Putin's Total Humiliation as Drones Swarm Into Russia

Hello and welcome to the Daily Beast Live. Thank you so much for joining us. We have got a fantastic topic to cover with you today and that is looking at Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for a very long time in Russia and for a very long time it looked like an unassailable control and grip that he had on the country. But that does seem to be changing as the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase. Today we will talk to a real expert on Russia and Ukraine and find out what is going on and why is Putin starting to panic, if indeed he is. So my name is Nico Hines, great to be with you. I'm joined today by Alison Quinn. She's a long time, much loved Daily Beast contributor, editor, writer. She is also somebody who has spent eight years in Russia. She has witnessed firsthand Putin's grip on authority becoming tighter and tighter. She wrote about it for the Moscow Times and then she finally left the country in 2015 when Putin began his original first leg of his invasion of Ukraine. So Alison, welcome. Hi, glad to be here. I love Putin's imminent downfall and signs of it. Okay, well, imminent might be a stretch, but it does seem to me that there are signs of big trouble for Putin. What's your kind of big picture view of this? I agree with you that it might not be too imminent, but I think that the cracks are definitely there. I think it's telling, it's becoming more and more obvious that Putin himself is spooked. We've heard in the past several months and even last year about how he's afraid of being assassinated, he's isolated in his bunker. And now there's this stuff about that secluded residence in Valdai, he was taking steps to demolish part of that to protect it from drones, moving his yacht. He seems spooked and it seems like his own people are ready to start calling him out and admitting to problems that he has long insisted are not there. Great. Okay, look, we're going to get into a bit more detail on all of those issues. Just first, can I just say to all of our lovely viewers who are joining us, please do put a comment in the comments field, whether you're watching on Substack or YouTube, and we will ask some of those questions to Alison, our expert, who we're lucky to have today. But there's also a big request for you, if you could like the stream, it will boost this conversation to a much wider audience and we can get the word out there that Putin is suffering. Okay, so Alison, what's been happening this week that's kind of changed? There seems to have been a whole load of drone attacks going on in Russia, some of them as far as Siberia. Yes, so this is the fascinating thing, right, is that Russia always thought that they had the upper hand, they had all those ballistic missiles, but what Ukraine has done, they've been so innovative and the fact that they were kind of the underdog, they were forced to come up with cheaper solutions. They didn't have those ballistic missiles, they started making these cheaper mid-strike, long-range drones, now they have Firepoint is working on these ballistic missiles, which can reach, I believe, maximum is 2,100 miles, so they can go well into Russian territory, and that's what we're seeing now. And I think that it's forcing ordinary Russians to wake up to the fact that they don't have, they have nothing to gain from this war. If they didn't realise that before, they have to be waking up to that now. They have only misery to gain from it. And one of the things which always seems to change people's minds in these situations is when the economic impact really starts to hit them, and what we've seen over the last, say, month is big lines at gas stations and problems with securing enough energy and enough fuel. Putin's even had to admit it himself that there is now a problem, and is admitting that that problem has come from the war in Ukraine. How big of a shock is that to people who live in these Russian cities, who were told at the start of this war, don't forget, that it was going to be over in five minutes? I think it's a pretty big shock. I mean, I've seen a lot of videos going around, just like people just fuming at these gas stations. They don't even want to say Putin's name. They're just flipping out about it. And he's, I mean, I think they're waking up to the fact that it's this guy, this old man in a bunker, who's so detached from reality that he doesn't have to deal with any of this. And I think it was Reuters that reported today that they only have enough for 65% of gasoline for the whole country, which is insane. So they're definitely feeling it. And when the war began, let's remember, to start with, you know, we go back to February 2022, Putin announced this war. The whole world was shocked. We were all shocked that he would actually do it. He did, but he said it wasn't a war. It was just a special military operation. All of the spin and some of the actual, I think, genuine fears of NATO allies was that, and don't forget, on day one or two, we were seeing Russian troops being dropped in right near Kiev. People did actually think that this might be a blitzkrieg attack, and the whole country might be taken within a couple of days. So at the beginning, at least, people thought, the people who were being aware of it, and obviously what they were being told wasn't ever the whole story, right? But even when the kind of early winds were looking quite strong for Russia, they must have had a generally positive feeling, or how was the mood in the first few months, and how different does that seem now? I mean, it is kind of funny that even the Kremlin is now admitting that it's a war, and, you know, the absurd reason that they continue to give, I'm still shocked that they are sticking to the original excuse that, well, we have to defeat the Nazis in Ukraine. And they're still going with that, like, years later. I'm just, I'm shocked that they think that still works. But so they're now admitting that it's a war, and they keep playing up this, like, oh, but Ukraine is committing these terrorist attacks on us. And it's like, you know, remember at the beginning of the war, it was supposed to take two days. The Kremlin was certain that it would be quick because, you know, it's big Russia against Ukraine. And the fact that they now have to admit that they're suffering these attacks from Ukraine, and it just didn't go their way, it is pretty shocking. I would say in the initial months of the war, most of the Russians that I knew and the Ukrainians that I knew did not expect it to last this long. But I mean, I think the payoff is that we are now seeing Ukraine turning the tables. And I don't think anybody was really expecting that. No. And let's get into a little bit more about how Ukraine is actually starting to change the narrative of this war in a minute. But let's have a look at some of these comments that are coming in. Gaffer Bob has got a question for you, Alison. Does Putin even know what's going on? I think that, yeah, that's a very good point. He probably doesn't, to a large extent. I think that he does live in a fantasy world. I think it's a world of his own choosing. You know, we know that he stays off the internet, he doesn't really venture out. He's even in the meetings when he's seen with his people, it's like he's got that long table, they all have to stay away from him or it's remote. So he's in his bunker. He probably knows some of what's going on, but I think he chooses to live in this fantasy world. I'm not so sure that he's being lied to as much as he is choosing. Right, right. Yeah, but I think it was very, very interesting to see him actually come out on television and address the nation. And of course, he didn't say, oh, the whole thing's a disaster. But he did start to just admit that there are issues with this war. And I think that crack in the veneer of his kind of total authoritarian nonsense does tell us quite a lot. And yet he's still doubling down on this and insisting that he wants to go all the way, he wants all of Donetsk in Ukraine, he wants all of this stuff that it's pretty clear to everyone else he's not going to get it. But he still wants it all. And that's, I'm not sure what that tells us about his mental state. Okay. What do you think? So we mentioned some of these missile attacks and also these drone strikes, which are happening increasingly deep into Russia. But what about actually in Ukraine itself? What's happening at the moment? Because there does seem to have been some sense of optimism in Kiev. And yet, when you kind of follow the day by day of battles over small towns and skirmishes, the Russians do still seem to be making some gains in some areas. So what's actually happening in Ukraine itself? It's extremely slowed down compared to where they were before. They're really not making big gains right now. I know that they're claiming that they are, but they're not. I mean, they're also running out of manpower. There was recently a report about how they've just taken to random headhunter websites to try and find people to operate the drones around Moscow. Not even military, they just want anybody who would be willing to do it. I think that they're in a much worse place than they were, say, a year ago. And I will also say that in Ukraine, they've really adapted to dealing with the missile strikes and all of these attacks. They know the drill. They know when it's coming. They have a good system in place. Everybody that I talk to, they go spend the night in the metro or wherever they need to go, but they're prepared. In Russia, as much as they say that they are, no, they are not. Last month, I believe it was, when Ukraine did pull off those strikes in the Moscow region, and a woman was actually killed in a suburb of Moscow, I believe. But I happen to have a friend living there, and I said, oh, but weren't there air raid warnings? Didn't the sirens go off? Nope, nothing. Nobody knew about it. She said that even after it happened, no emergency personnel came, like nothing. And I think you've got to remember as well, with the distance now that Ukraine can get these drone strikes, I mean, it's just not possible to defend the scale of a country as big as Russia. I mean, it's just so vast. Siberia is 2,000 miles away from the border, and they can't have anti-aircraft kind of missiles and identifications and all those battalions and things to shoot down these incoming across the whole country. So you've just got to, I guess, you just got to pick where to choose and hope you get lucky. Yeah, and Ukraine has actually figured out ways to bypass the air defense they use. I can't remember exact terrain tracking to go lower so that they can bypass it, and then they strike. So I mean, they've come up with all of these very innovative ways to get back at Russia. One area which obviously is extremely well defended still is the Kremlin. But let's do a little bit of criminology here. What is going on in that building behind those big, big imposing walls? Because there does seem to be some sense sneaking out of the halls of power that they do realize that there are problems here. What's going on? What's the mood you think inside the Kremlin? You know, I can only cite kind of these unverified reports and this chatter among certain murky sources. But I have heard quite a bit of talk that people are increasingly, I mean, within the security services, that members of the security services are increasingly growing fed up with Putin. We did have that report a couple of weeks ago about the former Russian commander who had been in Ukraine, and he went public with this video appeal to Putin and basically said that he had been approached by figures within the defense ministry and the security services, and they wanted him to basically level with Putin and tell him to, you know, wake up to these problems. And I guess the idea was that they had gone to him because he already had a channel, he already had kind of a platform for frustrated former service members. I'll tell you what that reminded me of that video when it came up. It reminded me of a guy who was once one of our favorite characters over here at the Daily Beast, Yevgeny Progozhin, who I'm sure a lot of you remember. He was the Wagner mercenary boss who had a terrifying reputation, which he had been burnishing in the early element of this Ukraine war, where Alison, in fact, was on the ground reporting. So from sort of 2014-2015, the mercenaries were sent in to do some of the early hard work. But they were also used in the intervening years all across the world, and especially in Africa, where they've been used to steal gold, steal diamonds, and murder lots of people. They're kind of a, well, they were also, of course, sent into Syria, weren't they? Absolutely terrifying bunch of mercenaries. And there was this, I think, I was about to say, should I not say this, but I think it was a genuinely electrifying moment when Progozhin, who had started by making videos just like the one we saw last week, where he was raising and airing some of the concerns of troops on the ground and their conditions. And he was just, you know, I'm just innocently raising questions. I'm just saying, have they got enough support? Have they got the backup they need? And then that kind of got more and louder and louder and louder until suddenly he's marching on Moscow with a kind of crowd behind him, and suddenly it looked like we could be on the verge of some sort of coup. What happened to Progozhin? We know that he's, well, apparently dead. But his men are not, and they are still active. Most of them are in Africa now, as far as I know. Some of them are serving as security in the Russian Shadow Fleet, guarding some of those ships. But I do think that's kind of a big element as well, if we're talking about the possibility of some kind of uprising. They have a lot to be mad about, and there's a lot of them. And they're, you know, I think that they are closely monitoring this as well. I've seen a couple purported former Wagner mercenaries who are kind of mocking Putin about everything that's going on. So we can only hope that they may be helping. Well, yeah, I mean, although who knows whether it would be a positive outcome if someone like Progozhin was to suddenly seize the reins of power. Of course, we should note that, and as Alison notes, we don't really know what happened. You never quite know what happens in these murky Russian stories. But the official account is that he met with an unfortunate aviation accident soon after allegedly coming to a deal with Putin, which meant that he could call off his putative coup attempt and make a deal with Putin, and Putin would make sure his men were looked after very well. And then, just by coincidence, a plane he was on went down, and he has at least reportedly not survived. I think this comes back to another theme, though, which is that Putin might give his word to these sorts of people, well, to all sorts of people, but he doesn't necessarily keep his word. And it's those people who have been scorned and who have been cheated who might want to come back and cause him problems, like these soldiers. And the soldiers' mothers is another good example, right, of a place where you hear public complaints about Putin, which is still very rare to hear in Russia. Yeah, that's right. I do think that as long as he has people within the security services that are still on his side, he's going to cling on to power. So what I'm monitoring is, I'm closely monitoring that, but you do have more and more families getting fed up about their kids being killed there or not getting paid. I mean, that's another thing. How many times do they get stiffed on payment for going there? But up until now, the Kremlin had a well-oiled machine and they had ways to kind of sweep that all under the rug. And what I think we are seeing now is there's less willingness to keep sweeping it under the rug. I know that we had reported on those instances of that very beautiful Russian supermodel, Victoria Kolya, who had done this appeal to Putin. And I personally think that that was actually orchestrated with the Kremlin to have kind of this clever way of confronting the thinking approval ratings of women. But the fact that they're going to those lengths to kind of orchestrate these things, they do know that there's a problem. Yeah, I think one of the really kind of clear signs of the problem is the Vladimir Solovyov situation. So he's a character that some of our readers on TheDailyBeast.com will be familiar with because Julia Davis, our brilliant Russian media monitor, follows the kind of things that he has been saying on Russian state media for decades. This guy is an absolute favorite of the Kremlin. He can always be relied on to push the Putin line. He was a huge fan of the war in Ukraine before it started. As the drumbeats got worse, as the pressure for the invasion grew, he was one of the loudest voices saying that it would be a great success and that they had to do it and we have to crush those Nazis. And of course, that's become a very, very difficult line to push five years later. He has tried to do it, interestingly, by covering the war closely. So unlike some of his other propagandists, he actually does go, maybe not to the front line itself, but he purports to get close to the action. He goes on the ground, he spends time with the troops. And again, if you're doing that, day after day after day, it's impossible not to start to reflect some of the grumbles and complaints and, you know, more than grumbles. In a lot of cases, we're talking about an army which is dying after about 25 minutes of exposure to the battlefield, according to some estimates. So the concerns are starting to be raised, even by people like him. And there are no greater supporters of Putin than this guy. He's been given every honour, every award, and even he is now struggling. He still, if you watch his show on a Sunday night, which is his big kind of weekly show, he still says that the war is a great thing and that Russia will have a great victory and that, if anything, they should just be going harder and faster and making the war bigger. But he started to be elbowed out somewhat from the Kremlin. He snubbed at all the awards this year. He normally does very well at those awards, funnily enough. And you're starting to see a break between the top puppet master and the top puppet. And although, like you say, with these kind of internal criminology stories, you never quite know the truth, but if there's a break between two figures like this, you know that there is real problems behind the scenes. Yeah, and part of it, I think, too, is that something we hadn't mentioned yet was the Kremlin's decision to crack down on the internet and Telegram and all of these platforms that even Russian military bloggers had been using, and then they were cut off. And that was also, many believe that that did affect the Russian troops on the battlefield because they had been using Telegram to coordinate and stuff. And so there is anger over quite a bit of that, just this bubble that Putin has created, which is kind of a deranged fantasy. And he lives in that bubble, but other people don't want to live in that bubble. So they're waking up to the reality. Yeah. Okay. So we've got some questions here. Susie Leigh is asking, what's the succession plan in Russia? So I guess, what's the succession plan from Putin's point of view, and what is potentially the succession plan from anyone else's point of view? I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know of a succession plan. I know of quite a lot of kind of informal speculation about who would succeed Putin. I'm not aware that they have actually designated any kind of plan, or if they have, that it would be public knowledge. I know that one of Putin's closest aides recently died, Sergei Ivanov, who was once considered a possible successor, but obviously he's dead. There have been kind of just nightmare scenarios like, what if Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, which I don't see how that would work. But I think they're keeping their cards pretty close. And the one way that Putin has really doomed the entire country, I think, is that he did create this power vertical where he's in control of everything. And then when he croaks, what's going to happen? There's no prepared. Yeah, we've got a question here, or I guess it's more of a comment. Rugby says Putin has killed off all the future leaders. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, yeah. So there's another question in here, and I think this is an interesting one, where it's one of those things where you hear rumours, you see reports, and you're not quite sure, should we be giving that any credence? Is that possible? And we've already had a few people make reference to it today in the comments, and that is, are there lots of pretend Putins walking around? Are the body doubles? Do we know that that's always him? He suddenly looks fat in some pictures, he suddenly looks thin. What's going on? I wish I knew. I mean, I see that all the time, and I try not to go too deep into it, because I feel like I might drive myself crazy, but I hear that a lot, and I do hear that from some credible sources, that yes, they do believe that he has body doubles. But obviously, we have to take all of that with a grain of salt, and if he does have body doubles, it's another nightmare, because then there's multiple Putins willing to do his fitting. Okay, it's pretty scary stuff. Okay, just a reminder to you guys who are joining us, please do like and subscribe. It helps boost us, and then more people can see our conversation and come and join in. And please do give us your questions for Alison. We've got some great ones here. Someone is saying, Putin is looking as bad as Mitch McConnell. Now, we don't need to go fully into the Mitch debate, although I can see from the comments that it is very much at the top of people's minds today. Someone else is asking, is Mitch still alive or what? I don't expect you to answer that question, but can you please give us a little bit of insight into Putin's health, because there have been rumours that he could be suffering from some serious health issues. Perhaps that could be what brings about his demise. There have been rumours for a long time that he has all these kind of health issues. You know, I've heard leukemia, cancer. He does occasionally look very bloated, and so people sometimes think maybe he's got some kind of kidney issues. I think it's the Botox. I think that his health might play a role. That is true. He's 73 years old now. We know that he's famously paranoid about protecting his health and protecting himself from germs. We can hope, but I think that I personally would hope for more of a coup if we're going to see his downfall. I think it would be too easy for him to suffer some kind health problem, and they fiercely protect everything to do with his health. He's also famously obsessed with immortality and trying to prolong his life, so we know that he has all kinds of wacko doctors presumably trying to help keep him alive. Yeah, but we don't really know. It's another thing that's just a lot of speculation, and there's not a lot of confirmed facts. Yeah. Okay, so if we're talking about this vibe shift, there's not a lot of confirmed facts, but there is definitely a vibe shift, which is that the war is not going so well. Putin knows he's in big trouble. The Russian public is starting to get that idea, and in fact, I think there's some polling, isn't there, from the last few weeks? Even the official Kremlin polling is admitting that Putin's popularity is on the slide, and you don't see that too often. Yeah, so in two weeks in a row, it's gone down. It's sinking, and that is the one that is controlled by the state, so that tells you something, and I know the Levada Center had also done polling, and I was watching an interview with the head of the Levada Center who's a foreign agent. He's an enemy of the Kremlin now, but he was also saying that they've seen this gradual sinking, not just of the approval rating of Putin, but of how Russians feel about the future. Everything's just getting gradually darker, and if we're seeing that in the state-controlled polling, that should be a wake-up call. Yeah, certainly a wake-up call. So, as that kind of vibe shift does take place, we've got a great question here from Roger Hinshel, who's saying, wouldn't this be a great time then for Trump to come back to the table and try to really negotiate peace again? Maybe there's an opportunity for that now, where there didn't seem to be for a while, because Putin seemed to be happy just continuing to crush Ukraine, but maybe now he does want a deal. It would be a great time, but I don't think Trump actually cares. I think at this point, Trump has just kind of lost interest, and he's going to let them sort it out. We know that he has welcomed Ukraine's long-range strikes on Russian territory. He's encouraged it. He's talked about letting Ukraine make their own Patriot missiles now. That would take some time, so that's not an immediate fix, but I think that Trump is really hoping that Ukraine just does it themselves, so he doesn't have to worry about it. But I will say that there was really quite an amazing turnaround when it comes to Putin-Trump, because we're now seeing Putin make really kind of desperate appeals. That's the other thing, is that it's become clear that he knows he's in trouble, because we can see him making these overtures to Trump. There was that video, I believe it was about a week ago, when he dressed up in his military uniform, and they staged this really ridiculous visit to a command post. For whatever reason, they had this camouflage knitting on the inside. It did certainly look like it was filmed in a TV studio somewhere, but it was designed I believe to get Trump's attention. It came out end of day on a Friday when Russians were sleeping. It seemed like they timed it to come out to get the attention of Washington, D.C. So he's made all these overtures, and then we know that Trump actually ghosted Putin. Yeah, this was interesting, wasn't it? Because Peskov actually admitted this. So what was going on with that? Because normally they try and make out that basically Trump was trying to get hold of Putin all the time, and Putin's very busy. Yeah, it's super strange. At the NATO summit, when Trump was behaving strangely, and he kept mentioning Putin, and he said there was a point when he was trying to field questions from reporters for Putin, so he could convey them to Putin later. He said, I'm going to call him after this. So everybody knew that Trump was planning to call Putin that evening. But it didn't happen, apparently. The Kremlin admitted that it didn't happen, which in itself is strange, because why come out and admit that you just got dissed? But they did, and then Peskov kind of gave a ridiculous excuse for it and just said, yes, Trump was just very busy, but we're ready, and Putin's ready. Whenever Trump can find time, Putin's ready, basically is what he said. And he continues to make these kind of comments. Whenever Trump wants to talk to us, whenever we're needed, Putin is ready for Mr. Trump, which I'm not sure if there's a strategy there, but to me, it looks like they're just admitting at this point that they're really desperate. Okay, I've got another question here about post-Putin Russia and the idea of it. So you raised the terrifying prospect of the Chechen warlord, Kadyrov, as being one of the people who potentially could take over if there was some sort of post-Putin fight to see who could claim the Kremlin. He's a very, very scary figure, although another one who seems to be dogged by serious illness. Again, we're not quite sure what's going on, but he does look a bit yellow at times, and I think that's a good side for your health. So we have this question from Curtis Campaign, who is asking, after Putin, is it likely that the Stans or Siberia or perhaps even Chechnya, which let's forget, Putin has history of quelling uprisings down there, of trying to split away, either leave the country or just leave the party, not want to be related to this kind of Moscow power-hungry centralized state anymore? Are we talking about like a sovereign state kind of situation where they'd be separated? I think it's just a question of like, what will happen to Russia when Putin goes? I guess that's really the question. I mean, I do think that that's a possibility. I mean, that is one of the realities of Russia, is that it's so vast and large that what you see in Moscow or St. Petersburg is not at all what you see out in the regions. So I do think that there is potential for some kind of sentiment about wanting to break away and establish their own. I don't know how feasible that would be. I'm thinking about who could possibly step in if something were to happen to Putin. Lukashenko. I mean, these are all kind of nightmare scenarios. Yeah. I mean, isn't Lukashenko even older than Putin? He certainly looks it. I think he's in his 80s, isn't he? Although Susie points out here at 73, Putin's not that old for a dictator. Yeah, that's true. There's certainly some predecessors of him and some people in Africa who've kind of limped on into their 80s and 90s. So there could be another 20 years of Putin. I do also want to point out that he does have those secret sons that are tucked away. I believe they're very young right now, but perhaps he's grooming them to be his successors. I don't know. It would make more sense, I think. And in fact, one of our commenters, I'm not sure if I can see it now, Benji, producer Benji, if we're very lucky, might throw it up on the screen. But somebody was pointing out that it's very dangerous to have a succession plan as an autocrat or a dictator unless you keep it in the family. And I think if you've read Shakespeare, even if you keep it in the family. What do we know about little Putin's? There's also a daughter, right? Yeah, well, how many daughters does he have? Two. But the boys, the two secret sons with Khabib, you know, the gymnast, who, according to reports, they are kept in this very remote compound at his Valdai residence. It's secluded. They're cut off from the world. There was recent reporting that we did about how they were hiring Western nannies from NATO countries to immerse the boys in the English language and Western culture, which I think says a lot about Putin's, I think he has disdain for ordinary Russians. And to me, that's what I see is that he actually hates his own people. And he's trying to raise these two sons to be more Western. But we don't know very much about them. Apart from they're living in this bubble, they're very well protected. I want to say they're both under the age of 10. I don't remember the exact ages, but I don't know what they look like. It's kind of a mystery, but there could be something going on there with the succession plan. I don't know. It'd be very interesting because you sometimes see a kind of soft launch like we've had in North Korea, right? With the daughter suddenly being invited to, for a while the sister was being kind of groomed and she was being allowed to make speeches and was given kind of prominent roles. And now suddenly Kim Jong-un's daughter is being kind of hyped up as a future power. So I guess at some point we should start looking out for, you know, if he's suddenly spotted with a couple of kids at a military parade, then that's a big sign something's happening. Okay, I've got quite a specific question here. I don't know if you'll know the answer, but you can talk a little bit about this issue, which is very interesting and is something that, bizarrely, Melania Trump has got herself involved in directly. So someone called calling themselves Van Rouge and happy Friday to you, Van Rouge. I think we all need one of those. Are Russian people aware of the mass kidnappings of Ukrainian children and the concentration of the war on civilian targets in Ukraine? I mean, that's a tough one because the Russians that I know personally are aware, but they're, you know, opposition types, they've always been against the war. Ordinary Russians, I don't think they care. I mean, I don't think that they even really ask themselves that question, or if they do, I think that they genuinely believe that these children were being rescued, which is really appalling and disturbing, but I don't think they care. We know that some Russian families have adopted some of these kids. They were swept up in the system. I can't imagine what it will be like for them growing up to one day realize what actually happened, you know, to their families and that they lost their culture. And I know Melania Trump has been closely involved, but I will say that there was some intrigue about that because she had been claiming she was dealing directly with Putin, and I believe it was Lukashenko who outed her and said that wasn't the case. It's very interesting. You don't often find a member of the Trump family who are insisting that their secret relationship with Putin is deeper and runs longer than had previously been reported. The rest of the family tend to try and hide their links. That's been another thing that we will absolutely carry on watching is the US reaction and response to these changing attitudes. Hopefully our commenters are right and that there'll be an opportunity here for peace to be struck. We're going to start to wrap it up now. I would just like to say thank you to everyone who's joined. Thank you so much to Alison. I'm saying to everybody, you've got to like us, you've got to subscribe, you've got to put your comments in, and we will be back. I have got to come back because we've got some questions here that we haven't been able to get to. Many of them are about Mitch McConnell. Vicky asked, has Trump been asking Putin how to keep Mitch McConnell alive? Might have. I don't know. I've also got a question here for me about the Ann Widdicombe story, and this is an absolutely wild one. I promise not to go into details, but one of the Brexit leaders was announced dead this morning, and it's now being alleged that they were murdered. So there's a manhunt underway and a potential, I don't know, some sort of political assassination in Britain. I don't know. Stay tuned. If that develops into an exciting story, we might come back to that, but we will certainly come back to discuss Mitch McConnell. We are watching his every, I was about to say his every breath, but we don't even know if he's still breathing, people. But we are covering it all over on The Daily Beast, and we will be covering it on Future Lives next week. So look forward to speaking to you all again then soon. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alan.