Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 7 – Many people in
Russia and the West are inclined to support Vladimir Putin and his policies
however much they disagree with them because they believe that he is the only
thing standing between the current situation and an even worse one that would
emerge if his radical nationalist opponents came to po
And such people accept without
question the related notion that Putin does not control these people and may in
fact be constrained as a result of their pressure and even to act more
aggressively than he would like in order to prevent them from coming together,
overthrowing him, and behaving even worse.
What these people do not consider but
should, Kseniya Kirillova argues, is that Putin is the clear beneficiary of
this mythology and works hard to spread it even though he remains in effective
control of the most important of these groups which carefully avoid attacking
him even though they attack everyone else.
In an essay on Novy Region-2
entitled “Putin is doing everything so that Russia will End Together with Him,”
Kirillova considers each of these notions in turn and demonstrates why they are
in fact false and designed to help and protect Putin rather than point to any
threat to him (nr2.ru/blogs/Ksenija_Kirillova/Putin-delaet-vse-chtoby-Rossiya-zakonchilas-vmeste-s-nim-100659.html).
There indeed has
been a dramatic growth in radical nationalist attitudes and groups in Russia
since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, but one has the sense, she suggests,
that “the ruling hierarchy in Russia is ably using this situation to blackmail
Western leaders by suggesting that if Putin leaves, then some Girkin will come
to power and then things will be worse.”
But there is no evidence for the
notion that “hurrah patriots” independent of the Kremlin are in charge or
threaten to be so anytime soon. All their centers and movements, Kirillova
continues, operate on the sufferance of and with support from the Kremlin. They
should not be viewed as independent actors.
And the most compelling indication
of that, she says, is that these groups attack all and sundry but they avoid at
all times criticizing one man: Putin himself. If they were really independent
and preparing to go after him, that would not be the case. Consequently, it is
at least premature to talk about their being beyond the Kremlin’s control.
That in turn means, Kirillova says,
that the appearance of their being beyond the control of the Kremlin is
something that is “being established artificially and even more as an insurance
policy of the president from a possible palace coup.” Moreover, there is an even more disturbing
aspect to all this.
“The impression is being created that
the Kremlin is consciously laying the groundwork for an inevitable civil war
and ‘big blood’ in the case of a change among the powers that be,” a truly
frightening prospect. But even that is not an indication that the radicals are
controlling Putin; just the reverse is true.
Putin “cannot end the war in the
Donbas not only and not so much out of fear of ‘dissatisfied patriots,’”
Kirillova argues, “as from the fact” that the war he is conducting in Ukraine
is part and parcel of the political system he has imposed in the case of the
Russian Federation.
Blaming the radical nationalists for
Putin’s crimes is exactly what he wants people to do; and it is exactly wrong,
the analyst concludes.
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