The journalist’s The Descent explores the bleak national psychology behind Russia’s long decline into authoritarianism.

You left Russia in 2022 after living there for 25 years. You witnessed a lot of change.

It was another country in the 1990s. There was the war in Chechnya and massive corruption, but Yeltsin’s administration didn’t control the flow of information. There were satirical shows about Yeltsin on TV. Now, Russia has basically returned to a totalitarian system that we hadn’t seen since Stalin.

Russia still has a parliament, elections, media. Why don’t they function as checks on Putin?

Russia’s parliament hasn’t been a check for years. In 2005, the speaker said that “parliament isn’t a place for discussion.” Elections are a joke. The only candidates who can run are those approved by the Kremlin. The only Russian-language independent media now operates outside the country. Inside the country, it’s totally crushed. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, he gave the order to destroy any remnants of opposition and to force out or kill anyone who disagreed with him.

You write about how shocking it was when your mother-in-law started repeating propaganda demonizing the West.

In 2014, when Russia sent troops into Crimea and eastern Ukraine, state TV became borderline hysterical. The idea of nuking the West was routinely brought up. Now there’s a constant drumbeat: “The West wants to destroy us. You’re in danger. Only Putin can save us.” It’s really poisonous.

Since you left Russia, you’ve gone to Ukraine to cover the war.

It’s hard to find words to describe the suffering—and the sadism. The landscape is devastated. Ukrainians, both POWs and civilians, are routinely tortured.

Is Putin in his right mind?

Only someone who’d lost his grip on reality would have given the order to invade Ukraine. I think Putin lost it when he was in isolation during the pandemic. The only people he had contact with were ex-KGB men who filled his head with wild conspiracy theories. One of them, Nikolai Patrushev, believes that the U.S. wants to invade Russia because a supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park is going to explode and render North America uninhabitable.

What comes after Putin?

One Putin ally told me, “After Putinism, there will be Putinism”—meaning that his authoritarian style is so deeply imprinted that it will outlive him. I wish it weren’t true, but I don’t have any hope for a democratic Russia. The madness goes so deep that it will take a long time to uproot. I don’t think I will ever live there again.