‘The UK has been promoted to Russia’s main opponent’: Luke Harding on Putin, Trump and the potential for a new European war

Luke Harding is the Guardian’s senior international correspondent. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the paper’s Moscow correspondent – until he was refused re-entry to Russia and deported. He is the author of several acclaimed books on Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and Russia. He met Nerve co-founder Carole Cadwalladr at the Frontline Club in London to discuss his new book Betrayal: Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest. This is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Carole On a personal level you’ve shown commitment to the story, haven’t you? This is something you feel compelled to cover, and you’ve kept on going back to Ukraine over what is now years.

Luke  Yes. And I see you sitting here, and I feel real kinship, because – without reopening too many of our wounds – for a very long time those of us who took an interest in Russia, in the Kremlin, in its destabilisation activities and its attempts to subvert our politics in this country, were dismissed as mad people, as neocons, or – one favourite phrase my Russian trolls use – as “Nato shills”, whatever that means. Oh, and Russophobes. Except it’s never just a Russophobe; it’s always a “pathological Russophobe”. They have to adjectivise it. And, speaking among friends: we were right. We were right.

And I speak as someone who was in Moscow and was deported; I was kicked out in 2011, the first case of its kind since the cold war. What we were right about was its boundless revisionist ambition to reshape the world: to impose Russian influence over the near abroad – basically the countries of the former Soviet Union, especially Ukraine. For a long time, a lot of politicians were not across it, or didn’t believe us, or preferred to ignore it – to the point where we now have the biggest war in Europe, the most deadly war in Europe, since 1945, in which thousands of civilians have died, and where every night the Russians are pounding Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones. This is not normal. This was not inevitable. And I’m just thankful that a few of us have stuck with this story.

Carole One of the things I want to talk about is that, in many ways, the scales have fallen from our eyes. We can see clearly now. We understand what Putin is doing; we can see what is happening in Ukraine. But what I find really interesting is that there are extraordinary things going on across Europe. There is a build-up happening, and we have had a series of warnings over the last months and weeks – particularly over the last few days – from the heads of European intelligence agencies, from the Polish prime minister, from the French president. They are talking about a significant escalation from Russia which could lead to a confrontation with Nato and trigger an article 5 event. Would we do what we’re supposed to do – stand together and fight back against Russia? We’re no longer in denial; we can see what’s happening. But the news cycle is not responding to these threats.

Luke The first thing is to make a conceptual point, a paradigm point: the Kremlin – the Russian political elite – thinks, and has long thought, that it is already at war not just with Ukraine but with what it calls “the collective west”. In other words, we may not wish it to be so, but they think they’re at war with Europe, and in particular the democracies of Europe. And by the way, they really hate the UK. America used to be the main opponent. Now America is run by someone whose allegiances to Russia we can discuss a bit later on, and the UK has been promoted. They feel this is a rolling war of good against evil – they’re good and we’re evil – and Putin has long thought like this. That’s why he’s dispatched assassins to this country to kill Russian dissidents. That’s why he’s tried to meddle in British politics. So first of all, the war exists whether we like it or not.

The other thing is the window of opportunity. I think most people probably assume Donald Trump will, in some form, lose the midterm elections, so the Russians have until January, when the new Congress is sworn in, if they want to test article 5 of the Nato treaty, to do something. And the war is going pretty badly from Putin’s point of view. He gives the impression that victory is inevitable, but in fact it’s been five grinding years and they still haven’t taken the whole of the Donbas region. And Russia’s chances of taking Kyiv and getting rid of Zelenskyy are practically zero. 

So if they’re going to do something, it has to be now. I’m pretty convinced they are going to do something. And I think the real test moment will be when Russia, accidentally on purpose, kills EU civilians – two people on the Estonian border, or four people in a farmhouse in Poland, or some people in Moldova. I think we’re quite close to that, and I think clearly European intelligence agencies think that, and are concerned.

Carole There are really credible voices at the moment saying there are a lot of things lining up right now which look scarily reminiscent of 2022, right before Russia invaded Ukraine. I’ve seen pushback from people saying “we’re not seeing troop movements, so keep your wig on”. But there is talk about a land invasion of Estonia, isn’t there? There are different scenarios: that, or a drone strike on Poland, or something in Britain … Can you talk me through those scenarios? 

Luke There aren’t going to be tanks. It could be water systems; it could be electricity. They’ve been buzzing European airports, naval bases and nuclear facilities, cutting undersea cables in the Baltic, and trying to blow up a Ukrainian plane at Leipzig airport – which they very nearly did, and which could have killed someone. You have to understand there’s a criminal energy about the Russian regime, and they really don’t care if they kill people collaterally. In fact, I think they rather want that, because it’s a test: how will Nato respond? And just in terms of drones, there was a major drone attack on Poland last summer using decoy drones, about 100 of them, and Nato struggled to shoot down four or five. And despite all of this – a hyper-aggressive Russia, a psychopathic dictator – I still don’t think most politicians, including in this country, have quite come to grips with the threat.

Carole There’s a very good chapter in your book on this. You go into detail on that attack, don’t you? And the “we accidentally dragged our anchor around the Baltic Sea for 24 hours”. It’s always wrapped in a thinly believable story, isn’t it?

Luke Yes. I loved writing that chapter. It’s called “Sabotage”, and it was about the Eagle S, which I think was an Indian-crewed tanker that pulled into a port in Russia and then set off into the Baltic on Christmas Day, and then, as you say, “accidentally” dropped its anchor and trashed a whole lot of undersea cables. And the Finns did a good thing: they sent commandos in on a helicopter. They abseiled down through the mist – it was all very dramatic – detained the captain, secured the bridge. And then what did the Finns do? They initiated a legal case, took these hapless sailors off and tried them, and they were acquitted months later on a jurisdictional technicality. This is the problem: we are using law and due process and fairness, and the Russians are just laughing, of course, because they’ll just find another boat and another crew and do it again. And diplomacy – forget it. That didn’t work. We tried diplomacy with Vladimir Putin. Macron flew to Moscow in early 2022 – of course he got nowhere. We need to … what’s the right word? I was going to say “man up”. We need to person up. We need to woman up … We just have to reply with force. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing that will deter Putin.

Carole Can I ask you a personal question? When the Russian spy ship started circling Ireland and Britain a year and a half ago, I started wondering what would happen if they cut the cables, and I have to confess that I bought a wind-up radio. So I must confess to being a prepper. Have you prepped?  

Luke I sort of have and I haven’t. I installed a heat pump this week – because, again, that’s what people are doing in Ukraine, by the way: solar panels and heat pumps, because the Russians are systematically destroying the whole energy infrastructure.
The strange thing is that in other countries – in Denmark, in Norway, the Scandinavian countries – governments have sent letters to people saying: get a power bank, have some water, have food supplies. And in this country we’re still pretending it’s the 1990s. Unfortunately, it’s not.

Carole You have a great line in the book – I think you’re quoting [chess grandmaster Garry] Kasparov – which is: if Trump wasn’t a Russian asset, how would it look any different?

Luke I think the key point is that Trump’s presidencies have been chaotic and protean, a terrible reality TV show where the cast is being swapped, and the only constant theme has really been Trump’s fealty – his suck-up-ness – to Putin. He doesn’t display that sort of behaviour with anybody else – least of all the Europeans, or Keir Starmer, whom he called “no Churchill”, or Meloni, whom he dismissed as a fangirl, or Angela Merkel, whom he said was awful, etc. Putin, by contrast, is a “very, very good friend”, or he has a “very, very good relationship” with him, I think is the quote.

I was about halfway through writing this book last summer when the Alaska summit happened, and there was just one image I couldn’t shake from my head. Trump arrives in Anchorage on Air Force One, and Putin flies in on his plane from Moscow. They meet in the middle. Trump descends on to the red carpet looking lethargic, nervous, lacking his usual swagger. He stands at the top of the T of the red carpet, and then Putin appears and starts walking towards him, and Trump bursts into this manic applause. He’s applauding a man who is a mass murderer, wanted by the International Criminal Court, the most blood-soaked leader since Stalin, and Trump is applauding like a nervous schoolboy. It’s deeply weird behaviour.

I offer three overlapping explanations in the book. One is “dictator envy”, which is the Fiona Hill theory: that Trump would quite like to have the freedom of manoeuvre Putin has, to steal even more money than Trump has done. Secondly, there’s ideological convergence, with a lot of people on the hard right – the Maga wing of the party – seeing Russia as some kind of kindred state, where it’s OK to beat up women (under Russian law, some domestic violence was decriminalised), where you can hate gay people, and where it’s a well-ordered, Christian-conservative, Orthodox place. 

And then, of course, there’s the kompromat – the compromising material – and the fact that eastern bloc spy agencies have been interested in Trump since the late 1970s. I’ve seen declassified files from the StB, the Czechoslovak secret police, who were spying on Trump from about 1977, and of course their product was shared with Moscow. The KGB brought Trump to Moscow in 1987, and he made successive business trips in the 1990s – and, infamously, in 2013, for the Miss Universe beauty pageant.

Of course they’ll have tapes of Trump. They’ll have tapes of Obama. Every high-profile international visitor staying in a five-star hotel in Moscow will have been bugged. And the Senate intelligence committee has confirmed that surveillance operation. It’s not my hypothesis; it’s fact. So there will be Trump tapes. They may show Donald Trump drinking a cup of herbal tea and reading War and Peace. Who knows? It could be a classic work of 19th-century Russian literature, or he could be having a more exotic and exciting experience. We don’t know. But what we have to understand is that Trump, though he may have forgotten some of the details, is aware. Trump knows that Putin knows. And I think this, more than anything, explains the leverage Putin appears to have over Trump.

Carole Can I ask you a question? A lot of the pushback on this is going to come from the progressive left in Britain, who are going to say it’s militaristic, chest-beating warmongering, and it’s taking our eye off what the real problem is, and that is Israel and Gaza. There’s this split which has happened: a lot of people are very focused on that, quite rightly, but they can’t see a similar pattern with Russia and Ukraine. Is this something you’ve noticed? 

Luke There’s definitely some of that. Of course, two things can be wrong at the same time. They don’t cancel each other out, and they’re not in competition with each other. But what I would say is that the left in this country has a proud tradition of fighting fascism in the 1930s and the 1940s, in the second world war. And, to be clear, what Russia is doing in Ukraine is fascism. It’s Russian fascism. It’s not the Nazis, but it’s the same idea, because it’s this totalising project to not only seize it territorially but to de-Ukrainise Ukraine: its history, its politics, its poets, its language. 

“When the Russians take a village, they change the way the signs are spelled. It’s not by coincidence that the Russians have burned 13 million books this year. They’ve burned down the warehouses containing Ukrainian books for schoolkids. My previous book, Invasion, is published in Ukrainian by Vivat. And at Factor-Druk, the production site where Invasion was printed, they dropped two ballistic missiles there, and they killed 12 people and shredded the machines. So it’s a fascist project of extermination. The left has always opposed fascism. We have to oppose it, and we shouldn’t get carried away with tribalism. We really shouldn’t.

Audience question Tell us about what’s happening with Zelenskyy. 

Luke I’ve interviewed Zelenskyy twice in the last nine months, and I know him pretty well. Internationally, he’s been a very effective leader for Ukraine. He’s got phenomenal communication skills. He’s the only politician I know who can hold an iPhone and film himself well. He’s just charming: he walks into the room, he’s got great eye contact, he laughs, he smiles, he’s self-deprecating. I think he’s the leader of the free world, actually. There aren’t many candidates at the moment, so I think he’s there. 

Having said that, domestically he’s more and more unpopular, because he has this habit of making really bizarre personnel decisions. He fired a very popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, recently, and I was in Kyiv covering protests by students and young people, and the sentiment was that Zelenskyy had really done this because Fedorov was cutting off some money schemes belonging to people who were whispering in Zelenskyy’s ear. So there have definitely been backsliding moments.

Audience question  And what’s happening inside Russia, with the elections – the sort-of elections? If Putin just died in three weeks, what’s going to happen?

Luke As far as Putin goes: Putin is a psychopath, and he lives in a completely fictitious world where his generals tell him that victory is certain and just around the corner, and he believes that. Unfortunately, like most dictators, he’s there for life. So I don’t envisage any end, or even a pause, in the war until Putin is carried out horizontally, like Leonid Brezhnev, in a coffin from the Kremlin. And one final thing: he does have doubles. Various intelligence chiefs have told me. There’s the chilly Putin, 10 metres away from his interlocutor at the end of a very long table, and then there’s a Putin filmed from behind, who plunges into crowds and hugs babies. That’s the double. And I think the double has a double, for when the double has a day off. 

Audience question You said that legal means haven’t worked, that sanctions haven’t worked, that all these diplomatic, nice, western ways of dealing with Putin haven’t worked, and we should be using force. What do you mean by that? 

Luke Force in the sense that we really have to be better prepared to defend ourselves from marauding drone attacks, from undersea cables being cut. And we also need to protect our politics better. It seems incredible that you can live abroad, make money from crypto, and then decide you’re going to retool the whole of British politics the way you like. So there are gaps we need to fill. And there’s more we can do for Ukraine, actually, in terms of supplying them with weapons, and also helping to shoot down drones. We could announce a no-fly zone over western and central Ukraine, for example. Or we could say we’re going to send forces now to the border with Belarus to relieve Ukrainian soldiers there, so they can deploy to the frontline. We need a bit more imagination, we need to be bolder, and we need to be quicker.

Audience question I’d also like to ask about how you feel about Russia. I know you got kicked out in 2011, which must have dramatically changed your relationship with the country. I just wonder: did you still have faith at that moment in the possibility of a different path for Russia? And if you did, have you since lost that faith, and when?

Luke I guess I lost my faith when I collided with the FSB. My family arrived in Russia in early 2007, in the winter. Within about three months, two colleagues did an interview with Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch in London, who told them he was plotting a revolution to overthrow Vladimir Putin. I was the third byline on that frontpage story, and literally the next morning my apartment doorbell rang, there were strange messages, someone tried to hack my laptop remotely, and then the break-ins started. And the specific moment was when we came back to find that someone had been in the flat – in the bedroom of Ruskin, our younger kid, who was six at that point, with a little Ikea bed. We were on the 10th floor of a Moscow apartment block. The window next to his bed, which we always double-locked because it was very badly built, had been broken open, with the implication that he might fall to the courtyard below. I took advice from the British embassy, who said: “No, this is just mind games. They do this kind of thing, but we’ve got no record of the FSB actually harming children.” But the fact that they would do that – that they would threaten your small children – made me think that this is an unhinged criminal regime with no boundaries, that is just fundamentally inhuman. And so it proved.

Where is Putin going to strike, if I were Putin? Basically, I think the Russians are not subtle; they’re obvious. I think the most obvious thing to do is something in the Baltic states – in Narva [on the Russian border] in Estonia, or in Lithuania. You attack a customs post with a drone. You say it’s a Ukrainian drone. Maybe even capture a Ukrainian drone and fly it into a customs post. Or – OK, here’s a scenario for you. You take a drone and drop it on the Russian friendship society in Narva, and you kill two ethnic Russians living in Estonia, and then you say the Ukrainians are killing ethnic Russians, we have to defend them, and then you escalate.

Audience member Like with Finland in 1939.

Luke Like with Finland. They will have multiple plans and multiple options. But, at the risk of terrifying everybody, I do think something is coming.

Luke Harding’s Betrayal: Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest (Guardian Faber) is out now (RRP £20; buy it at a discount at the Nerve Bookshop)