on whom you mean. If you mean our sources whom we drew on in this work, then many of them were aware of the content from the outset. We spoke with them at length, often many times. Sometimes we met in person, visited each other. Then they verified their quotes. So they understand, more or less, the context in which we are speaking. They are aware of the work. Of course, I cannot know entirely, but it seems to me that this is the result they wanted and that they should be satisfied with it.
Did the hypothetical Mikhail Prokhorov, mentioned in the book, respond to the text written by journalists from his former media? Or did other well-known people?
No. Such people now rarely respond to the media, even after the fact.
The book begins in 1999. I was 17 at the time. I remember clearly how my father told me that bringing Putin into the leadership was a mistake, because he was a KGB officer. He said: “the problem is that KGB officers, by definition, are beyond the law.”
You had a good father.
At the time I did not understand what that meant. I understood only in 2004, after Beslan… When did you understand that the head of your state lacked empathy, that human life itself meant nothing to him? People began to speak about this after the apartment building bombings in 1999.
I am partly ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I, as a journalist, as someone I consider to be well read, educated, intelligent, for a very long time treated Putin far too superficially. I did not fully grasp the horror emanating from him.
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist, assassinated in 2006. Source: Wiki Commons
I have been in the profession since 2005. I can confirm this. Often, you were mocked for writing about Putin’s crimes back then.
If you recall, in the Beslan story of September 2004 there was an episode with Anna Politkovskaya’s flight to Rostov-on-Don. Politkovskaya was hospitalized there because she suddenly fell ill.
Well, yes, she was poisoned.
And I am ready to repeat that, most likely, they poisoned her.
But I remember that we doubted it – was it really a poisoning? I do not recall exactly what we concluded then, but apparently we did not fully believe that this particular story was in fact poisoning…
If you recall, in the Beslan story of September 2004 there was an episode with Anna Politkovskaya’s flight to Rostov-on-Don. Politkovskaya was hospitalized there because she suddenly fell ill.
Well, yes, she was poisoned.
And I am ready to repeat that, most likely, they poisoned her.
But I remember that we doubted it – was it really a poisoning? I do not recall exactly what we concluded then, but apparently we did not fully believe that this particular story was in fact poisoning…
“And years later I am ashamed that we did not ask ourselves or the authorities questions about it, when it was still possible to do so much more freely than now.”
We failed to ask the important questions and there was never any investigation into the alleged poisoning of Politkovskaya. I am ashamed of this today.
When did you realize that Putin is a truly dangerous and frightening figure capable of physically eliminating his opponents?
Truly and completely – only after Navalny’s poisoning in 2020. And perhaps not even after the poisoning itself, but from then it became clear that these bastards had been at the very least monitoring and at the most targeting a whole group of others as well. It became obvious that there are no limits for them. They can literally kill a member of your family. They can kill an ordinary person just to intimidate others. That was when I felt truly not only fear, but also the full scale of his danger.
When did you realize that Putin is a truly dangerous and frightening figure capable of physically eliminating his opponents?
Truly and completely – only after Navalny’s poisoning in 2020. And perhaps not even after the poisoning itself, but from then it became clear that these bastards had been at the very least monitoring and at the most targeting a whole group of others as well. It became obvious that there are no limits for them. They can literally kill a member of your family. They can kill an ordinary person just to intimidate others. That was when I felt truly not only fear, but also the full scale of his danger.
Sergei Pugachev, a Russian businessman. He became a French citizen in 2009
left Russia in the early 2010s. Source: Wiki Commons
left Russia in the early 2010s. Source: Wiki Commons
Forgive me if this question seems inappropriate. It is clear that you are an enemy of Putin – a personal one. As his former friend, businessman Sergei Pugachev, once said: Putin kills traitors. You did not swear allegiance to Putin, which means you did not betray him. But how do you deal with your personal security?
I prefer not to talk about personal security. I do nothing special. But I also try not to do stupid things. We are used to living in this world and by now it no longer surprises us. Sometimes when you go somewhere in the US, the very first question people ask is: “why are you still alive?”
It can sound funny. Sometimes it made me laugh, sometimes it drove me crazy because it was so tiresome. But people do not ask this out of some primitive notions about Russia. They just ask the most obvious question. And if you think about it, it really is a deep one.
I prefer not to talk about personal security. I do nothing special. But I also try not to do stupid things. We are used to living in this world and by now it no longer surprises us. Sometimes when you go somewhere in the US, the very first question people ask is: “why are you still alive?”
It can sound funny. Sometimes it made me laugh, sometimes it drove me crazy because it was so tiresome. But people do not ask this out of some primitive notions about Russia. They just ask the most obvious question. And if you think about it, it really is a deep one.
“It is true, it is reality – he has a license to kill.”
I have thought about this a great deal in hindsight. My sons and I were followed when we lived in Moscow in 2020-21. We were followed. It was unpleasant, nerve-wracking. And in retrospect, I realize that it could have ended far worse.
This is part of a larger phenomenon. Everyone who has gone through Putin has plunged deeply into Russia, into the normalization of violence.
You are a historian by training. Will you argue with another historian, also unable to return home, who insists that Putin’s regime will collapse quickly and without warning?
Whom do you mean?
Vladimir Kara-Murza.
What happened in Romania, in Poland, in the Baltic states does not mean the same will happen in Russia in two years, in three, in five years. It does not guarantee it even in 20 years. Things can go a lot of ways.
What should we look at? There are those who believe that Putin has concentrated so many levers of power in his hands that if he suddenly dies or is killed with an inkwell or falls gravely ill, then everything will change overnight. They say all the officers beneath him have no power of their own and, of course, hate him.
This is part of a larger phenomenon. Everyone who has gone through Putin has plunged deeply into Russia, into the normalization of violence.
You are a historian by training. Will you argue with another historian, also unable to return home, who insists that Putin’s regime will collapse quickly and without warning?
Whom do you mean?
Vladimir Kara-Murza.
What happened in Romania, in Poland, in the Baltic states does not mean the same will happen in Russia in two years, in three, in five years. It does not guarantee it even in 20 years. Things can go a lot of ways.
What should we look at? There are those who believe that Putin has concentrated so many levers of power in his hands that if he suddenly dies or is killed with an inkwell or falls gravely ill, then everything will change overnight. They say all the officers beneath him have no power of their own and, of course, hate him.
“But if you look closely at what is happening, you see the country being passed down.”
The number of people involved in governance under Putin is vast. We should not underestimate how many people have been drawn into power under him. All of them are tied to the regime in one way or another. And now they are passing their functions down. We are studying this process now. A gigantic hereditary aristocracy has been built in Russia.
And we should not forget the obvious. Millions of people in Russia work in the public sector. They may not be Putin loyalists, they may not be politically engaged at all, but they are materially and technically dependent on the regime. So even if Putin dies one day, I would not be so sure the regime will not try to reproduce itself. There is no certainty that it will succeed, nor that it will not immediately descend into some kind of bloody conflict.
The amount of ego displayed by emigrants who call themselves politicians seems to cancel out any hope for the future. Does it not? They will never be able to find common ground with those who stayed in Russia, who have lived through hell, resigning themselves, adjusting, changing little by little.
Indeed, every new day in exile – something Navalny understood very clearly – drives a wedge between those who left and those who stayed. It distances those abroad, who claim to speak for Russians, from Russians themselves. This process is inevitable.
We should not underestimate the evil the Russian authorities inflict on journalists, activists and politicians.
And we should not forget the obvious. Millions of people in Russia work in the public sector. They may not be Putin loyalists, they may not be politically engaged at all, but they are materially and technically dependent on the regime. So even if Putin dies one day, I would not be so sure the regime will not try to reproduce itself. There is no certainty that it will succeed, nor that it will not immediately descend into some kind of bloody conflict.
The amount of ego displayed by emigrants who call themselves politicians seems to cancel out any hope for the future. Does it not? They will never be able to find common ground with those who stayed in Russia, who have lived through hell, resigning themselves, adjusting, changing little by little.
Indeed, every new day in exile – something Navalny understood very clearly – drives a wedge between those who left and those who stayed. It distances those abroad, who claim to speak for Russians, from Russians themselves. This process is inevitable.
We should not underestimate the evil the Russian authorities inflict on journalists, activists and politicians.
“As a historian, I know of no other example of such a mass, large-scale, systematic campaign against dissent.”
It is a hundred times more effective than what was devised under the Soviets, even during the era of stagnation.
It includes everything from the physical murder of “whomever is necessary” to millions of restrictions against everyone else. And it is backed by enormous spending. The Soviet Union never invested so much in repression. McCarthy never spent so much on persecuting dissenters.
A great deal has been done to ensure that people now cannot find common ground, that voters and those who want to represent them politically live in different countries. And no one said that those who will govern Russia in the future are necessarily abroad today.
You have done many war-related investigations. Every war has a stage when the killers, the wounded and everyone else return home.
You are right that the effect on society will be terrible. And not only because of the war itself, but also because of how society has been reshaped by what the Russian government has done over the years, including through this war.
Again, we return to the fact that we are not dealing with fools. They have done everything possible to ensure that both journalists and audiences have as little chance as possible of finding out what is really happening. Their measures against the media, their control of information and platforms – it is all carefully structured. With every blow they further weaken our connection with the country.
What they have done is not trivial. Starting with economic restrictions against the media, continuing with legal, geographical and technical barriers. Everything is meant to ensure that, in the end, our readers and viewers know less and less about what is happening inside Russia.
I must admit: it has worked out for them. We are very limited in what we can learn about what is going on there. We can figure out which 17-year-old starlets are being paired up with Putin. But learning what is happening at the grassroots level in a village like Vyritsa outside St Petersburg – that challenge could prove too big.
If some war veteran were to murder a family after being driven mad by mobilization and by television propaganda, there is no guarantee we would ever learn of it.
As far as we know, books by those who left sell well. And now they are being written more and more. How will you measure the success of your book?
The devil knows. Of course, there are print runs. But all of that has become very “elastic” in the new, emigrant conditions. There is no single, continuous book-selling network, as there was in Russia. Instead, there are scattered contracts with stores, with online platforms. So there is no point speaking of print runs as in Russia.
Our approach is simple: we cast off this burden from ourselves. That alone is a huge success for us. We understood that we had to write this book, because otherwise it would have gnawed at us.
Writing it also served as therapy for our memories. We wanted to structure them, to lay them out clearly, to share them. And we did it. It was an unprecedented feeling of relief, I can tell you.
As for public success – books have a much longer half-life than any investigation we publish. I understood this well while working on it. Because in our book we drew on materials written 20-25 years ago, overlooked at the time. Even though we are journalists and used to thinking in the medium term, here we were working with a long time horizon. Success, in this case, will be if the book is used. We shall see.
Have you read Sasha Filipenko’s new book, Elephant?
No.
He told us that his novel was briefly available on an online marketplace in Belarus. A few hours after he posted about it, the link was removed. The book was on sale for exactly one day. After that, Filipenko uploaded it for free on his Telegram channel. In this sense, could your book become like a paywalled article that suddenly becomes free?
That does not depend on us.
Have the rights been sold?
It is not only a question of the publisher. There are many different factors at play here, not only connected to us. So I would rather not go into it further.
Recently Boris Grebenshchikov was asked what he hopes for. He replied he prefers not to hope, but to act. And he does – a great deal. What do you hope for?
First of all, the great musician and man expressed it very well. We are in agreement. Among existentialists there is this concept, and it is close to me personally: action without hope of success. If an inner voice tells you that you must do something because it is right – because you have promised it to yourself – then you must do it. If it resolves the eternal problem of things being left unsaid, you must do it. Yes, I believe in that.
I hope at least to work in Russia as a journalist. For now I work abroad, among other things to strengthen and improve my chances of one day working again inside Russia. I am not talking about living there a bit. I am not talking about life there with my family – though of course I would like that too. But as a cautious journalist with an investigative background, I would like at the very least to work again in Russia as a journalist.
I think it would be useful both for Russia and for me.
It includes everything from the physical murder of “whomever is necessary” to millions of restrictions against everyone else. And it is backed by enormous spending. The Soviet Union never invested so much in repression. McCarthy never spent so much on persecuting dissenters.
A great deal has been done to ensure that people now cannot find common ground, that voters and those who want to represent them politically live in different countries. And no one said that those who will govern Russia in the future are necessarily abroad today.
You have done many war-related investigations. Every war has a stage when the killers, the wounded and everyone else return home.
You are right that the effect on society will be terrible. And not only because of the war itself, but also because of how society has been reshaped by what the Russian government has done over the years, including through this war.
Again, we return to the fact that we are not dealing with fools. They have done everything possible to ensure that both journalists and audiences have as little chance as possible of finding out what is really happening. Their measures against the media, their control of information and platforms – it is all carefully structured. With every blow they further weaken our connection with the country.
What they have done is not trivial. Starting with economic restrictions against the media, continuing with legal, geographical and technical barriers. Everything is meant to ensure that, in the end, our readers and viewers know less and less about what is happening inside Russia.
I must admit: it has worked out for them. We are very limited in what we can learn about what is going on there. We can figure out which 17-year-old starlets are being paired up with Putin. But learning what is happening at the grassroots level in a village like Vyritsa outside St Petersburg – that challenge could prove too big.
If some war veteran were to murder a family after being driven mad by mobilization and by television propaganda, there is no guarantee we would ever learn of it.
As far as we know, books by those who left sell well. And now they are being written more and more. How will you measure the success of your book?
The devil knows. Of course, there are print runs. But all of that has become very “elastic” in the new, emigrant conditions. There is no single, continuous book-selling network, as there was in Russia. Instead, there are scattered contracts with stores, with online platforms. So there is no point speaking of print runs as in Russia.
Our approach is simple: we cast off this burden from ourselves. That alone is a huge success for us. We understood that we had to write this book, because otherwise it would have gnawed at us.
Writing it also served as therapy for our memories. We wanted to structure them, to lay them out clearly, to share them. And we did it. It was an unprecedented feeling of relief, I can tell you.
As for public success – books have a much longer half-life than any investigation we publish. I understood this well while working on it. Because in our book we drew on materials written 20-25 years ago, overlooked at the time. Even though we are journalists and used to thinking in the medium term, here we were working with a long time horizon. Success, in this case, will be if the book is used. We shall see.
Have you read Sasha Filipenko’s new book, Elephant?
No.
He told us that his novel was briefly available on an online marketplace in Belarus. A few hours after he posted about it, the link was removed. The book was on sale for exactly one day. After that, Filipenko uploaded it for free on his Telegram channel. In this sense, could your book become like a paywalled article that suddenly becomes free?
That does not depend on us.
Have the rights been sold?
It is not only a question of the publisher. There are many different factors at play here, not only connected to us. So I would rather not go into it further.
Recently Boris Grebenshchikov was asked what he hopes for. He replied he prefers not to hope, but to act. And he does – a great deal. What do you hope for?
First of all, the great musician and man expressed it very well. We are in agreement. Among existentialists there is this concept, and it is close to me personally: action without hope of success. If an inner voice tells you that you must do something because it is right – because you have promised it to yourself – then you must do it. If it resolves the eternal problem of things being left unsaid, you must do it. Yes, I believe in that.
I hope at least to work in Russia as a journalist. For now I work abroad, among other things to strengthen and improve my chances of one day working again inside Russia. I am not talking about living there a bit. I am not talking about life there with my family – though of course I would like that too. But as a cautious journalist with an investigative background, I would like at the very least to work again in Russia as a journalist.
I think it would be useful both for Russia and for me.
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