If You're Listening with Matt Bevan

For 20 years the Russian President Vladimir Putin was happy to lurk in the shadows, trying and occasionally succeeding to manipulate the rest of the world into doing what he wanted them to do. But this year he chucked that out the window. His invasion of Ukraine has turned global security and the global economy upside down. In this episode we ask, why did he do it?

Vladimir Putin's plan for a three day takeover of Ukraine relied on a quick strike to take out Volodymyr Zelenskyy - to kill him, to capture him, or to make him flee. Putin assumed that Zelenskyy was weak, but on the very first day of the invasion, two events showed that Putin was wrong, and led to the transformation of a man into a symbol of defiance against Russian tyranny.

What does war look like on the ground, for the soldiers who go off to fight? What’s it like to be sent into the muddy confusion of a battlefield, asked to lay down your life for your country? In this episode: two soldiers. A Ukrainian in his 50s and a Russian in his 20s. One of them is still on the battlefield. The other fought for a week, and is now serving a 15 year prison sentence. These two stories explain a lot about how Russia messed this up, and how Ukraine was far stronger than anyone realised.

On 26 September, a series of underwater explosions destroyed a cluster of natural gas pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The pipes were designed to deliver gas directly from Russia to Germany, and the explosions exacerbated the already dire energy crisis in Europe. Everyone agrees it was sabotage, but nobody can agree on who did it. Today: the mystery of the Baltic Sea bubbles, and the story of how Germany’s plan for peace-through-capitalism blew up in their face.

Protest is not allowed inside Russia. There was little resistance from the Russian people to the invasion of Ukraine, and those who didn’t like it simply left. But Vladimir Putin has made a decree that has caused discord across Russia. Has he finally pushed his people too far?

After ten months of war, a few likely outcomes of the war in Ukraine are emerging. A win for Vladimir Putin. A win for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A bitter frozen conflict. Neither Putin or Zelenskyy will sign a peace agreement and admit defeat. But what if Putin’s regime ends?