Anne Applebaum: My Primary Concern Is To Stop Russian Imperialism – INTERVIEW

We sat down with Anne Applebaum to discuss the sustainability of political culture upholding Putin’s regime, as Res Publica Nowa is preparing a Polish-language volume on how Russia may fail.

Anne Applebaum is a journalist and a historian. In her writing, she has focused on Russia’s Communist past and the parallel story of oppression and resilience in Central and Eastern Europe. She wrote a book, ‘Gulag: A History’, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2004, and numerous other award-winning books like ‘Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956’ or ‘ Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine’. Her most recent book, ‘Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World’, examines how autocratic governments that do not share a common ideology collaborate to increase their power and control against democratic and liberal countries.

Wojciech Przybylski: In February 2025 you wrote about Russia not having the ability to continue to fight indefinitely. And yet they do. Furthermore, we just heard Putin saying that he is now ready with his war economy for a war with Europe. Is Russia actually growing stronger and more determined?

Anne Applebaum: Remember that you are playing with master propagandists. Putin also appeared yesterday in front of an audience wearing a military uniform, like he was the commander-in-chief, even though we know he never goes to the front line. They are trying to give the impression that Ukraine is going to collapse any minute now, and that, therefore, we need to rush to do a deal on their terms. They think they have the Trump administration on their side.

If you look at what the Ukrainians see, there are 15,000 to 20,000 Russian soldiers being killed or wounded so badly they cannot continue to fight every month. That means sooner or later, they will have to do a broader mobilisation. They are trying to mobilise covertly right now in the outer parts of Russia, in small towns and provinces. We know that Russians are sometimes picked up off the street to be mobilised. We know that Russians who enter airports are sometimes served mobilisation papers.