HOW PUTIN OUTFOXED THE WEST
12/16/2013 04:44 PM
Maintaining Russian Power
By Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp
In one of his many foreign-policy successes this year, Russian
President Vladimir Putin has used power politics and blackmail to
bring Ukraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence. But what is
the Kremlin leader’s secret to success?
Six weeks ago, two men walked across Moscow’s Red Square, one wearing
a coat and the other a bishop’s robe. They proceeded to the Monument
to Minin and Pozharsky in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Kuzma Minin, a merchant, and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky were the leaders
of an uprising against the Polish invasion of 1611. November 4, the day
on which they liberated the center of Moscow more than 400 years ago,
is now a national holiday, a symbol of how a united Russian people
can defend itself against any foreign enemy.
Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia, and Vladimir Putin,
the secular ruler of the realm, placed a bouquet of red carnations
at the monument. Back at the Kremlin, the church leader had prepared
a surprise for the president, a certificate honoring Putin “for the
preservation of greater Russia.”
“We know,” Kirill said, launching into a hymn of praise for Putin,
“that you, more than anyone else since the end of the 20th century, are
helping Russia become more powerful and regain its old positions, as
a country that respects itself and enjoys the respect of all others.”
President Vladimir Putin has led this country for the last 14 years,
but 2013 has been his most successful year yet. Forbes has just placed
him at the top of its list of the world’s most powerful people,
noting that he had “solidified his control over Russia.” According
to the magazine, Putin has replaced US President Barack Obama in the
top spot because the Russian leader has gained the upper hand over
his counterpart in Washington in the context of several conflicts
and scandals.
Indeed, at the moment, Putin seems to be succeeding at everything he
does. In September, he convinced Syria to place its chemical weapons
under international control. In doing so, he averted an American
military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad
and made Obama look like an impotent global policeman.
In late July, Putin ignored American threats and granted temporary
asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden, a move that stirred up
tensions within the Western camp. The Germans and the French were
also outraged over Washington’s surveillance practices.
Since then, Putin has scored one coup after the next. In the fall, when
meaningful progress was made in talks with Tehran over a curtailment
of Iran’s nuclear program, Putin once again played a key role.
And now, by exerting massive pressure on Viktor Yanukovych, he has
persuaded the Ukrainian president to withdraw from an association
agreement with the European Union that took years to prepare, just a
few days before the scheduled signing at a summit of EU leaders. In
doing so, he broughtUkraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence,
at least for now.
Russian Power Play with Ukraine
Many are impressed by Putin’s self-assurance and his ability to
question everything that is considered a political rule of the game
outside Russia. Prominent American blogger Matt Drudge once called
Putin the “leader of the free world,” while another commentator
dubbed him the “Chuck Norris of international politics.” Norris,
a star of action films like “The Way of the Dragon,” has found a
niche portraying hard-hitting, patriotic and deeply conservative
loners. Men like Drudge admire Putin for seemingly ruling his giant
country single-handedly, though often with ruthless methods.
For others, however, Putin is a man who rules in the style of a
19th-century despot, one who does not feel committed to the European
political model. He favors a feudalistic approach instead, with a
dominant state; courtiers who fulfill their ruler’s every desire,
no matter how arbitrary; an economy that purely serves the interests
of politicians; and a motto that reads: “What’s mine cannot be yours.”
And now the events in Ukraine and the role Putin has played in them
raises the question, once again, of who the man in the Kremlin really
is and what he wants. Is Ukraine, as it descends into turmoil, symbolic
of a new turning point in the relationship between East and West?
In recent years, Western capitals have viewed Russia as a difficult
but stable country — and, most of all, as one that had lost much
of its significance on the world stage. The conflict over Ukraine
illustrates that the fate of not only 143 million Russian citizens,
but also that of most of Russia’s neighboring countries within the
former Soviet empire, hinges on Putin.
While pro-EU demonstrators built barricades not far from the seat
of government in Kiev, the pro-Kremlin Moscow tabloid newspaper
Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a cover story predicting the collapse of
Ukraine. The pro-EU western parts of the country, formerly part of
the Habsburg Empire, were marked in purple. Meanwhile, the eastern
provinces, closely aligned with Russia for centuries, along with
the Crimean Peninsula were marked in red. At about the same time,
a lawmaker in Crimea urged Putin to send Russian forces to Ukraine
to “protect us from NATO aggressors, Western secret agents and paid
demonstrations.”
It was probably a mistake on the part of the West to stop treating
Russia as a potent adversary in the last two decades. And the outrage
over some of the things that have happened in Putin’s realm has been
justifiable. They have included, for example, the Kremlin’s use of
special police units to suppress the protests of tens of thousands
of Muscovites over election fraud in the 2011 parliamentary vote,
or the fact that Putin had two members of the female punk band Pussy
Riot locked away for two years, merely because they had staged a
protest performance in a Moscow church.
The uprising of disappointed pro-EU Ukrainians against President
Yanukovych is now revealing to the West the brutal methods with which
Russia is beginning to defend its interests beyond its borders.
Yanukovych’s sudden change of course away from the EU was the result
of a cold and calculating power play by the Russian president.
Blocking the EU’s Eastward Expansion
The world is seeing a resurgence of Cold War sentiments. Following
violent police crackdowns against protesters in Kiev, the United
States is considering sanctions against Ukraine, US State Department
spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki announced. Her boss, Secretary of State John
Kerry, had said earlier that he was disgusted by the police brutality,
saying that the response was “neither acceptable nor does it befit a
democracy.” His words were not only directed at Yanukovych, but also
at the man pulling the strings, Vladimir Putin.
Russia fired back. For the West, democracy isn’t even the issue,
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed. He argued that the West
merely wants to secure Ukraine as a trophy, so as to deal Russia a
strategic blow.
In Moscow last Tuesday, 444 of 450 members of the State Duma,
the lower house of the Russian parliament, adopted a statement in
which they accused Western politicians of “open interference …in
the internal affairs of the sovereign Ukraine.” The remark was a
reference to appearances by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle,
former Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczyski and US Undersecretary
of State Victoria Nuland on Kiev’s Independence Square, where Nuland
handed out sandwiches to demonstrators.
“Unsanctioned rallies, blocking access to state authorities, as well
as the seizure of administrative buildings, rioting, and destruction
of historic monuments” — a reference to the toppling of a statue of
Lenin in downtown Kiev — “lead to destabilization in the country
and may cause serious negative economic and political consequences
for the Ukrainian population,” the Duma deputies wrote, noting that
a “coup d’etat” was underway in Ukraine. Ukrainian state television
referred to the European Union as an “anti-Russian” alliance because
it was ignoring Moscow’s interest by seeking closer ties with Ukraine.
The deep divide between Russian and Western mindsets has become
especially apparent in Eastern Europe in recent months, where the EU
has been trying to advance its “Eastern Partnership” program since
2009. In addition to Ukraine, the initiative relates to EU relations
with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. The West
has been offering free-trade arrangements and financial support in
return for reforms in the legal system, election laws and media in
these six countries. Exports of Western goods would aim to foster
closer ties between the eastern edge of the continent and the EU.
Brussels and its junior partners were discussing steel tariffs, wheat
exports and the purchase of Eastern European wine. When such ties
suddenly became an issue of geopolitics, the West was shocked. For
the first time since the beginning of its eastward expansion, the EU
encountered bitter resistance — from Russia.
Exerting Pressure on Smaller Neighbors
Still, it wasn’t a complete surprise — and the EU should have expected
it. Since the early 1990s, Russia has been trying to keep the former
Soviet republics within its sphere of influence. Ignoring setbacks,
Putin is now using his power to achieve this goal. He threatens these
countries, holds them hostage, blackmails them or plays them off each
other. His actions, though cold and unscrupulous, have been highly
successful. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” Putin said.
To this day, Russia uses Transnistria, a state that broke away from
the Republic of Moldova in a 1992 civil war, to torpedo Moldova’s
sovereignty, although no UN member state formally recognizes
Transnistria today. Moscow also plays the role of protector in Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, two regions that broke away from Georgia after
the 2008 war, and it uses the puppet states to exert pressure on the
government in Tbilisi.
In the mind of Putin, a former KGB officer, a country that was once a
Soviet state and no longer wishes to be Moscow’s vassal can only become
one of two things: a vassal of Washington, or a vassal of Brussels.
Smaller states of the former Soviet Union that rebel against Moscow
today can expect to face Putin’s concentrated rage. In 2006, he banned
imports of Georgian wine and mineral water when Mikhail Saakashvili,
the country’s pro-American president at the time, demanded the
withdrawal of Russian troops.
Ahead of a summit meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where
at least Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova planned to sign association
agreements with the EU, Moscow boycotted Lithuanian milk products.
Years earlier, Russia had shut down a strategically important oil
pipeline to Lithuania, merely because the government in Vilnius
planned to sell a large refinery to Warsaw instead of Moscow and
cease its reliance on Russia.
The manner in which Russia exerted pressure on Armenia this year was
especially conspicuous. Like Ukraine, the small Caucasus republic had
spent four years negotiating an association agreement with Brussels.
The country’s president and prime minister rejected Moscow’s demand
that Armenia join a Russian-led customs union, arguing that it was
“geographically impossible” and “pointless” — until September 3,
when Putin summoned his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, to
the Kremlin.
Shortly after the talks, Sargsyan told reporters that Armenia was
not going to sign the agreement with Brussels, after all, but that
it would join the customs union. Moscow had threatened to raise
its prices for Russian natural gas and had started selling arms to
Armenia’s archenemy, Azerbaijan. Putin also offered the Armenians
help in expanding its railway system and a nuclear power plant that
had been scheduled to be shut down.
The Republic of Moldova was subjected to similar pressure. In
September, Moscow had suddenly informed Moldova that it could no
longer export its wine, the country’s most important export product,
to Russia. Putin’s officials also reminded the government in Chisinau
that hundreds of thousands of Moldovans earn a living as guest
workers in Russia, and that close to 200,000 of them had no valid
residency permits and could therefore be deported. Unlike Armenia,
the Moldovan government chose to sign the EU treaty nonetheless.
The pressure Moscow exerted on Ukraine before the EU summit in Vilnius
exceeded all of its previous efforts. In the summer, the Russians
blocked duty-free exports of pipes from Ukraine, as well as shipments
by Ukrainian candy maker Roschen, claiming deficient quality of the
goods. The move adversely affected two important Ukrainian oligarchs
and was designed to persuade them to talk President Yanukovych out
of the planned cooperative agreement with the EU.
In October, not long before the Vilnius summit, Russia suddenly
introduced new regulations for the transit of goods, causing long
backups of trucks waiting at the Russian-Ukrainian border. Then it
suspended imports of meat and railroad cars from Ukraine. Finally,
the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom demanded payment of
a [email protected] billion ($1.8 billion) debt for gas that it had delivered at
some point in the past.
Pulling Strings in Kiev
The Russian trade war was accompanied by an unprecedented propaganda
offensive. President Putin dispatched his economic adviser Sergei
Glazyev, a man with extremely nationalistic views, to Ukraine. He
painted a disastrous scenario for the Ukrainians if they signed the
agreement with the EU. Glazyev claimed that Ukraine would need at least
~@130 billion to comply with EU rules. This, he said, would sharply
drive down the country’s currency, so that Kiev would be unable to
pay its debts, citizens would be without heat and the country would
eventually be forced into bankruptcy.
“Why does the Ukrainian leadership want to drive its country into
economic suicide?” he asked. On the other hand, Glazyev noted,
Ukraine would generate an additional $10 billion in revenues if it
joined the Russian-led customs union.
Glazyev was named Russia’s “Person of the Year 2013” at a ceremony in
Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Nov. 28, the day the EU
summit began in Vilnius, without Ukraine having signed the planned
agreement. According to officials, Glazyev received the award for
his contributions to “bringing Ukraine back into the economic union
with Russia.”
Some might be surprised by Russia’s blatant efforts to pressure Kiev.
But Ukraine, whose name is derived from an Old East Slavic word that
means “borderland,” is Europe’s second-largest country, and Putin
needs it if he hopes to build his planned Eurasian economic empire.
Kiev is also the historic cradle of the Russian nation, and the first
East Slavic realm was established there in the 9th century. In his
speeches, Glazyev repeatedly spoke of “our shared intellectual and
historic tradition.”
At the same time, both Russians and Ukrainians are disdainful of each
other. In Moscow, Ukrainians are called “Chochly,” a reference to the
unusual headdress of the medieval Dnieper Cossacks. Kiev residents
refer to Russians as “Moskali,” which is also a derogatory term. The
Russians “have treated us as part of their property for the last 350
years,” Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of independent Ukraine,
once said.
Putin and Yanukovych are also not on good terms. The fact that
the Russian president eventually strong-armed Yanukovych has to do
with the mentality of the Ukrainian president. Yanukovych is a man
who never likes to commit himself and always keeps a back door open
somewhere. Putin had not believed that Yanukovych would actually sign
the agreement with Brussels. But when it became apparent in the summer
that he was prepared to do so after all, Moscow stepped in.
Even Putin has actually been disinclined to use such coarse tactics.
Russia is not “seeking a superpower status or trying to claim a
global or regional hegemony,” Putin said last Thursday in his annual
state-of-the-nation address. However, the president still expects
countries like Ukraine to remain within Moscow’s orbit.
‘New World Leader of the Conservatives’
Following Snowden, Syria, Iran and other foreign-policy coups,
Putin now sees himself in a role that he finds equally gratifying:
an “arbiter of global politics.”
“For Putin, all it took was 20 minutes with Obama on the sidelines
of the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg to avert a bombing of Syria and
to lay the groundwork for a solution to the Syrian chemical weapons
problem,” says a senior Russian diplomat.
According to an unpublished, 44-page report by the Institute for
Strategic Studies, the Kremlin’s most powerful think tank, to which
SPIEGEL has gained access, Putin’s authority is now “so extensive
that he can even influence a vote on Syria in the US Congress.” The
report praises Putin as the “new world leader of the conservatives.”
The report’s authors write that the hour of conservatives has now
come worldwide because “the ideological populism of the left” — a
reference to men like Obama and French President Francois Hollande —
“is dividing society.”
According to the report, people yearn for security in a rapidly
changing and chaotic world, and the overwhelming majority prefers
stability over ideological experiments, classic family values over
gay marriage, and the national-state over immigration. Putin, the
authors write, stands for these traditional values, while the domestic
policies of traditional democracies are hamstrung by the need for
compromise. Last week, Putin himself stated that the objective of
his conservatism is to “prevent a movement backward and downward,
into the chaos of darkness.”
These observations on the shift in the public mood may be correct,
but who wants to see Russia as a role model? The protesters on Kiev’s
Independence Square apparently do not.
Putin’s Russia is a poorly organized country whose power hinges on
the price of oil remaining above $100 a barrel. The colossus in the
East, with its nuclear weapons, mineral resources and foreign currency
reserves of $515 billion resembles the pseudo-giant in the children’s
novel Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver by German author Michael
Ende: The closer one gets to him, the smaller he becomes.
Russia looks very good on paper, with a budget that has been almost
balanced for years and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 14 percent (compared
with 80 percent for Germany). But growth rates of 6 percent and higher
are a thing of the past. The Kremlin expects a growth rate of only
1.3 percent this year, which is too low in light of the country’s
massive need for modernization.
In his address to the nation, Putin conceded that bureaucracy and
widespread corruption are stifling innovation and entrepreneurial
spirit in Russia.
To enhance this image and simultaneously counteract reporting critical
of Russia in the Western media, last week, Putin established the
media holding company “Russia Today,” a modern propaganda machine
intended to improve the country’s image abroad. He also issued a
decree to “dissolve” the deeply traditional RIA Novosti news agency,
arguing that its columnists were too dependent on Western positions
in their ideology.
The new head of Russia Today, Dmitry Kiselyov, attracted attention when
he said on a talk show that homosexuals should be banned from donating
blood or sperm. “And their hearts, in case they die in a car accident,
should be buried or burned as unfit for extending anyone’s life,”
Kiselyov added. He has also compared the EU’s bailout of Cypriot banks
with Hitler’s expropriation of Jews. At the first company meeting of
Russia Today, Kiselyov said that the most important characteristic
for employees of the new state-run agency is not objectivity, but
“love for Russia.”
The Rise of a ‘Non-Liberal Empire’
It’s been a decade since Anatoly Chubais, the architect of the
privatization of the Russian economy and still an influential
powerbroker in the Kremlin elite, wrote an essay in which he called for
a “liberal empire.” He argued that Russia should bring the countries
lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union back into its sphere of
influence by enhancing its own appeal through democracy, freedom and
the rule of law. The same applied to Ukraine.
“Today the European Union is the liberal empire,” says Moscow political
scientist Vladimir Frolov. “Putin is offering a different, non-liberal
empire,” he adds, an empire that appeals to authoritarian rulers,
such as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose countries, like Armenian and Kyrgyzstan,
plan to join Putin’s Eurasian customs union.
In Putin’s model, only a leader knows what’s best for his people. “The
non-liberal empire helps to explain Russia’s turning away from Europe
by citing subversive European values,” says Frolov, “and it allows
the Kremlin to hold onto the illusion that it is playing in the same
league as America, China and the EU.”
No Putin project embodies this illusion quite as much as the 2014
Winter Olympics in Sochi. They symbolize both Putin’s dream of a new
greatness and his weakness. The Kremlin chief has had new highways,
tunnels and railroads constructed in the Caucasus, as well as a
state-of-the-art train station and two winter resorts. Corruption
and nepotism were partly response for an explosion in costs — from
the original estimate of ~@9 billion to more than ~@37 billion. And
only a national leader with Putin’s ambitions, and only a country
with megalomaniacal tendencies, could hit upon the idea of holding
winter games in a Black Sea resort town with a subtropical climate.
Russia intends to use the Olympics to present its unique features to
a marveling world, which explains why the Kremlin had 14,000 people
carry the Olympic torch along a 65,000-kilometer (40,600-mile) route
throughout Russia — both of which are record figures. Naturally,
the torch relay began on Red Square, and of course the ceremony
coincided with Putin’s birthday. The Kremlin sent a diver with the
torch to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater
lake. Cosmonauts carried it into space in a rocket, camel riders took
it across the southern Russian steppes, sled dogs pulled it through
the Arctic and an icebreaker ferried it to the North Pole.
The Arctic Ocean is another place where the Kremlin is trying to
impress the world. To gain access to the mineral resources hidden
under the ocean floor, for which Russia is competing with other
countries bordering the ocean, Putin instructed his defense minister
last week to “expand Russia’s military presence in the Arctic.” This
means rebuilding 10 Soviet-era bases in the Arctic Circle and beefing
up Russia’s Arctic military presence.
How the EU Has Misread Putin and Ukraine
Putin’s strength is only relative because it feeds on the weakness
of the West. Europe’s policy toward Ukraine is a perfect example.
Germany and the EU long believed that if they could convince Kiev
to sign a few dozen liberal laws, not even a politician as slippery
as Yanukovych could question the country’s growing alignment with
the West. Instead of offering more money and clear prospects of EU
membership, at the end of the negotiations, they demanded the release
of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
In taking this approach, the EU wasn’t exactly demonstrating a unique
insight into Ukrainian sensitivities. Tymoshenko doesn’t have what
it takes to be a martyr, and Ukrainians have only limited sympathy
for her. Many recall her career as an oligarch in the 1990s and her
populist approach as prime minister. Indeed, they see no significant
difference between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych.
But Yanukovych’s mentality is similar to Putin’s — and therefore
not at all like that of the EU. He isn’t interested in values such
as fairness, the balancing of interests and freedom for the individual.
Like Putin, Yanukovych grew up in poor circumstances, where it was
important to be stronger than others and capable of bluffing and
pouncing quickly.
For Yanukovych, the planned rapprochement with the EU was purely a
question of what he stood to gain from it. He wants to be re-elected
in 2015, and there are two people, in particular, who could get in
his way: Tymoshenko and heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko.
The Germans have since dropped Tymoshenko like a hot potato, and now
they are focusing their attention on the man who is supposedly the
only leader of the opposition. Their goal is to build Klitschko into
an adversary of Yanukovych. But they are ignoring the fact that there
are actually three opposition leaders in Ukraine.
They also fail to recognize that the opposition is not the true
leader of the protests on Independence Square in Kiev, and that many
Ukrainians actually see their party leaders, including Klitschko,
as collaborators with the ruling elite. According to a poll, only 5
percent of the protesters on Independence Square are there because
opposition leaders called upon them to participate. In fact, most
have come to the square for their own reasons.
As long as the West sugarcoats the reality in Eastern Europe,
Putin will hold onto his trump cards. He is more familiar with the
situation, and he enjoys better leverage to influence the former
Soviet republics. He also has no scruples when it comes to using
ruthless tactics.
Backtracking and Bluster
It is Wednesday of last week as we meet for lunch with one of Putin’s
top advisers at an upscale Italian restaurant near the foreign ministry
in Moscow. In Kiev, the protesters are building even higher barricades
in a heavy snowstorm.
The Kremlin official’s eyes are bloodshot. The long nights at summit
meetings and the 19 foreign trips he has been on with Putin this year
have taken their toll. The official has brought along a message from
Putin. Over a meal of pickled squid and salami, he explains that
his boss is someone with whom “deals are possible as long as you
talk to him.” But talking to Putin to achieve compromises, he notes,
is something the West does “far too little.” Senior politicians like
German Foreign Minister Westerwelle, he says, should not associate
with the opposition in Kiev, and appearances on Independence Square are
“not correct, from a diplomatic standpoint.” After all, he points out,
there are no Russian cabinet ministers there.
The man is persuasive. Russian ministers have no need to hurry to Kiev,
he says, since the Ukrainian president himself has been summoned to
Moscow on an almost weekly basis. Nevertheless, this time, Putin may
have miscalculated when it comes to Ukraine.
When Kiev went to the barricades for the first time in 2004 and the
Orange Revolution began, Ukrainians were protesting against election
fraud. To Moscow, it was ultimately irrelevant whether Ukraine
was run by men or women like former President Viktor Yushchenko,
Tymoshenko or Yanukovych. They were all representatives of different
clans who were fighting each other for the country’s leadership —
and they were people with whom Moscow could more or less come to terms.
But now there are people protesting on Independence Square who
feel cheated of their hopes for stronger ties with the EU because
their leadership has allowed itself to be bought by Russia. To them,
Europe is synonymous with democracy, self-determination and honesty,
with an end to despotism and corruption.
Moscow’s clumsy attempt to put pressure on Kiev has changed the
situation, says Russian political scientist Vladislav Inozemtsev.
Ukrainian society, he notes, cares less about which member of the elite
is currently in power than about the direction in which the country
is headed. The number of pro-EU Ukrainians jumped dramatically this
fall, says Inozemtsev.
Yanukovych senses this. Last Thursday, he changed course and let it
be known that he did intend to sign the EU treaty at some point. But
it sounded like yet another one of his tricks, designed to finally
get the protesters off the streets.
He held a roundtable discussion on Friday afternoon, but it ended
disappointingly when Yanukovych failed to concede to any of the
opposition’s demands. Instead, he had his staff make preparations
for a major rally of his supporters. Nevertheless, his prime minister
suggested the possibility of resigning, while former President Leonid
Kuchma described Ukraine as “bankrupt.”
The game involving Kiev, Moscow and the EU hasn’t been decided. It
is already clear, however, that Putin has done Ukraine a disservice
with his intervention and has reduced Yanukovych to a puppet. Russian
political scientist Inozemtsev believes that Yanukovych’s chances
of winning the next election are slim. “It’s highly unlikely in 2015
that someone will be elected president who is prepared, once again,
to exchange Europe for cheap Russian gas.”
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan