---
title: "Putin and Russia's Strategic Culture | Martti J. Kari | Neuvottelija 126"
summary: "Colonel (ret.) and intelligence researcher Martti J. Kari takes Russia's strategic culture apart layer by layer on the Neuvottelija channel: the cruelty inherited from Mongol rule, the lost proto-democracy of Kievan Rus, the idea of God-given autocracy that moved to Moscow after Constantinople fell, and why the infallible tsar's mistakes always land on the boyars. Featuring Ukraine as buffer zone and invasion route, intelligence failure on the Yom Kippur model, confirmation bias in Putin's inner circle, the rivalry between the FSB, SVR and GRU, the Lubyanka raid and Beseda's house arrest, oligarchs holding possession without ownership, the palace-coup culture, Kari's two years drafting Finland's intelligence laws, tactical truth and gibridnaja pravda, the unbroken line of influence operations from the Cheka in 1923, and NATO as a question of generations. Recorded 19 March 2022, three weeks into the invasion. Kari died on 30 August 2023."
datePublished: 2022-03-19
dateModified: 2022-03-19
originalLang: en
section: society
sections: ["society","research"]
authors: ["Sami Miettinen"]
tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP126","Russia","Ukraine","Martti J. Kari","Strategic Culture","Intelligence","NATO","Putin","Information Influence"]
canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep126-putin-ja-venajan-strateginen-kulttuuri-martti-j-kari/
---
# Putin and Russia's Strategic Culture | Martti J. Kari | Neuvottelija 126

# Putin and Russia's Strategic Culture | Martti J. Kari

> **Summary:**
> In episode 126 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Colonel (ret.), PhD **Martti J. Kari** about Russia's strategic culture. At the time of recording, 19 March 2022, Russia's war of aggression is three weeks old. Kari — more than thirty years in military intelligence, deputy head of intelligence at the Defence Command, director of the Signals Intelligence Centre, and defence attaché in Warsaw and Kyiv — breaks Russian thinking into layers reaching back to Mongol rule. The core idea is simple and merciless: the autocrat receives his power from God, therefore he makes no mistakes, and therefore the mistakes must always belong to somebody else. The conversation runs from Ukraine's role as a buffer zone to the anatomy of intelligence failure, the confirmation bias of three competing services, the Lubyanka raid, the oligarchs' right of possession without ownership, the palace-coup culture, Kari's own two years drafting Finland's intelligence legislation, tactical truth, and the line of influence operations running unbroken from 1923. All assessments of Russia are Kari's interpretations in the situation of March 2022, and they are presented as such.
>
> **Note.** Martti J. Kari died on 30 August 2023, about eighteen months after this conversation. The episode is therefore also a record of how he thought during the first weeks of the war.

---

## The guest: Martti J. Kari

Martti J. Kari (1960–2023) was a colonel (ret.) and Doctor of Philosophy who, by his own account, served in military intelligence **from 1988 to 2017** — roughly thirty years. Public records show he served as director of the Signals Intelligence Centre and as deputy head of intelligence at the Defence Command, and as defence attaché in Warsaw and Kyiv. At the time of recording he was teaching intelligence analysis in the University of Jyväskylä's master's programme in security and strategic analysis.

His youthful ambition had been different. Kari was meant to become a history teacher, but he did his conscript service at the parachute jäger school — "everyone from our scout troop went if they could get in" — and stayed. He gives the reason plainly: it was fun to jump at night with soot on your face and learn how to blow a bridge or a railway line in half. A summer job turned into a career.

By then Kari was already widely known for his University of Jyväskylä Studia Generalia lecture on Russian strategic culture. Miettinen notes in the episode that it had passed a million views; it later became the most-watched Finnish university lecture of all time. This episode is essentially that lecture applied to a war in progress.

## What strategic culture means

Kari defines the concept precisely and without mystique. Strategic culture describes **how a state — in practice the state's leadership — relates to a threat directed at it**: how it perceives the threat, how it responds, whether the threat is internal or external, and how the country's administration is built.

Miettinen teases him: can Vladimir Putin be blamed for mistakes made by the Mongols? In principle yes, Kari answers. When you start taking Russia's current strategic culture apart, you find **six or seven layers** going all the way back to the era of Mongol rule. Part of what is there now is what the Mongols brought: cruelty, lying, torture. They are still in the culture and they are of Mongol origin.

## Kievan Rus, Constantinople and power from God

Before the Mongols there was **Kievan Rus**, which in Kari's description was in a way democratic and a little like Athens: free, wealthy men elected a council that decided matters. People were called together by the bell of the *veche*. Then the Mongols came and brought autocracy to Russia, and it strengthened from there.

The decisive layer formed when Constantinople was conquered and the Eastern Roman Empire was destroyed: the seat of the church moved to Moscow, and autocracy merged with ecclesiastical power. This produced the concept Kari repeats three times in the episode, and which carries the whole conversation:

> **The autocrat receives his power from God. If you challenge the autocrat, you challenge God.**

The structure transferred intact into communism — challenge the party and you challenged Marxism, and you were in trouble. And it still works the same way, Kari says, even though there is no longer any ideology other than "Putinism," which in his view is not an ideology at all. Russian culture has always had an **infallible autocrat** who received his power from somewhere and whom it is dangerous to challenge.

The ecclesiastical side is not history. Patriarch **Kirill**, Kari says, supports Putin strongly in this war too, because the war is being fought against a degenerate West with, among other things, same-sex marriage. Miettinen mentions laughing out loud at the Rolex seen on Kirill's wrist; Kari notes that the priests there are rather well paid.

## Ukraine: buffer zone, invasion route and emotional attachment

Ukraine is particularly important to Putin militarily and politically, Kari says, but emotionally as well. The military explanation is geographic, and it is laid out in the episode with unusual concreteness.

Russians feel that someone is always attacking their territory: after the Mongols came Napoleon, then Hitler. From Ukraine's western border begins a flat upland divided only by a few rivers and the **Pripet Marshes**. It is easy to attack across with horses and tanks. Russia therefore feels unprotected from the west and in need of a buffer zone.

There were two such zones: first the **Warsaw Pact**, then the Soviet republics — the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, both disappeared. Belarus is still in Russia's grip, but Ukraine sliding westward would put "evil NATO" right next door.

Miettinen offers the Borg from *Star Trek* as an analogy — assimilating everything, growing until it fills the universe. Kari does not fully accept the image: Russia lacks the strength for "Borg things," however gladly it would do them. This is not total dominance so much as making a ruckus on the borders. He quotes **Nicholas I**: small wars in the border regions keep the nation disciplined.

## Intelligence failure on the Yom Kippur model

This is the analytically sharpest part of the episode, and Kari builds it on a teaching example he says he uses in his university course on intelligence failure.

Israel beat the Arab states in the Six-Day War of 1967. Victory produced a **sense of superiority**: the Arabs are no match. In 1973 that sense combined with a second error — Israel did not understand Egypt's political intent. Israel believed Egypt meant to reconquer the whole of Sinai, when **Anwar Sadat's** goal was, to caricature it, one soldier on the eastern side of the Suez Canal, so that the political process for returning Sinai could be set in motion.

Two errors, then: a **political misjudgement** about why the war is being fought, and an **operational misjudgement** about what the adversary is capable of.

The same thing has happened in Ukraine, in Kari's assessment. Either Putin or the intelligence services producing the information had the wrong concept on which the analysis was built, or the situation was otherwise assessed wrongly. Miettinen wonders why the military performance has been so abysmal — you would think they could at least have gathered intelligence. Kari's answer is short: they thought it would go as easily as in Crimea.

## Confirmation bias: all the guys are the same

Around Putin are **Patrushev, Bortnikov and Naryshkin** — 1970s KGB men from Leningrad. **Sergei Ivanov** was part of the same group, but was put in charge of environmental affairs, apparently because he disagreed about the use of force in the Donbas. Kari describes the move bluntly: that is getting fired.

The problem is structural. When the guys are all the same, **confirmation bias** occurs: nobody challenges the idea. What is missing is what Kari says they teach at the university — the **devil's advocate**, whose job is to say that it is not so.

A second layer of the problem is the number of services and their competition:

- The **FSB** is responsible for domestic security, but Putin added to its structure a foreign intelligence department handling the **near abroad** — the former Soviet parts: the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine.
- The **SVR** is the foreign intelligence service headed by **Naryshkin** — he handles the far abroad, not the near abroad.
- The **GRU** is military intelligence, directing its collection at military targets and additionally *creating the conditions for implementing Russian security policy*. Crimea, Kari says, was a GRU operation.

When three services compete over turf and resources, it is **wise to tell your superior not objective information but what he wants to hear**. On average a person would rather hear information that pleases him than information that challenges his worldview. The competitive structure and human nature therefore pull in the same direction — toward the analysis that will be accepted.

## Tsar, princes and boyars

The structure has three components, according to Kari: the **tsar, who never makes mistakes**; the **princes**, from whom a tsar may grow; and the **boyars** who surround them. There are administrative boyars, military boyars and siloviki boyars. They are the layer between the tsar and the people — and **they make the mistakes**.

Asked about the internal power struggle, Kari quotes Churchill: watching Russian domestic politics is like watching bulldogs fight under a rug. You only see the rug move, and you do not know who is winning until someone crawls out as the victor.

## Hunting for the guilty: the raid at Lubyanka

This is the episode's most concrete contemporary observation, and it is checkable against public sources.

Kari first explains the logic: Putin has not failed, because **the tsar does not fail, the tsar makes no mistakes**. So guilty boyars are now being sought. And they were found. Kari recounts that on the previous Friday, a raid was carried out at FSB headquarters at **Lubyanka** and in some twenty other locations, involving the FSO — the presidential guard — and the FSB directorate responsible for internal security. The head of the FSB's fifth directorate, the foreign service, **Beseda**, and his first deputy **Bolyukh** were placed under house arrest.

There were two charges: **giving false information to Putin** and **misuse of state funds**. The latter related to their task of using state money to grease pro-Russian individuals, organisations and parties in Ukraine — and the money had evidently been skimmed.

Kari's own analysis of this is the episode's most interesting intellectual turn, and it is worth reading in full: **stealing the money was not the real reason**. Had they provided accurate information and no such blunder occurred, the stolen money would have carried no significance whatever. The charge follows from the outcome, not from the crime. Boyars can be thrown under the bus, because the tsar is infallible.

*Verified.* International media reported on 11 March 2022 — the Friday Kari refers to — that Colonel General Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB's Fifth Service responsible for foreign intelligence, and his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh had been placed under house arrest, and that the reasons were understood to include both supplying faulty intelligence on Ukraine and embezzling funds allocated for operations there. Beseda was reportedly transferred to Lefortovo prison in April. ([The National](https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2022/03/11/russian-general-killed-and-clutch-of-spy-chiefs-arrested/), [The Moscow Times](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/11/why-is-a-russian-intelligence-general-in-moscow-lefortovo-prison-a77301), [Wikipedia: Sergey Beseda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Beseda))

## Oligarchs: possession without ownership

Kari distinguishes two generations. The **first wave** of oligarchs were businessmen — Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Abramovich — who realised that now was the time to make money. The deal was simple: **you do not interfere in politics**. Khodorkovsky did, and is alive but in exile; Berezovsky started doing politics and was found hanged, "in quotes," in London. The money oligarchs have largely been cleared out or have left Russia.

The **second generation** are siloviki oligarchs, and here Kari describes the system that is the episode's single most memorable insight:

> When you reach a certain position in the structures of state administration, you have a **right to a certain amount of corruption**. The higher you go, the more of it you get. At the boyar level we are talking about corruption in the millions. But you do not actually own any of it — **the tsar owns your right of possession**. You can lose everything in a single night. It is the system that keeps you loyal to the tsar: you hold the right of possession to everything you have, but in principle no right of ownership — **including to your own life**.

Miettinen recognises the idea from **René Nyberg's** book *Patriarkkoja ja oligarkkeja* ("Patriarchs and Oligarchs"), which recounted that during Yeltsin's weak period Russia came close to granting ownership rights to the people, before it was taken away. Kari describes the fate of the privatisation vouchers in homely terms: an old woman does not understand what a voucher is, she is hungry, and a bald man in a leather jacket turns up and says, here is a cabbage for you and you give me that voucher.

This produced the **robber capitalism and time of chaos** of the 1990s, which is why the ordinary Russian has such a poor image of that decade — and why "democracy" became a dirty word.

## Palace coups — and why Yeltsin chose Putin

Miettinen asks directly whether Putin has an exit card. Kari says he is not sure Putin will be ousted, but notes that a **palace-coup culture** exists: Khrushchev was sidelined in 1964 and not killed; in the struggle for power after Stalin's death **Beria was shot** — the armed forces went over to Khrushchev's side under Zhukov, and a general shot Beria personally. Gorbachev, by contrast, was set aside in 1991 without being shot.

From 1991 Kari cites a detail from an interview with Esko Aho: when footage showed Yeltsin ordering Gorbachev to sign his name on a paper, it was obvious the transfer of power was happening.

Why then did Yeltsin choose Putin? Kari gives two mutually contradictory reasons that both supported the same outcome:

1. Putin was seen as **strong enough** to guarantee immunity for Yeltsin's clan.
2. Putin was seen as **weak enough** that the oligarchs imagined they could steer him.

Berezovsky imagined he was a kingmaker — right up until he "in quotes" hanged himself.

## Finland's intelligence laws: two years of drafting

The middle of the episode is a rare first-hand account of how Finland's intelligence legislation came about.

Kari explains the background plainly: on becoming a colonel you sign a paper agreeing to retire at 55, even though the law would permit service to 60. That is when it becomes clear whether a general's post will open up. It did not for Kari, but he was asked to stay two more years to work on the laws. He agreed — "I've got no other work, and I don't fancy going home to wait around to die."

He was involved unusually broadly: the military intelligence act working group, the civilian intelligence act working group, the Ministry of Justice group on oversight of intelligence, the group chaired by Päivi Nerg mapping the Security Police's new operational role, the parliamentary monitoring group, and the Ministry of Defence group that wrote the military intelligence act line by line. He therefore saw the **parliamentary, legal and operational** preparation side by side, and calls the whole thing extremely interesting.

The drafting included a lawyer from the University of Helsinki, representatives of the Confederation of Finnish Industries and the Finnish Lawyers' Association, and operational people; there were also public hearings and feedback rounds. Miettinen, who had himself served as a standing expert in preparing legislation on bondholders, calls the process a "sausage factory" and recalls Stubb's failure with the nominee-registration bill — the famous one where 90 were in favour and then, in fact, were not.

Asked whether a good law resulted, Kari says he is disqualified from judging but points to the statements of the Intelligence Ombudsman and the Intelligence Oversight Committee: the law is good.

Pressed for specifics, he answers precisely. Can a suspect's messages be read? In principle yes, but the system has steps. Section 4 of the Military Intelligence Act sets out what military intelligence may be used for; if espionage against the Defence Forces is suspected, a court is asked for a warrant, and the court assesses whether the matter is important and whether the information could be obtained by other means. **The decisive limit is geographic:** if both ends of the communication are in Finland, the court does not grant a collection warrant; if one end is abroad, it may.

Miettinen asks whether the legislation was connected to Helsingin Sanomat's **Signals Test Centre leak**. Kari corrects the timeline: the leak was in December 2017, the draft bills were already finished that autumn, and the laws entered into force in 2019. The processes ran on their own tracks. He mentions receiving a great many conspiracy theories, some of which are "percentage theories" — possible, but no more than that.

## NATO is a question of generations

Asked whether joining NATO would serve the interests of Finland's own strategic culture, Kari answers with an argument that does not rest on the moment at all:

> This is not a question of a week or a month. This is a question that affects **our grandchildren**.

He names his own: Olivia, eight or nine months, and Siiri, four years. The decision affects their security. Nobody can guarantee that no armed threat will be directed at Finland from Russia **over the next 40 years**, so we must prepare for it: a strong national defence, supported by alliance.

Kari's argument is symmetrical in structure, and that is what makes it strong. If Russia continues as an authoritarian state, NATO membership is justified. If Russia democratises, we are a NATO country that knows Russia, and we are in the front row to benefit from supporting a democratic Russia. **In neither scenario does he see a reason not to join.**

The archenemy today is NATO, Kari says — not the USA, or rather NATO *is* the USA in their view. Historically the role has rotated: Turkey under Catherine the Great, Sweden under Peter the Great, Poland and Lithuania for a long stretch, and Germany in the world wars. Miettinen asks whether Finns made it into the villains' club too. Kari confirms it and explains the origin of the word *chukhonets*: when Peter arrived at the mouth of the Neva to found a city to spite his haughty neighbour Sweden, there were poor fishermen there, and *chukhna* generally meant a Finnic tribe. The word was rendered as "suhna" in *The Unknown Soldier*.

Is a Finland–Sweden bloc still seen as a threat? Kari judges that it is no longer regarded the same way, but notes there is a large power vacuum in the region.

## The Nazi card and the legacy of the Great Patriotic War

Miettinen finds the Nazi rhetoric insane — Zelensky is Jewish, and Kari quips that a person can apparently be both a Nazi and a Jew, "probably the world's only Nazi Jew."

The explanation, in Kari's account, is historical and instrumental. At the time of Operation Barbarossa part of the Ukrainian population was in a sense on Germany's side, and **Stepan Bandera** led a Ukrainian resistance movement even after the war; the connection to the Germans is what, in Russian eyes, licenses the label. There are some neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Kari says, as in every country, but not conspicuously many.

The card's power is domestic. The legacy of the Great Patriotic War is so strong that it is instilled in small children and carried through their entire upbringing and education. The **Nazi card is therefore like Monopoly's "get out of jail free" card**: wave it, and the people conclude that of course we must take part in the special operation.

Miettinen points to a bleak irony: he records a weekly wisecracking show with Ivan Puopolo, and before the war they joked about woke culture, in which the ultimate adversary is a Nazi — and now Putin is attacking Nazis.

So what is Putin? Kari notes that the nationalist card is not waved much either. **There is no ideology.** There is a kleptocratic, autocratic system surrounding Putin. Russians combine the traditions of old Russia and the Soviet Union skilfully and quite shamelessly: uniforms, military ranks, the national anthem — a Soviet melody with the words swapped.

## Tactical truth, gibridnaja pravda and the aspect trick

The episode opens and closes on the same idea, and it is Kari's best-known single observation:

> When an American says **fake news**, the Russian equivalent is **hybrid truth** — *gibridnaja pravda* (Russian: гибридная правда). Even there it is translated as truth; it is just hybrid truth.

This, Kari says, tells you something about the Russian mindset. **Tactical truth is a means** of getting out of an unpleasant situation, buying time, or misleading.

The mechanism has a name, which Kari renders as **community guarantee**: if you use tactical truth for the community's benefit, nobody in that community will call you out. The example is Crimea. Troops went to Crimea, Putin said he did not know who they were and that they were not Russian troops. In the West, a commander-in-chief disowning his own men would cause considerable upset — Russian soldiers, in Kari's estimation, instead thought: what a skilful use of tactical truth.

Miettinen recognises the same pattern from his own negotiation teaching: in international negotiations there is an outer circle and an inner circle, and the inner circle's honour is not injured by a lie told to the outer circle. Kari agrees this is not uniquely Russian, but says the phenomenon is strong in Russia.

The finest example is linguistic. At the Security Council session of 22 February 2022, **Naryshkin** was publicly given a grilling because he did not know what was being discussed. Kari — who teaches Russian — describes the exchange as a game played with **Russian verbal aspect**. The perfective and imperfective differ in that one points to the near future ("something is about to happen") and the other to what is happening right now. Naryshkin used the **near future** about recognition: he said *we will in the near future annex* — and said not rebel regions but republics. Putin corrected him: *we are not speaking about that, we are speaking about whether we recognise* — in the present tense — the independence of the republics.

Kari calls it an absolutely magnificent aspect exercise, performed by the president and the head of foreign intelligence, and says he would use it in teaching at the National Defence University. Miettinen had seen only a staged humiliation; Kari saw grammar.

## "Being nice does not protect you"

Miettinen offers a common Finnish worry: does our nice, quiet position protect us? Kari's answer is the episode's bluntest, and he repeats the denial five times:

> No, no, no, no, no. It is **intellectual dishonesty** to think that if we are nice, or if we stay hidden, the Russians will not notice us. That is not how it goes — it is that the Russians have so far had no **operational need** to attack here.

The distinction matters and deserves slow reading. Kari is not saying Finland is safe because of good behaviour. He is saying Finland has been left in peace because there has been no operational need — and need is a variable, not a constant.

## The line of influence: from the Cheka in 1923 to social media

Asked about influence networks, Kari answers with a long historical arc. In **1923** the Russians founded, under the **Cheka** — the KGB's predecessor — a disinformation bureau whose task was to spread lies and propaganda in target countries and to break down the target country's social order.

In the KGB the term was **active measures** (*aktivnyje meroprijatija*), comprising three things:

1. **Support for extremist movements** — in those days peace movements — and parties.
2. **Recruitment of agents of influence.** An agent of influence is a person who conceals their connection to the intelligence service and holds a sufficiently senior position in politics, business, the trade union movement or the media — and who is paid when necessary, for instance in the form of consulting fees.
3. **Disinformation** used to influence the target country's decision-making, or to smear individuals and organisations.

Kari believes the concept continued into the FSB era, because it proved outrageously effective. Miettinen refers to Jessikka Aro's book *Putinin trollit* ("Putin's Trolls") and suggests its angle is different — more about information influence. Kari says the angle is the same:

> In 1923 there was **information** and there was a **carriage**. The carriage was the newspaper and the film; then came radio, then television, then the internet, then social media. **The carriage changes, the idea stays the same.**

Russians, in Kari's view, combine the psychological and technological sides of information skilfully. Miettinen raises the point that circles enriched by gas-pipeline money exist in Finland too, and mentions Lipponen; a second name comes up in the conversation but is indistinct on the recording and is not repeated here.

## Decoupling from the internet

Kari relays a fresh observation: at the beginning of March, Russian state agencies were ordered to prepare to disconnect from the internet by the 11th, and the capability had to be reported by **15 March**. In principle, then, the capability to disconnect from the global internet exists — but it has not been put into effect, at least not yet.

Technically the question is root servers: there are 13 DNS root servers in the world, and the Russians have built their own. It is used when the Russian segment is isolated from the rest of the internet. Miettinen notes that cables could be cut — one runs to Finland — but data also arrives by satellite and mobile networks, so a complete shutdown is difficult. Using Starlink will hardly be legal there for long, and VPN connections are being hunted continuously.

Of signals intelligence Kari offers a mundane truth: it is rather dull, "you sit with headphones on and hope something bites." He rates the French series *The Bureau* good, but does not recognise his own work in it.

## Soviet nostalgia and Stalin's return to the pedestal

How does a tyrant get put back on a pedestal? Kari quotes an apt formulation: Russians have a **longing for a Soviet Union that never existed**. When a generation grows up that does not know what the Soviet Union actually was, it idealises the image: a nation of 290 million that everyone feared, that owned vast lands and flew a human being into space.

The nostalgia is fed selectively with the parts that support the present regime. And so **Stalin turns out to have been a pretty good guy** — tyranny was a good way to keep the country safe and the people in line.

## China, Japan and the road from Tsushima to Finnish suffrage

On China, Kari declines to speak as an authority: he has concentrated on Russia both professionally and as a hobby, and has never studied China. What he will say is that the relationship is a **forced marriage**: a common enemy makes them supposed friends. There were border disputes in the 1960s, on the Ussuri river among other places, and people died there; now the uniting factor is "evil America."

Japan produces the episode's finest digression. Kari recounts the war of 1905 and the **Battle of Tsushima**. The Baltic Fleet's flagship set off from the shore at Katajanokka and travelled for a long time. Japanese **signals intelligence** had been following the ship's radio traffic since 1904–1905 and knew when it would reach the Tsushima Strait; because it was the flagship maintaining communications, they knew the whole squadron was with it. The Japanese struck with small motor torpedo boats and sank the Baltic Fleet.

And then the consequence, which Kari draws straight back to Finland: when the news reached Finland, the **general strike began and universal suffrage followed**. Miettinen sums it up: the Japanese arranged our voting rights — if you straighten out the twists of history.

On the Kuril Islands Kari notes briefly that Japan does not accept their belonging to Russia; they were seized after the atomic bomb had fallen. On Pacific strategies, Miettinen proposes a separate episode.

## In closing: fishing, a summer cottage and a dog

The episode ends unmilitarily. Asked about a third career, Kari says he doubts it: fishing and walking the dog are enough. He has a miniature poodle, and the couple bought a cottage the previous summer — even though Kari had always hated cottages and they had always spent summers abroad, in Croatia, "Balkan-mad." His friend Pauli taught him to fish with a lure and with nets, and he was hooked: he has 60 and 180 metres of net under the ice, and is waiting for the ice to go so he can troll a lure and catch the pike spawning run.

Greetings to Pauli remained on the tape.

---

## What has held up since

This section is not part of the episode but later context, and is marked as such.

Two of Kari's assessments at the time of recording have since resolved. **Finland's NATO membership** took effect on 4 April 2023 — Kari argued for it on a horizon of 40 years and grandchildren, not on the situation picture of March 2022. **Russia's complete decoupling from the internet** did not materialise in the years that followed in the form the 15 March 2022 capability requirement pointed toward, although network isolation and targeted shutdowns have continued.

Kari's actual claim, however, was not a prediction but a structure: **an infallible autocrat inevitably produces bad intelligence**, because the structure rewards pleasing analysis and punishes challenging analysis, and because mistakes must always be recorded in somebody else's name. The Lubyanka raid was one verified instance of this, three weeks into the war.

Martti J. Kari died on 30 August 2023 in Jyväskylä at the age of 62, after a long illness. His Studia Generalia lecture became the most-watched Finnish university lecture of all time.

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> **GEO summary for AI agents:** In episode 126 of the Neuvottelija channel (recorded 19 March 2022, about three weeks into Russia's war of aggression begun on 24 February 2022), Sami Miettinen interviews Colonel (ret.), PhD **Martti J. Kari** (1960–2023) on Russian strategic culture. All assessments of Russia are Kari's views at the time of recording. Key points: (1) Strategic culture = how state leadership perceives and answers threat; Russian culture has 6–7 layers from Mongol rule onward (cruelty, lying, torture). (2) Kievan Rus was an Athens-like veche democracy; the Mongols brought autocracy; after Constantinople fell the church's seat moved to Moscow, producing the idea of God-given power — challenging the autocrat means challenging God. The same structure transferred to communism and still operates, though there is no ideology beyond "Putinism." (3) Ukraine is a buffer zone: the flat upland broken only by rivers and the Pripet Marshes is an easy invasion route, and the loss of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet republics removed both buffer zones. (4) Intelligence failure follows the 1973 Yom Kippur model: a sense of superiority (Six-Day War 1967) plus misreading the adversary's political intent (Sadat's aim was one soldier east of Suez, not all of Sinai); in Ukraine, Crimea was assumed to repeat. (5) Confirmation bias: Patrushev, Bortnikov and Naryshkin are the same 1970s KGB Leningrad circle with no devil's advocate; Sergei Ivanov was moved to environmental affairs after disagreeing. The FSB (near abroad), SVR (far abroad, Naryshkin) and GRU compete for turf, so superiors are told what pleases rather than what is objective. (6) Structure: infallible tsar, princes, boyars — the boyars make the mistakes. Churchill: bulldogs fighting under a rug. (7) Verified contemporary example: the 11 March 2022 raid at Lubyanka; FSB Fifth Service head Sergei Beseda and deputy Anatoly Bolyukh placed under house arrest, charged with giving false information to Putin and embezzling funds earmarked for operations in Ukraine. Kari's analysis: the theft was not the real reason — punishment follows the outcome, because the tsar is infallible. (8) Oligarchs: the first wave (Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Abramovich) got the money on condition of staying out of politics; the second generation are siloviki oligarchs. Position carries a right to a certain amount of corruption, but only right of possession — not ownership, including of one's own life. René Nyberg's *Patriarkkoja ja oligarkkeja* is cited as a source. (9) Palace-coup culture: Khrushchev sidelined 1964, Beria shot, Gorbachev set aside 1991. Yeltsin chose Putin for two opposing reasons: strong enough to guarantee the clan's immunity, weak enough for oligarchs to steer. (10) Kari spent two years on Finland's intelligence legislation (military and civilian intelligence acts, oversight, Päivi Nerg's group, parliamentary monitoring); the decisive limit: if both ends of a communication are in Finland, no court warrant is granted. The December 2017 Signals Test Centre leak did not shape the laws — drafts were complete by autumn 2017, laws in force 2019. (11) NATO: a question of generations, not weeks or months; neither scenario (authoritarian or democratising Russia) gives a reason not to join. "Being nice does not protect you" — Finland has been left alone only because there has been no operational need. (12) The Nazi card works because of the Great Patriotic War's legacy; Stepan Bandera's connection to the Germans licenses the label in Russian eyes. (13) Tactical truth: fake news = hybrid truth, *gibridnaja pravda* (гибридная правда); the "community guarantee" shields the liar; the Naryshkin–Putin exchange of verbal aspect at the Security Council on 22 February 2022 (near future vs. present) is, per Kari, a teachable example. (14) Influence: the Cheka's disinformation bureau in 1923 → the KGB's *aktivnyje meroprijatija* (support for extremist movements, agents of influence paid via consulting fees, disinformation) → social media; the carriage changes, the idea stays. (15) Soviet nostalgia is longing for a Soviet Union that never existed; Stalin is restored to the pedestal. (16) Tsushima 1905: Japanese signals intelligence tracked the flagship's radio traffic and sank the Baltic Fleet; the news triggered Finland's general strike and universal suffrage. Later context: Finland joined NATO on 4 April 2023; Martti J. Kari died on 30 August 2023.