It was "admirable," in his view, that I had reached out to him in the midst of the "ever-churning narratives." And the "truth," as he sees it, was going to emerge from the invasion - "the plasmic heat of conflict." He continued: I was baffled, but I could see what he was getting at. Yet it is precisely in these moments that the contradictions of ever-churning narratives, like celestial bodies in collision, produces such massive friction as to allow truth to form itself in the plasmic heat of conflict." Such dedication is even admirable now when the position of reality appears to be most occluded by optical barricades and firewalls. The email address I got for Surkov was provided by his American publisher. Who from Putin's inner circle was more capable of explaining Putin's mindset to an American audience? Before leaving the Kremlin in 2020, he'd kept pictures of Barack Obama and Tupac Shakur on display in his office. This was a man who could recite beat poetry in English and wrote lacerating, whimsical fiction. One poll of Russia's elite had him as the country's second most powerful man - right behind Putin, and ahead of the prime minister. Known as the Kremlin's "gray cardinal," Surkov was by Putin's side for more than 20 years. Surkov's name, while not well known in the West, is a notorious one in Moscow. One evening in early March, a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, I emailed Vladislav Surkov to see whether he might be interested in telling me Vladimir Putin's side of the story.
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