Is Putin a master manipulator or a very smart guy?

ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis, the host of the Politics Now podcast, where I'm joined by the best of the best at the ABC to break down the latest in politics, including for the next little while, the wonderful Melissa Clark.

Oh, thanks, PK.

That's right.

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be joining you for the party room while Fran Kelly takes a break, and we'll keep on zooming out and taking stock of the week in politics and analyse what it really means for you.

So follow Politics Now on the ABC Listen App so you never miss an episode.

This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Awabakal, Darug and Eora people.

Remember earlier this year when US President Donald Trump held a military parade in Washington?

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the President of the United States, Donald J.

Trump and and First Lady Melania Trump.

It was kind of depressing.

Under dark skies, U.S.

troops ambled past a small crowd.

Pre-recorded rock music and ads for weapons manufacturers permeated the gloom.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Lockheed Martin.

Trump's low-energy and partially improvised speech was met with light applause from the military.

We're the hottest country in the world right now.

And our country will soon be greater and stronger than ever before.

Now, contrast this with the Russian Victory Day parade just one month beforehand.

It looked spectacular.

The military was pumped up to 11 with excitement for Vladimir Putin and all things Russia.

The production values were top-notch, very Riefenstahl-esque.

If you'd just woken up from a 30-year coma and had to guess which of these two countries was currently teetering on the edge of recession and bogged down in a horrific three-and-a-half-year land war in which it had suffered more than a million military casualties, would it be this one?

Or this one?

Yeah, it's not that one.

It turns out there's no real correlation between the quality of your military parades and the quality of your military.

The thing is though, Vladimir Putin is the master of facade.

The guy is all about portraying incredible strength and power, and making it look like with him in charge, Russia can never lose.

Donald Trump wants this man, Vladimir Putin, the guy with the cannons, the tanks, and the goose-stepping marching band, to come to a peace agreement with the country he invaded three years ago.

At the beginning of August 2025, Trump thought he was on the verge of getting it done.

His former golfing buddy, turned peace envoy Steve Witkoff, returned from Moscow with news that Putin was willing to make significant concessions in the name of peace.

He was willing to give up some of the land that Russia currently occupied and allow the US to guarantee Ukraine's security.

We agreed to

robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing.

There were hopes that both Russia and Ukraine could soon be holding big parades.

In the last few weeks, a flurry of peace negotiations took place between Putin and Witkoff.

Unfortunately, we don't really know what happened in those meetings.

And it now appears that Witkoff didn't really know what was happening in those meetings either.

I'm Matt Bevan,

and this is If You're Listening.

The history of wars in Ukraine is mostly about mud.

Europe's 21st century war is fought amid mud and rage in the trenches.

The same thing that's made Ukraine attractive to invading forces for centuries, its rich, black, fertile soil, also makes invading it very difficult.

Come March in Ukraine, the snow will start to melt.

That will create more mud.

That'll make it much more difficult for invading forces.

In Ukraine, they call this period of time bezdorizhia, or roadlessness.

In Russian, it's called rasputitsia, or the season of bad roads.

It can be a very powerful defensive weapon if you know how to use it.

And the Ukrainian army definitely knows how to use it.

In the early days of Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, his plan was to take control of the capital Kyiv in four days.

A massive tank attack would drive south from Belarus, past the Chernobyl nuclear power station and right into the city.

This is a convoy that's been building slowly for several days now, but it's apparently doubled in length since the weekend.

But the snow had started melting earlier than expected and turned the fields into impossible mud traps.

The tanks had to travel in a convoy on the highways.

These latest satellite pictures show a massive Russian military convoy north of Kiev that stretches for 64 kilometers.

Hundreds of tanks, weapons and troops are advancing on the capital.

But traveling in a Kharki Conga line on major roads presents a serious problem.

There was a big column moving towards Kiev.

We organized an an ambush and destroyed the head of the column.

If you blow up the front of the column, the destroyed tanks become a roadblock.

Going around that roadblock means driving into the mud.

Yeah, they have a lot of people, a lot of tanks.

It doesn't matter how they fight.

We fight like lions and they won't win.

The tanks became trapped.

New satellite imagery shows a large Russian convoy on the outskirts of Kyiv has now largely dispersed and moved into forests amid reports of food and fuel shortages.

This slowed the Russians down considerably, but their muddy problems were only just beginning.

Two days after the invasion, the Ukrainian army decided that they needed more mud and blew up a giant dam.

The dam flooded a river valley which encircled the northern outskirts of Kyiv.

Several towns were flooded.

Houses were washed away, but so were the Russian tanks.

Six months later, with the mud nice and dry, the Ukrainians started trying to push Russia back out of their country.

Launched in the past week, Ukraine's counter-attack in the east is paying off.

Ukraine's military continues to make rapid advances in the south and east.

On a stunning turnaround, Ukraine has recaptured more than 6,000 square kilometers of its territory in the space of weeks.

It could mark a major turning point in the six-month war.

A new front line was formed, 700 kilometers long.

Ukraine's soldiers and population, as well as its allies in the West, appear more resolute than ever.

that Russia can be defeated militarily.

The Ukrainians were confident that next time the mud dried, they would be ready to push all the way to the Russian border.

The Ukrainians have been waiting for the ground to dry for the counter-offensive, waiting for winter to pass, for the snow to melt, for the ground to dry so the tanks can go over it.

By this time though, Russia had spent enormous resources building fortifications to stop Ukraine's tanks.

And they were hoping that the Dnipro River, which ran along the southern part of the front line, would be too difficult for Ukrainian forces to cross.

As the mud began to dry, the Ukrainians began to make preparations to cross that river.

As soon as the ground hardened, they would be ready to make their move.

But they would never get a chance.

The Russians took a page out of Ukraine's book and destroyed a dam upstream.

Thousands of people are being evacuated downstream of a major dam which has collapsed in Russian-held Ukraine.

The Kokovka Dam Reservoir was the largest in Europe, 240 kilometers long and storing 18 cubic kilometres of water.

It was orders of magnitude bigger than the dam the Ukrainians had blown up near Kyiv.

Here in Australia we like to measure large volumes of water in Sydney harbours and this was 36 Sydney harbours.

Wiretap phone calls released by the Ukrainian security service indicate that the Russians may have intended to create a smaller flood.

In the call, one Russian soldier tells another the sabotage of the dam didn't go according to plan, and they did more than they had planned for.

Kind of the Russian equivalent of the Italian job scene where Michael Kaine yells, You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

The flood zone includes areas where more than 100,000 people lived before the war.

The flooding was catastrophic.

More than 40 towns downstream of the dam were inundated.

Even once the water receded, the mud was much too thick to mount an offensive.

As a result, Ukraine was forced to redirect their efforts to the northern half of the front line, which was heavily fortified with Russian troops.

Summer was supposed to bring huge gains for Ukraine, but within days of it beginning, the counter-offensive was in disarray.

In the previous summer, Ukraine was pushing forward several kilometers every day, but this summer they hardly made any ground at all.

But after months of fighting the southern front line has moved around 15 kilometers.

You probably haven't heard all that much about the front line of the Ukraine war since then, and that's because not that much has really happened.

The head of Ukraine's armed forces has admitted the war has reached a stalemate.

Two summers have come and gone since then, and progress is now being measured in meters, not not kilometers.

Impregnable fortifications have been built on both sides of the front line and constant drone surveillance means nobody can launch a surprise attack, no matter if it's muddy or dry.

They see everything we do and we try to see what they do.

It is impossible to break it.

The thing is though, the front line isn't anywhere logical.

It doesn't run along a state border or along the top of a mountain range.

It's just where both sides stopped trying to cross the mud and dug into it instead.

See, Ukraine is split up into oblasts, which are basically like states or provinces.

And the front line slices through four of these oblasts.

Hherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia controls almost all of Luhansk, but the other three are split down the middle.

In Luhansk and Donetsk, 72% of the population primarily speak Russian.

In Zaporizhia and Kusan, most people speak Ukrainian.

In 2022, Russia decided that even though they didn't fully control those four oblasts, they could attempt to claim them as Russian territory.

As Moscow is losing ground on the battlefield, it's hoping to win at the ballot box.

Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine are preparing for the first referendums on joining Russia.

Many Ukrainians who'd fled the region were unimpressed.

I'm against the referendum.

I think that my town and my region fully belong to Ukraine.

What was the experience like for people voting in that referendum, though?

Well, imagine sitting in your apartment in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

Someone buzzes the front door of the apartment building.

You see two women with papers and two soldiers.

As they climb the stairs inside, you can see on CCTV that the soldiers are carrying AK-47 rifles.

They come to the top floor

and they knock on your door.

Are you going to take the ballot they give you and vote against becoming part of Russia?

And if you are brave enough to do that, do you really think that ballot is going to be counted?

Yeah, thought so.

In Donetsk, the Kremlin claims that over 99% have voted to join Russia.

Wow, great result.

The polls have been denounced as a sham by Ukraine and Western governments.

Gee, what gave them that impression?

Following this referendum, Russia announced the annexation of those four regions, including the parts that remained under Ukrainian control.

That annexation has only been recognised by North Korea and Syria.

Very much the axis of thanks, but I'd rather you didn't help me countries.

But what does Russia do in the territory that they've annexed?

Well, in parts of that territory that has been reclaimed by Ukraine, mass graves have been found.

There are many children.

There are bodies with hands tied behind their backs.

The world must acknowledge this is genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Authorities here say some of the bodies dug up bear signs of torture.

Moscow has dismissed the accounts, accusing Ukraine of staging atrocities.

Additionally, Russia has been accused of abducting tens of thousands of children from the areas they occupy.

Once the children were transferred and taken to Russia, two things happened to them.

The first was that they were allocated to Russian families, and secondly, they've been made Russian citizens.

This, according to the International Criminal Court, may constitute a war crime.

It is forbidden by international law for occupied powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories.

Children enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention.

So, those are the facts on the ground, as they say.

Russia is occupying about 19% of Ukrainian territory and making claims over another 3%.

Russia wants all 22% to be part of Russia.

Ukraine wants Russia to have none of that.

That has been the calculus of the problem for three years.

There can be no peace because both sides say their land is being occupied by their enemy.

But then things seem to be changing.

Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled.

And it will take me no longer than one day.

Well, that one day has come and gone, followed by more than 200 other days.

And Trump now says that it's all a bit more complicated than he expected.

You know, I've done six wars, I've ended six wars, and I thought this maybe would be the easiest one.

And it's not the easiest one.

It's a tough one.

A lot of reasons for it.

Damn, whose job was it to tell Trump that the Ukraine war is complicated?

Was it JD, Pete?

Whose job was that?

Anyway, Trump's got his eyes set on that sweet Nobel Peace Prize, and so he's doubling his efforts.

And the guy he's got working on ending this conflict is Steve Witkoff.

Now, last week's episode was all about this guy.

He's a lawyer, turned billionaire, property developer, turned international peace negotiator.

He's become a very wealthy, successful man, and he's my pal.

In the first couple of months of the Trump administration, his wealthy, successful pal made several trips to Moscow.

In this clip, released by the Kremlin, Witkoff goes to sit opposite Putin at a table and seems to assume that the woman sitting next to him is a translator sent by the American Embassy.

Interpreter?

From the Embassy.

She is, in fact, one of Putin's aides.

Witkoff hadn't organized any American translators or any American officials to come and take notes, but that's fine because Putin would never trick anyone.

Putin's a very smart guy.

You know, someone said to me, you know, you got to watch it because he's an ex-KGB guy.

He could be looking to manipulate you.

Perished the thought.

I don't regard Putin as a bad guy.

I liked him.

I thought he was straight up with me.

Fortunately for Witkoff, this very smart, straight-up guy was very keen to run him through everything that was happening on the ground in Ukraine.

And Witkoff was more than happy to tell Tucker Carlson all about it in an interview.

First of all, I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea,

you know, the names,

Lugansk, and there's two others.

Slightly shaky start, but go on.

They're Russian-speaking.

I mean, some of them are, sure.

There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.

And Russia controls that.

In fact, some of those territories are now, from the Russian perspective, part of Russia.

Gee, all that sounds a lot like Russian propaganda.

But I thought Putin wasn't going to try and manipulate you.

According to Witkoff, all of this is just a matter of other countries recognizing these facts.

These facts that were created by guys with AK-47s knocking on people's doors.

The question is, will they be...

Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?

Will it end up, can Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this?

This is the central issue in the conflict.

Witkoff felt like he was making good peace progress with his Moscow meetings, so he headed back over in early August to meet again with Putin.

And when he returned to the U.S.

and briefed Donald Trump, the president started talking about land swaps.

There'll be some land swapping going on.

I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.

To the good, for the good of Ukraine.

Good stuff, not bad stuff.

Also, some bad stuff for both.

It's as good and there's bad, but it's very complex.

And this good, bad, very complex deal Witkoff thought he had made was very simple.

Remember those four regions?

You know, the names

of Lugansk and there's two others.

Yeah, so Putin currently claims all of them and Crimea, which he has controlled since 2014.

In the plan Witkoff was all excited about, Putin would give up two of the contested regions, and in exchange, he would keep all of the others.

So Putin would give up Kherson and Zaporizhia, and in exchange, he would keep all of Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea.

This would give Ukraine back most of its coastline, which according to Trump is very important.

You know, in real estate, we call it oceanfront property.

That's always the most valuable property.

If you're in a lake, a river, or an ocean, it's always the best property.

Putin is willing to give up prime oceanfront real estate.

What a guy.

This news came as a shock to European leaders and diplomats, as it was their understanding that Putin wasn't willing to give up anything at all.

And it turns out that

was in fact the case.

It appears that after going into a meeting with Putin without an American translator or a note-taker, Witkoff had totally misunderstood what Putin was offering.

The land swap he was actually offering was that Russia would give up a few tiny little bits of land they were occupying elsewhere in Ukraine in exchange for these so-called four regions, Donbass, Crimea,

you know, the names of Lugansk, and there's two others.

So Putin wasn't actually conceding anything at all.

At the subsequent meeting between Putin and Trump in Alaska, no land swaps were agreed to.

When Witkoff was asked on CNN what was going on with those four regions, he said this.

I think, you know, look, I don't know that

we have the time now to go through all the different issues on these five regions.

Oh, five regions now.

What Witkoff did have time to talk about, though, was that they'd made some progress on security guarantees for Ukraine, which would stop Russia from invading again in the future.

We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection.

That means a guarantee that if Ukraine was ever hypothetically attacked in the future, the U.S.

would come in with the full force of its military and defend Ukraine.

Which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO.

We sort of were able to bypass that and

get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.

And yet Russia has already said it will not agree to let Ukraine's Western allies station any troops in Ukraine, making any guarantee from the US basically worthless.

Putin hasn't actually agreed to concede anything.

And why would you expect him to?

This is a man who throws a spectacular Victory Day parade when he is simultaneously ordering the abduction of children, the torture of civilians, the bombing of apartment buildings, playgrounds, and maternity hospitals.

Giving up territory that he's claimed for Russia is not an option for him.

At some point, Witkoff and Trump may realize this.

They may realize that Putin is, in fact a bad guy.

If you're wondering, Steve, that's zlode in Russian.

If you're listening is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKeon.

Audio production is by Adair Shepherd.

Next, what on earth is going on with Iran?

According to the Australian government, they've been orchestrating anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.

This has understandably terrified the local Jewish community, but once you look past the terror and look at the details, these attacks are really very strange.

The people involved are incredibly incompetent, low-level street thugs, hardly international men of mystery, although one of them did call himself James Bond.

And the thing is, it's not only in Australia.

Similar attacks by similarly unsophisticated thugs are apparently being orchestrated elsewhere too.

So, what's going on here?

Is this a deliberate strategy by Iran?

Or are they scraping the bottom of the barrel after two years of conflict with Israel?

That's next, on if you're listening.