Bridget Kendall was the BBC’s correspondent for Moscow in the pivotal period covering the collapse of the Soviet Union. She shares her insights on interviewing Putin, how she predicts the Russia-Ukraine war will end, and advice from her own journalistic journey, which started as a student at Oxford.
Cherwell: What’s something that you had to learn living under the Soviet Union?
Kendall: When you have a totalitarian society, people live on two levels. Their public persona is very reserved, and they don’t smile on the streets. Almost as though to compensate for that, in their private lives they are very warm and have a completely different view of life.
Many were quietly very frustrated with the regime. When children would go to kindergarten, parents would have to say “there’s things that we talk about at home, and then there’s this world where you talk about Lenin and Communism, and these worlds don’t mix.” So, from a very young age people were made to exercise doublethink. This goes for all totalitarian societies, but it’s very important for understanding what Russians think about Ukraine. In Soviet Russia, people had to go into “exile in my head”, as one man told me after protests were suppressed in 2011. People would have thoughts in their head and share them with their close family, but not with the outside world until circumstances changed – the same goes for Putin’s regime. People have thoughts in their head and share them with their close family, but not with the outside world until circumstances change.
There were people that swallowed communist propaganda, but for lots of other people, it was like being bilingual: you could choose which way you were going to be. This can create a sophistication of thought which can make some people in the West appear somewhat naive, because we only have one level and don’t have to make those choices. So this was a humbling wake-up call to me.
I went to a provincial town and in those days, there was enormous deprivation in the provinces. You couldn’t get meat and vegetables, so you lived on a very restricted diet. It was interesting to live in a country where people thought of themselves as European, and were very literate, but lived in such deprivation. Most people also couldn’t get basic clothing. I realised that those that had nice clothes were exactly the ones I shouldn’t trust; they had parents in the party who allowed them to get these highly prized imported goods. My youthful assumptions of judging people by their appearances were turned on their head.
Cherwell: Do you think this internal resistance that some people feel, as shown by [Alexei] Navalny’s funeral, could be enough to overthrow Putin?
Kendall: Putin has pressed a button of fear, of oppression. The protests in 2011, and when Gorbachev lifted the lid, are telling examples of how people would speak out and would take to the streets if they had the chance. But this probably won’t happen until Putin goes.
This is about history, but it’s also about geography. Most people haven’t been anywhere except Russia. You can access the internet, and the borders aren’t completely closed unlike in Soviet Times, but surprisingly, even though Putin hasn’t done a complete clampdown, people feel he’s done enough for them to stay silent. They feel isolated – people have retreated into their own little worlds of trusted friends with which they can speak frankly.
Cherwell: You’ve interviewed Putin twice; what was that like and how did he come across?
Kendall: When he walked in you barely noticed him, he was a short man and didn’t really have any presence at that point. He had been president for less than a year and hadn’t yet acquired this aura of absolute authority and fear. In the interview, there were two Putins: the ex-KGB man who spoke eloquently on foreign policy and nuclear weapons, and who was pretty fierce when he’d bore you with his blue eyes, and then Putin when we asked a series of personal questions about his family life. To his credit, he answered them all, but came across not totally sure of himself.
Five years later, I was asked to conduct a similar interview. This time, there was just one Mr Putin: the tough presidential figure who felt he could control everything; a little bit cocky; a little bit annoying; a little bit heartless. This was partly because the economy had grown and he’d brought some stability. He’d been ruthless in Chechnya and had raised state pensions, so he felt he was on a roll. It was interesting to see how he’d grown into the role: this was a man prepared to be ruthless.
At one point he turned the interview on me. Someone asked why he’d turned the gas off in Ukraine to punish it for the Orange Revolution [a series of protests in Ukraine in 2004-05]. He leant back in his chair and simply asked me: “How much are those pearls around your neck?”. I just replied, “That’s a very unexpected question”. We had a bit of banter, but eventually I told him. He then said, “well you wouldn’t sell them to me for just 5 kopeks would you”. I realised that he was trying to make a heavy-handed analogy with the gas prices in Ukraine; that you shouldn’t sell gas to Ukraine for nothing.
Something else that feels very relevant was that a man from Ethiopia asked what Russia was going to do about racism in Russia. Putin responded, “Well, when Russian women go abroad, they’re treated like prostitutes”. This is a typical ploy inherited from the Soviet Union; analysts call it ‘whataboutism’: “What about the way Russians are treated?”. I asked Mr Putin if there was anything he wanted to say to this man, thinking he might want to apologise. He said, “No, he’s probably a criminal anyway”. He didn’t seem to care that this was going public. If he came across as tough and brutal, that rather suited him.
Cherwell: What are you expecting from Putin in the next few weeks and months? [This interview was conducted on Monday 12th May, before Putin had refused to meet with Zelensky in Turkey].
Kendall: I think he’s playing for time. He doesn’t want to fall out with Trump, and wants a reset of relations with the US, the lifting of sanctions, and some collaborative deals. But on the other hand, they do definitely have the upper hand in the war, and he doesn’t want to give Zelenskyy what he wants. What they want is a compliant leader in Ukraine so they can bring it back into Russia’s orbit.
The other thing is that Putin has decided that the new enemy is Europe. In the last few weeks, they’ve shifted their propaganda. For years Russia has portrayed the US as the big enemy who wanted to destroy Russia, with Europe weakly tagging along.
Suddenly, the US has changed, and Trump is offering a new policy. There have been some telling articles from the FSB [the Russian security service] declaring that ‘Eurofascism is back’ – their argument being that Europe is the fascist enemy, whereas America is now labelled the ‘land of the free’, as is Russia, so it’s a startling change of tune.
Cherwell: So do you see Russia forming an alliance with America?
Kendall: Trump can go hot and cold, and so is an unreliable ally. Russia can hope that more advisers will be hired who see collaboration with Russia as an opportunity. But the Russians will understand that democracies are inherently mobile: that America is an opportunity that might not always be there. Although, Russia’s biggest ally is China, whom Trump is very focussed on as a strategic opponent, along with North Korea and Iran. At the same time, he wants to make deals with everybody, so we’ll see how that pans out.
Cherwell: What does Putin want as an ideal outcome out of the war with Ukraine?
Kendall: He wants a ceasefire, for Russia to keep the territory it’s got, to hold new elections, and get a new leader of Ukraine who is subservient to Russia. Look at Georgia as a model. Russia has kept South Ossetia and the current Georgian government understands that keeping peace with Russia keeps their own country stable. It’s a bullying tactic. I don’t know if it will work in Ukraine, as he’s tried to put in [Viktor] Yanukovych before. Ukraine has been through so much that any leader put in by Putin might be quite a poisoned chalice to the electorate, but I’m not sure Putin thinks that.
Cherwell: And what about an ideal outcome for Ukraine?
Kendall: A truce to stop the fighting without the territories being recognised as Russian, with rebuilding funded by Europe and America. And living to fight another day.
The fact that Trump doesn’t want to keep arming Ukraine to the hilt, the fact that they’re running out of fighting men, and Putin enlisting North Korean fighters to the end means that it’s hard to see that it’s a good option for Ukraine to keep fighting.
Cherwell: Were there any new discoveries you made when compiling your book on the Cold War?
Kendall: We did the Vietnam War from the point of view of the American soldiers and the Afghanistan War from the point of view of the Russian soldiers. One of the things that stuck in my mind was how similar their experiences were. There was a fight for survival that people at home didn’t understand, and both groups felt very ostracised after the war. It was interesting to see these two superpowers engage in wars abroad and their soldiers sharing similar journeys.
This is particularly relevant for today. By the end of the Afghan War, far too many Russians’ sons were coming back in a zinc coffin. People then blamed the Soviet state. I thought this would be a reason why Putin would not go to war with Ukraine. How wrong was I. He is prepared to withstand a lot of criticism and be brutal.
The protests over the Afghan War were also about living conditions. People were frustrated and could see that the party had special shops and cars. Putin is more attentive to the people, hence these handouts [efforts to recruit soldiers with financial incentives]. Putin has also seen the war as an opportunity for importing substitutes, moving to a more developed economy that makes their own goods.
You have to remember that people’s tolerance for deprivation in Russia is quite high. In the Afghan wWr, it took 5 years for the feeling that ‘this has gone on long enough’ to filter through to the villages. We’re not 5 years into the war. I don’t know if Putin has made this calculation too – if he will be facing that problem in 2027.
David Cameron also stopped the war in Iraq after 5 years. I don’t know if there are any studies on how long it takes war weariness to creep in, but that was something the research this book made me think about.
Cherwell: What was your career pathway from being a student at Oxford to becoming BBC correspondent for Moscow?
Kendall: I worked for Student Radio Oxford. I then went to Moscow afterwards as a research student, and it was clear that Brezhnev was about to die. I set about meeting as many people as I could who had known him. I came back from Moscow with quite a broad view of what was going on in society below the radar.
Coming back to the UK, I was advised to apply for the BBC, and I applied to a couple of their trainee schemes. I didn’t apply for a journalism scheme because I didn’t think I had the journalism experience. To my surprise I got to the shortlist of two of the schemes, but I didn’t get either one. They said I was too old – I was 26. However, the head of the World Service said they thought they should have taken me. They felt so strongly about it that they’d found some money for me to do a training scheme with them. I was immediately put on current affairs programmes, having to churn out stories in six hours – it was incredibly stressful. I felt very ill-equipped, but you just stay up all night reading and try to brief yourself. After a few months I realised that I really loved this.
In 1985, when Gorbachev came in, he started reaching out to the West. The World Service would say to me, “You speak Russian, so you can find some Russians to interview”, which was very easy to do because the Russians had been briefed by Gorbachev to speak to and charm the West! They then said they were going to enlarge their bureau, so I was made correspondent in 1989. Then, the person I was supposed to join was kicked out, due to a spat involving [Oleg] Gordievsky being revealed as a spy for the West. So I ended up going to the Moscow bureau on my own in 1989. It’s quite something to go from no experience to having to field the hottest story on the planet. I did think that the challenge would be that people would think that Russia was opening up and that this was a constant good news story, but there were signs already of backlash from nationalists. My problem would be managing expectations from my editors and audience: this wasn’t all going to plan. What I didn’t expect was the fall of the Soviet Union – I didn’t expect it to be quite so brittle. I thought I would be reporting on a slow return to the norm in the Soviet Union – a rather depressing story. Instead, it was the most amazing story.
On the 19th August 1991 I was rung up saying that there’s a state of emergency, telling me to go to the office, and within hours Gorbachev had been arrested. It was just amazing. The first thing I wondered was “is this really a coup?”. The Soviets were masters at declaring something that wasn’t true. But I really knew this was happening when I turned on the television and saw the newsreader who had been sacked under Gorbachev was back. He made a short announcement, and then they played Swan Lake, which is often what they play when a Kremlin leader dies or is replaced. So I thought this must be real. Then someone called me saying there’s tanks going towards the Kremlin, and then I knew it was real.
Cherwell: What was it like being a female journalist in Russia?
Kendall: There were very few female BBC journalists at the time. Soon people realised that this was a fast-moving situation, and they needed people who spoke the language, and that trumped being an experienced male correspondent! Before long there ended up being a lot of us in Moscow from The New York Times, and El País, but we all felt united rather than divided as a cohort of journalists.
Once, at a meeting with the Soviet foreign ministry, the minister said, “And now let’s have a question from one of our dear lady journalists”. They asked a woman from El País, a fantastic journalist who always had tough questions and fantastic scoops. We saw his expression of being hit below the belt; he hadn’t thought a woman would come up with something quite so poignant.
Cherwell: What’s one piece of advice for aspiring journalists when writing or interviewing?
Kendall: To follow your passions, travel to interesting places so that you’ve got interesting things to say. It might also give you the opportunity to do things you wouldn’t necessarily have the chance to do in the UK.
You’ve got to show commitment to journalism – you need a portfolio, so start a podcast or a blog. Be able to turn your hand to other formats: a publication might send you somewhere to do a podcast or radio and take pictures, so you might as well learn to do it. This will also give you a landscape for what you like doing. Lots of people think they need to fill the gaps in their CV, but what’s really important is doing what you’re passionate about and getting the most out of it. That’s what gives you depth.
