Putin vs the West

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Anyone else watching?

Bringing back the Russian invasion. Amazing interviewees.

If it's the series I remember watching a while back, it's superb.

As you say, amazing interviewees. Very detailed, and definitely required watching in these days.

It lays out Putin's changing behaviour, from when he first rose to power in Russia to his evolution into a dictator. One of his cleverer moves was to signal to the oligarchs that they could enrich themselves as much as they liked by plundering Russia, as long as they left the political arena to him. But if they dared involve themselves in politics, god help them.

It also gives a very clear account of Putin's power-grab in Georgia.

I've just realised I still have a third (new?) episode to watch about Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Watching the third episode now.

About 33 mins in, it gives the lie to Putin's pretence that NATO had been attempting to suck Ukraine in.

The opposite was true: Ukraine had been asking to join NATO for years – because it was afraid of Russia – and kept getting turned down by France, Germany and other countries.

Zelensky phoned Jens Stoltenberg personally to beg for membership, but was told it was a no-goer without consensus from NATO members.

I think the 2 episodes we watched last night are both new. We watched the previous ones before.

Oh I'll have to go back and watch those. Thanks for the heads-up.

What channel was it on please so I can see if it's available for catch up?

It's on BBC2, and happily I can see there are episodes being shown again tomorrow (5 Feb) and on 10 Feb, and other dates. Those are episodes 1 and 2 (not in that order) of series 2.

This evening I've watched my way through the remaining one from the tranche I recorded last February, which I now realise from IMDB was episode 3 of series 1.

I also realise this isn't the series I was originally remembering. That was the excellent Putin, Russia and the West, a 4-part series which was also on BBC2 and covers earlier ground.

Thank you 😊