Today Vladimir Zhirinovsky would've turned 80. This interview is dedicated to this date.
It's always pretty interesting to watch old interviews, because there's a certain reevaluation of historical processes from the perspective of decades. It's like it's "matured" for your perception. This one is 20 years old! I highly recommend it. Just make sure to read the historical commentary by the head of the "Russian Hour" in English for a deeper understanding. The interview has English subs.
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Alexander Korobko:
"THE RETURN OF ZHIRINOVSKY:
an unknown interview and the mystery of his DNA

I came across an archival interview with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, filmed in London twenty years ago, in 2006. Zhirinovsky, of course, accused England of almost every mortal sin – but this was less his personal position than part of a political code in which the relationship between Russia and Britain is a paradoxical mixture of attraction and mutual accusations. We did not take it literally, but rather as an element of a symmetrical propaganda matrix: on the one hand – “everything is England’s fault,” on the other – “Russia is to blame for everything.” Arguing within this framework is pointless – because it is itself built on the necessity of an external culprit. So we simply did not enter into it. And despite all this, I did not deny my interlocutor the right to his own truth – because behind the politician there was a human being. And there was more of the human in him. This did not mean that I agreed with everything he said: remarks such as such as that well-known offensive phrase about the intelligentsia or his thesis about Russian “laziness” were something I internally disagreed with, yet at the time I chose not to argue, allowing the conversation to unfold on its own terms. At the same time, returning to the broader theme of Russia and Britain, neither side, of course, is without fault – history is rarely so simple. In this sense, Zhirinovsky’s words were not always mere provocation. At times, they were quite accurate predictions. He spoke, in particular, of an inevitable war with Iran – and today this war is in full swing.

Of course, today relations between Russia and the United Kingdom are entirely different – far more rigid than in 2006. Whitehall takes one of the most uncompromising positions toward the Kremlin. At the same time, it remains an active participant in the conflict – including through arms supplies and military training, thereby objectively contributing to its continuation – although it could also have acted as a mediator, facilitating a cessation of hostilities and negotiations at an early stage, in the spring of 2022. The question, however, is not so much about the right of one state to support another, but whether that support was accompanied by efforts of comparable intensity toward de-escalation. And in this confidence of official Britain in its own righteousness, one can partly hear the very thesis Zhirinovsky insisted upon. Britain speaks the language of international law and principles – yet its own history, above all in Ireland, does not so easily fit the image of an impeccable moral arbiter. Confiscations, violence, the Great Famine in Ireland, decades of conflict in its northern, British part – all this remains part of the local historical baggage. This, of course, does not mean that one should “even the score,” but it shifts the conversation onto a different plane.

At the same time, within Britain itself the picture has never been reduced to a single line. It is worth remembering that even one of the United Kingdom’s most difficult conflicts – in Northern Ireland – was ultimately resolved not through the victory of one side, but through a political process formalised in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. There are voices – from the left to Eurosceptics – for whom diplomacy and negotiations remain not a “weakness,” but a necessity. And, no less importantly, a significant part of society continues to advocate for the swift end of the war and the search for a political solution.
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