Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 7 – “Judging by
everything,” Yevgeny Kiselyov says, “the Kremlin is seriously considering the
scenario of a military conflict with the West, and with a high degree of
probability could unleash this conflict in the Baltics.” But there is at least
one indication this week that ordinary Russians may be less than enthusiastic
about dying for Narva.
The Russian journalist says that he
reached this “extremely worrisome conclusion” after several developments this
past week, most prominently the statement of Federation Council Speaker
Valentina Matvienko that the Russian leadership is no longer willing to put up
with discrimination against Russians abroad (echo.msk.ru/blog/kiselev/1778686-echo/).
That is disturbing on two grounds:
Moscow made the same argument before using military force in Crimea, and
Matvienko mentioned far more countries as problematic from the Kremlin’s point
of view on this issue than is typically the case, including not just the Baltic
states but Belarus and even Kazakhstan.
And related to that is the
reappearance of a second argument by those near the Kremlin that they used
before sending forces into the Ukrainian peninsula, “if Russian military units
hadn’t taken Crimea under its control,” they argued then and suggest once
again, then two weeks later there would have been NATO forces.”
Kiselyov says that that argument was
nothing new for the Kremlin: it had used it before sending troops into
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and into Afghanistan in 1979. And now senior Russian
officials like Frantz Klinetsevich, the first deputy head of the Federation
Council’s defense and security committee, has resuscitated them about the
Baltics.
He is arguing, Kiselyov says, that “NATO is preparing a place des armes
for a military strike against Russian” in the Baltic countries” and strongly
implying that Moscow needs to take “a ’preventive’ hybrid special operation of
military and special services of the Russian Federation against this threat.
By
issuing such threats, Moscow is “attempting to use intimidation tactics,” with
some even talking about the need to use tactical nuclear weapons,” an action
that if taken would put NATO in a difficult position: if it responded in kind,
there could be escalation to full-scale war; if it did not, NATO might die as a
result.
That
Vladimir Putin is prepared to push things to the limit was shown, Kiselyov
says, by his rejection of Aleksey Kudrin’s argument that the Kremlin should
seek a rapprochement with the West to save the economy. The Kremlin leader not only said he would
never trade on Russia’s sovereignty but also added that he would defend Russia “to
the end of his life.”
That
last phrase, the Moscow journalist argues, “speaks volumes.”
“The
diagnosis of the situation is bad,” he continues. “Putin lives as a prisoner of
his own ambitions and phobias,” which suggest to him that Russia is surrounded
by enemies and that the West is trying to destroy it and him. In this, Kiselyov says, Putin thinks just
like the zombified Russian population that he has created.
What
is more significant, he continues, is “not only this episode but practically
any discussion about how to get the Russian economy out of its prolonged crisis
runs into one and the same thing: the striving of the Putin regime to retain
power at any price,” including military conflict and nuclear blackmail.
“Any
serious reforms are impossible without political liberalization,” Kiselyov
suggests, something that the Kremlin understands quite well. But if it begins
reforms, it will “inevitably” lose power or be forced to share it with others. “The
only alternative is the tightening of the screws … all under the flag of
uniting the nation against a foreign threat.”
As
a result, the Moscow journalist suggests, “military confrontation with the West
is becoming ever more likely, and most likely of all in the Baltic region.” Of course, Putin could expand the war in
Ukraine or launch something in Kazakhstan or Belarus, but these are “exotic
scenarios” given his past approach. Consequently, he is going to go to the
brink in the Baltics – and possibly even over it.
But
there is at least one indication that perhaps the Russian people aren’t nearly
as enthusiastic about that prospect and that they do not want to “fight for
Narva” for Putin’s vision and salvation and against the Western alliance,
especially because they can see that NATO has built up serious forces in the
region, Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts argues.
In
an article in today’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal”
entitled “Will We Fight for Narva?” he observes that the Western
alliance has “in fact returned to the scenarios of the cold war. No one is
talking about whether Russian threatens or not the countries of the alliance.
Instead, they talk about where this threat is greatest and how to counter it” (ej.ru/?a=note&id=29778).
NATO has developed a system for
putting its forces in forward areas, Golts observes. “Earlier, the field of
battled was assumed to be Germany; today, it is the Baltic region,” and even Sweden
and Finland, which during the earlier Cold War, were neutral, are now “taking
part in NATO military preparations.”
Obviously, Moscow has to react to
this, a situation it played the key role in creating. But one chain of events
this week suggests that the Russian people may be less enthusiastic about war
than Putin is and more frightened of the NATO forces with which any Russian
move would have to deal.
First, a senior Russian
parliamentarian announced that the defense ministry planned to close some of
the military training faculties in key universities; and then the defense
ministry denied this was the case. Golts
suggests that perhaps the best explanation is that the Kremlin didn’t want to “take
the risk” of doing something like this before the elections.
And that in turn suggests, although
Golts does not take this next step, that at least some in the Presidential
Administration are worried about how the Russian people view what the Kremlin
leader’s warlike attitudes will lead to and what they will mean for their own
lives and not just his.
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