Senior official Maria Zakharova, who surprised everyone yesterday by challenging me to a debate, has now definitively backed out.
In any format, on any platform, with or without a moderator.
Here is a 20-minute recording of her live conversation on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station). It demonstrates, by the way, that a moderator is very much needed in any debate with her.
Here is the 90-second version:
I don’t see much point in discussing the details of who agreed on what, how, and with whom. Alexei Pivovarov wrote a timeline of events. Lyubov Sobol, who was directly involved in the negotiations, wrote a detailed post.
I honestly don’t know how to say any more plainly that I am ready for a debate, with no moderation and no conditions.
And yet this woman, without the slightest embarrassment, declares that I am a “complete coward”:
Here’s what I want to say:
I fully stand by everything I said about Zakharova yesterday in my live broadcast. With one clarification: today I feel even more ashamed for both Russia’s Foreign Ministry and Zakharova herself, its official spokeswoman.
Her remarks that air travel and vacations abroad are privileges for the rich, and that poor people have no business traveling and should find simpler forms of entertainment instead (this is where it all began), are so unacceptable that she should be dismissed from her post immediately.
Their pathological fear of anyone capable of open discussion shows just how insecure these “owners of enormous approval ratings” really are. We need to believe in our own strength and stop repeating that “the masses are still with Putin.” That mass no longer exists.
The main thought that now won’t leave me alone is this: what if one evening, in exactly the same way, sober or, uh... in unusually high spirits, they suddenly decide to declare war on someone? And then the next morning they stare wildly into the mirror and repeat: “My God, what have we done?”