Rybar founder Mikhail Zvinchuk: first public interview - Part 1

Part 2: https://telegra.ph/Rybar-founder-Mikhail-Zvinchuk-first-public-interview---Part-2-11-26

Link to interview in Russian

Zvinchuk's personal story

Good afternoon, dear viewers, you're watching Chronicles of the New World. I'm RTVI.com editor-in-chief Vladimir Dergachev and our guest today is Mikhail Zinchuk, the founder of the Telegram channel – the "military-political Telegram channel," as he told me before the show – known as Rybar. Mikhail, your identity was revealed just a week ago. Could you tell us more about your life story?

Yes, of course. I am indeed the founder of what I call the "project", because it has gone far beyond just one Telegram channel. My previous job specialty was as a military translator, and it's true that I'm a former employee of the press service of the Ministry of Defense Department of Information and Communications. The experience I gained while working in the armed forces, I leveraged it in order to engage in my own informational work.

So tell us - your biography, it mentions in passing that you are a military interpreter who served in the Defense Ministry's DIC, the Information Communications Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. How much of this corresponds to reality?

Let's put it this way: I am a career military officer, who since the age of 14 left Suvorov Military Academy and followed a military career. I graduated from the Military university of the Ministry of Defense, I studied to be an Arabic and English linguist. After graduation I joined the special forces. I was a commander of a reconnaissance group, then I was engaged in informational work, and, accordingly, when the operation in the Russian Armed Forces in Syria began, there were linguistic support tasks. I spent six months in Syria and Iraq, and then I began doing information work in the information support bodies of the Ministry of Defense. It so happened that, in 2019, I resigned from the armed forces and began to engage in similar activities on my own.

So you're a special forces commander, you were in Syria in Iraq, you're there as a linguist, right?

There's not a lot of talk about the specifics what military linguists do. In fact, when you do this kind of task, you're working with a certain official, with a commander, and you're combining the functions of an aide-de-camp, an adviser, and even a press attaché, because you have to follow what your commander is saying through you, and how he is saying it. You have to give practical advice and control the flow, so that other people don't think badly of your boss.

So in fact, if you think that a military linguist is a person who just translates papers, that's not true. Because my day could look like this: it starts a vehicle getting a flat tire, so you need to find someone to replace the tire and take the car to the shop. Then you have a business negotiation or some kind of meeting. Then you go and listen to the radio intercepts of insurgents. Then you ride out to positions, correct artillery fire or see what the scouts have spotted. Then participate in training. And in the evening there's a formal dinner.

All this stress, and eventually in these real-world, harsh conditions, you are transformed as a specialist, because inevitably you get some skills from your commander, you borrow them, and you learn a few things on your own. And you broaden your horizons a lot. As far as I know, many military translators, graduates of my university – the Military Institute of Foreign Languages at the time – they found themselves either as independent business representatives, opening their own business, or they became private consultants, including for billionaires. Because these are people with a fairly broad outlook, precisely because of the specifics of their work. 

From what I can remember, it was mentioned in the text that you were supposed to organize a consultancy for businesses trying to enter Syria after the start of the Russian Armed Forces' operation in the region?

Yes, this did happen. My colleagues and I were planning to start importing soap products, because the famous Syrian olive soap, it was not widely available in Russia at the time. But we found it difficult to do business in Syria because of the sanctions regime, because there are also problems with mutual settlements and problems with customs clearance of goods. Basically, the measures that were taken at that time by the government and various structures did not work in practice. Here's a simple example: in order to ship the soap, we had to use circumvention schemes either through the Emirates or through Lebanon, or through Turkey, including payment, just to clear the goods. And when you accumulate more than a dozen of these little issues, you realize that it's not worth the trouble.

I see. Tell me, the audience is most interested in how you came to this Rybar news project after all. Why did you decide to do military and political analysis?

It's close to what I used to do as a linguist. You know, since 2016, I've been writing various notes, materials, and analysis on the conflict in Syria and Iraq. That is, I had to do it as part of my media monitoring, my professional tasks, to keep track of what was going on. For example, back when the battle for Mosul in Iraq was at its peak, I remember how on my own initiative I printed out a map on A4 sheets of paper, glued it together and laminated it with scotch tape. Every day I monitored the situation to keep my supervisor informed. And accordingly, from then on I began to have an interest, I guess, to this whole subject. I was interested in what Russian military bloggers were writing on the topic, and spotting some of their shortcomings. Eventually I began reaching out to them from anonymous accounts, saying, "You guys have the wrong information here, look at these sources. Here's what it really looks like here." So this is purely some kind of expertise that I developed myself, based on open sources. In 2018, my colleague Denis Schukin and I realized that we probably need to have our own resource to offer our analysis. So we decided to try a Telegram channel. Initially, we wrote mostly about the Middle East, because that's where I have the most experience and expertise, having been there and knowing those sources.

You were actively covering the Syrian conflict, I remember?

Yes, I actively covered the Syrian conflict. Moreover, I never liked that our courtiers, let's call them "military experts" - who are specialists on a wide range of issues, from the coronavirus to the use of RP systems - write about the conflict, about which they know absolutely nothing.

Or they've never even been in Syria.

Well, these days you can be in one conflict and understand the basic molds of how a conflict develops. For example, if you compare conflicts in Syria and Iraq, in which I was directly involved, I understand how the armies of foreign countries operate, what is used in combat, what are the basic training methods of the enemy troops. My expertise has been built up over the years because you look at this or that situation from different angles. You look not only at the situation on the battlefield - that's what I missed, for example, when I was in Syria. I wasn't that interested in military news and what was going on then, I saw the situation where I was at, but on a tactical level. Roughly speaking, I know what is going to happen in my area because of certain commanders' plans, but I was disconnected from the information field and did not understand the bigger picture. Now my situation is such that I have control over the information situation, I have a fuller understanding due to more developed means of monitoring, and so on. I have access to a certain amount of inside information from sources on the ground on both sides of the conflict. And there is my own vision, based on my experience, of what and how things might develop further. Again, based on geopolitical information.

If we go back to your biography, to your career - in 2020, 2021, if I'm not mistaken - you were a columnist for RIAFAN, affiliated with Evgeny Prigozhin. Did he help in any way with funding, or to get your project off the ground?

I did work as a columnist for the Federal News Agency, but it was just that, a column. I was an expert who sent texts to the editorial board that I thought might be of interest at the time. Plus, the editorial staff would periodically call on me to comment on one thing or another. So if you think that any individual columnist is controlled by Evgeny Prigozhin, you are mistaken.

–But do you have any personal relationships or connections? So you were just purely a freelance columnist?

–Yes, well, on the contrary, a full-time columnist.

–Full time, I see.

About the Rybar project

Tell me what your project looks like. That is, how many people are on the editorial board? How many, I don't know, stringers or outside informants do you have? Can you give any figures? Total budget, if it's not NDA'd, that is, if you can tell us what kind of figures, at least roughly.

At the moment, our full-time staff is about 40 people. We don't only have the Rybar Telegram Channel, we have a huge network of channels. At the moment, after the latest calculations, and taking into account our partners' network and those channels with which we are united, we have over 150 channels in our media network, with a total audience of 13 million people in the Russian segment. In the foreign segment, we have 110 channels with a combined audience of 3 million people.

—Well I understand that it's an overlapping audience after all, you just added up the subscribers of all the channels, right?

—According to my personal calculations, the Russian Telegram audience is not more than 4 million people.

—So all of these, so to speak, "Z channels," are read by more or less the same people? Or what do you mean?

—Basically, the Russian Telegram audience... Let's keep it simple: what is the largest Telegram channel we have?

—Gosh, I don't remember. Maybe Topor 18 Plus, let's say, right?

—Topor 18 Plus is read by the Ukrainian side. Okay, so there's 3 million-plus there. We have RIA News, 2.6 million, which is a relatively neutral source that both the non-radical liberal audience and the Russian patriotic audience will read. We have Kadyrov's Telegram channel, which is read by both ours and yours. So we get this combined figure of 2.6 - 3 million. Add on top of that those who typically read entertainment channels and we basically get a ceiling of 4 million. This is the entire Russian Telegram audience that currently reads channels.

—So all these reports that Russian Telegram - just the Russian segment - has tens of millions of subscribers, they are not true in your opinion?

—No, absolutely not. We have an overlapping audience, that is, a person who is interested in the conflict, let's say, will simultaneously subscribe to Rybar, Russkaya Vesna and Readovka war correspondents.

—I see.

Tell me, Mikhail, if we go back to questions about organization and financing, are you a wealthy person at all? Do you make money from the Rybar channel?

Look, as I said, we now have a full-time staff of 40 people. And on top of that there is a staff of volunteers, there are freelancers who come and go from the group and perform certain tasks. The monthly budget of the project now exceeds 4 million rubles ($65,000). As it turns out, our budget is replenished solely from donations. That is, donations are the main source of our funding and the accumulation of a certain financial cushion. Yes, one time we did agree to help some of our information partners and published some messages of a commercial nature, but these are one-off actions, which are not comparable with the amount of money coming in from people who are ready to fund our information tasks.

Who is the average donor? Is it a patriotic person, a Russian who supports the special operation? Do you roughly understand what kind of person donates to you?

I can say this: those who donate are mostly just people who want to help the front, but have repeatedly encountered the fact that projects that collect money to help the army and lead fundraisers for the purchase of quadcopters, or body armor, ammunition, whatever, they no longer know who to turn to. Because there is a single regulator whose financing and supply scheme is considered rather opaque by many people - I'm talking about the All-Russian People's Front. There are separate channels, unofficial ones, many of which perform tasks that are hard to understand from the user's point of view, from the audience's point of view. Because often from the time a fundraiser starts to the time when a person or particular unit is provided with certain equipment, a month or two passes, on average. And the person who donated the money, initially he does not understand where it's going. But here he sees what we do. He sees that we facilitate, among other things, strikes on certain targets on the basis of our analysis, our data. And he sees the result in practical terms. It can be felt. He pays, it turns out, voluntarily for our content. He pays for quality, and he enjoys supporting it. So this could be considered, in essence, just a payment or subscription for good content.

Tell me about the strikes, as you know, you put out coordinates that, it's practically been verified, the Ministry of Defense then goes on to strike them. How is this network of informers, spotters, people who are correcting there from Ukrainian-controlled territories built?

We do have a network of agents in Ukraine. It was built during the special military operation from among people who care about the course of the special military operation. They are waiting for Russian troops to reach their city and liberate it. They, despite all the controversy of the fall campaign, still believe it will happen someday. They believe the Russian World will come and triumph, and are ready to help, risking their lives. I have informants, including those within enemy headquarters and command posts, who for a long time have been providing us with analytical documents and data on troop movements. Of course, the first thing we do is pass this information through closed communication channels to higher headquarters, and only after some time has passed since the information was passed on, do we then publish it all on the channel in order to spread panic in the ranks of the enemy.

Attitudes towards the war

In your opinion, after the regroupings - I don't know what to call them, goodwill gestures, but really retreats of the Russian army from certain territories in Kharkiv region and in Kherson - has the number of these sympathizers decreased? Is there any trend in the number of people who are disenchanted after the withdrawal of troops from the right bank of the Dnieper?

My contact from Mykolaiv wrote to me and said,

"I don't know what to tell you now. And neither do all the people who've been giving targeting data for months, some of which were struck and some weren't. People who risked their lives, who are now just looking at captured Russian equipment paraded through the streets of Mykolaiv. I don't know what to tell you."

People are confused, people are panicked, people don't understand what this is for. People don't understand sometimes the gravity of political and military decisions that rest on the shoulders of the decision-makers. But they don't lose faith. Yes, during that time quite a few sources went dark, because people become disillusioned, or at least decide to flee to Poland, to Europe, and from there to Russia. But there's a very large percentage of those who still believe.

Were there any cases when - I don't know just how authorized you are to talk about this - let's say your informant was handed over to the SBU and mentioned being in contact with you? Have people been punished for being contact with Rybar?

For being contact with Rybar, I'm not aware of any such incidents. But we had one unfortunate incident at the beginning of the special military operation. A man sent in a picture of his support for Russia from Kharkiv. He just posted a picture of a Russian flag drawn either on a notebook or somewhere else. We, in turns, shared the pictures, and then other patriotically-oriented channels shared it. Just a photo of a Russian flag drawn in a notebook. Later, when the population was being searched and they were checking everyone's cell phones, they found the photo and the person who took it. And then the SBU reported that they'd captured a saboteur who "for years" had been acting in the interests of the Russian Federation.

—So it can become the basis of a criminal case?

—Yes. Because even if you keep a certain photo or if you subscribe to a Russian telegram channel, that's already grounds for accusing you of working for the Russian secret services.

—During filtration activities, right.

Tell me, we mentioned Prigozhin, did you and the Wagner men cooperate in any way? Do they help you with collecting coordinates or any other informational work?

We have certain channels for transmitting information. On Bakhmut, when the storming of the city began, we transmitted coordinates for firing, we transmitted the location of one of the HIMARS launchers, which was then destroyed. So in essence we do have a communication channel. But Wagner in this case isn't some exception to the general rule. For us, they are just another unit of the collective Russian forces that operates on the front line and has to fulfill its combat mission. We have exactly the same interaction with formations in the Zaporizhia direction, in the Kherson direction, in the Kharkov direction.

Tell me about your informants. Do you pay them somehow, or are they on a volunteer basis? Or is it a mixed system: there are people who care and send in information because they sympathize with the Russian army, and others who do it exclusively for money. Can you explain the situation?

It all depends on the level of risk. That is, for some people, yes, we do pay for their information. There are people who are willing to provide information only on the basis of the money we transfer. But all transfers, even if we're talking about transfers through crypto, are easy to trace. So we give people a fair warning that we're willing to try this or that system to provide a certain payment, and if the target is confirmed, then we actually transfer the money. But it doesn't always work out, because payments are quite easy to trace objectively. Crypto has long ceased to be anonymous. But a lot of people really do care, and the average age of such a representative of the network is somewhere from 28-42 years old. That is, a relatively young person with mature convictions. Ukrainian propaganda tries to make it seem like only senior citizens basically, who are waiting for the revival of the Soviet Union, sympathize with Russia, but this is far from true.

Yes, because I know a sociologist who worked in the Kherson region, in Kherson city, when it was under the Russian army. He told me, for example, that the young people are almost all pro-Ukrainian, and only the older generation there leans toward Russia. So in your opinion that's not true?

In my opinion, young people who are between 18 and 25 really are mostly pro-Ukrainian. Or at best neutral. It's not common to find pro-Russian views among members of that group. Because people for the past eight years have been subjected to a certain influence. Those who are now 18, they used to be ten years old. And if they are told from the age of ten that Russia is an aggressor country, who occupied Crimea and attacked the territory of Ukraine, they will really believe it. Even if it's not true. But the point is that everything depends on a person's upbringing. And if children were taught normal, adequate values by their parents, then they will be more reserved in their views.

You also talked about people who have lost some confidence. Do you think there are many of them? Those who are disappointed in the military operation, because they actually thought that this war, which we call a special operation, would end in a month or in a few weeks. And it's been going on for nine months now, and maybe they don't see any positive end to this operation for Russia.

Not so long ago we started conducting sociological surveys of the audiences of patriotic telegram channels. We brought in professional sociologists to our team and began this kind of activity in order to show that we are no worse than VTsIOM or other organizations, able to conduct this kind of research. But we clearly understand that we're working with the patriotic layer of Russian society. And the patriotic layer, they are more ... probably, zealous, I guess, in their reactions to such failures. The problem with the patriotic audience is that for years they really believed that Russia is a country that can shop up, kill and destroy everyone at the snap of a finger.

—The second army of the world.

—Yes. Alas, now it's turned out that the Russian army was unable to accomplish this task in the time frame that was originally set. There was no blitzkrieg. This is the objective reality that we encountered. And naturally it affected the audience like a cold shower. And now, given the fact that the special military operation is obviously being transformed to achieve certain objectives in stages, no one is now aiming to take...

—Kiev and Lviv.

—Well, something else. What I mean is, let's say in two weeks or a month to liberate the entire territory of Ukraine. There is a good saying: you have to eat an elephant in pieces. And it's the same thing here. And the people who for years thought that we were able to defeat the enemy at the snap of our fingers, they are naturally disappointed. And when we conducted our most recent sociological research, we found that in two months - we conducted the first research after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the east of Kharkov region, and now after the abandonment of the right bank of the Dnieper. And the number of people, on average, who believe that the special operation goes against the original goals has now increased by about 20%.

I'm not going to lie, I don't remember the exact figures, but the percentage of public reflection on this topic is getting higher and higher. And people are annoyed that the goals they originally envisioned are not being realized so easily. But at the same time, the percentage of support for the special operation is not dropping. That is, people understand its justification, understand its necessity, and they are ready to continue to support it. Yes, they are sad that there is a setback now, and this is equally true of the Ukrainian audience and of the very people whom Ukrainians call zhduns ("waiters") - those who are waiting for the Russian army to come. They really are waiting, they have faith, and they aren't losing their... hope, I guess.

Here's a good example: I have several sources from several regions of Ukraine who have been sending data on various sites for several months. Maybe they noticed enemy movement there, there they saw that in one of the houses, territorial defense forces had set up shop. They noticed that equipment was being taken in for repairs. They carefully took pictures from under the floorboards. But they don't see the practical result.

If they send info in the hope that there will be a strike and it doesn't come – well, because there are targets that, to put it bluntly, are not a priority – no one will spend an Iskander or bring artillery from the line of contact just to hit some small house where five militia men are sitting. But at the same time, they see that there is no answer, but they keep sending data, they keep watching, they keep investigating, without giving up hope that some of it will come in handy someday. And there are a lot of people like this.

Tell me, Mikhail, returning to that gap between expectations and reality – the second army of the world, taking Ukraine in a week or a month. Do you think, if that was in the minds of a large part of the patriotic Russian segment, or maybe the sympathetic Ukrainian segment, was that gap present in the minds of the Russian military and political leadership? The expectation that it would be quick and swift, and that's why all of this is called a special operation.

When the special military operation started on February 24, I and my colleagues who are engaged in military-political review, analysis and so on just sighed sadly, and said, "We all have no right to be called military analysts anymore, because we could not have predicted such a thing." But we did discuss and think about what could happen. At most, they would recognize the LDNR, incorporate them into the Russian Federation, and proclaim the need to liberate the LDNR within the borders of their regions. But no one could have thought or imagined that a full-scale special military operation would begin on the entire territory of Ukraine. There would be strikes on targets deep in the rear, there would be an attack on Kiev, there would be an attempt to take the Chernihiv and Sumy regions. So the way I see it, it's not so much a problem of the military or security agencies that they were not prepared – no one believed that such a trial by fire would really be carried out. At one point we made this comparison with the Syrian campaign, which began on September 30, 2015. Now, in retrospect, it's possible that it was a preparation for this kind of large special operation. That is, in the course of [the Syria operation], it was possible to hone the combat skills of the armed forces at a much higher level. But they fought with a limited contingent and carried out tasks with a limited contingent.

And most importantly, who were they fighting against? Not against an almost 40 million-strong country?

And this is the key problem. We don't have a single army in the world right now that fights against a trained, high-tech enemy. Even if we take NATO's combined arms contingent, operations have been conducted conventionally against "bearded guys" and irregular fighter formations. Yes, with technicals. Yes, with certain missile systems or makeshift MLRSs. But without regular aviation, without any coordinated units, and so on. If we take the Ukrainian Armed Forces, over eight years they have at least honed their artillery fire skills. And their personnel, whether of the National Guard or regular formations, were trained in the ATO zone. And in principle they had relatively relevant combat experience at the beginning of the conflict on February 24, 2022. They were more battle-hardened, more trained and motivated, more psychologically amped up than any other troops anywhere else. I mean, that's the objective reality.

And the problem is that for long 8 years the whole population of Russia was convinced in talk shows, political programs, etc. that the Ukrainian Army is falling apart or is about to fall apart, that Ukraine will freeze, that everybody there is waiting for Russia with open arms. No, that wasn't true. For 8 years, Kharkiv was being turned into a center of Russophobia. Russian Kharkiv, as it once was. In 8 years a huge job was done to reformat the brains of the local population. All units that were serving there were replaced, diluted with natives of Western Ukraine, who could not stand the population of Donbass. Hatred of everything Russian was cultivated in schools. And the city itself was consistently turned into one solid fortification. And in all honesty, I don't know why no one saw this, or didn't want to notice or believe it, but it turned out the way it did.

—On February 24, when these missiles from the morning, strikes on Kiev...

—I slept through it.

—Slept through it. (laughter) Okay. I'll change the question like this:

When you woke up and you saw what was going on, did you realize... You could even make a prediction that in 9 months you'd be sitting in a studio discussing the course of the 9th, 10th month of the special military operation? A regrouping, a goodwill gesture, and so on. Or did you think it was going to be a blitzkrieg after all. Did you believe that at the time?

I believed then that it would be a blitzkrieg. I honestly did. Because even being in the special operation zone in Syria, I saw what experience our troops, the limited contingent, were gaining. What experience the military advisers are gaining. The experience that the pilots and the technical staff and so on were gaining. And I, for all my dislike of tank biathlons and army games contests, thought, and still think, that in principle this contest system in its time gave a necessary "boost" – not sure how else to say it – to the combat training process. That is, the gamification of the combat training process helped bring it to a certain new level. If this were combined with the military bureaucracy and drill instruction, it would be even more useful. So really before the start of the special operation I sincerely believed that there would be a blitzkrieg. And the fact that it turned out to be completely different now only proves that the vast majority of decision-makers and analysts alike were wrong.

—The vast majority thought the same as you do, do you suppose?

—Yes.

—Thought that it will be over quickly.

The future of the war

Okay, let's turn the question this way: the initial goals of the special operation - Remember Putin, Peskov, and so on, the Kremlin leadership - were denazification, demilitarization, neutral status for Ukraine, and so on. What do you think the goals are now? Is there any chance that Russia will achieve, let's say, its goals?

I don't believe that Ukraine's neutral status as a goal can be achieved now. Let me explain. Because it doesn't matter if Ukraine is a NATO member, a NATO candidate country, or anything else. Yes, it has no right to the fifth article on self-defense, on attacking a NATO member to be protected by another contingent. But we see in practice now that there is an uninterrupted supply of weapons and military equipment and ammunition. Personnel are being trained. And yes, among others, active and former servicemen who are fighting as part of international legion are being used, they are participating as instructors or special forces teams on the front lines. All of this is already there, that's why we won't get neutral status for Ukraine. If we even get it on paper, the reality will not match the word at all.

As for demilitarization and denazification, the demilitarization part goes like this: demilitarization is essentially fighting the Ukrainian Armed Forces and related formations, starting with the so-called Volunteer Battalions, we call them the Nationalist Battalions, and continuing with the International Legion of Ukraine and all other formations. It's ongoing. How long it will take is another question.

In terms of denazification, it is quite difficult to judge here, because in order to carry out denazification, it is necessary to demolish Ukrainian statehood once and for all and to deprive Ukraine of the possibility of ideologically indoctrinating the population. And this is impossible without gaining control over the entire territory of Ukraine.

Let's return to the Kremlin's statements. Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov says that the special operation is going well, according to plan, and that in general everything seems to be fine. However, the goal of the special operation is not to change the government in Kiev, which, as you said, is necessary to change the ideological vector in Ukraine. In your opinion, though, what are the goals now? It's just that no one really understands what they are.

Our goals were voiced by the president, and as we know even the press secretary of the commander-in-chief does not always reflect what Putin says. If you watch one of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]'s interviews, you will see him joking about how Peskov "sometimes," and I quote, "blurts things out". I don't know why he even said that. So, there's that. In my view, during a special operation, any comments on the course of the operation and its results must come exclusively from the defense agencies. Because civilians are not trained in how to properly work with an audience and what can and cannot be said in the course of such a critically important thing for society.

Well, don't you think that it's turning into a "samurai code" of sorts – the samurai has a path, but not necessarily an end. It's kind of unclear what the goals are right now. And the Russian audience, including the patriotic audience, which, accordingly, is your Rybar audience, simply does not understand what the Kremlin actually wants. A grain deal, an ammonia deal, I don't know. Surrendering the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, I don't know, giving it to Ukraine. It's like, no one gets it, and the biggest problem is that no one has even bothered to explain it to the Russian audience.

Look, what is there to explain? We understand very well that this is a continuation of politics. As far as politics is concerned, in any case while the military are fighting, there is a dialogue, including with enemy emissaries or mediators, through diplomatic representations, special envoys or business interests. Because "war is war, but you have to eat lunch on time," as they say. If we look at the same grain deal and what it is for, we see that Russia gets the benefit of the West turning a blind eye to the fact that we have a huge and substantial import, including dual-purpose goods, passing through Turkey to the territory of Russia. In other words, Turkey has become an informal hub for interaction with Russia, so that all the logistical chains don't collapse. Among other things, we have an opportunity to influence the enemy and blackmail him, since we can break the grain deal at any time. Turkey in turn got an opportunity to make money on flour and supply it to the Third World. It's the same with other aspects. And now, it turns out, when people reflect on the fact that we're battling Ukraine with one hand, and conducting hybrid negotiations with the other, roughly speaking, then it's a bad notion.

Because war has not been officially declared, and there's a pipeline pumping oil and gas through Ukraine. As radical patriots have been asking for since February 24, no one is hitting the decision-making centers in Kiev with missiles. In your opinion, this situation could be a long one, right? Like a swing set, the military situation goes back and forth, Russia is not going straight for radical actions.

Look, I don't believe that the decision-making centers are in Kiev. At most, there are certain control points in Kiev, where representatives of the backer countries are also located, so to speak. Negotiations with Kiev are political smoke and mirrors, designed to distract the population, because the real agreements and negotiation processes are not at all with Kiev.

But at the same time, we see that the Russian side is sending out more and more signals about requesting negotiations through mediators from Third World countries, through some African presidents, and constantly sending regular signals about talking to Kiev without any preconditions. Mr. Ryabkov, Lavrov's deputy foreign minister, told me about this. At the same time, we see that Kiev responds with a list of, I think, 10 demands that were voiced at the G20, which are pretty harsh. That we should roll back to the border before February 24, and in even 1991. To give back Crimea, to withdraw all troops, and so on. That is, there are two opposing vectors: Russia, which is actively asking for negotiations without any preconditions, and Ukraine, which is putting out such harsh conditions that Russia is obviously not ready to accept right now. What do you think this has to do with?

I don't think that Russia's position is that we are ready to negotiate without preconditions or whatever else. We've already written on our channel, for some reason [Russia's] messages were perceived as preparing the population for the fact that there will be negotiations. Well, there is this feature of conspiracy-minded channels. They think that if a story appears on Rybar or any other news channel, it means that the presidential administration has ordered a narrative that the population will be prepared for. And no, that's not true at all. We're not trying to justify the Foreign Ministry, or anyone else, or top officials, when we talk about the negotiation process, the fact that Foreign Ministry officials do not always think about how to properly work with the audience, in terms of informing the public.

And if we turn to the statements of the Deputy Foreign Minister, to the statements of officials about the negotiation process, we can notice that absolutely everyone is referring to the President's words, which have been said more than once. They're making a sort of diplomatic kowtow. Normally we would call this a "goodwill gesture", although this is a hackneyed phrase today that has taken on a different meaning. But it is about basic diplomacy: that on Russia's part we are ready to negotiate, only Kiev is not ready to negotiate, constantly setting more and more new conditions. And the phrase about being ready "without preconditions" or something else, it must be taken in the context of what the President had already said, which is that negotiations, if they take place, will be held amid the current realities that have already taken shape. That is, given the situation on the battlefield now; no one will be retreating or folding. Take the example of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant. We, I think, two days ago, wrote a breakdown on this topic and drew attention to the fact that now again they've started stirring up hysteria and panic, including with the support of the Ukrainian TsIPsOs,

—That the Zaporizhzhya NPP will be given to Ukraine, with the support of the IAEA and the international community.

—Yes. We wrote about the IAEA back in October. What's the bottom line? Well, negotiations through the IAEA as an intermediary have been going on, I think, since August or September. The Russian side is interested in having IAEA representatives at the plant. Why would they want this? I will be blunt, but here's what it is–

—To record incidents of shelling.

—Well, the inspectors may simply become hostages of the situation, and if they come under fire from Ukraine, there is no way to hide it.

Yes, our people are ready to demilitarize the perimeter of the station - the perimeter, I should stress. That is, the withdrawal of security personnel to outside the gates of the power plant, the deployment of air defense systems, and so on, which would cover it. Maybe our side would agree to increase the small area.

Or I think that as a compromise, our country, represented by Likhachev who is now negotiating, is ready, for example, to expand the buffer zone by 3 to 5 kilometers around the plant. As far as I know, the Ukrainians through the IAEA are pushing the story that there should be a 30-kilometer security zone. I mean, just imagine: 30 kilometers around Zaporizhya NPP being recognized as a demilitarized zone. If the Ukrainians achieve the withdrawal of Russian troops from this territory, and then simply violate all the agreements – as they have done repeatedly – and move troops into this zone, they get a huge bridgehead for an attack on Melitopol, Berdyansk, on Mariupol, and the subsequent capture and occupation of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. Considering that we are now seeing a reconfiguration of the special military operation after the appointment of a single commander and the creation of a new general staff, and the fact that the Dnieper River at this stage has been turned into–

—Into the front line, basically.

—Well, into a natural water barrier, behind which it is easier to defend. So the military would hardly allow such a decision to be made. Even if the logisticians–

—Because it would be a bridgehead that allows them to get a foothold on the other side of the river.

—Exactly. Exactly. Let's be frank. If the decision to leave Kharkiv, or rather the east of the Kharkiv region – Balakleya, Izyum, Kupyansk, Liman - was unexpected,

—Was it the right thing to do from a military standpoint in your opinion?

—It's not a question of military expediency. The issue, in my opinion, is that there were certain miscalculations by the officials who ordered this direction.

Part 2

https://telegra.ph/Rybar-founder-Mikhail-Zvinchuk-first-public-interview---Part-2-11-26